post-modernism and the abstracted self

I got into a Walker Percy kick again recently, for the first time in a while. At one point, I read him voraciously, reveling in the irony, the dissipation, the odd redemptions, at times bitter, at times flat, at times (such as Lancelot which I cannot in good conscience recommend to anyone but is an incredible feat), breathtaking.
Feeling irritated with Love in the Ruins, which is the first Percy book I got my hands on and usually delights me, I picked up Lost in the Cosmos, which I love but which, at one point, hit too close to home in its discussion of transcendence and re-entry. At a slight distance, though, I am able to appreciate it greatly, and equally greatly regret that it slipped my mind when writing my master's thesis (so passé and, it may be argued superfluous, but I so badly wanted to write). It's a superb treatment of the post-modern man--or human, if you prefer--dilemma of the abstracted self. Put simply, the modern man has no point of reference by which to define himself, so he is left floating in a constant state of impermanence, unmoored to any solid referent outside of himself . Art and science, claims Percy, are the two ways by which a person transcends the problem of reality, but then s/he is left with the problem of re-entering the word "at Wednesday afternoon at 4 o'clock": How does one who has tasted transcendence deal with the most mundane and humdrum of this often tedious reality?
One thing that slowly dawned on me is that, while spot on with the idea of transcendence and reality and the difficulties of the artist (and, to a lesser extent, the art-lover/receiver), something about the 1983 view of science wasn't quite relevant any more. There is some truth to it, that the "laity" revere science: medicinal, environmental, technological, but there is an edge, a disillusionment, that we have that was still absent to the wondering world of the '70s and '80s. We question surgeries and vaccines; our scientifically-altered food is making us an increasingly ill society; we have seen the limits of and also the fear of advanced weapons technology; we have reached the second decade of the 21st century and still drive cars, by and large, that run on four wheels and gasoline. So I pondered: What has replaced science as our panacea, our new god, our layman-available escape?
Oh friends: it is entertainment. Instead of seeking the cure for the abstracted, "flying dutchman" self, we have sought to numb it continually through means of ever-increasing, ever-more-extreme pleasures.
We are zombies.
Abstracted zombies.
The problem hasn't changed. We, as a societal whole, still are floating around, unmoored, untethered . . . except now we don't care. We numb it: lots of prescription drugs, lots of other drugs, lots of media--oh, such an incredible amount of media! (like this blog: teehee!)--fake online "communities", yogis and gurus and meditation and marriages and non-marriages and "alternative marriages" and God knows what else.
but we don't care, as long as we can numb it, even for a moment.
One slightly spooky coincidence is how well Percy's description of the modern man jives (yes, I did, and no I won't take it back) with C. S. Lewis's depiction of hell in The Great Divorce: isolated individuals, petty squabbling, incessant bickering over nothings, and, above all, the tininess. We are a nation of pusillanimity: of small-souled beings. How much you love your dog or cat or save the whales or the ozone layer doesn't matter a'tall in the end. What matters is our relationship to other human beings. We are the human race. The problem is not saving the abused animals or the abused earth or the whatever. The problem is that we are doing it instead of caring for each other. Because "caring" for each other has come to mean "let me do whatever the hell I want or I will scream intolerance at you."
We will not save ourselves or each other or the dogs (after all, it is very, very wounded people who abuse animals and children) or the earth (ditto that: if I don't care about myself, why should I care two pins about the earth?) or the whatever. And we cannot fix ourselves or help anyone else until we find moorings. And, as Walker Percy, the first in a family of generational suicides not to kill himself (it was at least his father and grandfather, if not great-grandfather, as well, and I believe an uncle or two) well knew, the only way to survive this world, to find moorings, is to find God. After that, well, as Lewis says:
"A sum can be put right: but only by going back till you find the error and working it afresh from that point, never simply by going on. Evil can be undone, but it cannot 'develop' into good. Time does not heal it. The spell must be unwound, bit by bit, 'with backward mutters of dissevering power'--or else not. It is still 'either-or'. If we insist on keeping Hell (or even Earth) we shall not see Heaven: if we accept Heaven we shall not be able to retain even the smallest and most intimate souvenirs of Hell."  (The Great Divorce, "Preface")

where to go, where to start

   Most people now are looking for "a better place," which means that a lot of them will end up in a worse one. I think this is what Nathan learned . . . . I think he gave up the idea taht there is a better place somewhere else. There is no "better place" than this, not in this world. And it is by the place we've got, and our love for it and our keeping of it, that this world is joined to Heaven . . .
   "Something better! Everybody's talking about something better. The important thing is to feel good and be proud of what you got, don't matter if it ain't nothing but a log pen."
   -Wendell Berry, Hannah Coulter

I don't agree with Wendell Berry's views of education, but then, I don't think he understands education as anything except the prevalent view: a means (degree) to an end (more money). He does not, I don't think, understand education as liberal arts, in the ancient sense.  Perhaps he still would not agree, but I think maybe he does. What he does understand, and what I do agree with so strongly, is his view of land, and the realization that this is where it must begin, with love of earth and land, with appreciating the value of simplicity and the simple life: renewing the land, renewing homes, continuing cultivation through generations, being able to transmit the values from father to son: the importance of hard work, of working with one's whole self. Speaking of his daughter's unfaithful husband, Nathan says, "It would have been better for Marcus if he had been tireder at night."
It is absurd, I agree, how divorced everything has become. People sit in offices all day and then go to other insides to "work out," rather than having a life and job incorporating both--and surely this is possible without everyone farming. Surely not everything must be so isolated, including families--from each other and from themselves, even, so often husbands and wives and children having completely separate lives.
In The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell works from the presumption that families are not, or at least no longer are, the primary shapers of their children. In modern society, this is often the case: that, as Gladwell asserts, the silences that would be filled with the voices of adults are now filled with cell phones, video games, television, texting, et cetera, ad nauseum. But, of course, this does not have to be the case, and returning to the sort of simplicity that Berry's stories portray would be a good place to start.