Plague Journal (46): On truth and beauty

Where I grew up people had a somewhat surly relationship with their neighbors. Even when they were friendly, they were friendly "up to a point." There were strict limits. Trust was considered foolhardy. Too much friendliness meant you were out for something, seeking advantage. If your neighbor gave you some deer meat, it was because he wanted something from you in return. So later on you gave him some of what you had, maybe you bought him a case of beer, something of equal value or perhaps a little more, so that the transaction could then be considered complete. Or perhaps you'd even tipped the scales in your own favor. Now your neighbor "owed you one." Each evening you watched Andy Griffith or Gomer Pyle on TV, drank your highball, and wondered when your rotten neighbor was going to come through with what he owed you.

In such a worldview, there is no good man, no kind man, who does not have an ulterior motive. If you were a Christian, you latched onto that verse that says, "Not one of us is righteous, no not one." Such an attitude, of course, undermines all forms of communication. No one can be trusted, not even the preacher who on occasion might even preach Romans 3:10! And certainly not the talking heads, the communicators, on our television sets. Every sentence was a tactic. Words were a screen. You went through life with the motto, Get what you can, and don't be fooled.

Perhaps a lot of the so-called rebellion of my generation (OK, Boomer) was a rebellion against just this defensive posture. In many sometimes very stupid ways we were just looking for truth and beauty in a culture that seemed to trivialize these things. Most of us, as time went on, eventually abandoned the quest. At 20 we had smashed our TV sets, declaring our independence from the idiot box. At 60 we have a $2000 flat-screen mounted on the wall, one of several TVs situated around the house (but often we just watch stuff on our phones).

But things have gotten far beyond TV/NOT-TV. Most of what we know about the world around us nowadays comes to us through media that are world-encompassing, and at the expense of all that comes to us through no intermediary media, but which we know by experiencing, interacting with directly. We may know more about someplace far away that we read about in some travel-blog than we know about our own town. 

So this is a post about localism, I guess. Or it is a post about truth and beauty. Perhaps, during this Great Sheltering that we are now going through, we might begin to look around and discover where we are, and who is here with us. Because truth and beauty doesn't descend on us from our credentialed betters, received through Internet portals. It waits around the corner, elusive yet knowable, among us, within us, between us. I am writing this on a laptop on a fine-looking sunny morning. I would do well to end it quickly and go for a walk. Discover my neighbors. Look for the green things shooting up through the mulch of winter. Write a poem. Build a birdhouse. 

This is not rebellion. This is the return of the native. Coming home can take a lifetime.