Heat Beating
Yesterday was hot enough to drive me away from my apartment for the afternoon. Many people claim they are beating the heat by sitting around in the sunlight near a large body of water. This doesn't make sense to me, since you are really cooking yourself in direct sunlight--far worse than just suffering the high ambient air temperature. (It's also amazing how many people don't understand the principle of setting a thermometer in the shade to get the actual air temperature. They put it in the sun and think it's malfunctioning or that their back yard is twenty degrees hotter than what the news report says.)
At any rate, my plan was to go to the PSU library and work through a little stack of books during the hottest part of the day. Unfortunately, on my arrival, I learned that the AC unit is being replaced and there will be no air conditioning in the library until July. We were admonished in posters to keep the curtains drawn. I headed down to the basement--generally a cooler part of any house or building. I like the basement anyhow, since that's where the philosophy, theology, psychology, and history books are. The early letters of the Library of Congress shelving system. Powell's had gotten in some Jacques Ellul books recently which put him in mind, so I took down four titles by him, as well as a couple books by Peter Kivy, a philosopher specializing in the aesthetics of music. Like a hungry diner who orders more than he can eat, I had way more books than I could manage in the few hours I would be there, but I never know if a book or two will be uninteresting so I usually overstock myself. As it turns out I didn't have any time to even look at the Peter Kivy books, and I actually spent the majority of my time reading Ellul's Critique of the New Commonplaces. This was actually a re-reading, but it was a long time ago that I read it the first time. I was an undergraduate in Tempe, Arizona, and it may have been the first Ellul book I read of any sort. I knew by reputation that he was one of those pessimistic culture critics I like so much (Mumford, Neil Postman, Christopher Lasch, Russell Jacoby). Some say Ellul is one of the most hardcore, almost inducing a sense of futility as you read him. Perhaps true, but I find it invigorating rather than depressing.
It was funny to look through this book after so many years. Especially his little chapter "Make Way for Youth!" At the time I first read it, I really was young. Now I'm creeping into middle age. (I happened to hear an interview with generational scholar Neil Howe in which he talked about how Gen Xers are now starting to realize they are no longer the center of "youth culture" in America. Indeed, that's been my feeling the past few years.) Ellul did not bitch about the overvaluation of the young as one might expect of a then-middle-aged writer. He merely pointed out the illogic of putting too much optimism behind the idea that the young, as "inheritors of the future" are going to fix everything with all their energy and idealism. The fact is, by the time they inherit this future, "they will have become the same old wrecks that we are now, and will make just about the same present as the one that served us as future."
Ellul had no illusions that any given generation (such as his own) had somehow latched on to a program to fix society, but had merely run out of energy or time. (This, he says, is the perception of people as they age.) Such people turn hopefully towards the younger generation to finish what they started. At the time I first read this, I found myself thinking of the scorn that baby boomers (many of my professors) had for people my age and our supposed lack of political ambition, etc. They wanted us to carry the torch of sixties radicalism. Today I find myself thinking about how my generation's own attitudes and assumptions might seem to the up-and-coming youth. There was no doubt a sense in my former self that I was on the rising crest of cultural relevance. Now I can start to see the downward slope in the not-so-far distance. I'm looking both ahead and behind. Still, I've never quite typified the Gen X stereotype myself. (Maybe every Gen Xer says that, and maybe they're all right since we can each find some idiosyncrasy or another to cling to, to prove our exceptionalism.) So I don't think I'll be all that sad if the supposed traits of Generation X do indeed become outmoded and ignored by the rising generations.
Ellul asks, why should the young be interested in the ideas, goals, attitudes of the previous generation? They are, after all, thirty years out of date. And so the old often try to convert the young to their attitudes (All the things we rebelled against in the 60s are still going on! I've heard from many an aging radical.) Sometimes they succeed, and we have the sad spectacle of the young person who willingly becomes a mimic of a previous generation's actions.
Another chapter that sparked my interest (I even made a photocopy of it) was the one on work. Already in my youth I had a bad attitude about work, but as a student it was only abstract. Now that I've made my living as a self-employed book scout for a while, and have suffered a kind of voluntary poverty but also a psychological freedom as a result, I have a different perspective. I also feel more pressure from people around me to quit "goofing off" and start working on a career. You don't want to be poor forever, do you? What about a pension or retirement? You'll be doing the same thing for peanuts twenty years from now! etc. Ellul is bracing to read in the midst of this. He argues that hardly anyone really loves work. The exceptions are those obsessed with some craft or practice. Throughout history, in all cultures, work has been thought of as a burden, not a delight, or something good for the soul. This latter attitude only came about in the last two centuries with the rise of industrialism and the bourgeois. Further, Ellul (himself a student of Marx) points out that even the utopian thinkers (Proudhon, e.g.) were taken in by the idea of noble work. The goal wasn't to liberate people from working, but rather to get the rich aristocrats to get their hands dirty and engage in soul-lifting labor. All must work!
In a parallel chapter on the belief that we must first satisfy material wants before we can expect moral and spiritual improvement, Ellul points out that Isaiah, Buddha, St. Theresa, Ramakrishna and Confucius "all unanimously and without a single exception, say that only poverty is favorable to the spiritual life; that all wealth, even moderate, is sterilizing; that all security and all comfort are destructive of meditation and the search for truth. They all reject the idea that it is with a full stomach and when he has an hour to kill that man can turn toward eternity and has the leisure to do so!" Further, it is naive to think that a man can compartmentalize his life as such: "from eight a.m. to noon, drudgery; from noon to two p.m., relaxation and culture; from two p.m. to six p.m., more drudgery; from six p.m. to eight p.m., family life; from eight p.m. to ten p.m., spiritual life. But to imagine that eight or even six hours work in the modern world do not alter the whole life, do not sterilize all capacity for culture or spiritual life, precisely because it is work that is nonassimilable, impossible to integrate into the whole life, is to have absolutely no sense of what spiritual life or culture can be."
This goes back to something I hear from time to time about how if I worked a "real" career-type job, I would actually have more leisure because I would get paid vacation time each year, and would have the money to travel different places, stay in hotels, etc. Or perhaps take up "enriching" hobbies. On this Ellul writes of the illusion that "Man will improve himself when he has nothing better to do, to fill the void, and, of course, with no relation to his work--shut up in the living room and hypnotized by the little screen. Making the Eiffel Tower out of matchboxes, collecting miniatures, experimenting with spaceships in the garden, inventing a lethal fountain pen--this is culture! Watching old movies, a documentary on Mount Athos, a production of a Racine rebroadcast over television--this is culture! Reading Paris-Match and glancing casually at the reproductions of Van Gogh while an ear distracted by clinking dishes and playing children catches fragments of Mozart--this is culture! Actually, we are surrounded by false culture!"
The two parts of this dance are the first move of elevating work to a virtue (you are what you do; work is fulfilling; it gives structure to daily life; it provides socializing experiences) and the second is devaluing culture and spirituality to some kind of distraction or diversion for those moments when you are not working (the words should be run together as a single concept: notworking). Whew, I'm tired from all that working, and since I am presently notworking, I will watch a movie or read a pop spiritual book (The Five People You Meet in Heaven.) Nothing too taxing! I'm tired after all. I need to "refresh," to "recharge my batteries" for another week of work. How often the people who sing to me the potential benefits of regular, structured work fail to avail themselves of anything they talk about! Travel is the one exception since so long as you have the money for a plane ticket and lodgings you can undertake a trip. A far less expensive and intrusive activity like reading a serious book isn't part of the program. "I'm so exhausted from my job, when I want to read, I just want something fun and easy!" "I want a movie that makes me laugh!" and so on. Sometimes I get a sense of slight embarrassment from the speaker--he would like to do something deeper or more serious in his "free time" (notworking time) but right now anything too heavy (a Eugene O'Neill play, e.g.) will depress his spirits or bore him because he lacks the mental energy. Perhaps when he is older and retired he can take up such things.
Yet, if not now, why then?
At any rate, my plan was to go to the PSU library and work through a little stack of books during the hottest part of the day. Unfortunately, on my arrival, I learned that the AC unit is being replaced and there will be no air conditioning in the library until July. We were admonished in posters to keep the curtains drawn. I headed down to the basement--generally a cooler part of any house or building. I like the basement anyhow, since that's where the philosophy, theology, psychology, and history books are. The early letters of the Library of Congress shelving system. Powell's had gotten in some Jacques Ellul books recently which put him in mind, so I took down four titles by him, as well as a couple books by Peter Kivy, a philosopher specializing in the aesthetics of music. Like a hungry diner who orders more than he can eat, I had way more books than I could manage in the few hours I would be there, but I never know if a book or two will be uninteresting so I usually overstock myself. As it turns out I didn't have any time to even look at the Peter Kivy books, and I actually spent the majority of my time reading Ellul's Critique of the New Commonplaces. This was actually a re-reading, but it was a long time ago that I read it the first time. I was an undergraduate in Tempe, Arizona, and it may have been the first Ellul book I read of any sort. I knew by reputation that he was one of those pessimistic culture critics I like so much (Mumford, Neil Postman, Christopher Lasch, Russell Jacoby). Some say Ellul is one of the most hardcore, almost inducing a sense of futility as you read him. Perhaps true, but I find it invigorating rather than depressing.
It was funny to look through this book after so many years. Especially his little chapter "Make Way for Youth!" At the time I first read it, I really was young. Now I'm creeping into middle age. (I happened to hear an interview with generational scholar Neil Howe in which he talked about how Gen Xers are now starting to realize they are no longer the center of "youth culture" in America. Indeed, that's been my feeling the past few years.) Ellul did not bitch about the overvaluation of the young as one might expect of a then-middle-aged writer. He merely pointed out the illogic of putting too much optimism behind the idea that the young, as "inheritors of the future" are going to fix everything with all their energy and idealism. The fact is, by the time they inherit this future, "they will have become the same old wrecks that we are now, and will make just about the same present as the one that served us as future."
Ellul had no illusions that any given generation (such as his own) had somehow latched on to a program to fix society, but had merely run out of energy or time. (This, he says, is the perception of people as they age.) Such people turn hopefully towards the younger generation to finish what they started. At the time I first read this, I found myself thinking of the scorn that baby boomers (many of my professors) had for people my age and our supposed lack of political ambition, etc. They wanted us to carry the torch of sixties radicalism. Today I find myself thinking about how my generation's own attitudes and assumptions might seem to the up-and-coming youth. There was no doubt a sense in my former self that I was on the rising crest of cultural relevance. Now I can start to see the downward slope in the not-so-far distance. I'm looking both ahead and behind. Still, I've never quite typified the Gen X stereotype myself. (Maybe every Gen Xer says that, and maybe they're all right since we can each find some idiosyncrasy or another to cling to, to prove our exceptionalism.) So I don't think I'll be all that sad if the supposed traits of Generation X do indeed become outmoded and ignored by the rising generations.
Ellul asks, why should the young be interested in the ideas, goals, attitudes of the previous generation? They are, after all, thirty years out of date. And so the old often try to convert the young to their attitudes (All the things we rebelled against in the 60s are still going on! I've heard from many an aging radical.) Sometimes they succeed, and we have the sad spectacle of the young person who willingly becomes a mimic of a previous generation's actions.
Another chapter that sparked my interest (I even made a photocopy of it) was the one on work. Already in my youth I had a bad attitude about work, but as a student it was only abstract. Now that I've made my living as a self-employed book scout for a while, and have suffered a kind of voluntary poverty but also a psychological freedom as a result, I have a different perspective. I also feel more pressure from people around me to quit "goofing off" and start working on a career. You don't want to be poor forever, do you? What about a pension or retirement? You'll be doing the same thing for peanuts twenty years from now! etc. Ellul is bracing to read in the midst of this. He argues that hardly anyone really loves work. The exceptions are those obsessed with some craft or practice. Throughout history, in all cultures, work has been thought of as a burden, not a delight, or something good for the soul. This latter attitude only came about in the last two centuries with the rise of industrialism and the bourgeois. Further, Ellul (himself a student of Marx) points out that even the utopian thinkers (Proudhon, e.g.) were taken in by the idea of noble work. The goal wasn't to liberate people from working, but rather to get the rich aristocrats to get their hands dirty and engage in soul-lifting labor. All must work!
In a parallel chapter on the belief that we must first satisfy material wants before we can expect moral and spiritual improvement, Ellul points out that Isaiah, Buddha, St. Theresa, Ramakrishna and Confucius "all unanimously and without a single exception, say that only poverty is favorable to the spiritual life; that all wealth, even moderate, is sterilizing; that all security and all comfort are destructive of meditation and the search for truth. They all reject the idea that it is with a full stomach and when he has an hour to kill that man can turn toward eternity and has the leisure to do so!" Further, it is naive to think that a man can compartmentalize his life as such: "from eight a.m. to noon, drudgery; from noon to two p.m., relaxation and culture; from two p.m. to six p.m., more drudgery; from six p.m. to eight p.m., family life; from eight p.m. to ten p.m., spiritual life. But to imagine that eight or even six hours work in the modern world do not alter the whole life, do not sterilize all capacity for culture or spiritual life, precisely because it is work that is nonassimilable, impossible to integrate into the whole life, is to have absolutely no sense of what spiritual life or culture can be."
This goes back to something I hear from time to time about how if I worked a "real" career-type job, I would actually have more leisure because I would get paid vacation time each year, and would have the money to travel different places, stay in hotels, etc. Or perhaps take up "enriching" hobbies. On this Ellul writes of the illusion that "Man will improve himself when he has nothing better to do, to fill the void, and, of course, with no relation to his work--shut up in the living room and hypnotized by the little screen. Making the Eiffel Tower out of matchboxes, collecting miniatures, experimenting with spaceships in the garden, inventing a lethal fountain pen--this is culture! Watching old movies, a documentary on Mount Athos, a production of a Racine rebroadcast over television--this is culture! Reading Paris-Match and glancing casually at the reproductions of Van Gogh while an ear distracted by clinking dishes and playing children catches fragments of Mozart--this is culture! Actually, we are surrounded by false culture!"
The two parts of this dance are the first move of elevating work to a virtue (you are what you do; work is fulfilling; it gives structure to daily life; it provides socializing experiences) and the second is devaluing culture and spirituality to some kind of distraction or diversion for those moments when you are not working (the words should be run together as a single concept: notworking). Whew, I'm tired from all that working, and since I am presently notworking, I will watch a movie or read a pop spiritual book (The Five People You Meet in Heaven.) Nothing too taxing! I'm tired after all. I need to "refresh," to "recharge my batteries" for another week of work. How often the people who sing to me the potential benefits of regular, structured work fail to avail themselves of anything they talk about! Travel is the one exception since so long as you have the money for a plane ticket and lodgings you can undertake a trip. A far less expensive and intrusive activity like reading a serious book isn't part of the program. "I'm so exhausted from my job, when I want to read, I just want something fun and easy!" "I want a movie that makes me laugh!" and so on. Sometimes I get a sense of slight embarrassment from the speaker--he would like to do something deeper or more serious in his "free time" (notworking time) but right now anything too heavy (a Eugene O'Neill play, e.g.) will depress his spirits or bore him because he lacks the mental energy. Perhaps when he is older and retired he can take up such things.
Yet, if not now, why then?