The Malaise of Modernity

In our modern world of technology and industry that races ahead each hour, the art of reflection is slowly dissipating. Perhaps the last opportunity to truly reflect lies in our precious few undergraduate years, because to a degree we are still stress free, untarnished by the real weight of the world which awaits us at the gates of graduation. It's a shame that our time is now, because we lack the ever-so-important life experience that is so integral to a profound reflection process.

By reflection I mean taking time to think about our existence. "Our existence," is a very general phrase, but I utilize this generality because it truly encompasses everything: the influence that everything we experience and everything we learn has upon us. Concomitantly, the influence we can have on others and on ourselves and on our reality.

Tangentially, all the hoopla last year about education, Sy Syms versus Yeshiva College, in my humble opinion, can be boiled down to the issue of reflection. Sy Syms is fast paced - memorize information, apply information, take an exam and move on. (I realize that this is a broad generalization, and having taken Dr. Pava's Accounting I class, I recall several times discussing business ethics and other issues. Nonetheless I believe my assessment to be a correct generalization.) Science is very much pursued in a similar vein. The beauty of a liberal arts education is that in theory, though not always in practice, it should force students to reflect on both personal issues and issues affecting mankind at large. The studying of history, philosophy, literature, music, economics, etc. trains us to think critically, but it should also teach us how to reflect on our own lives and the lives of those around us.

This column will be an attempt at reflection, my own reflections on life. I do not assume that I am always correct, nor do I assume that I will address every relevant issue, even my hubris does not extend that far. But it is my hope that I can impart the knowledge that I have garnered through my own hours of discussions, readings and reflections to the readers of this paper so that together we can chart a richer and more productive path through the precarious jungle called life.

As I stated above, modernity has brought with it a whole slew of social difficulties that have yet to be truly confronted. We, that is the Western World of which we are very much a part, whether or not we would like to admit it, have attempted to incorporate the paradigms of the incredibly fast paced technological progression to our own lives. But a technological paradigm is not one that should be necessarily incorporated into our own psyches. "On to the bigger and the better," while superficially sounding admirable, is not the wisest course for a human being to pursue when dealing with his own personal problems. (I use the male because the use of he/she becomes quite cumbersome to the reader, but my message is geared for both genders.)

Loss, mistakes, bad decisions, failures are no longer acceptable in this world where we reside. From day one we are surrounded by ostensible success and are geared towards that direction for the rest of our lives. Success in all areas of life is the paradigm, yet the paradigm is often far from attainable.

We all have our problems. They may include problems at home, problems in relationships, and problems in school. We lose, we fail, sometimes because of our miscalculations, sometimes because of the miscalculations of others. These problems can potentially have far reaching psychological ramifications, but following the prescription of modernity, we plow on ahead, never looking behind, never contemplating, never reflecting.

Directly resulting from this process, or lack thereof, is the proliferation of psychologists and psychiatrists. These people in one way or another teach us how to cope with our problems. They explore the emotional ramifications of events which transpire in our lives, and let us not forget that they charge handsomely for these services. In effect, we are paying them to help us cope with the malaise of modernity.

What about religion, you ask? Religion is a tricky issue, and can function as a double edged sword. Through real textual analysis, one can perhaps come upon prescriptions for self understanding. This has weakly culminated in the proliferation of "Jewish"-pop-psychology books that fill the shelves of every Judaica bookstore. But I have often seen it work to a person's detriment, because religion provides the perception of a seemingly wonderful, yet truly superficial panacea - everything happens because God wills it that way. But even so, even if God has willed it, we are still human beings and our emotions/souls/psyches are effected in ways that we don't take the time to fathom.

Emotions not confronted can be monstrous, and like the wind, they will blow us in all directions unless we begin to cogitate these emotions. Take a look at yourself, try to assess how life affects you and how you react to different situations. Do you build walls, do you become angry? What are your "defense mechanisms?" And then ask yourself why?

Obviously I am not advocating long term brooding or wallowing in one's own sorrow. One needs to move forward, but not blindly and not without thought of how he is affected. For example, as a friend of mine pointed out, the movie "Swingers" is based around a character who takes a good six months to get over his previous girlfriend and finally is able to move on. This is, of course, absurd. We must try not to destroy ourselves because hurt. However, to move on right away, after having lost something that is extremely meaningful, without examining how this loss is affecting one's self, is just as absurd. Yet that is exactly what modernity preaches.

As the old adage goes, "Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it." It is so in our personal lives. If we do not learn from ourselves, we are doomed to make the same mistakes ad infinitum.