When we consider pleasure, we do a tremendous injustice if we find the entertainment media to be the sole culprit of promoting illegitimate pleasure or hedonism. The subject is far too complex a web, which we have all shared in spinning.
What role, for example, has higher education played? Has it been any less a force in causing young minds to stumble? The reality is that there is nothing so vulgar left in human experience for which some educator from some institution cannot be found to justify it. In the name of literary license, anything passes off as permissible.
But thankfully, there are also voices of caution from higher education, such as Neil Postman’s. In his book Amusing Ourselves To Death , he contrasted the futuristic visions of George Orwell’s 1984 and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World :
What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley
feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there
would be no one who would want to read one…. Orwell feared
that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the
truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we
would become a captive culture. Huxley feared that we would
become a trivial culture…. As Huxley remarked: the civil
libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose
tyranny “failed to take into account man’s almost infinite
appetite for distractions.” In 1984, Huxley added, people are
controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are
controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that
what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will
ruin us. This book is about the possibility that Huxley, not
Orwell, was right.
I think Postman is right. Any pleasure – whether good or illegitimate – can make us slaves. Hunger for even the simple pleasure of food may become a life-dominating drive. Oscar Wilde said, “The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it.” He’s got it wrong. The unrestrained appeasement of desire only expands hungers. Does not our experience tell us so?
It is true. The fences of our moral pasture have been torn down, leaving us much room to graze. But let us remember what G.K. Chesterton once said: Any time you pull down a fence, always ask why it was put there in the first place. That is good advice.
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Copyright © 2002 Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM). Reprinted with permission. “A Slice of Infinity” is a radio ministry of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries
[see also HolwickID #29479]