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".
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9 comments:
Well said. This is an interesting, but certainly not new problem, that I certainly wouldn't attribute to America alone. The way I see it, though, is that it might not even be considered that much of a problem as it is beneficial, depending on whose vantage point you're looking at.
What I feel basically describes this is (and I'm probably attributing this to the wrong person) Thomas Malthus, with his writings on population growth and the idea of a "Malthusian Safety Valve". It basically describes the idea that if you distract the people, they won't be as likely to focus on their problems and/or rebel. An example of this is the coliseum in Rome; both the games and the bread that they frequently handed out during them helped to control the populace by fomenting some sense of peace within the realm.
Of course this all has long-standing consequences, both to us (now as consumers and our ease of distraction), and any entity that would willingly distract (be it for good or bad reason). Is this a problem? Maybe. But even if it is, there's no simple solution for sure. A large part of the problem stems from class and education disparities (though certainly not the only contributing factors). Just thinking about that alone shows how hard it would be to fix - and the recent examples of attempts at removing class and education disparities have not gone over well at all. Even now, you and I could consider ourselves well educated - though I can't speak for you I know I've made some poor purchasing choices before. But could that be fixed? Could we do that same process for all 300 million people in this country? Sadly the reality is that it's extremely costly and not likely to happen any time soon. BUT, as education gets more ubiquitous and reaches higher levels, perhaps this problem (as it were) will work itself out. But by then, I'm sure we'll have a whole new set of problems to deal with.
It's a grim outlook, for sure, but it doesn't have to be. It's just the way society has functioned for the last several thousand years - and despite the populace's ability to get cheated in any way, like all things it comes with both pros and cons. Remember though that a testament to this fact is that despite all this, society has functioned for the last several thousand years.
Hi Jessie,
I think your observation is certainly correct, although I'd take a more "glass half full" outlook on it. I think that societies develop and mature in ways similar to individual people. When first faced with a new development, we lack the experience to see long-term consequences and rather focus on short-term benefits (like a child that wants to always play video games). Food is an example: we often speak of how our nutrition has gone 'down hill' and that our diets were much better decades ago than they are now. What's not mentioned is how our healthier nutrition in the past had nothing to do with conscious choices and everything to do with circumstances out of our control (nature). We didn't become poor eaters when modernity hit, we were just given the opportunity to have our choices reflect the ignorance we've held all along. But everything comes full circle: the obesity epidemic will peak at some point (some people say it already has), and society will eventually gain the experience to make good long-term-oriented decisions, as many people already have. Five-hundred years ago, free-will and choice played far less into the outcomes of our lives than did uncontrollable circumstances. Nature and circumstance were our parents, but now we're all having to grow up. At the end of the day, there's no better teacher than the pain of experience. This myopia you speak of is, in my opinion, less a permanent human characteristic than a mere growing pain of society's adolescence. Still, I love me some good fireworks.
Dave - I was actually thinking about the whole bread and circus analogy while writing this as well. And I agree - we've functioned for several thousands of years, but I might attribute that just to survival instinct. If something is TOO bad of a decision, we'll avoid it, but if it doesn't kill us, we seem content to live at a sub-optimal level.
Jose - that's a good thought. I hadn't really thought about whether or not our "myopia" changes with time. I'm a bit more skeptical about society *always* orienting itself towards the wiser choice, but I do agree that more often than not, we will eventually, if unconstrained by other circumstances, avoid behavior that's too self-destructive. Like obesity.
But at the same time, some behaviors don't have the same consequential weight - obesity is directly linked in with health problems, which is one of our immediate interests. But once again, many behaviors don't have consequences as fatal or inconvenient, and I was mentioning to Dave that we're often content to live with those consequences, even if it might be at the cost of deeper or slower-developing virtues. So even in our adaptation, I feel like we're fairly short-sighted. We'll try to live healthily until we're not at risk for heart disease, but quit once the problem is out of the way.
I can't say I don't enjoy fireworks too =). But I feel like it's at least good to be conscious of when entertainment is just cheap thrills.
What do you think is a better way of forming an impression of a church if one is searching for a church home?
Idealistically, I would say more the people, the direction in which their community and ministry tends to point - something which most people would probably consider important (and also something that doesn't leap out and capture our attention as easily as other things). However, I think the answer is a little more complicated than that...
What are your thoughts, Alan?
i agree with a lot of what you said...but certainly not everything
one thing i wanted to say though is that transformers was an amazing movie...it may not have had depth of plot, but i'd argue it wasn't meant to...i'd argue that michael bay, being a visual artists, made the kind of movie he was good at it and made it have deep beauty....beauty in the fight scenes....beauty in the combination of sounds......beauty in the flashes and bangs that had to be carefully placed....in a way i find beauty in his movies the same way i find beauty when worshiping.....i may not always like or find depth in the words of the music...but sometimes the musicianship expresses a beauty to me that know words or plot could....a beautiful gift that only God could create :-D...tell me if that makes sense
Julian - I suppose that can be said, and perhaps that's the way Michael Bay directs his movies. Given his personality and his comments about the movies, I doubt he's intending to be artistic in such a way. Still, the main issue I had with the movies was more about the reasons why people love such a film.
I do have my personal opinion about Bay's movies - that they're just buoyed up by fancy effects, explosions, and large amounts of money, and that they're not good movies in the classical sense of film making. I'd liken his movies to pop music - you can consider the production of bubblegum-pop-music as artfully putting things together, but truth be told, most mainstream pop music is much easier and takes less skill to make than good music. They have fantastic production, but it hides the fact that musically and lyrically, the songs are pretty cheap.
I feel like Bay's movies are the same - just as there should be music and not just fancy production in a song, I think there should be something more than explosions, hot girls, and cheap thrills in a movie.
Yay for Transformers. Weak plot, big explosions, Megan Fox.
Haha the whole time I was reading this, I was thinking of Richard Beck's pop culture/sticky, sound-bite theology posts. It is interesting, but consumer culture is starting to well....consume culture.
I'm not gonna say too much, because I'm well out of my lunch break. I'll see ya in a couple weeks though.
Nice, I thought back to Beck as well.
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