The Galli Report: 01.29.21
What is a 'quality life'? ‘Virtue Hoarders.’ Sin has many colors. Why are we taking so many pictures? Egyptian life circa 1925 on film.
What Is a Quality Life?
Sometimes someone need to say the obvious, especially when the obvious seems to allude so many. Such was the task of Alan Jacobs (professor of humanities in the honors program at Baylor University), which he did admirably (as usual) in “Love and Death: Quality of life’ calculations leave out far too much that matters.” Reviewing two essays that take a utilitarian view, as do so many today, he writes,
They evaluate the quality of life almost wholly in terms of activity, especially professional activity. Valuable years for Lee are “active and event-filled” years. Emanuel asserts, “There are not that many people who continue to be active and engaged and actually creative past 75. It’s a very small number.” It is hard to know whether this is true because he doesn’t define “active” or “engaged” or “creative,” but elsewhere in the same interview he is extremely dismissive of anything, including especially “play,” that is not “meaningful work.” He is quite explicit in his scorn for anyone, even well past retirement age, who lives for play rather than work: “But if it’s the main thing in your life? Ummm, that’s not probably a meaningful life.”
His next argument, including a touching personal story, was even more to the point for this grandfather.
‘Virtue Hoarders’
“The Dictatorship of Virtue” concerns one of my hobby-horses, the on-going class conflict in America. It’s not divided by rich and poor but along other more complex lines. The piece is a bit too polemical for my taste, but offers enough insights for me to recommend it. In a review of Virtue Hoarders: The Case Against the Professional Managerial Class, Geoff Shullenberger writes,
Virtue Hoarders is the latest entry in a decades-long debate. John and Barbara Ehrenreich first proposed the term “professional-managerial class” in the late 1970s to designate a new social class that had emerged in advanced capitalist societies. The class’s role was to oversee, in their words, “the reproduction of capitalist culture and capitalist class relations.” As Liu explains, “the Ehrenreichs’ PMC comprises deracinated, credentialed professionals, such as culture industry creatives, journalists, software engineers, scientists, professors, doctors, bankers, and lawyers, who play important managerial roles in large organizations.” For the Ehrenreichs, “professional-managerial class” was a neutral descriptor, neither celebratory nor condemnatory. This is not the case for Liu, whose polemic, in effect, seeks to vindicate the use of the term as a slur by Sanders fans on Twitter.
As a former journalist, I fit the description. I can’t disagree with the notion that I was, and still am in retirement, a member of this class. But I fancy myself as one who tries, now and then, to be subversive to my class’s interests. Then again, I suspect this is one trait of the professional-managerial class, a trait of which we are quite proud!
Sin Comes in Many Colors
Carl Trueman waxes eloquent about Critical Race Theory in “Evangelicals and Race Theory.” He points out flaws of the theory, including:
Critical theory, whatever form it takes, relies on the concept of false consciousness—the notion that the oppressors control society so completely that the oppressed believe their own interests are served by the status quo. This is a wonderful idea. It allows every piece of evidence that might refute one’s theory to be transformed into further evidence of how deep and comprehensive the problem of oppression is. If factory workers buy houses in the suburbs and vote for Republicans, that’s not a fact that requires rethinking Marx’s theories; it’s a sign of how all-powerful bourgeois ideology has become.
This was a problem I discovered with Liberation Theology back in the day, as much as I sympathized with it’s call for concern for the poor.
Trueman is at his insightful best overall, especially regarding his main thesis that establishment evangelicalism seems anxious to buy into the theory uncritically.
But when it comes to CRT, I think he protests too much, in particular against CRT’s assertions that racism is systemic and that all are racists. Here’s where I agree with CRT. Still, the theory, which sees only racism in every closet and under every bed, fails to recognize that we live in a world plagued by systemic greed, systemic lust, systemic pride, systemic inequality, and so on, and that each of us fights these demons not only socially but also personally. It’s a fallen world, with battles to be waged on many fronts, never to be fully won in this age, with our energy and hope sustained only by the absolutely certainty of God’s mercy and final justice.
Why Is Everyone Taking Pictures All the Time?
On a lighter note, “Why iPhone is today’s Kodak Brownie Camera” helped me better understand a current and ubiquitous phenomenon:
Photography as we know it has been around for about 150 years, though its origins can be traced to earlier civilizations. But it has never been so visceral, and so much a part of our daily lives, as it is now. In short, the arc of photography’s history is that it has always been about getting more and more people to take photographs. Our desire to know more about ourselves means we must have more of them, more often, in more places, and of many more things. Whether it was new chemicals or new film or new sensors, technological advances in this area have — by and large — been about making it simpler for us to capture the moment. All of it has brought us to today, when we have quietly passed the cultural tipping point where taking a photo is as second nature as breathing. There’s no art to it. It is just something we are always doing.
Egypt a Century Ago
I will admit to not viewing this entire 25-minute film, but only the first 10 minutes or so. But that was enough to satisfy my curiosity. Check out the 1925 Metropolitan Museum of Art’s “Daily Life in Egypt: Ancient and Modern” if you are as curious about the history of daily life as am I.
Grace and peace,
Mark Galli
markgalli.com