The moment rules

A spiritual and a commercial movement seem to come together, unwittingly. Now that we are all out of god, or at least some of us are, we have gone out shopping for something to believe. It appears shops in the East are full of goodies, thousands have been there to stock up on insight and meaning.
That's a good thing.
We don't want to run out of meaning.
One of the items they brought back was a new consciousness of life, of the moments it is made of. A singular attention for whatever it is that we do. Be it washing up or writing a novel, painting the house or riding the Tour de France - you do it with all your attention and all your senses. You let other thoughts go and assemble yourself around the task at hand. One by one you shut down other considerations, worries, ideas, ambitions and needs. You do what you do and you do it fully. When you are with friends you are with them and the more you can let other things go, the more you will experience and enjoy their company and the more that experience will mean. For them and for yourself. You expand the moment by living it to the full. You learn by fulfilling your potential in that moment.
Good stuff.
At the same time the experience economy is on the rise. Everything we buy must also be an experience. Just buying new shoes or breakfast cereal or holidays isn't enough. We are in need of experiences, be it rafting, bungee jumping, hicking through Iran, helping victims of a natural disaster or a visit to Disney World.
And every experience must be bigger and better and more intense, louder, higher and faster than the previous. We are in the middle of an economic life cycle that can only go one way.
The media, too, are part of the experience economy. For the love of ratings and circulation figures they serve us what we want: Moments filled to the brim with experience. Overflowing. Every possible sensory stimulus crammed into each moment. Shouting, yelling, singing, dancing, laughing we turn up the volume until we can only hear ourselves.
The moment rules.
Live it.
Eat it.
Scream it.
This is your life.
And this.
And now.
And again.
The spiritual and the commercial coincide and produce moments never to forget. Until the next moment. A tsunami draws media from all over the world: television, radio, newspaper, photo, blog - there are thousands of people there to pump up the moment. Biggest ever.
European football championship.
The China Olympics.
We are here.
You are here.
Give.
Live.
On to the next one.
Temptation Island, Expedition Robinson, Big Brother.
We are creating hysteria. We are marketing hysteria. We are selling hysteria.
Small wonder that these are hysterical times.