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If We Hand It Over

Below is a quote from an interview with Jonathan Franzen on why it is essential to good writing that traditional publishers and editors continue to exist. This could be applied to a lot of things today, including the need for traditional denominational structures and ordination processes in churches. It also speaks to the need for isolation and meditation in a world inundated by technology.

Okay, let’s talk about those guys. What do you really think about Twitter?

[Laughs] I have a particular animus to the social-media world because I feel as if the kinds of writers I care about are just temperamentally not very good at that. Hard to see Kafka tweeting, hard to see Charlotte Bronte self-promoting. If we don’t maintain other avenues for establishing a literary reputation and finding some kind of readership – things like traditional publishers and reviewing, where the writer could just be a writer and not have to wear the flak hat, the salesman hat, the editor hat, the publisher hat – if we don’t maintain those, then we hand over the literary world to the personality types who are, I would say, less suited for the kind of work I care about.

It could be that my model of literature is simply outmoded, but I feel closer to Joyce with his ‘silence, exile and cunning.’ I worry that the ease and incessancy of communication through electronic media short-circuits the process whereby you go into deep isolation with yourself, you withdraw from the world so as to be able to hear the world better and know yourself better, and you produce something unique which you send out into the world and let communicate in a non-discursive way for you…

It’s not like I’m militantly opposed to discursive interactive communication. It’s fine, it’s great. But there’s a tipping point you reach where you can’t get away from the electronic community, where you become almost physically dependent on it. And that, I persist in thinking, is not compatible with my notion of where terrific literature comes from.

-From Scratch: Writers, Money, and the Art of Making a Living, edited by Manjula Martin, pp. 266-267

Leave Me Alone

Anyone who has ever protected a little boy from being bullied at school, or a little girl from some childish persecution at a party, or any natural person from any minor nuisance, knows that the being thus badgered tends to cry out, in a simple but singular English idiom, “Let me alone!” It is seldom that the child of nature breaks into the cry, “Let me enjoy the fraternal solidarity of a more socially organised group-life.” It is rare even for the protest to leap to the lips in the form, “Let me run around with some crowd that has got dough enough to hit the high spots.” Not one of these positive modern ideals presents itself to that untutored mind; but only the ideal of being “let alone.” It is rather interesting that so spontaneous, instinctive, almost animal an ejaculation contains the word alone.

-G.K. Chesterton, The Well and the Shallows

I just deleted the over 1,000 words I wrote about this quote. I don’t regret it. It’s difficult.

The fact of the matter is that we are made in the image of the triune God. God is one. God is three. We need to be alone. We need to be in community. Christianity, and only Christianity as far as I know, can truly account for the fact that we want to be alone and not be alone at one and the same time.

The fact is that, in our sinful condition, we have to encourage people to be both alone and not alone. We have to encourage the introvert to get out and the extravert to get in, realizing that both solitude and company are worthwhile. Neither is superior to the other. Both are vital for spiritual and psychological health.

The monk needs to get out of his cloister regularly. The social butterfly needs to lock himself up in a room from time to time. No hermits; no social complexes; no schizoids. No dependent personality disorders either.

The age is the issue. In some times and cultures, we must emphasize one over the other. But what about such a time as this? Hence the difficulty. We live in an age where we are never alone although we are often…well…alone. We need real community and real solitude. We lack both.

Mysticism is not the answer. Neither is a community group. We need balance…

Shocking: “Humans prefer an electric shock to being left alone with their thoughts”

The headline of an article on The Verge reads, “Humans prefer an electric shock to being left alone with their thoughts.” The potential for puns is shockingly high. I can feel the electricity as I type…

Anyhow, the article points to a study in which people were given a choice: sit alone in uninterrupted silence and solitude for 15 minutes, or amuse yourself (or whatever) by pressing a button that will shock you. The majority chose the shock, and some chose to repeat the shock quite a bit. My first thought was that this doesn’t really prove anything. I probably would have been curious enough to push the button at least once just to see what it felt like. But it is the repeat offenders that confound me. The first time is just curiosity, the 20th time must be done out of sheer boredom.

Regardless of the cause, it is an interesting anecdote for what we have been coming to realize for some time now: modern people struggle with solitude and silence. This is something I have pointed to quite a bit on this blog, and something that continues to trouble me. I believe it is one of the great pastoral issues of our day. It is a logical progression for a culture in which we are constantly surrounded by bells and whistles – even books. I wonder if any of the trial-subjects spent the 15 minutes in silent meditation and prayer. Perhaps we should all take this as a cue to do so.

Read the article HERE.