ABNORMAL LIFE
Modern man drifts through a pampered, entertainment‑soaked existence, numbed by constant temptation and fantasy spiritualities. Beneath the smiles of Disneyland and the slogans of comfort, a darker project advances, aiming not at our pleasure, but at the capture of our souls.
Anyone who looks at our contemporary life from the perspective of the normal life lived by people in earlier times, say Russia or America or any country of Western Europe in the 19th century, cannot help but be struck by the fact how abnormal life has become today. The whole concept of authority and obedience, of decency and politeness, of public and private behavior, all have changed drastically, have been turned, in fact, upside down, except in a few isolated pockets of people, usually Christians of some kind, who try to preserve the so‑called old‑fashioned way of life. Our abnormal life today can be characterized as spoiled or pampered.
From infancy, today's child, as a general rule, is treated like a little god or goddess in the family. His whims are catered to, his desire is fulfilled, he is surrounded by toys, amusements, comforts. He is not trained, or seldom trained, very rarely well trained, or brought up according to strict principles of Christian behavior, but left to develop whichever way his desire is inclined. Usually it's enough for the child to say, “I want it,” or “I won't do it.” For he's obliging parents to bow down before him and let him have his way.
Perhaps this does not happen all the time in every family, but it happens often enough to be the rule of contemporary childhood, and even the best intention of parents do not entirely escape from its influence. And when they try to raise a child strictly, the neighbors are doing something else, and they have to take that into consideration in disciplining the child. When such a child becomes an adult, and as he surrounds himself with the same things he is used to in his childhood, with comfort, amusements, and grown‑up toys, life becomes a constant search for fun, which, by the way, is a word which is totally unheard of in any other vocabulary. Nineteenth‑century Russia wouldn't have understood what this word means, nor would any civilized, serious civilization.
Life is a constant search for fun, which is so empty of any serious meaning that a visitor from any 19th‑century country, looking at our popular television programs, amusement parks, advertisements, movies, music, and almost any aspect of our popular culture, would think he had stumbled across a land of imbeciles. We have lost all contact with normal reality. We don't often take that into consideration because we are living in this society, and we take it for granted. But really, some outsider comes in, often a person from a country of Eastern Europe, where they have a very tough life, and he sees how strange is the life that we think is normal.
Some recent observers of our contemporary life have called the young people of today “the me generation.” In our times, the age of narcissism, self‑worship, characterized by worship of and fascination with oneself, prevents a normal human life and development. Others have spoken of the plastic universe, or fantasy world, in which so many people live today, unable to face or come to terms with the reality of the world around them or the problems within themselves.
When the me generation turns to religion, which has been happening very frequently in the past several decades, it is usually to a plastic or fantasy form of religion: the religion of self‑development, where the self remains the object of worship; of brainwashing and mind control; of deified gurus and swamis; the pursuit of UFOs and extraterrestrial beings; of abnormal states and feelings. There's no need to go into all these right here; these manifestations are probably familiar to all of you in some form or other. Later on, I'll discuss a little how these touch on the Orthodox Christian spiritual life of our days.
It is important for us to realize, as we try ourselves to lead a Christian life today, that the world, which has been formed by our pampered times, makes demands on the soul, whether in religion or in secular life, which are what one has to call totalitarian. This is easy enough to see in the mind‑bending cults that have received so much publicity in recent years, which demand total allegiance to a self‑made holy man. But it is just as evident in secular life, where one is confronted not just by an individual temptation here or there, but by a constant state of temptation.
It attacks one, whether in the background music heard everywhere in markets and businesses, in the public signs and billboards on city streets, in the rock music which is brought everywhere by its devotees, even to forest campgrounds and trails, and in the home itself, where television often becomes a secret ruler of the household, dictating modern values, opinions, and tastes. If you have young children, you know how true this is when you’ve seen something on the television, how difficult it is to fight against this new opinion which has been given as an authority by the television.
The message of this universal temptation, which occurs in all these various forms and attacks men today, quite openly in the secular forms but usually more hidden when it becomes religious, is something like the following motto: “Live for the present. Enjoy yourself. Relax, be comfortable.” In fact, these very phrases become part of our everyday talk; it is quite distinct from earlier times.
Behind this message is another, more sinister undertone, which is openly expressed only in the officially atheist countries, which are one step ahead of the free world in this respect. In fact, we should realize that what is happening in the world today is very similar, whether it occurs behind the iron curtain or in the free world. There are different varieties of it, but a very similar attack is being made to get our soul.
In the communist countries, which have an official doctrine of atheism, they tell quite openly that you are to forget about God, forget about any other life but the present one, remove from your life the fear of God and reverence for holy things, and regard those who still believe in God in the old‑fashioned way as enemies who must be exterminated. One might take as a symbol of our carefree, fun‑loving, self‑worshiping times our American Disneyland. But if so, we should not neglect to see behind it the more sinister symbol that shows where the me generation is really headed.
This symbol is what is well known in the Eastern countries under communism: the Soviet gulag, a chain of concentration camps which still governs the life of nearly half the world population.
