I've been thinking since last week about Seinfeld's comment--his angst over the banality of the characters' lives that had made him so ridiculously wealthy.
One of our greatest fears as humans is that our lives will have no meaning or purpose. The central philosophical underpinning of post-modernism is just that: there is no "meta-narrative," no larger story that orients or makes sense out of all of our little stories. There is just our story, or our story as we choose to merge our stories with others that then define our own reality.
Our souls, much like nature and my old dog Rio, abhor vacuums. Since we were created to have purpose (I like John Piper's spin on the Westminster Catechism: "Man's chief end is to glorify God by enjoying him forever.") we seek out purpose and larger stories wherever they might be found in order to find equilibrium and to help us navigate the dis-orientation of life as we now know it.
We are only about 20 years into post-modernism, and so the returns are still early, but the first candidate for meta-narrative (at least at the popular level) would seem to be the role of 'consumer.' Our good friend Mike McClure was over the other day discussing an article he had read where students coming to college have much more of a consumer mindset about their college experience: I am paying you (the school, and particularly the teachers/professors) to provide a service for me. You had better meet my needs and expectations.
There may be some helpful correctives here (everyone with the word "doctor" in front of their name is not the all-knowing source of gentle wisdom--trust me, I'm related to one) but on the whole I find this trend disturbing precisely because consumer is a poor meta-narrative. If I primarily understand my role and place in this world as 'consumer,' than the only way I can view the world is as one, giant Wal-Mart. There is no space for suffering (or even dying) for causes that are greater than me, or persevering through a season of struggle in a church or even in personal relationships. I'll just shop elsewhere for a church/friends/country to live in/etc./etc.
Previous generations have had non-Biblical meta-narratives that have had their pros and cons (Tom Brokaw's "Greatest Generation" certainly had the "American Dream" meta-narrative with all it's blessings and curses) but consumer as the new meta-narrative seems to have few upsides. I hope that it does not remain at center stage for very long.
2 comments:
As one who is awkwardly straddling the line between modernity and post-modernity (born in Dec 1980, p-m said to have started in 1981), I find this whole consumer meta-narrative a constant thorn in my side. I can see that it has few upsides, I can see the way that it destroys people, community, and reliance on God. But I also struggle to not be one of those people. I find myself naturally heading that way, getting swept up in the grandeur of looking out for #1, and getting the most bang for your buck. I see the pride and arrogance that comes with this idea; I hear students asking the questions of "what will it do for me?" to anything that crosses their path, or "how will that make everything ok?". I see the lack of work-ethic that comes with it -- that might be an overly broad statement -- it offers too much of an opportunity to quit when things get tough. I wonder how the book of Job would look in 2006 America. Although Job's friends were pretty adament about him abadoning ship (i.e. the Lord), so maybe that is a story FOR our generation... My thoughts are less organized than yours, but eagerly running through my head.
Katie: I think you straddle the line quite gracefully, actually.
Alex: Two quick, half-baked thoughts. (As opposed to my other slow, half-baked thoughts.)
-- I wonder if the lack of meta-narrative for postmoderns is a result of a lack-of-dying-for-things, as opposed to the cause of a lack-of-dying-for-things. That is, it's because we (the Western World) have had so little struggle, histo-relativicly speaking. (Like my new word?) Unlike folks who lived through WWI & WWII, we haven't had to deal with very much.
-- And along that line, I wonder if the meta-narrative to eclipse the Consumer meta-narrative will be the strugggle between Western Civ vs Islamo-Facism. And, of course, the values worth fighting for in Western Civ are Judeo-Xtian values.
Just stirring things up, with my half-baked ideas, if you'll permit the mixing of metaphors.
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