Bread and Circuses

Are Americans indifferent to the events in the larger world because of their preoccupation with bread and circuses?

In the course of a lifetime I’ve often seen writers compare our American empire to that of Rome. As with all the great empires beforehand Rome, too, fell. In Gibbon’s classic analysis, the cratering of that empire was due to internal factors, not external.

By means of bread and circuses the ruling class of ancient Rome maintained their power and control of the people. As long as the masses were happy, their labors could be used to fuel the wheels of progress... or at least maintain the status quo.

Starvation, infant death, malnutrition, terror, slaughter, oppression, torture, violence… these things abound in our world today. Simultaneous to these global maladies, we have in this country a 24 billion dollar amusement park industry, a 30 billion dollar entertainment industry, a 200 billion-plus sports industry, and an even larger gambling industry. (Called “gaming” because gambling has negative connotations.)

Meanwhile, according to the World Hunger Organization, 800 million people go to bed hungry every night, mostly women and children. 24,000 die every day. Two hundred million children under five years of age are underweight due to lack of food, which can lead to mental retardation and stunted physical stature. And while you read this, one child will die of starvation every seven seconds.

By way of contrast, according to A.C. Nielsen stats from a recent year, the average American watches 3 hours and 46 minutes of TV each day (which would add up to more than 52 days of nonstop TV-watching per year). By age 65 the average American will have spent nearly 9 years glued to the tube. A few may be watching educational television, but most are simply watching whatever distraction the channel is tuned to at the time.

As tensions rise between India and Pakistan, most Americans have no clue what the fuss is about. As tens of thousands visit the grave of Benazir Bhutto, how many understand the significance of this woman who was killed in a gun-and-suicide attack one year ago already? How many understand that the Mumbai incident has significance nearly as important as our 9/11? Just because it is not longer in our U.S. newspapers, it doesn’t mean there have been no reverberations set in motion.

I’d be half willing to bet that most Americans don’t even know where Pakistan is located, let alone that there was a 1971 war fought between India and Pakistan that cost hundreds of thousands of lives. We were pre-occupied that year with All in the Family, Flip Wilson, Marcus Welby, Gunsmoke, and earning money for our next Disneyland vacation.

I realize I am being a little harsh. Let me say that I am not aiming to impose new restrictions to behavior. (“Don’t smoke, don’t chew, don’t go with girls who do.”) I am simply making an appeal to conscience. We live in a world where there is suffering, and the aim of our lives needs to be something bigger than next weekend’s bash. An Old Testament maxim from the Book of Ecclesiastes comes to mind here. “The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning, but the heart of fools is in the house of pleasure.”

Is it possible that those who control the marionette strings love the power they hold? Who gets the bailouts? Who has the golden parachutes? Who gets the wool when the sheep are fleeced?

A lot of questions in life have no easy, clear cut answers. One of the toughest: What should our relationship be to the culture we find ourselves in? Sure, the gladiators are putting on quite a show for us today. Is that what it’s all about? More bread? More circuses?