In an argumentative essay addressing the perils or perks of television, this student profoundly (or at least he thought so) proclaimed that "entertainment is what we live for in life" and that "life is incomplete without television."
Hmmmmm....
After my first incredulous cringe, I reread the phrases--and cringed again. Is that what we have really become--a nation of fools whose only reason for being is to be titillated, to be thrilled, to be entertained? Forgive me, but it sounds as though we are aspiring to be Jordan Belfort, of recent Wolf of Wall Street fame, reveling in as much debauchery as we can command, narcissistically thinking of only ourselves, only of what we can take.
If entertainment is what we live for, it would explain an awful lot, though. For example, it would explain why the entire world was enraptured with the birth of celebrity babies with bizarre names rather than the efforts of Malala Yousafzai, a young Pakistani woman shot in the head for trying to bring education to all people of her homeland. This preoccupation with being amused would elucidate why the multitude of inane and absurd reality television shows continue to proliferate despite the fact that they serve only to show people at their worst moments. It would also illuminate our desire to take beautiful, meaningful, life-enhancing narratives and turn them into sensory eye candy by stripping the narratives of the very parts that make them beautiful, meaningful, and life-enhancing and replacing them with explosions, blood, and gratuitous skin.
This fixation on being entertained has dulled our senses to the beauty--and real sorrows--that this world has to offer from which we can learn more about what it means to live a human existence. Our ability to have empathy is tragically dwindling, reducing us to slavering chucklebunnies immune to the real substance of our existence--our ability to connect with one another, to learn patience, love, and compassion, to develop the qualities that bring out the best in us, not allow us to sink in the mire.
My essay's sentences would be so very different. Yet, these are the honest thoughts of a young person who has pondered an essay topic for at least three weeks, discussing, rethinking, challenging, exploring. Alas, this was not my essay to write. However, if it were, I would enlist as support a wise American writer/poet/philosopher:
“The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
Where did we go so wrong?
Love it. You took the thoughts directly from my mind.
ReplyDeleteI would expect no less from you than that reaction. Life needs to have adversity, trials and measurements. What that student thought as a higher calling, was no less than the dumbing down of an entire culture. And it is also the non-responsibility cult that glorifies the inane, the gratuitous and the total lack of privacy. A life well lived is one that has undertaken and overcome adversities. It is a life that strives for quality and sometimes, if lucky, achieves it. Emerson's quote was exquisite in this context.
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