Finally we come to what Pascal meant by the "iodine of hyperactivity". We flit from one diversion to another so as not to be alone in the presence of our thoughts. For our Dante reading group I've included the author's tip of the hat to Dante.
Oakes continues:
... Pascal was an acute student of boredom,
and saw in this phenomenon… the clue to the very pathos of the human condition.
Generally speaking, says Pascal, “we think either of present woes or of
threatened miseries.” But moments occur in almost everyone’s experience when
life reaches a temporary pause of homeostasis, when we feel quite safe on every
side, when bad health does not threaten, when bill collectors are not baying at
the door, when rush “hour traffic is light and the weather pleasant.” But
precisely at such moments “boredom on its own account emerges from the depths
of our hearts, where it is naturally rooted, and poisons our whole mind.” Not
just the king craves diversion. So terrified are we of boredom that the king’s
ambition is our own.
I have
called Pascal “the first modern Christian” because, among other reasons, our
civilization, in contrast to all other past civilizations, gets its very
identity from the sheer range of distractions that have now been made available
to us, from hundreds of channels on cable TV to over a thousand video cassettes
on the shelf of any self-respecting video rental agency to the millions of
websites on the Internet, group activities of every sort imaginable, aerobics
classes, talk-show radio on the air twenty-four hours a day, and so on....
Our own age is not likely to be distinguished
in history for the large numbers of people who insisted on finding the time to
think. Plainly, this is not the Age of Meditative Man . . . . Substitutes for
repose are a billion dollar business. Almost daily, new antidotes for
contemplation spring into being and leap out from store counters. Silence,
already the world’s most critical shortage, is in danger of becoming a nasty
word. Modern man may or may not be obsolete, but he is certainly wired for
sound and he twitches as naturally as he breathes.
Of course
no one denies the legitimate need for entertainment or the role that diversion
plays in generating demand for the works of art that have become the glory of
our species. Often life achieves its goal of testifying to its own goodness as
worth living when a human being is able to enjoy the highest benefits of
culture. I personally count myself most glad to be alive when I am enjoying a
good meal with a friend, listening to Mozart in the privacy of my room, or
reading a good book. Nor, despite his seeming Jansenist severity, would Pascal
contemn such pleasures. Even he, the least therapeutic writer imaginable,
admits that diversions can help to heal the beset soul ….
But our
extraordinary obsession with entertainment and distraction constitutes perhaps
the hallmark of our civilization in contrast to past cultures. From the time
the clock radio goes off in the morning to the late-night talk shows, the
average denizen of contemporary culture need never be alone, encounter silence,
or have to listen to the voice within. As Pascal says: “We run heedlessly into
the abyss after putting something in front of us to keep from seeing the
precipice.” ….
Second only
to Dante, Pascal is Europe’s most politically incorrect writer. He dares to
raise the unmentionable topic of truth in religion, and even called one of the
sections of his Pensées “Nature Is Corrupt: On the Falseness of Other
Religions.” In contrast to most reflection on the problem of world religions in
today’s academy, Pascal sees the “problem” as in fact essential for the truth
of the Christian message:
That God wanted to be hidden . If there were
only one religion, God would be clearly manifest. If there were martyrs only in
our religion, the same. God being therefore hidden, any religion which does not
say that God is hidden is not true. And any religion which does not give us the
reason why does not enlighten. Ours does all this . . . . If there were no
obscurity man would not feel his corruption: if there were no light man could
not hope for a cure. Thus it is not only right but useful that God should be
partly concealed and partly revealed, since it is equally dangerous for man to
know God without knowing his wretchedness as to know his own wretchedness
without knowing God. “Truly God is hidden with you” (Isaiah 45:15).
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