The Transient Nature of Our Modern Society
"Since the 1960's, to the consumption of goods has been added a growing consumption of services. They are, of course, of all kinds, ranging from lawn services, health clubs, and inspirational lectures, to sporting events, rock concerts, and movies. Those of a recreational kind present themselves as miniature escape routes, taking us out of our own private reality and into another. The duration of each of these moments of consumption is quite brief, but then brief duration is of the essence of our modernized world from our aerosol cans, vacuum sweepers, and cars to our TV advertisements, fashions and fads. [...] These life patterns accentuate the importance and desirability of what is instantaneous, like fast-food production, and what is disposable, like Styrofoam cups, plastic knives, and forks, and diapers. The result is an accelerated transience that greatly fuels both fragmentation and diversity. [...] And here, too, is another wrenching relocation of the new self, away from what is eternal, unchanging, and enduring, and into what is shifting, faddish, fleeting, and ephemeral. It is no wonder that as God disappears, the self gets flimsy and thin and often has the sense that it is no more durable than the cans and plastic paraphernalia that are taken in great profusion to our garbage dumps."
David Wells, Above All Earthly Pow'rs: Christ in a Postmodern World (pgs. 42-3)
Mar 9th 2008 
One Comment 
Mar 23rd 2008
Impressive and thought-provoking. Perhaps society fears change so much that they'd much rather hold on to nothing instead of losing something. It starts from love-the most intense feeling our brains experience. You learn that the longer something is constant, the more thrown you feel when it is no longer constant. It shifts you to a life where less investment equals less possible disappointment. That practice begins stemming off and applying to everything in life. We find ourselves so caught up in inconsistancy that offers no attachment that it seems proposterous to indulge in anything better. If we chose to bake a homemade meal, we risk the family not liking the recipe we put our time and effort into. We lose quality time with our family while we're in the kitchen. It makes pulling up to a drive through, getting our food made by others within minutes so much more sensible. The plastic eatery has no other alternative meaning however than to feed us in a respectable manner in it's short life without wasting our time as busy people with their demands to clean them.We dispose of what we no longer need. This occurs on all levels. We end friendship, we divorce, we quit jobs. We do this for the same reasons for disposing of out plastic eatware-and it is that they no longer serve us a purpose in our lives. We can bring our God into this with the reminder that when we have served our purpose in this life, we are disposed of. The important thing to remember is that we are renewed. Not of the same substance, but it all still exists. While the plastic fork is now being made into a rubbermaid container, every death of mankind is replaced by a birth. Inconsistancy and change does not make us brittle, it does not break us down. It rather builds strength, it builds character. While some say it's gotten worse, others will say it's simply evolved. We've evolved. God put us here to do that, so we're doing our deed.Â