{"id":293,"date":"2016-03-14T05:00:52","date_gmt":"2016-03-14T10:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/thedorothyoption\/?p=293"},"modified":"2016-03-13T11:17:25","modified_gmt":"2016-03-13T16:17:25","slug":"insanity-and-alienation-in-america-revisited","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/thedorothyoption\/insanity-and-alienation-in-america-revisited\/","title":{"rendered":"Insanity and Alienation in America: Revisited"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"Source:<\/a>
Source: Wikimedia Commons<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

On February 25th there was another \u201cmass shooting<\/a>,\u201d this time in Hesston, Kansas, just down the road from where I live. In this light, I was reminded of some things I wrote<\/a> after the school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, and I thought it a good time to revisit the theme of insanity and alienation in our society:<\/p>\n

Insanity is understandable. I can, in a sense, walk a certain distance in the shoes of the phobic who fears open spaces\u2026All that I know of the tragedy in Connecticut is that it is entirely incomprehensible. We could call this insanity, but I think we are dealing with something of a different order entirely. Anyone brave enough to make the terrifying attempt at identification with this man will return from the exercise with a brand new horror: this is not some new extreme of evil, this is something altogether alien. There are no marks of humanity on it.<\/p>\n

We cannot mourn, shrug our shoulders, and move on. At some point, we have to ask the uncomfortable questions: How could this happen? Why are we the world leader in this particular brand of horror? When we seek answers to such questions we are reaching into the alien darkness, because again the act was not a human one\u2026It is nameless and faceless\u2026it deteriorates our humanity. It is like a process of reverse refinement: it disintegrates the diamond and saves the rough. It acts as a solvent to the human soul.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Because I have spent some time previously\u00a0here at The Dorothy Option\u00a0reflecting on the nature of work<\/a>, and because this shooting took place in a \u201cproduction environment,\u201d\u00a0I was reminded in particular of the demonic nature of this kind of work. And when it is a question of demonic work, how could we possibly be surprised when we conjure up demons?<\/p>\n

Anyone who has labored on an assembly line for very long knows the numbing monotony of acting as a cog in a machine. Less than a cog, really, because the cog is a part of a whole, while the machine attendant is merely the watcher of the cogs\u2013he is alienated not only from the work, but from the machine doing the work. He is as far removed from the process of creation as possible without ceasing to exist.<\/p>\n

Pope Pius XI observed that \u2018from the factory dead matter goes out improved, whereas men there are corrupted and degraded.\u2019 Work was ordained for the good of man, but our technique<\/em>\u00a0(as men like Jacques Ellul came to call it) has turned the concept of work upside-down. We actively try to minimize the \u2018human factor.\u2019 We make it merely mechanical, which makes man a perversion of the creative being that he is. Not everyone works in a factory, of course, but the trend of mechanization is characteristic. Is it not odd that many of us must interrupt our daily labor in order to stretch so that the repetition does not injure us?<\/p>\n

Just\u00a0this morning I was re-reading Thomas Merton\u2019s\u00a0Raids on the Unspeakable<\/em>, and chose, by chance, one of his eschatological essays. Since these dark themes were already in the back of my mind, my interpretation was naturally biased, but it seemed that he was speaking directly to the problems I was grappling with:<\/p>\n

The time of the end is the time of demons who occupy the heart\u2026so that man himself finds no room for himself in himself. He finds no space to rest in his own heart, not because it is full, but because it is void\u2026In the time of the end there is no longer room for the desire to go on living. The time of the end is the time when men call upon the mountains to fall upon them, because they wish they did not exist.<\/p>\n

Why? Because they are part of a proliferation of life that is not fully alive, it is programmed for death. A life that has not been chosen, and can hardly be accepted, has no more room for hope. Yet it must pretend to go on hoping. It is haunted by the demon of emptiness.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And then he closes with a note on pessimism:<\/p>\n

Is this pessimism? Is this the unforgivable sin of admitting what everybody really feels? Is it pessimism to diagnose cancer as cancer? Or should one simply go on pretending that everything is getting better every day, because the time of the end is also\u2013for some at any rate\u2013the time of great prosperity? \u201cThe Kings of the earth have joined in her idolatry and the traders of the earth have grown rich from her excessive luxury\u201d (Revelations 18:3).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Sometimes I wonder if pessimism\u2013a healthy, honest, invigorating pessimism\u2013is not the only thing that can save a man in the modern world. I mean the kind of pessimism that allows a person\u00a0to admit to himself that his work is a kind of living hell, that he is lonely, that he is losing his mind, that something isn\u2019t right and something ought to change. Even if nothing changes, at least he remains alive and aware of his reality, and insofar as he remains conscious he retains his humanity, and so long as he retains some shred of humanity, the demons cannot occupy the heart completely.<\/p>\n

But if we keep telling ourselves that everything is fine\u2013or is going to be fine if \u201cour guy\u201d wins the election, which is a form of \u201chope\u201d I have learned to interpret as just another method of\u00a0avoiding the problem\u2013then we have chosen surrender. And then, eventually, the disintegration of society\u00a0at large is bound to complete its work in the occasional, unfortunate individual, leaving them utterly thwarted, insecure, confused, and estranged\u2014but of course functional, always functional\u2013on the surface. Like the imagery of Luke 11:25,\u00a0the inner chamber is \u201cswept clean and put in order,\u201d and then left as such\u2014as a tidy inner void. And the human heart, like nature, abhors a vacuum. If we neglect to fill it with human goodness, it will be filled with something else, not by chance but as a matter of necessity.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On February 25th there was another \u201cmass shooting,\u201d this time in Hesston, Kansas, just down the road from where I live. In this light, I was reminded of some things I wrote after the school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, and I thought it a good time to revisit the theme of insanity and alienation in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2571,"featured_media":297,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-293","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alternative-economics","category-daniel-schwindt"],"yoast_head":"\nInsanity and Alienation in America: Revisited<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"On February 25th there was another "mass shooting," this time in Hesston, Kansas, just down the road from where I live. In this light, I was reminded of\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/thedorothyoption\/insanity-and-alienation-in-america-revisited\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Insanity and Alienation in America: Revisited\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"On February 25th there was another "mass shooting," this time in Hesston, Kansas, just down the road from where I live. In this light, I was reminded of\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/thedorothyoption\/insanity-and-alienation-in-america-revisited\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Dorothy Option\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2016-03-14T10:00:52+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2016-03-13T16:17:25+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/629\/2016\/03\/Electronics_factory_in_Shenzhen-1.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1037\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"569\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Daniel Schwindt\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Daniel Schwindt\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"5 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/thedorothyoption\/insanity-and-alienation-in-america-revisited\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/thedorothyoption\/insanity-and-alienation-in-america-revisited\/\",\"name\":\"Insanity and Alienation in America: Revisited\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/thedorothyoption\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2016-03-14T10:00:52+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2016-03-13T16:17:25+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/thedorothyoption\/#\/schema\/person\/1904483ce6579fd696419c5de722afa5\"},\"description\":\"On February 25th there was another \\\"mass shooting,\\\" this time in Hesston, Kansas, just down the road from where I live. In this light, I was reminded of\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/thedorothyoption\/insanity-and-alienation-in-america-revisited\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/thedorothyoption\/insanity-and-alienation-in-america-revisited\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/thedorothyoption\/insanity-and-alienation-in-america-revisited\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/thedorothyoption\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Insanity and Alienation in America: Revisited\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/thedorothyoption\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/thedorothyoption\/\",\"name\":\"The Dorothy Option\",\"description\":\"by Solidarity Hall\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/thedorothyoption\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/thedorothyoption\/#\/schema\/person\/1904483ce6579fd696419c5de722afa5\",\"name\":\"Daniel Schwindt\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/thedorothyoption\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/4b4597e181d681d4c365e76a1329e4d0?s=96&d=identicon&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/4b4597e181d681d4c365e76a1329e4d0?s=96&d=identicon&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Daniel Schwindt\"},\"description\":\"Daniel's published works include \\\"The Papist's Guide to America\\\" and \\\"Catholic Social Teaching: A New Synthesis (Rerum Novarum to Laudato Si').\\\" He also manages a Catholic website at www.CatholicFront.com.\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/thedorothyoption\/author\/dschwindt\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Insanity and Alienation in America: Revisited","description":"On February 25th there was another \"mass shooting,\" this time in Hesston, Kansas, just down the road from where I live. In this light, I was reminded of","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/thedorothyoption\/insanity-and-alienation-in-america-revisited\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Insanity and Alienation in America: Revisited","og_description":"On February 25th there was another \"mass shooting,\" this time in Hesston, Kansas, just down the road from where I live. In this light, I was reminded of","og_url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/thedorothyoption\/insanity-and-alienation-in-america-revisited\/","og_site_name":"The Dorothy Option","article_published_time":"2016-03-14T10:00:52+00:00","article_modified_time":"2016-03-13T16:17:25+00:00","og_image":[{"width":1037,"height":569,"url":"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/629\/2016\/03\/Electronics_factory_in_Shenzhen-1.jpg","type":"image\/jpeg"}],"author":"Daniel Schwindt","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Daniel Schwindt","Est. reading time":"5 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/thedorothyoption\/insanity-and-alienation-in-america-revisited\/","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/thedorothyoption\/insanity-and-alienation-in-america-revisited\/","name":"Insanity and Alienation in America: Revisited","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/thedorothyoption\/#website"},"datePublished":"2016-03-14T10:00:52+00:00","dateModified":"2016-03-13T16:17:25+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/thedorothyoption\/#\/schema\/person\/1904483ce6579fd696419c5de722afa5"},"description":"On February 25th there was another \"mass shooting,\" this time in Hesston, Kansas, just down the road from where I live. In this light, I was reminded of","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/thedorothyoption\/insanity-and-alienation-in-america-revisited\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/thedorothyoption\/insanity-and-alienation-in-america-revisited\/"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/thedorothyoption\/insanity-and-alienation-in-america-revisited\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/thedorothyoption\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Insanity and Alienation in America: Revisited"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/thedorothyoption\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/thedorothyoption\/","name":"The Dorothy Option","description":"by Solidarity Hall","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/thedorothyoption\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/thedorothyoption\/#\/schema\/person\/1904483ce6579fd696419c5de722afa5","name":"Daniel Schwindt","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/thedorothyoption\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/4b4597e181d681d4c365e76a1329e4d0?s=96&d=identicon&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/4b4597e181d681d4c365e76a1329e4d0?s=96&d=identicon&r=g","caption":"Daniel Schwindt"},"description":"Daniel's published works include \"The Papist's Guide to America\" and \"Catholic Social Teaching: A New Synthesis (Rerum Novarum to Laudato Si').\" He also manages a Catholic website at www.CatholicFront.com.","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/thedorothyoption\/author\/dschwindt\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/thedorothyoption\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/thedorothyoption\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/thedorothyoption\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/thedorothyoption\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2571"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/thedorothyoption\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=293"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/thedorothyoption\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/thedorothyoption\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/297"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/thedorothyoption\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/thedorothyoption\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/thedorothyoption\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}