This
week’s Friday Food 'n' Therapy follows on a theme we maintained for some time
earlier this year on the increasing impact of fantasy on the mentality of
both the individuals who make up a society – and the corporate mindset that
constitutes the (general) mentality of that society
Making
room for more and more fantasy / rôle playing will have increasingly
detrimental effects on those who subject themselves to it.
For
instance….
1.
A friend sent this earlier today….
Nutty
professor leaves NZ military red-faced
NZ's
military admitted yesterday it was "seriously embarrassed" for having
granted high-security clearance to a scientist who lived in a fantasy world.
The
head of the Defence Technology Agency, Stephen Wilce, quit last month after it
was revealed he had falsely claimed to be an ex-marine combat veteran and an
Olympic bobsledder who raced against
The
government report found Mr Wilce's appointment had been carried out with undue
haste and called for tighter vetting procedures. While Mr Wilce had not posed a
significant threat to New Zealand's national security, he certainly presented a
risk to its reputation in the eyes of its security partners, the report said.
"Some dumb decisions were made," Defence Force chief Lieutenant
General Jerry Mateparae admitted. For five years, Mr Wilce headed eighty staff
at the agency, which provides technology support to New Zealand's military. He
resigned when commercial broadcaster TV3 revealed his fanciful claims.
They
included being a combat veteran and a member of
Previous
employers and colleagues told the program Mr Wilce was a "Walter
Mitty" character who claimed he designed guidance systems for
And
note that this report is from the land that is now proudly proclaiming itself,
“Middle Earth” in an attempt to attract more tourists to come and pretend
they are in Lord of the Rings territory!
2.
Yes, the lines are becoming blurred between reality and
fantasy…. and the end result will be an increasing incidence rate of insanity
– defined as an inability to distinguish between the real and unreal world….
(often accompanied by resultant depression)…..
Is “Reality TV” truly this? In
the future, will all of us be “famous for 15 minutes” as
3.
On the broader (corporate
society) scene…. changes in the teaching regime in the high school public
system were illustrated several years ago by a teacher I knew who – even
though he was having a beneficial effect in a local public high school – opted
out – and went into the Christian school system.
When I asked him why was he leaving a school where his kind of teaching
and relational skills were so greatly needed, he replied, “I was trained to be
a teacher, not an entertainer.
These students expect me to perform for them, and if I don’t,
they refuse to listen to the material I am trying to teach them”.
4.
Perhaps the last word belongs to one of the stars of the cult
classic, Star Trek…. In 1986,
William Shatner (Captain Kirk) performed in a famous sketch on Saturday Night
Live. He played himself at a Star Trek convention at which he told
the Trekkies to "get a life". "For
crying out loud," Shatner elaborated, "it was just a TV show!" At
one point, he asked Jon Lovitz's Trekker character, whom he assumed to be almost
30 years old, if he had ever kissed a girl, at which the character sadly hung
his head. Quoted from
Wikipedia
“Getting
a life!” is good advice in this day and age – maybe we could add, “getting
a real life!’
Next
week – Facebook, “friends”; and fantasy…
Trying to explain Twitter to someone who lived through WW2, or the Great
Depression…..
(If you missed the collated commentary on the film Avatar, and its fantasy addiction qualities, go to Brian and Elizabeth Rensfords’ website >>> Ministry side >>> Friday Food 'n' Therapy – serious stuff.
In
our previous Friday Food 'n' Therapy, we highlighted some areas in which fantasy
has grown out of proportion in the modern (or is that post-modern?) Western
mindset.
All
children have a capacity to fantasise. It’s
part of expanding their horizons as to what they can accomplish.
However, sooner or later, the fantasy has to come into alignment with the
real world. Some reasons for this…
1)
What looks “cute” or ok or reasonable for a nine year-old
looks quite ridiculous for a sixty-three year-old!
Proof attached! How silly
I’d look!
2)
The safety aspect. When
I was four, we used to go to the Saturday afternoon picture show and watch (in
serial form) Superman! Wow!
What four year-old boy doesn’t want to be a hero and fly???
So I came back to our quarters, climbed up onto a water tower in the
compound we were living in… and jumped off a 4-metre-high platform!
And fly I did – for 4 metres, straight down, head-first…., and into
hospital. I carry the crash scars on
my forehead to this day….
3)
Fantasy can at times open a door into a “dream factory” (or
maybe that should read “daydream factory”), which can disassociate the
person from the real world, or worse, may have roots in occultic principles and
practices. doors open, that can’t
be easily closed…..
4)
An alter-ego persona is created – again disassociated from the
real world. seniors’ humour is
awash with this kind of reality-denial! Example
attached!
One
of the marks of emerging maturity is the ability to move into the real world and
put away childhood fantasies. Paul
told the Corinthians, “When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought
like a child, I reasoned like a
child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me”
(I Cor 13:11). The Greek
contains the idea of doing a reality-check (literally, to take stock as in an
inventory). and the context is
functioning in a mature way in ministry / service.
Courtship
that leads to marriage (a permanent covenant-based relationship for life) tracks
a similar path. How dishonest many
of us were in the early stages of getting to know someone we “liked” –
afraid that if they really got to know us (warts and all), they might turn away.
Courtship is the time in which, once we become aware of each other’s
true character, we are in a position to make a values’ judgment that, weighing
up the other person’s pros and cons, the pathway is worth pursuing to
covenant-bonded relationship.
Next two Friday Food 'n' Therapies, we will explore more along the lines of 4) – and the increasingly powerful rôle of Facebook, etc, in creating alter-egos that may not be truly at home in the real world that is nearby. With the whole world now a global electronic village – filled with people wanting to be “friends”, etc – this is becoming a tool of good and great potential for links across the miles… As long as the reality check is watchfully maintained. And look at differences between “fantasy” and “imagination”……
The
previous two Friday Food 'n' Therapy servings touched on the increasing rôle of
fantasy in the mentality, life, and time-management of “adults”.
We’re talking about age here, not necessarily maturity levels.
Part
of the phenomenon doesn’t particularly look like fantasy at all…. namely the
realm of self-projection.
For
instance…
§
References have become increasingly ignored by prospective
employers – too much overkill of one’s own “talents” – many
interviewers now go to Facebook instead! Proverbs
says “Let another praise you, and not your own mouth; someone else, and not
your own lips.”
§
For a medium amount of money, you can have a “glam photograph”
session! In which your ordinary
looks will be airbrushed to make you look like a
§
For a bigger amount of money (in the Australia at least, not in
the Third World), a group of school children can organise hiring at this time of
the year a stretched Hummer to go to their year-end school “Formal” (go
here for examples of this). Princess
for a day! or as is more often being
said, “goddess”…
§
Paralleling this development, comes a redefinition of
“friendship” – one that is emptying the original meaning of the word of
its depth of content, and replacing it with “pretend” friendships, which
would be better described as “acquaintances”.
Neil Anderson says, Solomon wrote: "A man of many friends comes to
ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother" (Proverbs
18:24). It may be nice to know a lot
of people on the surface, but you need a few good friends who are committed to a
quality relationship with each other. We
all need the satisfaction which quality relationships bring.
And
he wrote that years before friendless Mark Zuckerberg created Fantasy Friends
– a cyberworld where face-to-face work-it-through relationships function could
be replaced by a shallower model (see the article below).
Facebook
is a marvellous invention for contact, and information sharing….
As long as the fantasy element is kept under control – Seniors
in Fantasy Land!
Real
and lasting friendships and relationships MUST
be based on reality in both/all participants!
Let’s keep working on it….
Mark
Hadley, Southern Cross magazine
The
Irony at the heart of Facebook is that apparently the world's largest social
network was created by a young man so socially awkward he was incapable of
holding on to a single friendship. It's
a contradiction The Social Network conveys well, while challenging us to
consider whether we are more or less friendly than before.
This
is a human drama about the doubtful dealings, broken promises and shattered
relationships that went into building the world's largest site for online
friendships. The Social Network appropriately
builds it’s story around Mark Zuckerberg, the 19-year-old who took a fledgling
website and transformed it . into
the most powerful social network of all time .
or did he?
Just
pause and think for a moment about what that team of programmers really achieved.
Was it:
a
$25 billion web property?
500
million members in seven-years?
a
site second only to
All
true, but the answer is 'none of the above'.
It's too easy to be swamped by the statistics and miss what is truly
significant. Mark Zuckerberg and
others helped redefine friendship.
Thanks in part to Facebook, a generation that grew up online has learned
to build relationships on bytes of computer information.
Yet it is a sad truth that a person can be part of a thriving internet
community and still maintain sufficient distance to be barely known by anyone at
all. Facebook has helped create 'friendship-lite'.
The
Social Network is ultimately a film about that tension - knowing but not
really being known. The day that
Facebook signs up its millionth member, Zuckerberg loses his best friend.
"I was your only friend," his college roommate tells him.
"Your only friend." Sitting
on top of his silicon tower, Mark might have benefited from some of Jesus'
advice: "What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world - yet loses
his soul?". Instead he finishes
the film refreshing his computer screen, hoping a single person he cares about
will 'friend' him on Facebook.
The Social Network shows us what we have lost in the way of friendship. In many cases we have exchanged quality for quantity, when what we hunger for is real concern. Strangely this is what archaic Christianity can offer cutting-edge Facebook: a community that will strive and sacrifice for even its least-known members. Facebook may have topped 500 million but the church consists of many millions of its own who know the truth of that statement.