Brave New World

Daniel Boorstin, former Librarian of Con­gress and director of the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, offers this assessment of contemporary culture:


When we pick up our newspaper at breakfast, we expect- we even de­mand - that it bring us momentous events since the night before. We turn on the car radio as we drive to work and expect "news" to have occurred since the morning newspaper went to press. Returning in the evening, we expect our house not only to shelter us, to keep us warm in winter and cool in summer, but to relax us, to dignify us, to encompass us with soft music and interesting hobbies, to be a playground, a theatre, and a bar. We expect our two ­week vacation to be romantic, exotic, cheap and effortless. We expect a far­ away atmosphere if we go to a near­by place; and we expect everything to be relaxing, sanitary, and American­ized if we go to a far-away place. We expect new heroes every season, a lit­erary masterpiece every month, a dra­matic spectacular every week, a rare sensation every night. We expect ev­erybody to feel free to disagree, yet we expect everybody to be loyal, not to rock the boat or take the Fifth Amendment. We expect everybody to believe deeply in his religion, yet not to think less of others for not believ­ing. We expect our nation to be strong and great and vast and varied and pre­pared for every challenge; yet we ex­pect our "national purpose" to be clear and simple, something that gives di­rection to the -lives of two hundred million people and yet can be bought in a paperback at the corner drugstore for a dollar.

We expect anything and everything. We expect the contradictory and the impossible. We expect compact cars which are spacious; luxurious cars which are economical. We expect to be rich and charitable, powerful and merciful, active and reflective, kind and competitive. We expect to be in­spired by mediocre appeals for "ex­cellence," to be made literate by illiterate appeals for literacy. We ex­pect to eat and stay thin, to be con­stantly on the move and ever more neighbourly, to go to the "church of our choice" and yet feel its guiding power over us, to revere God and to be God.

Never have people been more the masters of their environment. Yet never has a people felt more deceived and disappointed.

Ah, Brave New World! Boorstin ne­glected to mention that the word culture, as in "modern culture," also refers to some­thing grown in an artificial medium. For instance, a virus.

Extracted from Philip Yancey’s Finding God in Unexpected Places.