Surviving The Fall, 6

There appears to be an unfortunate tend in academic thinking these days, largely thanks to the extreme postmodernism in the university curriculums for the humanities and social sciences. Basically, they are teaching that we are completely the result of our social environment and our genetics. That personal choice, free will play not an iota of a role in forming who we are. That of course is a complete one eighty from the belief of my parents' generation, of the self-made man (or woman) and that we all made choices and that those choices determined our outcome. This I believe to be a splendid example of how limiting the lens of the era can be when we are seeing through it, along with our blinding ignorance that insists that this has always been the only valid way to see things. The sad irony is that we are all completely blind to the biases of our era, or more or less, though some of us are aware of these things and their prophetic voices are generally shouted down, silenced or ignored. Indeed, it can be supremely difficult to effectively distance oneself from the thinking of the day, because the influence pervades and seeps in like rancid tenement cooking odours into every room and every nook and cranny of our being. I am reminded of a very critical time in my life when I was twenty-three and I made a conscious decision to limit, or entirely cut off all the influences of American pop culture in my life and way of thinking. So, I did not have a TV. Neither did I listen to pop radio. Those were the Halcyon Days of nonstop classical music on tap courtesy of CBC Radio 2, then known as CBC Stereo. The newscasts were brief and succinct, and the radio hosts fully knowledgeable, well-versed and cultured. There were always educated commentaries on famous composers and the times they lived in and the historical, cultural and political dynamics and fallout of their lives and times. I knew next to nothing about movies stars or pop stars, and I didn't want to. This was my lovely little culture bubble. I read voraciously, great works of nineteenth and twentieth century literature. I studied the writings of Carl Jung. I explored art and painting. I lived in a spiritually rarified state, developing my ministry to marginalized persons while coping with the equally insular and rarified high Anglican church I was part of, where almost everyone, like me, had their radio permanently set at CBC Radio Two, and who, like me, religiously read the Globe and Mail (though Canada's national newspaper still hasn't been integrated into the liturgy!) Even though my life felt socially isolated, I have no regret about any of the steps I have taken. The whole American garbage bin of pop culture has largely passed me by. Instead of sitting on my butt in front of the TV or more recently in front of Net Flicks, I go outside and walk everywhere. I also am careful to be a friend to others, and this approach has won me some very close and enduring friendships with very good people. Most important, I know that there is no one doing my thinking for me. I have cultivated the means sand resources for learning how to make careful informed and intelligent decisions, especially by keeping a healthy distance from the huge garbage can that we are forced to live in. am I influenced by my environment? Yes. Am I influenced by my genes and upbringing? Yes. By my generation and era? Yes. By the current era I am living in? Yes. But I am also arbiter over to what extent I am influenced, and I am the one in charge of mixing, matching and discarding, and I am the one who decides the direction that I am going to grow in. It is very sad, that so few people will do this. It takes work, it takes effort, and it can be very costly and socially isolating. For some reason, in many workplaces, it is unforgiveable to not know or be able to effectively expound about what everyone is seeing on TV, or has posted on Facebook. I am saying that not only is it possible to have a viable life without those props. In order to have a viable life to live and flourish in, it is usually highly necessary not to have those kinds of props. We need badly to not only recover our sense of choice and free will in defining who we are, but to also rediscover the priceless resources of our culture, heritage, and of everything that the diverse and incredibly rich cultures of the world, as well as aboriginal cultures, can also teach us. Just don't worry about cultural appropriation. Get out and learn. Travel. Read good literature and prestigious journalism. Spend more time outside. Observe nature. Enjoy God's creation, of which you are part. And don't let anyone do your thinking for you.