The Solemnity of Disgust
I mean real disgust. The kind that renders us silent. The kind that makes us pray.
In a world where solemnity is being sacrificed to the god of entertainment (that boastful asphyxiation that we mistake for happiness) we find moments when the sacredness of life is inescapable. Sadly, the joy of life is rarely what garnishes this kind of attention. But, in our disgust for the heinous atrocities we cannot this time get away from, we find a sacred veil of silence and awe in the utter severity of the human condition that is impenetrably serious.
During these events, reverence sneaks into the busy and unrepentant lives we lead and makes us stop and gasp and wonder and fear. We are solemn, but we don’t know what it means or where it comes from. We light candles and shed tears and do things we know are ancient but what do they amount to?
This is our hope: The antiquity of Love.
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If I understand your meaning, I don’t think disgust is the right word. For example, I was left almost speechless by the case of the 5-year-old Iraqi boy who had acid poured on his face two years ago, as well as the continuing acid attacks on girls and women. Or there’s the current case in which a 28-year-old woman in California is accused of raping an 8-year-old girl with a foreign object, killing her, and putting the body in a suitcase and throwing it in an irrigation ditch.
Also, you seem to be condemning entertainment in and of itself. I’m looking forward unashamedly to see how they’re going to bring Prison Break to a conclusion. And the same goes for Lost. Shakespeare’s plays, in their time, were popular entertainment (not that we have anything currently, on television, at least, that will last 400 years.) On the other hand, the only sports I watch (and it seems like an awful lot) is during the time between 7:00 on Sundays and the time 60 Minutes begins. This will no doubt appall a lot of people on the site. When I first heard of the Somali Pirates, I wondered if they were a sports team.
David, if you understand my meaning, then, the word doesn’t really matter: understanding each other is the only point to them (words) anyway.
However, I do not think that you understood the meaning I was trying to convey as a whole. That begins in your unashamed defense of your TV watching habits. Personally I find TV a near total waste of time that could be better spent otherwise, but that is entirely beside the point.
The point is what Tolstoy writes of in “The Death of Ivan Ilyich” and what the total absurdity of Columbine made me think of. I happened to be lecturing on Tolstoy’s novella today in class (just got back from it) and was thinking about it through the lens of Columbine, so, I wrote this to express myself.
If you want to know the “meaning” of what I wrote, then, read Tolstoy and ponder Columbine and then read what I wrote and see what happens.
Sam,
As a repeat reader of Tolstoy’s “The Death of Ivan Ilyich”, I still have a hard time getting at your ultimate meaning here.
In all honesty, I can be slow to catch on in many, many matters, so I at least need more help.
Could you elaborate further?
I am not sure there is an “ultimate meaning” it was written in media res, so to speak, as a reflection, not a technical essay. It captures my feelings on death, modernity, and the need for sacrament and love.