fred on the rat race

Here I was, just about to pack it in for the night, and I come across this awesome new Fred column that touches on a topic of interest that I've rambled about before (here and here, for example) and will now ramble about once more. Fred adds a lot of insight that I hadn't delved into. It seems that the pace in our society precludes us even being able to desire some of the finer things in life, much less having time to enjoy them. Here's the basic gist of what Sir Fred has to say:

In all things technological the United States is magnificent, the Athens of solid-state physics. Yet the great orchestras die unlistened to, we have no Shakespeare or Dante nor notion why we might want them, and religious expression grows mute, or crabbed and hostile. Why?

I think the answer is that our surroundings determine not just what we think, but what we can think. We live in cities urban but not urbane, among screaming sirens, in air grayed by exhaust and wracked by the blattings of buses. The complaint is not invalid for being trite. I cannot imagine a Whitman composing in a shopping mall.

The rush and complexity of everything take their toll. As a people we might well be called The Unrelaxed. And, therefore, the Uncontemplative.

(...)

The Milnes and Donnes and Marlowes don’t exist because they can’t, and we don’t want them because we can’t want them.

The emphasis is added, of course. He really hits on something there. It's not that we just don't have time to appreciate things. We are, due to the pace of our lives and the state of our minds, unable to appreciate things. We only know what is right in front of us or whatever comparatively miniscule task or topic is at the forefront of our thoughts at any time, and this prevents us from focusing on the bigger things beyond that. But I'm reiterating myself here so I'll leave it at that for now.

Fred has a way of describing people that applies to our society: "Scientists take things apart but, except for the greats, do not notice the whole." Methinks that is profound. In this context, America has become a nation of scientists. We understand great details about small things but are woefully ignorant of greater concepts. Worse, we often don't realize our ignorance. And still worse, even when we realize it we don't care. We understand the intricacies of life at a molecular level, but we don't why it exists or how it started and we don't care to know. We know how sound waves work and how to manipulate them in seemingly endless ways, but we can't understand or appreciate some of the most challenging and greatest compositions of all time. (Or worse yet, bands like System of a Down and Radiohead come along and create cacophonous dins of noise, and the masses call it "music" and lap it up! God help us all.)

I can't help but think about modern Christianity here. People often decry the decreasing influence of the faith over the years in the West and carry on at great length about how the trend ought to be slowed and reversed. I agree that its reversal would do wonders for the health of society. But how should we approach this issue?

I'm not sure it's possible for such a reversal--a revival, if you will, as it's been understood historically--can happen (at least not by human efforts, but you get the idea) without a "slowing down" of society. For one to seek and know spiritual things in any depth, one must first "know the questions," as Fred puts it. That's not just being aware that such questions can be asked, but knowing their significance and implications. For one to even begin to grasp the greater ideas of spirituality--things like origin, destiny, and so on--one must be able to contemplate such things. Such contemplation requires a relaxed state of mind that is free from the burdens of everyday life as we know it, the "tyranny of the urgent," time to just ponder things and take in the world without any specific purpose in mind. This sort of mindset requires being able to put aside other thoughts and just be "at peace," for lack of a better way to put it. (I sincerely apologize for the hippie-esque bent here, but I'm failing to come up with a better way to put it.) It's like the tenets of Christianity--to understand salvation one must first understand sin.* To understand Christianity one must first know the questions.

The trouble is, society prevents us from doing that. The pace of society does not lend itself to pondering things of depth. Moreover, our minds, having been conditioned by society for so long, are not (often) capable of that. Something that used to come naturally during times of rest or even throughout the day now takes great effort to "achieve," and I wonder if just the necessity of the effort makes it impossible.

So while many continue to bemoan the shrinking influence of such big-picture things in our lives, perhaps they ought to focus not on the results but the causes. Rather than continually repackage Christianity into forms that fit the cultural norm, maybe we should ask why such repackaging is necessary. What would happen if, instead of trying to change Christianity to fit society, people tried to change society? And that not just on a surface level of "vote for this" or "boycott that," but on a fundamental level of what drives us to think we can or should do what we do.

To paraphrase my closing line from a previous and favorite post of mine, in our society we are fortunate to have a lot of things, but do they make up for what we don't have?

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* I don't mean fully understand sin, but enough to appreciate its magnitude and consequences on more than a worldly scale.