What have we become?

While I was at L’abri last semester I really got to see in theory and in practice the real depth at which sin has affected every aspect of our humanity. Every relationship between man, God, and nature have been severed and in need of redemption. It is under this guise that Bloom seems to shatter all ungrounded humanism in describing some aspects of the relationships that his students deal with. He has couched his premises interestingly enough under Self-Centeredness, Equality, Race, Sex, Separateness, Divorce, Love, and Eros.

In beginning with Self-centeredness he really looks first at the unparalleled freedom that our generation has experienced. Not the nuclear scares of the sixties, or drafted in Vietnam mostly ease. Even in light of 9/11 I imagine these truths are still prevalent. And building on what he has already played up in the errors of cultural relativism he thinks we have been free but have been given no real alternative to looking inward. Again there is no desire for what is noble, true, good, etc we merely feel that survival (living longer, beating cancer, everything on the discovery channel,) is now the only virtue for us to admire. He brilliantly adds that “the petty personal interests of youth- “making it”, finding a place for oneself- persevere through life” and these are the only things standing in the gap (between infinity and the individual) where country, religion, family, ideas of civilization, etc once lived. So the diagnosis is a severe case of narcissism unparalleled in history.

So the effects of this narcissism:
1) It is not so much of an effect but a parallel endemic of the decline of the family that have fed each others downward plunge. There isn’t much respect for the roles of parents and as we all know America/the West feels no obligation to our elderly apart from shoving them into a nursing home to waste away clearing our consciences.
2) Any sense of “rootedness” has now officially been severed since we exist primarily as individuals. Surely the massive frequency with which we move cannot help.

“They can be anything they want to be, but they have no particular reason to want to be anything in particular. Not only are they free to decide their place, but they are also free to decide their place, but are also free to decide whether they will believe in God or be atheists, or leave their options open by being agnostic; whether they will be straight or gay, or, again, keep their options open; whether they will marry and whether they will stay married; whether they will have children- and so on endlessly. There is no necessity, no morality, no social pressure, no sacrifice to be made that miliates going in or turning away from any of these directions, and there are desires pointing to each, with mutually contradictiory arguments to buttress them. “

No wonder Camus’ the Stranger and Jack Kerouac (beat poets) contiune to be enshrined by our generation.