Sitting in a museum and just listening can be a great way to learn.
You hear tour guides struggling to hold flagging interest in young people and in old people. It is interesting to note the differences between the two. With older people, there is always promised, just ahead, the Utopia of public toilets and good food. With younger people, there is almost promised some sight or other calculated (however hopelessly) to make Shakespeare cool or learning trendy and fun. (”We shall soon see a giant T-Rex!”) In both cases, this corner may be dull, but excitement looms.
It is good just to chat with and listen to people. You can learn a good bit about a certain set of people by watching them and hearing their lives. We met several delightful people in Britain this way. One grandmother had earnest and well thought out opinions on American education (which does not mean that she always agreed with my own opinions!). British experiments with ever more exams, dumbed down to broaden success, had her in a lather. On this we could easily agree, given America’s foolish “No Child Left Behind” act.
Another person told of her life in the country raising a generation of children. She told of her struggles to deal with a culture growing ever more toxic to traditional British ideals. She was not particularly religious, but she was a mother. She had a mother’s concerns that her sons and daughters were being harmed by the lifestyles and consumerist ambitions carelessly foisted on them.
At the end of any European trip, it is easy to loath the materialist culture that demands that everyone have more . . . though nobody is sure what the more is for. It is sad to realize that much of it was foisted on the world by American companies who have used their freedom to advertise to do so with abandon and without care for the culture.
Getting kids to want a thing is all that matters. Parental authority be damned. Perhaps because the consumerism of Russian (for example) is so new, it was easier for me to see and uglier in its crudity. Americans are no better just more sophisticated (sometimes) in our notions of middle class bling.
In one British museum, I listened to a North American chatter about her life. I did not mean to listen, but there was no way to avoid it. I was not feeling very well and there was only one chair. She had a loud voice (something about which I cannot justly complain) and anyone within ten feet could not miss hearing every word she said. Never have I so earnestly wished for an Ipod.
She was quite pleasant looking, with a confident voice, lightly educated, an obvious ex-pat (a home on the Continent), and dressed with the careless care that signals real money. The longer she talked to her British friends (and she did all the talking) the more empty the conversation became. It was an endless cycle of demands on life and of complaints about slight grievances. While no blogger can be too critical of endless monologuing, this was extreme.
Education, a frequent topic, was about “the right schools.” This young woman was as class snobbish as any Victorian social climber, but she was much more comfortable with her superiority. She had no pious scruples to check her pride. Indeed, any inconvenience that got in her way (or her friend’s way) was an outrage. She was full of causes (anti-nuclear was her favorite), but she did not talk about their ideas, just their events. Evidently hanging out at high priced anti-nuclear events is a great way to meet mates.
Slowly the conversation turned, lightly turned, to her surrogate mother that had provided her with her bottle fed, perfectly turned out tyke. She was discussing the art versus the science of picking the right woman to have one’s baby, when I had to leave. Scattered through the conversation were discussions of diamonds (getting the right one matters), Paris, and the men who pick the right time to propose. Of morality or ethical concerns, except the immorality of inconvenience to self, there was never a trace in anything she said.
(”She wants to buy all her wedding things locally. . . but as I pointed out to her such plans do not always work out . . . since local wine is likely to . . . and her dress can be . . . you know how it is with intentions . . . but she is such a romantic . . . ” )
I felt battered as I walked away. There was no ideology with which I disagreed. How can one “argue” with a life dedicated to personal peace (at almost any cost) and affluence? She was not liberal or conservative. Her views seemed exactly those calculated to fit into her class and careened wildly across the spectrum.
Perhaps, I heard her on a bad day . . . but if not . . . if she represents anything real in our elite . . . than our elite are simply decadent.
And over the years, I have begun to suspect that this is true. There is not so much a great argument taking place in our elite about ideas as there is a great desire for trendy bread and better circuses. They are simply overfed and very comfortable people looking to be entertained. This can be edutainment (as in museums) or clubbing (the choice for the evening) or a baby (which can be sent to nanny when needed) . . . but no sacrifice.
Leaving my religious beliefs out of it, I would despair as a noble pagan or thoughtful secularist. Better to be governed by a committed atheist, who at least has a consistent program to discuss, than a generation like the woman in the museum.
She was of Obama, of course, but I do not blame him. She was voting as her class demanded and if her class loved McCain, she would vote for him. She was not political . . . precisely not a member of any polis other than the city of one. Much of what Senator Obama says is a rebuke to her (and he is to be commended for his courage in saying it), but she could not hear his message for her infatuation with his style.
Of course, I realized pretty quickly that being too harsh or so hasty in my judgment was imprudent and wrong.
About this particular soul, I can make no real judgment. Her conversation can stimulate thought and point to things I have generally seen, but about her particular soul (as it really is) I can make no just decision. Any opinions expressed about it, must only be about her conversation (and the “self” it presented) as a stimulus to generalizations.
In that sense, I am not talking about the actual “woman in the museum,” but an aspect of modern culture she was expressing.
This disease, this earnest desire to be placated by life, exists in me as well. I too think far too much of what is best for self . . . and not for my community. I may have different desires, but too much of my life is centered on fulfilling those desires.
The “woman in the museum” cared for personal peace over her country. She had no real country. Her globalism was not the saint’s hard earned love for the many having given up a love for a mere tribe or nation, because she showed no evidence of having to give up any such love. Her globalism came through the convenience such a world gave in buying diamonds in South Africa to be used in romantic moments in Paris.
I fear like Professor Henry Higgens in Pygmalion (a wonderful version is at the Old Vic), she will be so self-centered as to end life alone having missed out on real love and affection due to an inability to stop thinking of self. Americans comfort themselves with a soft ending, but Shaw’s Higgens has no “fair lady” only his work and his own desires.
I see too much of that in me.
Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on me a sinner.