Baudrillard says that the seeming triumph of communication and information in the digital world is a kind of substitute satisfaction for the utter failure of the aspiration, which we once had, to transcend social alienation. Because we are still alienated, we communicate like mad, proliferating social networks and submitting to homogeneity.
Social communication today is, therefore, hyper-social. It's simulated sociality in an era when we've broken down all walls on sociality, and everyone can be friends with everyone, and everyone can say everything.
"All this communication is basically nothing but a rigid script, an uninterrupted fiction designed to free us not only from the void of the television screen, but equally from the void of our own mental screen whose images we wait on with the same fascination."
Post-orgy cope is not restricted to the Left. Those who today clamor for "Free Speech" are not repressed; they are simulating their own repression, fighting for something that has already been won (encoded generously in the First Amendment and ample common law). They don't really want Free Speech; they want the direction, courage, and conviction to exercise the freedom of speech they already have. But lacking these things, they pretend to be freedom fighters, according to a template they learned from movies.
They pretend they are fighting for Fee speech when we already have it, precisely because we are anxious that we have it and we don't know what to do with it.
The only productive way to interpret such a situation is to make a bet on what's ultimately valuable and then construct it with the full force of modernity's liquid and uncontainable affordances.
Given some leap of faith about ultimate values, how can I harness the chaotic world of unmoored objects and symbols in its direction? How can I generate and distribute new objects and symbols to bend all of the world's circulating detritus into the orbit I believe in?
In the words of the band The Wonder Years, as cited by George Hotz in the first print issue of Return magazine:
"The whole world's full of losers. If you get the chance to win, take it."
Perhaps this is the right answer to Baudrillard's question, and a promising path for reconstituting a meaningful life in the desert of the hyper-real.
If everyone is fake, then doing something real should face little competition.
Ordinariness and One area of life
THE ORDINARY AND EXTRAORDINARY WORLD I’m going to reinforce this point throughout the book because I don’t want you to get a sugary sweet taste in your mouth from the words on the page. You’re not a terrible human being if some area of your life is “average.” You won’t put this book down and become Batman, Black Widow, or Black Panther in EVERY. SINGLE. AREA. OF. YOUR. LIFE. Frankly, I’d kick my own ass if that was the book I wrote. Instead, treat this idea like a compass, orientating you to one stage. Find one Field of Play, and let’s look at creating something extraordinary there. It’ll make this process far simpler, far more accessible, and a helluva lot easier to implement. — Alter Ego Effect, Todd Herman
The eternal adolescent lives in a realm of possibility, unwilling to make a Commitment to any one thing or person, because he does not Want to give up the next possibility that comes along. Until it is often too late, he thinks himself immortal as if he had all the time in the world—and he doesn’t. While other men are establishing careers and families, he may be pursuing adventure or merely going from one thing to another, only to find at midlife that life is passing him by and that he is getting old. He has been a peter Pan living in Never-Never Land until he is around forty, and then, as he looks in the mirror and at his life, the realization dawns, that it is—or may be—too late for him, and a midlife depression results. — Gods in Everyman
Longing For Hope
In society we see many monetizing and marketing their solutions to hopelessness and despair. Leadership gurus promise easy hacks to resolve our disappointments and deepest struggles. Instagram influencers outline diet and exercise plans guaranteeing a healthier life. Technology companies insist their latest app will decrease our stress and anxiety, bring peace to our relationship challenges, improve our sleep, and make us look younger. In 2020, “self-care” expanded to a $450 billion industry, forty-five times larger than it was just one decade earlier.2 From Fitbit to candles and from self-help books to meditation apps, we are spending close to half a trillion dollars annually in our attempt to find hope. But our experience is that these solutions leave us utterly unsatisfied. Our Western cultural obsession with self-improvement is insufficient. Rates of depression, anxiety, stress, and suicidal thoughts continue to increase throughout the United States.3 We are spending more time and money but coming up empty. More than half of Americans say they are more anxious today than they were one year ago.4 Within the Church, the solutions Christians propose are often equally unhelpful. Trite Jeremiah 29:11 memes assuring us our hardships are NBD (“no big deal”) because God has a plan aren’t helpful. “It will all work out” is not just untrue: It is hurtful. We don’t need any more advice amounting to tying theological bows on hardship. Cultural remedies point us to something we can discover or architect within ourselves: “Look within and find your inner strength.” But the Old Testament prophets and the modern-day leaders we feature in this book describe a very different journey and conclusion: Within is the wrong place to look. We cannot master our circumstances, engineer our happiness, or find refuge from real pain. We cannot avoid hardship and deep disappointment. We are unable to control all our circumstances. When everything feels like it’s falling apart, how do we respond? How do we find hope? Where do we turn to navigate the troubles we’ll inevitably encounter in ourselves, in our organizations, and in our service?
Idolatry of Self / Self-Idolisation vs. God based Wisdom
We prefer our own wisdom to God’s wisdom, our own desires to God’s will, and our own reputation to God’s honor. . . . The human heart is indeed a factory that mass-produces idols. —Timothy Keller1
Most temptingly today, we place our confidence in the soil of self-reliance. With clenched teeth and gritty resolve, we say, I’ve got this. We believe ourselves qualified and capable, turning inward toward whatever resolve and resilience we can muster. It’s pride (opposite of shame — self pity… but spiritual affects damming despite opposing extremes) and, Jeremiah would suggest, idolatry. We bow to the idol of our own abilities. But this type of humanism falters when the winds of pain and disappointment blow. Our good intentions can never be good enough to sustain us for the long term. Through the prophet Jeremiah, God invites us to pursue the alternative of “in my own strength” humanism: hopefulness, rooted in trust and active expectation in God’s strength and faithfulness. He invites us to sustain hope amid the drought because He is the One who sustains. He invites us to cultivate deep roots that reach the ever-flowing Source of living water.
Pride and shame. You’d never know they’re sisters. They appear so different. Pride puffs out her chest. Shame hangs her head. Pride boasts. Shame hides. Pride seeks to be seen. Shame seeks to be avoided. But don’t be fooled, the emotions have the same parentage. And the emotions have the same impact: they keep you from your Father.
Pride says, “You’re too good for him.” Shame says, “You’re too bad for him.” Pride drives you away, shame keeps you away. If pride is what goes before a fall, then shame is what keeps you from getting up after one. God, the sinless and selfless Father, loves us in our pride and shame
— Max Lucado
But blessed are those who trust in the LORD and have made the LORD their hope and confidence. They are like trees planted along a riverbank, with roots that reach deep into the water. Such trees are not bothered by the heat or worried by long months of drought. Their leaves stay green, and they never stop producing fruit.4 Jeremiah contrasts stunted shrubs with an image of a firmly planted tree, producing fruit even in the harshest of droughts. The conditions are the same, as both the stunted shrubs and fruit trees experience droughts and heat. The difference, Jeremiah tells us, is roots that connect to Life. It’s making the Lord, not ourselves, our source of hope: turning upward, not inward. This theme emerged consistently in our conversations with global leaders. We did not hear about self-reliance; we heard about faith. We did not hear about strength and resolve; we heard about roots. Ultimately, where our roots find their source of life makes the difference between a fruit-bearing tree and a brittle shrub. This is the difference Jeremiah calls out. It’s not about our own strength. It’s not about a new model of self-help. Rather, it’s about deep trust, connection, and reliance on God—despite harsh, even brutal, conditions. Similarly, Jesus tells us the way to produce fruit—and speaks frankly of our limitations—in John 15: “A branch cannot produce fruit if it is severed from the vine, and you cannot be fruitful unless you remain in me. . . . Those who remain in me, and I in them, will produce much fruit. For apart from me you can do nothing.”5
The leaders we interviewed emphasized Holy Spirit encounters, commitments and callings, and how Jesus held them in their moments of greatest crisis. They spoke of turning upward and outward, not inward. God invites us to be people who look up. Who remember that we have nowhere else to go. As we read in Psalm 121, “I look up to the mountains—does my help come from there? My help comes from the LORD, who made heaven and earth!”8 Or as the author of Hebrews invites us, “Let us run with endurance the race God has set before us. We do this by keeping our eyes on Jesus, the champion who initiates and perfects our faith.”9 This approach is dramatically different from the self-help formulas dominating our podcasts, bookshelves, and culture. It’s reaching the end of our own strength and turning to the God who invites us into holy surrender. It’s not a neat and tidy list of five steps to bulletproof our ministry or organization; it’s far more radical, though perhaps simpler as well. It’s an invitation to turn to God and away from the idolization of our own abilities. We see this decision to look upward in global leaders who endure exile, grow through suffering, surrender their own agendas, and commit to their calling despite entrenched conflict. They are following the example set thousands of years ago through the faithful obedience of the prophet Jeremiah, and as a result, they experience fruit even in times of drought.
Discernment remains vital in the lives of leaders who seek to press onward into long obedience and faithful service. It helps us critically evaluate and distinguish the helpful from the harmful, the true from the false, the good from the bad, in our own approaches and in others’. We cannot simply look inward and follow our hearts. As Jeremiah says, “The human heart is the most deceitful of all things, and desperately wicked. Who really knows how bad it is?”19 Nor can we place our ultimate trust in the wisdom or authority of other leaders. Instead, each leader must “learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect,”20 asking God for wisdom, which He has promised to give generously.21