Sunday sermon : on Life & Style

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God intended the Sabbath to be a Day of Rest where one would recuperate from investing their Interest, Initiative, and Imagination in work, by reinvesting it in their family and society.  In this is recuperation from all it takes to become self-absorbed.

- ed

I was clicking away from The Guardian when something caught my eye, and I clicked back.  It was the ‘Life & Style’ section on the main page fronted by some female in some ‘fashionable’ dress that had caught my eye.  I wondered how the phenomenon of Life was going to be penned in by this section.  These following are the titled contents,

At top position,

 

“A good homemade tart is perfect summer eating, indoors and out says Hugh Fearnley- Whittingstall

 

In 2^nd Place,

 

Jackson’s Clothes - Gallery (19 pictures): Michael Jackson's clothes were as iconic as his songs. Jess Cartner-Morley looks inside his wardrobe

 

Reach for the Sky - Tom Stuart-Smith marvels at the towering plants that punctuate his patch

 

My four Mums - The Wild communes were a radical experiment, but what became of the children conceived and raised under revolutionary feminism?

 

The Quite Life - It's goodbye statement walls, hello grey, muted purple and peat. Embrace the new gloomy palette, says Hannah Booth

 

In 3^rd Place,

 

How to wear Summer Hats

Slow-moving Fast Food

The Fashion Briefing

Interactive Guide to Britain’s Best Pubs

 

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I had written to the BBC a few years back asking why they did not have a section on ‘Environmentalism’.  Was it not worthy of a section for itself given that they had a section dedicated to imparting information on which ‘star’ had how much pork-floss on which dish and at what restaurant?  Well, I didn’t get a reply – but I must give them credit for airing my question on their radio programme – WriteOn – where I asked why Michael Jackson featured more prominently than the other tragedies.  Of course, the bloke who attempted to rebut my position did quite a pathetic job and gave an answer that I could expect from a 15 year old.

 

Anyway, the Guardian’s ‘Life & Style’ section is quite telling of the kind of civilisation most are comfortably couched in.  The ‘modern’ masses are continuously focused on the trivial and trite.  In the blogging world, pictures of hamsters and dolls attract far more comments than insightful articles on a host of issues; in the social arena, people tend to just go on about relationships, shopping, trends, their personal lives; in the international sphere, people generally tend to focus on their own local interests or that which is given much publicity; science fiction and fantasy, be it Harry Potter or Battlestar Galactica, increasingly uses props from another reality which simply serves as a backdrop for a reality that is no different from this one; and so on and so forth. 

 

If ‘modern’ civilisation can be illustrated artistically, it would comprise concentric circles that are inward-looking as opposed to the inverse.  They simply illustrate varying degrees of self-absorption.

 

For instance, take a look at Vox’s ‘Question of the Day’

 

“Phone calls, emails, text messages, facebook, Morse code or something else... How do you like to stay in touch with your friends?”

 

“What's your favorite Michael Jackson song? Bonus points if you share the video.”

 

“What's the best compliment you've received lately?”

 

“What does the 4th of July mean to you? How are you celebrating?”

 

“If you had to give up one of your five senses, which one would it be?”

 

Oh for goodness sakes.

 

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It seems that civilisation is becoming more ‘assimilationist’ (ref. Jean Piaget’s ‘cognitive development’).  That is, making sense of reality according to what they can personally relate to.  Whilst people may pick up this or that trivial interest, they seem to be operating within the auspices of those perspectives they acquired as children given that the one of the hallmarks of the child is egocentricity.  And from these spring a whole range of ‘adult’ pastimes that are led by perspectives that aren’t dissimilar to teens except that they are applied within a narrower and narrower arena such as work.  So today, we get 'Life & Style' sections in newspapers that basically teach you to value yourself within the auspices of the 'family', as a 'foodie', as a mindless 'fashion' victim, etc.  Where are the articles that tell us that there is more to 'Life' than that depicted in, amongst others, The Guardian's 'Life & Style' section.  You'd say, 'in other sections.'  And I'd say, how does that impress upon you the relevance of these other sections in your perceptions of what comprises your 'Life & Style'? 

 

Hence, I am of the relatively qualified opinion that people get more stupid and self-absorbed with age as they are not only led by juvenile perspectives, but have their perspectives narrowed by ‘work’ and ‘family’ with the 3 I’s – interest, initiative, imagination – being invested more in the former than the latter or anything else.  Recuperation, thus, becomes little more than not utilising the 3 I’s in anything else, or with as great a degree as done so in work. 

 

Maturity, in this sense, means making yourself increasingly irrelevant in the education of youth.  That makes the perspective, ‘the children are our future’, take on a whole different meaning.  In one sense, it means, that given that you are going to degenerate intellectually and perspectivally with age, your children’s perspectives are going to be as inward looking as yours in your future – except that they are going to be that way from a younger age given that you did nothing significant to address this social malaise it in your adulthood.  In that, your children are taken away from you at a far younger age than you think as their ‘education’ is going to be led by The Corporation that ensured your degeneration so that they may achieve amongst them at a younger age that which took a longer time with you.

 

Just keep this in mind, it takes more than the ability to feed and f**k yourself into the next generation to qualify yourself as anything more than your counterpart in the Zoo.  The language here simply illustrates the coarseness of 'modern' civilisation.    

 

Perhaps The Guardian’s ‘Life & Style’ ought to consider including this article in the section next Sunday.  But I wouldn’t expect it to top their ‘tart of the day’.

Ed