amusing ourselves

I happened to StumbleUpon some photos the other day of the Six Flags New Orleans amusement park. There was an eeriness to the pictures, not unlike what you might feel standing on the porch of an abandoned Victorian house—sort of "Addams Family-esque" feel.

But what struck me most was the irrelevance of it all. In my mind there was something of an "interesting, but so what?" feel to the whole thing—not at all the same feeling as I get when looking at the washed-out and abandoned homes left in the wake of Katrina. I was reminded of the story of a Ugandan bishop being taken on a tour of Disneyland. At the end of one particular ride (not to be named, but let us say that the main character in the story would be lost without his hat and whip), upon disembarking, the bishop turned to his host and asked, "And how, exactly, does this glorify Jesus?"

I love Disneyland, Six Flags and amusement parks in general. But looking at those photos of Six Flags NOLA brought a realization of the near-vacuity of a culture that is, as Neil Postman wrote in the mid-1980s, "amusing ourselves to death". I was struck particularly by the millions of dollars worth of equipment and structures simply lying around rusting into oblivion, and the incongruity of the graffiti sprayed in several places: "NOLA rising".

It is significant that there has been no effort at rehabilitation nor even clean-up since August 25, 2005. It is as if folks understand, almost unconsciously, the values-statement any such work would make. I assume that the Six Flags corporate office has realized that any attempt to rebuild while the real lives of thousands of residents and former residents of "NOLA" are still, six years after the fact, desperately impacted would be a profound act of hubris bordering on the inhuman. As it stands, it is a reminder of how much we expend on things that have no eternal value, and a statement of something that we really do not care to think about if we can at all avoid it: the notion that there is much we hold in high regard that, when the wheels come off, really do not amount to anything at all.

There is in me a certain gratification that Six Flags New Orleans lies abandoned and rusting away. I like the personal reminder that, when it all comes down to it, amusing myself for the sake of amusement not only doesn't add much to my life, but can in fact diminish it in some deep and profound ways. Paul said it this way:

Finally brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things [Philippians 4.8, ESV].

anxiously acting out

There has been a tragic revelation lately in news stories of politicians behaving badly. The absence of sense and morality, the public indiscretions exposed in national leaders such as the former governor of California Arnold Schwarzenegger and New York Representative Anthony Weiner are only the latest in a long series of such events that include Newt Gingrich, John Edwards and Bill Clinton; and we must not forget they also include folks like Ted Haggard and Jimmy Bakker.

What possesses men like these to undertake such tragic lapses of judgement? And even more tragic, what possesses us to accept such men as leaders? Is there no place for, much less expectancy of, morality and upright behavior any more? What could possibly entice us to elect and/or follow such people and invest them with so much power and authority?

I have been reading the blogs and online news sources, and I see a trend that I find profoundly disturbing. There seems to be a proliferation of opinions that run along the lines of: "Well, it was only pornography" and "We all do it!", so "What's the big deal? Why are we such prudes?" To say that Rep. Weiner's indiscretion was "only pornography" is like saying of the 400,000 + acre Wallow conflagration in eastern Arizona, "Well, it's only a wildfire!"

The truth is that we, as a culture, are on an ever-accelerating societal revolution to abandon all moral living as something which "cramps our style" to use the vernacular of my youth. And the curious—even tragic—thing about this collision course with anti-nomianism is that we are steadily laboring to abandon the very thing we are crying out for. Any culture needs laws, particularly moral laws, in order to survive. The current trend, however, is toward anarchy, and everyone a law unto himself.

Edwin Friedman writes that we are a culture in deep anxiety. This chronic anxiety has caused us to have ceased to promote and follow healthy, well differentiated leaders, and instead to organize ourselves around a basic immaturity, to the point of selecting those least mature to be our leaders. Instead of looking to great hearts and minds to lead us, we gravitate toward the slick and the self-aggrandizing egos of those who have no sense that they are not above the law, and no shame except the shame of being caught out in their indiscretions.

And, tragically, the anxious society perpetuates its own anxiety, potential leaders are prevented from rising to the top through the systematic cultural sabotage of their resolve and the tearing down of any initiative that might cause them to rise above the crowd. Curously, and almost counter-intuitively, one of the primary examples of a society in regression (to use Friedman's term) is an over-sensitivity to potential hurt. In A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix, Friedman writes:

As with any chronically anxious family, there is in American society today an intense quickness to interfere in another's self-expression, to overreact to any perceived hurt, to take all disagreement too seriously, and to brand the opposition with ad hominem personal epithets (chauvinist, ethnocentric, homophobic, and so on).

 Until we begin to recognize that we are desperately in need of leaders who are unafraid to lead, and to undertake the hard solutions to a society in free-fall versus making their decisions based on the latest poll and looking for the "quick fix", we will continue to find ourselves "led" by the fearful immature, those completely incapable of doing the hard work of truly leading. And those "leaders", whose souls recognize their own poverty, will continue to act out of their immaturity in self-destructive fashion.