I have the mind of a squirrel this morning–unable to settle on anything, only flitting back and forth between a hundred and fifty things I know I have to do. In moments like this I always hope the Internet will provide me with some focused provocation to concentrate and untangle my mental spaghetti. And really, the gentle stream of foolishness is usually always there for me. Except, for whatever reason, this morning there is so much outrage, of such alarming apocalypticism, that I can’t possibly add anything to the hysteria.
The squirrel syndrome had already over taken me yesterday, as I buzzed around, trying to do all the things, if not to read them. To calm myself I listened to a variety of interesting podcasts–the Art of Manliness podcast, and the Federalist, both perfectly fit the bill. I tend to go for funny, but it was so soothing to listen to quiet sounding people talk for a long time about one or two subjects with no hype whatsoever. The Art of Manliness one was all about motivating yourself to do something, like all your work. Like coping with email. Like parsing a big project down into manageable steps.
The point, said the very quiet man, is to think. Which seems so obvious. Except that absolutely everything in modern life feels like it is trying to stop all rational thought, under the guise of calling itself rational thought. In illustration of this obvious and boring realization, I happened to see a Facebook thread yesterday, upon which I was clever enough not to comment, in which a ridiculous assertion was made, with no basis in fact what so ever, and when someone meekly suggested that the assertion was, in fact, bosh, hysteria ensued. How dare you challenge my closely considered opinion of five minutes. That’s what all discourse feels like to me. No thought, just wild emotion.
Obviously I’m being terribly unkind. It can’t all be this bad. The Internet is full of interesting information. But to get to it, you have to climb over piles of memes and people shouting at you about what you should do and who you should be. All the noise does not create, in me anyway, a robust thought life. I feel jarred, dare I say triggered, in need of a quiet corner to collect the broken pieces and shove them into some kind of order.
It’s one reason I like being a Christian. Where the Internet is sure that humanity, with just one more kitchen hack, will become perfectly wise and morally good, the bible articulates a dim view of man’s ability to achieve rational thought. All mankind has sinned, has embraced foolishness and noise. The only way to be completely rational is to begin to fear God. I know I’m always quick to leap in and say that the word ‘fear’ really means ‘awe’. You know, respect. But awe doesn’t go far enough. Really, there has to be good old fashioned fear of death, and judgement to follow. The power of life and death is in the hand of a perfectly just God, who keeps careful accounts, and knows the substance of each thought and action. It is the fool, like me, that bumbles about, thinking that death will never come, that all the fluff and silliness doesn’t matter, that what I think is very clever and important. All the Facebook assertions in the world will not produce rational wisdom if they don’t include an actual fear of dying and being judged by a just and perfect God.
So, I’m going to get up and do all the things. All the outrage will all still be here tomorrow, whether I say anything about any of it or not.
Pip pip
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