We have a gap in our understanding of the world that leads us to undervalue ourselves.

When you watch a nature documentary, they often show the courtship for an animal species. So you’ll see a peacock fan its tail, or a frog croak, or cuttlefish put on a colourful display. But the emphasis is on the male’s display. Little attention is given to the female, the audience’s, status. The documentary’s narrative is typically structured that the only part of her actions that matter is whether she accepts or rejects the male based on his performance.

In effect, we’re told that the audience matters less than the creative, the performer. After all, she has put less effort in.

Yet the male’s performance is purposeless without her.

Why are we biased to focus on performance and not on its reception? An audience is not a passive being.

In our lives we spend more time in the role of audience, than of creative, which is why it’s so damaging to misunderstand the audience’s role as lesser and passive. It leads us to see ourselves as lesser and passive, as people shaped by outside forces rather than contributing to the world around us.

Any creative endeavour is consumed by someone, even if the same individual switches role from creative to audience. So a home baker can make cookies, then eat them. The creative turns into the audience. As satisfying as the baking experience was to the creative aspect of the individual, if the cookies are not consumed, then the pointlessness of making them devalues the experience.

One of the problems of understanding the power of our role as audience is that it involves consumption, and the idea of ourselves as consumers has been damaged by commercial interests mucking with the concept, trying to sell us things. A consumer is more than someone with purchasing power.

If you walk through a garden or a free public art gallery you are consuming beauty and art. You are the audience for the efforts that have constructed, and are displayed within, both. Yes, the beauty and challenge of the art would still exist without you, but without effect. There has to be an audience for the creative endeavour to add to the world. This is different to the old philosophical question of “if a tree falls in a forest and no one witnesses it, has it really fallen?”. Creative endeavours exist to be consumed.

When you support your favourite sports team by watching their game or go to a concert to see a great band, your personal connection to the performance is also part of a wider group identity. This communal aspect of the audience role is crucial for our mental and emotional health. It establishes each of us as part of the communities we choose to belong to.

Consider the “like” button on Facebook. You can dismiss it as merely another data collection tool employed by a massive corporation who will then on-sell your data. But approach the “like” button from a different angle, and it reveals a fundamental aspect of being audience.

When a person views a post on Facebook and clicks “like”, they are saying, “I am here. I am part of this.” The “like” button serves for them to self-identify as the audience for the post (and yes, I know that Facebook decides which posts are shown to its users, but that’s not the point I’m trying to make). What and when we choose to assume the role of audience is part of how we build and refine our personal identity.

And by our response to a performance we, as audience, influence subsequent performances. We shape the world. This power is crudely expressed (or hijacked, if you want to be cynical about it) in systems of ratings and reviews, but more nuanced, genuine and persuasive in what is termed “word of mouth”. A compliment to a baker encourages future baking and baking experimentation, but so can simply devouring the cookies. Feedback is vital to creatives, and can only be delivered by an audience.

As an author, let me tell you a not so secret truth about creatives: we’re sneaky. We want our audience to shower us with praise; that is, with positive feedback. We’re not above trying to guilt you into compliments and future consumption of our performances (buy my next book!). So in fairness to you, as you think about your role as audience and the power you have, please remember that being audience draws on the same wisdom that guides all of your life: live by your values and needs, not by other people’s demands.

We are audience, and we matter.

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I’ve been thinking about this subject for years, ever since I realised that appreciating other people’s creativity is a vital part of who I am.