Saying a lot of nothing

Recently I have been reading a number of different blogs. By different, I mean blogs those outside my normal circle of reading--I am still am still considering the value of blogs, social media, and other means of popular communication. Also, I have been unable to blog lately as I no longer have internet in my office and have been thrown off my groove. But now I'm back to it... I hope.

Anyway, back to where I started; reading around a little. In general, volumes are being written, but not much is being said.  Now, I'm not saying nothing is being said, but much of what is being said is hype, regurgitation, and cheap reproduction slapped with a different veneer, or the meandering of the simple, such as myself. Some seem to be selling something such as a conference, a book, an experience, themselves, or even Jesus, while others are justifying their own ideas and finding freedom in the faceless world of facebook. All of this is hard to shuffle through in the sea of voices competing for an audience. 

I too am one in that flooded market. Competing to be heard for my own sake is not my ambition, which only complicates matters. Complication arises in everyone's personal assessment of his or her motives as good and pure. However, even though 'every way of a man is right in his own eyes... the Lord weights the heart.'

Hopefully, with God honoring motives, I see in my reading and in people's lives a contradiction in practice, which is true in every epoch of man as well as in my own life, which needs to be minimized if possible. One of the major inconsistency in practice is the intellectual arrogance of the current milieu, ironically coupled with the intellectual laziness of the current milieu. (And yes, I recognize the use of milieu smacks with delicious satire or paradox in the current sentence, it depends on who is reading. Then again, my mom and my wife are the readers...)

Intellectual arrogance is evidenced with self-praise of enlightened intelligence, superior knowledge, along with abundance of information and technological advance, as though man has some how evolved. This evolution has placed humanity at its pinnacle proclaiming that mankind can do anything. The current context in the pages of history seems different than any before, but then again, all things are common to all men. So maybe this era is not as unique as boasted. I believe similar boasting in what man can achieve is what led God to scatter and confuse the people in Genesis 11.

Without a doubt, in some respect this age is distinct, which is true of every period in history, although uniqueness fades after communicating the superiority of this age, as has been done through out the ages. Blowing the horn of superiority because of the multiplicaiton of information, and yet being yoked to the inconsequential, the frivolous, and the utterly foolish nature of what arrests people's attention is nothing more than than the expression of this time period being similar to every other period of mankind.

New mediums of communication, increased access to information, and an increase in knowledge does not presuppose an increase in wisdom, understanding, and superiority. Currently people communicate a lot about nothing, which is exactly what is desired, but this reveals nothing about superiority, as many assume. Not many want to labor to exercise their 'enlightened intellect,' rather messages need to be short, stories need to be told, and propositional truth needs to be abandoned. 

In reality people are lazy, unwilling to think, unwilling to labor to understand, which is no different than ages past. If understanding is not gained immediately, then it is assumed that it cannot be known or it is not worth being known--this is not a new assumption. However, the freedom to bounce to another set of information is relatively new, and the assumption that this makes the current era superior to all others is simply blinding arrogance. 

Then again here I am blogging... saying a lot of nothing.