Three-Dimensional Human Beings

Well, the posts here have been few and far in between. There's a lot of reasons for this, I suppose, when one sits down to think about it. I'm often very tired and my brain is mush; I haven't much time for reading and reflecting, and, in generally, don't have much time which isn't taken up with work, or friends/family, or just sleeping.

Perhaps it's a sign of intellectual rigour (what little muscle I had!) gone to flab. More positively, perhaps I am spending more time "out there" in the real world, with people, than sitting at home in front of the computer by myself.

In the final analysis, however, it boils down to "I ain't got much to say."

I do seem, however to have ample time to check Facebook, post articles, and click through the various albums of "a friend's friend's cousin's little sister's photos of her trip to that hip bar in Boronia."

Hmmm!

The internet is taking over my life!

While there's merit in just taking time to unwind, and allowing your brain to rest by clicking through a collection of cool photos on the internet, there comes to a point where you're simply wasting time. (Sounds obvious, huh?)

I've been mulling on the words of writer and English professor Alan Jacobs. On the enormous amount of internet "sharing" (blogs, FB updates, Flickr &c.) and passive online consumption that goes on, he comments:

What is necessary, I think, is for all of us to be engaged in some activity that challenges us, that tests our intellectual limits. For some people that might be reading Tolstoy, while for others it might involve writing code or learning Klingon. But as Lanier says, “You have to be somebody before you can share yourself,” and being somebody is an achievement. It requires intentional labor, and a degree of personal ambition — and anyone can work and strive, though some have farther to go than others. But a lot of fooling around on the internet is just that, fooling around: it doesn't test our resources or stretch our capacities. In many cases that’s fine, because we shouldn't be working all the time: but even if fooling around on the internet really does somehow increase social creative capital — which I have no reason to believe — it doesn't achieve a damned thing for the person doing it.

I ain't got nothing to say, because there's not much of me that is solid, and substantial.

Jacobs is a Christian, and no doubt hidden behind this statement is also a theology of humanity, that sees the inherent richness in each person - beyond personality, beyond mere intellectualism - that comes when we lose ourselves in Christ. He who created us knows that we are beyond a body to be fed, a functioning participant of society. We are ourselves, fearfully and wonderfully made, and there is no-one like us. Only, paradoxically, one must give away blindly, throwing 'self' away, to receive the mind and likeness of Christ, and in him made fully ourselves. For who knows us better than God who made us, "intentioned" us in our mother's womb?

Give up your self, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favourite wishes every day and death of your whole body in the end: submit with every fibre of your being, and you will find eternal life. Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will ever be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in. - CS Lewis.

Then he said to them all: "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it. - Jesus.