The Contemplative Life vs. Our Media Saturated Society

The contemplative life should liberate and purify the imagination, which passively absorbs all kinds of things without realizing it;

Liberate and purify itself from the influence of so much violence done b y the bombardment of social images. There is a kind of contagion that affects the imagination unconsciously more than we realize– It emanates from things like advertisements and from all the spurious fantasies that are thrown at us by commercial society.

These fantasies are deliberately intended to exercise a powerful effect on our conscious and subconscious minds. They are directed right at our instincts and appetites, and there is no question but that they exercise a real transformative power on our whole psychic structures. The contemplative life should liberate us from that kind of pressure, which is really a kind of tyranny.

Thomas Merton Cited in Christian Mystics

Matthew Fox adds these thoughts and considerations to Merton’s observation in these words:

“The advertising world– so omnipresent and so powerful and seductive with its clever and artistic ways– can be a subtle form of tyranny, Merton observes. It deliberately and powerfully affects our conscious and unconscious minds. It gets inside, and creates a kind of “contagion” in our imaginations.

Nurturing the contemplative life helps purify our minds and imaginations of the “violence” we are bombarded with. This cleansing of “our instincts and appetites” is necessary because it is precisely our appetites and desires that these advertisers seek to influence.

Have you developed a regular contemplative practice? It is strong enough to diffuse, purify, and laugh at the commercial babble so intent on stealing our imaginations from us?”

Merton gives us this wise and insightful admonition before the advent of social media, and its pervasive and potentially pernicious effects and influences on our society. He also mentions the psychological price we pay from submitting to persistent pushes and cajoling effects of advertising on its negative impact on individual consciousness and ethical choices…

What would he think about today’s saturation and its abuses? I fully expect that his despair would be acute!

With the decline in church attendance already underway, and with the admission that belonging actively to a church did little or nothing to enhance our spiritual sensitivities and attunements, the death knells for institutionalized religious imagination has begun to ring…

The decline of church life as a source of inspiration and creative spiritual discovery has already made a strong case for its rapid silence or its quiet disappearance!

We are, as a society, daily overwhelmed by media energies and influences. In an accelerated way, the use of the computer and the necessity of social media interactions from emails to TikTok have penetrated our society and our psyches. The presence of being online has gone from a luxury to a foundational requirement for literacy and educational/vocational success!

Like no other intrusion that has been so warmly welcomed and culturally invited, the computer from its games and gambling, its pornography to political outrage threaten any tenuous stability our society has managed to maintain.

From Merton’s perspective, and through my own eyes, the crisis in imagination and lack of the willingness to cultivate spiritual awareness, serves only the most pecuniary and prurient interests. From the incessantly endorsed need to buy useless or even ecological harmful products, to the willingness to produce alarm and unrest in everything, from our health needs to national stability.

OK… While my diatribe could go on, just like they predicted a generation ago that TV could be “a vast wasteland.” When we allow social media to be unregulated, and a laissez faire approach to continue, it will certainly reach the bottom of our values system; before it truly and earnestly promotes any of the values and virtues that truly elevate or sustain our sense of community, or our hope for our collective future!

The key point is this; each of us has to break any inclination/addiction to mass media in a way that frees them, liberates them, and inspires them; heart centered incentives to develop their intuitive, creative, and idealistic approach to living on earth, and living positively in a shared culture together!

We have to seriously consider regulating screen time, limiting advertising to certain adult times, AND objective governmental legislation that sets moral and ethical standards for programming online and through our airways.

To this point, I would like churches, community groups and the health care system to take spiritual practices more seriously… I would have no objection to meditation time in every school day, as long as it was not connected to mandatory prayers or evangelical demands.

School programs that taught yoga or tai chi, centering prayer and mandala painting etc. Activities whose aim is to alleviate the risk of a whole generation losing their religious and creative imaginations! We will have to provide programs that introduce and advocate for their inclusion in a whole person approach to living and balance education!

As for me, my voice counts only as my actions in and through my own daily routines and interactions support the ideals I talk about and support… After beginning to share some of my progressive and inclusive views on my Facebook page, I was greeted with some hostile responses and that created both agitation and dismay.

Rather than stop, I decided that I would continue to share my reposts and articles on my page in a way that provided others with some information, humor, and inspiration.

From my little sliver of the internet, I would provide ideas and ideals on FB that would serve to redeem any of the negative thoughts and attitudes that race around the internet. In my own humble way, to overcome negativity with my posts. I hope that my efforts will encourage others to do the same, rather than let Facebook and all the others race/reach for the lowest, most angry and vile content to get more arousal and more clicks!

If each of us posted hopeful, inspirational images and stories, we could begin to counter the nasty and the negative and provide other readers with some hope and light!