Epilogue: Overcoming boredom

   I'm tired of old things becoming uncool by virtue that they are old. I do not believe that "fashionable" means "thou shalt pursue" Of course,  the more "unpursuable" a thing is the hipper it is. I cannot help but be miserable about the cliche urge that calls us as a culture to be open minded. Adding to that misery is the fact that the reason for my misery is not accredited to my "traditionalism", for I am not a traditionalist, but now open-mindedness has become cliche, and I need something more fashionable, like narrow-mindedness.  Surely we have come to a point where this conversation will have to end due to its blatant frivolity. 

  However, I am not sure this isn't a problem unique to our age. Perhaps there was once a day, when people never entertained a the modern notion of "tradition".  It is a searing, but applicable question: "Can one be poor and bored?" or "Can one be religious and bored?" "Does boredom only exist with a culture of leisure?" And is the modern suburban more wretched than the medieval peasant serf? You've heard the statistic: The United States and Europe lead the world in deaths by suicide. If you were starving, would you kill yourself, or would a greater tragedy have to befall you such as a broken relationship? Affluence, power, and the American Dream simply do not produce satisfied customers. Musician and lyricist Jon Foreman once wrote: "There's gotta be something more, than what I'm living for"

   What does the second paragraph have to do with the first. I'd like to suggest that our search for the fashionable is made possible by our culture's affluence, which has produced a form of restlessness. We are a restless culture, satisfied only with the next big thing.  This culture needs a chill pill, or maybe Ritalin, or maybe not.  I'd also like to suggest that in our culture, entertainment is overrated, and work is underrated. Technology is taken for granted, nature, and our souls are lost for it. Meals are an afterthought, thus poverty is ignored.  Time is money, thus people are objectified. Privacy is paramount, community is cultish. The world of entertainment, technology, food, busyness, (not the same thing as work), and privacy is in opposition to the world of hard work, familiarity with raw nature, feeding the hungry, and loving people in community.  There's only two ways I know of that this second world is possible. Prayer, and action. 

 Any thoughts?