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Article snippet: I recently learned that a group of neuroscientists have discovered that watching live theater can synchronize the heartbeats of an audience. One of the researchers put it this way: “Experiencing the live theater performance was extraordinary enough to overcome group differences and produce a common physiological experience.” The living presence of the audience is what strikes me as so singular about the theater, why I love working in the theater so much and why I believe in the particular importance of our beloved form right now. But first, let me say: I am not hopeful about where we are as a nation — as a species (if I can be so presumptuous). I’m not hopeful, because I am increasingly of the mind that even my hope is being monetized. That which is most enduring, most noble, most human about me — my urge for something brighter, more vivid, more loving, more alive — all of this is being used against me. Some 60 years ago, Eisenhower warned us of the military-industrial complex — that nexus of hidden interests responsible for monetizing warfare. We are no longer a society caught in the fateful grip of lucrative warmongering. It turns out, there’s less money in war than in the merchandising of our attention. And so a new nexus of hidden interests has arisen in its place: merchants of attention — Google, Facebook, Twitter, Apple, etc. — married to the mature technologies of finance, what we could label the attention-finance complex. The attention-finance complex has... Link to the full article to read more