Spectacle as a new phenomenon

When I first read Debord, I was immediately depressed because he comments on (what he considers to be) the degeneration of society.  The first section is case in point: "All that once was directly lived has become mere representation."  His use of the word "mere" makes the life as seen through representation seem lesser and worse than the original, "directly lived" life.

Perhaps I felt sad and empty because Debord was commenting on the society that I supposedly am a part of - apparently my everyday is nothing but illusion and representation of the original.  I had trouble accepting that my perceptions were never direct but just expressive images.

However, Debord's reasoning in the article is sound, and for the purposes of this article I will assume that his argument is correct: I do live in a society of spectacle - filled only with "mere representations" of all of the intangible concepts of life.  So moving on now, I want to investigate the other parts of the passage that I have highlighted above: "All that once was directly lived..."  So Debord assumes that in centuries past, the spectacle was nonexistent and all emotions and concepts were perceived in a perfectly direct way.  But what proof does he have for this?  What if the spectacle is not a relatively new development in society, but a phenomenon that has been occurring since the beginning of human history?

This thought did not occur to me while I maintained my first impression of the spectacle - a superficial way to run society in which the members simply lived in a haze of illusion (with of brands, billboard etc.).  I realized that I needed to move past my instinct to think of this superficial society as just a materialistic one.  I decided to expand my thinking by expanding the definition of the society of spectacle.  Couldn't the passage "All that once was directly lived has become mere representation" be applied to something society seemingly irrelevant to our previous focus and discussion on consumerism and materialism?

The first "something" that I thought of - and it ultimately served my purposes very well - was writing.  Writing, I have been told, is only a representation of the deeper concepts that are within the writer.  It is not possible to for the writer to directly express these inner emotions and ideas: fears, joy, anxieties, pride, etc.  He or she can only represent it in words in the best possible way.  Following directly from Debord's own words, then, writing is a type of spectacle. Writing has been a staple of human society for centuries, even before many claim that it became superficial and materialistic - full of illusion.  So were human lives ever directly lived, or just represented by illusion to a lesser degree?

Here I could conclude my argument that indeed spectacle has always been a part of our society - nothing to be alarmed about.  It is impossible to directly live life anyway.  

But here again I also see a big difference between the writer and the materialistic spectacle of today's society.  I think in the case of the writer, he or she still lives directly within himself or herself.  Even if others cannot experience the life directly, there is still something inside of each individual that is true and pure.  Perhaps Debord's point, then, is that in modern times even this inner truth is lost to that of representational elements.  Expression and conveying to others aside, the individual no longer lives his or life directly.