Say what you will about Jonathan Franzen, who TIME proclaimed to be today's "Great American Novelist," this is a pretty dank (and I mean that in a good way) quote and probably one of the better articulations of gospel-living. People who don't claim Jesus as Lord often times utter some of the most convicting statements I've ever heard.Here's what Franzen said last Friday on APM's MarketPlace:
"We have this notion in this country, not only of endless economic growth but of endless personal growth. I have a certain characterological antipathy to the notion of we're all getting better and better all the time. And it's so clearly belied by our experience. You may get better in certain ways for 10 years, but one day you wake up and although things are a little bit different, they're not a lot different. And I think if one can get more accustomed to that somewhat more tragic view of life, that people would think yeah, 'We don't actually need to have a bigger and bigger house, and a bigger and bigger car, and more and more things in the house.' That there might some way to think of the world in different terms, so it was more about being and less about growing."He's on to something there...
(HT: The Mockingbird)
1 comment:
I'm not sure I agree with that. One of the greatest aspects of the human condition is our adaptability; that is, we can continually improve ourselves both intellectually and materially. But with this flexibility necessarily comes the flip side: we can get much worse, presumably because most of the time we don't know what is best for ourselves.
But accepting the fact that we have little power to continually improve ourselves is a dreary prospect, and one I hope Franzen doesn't actually believe.
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