According to the data you're more than likely to [press the button], which is why civilized societies can become barbaric. Germany had the most advanced public education system in the world, impressive industrial production, and yet they tried to exterminate an entire race of people. (Brennan to Cam, Bones, Season 10 Episode 9 airing December 4, 2014.)While discussing the likelihood of a good person pressing a button that, when pressed, causes increasing pain and then death to anonymous subjects, Brennan points out that even Cam is more than likely to press the button. She uses Nazi Germany to prove her point - a point I made in my senior honors paper in 1992 as a condition of graduation.
I wrote about how the post-modern society is no longer Christian, no longer has a common set of referents, and no longer is capable of sincere interpersonal interaction. I used the work of two of my favorite authors, Flannery O'Connor and Walker Percy. They both made the point that because of the loss of a common experience, we can no longer even effectively communicate with one another and our language has lost meaning. Case in point, when we talk about the things we "love" we use the same word we use when we tell the people in our lives we love them. How can saying "I love you" to someone carry any significance when we also say, "I love spritz cookies" or "I love toast."
Both O'Connor and Percy had realized that people are, essentially, dead, and it takes a disaster to wake them up. In fact, O'Connor's Grandma ("A Good Man is Hard to Find) first loses her worry and concern about what others might think of her when she is confronted with the gun-toting Misfit who has just brutally murdered her family in cold blood; she becomes alive and real in those moments before the Misfit fires the gun in her face. Percy's Will (The Last Gentleman and The Second Coming), discontent with the living dead, questions whether God even exists or cares about people and he decides to test God in a lonely cave with barbiturates.
In The Moviegoer, Percy comments on this world we inhabit in a way that strikes a personal chord:
Ours is the only civilization in history which has enshrined mediocrity as its national ideal. Others have been corrupt, but leave it to us to invent the most undistinguished of corruptions. No orgies, no blood running in the street, no babies thrown off cliffs. No, we're sentimental people and we horrify easily. True, our moral fiber is rotten. Our national character stinks to high heaven. But we are kinder than ever. No prostitute ever responded with a quicker spasm of sentiment when our hearts are touched. Nor is there anything new about thievery, lewdness, lying, adultery. What is new is that in our time liars and thieves and whores and adulterers wish also to be congratulated by the great public, if their confession is sufficiently psychological or strikes a sufficiently heartfelt and authentic note of sincerity. Oh, we are sincere. I do not deny it. I don't know anybody nowadays who is not sincere.Yes, liars and whores and adulterers connive to be congratulated by the public, but truth is, their rotten feet still stink. And all the "sincerity" and niceness and cosmetics cannot disguise the stench.
Brennan, O'Conner, Percy and I are right. Out of the greatest good has come the greatest evil - but it's not touching me. The Great Adversary cannot stand goodness and light and will do everything possible to stop it from spreading. My dear friend always reminds me, though, that the darkness - no matter how deep or profound - cannot put out the light; in fact, the light spills into the darkness. So, our best hope is to be wary and wait on the Lord. Right here, right now, we need to keep doing good, keep spreading the Light, and keep on the narrow road.
For me? I will strive for something far more than mere mediocrity. In this season of hopeful waiting, I see the blessings all around me. I am successfully managing my household, enjoying my friends and family in new ways, creating an exciting new business while the seed of another opportunity germinates, and finding out who I am called to be.
Blessings!
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