Feelings, Benefits, and Mistaken Desire

We live in an age when we think we’re listening by we’re not actually hearing; we’re seeing, but we’re not really seeing. 

A recent post by friend Jonny Baker encouraged me to got out and purchase a copy of Adbusters: The Big Ideas of 2012. I was not disappointed; there are some very thought-provoking and stimulating articles in it. I was struck by many themes, including this paragraph in a very short Darren Fleet article Good Times on Campus: 

“…Christian Smith and his colleagues at Notre Dame University recently produced a study Lost in Transition: The Dark Side of Emerging Adulthood which revealed that the majority of America’s young adults on campus navigate ethical propositions based only on time, feelings, benefit and desire… [Values, ethical/moral commitments, and “God”] were non-factors… Participants in the study were not at all bothered by ‘rabid consumerism’…” 

In particular I was struck by the dominance of “feelings” in particular, but also benefits, i.e. what’s in it for me (self-absorption: my perceived ‘needs’. So "friends" become "friends with benefits" (for me)!), and (hyper-stimulated) “desire” (which of course has very different connotations than say St. Ignatius of Loyola’s understanding of (deep) human desire and longing, and the place of desire in human and spiritual formation). 

I would suggest these contemporary means of navigating life and ethics are not restricted to “young adults”. Adults too increasingly lack any other framework or means of navigating their lives and making life-decisions; there is little regard for anything other than what I perceive as my needs being met / realised, so “love” for example is no longer about actions, doing, practices, and commitments its about “feelings” and whether we “feel” in love or not: “I don’t feel any love for you; I don’t love you anymore… so, I don’t want you anymore. I will look for someone else with whom I feel in love. And when I no longer feel in love with that person or they no longer offer me what I think I need, or anything of value (anything I can use for my own gain for advancement, I’ll discard them, and use someone else, while all the time thwarting the deeper, transformative, and healing invitations of love (cf. touched on lightly in this recent post). If its broken, throw it away! If its not working for you, move on!

While feelings are important, they also deeply deceptive in a consumerist / individualistic / self-absorbed-narcissistic “me & my needs” centred cultural context. But, transient, easily stimulated (by marketers, cultural-liturgical conditioning etc) “feelings” dominate decision-making. We're deeply selfish and self-absorbed people contra the invitations and exhortations of the OT and NT, and particularly the NT in relation to what "love" truly is, and how it is embodied and enacted.

What I think I feel or what I think I need at this moment or stage in my life crowd in upon and profoundly shape the decisions I make. Our individual needs and feelings and the narratives we create to justify those ‘feelings’ and ‘needs’ leave us forever at the level of the fleeting, shallow’ and the superficial; ever in need of stimulation, ever captive to the moment, ever captive to our own self-absorption – my perceived needs always first; everything is always about me and my happiness. Everything becomes about the person I want (contra my deepest and truest self) to be in the moment and how I project myself in order to maximise the meeting of my own perceived needs, and maximise the “benefits” to me.  My image, my popularity, how people see me, and what they think about me become all consuming in an age of superficial self-absorption. 

So Christian Smith and his team are accurate in the findings of their research and it doesn’t bode well for the health, well-being and growth of individuals, relationships, and of society more broadly. Despite the emphasis on “being happy” and on meeting my needs, we’re going to find ourselves a very discontented, lonely, lost and unhappy group of individuals. 

Are our children and their children going to be able to subvert and find life-giving, humanising alternatives to the kinds of people and culture we’ve chosen to become? Consumerism and self-gratification isn’t going to do it for us I’m afraid. We’re in what Darren Fleet calls an “ethical freefall” and we’re sadly not going to hit the bottom anytime soon. Brueggemann is right too, we have to recover the practices of lament!

Comments

[Jeff Haines]

Hi Paul, I am always amazed at how we keep stumbling onto the same stuff via different means. I found Adbusters through 'Time' Mag 'Person of the year' issue. Watch your inbox for some treats.

Blessings.

[rodney neill]

Adbusters sounds good - will purchase magazine