Vicarious Living: From Gamers and Binge-Watchers, to Sports Fans and Book Worms.

What are the consequences of our engagement with other people's experiences?

The purpose of The Forum at Q is to birth ideas, engage with them and discuss them so that we might consider how we want to transform our minds and our hearts and live our lives more fully in the real world of our day to day lives.

With that in mind, let’s watch an advert as a springboard into today’s theme:

This advert is called The Double Life and was released in 1999 for the Sony Playstation games console.

The characters in this advert make some audacious claims:

“I have assailed adversaries, commanded armies and conquered worlds…and I can say that I have lived.”

Is that true? Have they actually lived?!

I used to be obsessed with the football team Manchester United and identified with them so much that if they won, I would say “We won!” and if they lost “We lost!” If my favourite team beat your favourite team then “We beat you!”

Was that true? What involvement had I actually had in that game?!

I believe that these are examples of what I’ve come to think of as Vicarious Living which is the action of experiencing something indirectly, through the feelings or actions of another person.

The root meaning of the word Vicarious is “To substitute” and when we engage in a vicarious experience, there is an element of substituting our own experiences for someone else’s.

So, do you love a bit of vicarious living?!

Our various vicarious experiences…

Let’s consider sports?  Why do we care if one team, one player or one driver wins and not the other? How do we benefit?

My personal conclusion has been that I enjoy a sense of vicarious achievement and when I identify with a team or a player and they succeed, then I have succeeded by association. I haven’t actually achieved anything in the real world, but I get the sensation that I have through a vicarious experience.

A 2014 study titled “The Neural Underpinnings of Vicarious Experience,” published in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, delves into the brain’s mechanisms behind vicarious experiences. The research indicates that these experiences can trigger authentic emotional and physiological responses akin to those felt in real-life situations. This phenomenon is attributed to the activation of brain regions associated with empathy and social cognition, including mirror neurons.

In layman’s terms, when my team scores a penalty, a very similar pattern can be observed in my brain as in the brain of the person who actually scored the penalty.  Even though I never kicked a ball, my vicarious experience gave me the same sensation of scoring a goal!

Does sport provide a vicarious experience for you?  If you were really honest with yourself, why do you think you care about the outcome of a sports game?

Maybe sports aren’t your thing. Perhaps your vicarious experiences are found in movies or books? When we immerse ourselves in a story we step into another world of someone else’s relationship, romance, adventure or horror, we are experiencing it indirectly, feeling their experiences and actions vicariously.

Are you a sucker for a bit of Reality TV? When we watch talent shows or dating shows like X Factor, Love Island, Married at First Sight, Love is Blind, or even Gogglebox, in which we watch other people watching TV, like a fly on the wall, we experience the intimacies of someone else’s life, vicariously. So, if you’re a reality TV fan, take a moment to consider: what’s the attraction for you to those shows?

Are you a Vicarious Follower?

Followers of religions might also be partaking in a different kind of vicarious experience. If you look at the word, “Vicar” you can see that is related to vicarious. If the root meaning of vicarious is a substitute, what or who is a vicar a substitute for?

In Catholicism, The Pope is known as the vicar of Christ, a substitute for God. I wonder what views or beliefs are being held that lead us to think that we would need a substitute when it comes to our faith and interaction with the divine?

You might not consider yourself religious but might be a follower of celebrity or social and political commentators on social media. Do you think being a follower on social media might be a comparable vicarious experience? 

The song Pictures of Mountains, by Cody Fry, tells a tale of a vicarious life in which the singer realises the power of first hand experiences, singing “Nobodies heart ever pounded at the feeling of being surrounded by pictures of mountains.” It’s the real thing that takes our breathe away.

In one particular lyric, the songwriter makes this acknowledgement:

“I look up opinions about news and religion so I don’t have to use my own mind…”

Is it possible that I might be following religious leaders or social and political commentators in order to have a vicarious experience and adopt someone else’s views, because I don’t want to use my own mind?  If I am doing that, what might the consequences be? Is it beneficial or could this be problematic?

Vicarious Parenting

When we have regrets about how we’ve lived, or we have the benefit of hindsight of choices we’ve made in the past, it’s easy for us as adults to live vicariously through our children.  Last week at The Forum, Clare spoke about Shame - when we are ashamed of choices we’ve made or things we’ve done or believed, it might seem the obvious thing to do, to ensure that our kids don’t make the mistakes we have, or encourage them to choose the path in life that we wished we’d chosen.  This can easily become Vicarious Parenting, when we live out our unfulfilled dreams through our children. 

What effect does vicariously living through our kids or grandkids have on them and on us? Have you found yourself doing this or have you experienced your parents trying to live vicariously through you?

An extreme example of this is arranged marriages. Romance, love and individual choice as the basis for marriage or long term relationships is a relatively new idea that only gained traction in the 18th and 19th Centuries. Before that we would have married who our “wiser” parents might have arranged for us. Their ideas of what was best, would have been vicariously lived out through us as their children. There’s a necessary distinction to be made between arranged marriages and forced marriages, the first gives the prospective Bride and Groom the freedom to reject the match, where the second gives no choice and is enforced by threat. I have friends who have had arranged marriages and are happy with the outcome. There are clearly some obvious negative consequences to vicariously living through our children, but are the benefits that we might dismiss in our culture that other cultures might embrace? As we say here at The Forum: What views have you on such things? 

With all these examples of vicarious living, what might be the benefits and the dangers?

Let’s consider the potential benefits of vicarious experiences:

A Mirror for our Motivations: Our desire for vicarious experiences can act as a signpost to show us what we’re really looking for in the real world? If we’re drawn to romance, adventure or thrills on screen, this might be a mirror to show us what we really want in life and maybe our attraction to these vicarious experiences could be an ignition point for action and to make the change we want to see in our lives?

Nurturing Empathy: We have our own experiences but vicarious experiences like movies, books or tv shows can allow us to virtually experience life from someone else’s point of view that we might not get to regularly interact with in person. This might help broaden our worldview, giving us another lens through which to view the world.

Creating Connections: My friend, Steve, has been regularly watching Liverpool football club for about 50 years now, Steve has sat next to the same people at Anfield for decades, sharing years of highs and lows, developing relationships and community with those people that he otherwise would never have met.  The shows, movies and celebrities whose lives we follow can raise talking points to help us develop our own views, beliefs and approaches to life that can nurture our connections and relationships with each other. I wonder what your experiences of this are - how have your vicarious experiences created connections?

A Timely Tonic: The most common reason people I’ve spoken to give for why they love their vicarious experiences is that these experiences offer a well-needed rest from our own lives. We immerse ourselves in the lives of others, whether fictional or real, to switch off.  Are these vicarious experiences a necessary tonic for the trauma of our lives and a dose of excitement to spice up the monotony of the daily grind?

Learning: We can learn about things from our vicarious experiences that we might never get a chance to hear about in our own day to day life.

When considering vicarious parenting, to what extent should we give our kids completely free reign to choose whatever they feel they want in any moment and how much should we seek to teach and guide them from our own experiences, so that they make choices from the benefit of our accumulated learning?

This opens a rabbit hole to another huge question: To what extent do we want to make our own mistakes and learn from our own experiences and how much do we want to be guided by the advice and experiences of others?

The potential dangers of vicarious living

Comfortable Passivity: Whilst vicarious experiences might be able to reveal to us what we really want, it’s easy to avoid the messiness of reality when vicarious experiences can be less challenging, more comfortable and more exciting than real life.  

A Feeling of Inadequacy & Low Self-Esteem: When we don’t take the steps to learn, grow, engage with real life and change, we aren’t building our self-esteem on anything beyond someone else’s experiences which might not be sufficient to help us when the rubber hits the road and the storms of life come along.

Co-dependence and helplessness: Living through another person’s achievements can create a codependent relationship where you rely on the other person for your happiness. If I’m constantly living through someone else's accomplishments, how will I ever develop my own identity or sense of self-worth.

This week, Thomas Tuchel was announced as the new Manager of the England Football Team. A study from Lancaster University showed that there was a correlation between England losing a football game and an increase in domestic violence, so much so that a campaign was launched called “Give Domestic violence the red card.”

To what extent do vicarious experiences affect our moods to the point that it starts to influence how we treat each other?

Ruined Relationships: Proud parents living vicariously through their children can put immense pressure on their kids to live up to their expectations. This can strain the parent-child relationship and lead to all sorts of long lasting psychological damage.

VR: The Future of Vicarious Living

As technology continues to develop, Virtual Reality (VR) experiences have evolved to become more realistic than ever and the recent breakthrough of Elon Musk’s Neuralink brain-computer interface opens up some fascinating futuristic scenarios for vicarious living:

Immersive Virtual Experiences: VR can create highly immersive environments where users can experience different realities, from exploring exotic locations to participating in historical events. With Neuralink, these experiences could become even more realistic by directly interfacing with the brain, allowing users to feel sensations and emotions as if they were truly there. 

Empathy and Understanding: By experiencing life from another person's perspective, VR and Neuralink could enhance empathy and understanding. For example, users could "live" a day in the life of someone from a different culture or background, fostering greater compassion and awareness.

Education and Training: Vicarious living through VR and Neuralink could revolutionise education and training. Medical students could perform virtual surgeries, and astronauts could train for space missions in realistic simulations, gaining hands-on experience without real-world risks.

Therapeutic Applications: For individuals with physical or mental health conditions, VR and Neuralink could offer therapeutic benefits. Patients could engage in virtual environments designed to reduce anxiety, manage pain, or rehabilitate from injuries, all while their brain activity is monitored and adjusted for optimal outcomes.

Entertainment and Leisure: The entertainment industry could see a new era of interactive and immersive content. Users could become their favourite sport’s stars, take the place of characters in their favourite stories, influencing plotlines and outcomes in real-time, creating personalised and engaging experiences.

Digital Afterlife: Diving into the realms of Science Fiction, many movies have imagined the possibility of uploading human consciousness into a digital realm, allowing people to continue "living" in a virtual space even after physical death.

How would the potential of these next-level Vicarious Experiences through Virtual Reality enhance the benefits or exacerbate the potential dangers we’ve mentioned?

In Conclusion…

We all engage in vicarious living, when experiencing something indirectly, through the feelings or actions of another person.  From watching movies, reading books, following sports or social media and raising children, we all have our own favourite vicarious fix.

If you’ve read this far, then thank you! If the question in your mind is “So are vicarious experiences bad?” then I’d invite you to consider a question that might help you more: How are your vicarious experiences affecting your life? Are they holding you back from your potential or helping you fulfil it? As you consider this my hope is that you’ll be able to say with confidence:

“I have lived.”