Jana’s sitting in one of the wingback chairs watching Hotel Rwanda on her laptop. Occasionally I hear her gasp, and I look up to see her grimace in the glow of the laptop screen.
I just finished reading a textbook for one of my classes, so I try to wind down by reading webcomics and playing games. My conscience is harried by Jana’s groans.
I spend way too much time and money on escaping from the world when I should be focused on engaging it. I don’t think that I’m alone in this–we live in a society where Survivor gets more attention than Darfur and even the doses of reality we get is repackaged as an escapist commodity (CSI? Cops? “News?”).
I get depressed when I think about how much money I spend on computers and games–even on books and education and the occasional dining out. I often put myself in Oskar Schindler’s shoes in the Spielberg movie: how many African children could I feed if I gave up frozen yogurt and Boba and pizza for a month? How many Nepalese could have their cataracts removed with the money I spent on my MacBook Pro? What right do I have to set aside money for retirement thirty years from now when people in this world don’t have enough for today?
I don’t mean to depress you all, but where do we draw the line? When does our escapism become immoral? Can we justify spending our time and money on frivolous things when doing so has the potential to deprive others? I’m not articulating this as well as I’d like–I don’t think there’s a clear answer to this question, but I do think that if we care, then we should at the very least be troubled. To echo Miko’s prayer: may we all be blessed with discomfort.
8 responses so far ↓
1 PodMonkeys // May 11, 2006 at 3:42 am
Maybe the answer lies somewhere in the middle. Instead of living a life of luxery, or living a life of complete deprivation, we should be living a life of just what we need + the occasional luxery now and then.
Combine that living with spreading the idea, and then maybe if everyone is trying to live that way, then maybe everyone could possibly live that way. I guess its sort of like communism, except its sort of a by product of individual life style choices.
If you don’t do a little to take care of your self now (ie: retirement), then neither you nor the poor of the world will be able to take care of yourselves when you’re old. Basically I think those of us with modest means can do a little but not as much as others to help the needy. There are quite a few people in the world that really shouldn’t need 800 square foot walk -in closets to hold just their shoes.
Thats just my opinion on spending.
ps: I’m really hating that I get to near the end of what I’m typing and find my browser goes back a page, thus tossing everything I type. Is this just happening to me?
2 Miko // May 11, 2006 at 5:03 pm
my husband & I were just talking about this today: we spend 8hrs at work and then come home to watch TV/surf the internet. when does this become pathological escapism? I got a video game for my bday from a friend (a really cool one, too (the game, not the friend, tho yes, she’s cool) and I’m a total geek so I liked the fact that it uses a camera to track my movements &….) and I still haven’t played it because, despite the plethora of video game systems, DVDs, cable channels, &c., I like the internet & books better. Somehow it feels less passive.
& Pod: no, that happenes to me frickin’ all the time & drives me crazy!!
3 John // May 11, 2006 at 9:39 pm
I agree with PM that balance is probably the best (though the idealist in me wants me to strive towards asceticism). My problem is that I that I (and perhaps many, if not most Americans) are heavy on the escapism. More balance in individual Americans could do the world a whole lotta good, methinks.
Maybe blogging and commenting on blogs is less escapist and more engaging. I like that PM and I have never met Miko, but here we are all making connections with each other. They’re little contacts, but meaningful and hopefully uplifting ones.
4 John // May 11, 2006 at 9:41 pm
Okay, my programmer hat is on now: is the browser backing-out problem specific to mindonfire.com, or is it a general problem?
5 Josh // May 11, 2006 at 10:36 pm
Passages in Deuteronomy suggest that there should be no poor in the world. Unfortunately we dont live in a utopian society, and so the reality we “should” have is far from reality, which is why Jesus said “The poor you will always have with you” Matthew 26:11. Of course this does not suggest that we should just forget about them and let them be since we cant do anything about them. It does suggest that we should not worry and fret that all the money you make for the year is not even going to dent the problem. The greatest commandment is to love the lord thy God, and to love your neighbor as yourself. Our neighbor is not just those we like, rather it is everyone, even your enemies. Loving God means serving others, but other scriptures teach us to be good stewards of our money, especially since it is God who has blessed us with what we have. Why did I just throw out all these seemingly random verses and teachings? When put all together in a hollistic candybar, I understand my place in the world and the poroblem of poverty to mean: I will love God, and because I love Him, I feel a deep compassion for the poor, and so I should act upon this compassion to do what I can with my resources to help them, while not fretting about the magnitude of the problem I take peace knowing that good stewardship of my resources will not hurt nor detract from my duty and responsibility to my family, myself (health), my other ministries, while yet giving max potential impact that I can as God has set me up to help the poor which I can.
So as Joe suggests its a balance, or perhaps rather a holistic aproach to life, ministry and resources.
6 Miko // May 12, 2006 at 6:21 pm
John: the important thing to remember (and this is Miko the Aristotelean logician speaking) is that each extreme is a vice and the activity itself is morally neutral. The art/difficulty is finding the “middle road”.
Mr. Programmer: it’s never happened to me on your site.
7 John // May 12, 2006 at 10:29 pm
Buddha also focused on the “middle way” between selfishness and extreme self-denial.
Though now that I think about it, those bodhisattvas and Christian apostles were pretty extreme sorts, what with their giving their lives up for others. Gandhi, too. Religions seem to have both the justification for walking the middle path as well as the deep yearning to crucify the self in compassionate service. (I wonder if context is important in determining if extreme self-sacrifice is a vice?)
At any rate, I’m grateful for the creative tension between the moderation and yearning.
I’m also glad that my site wasn’t responsible for causing heartache of the programmatic variety!
8 Josh // May 13, 2006 at 7:35 am
Perhaps it is a calling. For the most of us, our calling is to serve God, our family, and our earthly responsibilities. To dump all of that and seek to give our everything to a cause is to serve a greater injustice to those other areas than the offering of sacrifice we offer to the cause. Yet there are some whose calling, perhaps as you suggest:context, whose lives are better offered in sacrificial cause than in whatever they were doing which may have been of lesser significance or responsibility.
Interestingly, Jewish men were not allowed to study the Kabalah unless they were of certain age (I think 35) and had a family. The reason was because they were thought to be grounded and would not shirk their earthly responsibilities and go off to be a kabalist mystic as most young people would be prone to do.
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