Some healthy food for thought...

... from Monsignor Romano Guardini, whose books The End of the Modern World (orig. 1956) and Power and Responsibility (orig. 1951) are, I think, must read works; this quote is taken from the latter:

The advantages of a well-planned, dependable insurance system are indisputable. Sickness, unemployment, accidents, old age, and so on lost much of their terror when the material needs are assured. But let us imagine the goal of insurance-experts realized: one organization for all citizens, covering every possible need. What, in the long run, would be its effects upon the average man? What would become of personal conscientiousness and prudence, of independence and character, of healthy confidence and readiness for whatever comes? Wouldn't such a system of total, automatic welfare be also a system of tutelage? And, along with all that, wouldn't man's feeling of being led to his destiny by providence gradually disappear?

Or again: When traffic moves more swiftly, smoothly, will people really gain time? They would, if improved transportation meant more rest and leisure. But does it? Aren't people more rushed than ever? Don't they actually stuff more and more into the time they save by getting places faster? And when man does have more leisure, what does he do with it? Does he really break away from the pressures of life, or does he fling himself into more and more crowded pleasures, more exaggerated sports; into reading, hearing, and watching useless stuff; so that in reality, spirit-impoverishing busyness continues, only in other forms, and the beautiful theory of the richer life of leisure proves to be one more self-deception?

No mater where we start from, invariably we arrive at the same fundamental conclusion: the fundamental correction of cultural ills does not lie in the adoption of utilitarian reforms; however great their immediate advantages, their dangers are greater still. In the last analysis, the quality of the creature is determined by decisions of the spirit. And that means that man, as he has ever greater power at his disposal, leaders a life of ever greater peril.

It makes me think not only, of course, of the current hubbub over national(ized) health care, but of a current IBM commercial, which features people talking about building a "smarter" planet, towns, cities, government, retail, shipping, airports, etc., etc,—because "when you connect them altogether, what do you get? Happier people!" It gives me the creeps, in part because its core message is so grim and devoid of glimmer of joy or real meaning. Nope, the meaning of life is working on technology that makes life more efficient, which in turn makes us happier, because our lives are more efficient, which....auuuugh! It, in turn, makes me think of those folks who say, "I'm going to work hard for thirty years so that when I retire I can really enjoy life." Wha--? How incredibly depressing and sad.

A classic book on this topic is Josef Pieper's Leisure: The Basis of Culture; a new edition is being published by Ignatius Press this fall. Highly recommended.

Comments

[T. Shaw]

Using the present CRISIS, Obama, Pelosi, Kennedy, Reid, etc. are railroading The U.S. into a thing (cap and trade to destroy the private sector economy; nationalized auto and banking industries; hate speech/censorship applied to people of faith; socialized, rationed (covert euthanasia) hell care; tax the rich out of existence; etc.) that we will not recognize or like.

Their ultimate goal is a world like that posited by George Orwell in 1984: joyless, techocratic and ruled by unimpeachable elites who always know what's best.

[jonathan]

In general, we need the others to be happy. Life is not to be completed alone. So we think of how we've made connection with them, we know what they mean to us.