Tuesday, July 14, 2009
marriage and religion
A very honest and amazingly well-written post about marriage (and some of my fears about it).
Monday, July 13, 2009
thoughts on being popular
They won't pay a cent to hear you laughing
They might pay a little to hear you cry
If you do it long enough they might even pay attention
But they still won't pay respect until you die
- Jon Foreman, Broken From the Start
Saturday, July 4, 2009
fireworks, Michael Bay, and America
I went to see Austin's July 4 celebration. The Austin symphony played for an hour, and then there were fireworks for the next half an hour. A grad friend of mine went with me, and halfway through, remarked that the fireworks were kind of repetitive. I laughed, and then remarked that they resembled Michael Bay's movies as well. And then, after thinking about it, I became sad.
I can't claim to speak for all countries in general, but America definitely seems to have an obsession with the bright, loud, and explosive. I don't think it's a coincidence that while the symphony received only polite applause while the fireworks received "oohs" and "aahs" and excited cheers all the way until the end of the show. As for the Michael Bay analogy, if you haven't heard, Transformers 2 has become the highest grossing in America currently, and probably the highest grossing movie ever with such universally terrible reviews. The idea is that the movie is basically a July 4th show, except with fighting robots instead of fireworks (and not much more in terms of depth).
So, if we can accept the possibility that we as Americans tend to be drawn to things that capture their attention, I'd like to connect this line of thought to America being a consumer culture (and I don't mean the materialistic, greedy consumer culture). In a broader sense, we're expected to act as consumers in every aspect of life - we have so much freedom of choice, that basically everything we do can be seen as giving something of ours in exchange for something else. We give our money in exchange for things we buy, we give our votes to our politicians for their promised support of our interests, we give our allegiance to churches (through membership or just association) in exchange for their vision/goals (or resources, what they can offer), etc. It's all about our choice as the consumer.
In theory, the trick to having this all work is that consumers are supposed to weigh all the different choices to determine the best one. However, in practice, the "best" choice chosen is usually more along the lines of the "most attractive" choice. Given a one-sided deal (the consumer chooses from a group of set choices), these are the same. However, when these choices are allowed to change to pander to the consumer, problems arise.
For example, while this theory may make for a healthy economy, it can be terrible for consumers. Take almost any sector of the economy - food, for example. The junk food business thrives almost entirely by dealing in the equivalent of a fireworks show - quick, cheap, and easy thrills with almost no depth, and the result is a booming business at the expense of the health and lives of a large number of Americans (leading cause of death in Americans is coronary heart disease, after all).
Politics is similar - every political commentary will remark on the need for a candidate to win over different interest groups, but rarely do they actually think about the consequences of such pandering. For example, this article describes a common type of pandering - trying to keep citizens happy by convincing them that you are doing something about ___(insert problem here).
Do you see? More weight is given to consumer appeal then to truth - the question of "what's effective" becomes "what's attractive", with little or no regard for what actually works. This situation reminds me of the idea posted a while ago of BS as disregard for truth (as opposed to lies, which acknowledge the truth, even if only by trying to cover it up), which I believe is the issue at stake here as well.
And herein lies so many of our problems - we're incredibly short sighted. When given the freedom, we tend to choose what feels the best at the moment without much foresight or extra thought.
This trend is prevalent in church culture as well. I don't mean to take shots at any churches, but trends do exist. Austin Stone Community Church is Chris Tomlin's old church, and the production is amazing professional (they fly the sound crew in from Dallas to Austin every week. just for sound). The whole thing feels like a conference of concert. Every. Single. Week. A friend who grew up in another Austin church remarked that even as the high schoolers spoke negatively of big churches and overdone productions (which I think this qualifies for), as they went on to college (and left the pizazz of their hip, cool youth service), they gradually all stopped going to their old church and started going to Austin Stone. I don't believe everyone that goes there is drawn in solely by the fireworks of their service, but I do believe that the flashing lights, rock-star worship team, and concert-type experience play a larger part in most of Stone's constituents decisions than they'd like to admit.
The more telling trend is the fact that so many people tend to base their impression of a church off of their first few experiences - the music, the building, the pastor's ability as a good speaker. We enter the church not as Christians but as consumers, wanting to know whether we should buy into this place - which, by itself, is not a bad thing (it's simply thinking over a decision), but combined with the fact that we seem to be sold by the cheap and easy, it's not good news (ha ha ha).
Just thoughts for now, since I don't have a quick and easy solution. I think there are a lot of different things to learn from this and different ways in which it can be applied, but as for the root problem of being "too cheaply sold", I haven't come up with something substantial yet.
FYI, much of the content of this post seems to have been first thought up by Lewis, in fact (though written in a broader sense).
Other links on the subject
- Sticky theology - emotional selection and sound-bite theology
- C.S. Lewis' Weight of Glory sermon, considered to be one of the greatest ever. He comments on being "too cheaply sold".
I can't claim to speak for all countries in general, but America definitely seems to have an obsession with the bright, loud, and explosive. I don't think it's a coincidence that while the symphony received only polite applause while the fireworks received "oohs" and "aahs" and excited cheers all the way until the end of the show. As for the Michael Bay analogy, if you haven't heard, Transformers 2 has become the highest grossing in America currently, and probably the highest grossing movie ever with such universally terrible reviews. The idea is that the movie is basically a July 4th show, except with fighting robots instead of fireworks (and not much more in terms of depth).
So, if we can accept the possibility that we as Americans tend to be drawn to things that capture their attention, I'd like to connect this line of thought to America being a consumer culture (and I don't mean the materialistic, greedy consumer culture). In a broader sense, we're expected to act as consumers in every aspect of life - we have so much freedom of choice, that basically everything we do can be seen as giving something of ours in exchange for something else. We give our money in exchange for things we buy, we give our votes to our politicians for their promised support of our interests, we give our allegiance to churches (through membership or just association) in exchange for their vision/goals (or resources, what they can offer), etc. It's all about our choice as the consumer.
In theory, the trick to having this all work is that consumers are supposed to weigh all the different choices to determine the best one. However, in practice, the "best" choice chosen is usually more along the lines of the "most attractive" choice. Given a one-sided deal (the consumer chooses from a group of set choices), these are the same. However, when these choices are allowed to change to pander to the consumer, problems arise.
For example, while this theory may make for a healthy economy, it can be terrible for consumers. Take almost any sector of the economy - food, for example. The junk food business thrives almost entirely by dealing in the equivalent of a fireworks show - quick, cheap, and easy thrills with almost no depth, and the result is a booming business at the expense of the health and lives of a large number of Americans (leading cause of death in Americans is coronary heart disease, after all).
Politics is similar - every political commentary will remark on the need for a candidate to win over different interest groups, but rarely do they actually think about the consequences of such pandering. For example, this article describes a common type of pandering - trying to keep citizens happy by convincing them that you are doing something about ___(insert problem here).
Do you see? More weight is given to consumer appeal then to truth - the question of "what's effective" becomes "what's attractive", with little or no regard for what actually works. This situation reminds me of the idea posted a while ago of BS as disregard for truth (as opposed to lies, which acknowledge the truth, even if only by trying to cover it up), which I believe is the issue at stake here as well.
And herein lies so many of our problems - we're incredibly short sighted. When given the freedom, we tend to choose what feels the best at the moment without much foresight or extra thought.
This trend is prevalent in church culture as well. I don't mean to take shots at any churches, but trends do exist. Austin Stone Community Church is Chris Tomlin's old church, and the production is amazing professional (they fly the sound crew in from Dallas to Austin every week. just for sound). The whole thing feels like a conference of concert. Every. Single. Week. A friend who grew up in another Austin church remarked that even as the high schoolers spoke negatively of big churches and overdone productions (which I think this qualifies for), as they went on to college (and left the pizazz of their hip, cool youth service), they gradually all stopped going to their old church and started going to Austin Stone. I don't believe everyone that goes there is drawn in solely by the fireworks of their service, but I do believe that the flashing lights, rock-star worship team, and concert-type experience play a larger part in most of Stone's constituents decisions than they'd like to admit.
The more telling trend is the fact that so many people tend to base their impression of a church off of their first few experiences - the music, the building, the pastor's ability as a good speaker. We enter the church not as Christians but as consumers, wanting to know whether we should buy into this place - which, by itself, is not a bad thing (it's simply thinking over a decision), but combined with the fact that we seem to be sold by the cheap and easy, it's not good news (ha ha ha).
Just thoughts for now, since I don't have a quick and easy solution. I think there are a lot of different things to learn from this and different ways in which it can be applied, but as for the root problem of being "too cheaply sold", I haven't come up with something substantial yet.
FYI, much of the content of this post seems to have been first thought up by Lewis, in fact (though written in a broader sense).
Other links on the subject
- Sticky theology - emotional selection and sound-bite theology
- C.S. Lewis' Weight of Glory sermon, considered to be one of the greatest ever. He comments on being "too cheaply sold".
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