This post was written by Patrick Rist on September 13, 2006
Many commentators and social critics have observed that we live in a time of increased “weightlessness” – in which the acceleration of our daily experience tends to empty out our lives of substance and meaning. The constant press of the next thing we have to do — the next meeting we have to attend — the next place we have to be — the next appointment in our Treo – all seem to detract from our ability to see any of it having any particular meaning. It seems to be merely the “price of admission” into modern existence.
I’ve recently been reading Orthodoxy by CK Chesterton, written in 1908. It was only an aside, but it was ironic to read Chesterton’s abhorrence of the busyness of the England of his day, almost a century ago. So this impression has been with us for a while.
And yet one wonders if the particular kinds of activities that occupy us today are unique and especially potent in flattening out our world. There have been several articles in the news about “Blackberry Thumb” – the malady that comes from punching in too many messages on the PDA/phone device. My point is not the ailment, but the mania about email that causes the ailment.
Email, which I use every day like everyone else, is a careless, almost substance-less form of expression. If you received a written letter with the same punctuation, spelling and sentence structure as the typical email message, you’d think you were corresponding with an imbecile. I’m not advocating that we construct our email with the precision of a legal document or the style of Dr. Johnson; I’m merely raising the possibility that the use of this media has the effect of downgrading language and language’s attendant meaning.
The internet as a whole probably has the same effect – and the irony that I’m writing this for a website does not escape me here. But I don’t think that it is possible to overestimate the impact that the Web has had on our perception of knowledge and information. Along with the hyper-abundance, there has been a corresponding downgrading of the importance and meaning of individual units of knowledge. How does one examine an individual raindrop in a hurricane?
These phenomena, or perhaps the uncritical embrace of these phenomena, constitute what might be the unique worldliness of our age. Not all Christians throughout the centuries have been learned. Perhaps only a minority could have been accurately called contemplative – either by nature or profession. But never has the regnant world system and its practices been so aggressively set against either learning or contemplation.
And at the height of irony, one sees the modern research university perpetuating the same mindset. In its emphasis on production and achievement, the University merely reflects the culture of business and busyness that we see all around us.
Well, what can be done? Sad to say, there’s no known cure. But, by the grace of God – and let us never regard that phrase as a cliché – I believe that we can be agents of resistance.
We can be models of remembrance – mindful that there are other ways of living, other ways of thinking, other ways of ordering our lives that are not beholden to the latest and greatest technology or trend.
We can be models of intentionality – using discernment and wisdom in the choices we make, utilizing technologies when appropriate and taking a pass on them when not.
And we can be models of excellent difference – choosing, for example, to use proper English, even if no one else is; choosing to read actual books, or even [GASP!] write actual letters.
These are all profoundly conservative activities, but they are not conservative in the political sense. They are conservative in the same way that monks copying classical texts in the Dark Ages were conservative. Who knows – future generations may call us blessed in the same way.
These different “models” are probably worth exploring further — with examples and rationales. We’ll try to revisit these topics in later Antecedents.
|
