Asking the Worthwhile Question

We are living in a time of prophets, in a time of dictators, tyrants, and yes, saints. And it is loud in our heads. It is loud in my head. The din is unsustainable, and yet it is there day after day – sending out messages of obedience, messages of resistance, threats that your politics and your very existence is enough to get you hunted and killed. Churned into the mix of this theatre of hate and absurdity is the filter of AI, omnipresent through our social media interactions, our google searches, even our attempts to write – constantly interjecting itself to suggest you rewrite every sentence until your own unique voice disappears. We are being taught through every online interaction to accept false images – that such things are now unavoidable, which then replicates the belief that we too may present any false image that benefits us, generates clicks and followers. Did I say absurdity? Yes, our culture is now so absurd, so beyond the pale that the assuring thought “but that could never happen” no longer crosses our minds. In the most alienating way, we are called to perform. All the world’s a stage and we damn well better play our part if we know what’s good for us. And most of the time we’ll go along, as long as we think we’ve chosen our role.

Decades ago Joseph Campbell warned us about the masks we have been conditioned to wear, and the stuffed shirts we are expected to fill. He understood and taught that such a world divorces us from the deeper meaning of our ancestors’ ritual needs – human needs now largely going unmet - and the location of our identity in a land as part of a people intimately connected. Campbell posited that the economic interpretation of history is rubbish. An alternative theory is that of inspiration produced by awe and relationships, not transactions. And yet here we are. The neoliberal project has gifted us a wasteland where most social/political/professional interactions are transactional. The language of economics pervades every profession, even from some pulpits where those peddling the false gospel of prosperity theology refer to their congregations directly as consumers. We were not made for this.

By my estimation, Western civilization is void of course morally speaking, and in our transactional model nothing is sacred and all may be sacrificed. The Boundary Waters are up for sale, endangered whales are slated to be hunted as threats to national security, data centers proliferate the rural landscape like a pox - bleeding small communities dry of water, vacation homes take priority over small farms, and the United States Supreme Court has utterly fallen to the grift of power and domination. In the end future historians will note how cheap it went.

If there is to be any hope of catching the thread again to regain and remember our sacred selves, we need to start asking and taking seriously questions like “What are people for?” That is a question that Wendell Berry pointed me in the direction of many years ago, and it helped reorient my thinking, clarified my ambitions, and brought into clear view my true moral horizon. What is your North Star? I learned that I won’t sell out for capital, but that I will give my life for deep affection and intimacy between myself and the land, between myself and those whom I love, between myself and the commons of the little town I serve where I have learned there is no higher political calling. Three nights ago I sat around a table with folks I love dearly, sharing a meal and talking late into the evening about what it means to be in community, to cultivate trust and dare to nurture a dream that extends beyond any one single lifetime. Years ago I would have thought I was preserving the moment by taking a photo and sharing it online; hell, I would have done it to help cultivate an image. But I have learned over time that people are not served well when we disrupt intimacy, and so I don’t do that sort of thing anymore. Intimacy is what is being ripped from our humanity as we filter our world through the lens of AI, say yes to the grift, and let loose our values to satisfy the more immediate desire of the moment.

I tell you, that’s not what people are for.

Originally published in the Bennington Banner