Christine the Vitalist

The innate need for community that i have only recently come to terms with has best been fulfilled in my life by the ritual of entertainment. I think this is the case for most people in North America. We are a social animal; that is undeniable. But in the past, and still in most other places on this planet, the need for community is met by means of family (mostly large and centralized), or religion (the collective ritual of prayer and worship), or work (communal efforts on farms or fields, for example.)However, today, in the West, families are smaller and segmented, religious ritual is practically obsolete, and most workplaces encourage isolation in offices or cubicles. This societal focus on the individual as opposed to the collective, coupled with the visceral need to connect with other people forces us to search for alternative means of communion. Blaise Pascal called this concept "le divertissement," or entertainment. He meant entertainment in the etymological sense of distraction; the distraction that humans need to prevent them from worrying incessantly about their own mortality. However, in this case, as in for North Americans today, I use the word entertainment literally. I am talking about rock stars, pop idols, and movie legends.In a televised "Free Tibet" concert a few years ago, I remember seeing a Tibetan monk shocked at the throngs of people practically walking over each other to get closer to the stage, their arms-outstretched to try and touch the musicians. The monk said something along the lines, "You North Americans feel the same way about your entertainers as we do about our religious leaders." With the idolatry comes the sense of community for the people in the audience. Maybe The Beatles were not quite "bigger than Jesus" in terms of influence, but in terms of popularity, they certainly come close.In fact, this very medium of expression and connection that i am using, the My Space website, is built upon this concept. Building a network, a community based on similar interests, similar tastes in music or films. Similar means of entertainment, really. "How do you like to entertain yourself? How do you like to spend the time you don't have to be working for your survival? What is it that keeps you going, and prevents you from being sucked into the black hole of negative thought that exists in our collective mind?” For me, it is music, it is the theatre, it is creation and, in spite of myself, and in a fortunate violation of my crippling pride, it is connecting with people.