I’ve been thinking about the July 4th fireworks that many of us experienced the other day. Over the course of several hours, millions of people across the U.S. were setting off controlled explosions, usually with spectacularly loud results.
This yearly ritual is, in essence, an enormously large scale audience participation event. And there is something crazy about the entire enterprise, which I think is a large part of its appeal.
On that day of the year, people all across the country are literally playing with fire. As an activity it is more than a little dangerous, and in a moment things can go very wrong.
So why do so many people do it? Maybe it’s a reaction to the fact that we spend so much of our lives watching canned entertainment from a safe distance.
Perhaps on a deep level this is a chance for people to feel something beyond the usual safe and packaged experiences on offer. In some primal way, setting off July 4th fireworks fills a need that for most of the year people don’t even realize they have.