The culture of spectacle – Ahmed Fateh Muhammad
A person who does nothing is not necessarily lazy — perhaps he is too busy watching.
We are a people with a rare talent for watching. A talent that does not require training, education, or even a comfortable chair.
We stand on our feet for long hours to see a car accident, we rush to see a fight in the street, and we circle around any scene at a speed faster than the speed of an ambulance that does not come. Watching for us is not curiosity – it is identity.
In the past, watching required at least physical effort — getting up, walking, arriving. Today, I am free from all this trouble. You sit at home, film from your balcony, and post before the scene ends. And the camera doesn’t lie — but it doesn’t help anyone, either.
When the man fell in the street, phones were faster than hands. When the fire broke out, there were more photographers than firefighters. When the mother cried for her son, someone was adjusting the lights.
We don’t help — we document. We have a ready-made philosophical justification: “so that the world may know.” The world does not know, nor does it care, but the justification relieves the conscience.
Aristotle said that tragedy purifies the feelings – a person sees it and cries and is purified. But Aristotle did not know a society that saw tragedy, laughed, shared it, commented on it with emojis, and passed on. The purification he talked about has turned into dullness for us – we see pain so much that it no longer hurts us.
What is more dangerous than watching misfortunes is watching life as a whole. We watch politics and do not change. We watch corruption and do not act. We watch our dreams die and say: (This is his time).
Watching for us is not a temporary situation – it is a complete philosophy of life, a philosophy that says: I am here, and I see, but I am not responsible for anything.
Camus said that the only serious philosophical problem is why people do not commit suicide. Perhaps our answer is simple: because he is busy watching others commit suicide.
And the phone is raised. Registration is ongoing. And life passes.
And no one moves.
