[Pearls Ep 148: Answering atheism Tuesday.]
Camel hair suit.
Locust tartare with wild honey.
Drawing curious throngs out to the desert and then baptizing them.
John the Baptist was a true individual.
And there was a reason for that – John received the gift of the Holy Spirit while still in the womb, when a pregnant Mary went to care for a pregnant Elizabeth. It is through the Holy Spirit that we come into our true self – the stunningly unique individual God created us to be.
The Church Fathers (St. Gregory of Nyssa and St. Ambrose in particular) note that He went into the wilderness to remain pure and to be 100% focused on his mission in life – which is to say, being 100% who he was created to be.
Back to our discussion of soul-sucking-devices (SSD) and all the so-called “media” they pipe into our life – a solid reason to steer clear of our SSD and mainstream media is to be like John – to remain pure and become 100% who we are created to be.
The purity part is fairly obvious, given the open sewer that is most of mainstream media.
But what about becoming 100% who we are created to be?
Turns out, mainstream media, especially social media, is a leading cause of “monoculture.”
Monoculture is traditionally an agricultural term – an entire field of corn is a monoculture. In many ways, it’s not so good. Monoculture crops deplete the soil. And they typically require more pesticides – because an invasion of bugs or disease would quickly wipe out the entire crop.
Where monoculture excels is generating a colossal volume of a cash crop.
And monoculture in social media does the same thing – except the cash crop isn’t corn or soy or wheat, it’s people (echoes of Soylent Green…).
Facebook, Instagram, Tiktok, Snapchat – they are threating to produce entire generations populated with nothing but blandly similar humans.
And that’s not just us being curmudgeons. Progressive magazines like Slate, Atlantic and Vox have all decried the monoculture-forming effect of social media – somehow the irony being lost on them.
Just one more of a thousand reasons to follow our instincts and ruthlessly reduce online time for ourselves and our loved ones.
Someone pass the locusts…
Steve and Karen Smith
Interior Life