Let's enter into a conversation about the effects of multiculturalism on our collective social experience. We'll celebrate diversity in its many forms and dialogue about ways of seeing and ways of knowing that might be new to some of us. Reaffirming our dedication to tolerance and inclusivity, we welcome many ways of seeing the world.
Please excuse me while I vomit.
Some people may find this barrage of inaccessible ambiguity comforting and meaningful. I'm not saying you lack intelligence for doing so. It kind of has an intoxicating lullaby feel to it. Language is something that is trendy. We use words like "conversation" and "dialogue" and "collaborative", not necessarily because that's what we mean, but because that's the babble of the moment.
I stand in favor of a little regress.
For one, all this flowery verbiage. Is it saying anything, or is it simply drawing a gauzy curtain around a charlatan wizard? I thought words were for unveiling ideas, clarifying, and slicing off bits of philosophical gristle. That string of unintelligible babble seems to either be an eloquent attempt at saying nothing or a cunning way of wrapping crap up in a box and bow. When I hear things like "spiritual community" and "dialogue", I want to break something, preferably glass so that it's loud and emphatic. I realize that's an immature response to frustration, so I turn instead to blogging. But I digress from articulating my desire to regress… [lame language pun]
By desiring a bit of regress, what I mean to say is I'm after a true kind of progress. Just trying to come up with the latest and greatest after the last has past is not progress. In my understanding, true progress takes into account the whole of history in its evaluation of the world. What did Bacon and Plato and Hippocrites have to say? What about Sartre, Kirkegaard and Hume? Were they right? Were they wrong? What did Churchill do right and Prince Vlad do wrong?
No longer do we await word from messengers atop light footed horses. Thanks to the industrial and technological revolutions, the world is at our fingertips. Globalization has become a reality, and the price of peanut butter in Alabama may indeed affect the price of tea in China. We can buy, eat, travel more than ever before. Thanks to the industrial and technological revolutions, we may more easily than ever before become stimuli gluttons. We have the choice of twenty kinds of mascara and a hundred cereals. We like the word option.
How do we best make use of living in a time in history where information and resources are more accessible than ever before? How do we own our iLives instead of letting our iLives own us? I think the answer lies between your ears and at the ends of your wrists and next to your sternum. I think there is value in using your head and hands and heart to live. I don't mean everyone needs to quit corporate life and build a log cabin and plant a garden. There's not enough space. What I do mean is don't let the euphoria of technology and linguistic poppycock dull your senses. Letting the number of apps on your phone deceive you into believing you are well educated. Reading blogs about people who help people instead of actually helping people yourself. Scrolling through Pinterest instead of making your own darn hairpins. Don't settle for an technologically advanced and audiovisually enhanced façade. It's still a façade.
Love from Australia,
Little Miss Sunshine, who just finished A Grief Observed and is convinced Lewis is the most brilliant non-Biblical author she's ever read.
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