O, Perverse Generation!
by Bishop [now Archbishop] Chrysostomos
Clergymen, educators, military leaders, and
every segment of our society have sounded an alarm. We are
creating a generation of self-centered, ego-bound know-nothings
who are not only unable to identify on a map where they live, to
define where they stand in history, or to enumerate the basic
tenets of their culture; but who, indeed, do not care that they
are ignorant! As a teenager in one of New York's most prestigious
"prep" schools recently told a television interviewer,
"I can identify with 'Joe Blow,' who doesn't know what I do.
The only reason that I'm in school and learning what I'm learning
is so that I can have a better life than 'Joe Blow'—money
and stuff. You know." In other words, even those among the
young who seek education do so for the purpose of fulfilling
selfish, materialistic goals.
In generations past, when the Church was not a
part of the materialistic world itself, but was respected for its
resistance to society's selfish and materialistic goals,
monasticism and vocations dedicated to the fulfillment of our
fellow man flourished. One was respected for self-sacrifice.
Today, such vocations have largely become the refuge of social
misfits. Those who would have sacrificed themselves in the past
for a life of dedication to God and their fellow man are now on
Wall Street, reaping the benefits of a life squandered in wealth
and worldly pleasure. Monasteries and convents cry for healthy
aspirants. Hospitals and charitable foundations worldwide have
nearly given up in their quest for nurses and physicians who will
work without remuneration merely for the betterment of society.
And let us not ask for those youths who will
die for their country and for their freedoms and beliefs. The
line will be short, and the voices of those putting forth their
oaths of loyalty will be drowned out by the jeers and laughs of
the vast majority of their peers.
The few who hear the call to lives of
dedication today, whether as monastics or social workers, too
often lack the strength of character that sustained their
predecessors. In the past the lust for the world translated into
a desire for money or for the fulfillment of the coarser
pleasures. This lust could be easily countered by recourse to a
moral choice: the choice between a fulfilling life in making the
world better and a hellish life of self-destruction wasted on the
proverbial "wine, women, and song." The moral weight of
the choice itself encouraged commitment to higher goals.
Now young novices or budding humanitarians face
no moral dilemmas. Life has been reduced to inanities. More often
than not, we have found that novices are tempted away from the
monastic life not by the classical world of lust, but by the
vapid lure of Disneyland, pizza, Burger King, video games,
television, movies (which are increasingly aimed at the
intellectual and moral "zeros" of this world), and
romantic visions of marital bliss and financial security.
There is no moral choice here. There is no
vivid contrast between a life of positive and negative intensity.
The choice here is between meaning and non-meaning. Thus there is
no real contrast, since what is meaningless has no form—no
more form than a life frittered away in Disneyland and punctuated
by respites in the land of Oz and forays into the fracases of
Fantasyland, or on a belly perpetually filled with "Crunchy
Critters" or the latest double-decker, triple-cheese,
soya-filled beef burger delight in a shiny plastic case sporting
a depiction of Mickey Mouse's third cousin—the only
approximation of art in this whole stomach-turning "package
deal"—, watered down by a tooth-rotting array of
artificially flavored brews that defy both chemical analysis and
the test of taste. Lacking the contrast between real alternatives
in a real choice, today's youth do not have the strength of
commitment to a good that sustains a life of selfless dedication.
And it is not our youth alone who stain this
perverse age of ours. After all, they learned their ways from the
values—or "unvalues"—which we others allowed
to take over society. They learned from a society which replaced
manners with boorish behavior. Indeed, who today teaches his
children what we were taught: not to stare; to put the comfort of
guests before our own; not to gossip; not to boast; not to show
off our possessions; not to embarrass or denigrate others; to
exercise meekness and kindness; and so on? And if our youth have
not been taught these things, is it any wonder that they have no
concept of selflessness or of dedication to others and to the
betterment of mankind?
I often remark that those in positions of
authority and respect, today, have not even rudimentary manners.
They are increasingly boorish, impolite, and abusive of their
powers. Write a letter to someone of importance. More than half
of the time you will not receive a response. Our leaders are no
longer even endowed with the simple manners of school children,
who at least know that they should answer their mail!
Authorities—and even those in the Church—, who used to
be "above" gossip and cheap rumor, now often specialize
in collecting "information" on their underlings. They
often set aside the responsibilities of independent judgment for
the filth and slander of the rabble. And more often than not,
they let political, rather than moral, considerations influence
what little judgment they do exercise. Again, is it any wonder
that our youth are where they are?
Just as the malaise in today's world has been
caused by a departure from high values taught by simple and
uncomplex customs, so we can return to a healthy world built on
those values by restoring the same simple customs. We can teach
our children to respect their elders; to put others before
themselves; to show concern for others through basic manners
(beginning with "please" and "thank you"); to
understand that the quality of the world is determined by the
quality of the people in it; and to respect, if not embrace, the
unselfish goals of those who live more for others than for
themselves. Even the vapid pleasures which they enjoy today, our
youth must understand, depend on the skills and abilities of
those who have acquired knowledge in the only possible context:
one which values knowledge for its own sake. A society which
learns in order to get things is wholly unproductive. And
whatever it wishes to get by such learning, it will be unable to
produce. Thus it will become a rather sad satire on itself.
Parents! Look again at this generation and
resolve to see that its errors are not repeated. Dedicate
yourselves to supporting those things in society which lead to a
sense of social responsibility. Teach your children the value of
self-deprivation, the highness of humility, and the richness of a
life lived with necessities rather than abundance. Otherwise, you
will destroy your children and their future. You will produce
moral and intellectual cripples who cannot read, who cannot
therefore know the course of human history and the human
condition, and who will thus fall to a witless existence that is
really no existence at all. The time is ripe and the need is more
than abundantly apparent.
From Orthodox Tradition, Vol. 6, No. 4, 1989, p. 2.
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