the great conscientious objectors
The Truth Project meeting last night was unequivocally good. Diane made the house beautiful, as she always does, and seeing our friends again after the hiatus of the wedding and honeymoon made us very happy.
We discussed God’s attitude toward labor and work and through that His perspective on the poor, and also arts, the media and culture. Discussion after the video was lively as most everyone has readily available opinions about those things. Sprinkled throughout the video series are “experts” who give their take on the issues being discussed. A featured expert last night was Gordon Pennington, an international consultant who used to be the marketing director for Tommy Hilfiger. He is very articulate and demonstrates a firm grasp of the influences that shape culture nowadays. See the video clip here. For those who can’t see the clip, here’s a transcript:
We’re at the nexus of tremendous complexity where we need some defining principles. We need truth more today than we’ve ever needed it.
No generation has ever been more manipulated than the generation that lives today, and they know it, and they’re savvy, and they’re adept at living in this technological environment that they also distrust even as they feel compelled to use it. People are responding to an array of stimuli that is simply overwhelming today. To filter that out and to protect oneself requires a kind of understanding, awareness, discipline and resistance that’s very rare. If part of living in the modern world today means that we’re going to be exposed to ideas that we find repugnant, malevolent, dark, wicked, then what do we do to challenge the predominant institutions, the predominant powers that control these images?
We should be the great conscientious objectors who always want to return to a place of truth, to a place of vulnerability to that truth. Most people don’t really want to know the truth if it means being disappointed along the way, so “eat, drink and be merry,” be distracted, entertained and amused to death. The risks of pursuing truth are tremendous. And what could be a greater adventure than to risk everything in pursuit of the one thing that endures? If truth isn’t worth all that, then it probably isn’t truth at all.