Imagining the Good Life
What's the aim of our technological society?
Hey Readers, welcome back. Last time, we talked about how modern society talks about our attention like a tool.
We reflected on how we talk a lot about optimizing our attention, without much thought about the aim of our attention:
We may spend a lot of time optimizing without a clear vision of what we’re optimizing for.
We may have clearly stated principles for which we are working to optimize our lives, like efficiency or honesty. Still, those principles can be undercut by the rest of the practices of our lives that aren’t pursued intentionally.
I see this difference most in my own life with I’m “on” vs. “off,” meaning when I’m doing something that requires my deliberate adherence to a code or set of rules, like running a board meeting or completing my work. In contrast, there are times when I’m “off” and relaxing, maybe out running errands, stuck in traffic, or otherwise not being very deliberate with my actions.
So when I say we spend a lot of time optimizing for things without a clear picture of “the good life,” we can run into a bit of a confusing thing here. We may spend a lot of time optimizing for principles (efficiency, profitability, honesty, etc.) when we’re “on” and can probably vaguely articulate what the world we’re aiming for looks like. We also spend a lot of time in our day-to-day lives that are not super focused on those things. But even in that lack of focus, we can still find ourselves generally moving towards something.
The question is, which vision of the good life is the one we’re really after?
In the introduction to his book Desiring the Kingdom, James K. A. Smith first invites us on “a tour of one of the most important religious sites in our metropolitan area.” He asks us to be “Martian anthropologists who have come to this strange world of twenty-first-century North America in order to gather data on the rituals and religious habits of its inhabitants.” Smith goes on to describe in some detail on pages 19-22 the experience:
“As we’re still off at a distance, I want you to notice the sheer popularity of the site as indicated by the colorful sea of parking…”
“The design of the interior is inviting to an almost excessive degree, sucking us into the enclosed interior spaces, with windows on the ceiling open to the sky but none on the walls open to the surrounding automotive moat.”
“From the narthex entry, one is invited to lose oneself in this space, which channels the pilgrim into a labyrinth of octagons and circles, inviting a wandering that seems to escape from the drive, goal-oriented ways we inhabit in the outside world.”
“This temple – like countless others now emerging around the world – offers a rich, embodied visual mode of evangelism that attracts us. This is a gospel whose power is beauty, which speaks to our deepest desires and compels us to come not with dire moralisms but rather with a winsome invitation to share in
this envisioned good life.”
“As we pause to reflect on some of the icons on the outside of one of the
chapels, we are thereby invited to consider what's happening within the
chapel- invited to enter into the act of worship more properly, invited to
taste and see.”
“Sometimes we will enter cautiously, curiously, tentatively making our way through this labyrinth within the labyrinth… At other times our worship is intentional, directed, and resolute: we have come prepared for just this moment, knowing exactly why we're here, in search of exactly what we need.”
“In either case, after time spent focused and searching in what the faithful call "the racks," with our newfound holy object in hand, we proceed to the altar... When invited to worship here, we are not only invited to give; we are also invited to take. We don't leave this transformative experience with just good feelings or pious generalities, but rather with something concrete and tangible, with newly minted relics, as it were, that are themselves the means to the good life embodied in the icons who invited us into this participatory moment in the first place.”
At this point, Smith reveals that he’s been a bit facetious… he’s described a trip to a shopping mall. So why all this lofty language to describe something as mundane as a visit to a store in the mall?
His point is that we are ultimately liturgical creatures, being shaped by our actions. We don’t normally think of a trip to the shopping mall as a shaping experience in our lives. Still, Smith’s point is that every time we engage in this excursion, these rituals and expected behaviors become more deeply ingrained in us. The principles of consumerism and transactional engagement seep down into our beings and replace the other principles that we aspire to live our lives like. They replace whatever vague notion of the good life we may have held with another, one that’s shaped by a desire for more and shaped by the belief that what we have today isn’t good enough. We need something else.
Smith's use of religious language helps us view the trip to the mall in a more “religious” sense. When we visit a place of worship, our actions there are intended to shape us through our engagement in worship. We participate in the singing of songs. We hear a sermon; we give an offering and join in communion, among other things. If we strip all those actions of their religious language, their descriptions will become rather dull. If we then add that religious language to the trip to the mall, it “elevates” that experience. Smith’s point is that our bodies don’t always know the difference. We are shaped by these repeated actions and the “liturgy” of shopping, even though we don’t cognitively recognize it as happening.
The shopping mall isn’t the only type of venue that does this. We can think of several other examples, like visiting a sporting event or engaging in meaningful work. Not all of this shaping is “bad,” but most is unreflected upon. It might be helpful or hurtful; if we never stop and think about it, we are unlikely to recognize the difference.
He goes on to summarize:
…liturgies–whether “sacred” or “secular”–shape and constitute our identities by forming our most fundamental desires and our basic attainment to the world. In short, liturgies make us certain kinds of people, and what defines us is what we love. They do this because we are the sorts of animals whose orientation to the world is shaped from the body up more than from the head down. Liturgies aim our love to different ends precisely by training our hearts through our bodies. They prime us to approach the world in a certain way, to value certain things, to aim for certain goals, to pursue certain dreams, to work together on certain projects.1
So for this week, a question:
How do the expectations ingrained in us by the way we live our lives affect the expectations we have about what the good life is, regardless of what we may intellectually believe?"
And with that, thanks for reading. See you again soon.