Churlishness in the Time of Pandemic

Yesterday while walking I heard this on a podcast I like:

People do not deserve to die because they vote the wrong way or have opinions that are unfashionable.* 

I thought about the kind of comments I hear now and again, not just on social media, but yes, mostly on social media. Like if someone we don't like--typically a politician or maybe a public figure--gets sick, maybe catches this Covid 19 virus--there's a kind of gleeful gloating. I heard it when Boris Johnson was stricken with the coronavirus. I've heard it about Rush Limbaugh's Stage 4 lung cancer diagnosis. I'm pretty sure I'd hear it if Donald Trump or Nancy Pelosi got the virus.

It's human nature, I guess. But maybe we need to push back against our human nature. 

I'm reading a book by C. S. Lewis called The Abolition of Man that I admit is way above my pay grade. But what little I do grasp so far is this: There's a higher law, not just for one religion or another, but that simply exists. Being aware of and even conforming to this law is what makes us human. Though Lewis was a Christian, he's not even talking about Christianity. He calls it the Tao--a kind of objective set of values that transcends and yet permeates all doctrines. It's the thing which elevates us, that distinguishes us from animals, that enables us to choose to be good, to be decent, to be kind or generous or sacrificial. To jettison this higher law is to become less than human. That's what he means by the abolition of man.

I'm still trying to get my head around this (will probably have to re-read a few times), but I think there's something to this. Maybe it's what Jesus was tapping into when he told his followers to love their enemies. And so on a practical level, when people we despise suffer, even if we can't genuinely wish them well, at the very least, we shouldn't celebrate, shouldn't gloat. To do so makes us less human.

There's a famous saying, probably attributed to any number of people but which I first heard years ago in a book I was reading by a missionary named Amy Carmichael: 

Let nothing be said about anyone unless it passes through the three sieves: 

Is it true? Is it kind? Is it necessary?

This is neither religious nor secular advice. But I think it's good advice.

******* 

* Podcast

Mad Dogs & Englishmen Episode 262

Kevin D. Williamson and Charles C. W. Cooke

Narcissim Run Amok: Thoughts After the Isla Vista Rampage

I'm beginning to develop a theory about the next generation. 

Not having to do with access to guns. That's a separate issue. But having to do with the way this generation (millennials and younger) are being raised, not only without God and faith and and a morality that transcends human wisdom (right/wrong, good/evil), but also being raised as if they're the center of the universe. 

Maybe this next generation should be called the "narcissistic generation." YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, selfies. This is their world. Affirmation is not an option but a necessity. One of my students wrote in a paper this semester that if she doesn't get at least 50 "likes" on a Facebook post she removes the post. 

Even if it turns out this guy Elliot Rodgers had some kind of mental disorder, it doesn't change my thinking. I believe he's an inevitable by-product of the societal trend that fosters self-affirmation. Social media not only perpetuates this trend, it probably spawned it. 

From childhood, millennials have been nurtured on the idea that they're self-important, that everything has to go their way, that they are "winners," that nothing bad should ever happen to them, that they deserve happiness, that the world revolves around them. And when it finally dawns on them that the world does not revolve around them, those that that are already a bit "off" (like this guy apparently was) are already be primed to commit atrocities like this. 

But not, of course, before they get out their I-phones and videotape themselves, up close, in our faces, talking about how they've been wronged. 

Factor in the secularist, anti-Christian, anti-God thinking that now permeates both the schools and public square, and the inevitable result is pretty frightening. What we saw in Isla Vista last night is just a symptom of a greater ill: narcissism run amok.   

Isla Vista Shooting Suspect Left Disturbing Manifesto (Los Angeles Times, May 24, 2014).

This is Living?

This ad has risen to the top of my all-time favorite commercials:



Favorite lines:

"I read an article...well, I read the majority of an article online...."

"I have 687 friends. This is living." 

What a brilliant ad. Yes, it's promoting the 2011 Toyota Venza. But I love the jab at the Facebook-addled Internet generation (and apparently, internet addiction is becoming a real medical "condition," along with gaming addiction) who need to "get a life."

These are my students!

Of course, it's not just 20-somethings who are "addicted" to social media. Here's the latest from Facebook's Statistics page:

People on Facebook:

• More than 750 million active users
• 50% of our active users log on to Facebook in any given day
• Average user has 130 friends
• People spend over 700 billion minutes per month on Facebook

 Activity on Facebook:

• There are over 900 million objects that people interact with (pages, groups, events and community pages)
• Average user is connected to 80 community pages, groups and events
• Average user creates 90 pieces of content each month
• More than 30 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photo albums, etc.) shared each month. 

Mobile Users:

• There are more than 250 million active users currently accessing Facebook through their mobile devices.
• People that use Facebook on their mobile devices are twice as active on Facebook than non-mobile users.
• There are more than 200 mobile operators in 60 countries working to deploy and promote Facebook mobile products 

That's a lot of people spending a lot of minutes per day interacting at (what most people would agree is) a fairly superficial level.