Collective Joy

Thanks to a nudge from Alan Moore I am currently listening to Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy by Barbara Ehrenreich and thoroughly enjoying it. The book traces the history of street festivals, carnivals and other group activities that have been repressed and disapproved of by various regimes through the centuries but which continue to surface in new forms with each generation.

It occurred to me that Facebook, Twitter and all the other tools that people like to disparage as being silly are probably the latest attempt to express collective joy in the face of "grown up" resistance!