{"id":3358,"date":"2014-07-22T08:48:00","date_gmt":"2014-07-22T14:48:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/paperbacktheology\/?p=3358"},"modified":"2014-07-22T08:48:00","modified_gmt":"2014-07-22T14:48:00","slug":"welcome-to-costco-i-love-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/paperbacktheology\/2014\/07\/welcome-to-costco-i-love-you.html","title":{"rendered":"Welcome to Costco – I Love You"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

<\/iframe>There\u2019s a certain private prayer I find myself saying a lot these days. It\u2019s a prayer of lament, a one-line joke cribbed from the movie Idiocracy.<\/em> I utter this prayer under my breath when I hear a song, see a movie trailer, stumble upon TMZ, or overhear conversations in supermarkets, restaurants and public spaces\u2013pretty much anytime I bump up against all manner of unavoidable evidence that our culture is making us dumber. \u201cWelcome to Costco. I love you.\u201d It\u2019s my six word confession that we are wasting our chance to reach for something higher. I\u2019m not saying we are headed for an unavoidable idiocracy. It\u2019s not unavoidable. But neither is it out of the question.<\/p>\nDon\u2019t get me wrong.\u00a0It\u2019s not that I think film, television, radio, online and print media have to be be grad school seminars on philosophy and ethics in order to be valid. Ironic silliness and the stupidly hilarious have a place in any culture. But we have a collective future. We are all responsible for the development of our own intellectual life. We are all responsible (to one another and to God) for the planet, for our common life, and for the ways in which we choose to organize and engage\u2013or not. And the simple fact is: everything we do and see shapes us. So we might want to think about our exposure.<\/p>\nAs the amount of time people spend plugged into digital media\u2013tv, internet, mobile devices\u2013trends ever upward, and the amount of time spent reading print and listening to radio continues to decline, you have to wonder how long the human brain will be able to withstand the onslaught of inane and insufferably self-absorbed pseudo-reality that is the contemporary cultural milieu before becomes addled beyond repair. Culture is a liturgical force in our world. Culture is not benign. Mostly propagated via media, film, tv, internet, and so on what we describe as \u201cculture\u201d has an agenda. It\u2019s not monolithic by any stretch, but there are themes. Individualism, consumerism, nationalism\u2013these are sold to us as self-evident virtues.<\/p>\nThe creative minds behind the propaganda campaign waged during WWII in order to unify the American public behind the war effort were immediately conscripted by the army of Madison Avenue advertising firms. They rebranded propaganda<\/em> as public relations<\/em> and manipulated the collective consciousness for economic gain. This is intentional. Advertising, media, entertainment\u2026 it has intention. These things are building a folk anthropology, philosophy, and theology. As long as we uncritically accept the folk theologies of the day, the totals of industry will carefully continue to capitalize on the deep seated belief that our collective future is inevitably trained toward perpetual moral and intellectual progress.<\/p>\nAll I\u2019m saying is that a quick trip to Walmart at about 9:45pm will give you some pause regarding that assumption.<\/p>\nAnd you can\u2019t hide your head in the sand with this problem. If you are not part of the solution you are part of the problem. Scratch that, the problem is so big that even if you are part of the solution you are inevitably still part of the problem.\u00a0You cannot simply make disengagement and intellectual laziness and turn it into a kind of zen distantiation, as though you can live your entire life over and above the fray, and still claim to contribute to the overall well being of the world.<\/p>\nWhat\u2019s my point?<\/p>\nThis is my point: Turn off the tv. Logout of Amazon.com. Close your laptop. Put your phone down for a few hours.\u00a0Unplug from the blatant propaganda of the political left or the political right (they are two sides of the same toxic coin). Get your face out from behind the ubiquitous screens and do something different. Read a book. Take a class. Read the newspaper\u2013read several newspapers. Learn a new craft. Play a sport. Talk with your children. Learn an instrument. Go to a concert. Study the world around you. Go to an art museum. Go for a hike. Learn the names of the birds and trees. Plant a garden\u2026<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There\u2019s a certain private prayer I find myself saying a lot these days. It\u2019s a prayer of lament, a one-line joke cribbed from the movie Idiocracy. I utter this prayer under my breath when I hear a song, see a movie trailer, stumble upon TMZ, or overhear conversations in supermarkets, restaurants and public spaces\u2013pretty much […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1118,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[934,580],"class_list":["post-3358","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-culture","tag-idiocracy"],"yoast_head":"\n<title>Welcome to Costco - I Love You<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"There's a certain private prayer I find myself saying a lot these days. It's a prayer of lament, a one-line joke cribbed from the movie Idiocracy. 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