Societies with little or no public life or attendance at public events

July 8, 2022 5:16 AM

Do you have advice, ideas, or examples of how to live a meaningful life without participation in local, regional, national, or international public life? Do you have favorite historical analogues for this, societies where public life was wildly constrained or people (unfree, enslaved, or otherwise constrained) were forced to develop their own alternative to public life that was not limited solely to domestic life? What are the best routes forward for this in 2022?

This question springs from the fact that many people I know, and more I follow online, have largely turned away from participation in public shared or semi-shared activities (restaurants, protests, shopping, movies, festivals, parades, etc., etc.). This turn is driven in all cases by a blend of pandemic concerns and concerns for mass and/or political violence. In the U.S., mass shootings are a major component of comments I've seen or heard along these lines.

My immediate interest in this question was spurred by a thwarted mass shooting in my city that was planned for this July 4th. I wasn't planning to attend a public event that day, but if I had, the fireworks display location the alleged would-be shooters targeted is where I probably would have been. As to the pandemic, I'd been looking forward to resuming more activities in 2022, and I have cautiously done so, but every major event (conference, convention, etc.) I would have attended this year had at least some Covid transmission, and there were large outbreaks at most.

I am not an extrovert by nature, but I'm thinking about the next 30-40-whatever years of my life. I know people who have completely withdrawn from everything they can since March 2020. I also know at least one person who survived a mass shooting and has carried on living her life, apparently giving zero fucks about any of this. I am somewhere in between, with a side order of serious concern for Long Covid effects and wanting to avoid that. I have been socializing more outside, been a little more active on MetaFilter, etc., but I experience enough negative effects from social media that I know it can't fully substitute.

I have gone looking for examples for how people have lived in situations where public life was constrained. My limited searching thus far hasn't turned up precisely what I want. (I think; I don't know what I want.) The closest relevant scholarship has covered:

* How women and members of gender or sexual minorities have created societies in spite of the patriarchy
* How unfree, enslaved, or otherwise constrained persons have created societies in spite of laws, policies, etc. that did not allow their participation.
* "Life under Communism" studies
* Public/private life studies (Ancient Rome; Renaissance Italy)

[Note: this question stems from a place of privilege, both my own and historical persons. Should I choose, I could with my current employment substantially--not entirely, but much of the time--work and live without leaving home. Please bear in mind that I am aware that this is a privilege and that many have no alternative than to exist in more dangerous spaces.]

posted by cupcakeninja to Society & Culture (14 answers total)

The categories you’ve articulated seem to focus mostly on oppressed subgroups and how they form community. I personally find that more interesting and thus an entirely understandable focus, but to answer your question, another category would be the private social lives and communities of more privileged groups in authoritarian or restrictive societies. Eg. young people with resources still party (in mixed gender groups) in places like Iran, Saudi Arabia, UAE, etc. (there’s overlap here with some of your categories, of course - eg. most of the folks I know who grew up in Iran were undoubtedly from more economically privileged families there, but some were also oppressed on the political/religious axis). Very very rich people in the US (and I guess also UK/Europe?) seem to have a similarly strong but largely hidden from outsiders social milieu, albeit for different reasons (managing public perception rather than avoiding legal consequences).

I haven’t followed up as much as I originally intended, but if you go back to earlier in the pandemic, a bunch of articles came out from people in the disability/long term illness community who have been living with the sort of restrictions you describe and finding/creating community since long before the pandemic. Some of these focused on the changes to economics systems and public policy that we need in order to enable better public participation by everyone, while others were more focused on advice to the rest of us newbies on how to stay connected to others and mentally/emotionally healthy (as much as possible, anyways). The rest of society seems to have returned to largely ignoring these voices and their expertise, but it may be more in line with what you’re looking for?
posted by eviemath at 5:45 AM on July 8, 2022 [14 favorites]

Along the same lines as eviemath, expats in some countries (UAE, Saudi Arabia) and European Royalty function like this.
posted by plonkee at 6:11 AM on July 8, 2022 [1 favorite]

One more community to consider would be disabled folk. Even in countries like the US with something like the
ADA, it is not easy for many folk to participate in much of public life, whether for mobility reasons or communication.

Another consideration is how you define domestic life. In the US, we tend to think of domestic life as nuclear family only. So even in the "big" case you've got a married couple and possibly kids. Other times it's just a person or couple. Other societies have bigger households, with extended family living together, so the line between public and domestic is different.
posted by mrgoldenbrown at 6:13 AM on July 8, 2022 [4 favorites]

Oddly, you may find some of what you are looking for in Jane Austen. There were few to no public events in English country life, society was based on invitation only events, primarily lunch, tea, or dinner but occasionally large balls held in private spaces.

Being by invitation only was the key, I think.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 6:54 AM on July 8, 2022 [3 favorites]

Response by poster: For clarity's sake: I am privileged on most axes of measurement. I value the opportunity to learn about the experiences of oppressed groups negotiating these issues. I am especially grateful for the generosity shown by so many members of disability and long term illness during the pandemic in sharing their advice and life strategies. I am sorry that we are failing you and have shifted in many environments away from the occasional 2020/2021 approach that prioritized accessibility in ways I had never seen. I work to be an ally and advocate on these issues where I have any sway. And to be super clear, I do not in any way, shape, or form want this Ask to come across as minimizing the lived experiences of anyone.

Thanks for the suggestions so far. I really appreciate it. I'd halfway thought about quarantine bubbles as expanded domestic spheres, but I had not thought about expat communities at all.
posted by cupcakeninja at 6:56 AM on July 8, 2022 [3 favorites]

You may be interested in CBC Radio's 2010 multi- (like, 14?) part broadcast on "the Origins of the Modern Public" (in Europe between 1500 and 1700). Part 1, Part 2, podcasts page for CBC's Ideas.
posted by heatherlogan at 7:31 AM on July 8, 2022 [6 favorites]

Another item embraced by the English aristocracy was The Club, a private space that was permanently open to members, with spaces for both socializing and sitting quietly.

I currently work in a public library where I have endeavored to create both spaces as much as it is logistically possible. I’m afraid that would count as a public space under your definition, but it is generally a small group of people who come and make use of it.

Sorry to keep dipping into the English aristocracy, but they made an art of having a Society while keeping themselves separate from the public.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 7:55 AM on July 8, 2022 [3 favorites]

I mean, another approach might be to read about people who feel unable to integrate into society fully for religious reasons - so, the Amish. Of course, they do socialize with each other, but they don't participate in regular American public life.

From a different angle, you could listen to the podcast "Project Unabomb" about Ted Kaczynski, who really unplugged from society.

"I also know at least one person who survived a mass shooting and has carried on living her life, apparently giving zero fucks about any of this."

Side note: I'm not sure I'd assume that your friend doesn't care, it's more she has a different relationship to risk than you do. Despite how frequently they occur, the risk of being involved in a mass shooting is still relatively low - lower than being in a car accident, for example. It's possible to not worry about small risks on a personal level, but still care about the problem on a national level.
posted by coffeecat at 8:25 AM on July 8, 2022 [2 favorites]

Another avenue you might explore is reading about historical Jewish communities in Europe and the various ways they socialized and lived — under constraints that were both imposed by the government / non-Jewish public, and sometimes chosen for themselves or dictated by their religious observances. Some of these traditions continue today in more conservative Jewish communities in places like NYC or Montreal. It's totally possible to have a large but completely closed community with big social gatherings but no participation in a broader "public," and no social overlap with nonmembers — even in the middle of a giant urban centre.

I don't have specific recommendations for reading on this, but there is a lot out there.
posted by 100kb at 9:44 AM on July 8, 2022 [1 favorite]

If you're interested in fictional examples, you might like the Ursula Le Guin story "Solitude."
posted by Redstart at 10:25 AM on July 8, 2022 [1 favorite]

This is a fascinating question because there really aren't many easy historical analogues to today's COVID isolation situation--there are some societies where there wouldn't have been much association outside a small family unit, but because of transportation issues and need for labor on the land, not because of fear of violence or disease. (I'm thinking parts of Little House on the Prairie. Or maybe Wisconsin Death Trip.) Or there could be communities cut off from the outside world as a whole but which still involve a lot of face to face socialization "within the walls"--the Jewish shtetl would be one of those communities to an extent, and yes, the Amish. But individuals in these communities still participated in public life, just not in ways accessible to strangers. Even Jane Austen would have had a very "full" life by today's standards of isolation--all those servants! She didn't mention them in the novels, but they would have been there.

It's not exactly the same because of course we now have the Internet, but perhaps the monk, nun, or even the anchorite is the closest Western example--someone who intentionally cuts themselves off from an outside world that is considered fallen, frightening, and contaminated. There's nohing "out there" worth the risk, so why bother? (To one's immortal soul in the days before germ theory, to one's mortal body afterwards.)
posted by kingdead at 10:31 AM on July 8, 2022 [4 favorites]

Natural philosophers, intellectuals and scientists of the 16thC and 17thC lived a fulfilling life, largely working from home, and communicating with peers in distant places by letter. Some of them had a public side working as court astrologers and the like, but their drivers seem to be more pushing the frontiers of physics, metaphysics, astronomy and the transition of alchemy into chemistry. They established priority by sending each other anagrams and riddles.

e.g Christiaan Huygens sent his pals "ADMOUERE OCULIS DISTANTIA SIDERA NOSTRIS UUUUUUU CCCRRHNBQX" after some telescopic observations. Which being translated is Saturno luna sua circunducitur diebus sexdecim horis quatuor" or The moon of Saturn orbits in 16 days and 4 hours.

I'm thinking of Montaigne. But The Sleepwalkers: A History of Man's Changing Vision of the Universe [1959] by Arthur Koestler is a great sequential biography of Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo. Kepler and Galileo also played anagram mind games on each other.
posted by BobTheScientist at 10:34 AM on July 8, 2022 [5 favorites]

Natural philosophers, intellectuals and scientists of the 16thC and 17thC lived a fulfilling life, largely working from home, and communicating with peers in distant places by letter.

I find these assertions that wealthy early modern English (or other European) people didn't have a public life to participate in quite....strange, as if people simply couldn't recognize forms that didn't match their own, when in fact the notion of a "public sphere" was originally developed in the context of 18C England! In London, and to a lesser degree in small cities, there was a vast tide of public life to be involved in, from the coffeehouses to the concert-halls to the mercantile-exchanges. (When it comes to Jane Austen, she wrote a good half a novel depicting people moving in the public life of a seaside resort! Elizabeth and Jane meet Darcy and Bingley at a public assembly in Meryton!) Rural life could be sleepier, especially for women, but even then there would have been the church, the markets and shops, the seasonal courts to serve as medium for public life. Intellectuals had a thriving international public life to participate in via schools and universities and the courts (or whatever other places they sought patronage). Kepler spent way more time out of his house than I have the past two and a half years.
posted by praemunire at 3:09 PM on July 8, 2022 [3 favorites]

You might want to look at the Biedermeier period.
This brief article gives a good starting point.
Quote:
"The Biedermeier, for example, covers a 30+ year period between 1815 and 1848 (two rather auspicious dates in European and Austrian history).

1815 saw the defeat of Napoleon and the reorganisation of political Europe at the Vienna Congress (held, unsurprisingly, in Vienna).

In Austria, the Emperor sought to shore up established structures, so the authorities cracked down on free thinking and political activism. Censorship was rife. Not that it helped much in the end, since 1848 saw the Austrian empire suffer revolution like much of the rest of the continent.
(...)
The term Biedermeier now tends to refer to the style and culture of that era, rather than the specific period of history.

Given the political situation, much of life retreated behind closed doors. Conservatism and simple pleasures, rather than artistic and intellectual experimentation, characterised the times. The middle class grew in numbers, and the arts reflected their needs and interests.

As a result, the Biedermeier became associated with genteel domestic idylls, elegant interiors and furniture design, paintings of landscapes, families and living rooms, music suited to performance at home (so-called house concerts), lightweight theatre and public dances, walks in the park, and similar."
____

The Wikipedia entry here is also not bad.
posted by 15L06 at 8:12 AM on July 9, 2022 [1 favorite]