"I think we're miserable partly because we have only one god, and that's economics. Economics is a slave-driver. No one has free time; no one has any leisure. The whole culture is under terrible pressure and fraught with worry. It's hard to get out of that box."
James Hillman
friendship as a mode of spiritual formation | instigating one another from alongside to follow Jesus
Ignore the expiration date
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5 comments:
What a tragic statement Hillman has made, singularly hopeless and bleak, a terrifying glance into engineered disillusionment. There is no "culture" other than that which exists in one's mind, invented and formed by corporate entities and delivered through the media (and people like Hillman himself) to exploit us and rob us of the Truth, which they have done successfully. Once Hillman understands this, his "box" will disappear and he will no longer spend his life bowing to Rome, and worshiping his one god. And he can begin by ignoring the media, literally, closing the newspaper, leaving the television off, and also muting those people though which his illusion of culture is reinforced. Indeed, culture is our greatest excuse for our failures, for quitting thinking, apathy, and it’s the source of our many neuroses. It may even make someone believe there is no time for "leisure". It's a culture of debt and worry packaged as some kind of a dream. There is an answer: "the sound instruction of Jesus Christ." And here is it: "Worship the Lord God and worship him only." The [right] way has been prepared for us. Jesus Christ is the calm in this storm.
ATW, my friend...
In Dr. Hillman’s defense, this statement is pulled from an interview where he is criticizing this cultural condition. He’s calling for us to live in a more soul-honoring manner. (I apologize for not making the context clearer.)
But I like the fire of your response, and I’m grateful that you would take the time to so passionately engage the conversation. That’s what soul-friending should be.
I think you’re right about our use of culture as an excuse for un/dis-engaged living. That’s a concept well worth mulling over. Serious ramifications...
Indeed, Jesus Christ is the calm in this storm.
Thanks for commenting, Joshua. You are no doubt at least partly right about the lazy-mindedness factor.
To some extent, though, it’s an understandable conundrum: A person stays on the treadmill in order to provide well for family, believing it is the only honorable course of action. But ironically, the family misses out on the provider’s presence.
They also miss seeing what its provider would look like while living an engaged life, awake to creativity, in touch with beauty, attuned to wonder, vulnerable to the holy...
I’m convinced, along with Alex and yourself, that the answer to the conundrum is in following Jesus. I’m also convinced that following Jesus is much more an art than a science...
Alex -- To be fair, I must confess that I'm using the term science in a pejorative sense: quantifying, qualifying, hard empiricism... But there are realms of science that are more holistic, intuitive, and open to mystery.
My reasons for favoring art over science as a mode of following Jesus are that it welcomes wonder, it intuits stories within stories, it isn't compelled to rigidly delineate between symbolic and literal, it is capable of conveying vastness with brevity, it responds to a moment of unique inspiration while rooted in histories and reaching to portray what is just beginning to unfold before us...
Fair point. I agree that we isolate art & science from one another to our own impoverishment.
Bringing faith into the equation, I'd submit that both science & art require faith to exist.
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