Wherefore I Know Not...

I have of late, like some Danish prince, lost much of my mirth. This has to do with several things. First, the school year has been taxing, and I have been short of exercise, the kind of things that will release stress and provide a sense of balance. Second, I have lost connection with a life of the mind. Forget culture, forget elegant arguments of re-enlivening the imagination as a force to counter the spiritual malaise of the modern world. I can barely find the time and space to read in a disciplined way. Who usually bears the brunt of this is my wife. I feel confined by duties of job and "family." I feel confined by a city where there are two hour parking limits for every overcrowded, overlit, excessively loud coffee shop, while at home, the internet, the neighbors, the television, and a pile of laundry provide too much distraction. There is no respite save for a 25 minute swath I have tried to carve out of my morning for silence and breathing. The sweltering 100 plus conditions scorch the landscape and the ground is as as parched and inhospitable as my own soul. There is little in a given week to look forward to, except for the droning, infantilizing, sentimental and melodramatic voices of popular culture, entertaining and stupefying as they may be. To follow up on von Balthasar, there is even much beauty around me, but it is beauty devoid of truth. There is nothing behind the mask. In a given day, we visited the pompous new cathedral of capitalism, the new Vatican of the self, the consumeristic chapel called Americana. How appropriate that what passes for "Americana" is essentially a large parking structure and pseudo-luxurious, immersive shopping experience. Taking their cues from Disneyland's pseudo-nostalgic Mainstreet USA, developers have planned immersive shopping experiences in overpriced stores strung together below "luxury apartments" encircling a manicured turf area, and in the center a kind of golden man, coming up out of the water, his hand extended to chase a fish(?) Apparently, this is a golden replica of the spirit of American youth, memorialized for those soldiers who lost their lives on D Day. We've now placed it. embossed with gold, at the center of our billion dollar, corporate sponsored brandscape. "Americana on Brand" is the all too ironic title for this new cash cow, the success of which, according to the LA Times, "defies the current economic downturn." We have branded Americana like so many Norman Rockwell prints in the bargain bin at the mall. This high-end shopping experience feeds our inner version of the American Dream, the need to seem glamorous, not even buying any of the high-end brands available, just grabbing a Starbucks and a movie: preferably Iron Man, that latest and most attrative, aesthetically pleasing, that superficially beautiful Hollywood opiate du jour, and being in close proximity to it, which seemed to suffice for the large crowd of ethnic minorities and after church crowd, still salivating from the scent of American pie on display, the promise of self transcendance, of transformation. Somehow, I don't quite think this is what Emerson or Thoreau had in mind. On the way home, we stopped at McDonald's, and I greedily scarfed down a cheeseburger. To have human needs in America means to participate in the very structures of dehumanization by default, by association. I fill my gas tank with the blood of Iraqis, of American servicemen and women. I eat the flesh of cows slaughtered in sterile, inhumane factories. I couldn't wait to get back to Europe for some rest, when I remembered looking out from Mars Hill next to the Akropolis looking out over the city of Athens, that bastion of reason, and seeing a towering, larger-than-life figure standing out amongst the architecture, that new unknown god of the pantheon, maybe the one Paul really had in mind, Ronald McDonald. I went to see Shane Claiborne discuss "new monasticism" and intentional urban Christian communities to revive the neglected places of the Empire. It's encouraging to see a committed person of conviction living out their beliefs in a constructive way. The worship experience, however, seemed to mirror our culture and was less palatable to me: more melodrama, more sentiment, more hyperbole. Crowds whipped up into frenzied groupthink. (I did have an eerie moment of inverse self-recognition when a plain-looking European man got up and wondered how this pacifist understood the Armageddon: would Jesus simply negotiate his way out of it, or would he fight and conquer, as saith the Book of Revelation? Claiborne skirted around the juicy millenialism debate and gave instead a picture of a grace filled Christ as he understands him. The questioner stood unmoving and unmoved during worship, arms folded...he wasn't buying it. Could all these people really not understand the importance of standing up to fight during Armageddon? They just didn't get it. I was standing one row back, in a similar posture, for different reasons). We get home to Ty and the gang for a season finale of the uplifting "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition:" more melodrama, more sentiment, more hyperbole, and the excessive use of the term "hero." What is it with this country and the myth of the hero figure. We're so constantly ready to elevate others and ourselves to hero status, and then bask in the satisfaction of the humility that is uncomfortable with the title. It's all prescripted: you're such a hero, no I'm just a regular guy who feels responsibility toward his fellow man, wow, you're so humble. And we all love a humble hero. Aaaaand cut. Print. Now this is not to say that there isn't positive, constructive things going on through such shows, but it is distorted, trivialized by its excessive sentimentality, its perpetuation of the perverse American manifest destiny myth, its design, at least in part, to increase Sears' and Ford's bottom line, there's Americana for you. We rounded off the night with a two hour season finale of "Desperate Housewives." It's not quite Dostoevsky, hell it's not even Kerouac, but after so much soul-corroding Western bile, who really cares? Or maybe I can relate, as a desperate house husband.