Our car rides over the last two weeks have been funny at times. After three years of riding rear-facing, I just turned his car seat so he’s facing forward like the rest of us. The world looks a little different to him now. He’s been confused by different turns, not recognizing it from his new position. But today, he’s quiet. Thinking. Observing.

I change lanes to take a ramp from one highway to another. “What time is it?” he asks as we circle the ramp.

“6:52, buddy.” I always think it’s funny when he asks this. He doesn’t know anything about time. He is three, after all. Time is either right now or too long when you’re three. But he asks the question often, probably because he hears it from his older siblings, who do in fact understand time.

“Are we there yet?” He says it without a whine. It’s just another question he’s somehow learned to ask, again, probably from his eleven-year-old sister, who sometimes likes to believe she will wilt away during long drives in the car.

“No, buddy, you know we’re not there. Do you see our road yet?”

“Oh.”

He puts his hands back to his mouth and looks out the window as trees and cars whizz by us.

My family didn’t take particularly long road trips when I was growing up. If I’m not mistaken, the longest trips I went on were four hours from home.

I remember, on many such trips, counting trees. I’m not sure what the highest number I ever counted was, but since the Virginia and North Carolina highways where we mostly traveled are lined with trees, I imagine it was a lot.

I also counted tractor-trailers. Sometimes my counting would morph to a game where my siblings and I tried to get a tractor-trailer driver to honk at us. Oh, how we laughed and laughed when we succeeded, and then before we stopped laughing, we’d start trying all over again.

Of course, I also enjoyed the alphabet game, the quintessential road-trip activity in which you have to find the letters in alphabetical order on signs or license plates. My siblings and I would shout out letters as we saw them, claiming dibs so no one else could use it. It was always frustrating to get stuck on one of the less frequently used letters at the end of the alphabet. I don’t find it amusing when businesses use unconventional spelling for their names, but who doesn’t love a good Qwik Stop gas station when playing the alphabet game? Twenty to thirty years later, and my kids are playing the same games in the car.

Today, they start by playing the alphabet game during the ten-hour trip (though it will take us twelve) from our home in North Carolina to southern Florida, where we’ll spend the week at a friend’s river house about ten minutes from the Atlantic Ocean.

We shift quickly from the alphabet game to trivia. Everyone plays, except the three-year-old who shouts out answers because he thinks he’s playing.

We take a break after a while when we change drivers. My oldest two children are both adults now and happily take turns driving, especially when it means the opportunity to uncurl their bodies from the cramped spaces in the back seat of our minivan.

Three hours in, the three-year-old asks, “Are we there yet?”

“No, buddy, not even close,” his eleven-year-old sister says. “We’ve only gone—“ she checks the clock, “three hours! We’ve only gone three hours?” She sighs and moans softly. I watch from my sun visor mirror as she wiggles around in her seat, mumbling, “Only three hours!” several times.

The eighteen-year-old reminds her wiggling youngest sister that, besides the toddler, she’s the smallest person in the van and does not get to take up the most room. Bickering starts. I tell them to stop and to think of serving each other. It will be a long ride, after all. They don’t stop, despite my compelling speech, but quiet their volume instead.

“Are we there yet?” the three-year-old asks again, this time to no one.

Last year, we made the same trip: Ten hours, which took us twelve, to southern Florida to stay in a river house ten minutes from the Atlantic Ocean.

Last year, we made the same trip for the same reason: we left the day after we graduated one of our children from high school. Our whole family felt the big change of sending him off to college looming over us. A week away was what we needed. Memories to keep forever. Time together with our oldest still with us, for another week, just as it had been for nineteen years.

This year, we made the ten-hour trek again (in twelve hours), the day after we graduated our second-oldest from high school. Two months from now, we’ll wave goodbye to our two oldest when we leave both of them together at their college campus. We are dreading the changes in the horizon again, but this time with a little more understanding of how hard it will be and that we will actually survive the changes.

We need this week at the beach. More memories, the seven of us. More time together with both our twenty- and eighteen-year-olds still with us.

Our fifteen-year-old tells us that she fully expects to be leaving on a ten-hour drive to the beach that will take us twelve hours the day after she graduates from high school. She knows that high school graduation is quite an accomplishment—we’ve told both of her older siblings so—and she lets us know that she, too, will deserve a week at the beach after making it to that milestone.

The toddler shouts out, “Me too!” though I’m not sure he even knows what we were talking about. He begins to hum before asking, again, “Are we there yet?”

In thinking about my daughter’s graduation, I’ve realized that I’ve spoken about it with her as both the subject and the direct object, though not at the same time. She is graduating from high school. She is the doer, the actor, the subject. But, at the same time, my husband and I are graduating her from our home school. She is the recipient of the action. Something is happening to her by someone else (in this case, by her parents).

Not all parents have the honor of being the subject of their children’s high school graduation. For the student of a traditional high school, the school, its administration, and faculty (compound subject) are graduating their students (direct object). A traditional school has a list of requirements, deemed necessary by the school’s governing body, to graduate. Generally, they will require twenty-two or so credits of core classes and electives. Sometimes, you’ll find another requirement or two: a senior thesis or capstone, especially at a classical school, or a minimum number of volunteer hours. But someone besides the parents determined which classes and extracurricular activities are necessary for a student to earn his high school diploma.

My kids don’t go to a traditional school, however. There is no one telling me what they must finish, learn, do, or achieve before we complete a high school education. The state of North Carolina has recommendations, but in the end, my husband and I are responsible for what must be completed. And so, graduating my children, I looked at them and wondered, “Are we there yet? Is this what a high school graduate is supposed to be able to do? Is this how they’re supposed to be able to think? Is what we did right? Is what we did enough?”

It’s a terrifying thing to graduate your children from high school, hoping they’ll be able to meet adulthood and be successful. If they aren’t prepared, I can’t blame the schools or the teachers for their failures.

Home schooling reveals all of my weaknesses and shortcomings. My temper flares when there are tears over math. My lack of mastery is revealed when I try to explain biology or chemistry. Even literature and grammar, content I was once paid to teach to other people’s children, can stump me. My own failures are revealed daily as I try to move my children on step closer day by day to being a well-educated, well-rounded adult. Why am I not there yet? How can I get them there if I’m nowhere close?

Once or maybe twice a year, a young woman will approach me and ask if we can get together. She’ll tell me she respects me or looks up to me and wants to spend time with me. I sometimes look around to see if there is someone else close by she’s actually speaking to.

Me? No, you must mean someone else. I’m not there yet. I’m short-tempered and uncharitable. I have too much to learn.

Last month, a young lady was, indeed, speaking to me. She wanted to study the Bible with me.

We started by reading some of the Proverbs while also reading the story of Solomon’s life found in 1 Kings. How was the wisest man alive such a foolish man? How did he manage to pass on so many truthful proverbs to us and yet make such a mess of his life? If he can’t make it, what hope is there for me? And how in the world am I supposed to help my kids? Are we there yet? Shouldn’t I be more confident in myself, more sure about what I’m doing?

But maybe that’s the right place to be—feeling some tension with your independence, your adulthood, your accomplishment; remembering there is much to learn still and more ways to grow and plenty of weaknesses to shore up. Maybe that’s where I need to guide my children: to a place where they are mature enough to ask for help, to seek knowledge and wisdom, to confess and repent.

It was 12:30 am when we finally pulled into our driveway, a full twelve hours since we had left southern Florida for our home. We spent the week playing in the ocean and the pool, building in the sand, kayaking, and reading. We ate good meals, took long naps, and went on long runs (everyone but the toddler and me) and long walks (those of us who can’t run). It was the kind of vacation you hope for.

Oh, but the drive home was even tougher than the drive there. We had traffic and a terrible storm that, at times, made it impossible to see the road.

My daughter drove the last leg so I could be closer to her baby brother who was screaming. He had woken up after a few hours of sleep upset that we were not, in fact, there yet. When she parked the van in our driveway, she turned it off and stretched before gathering trash around the front seat. The eleven-year-old pushed her way out of the van and stumbled through the front door, up the stairs, and to her bed. The fifteen-year-old grabbed as many bags as she could carry from the back row and disappeared inside, not to be seen again until a few hours after the sun had risen. My husband and our oldest son began the hard task of emptying the trunk and the rooftop-carrier of all the bags.

I made the toddler very angry when I got him out of his seat, where he had just gotten content for the last fifteen minutes of the drive. I stepped inside our house and breathed in the sweet smell of us. My toddler was angrier with every step we took. We made it to his room, where I changed him quickly as he screamed and then I put him in his bed. He instantly quieted, rolled to his stomach, and mumbled, “Are we there yet?”

Image Credit: Degas, “Ballet Dancers” (1888)

Most Americans are familiar with the colonial past. That is to say, the British colonial past- the pilgrims, Jamestown, Boston, Philadelphia, William Penn, et cetera. But the earliest elements of America’s colonial origins are more complex. Many other peoples helped lay the foundation for what Gordon S. Wood termed the ‘idea of America’. There is still talk of the Dutch presence in New York, of how they established the colony, which was taken over by the English and grafted to the growing British Empire. Less common in our cultural consciousness is the history of the Swedes along the shores of the Delaware. And yet, like the Dutch, they were here, and their presence influenced all things that came afterwards. Their work of settlement impacts our contemporary world in strange and unconscious ways. We walk down the literal and metaphorical paths they made without a second thought.

Curiously, there are few material markers of this world. The ghosts of the Swedish colony of the Delaware still haunt placenames in the region. Along the various lanes and streets of modern Philadelphia, the passerby might spy a few names obscured by centuries of development. Swanson Street bears witness to a time when the Swanson brothers’ log cabin stood along the narrow lane of Wicaco, the place where Swedes and Lenape Indians once engaged one another in trade. Local tradition holds that Catherine Street is named for a young Swedish girl, Catherine Hanson, the first colonist to die in the New World. In nearby Bridgeport, sometimes still appropriately called ‘Swedesburg’, Rambo Street recalls the colonist Peter Rambo, the man whose surname would christen a new type of apple. Gunner’s Run, once a wild creek snaking across the city, preserves the memory of the Gunnarsson family. The Swedish Queen Christina, who reigned during the time of the establishment of New Sweden, is also the eponymous source of various local place-names: the Christina River, Queen Village in Philadelphia, and both Christiana, PA, and Christiana, DE.

Elsewhere, Swedish names remain scattered across the Delaware Valley region like breadcrumbs. Mullica Hill in New Jersey remembers Finnish settlers who arrived during the era of New Sweden, including the Mullica family, whose descendants are still spread throughout South Jersey. The small suburban town of Morton, Pennsylvania, takes its name from the old Swedish settlement of Mårtensson’s. And even places that are distinctively non-Swedish still recall the brief political adventure of the Scandinavian encounter with the American frontier. Naamans Creek in Delaware is born from the memory of the Swedes encountering a local Lenape chieftain, whom they granted the Biblical name of Naaman (2 Ki. 5) for reasons that have been lost to history.

New Sweden’s limited physical infrastructure also survived long beyond its tenure as a royal colony. A surprising amount of the original Swedish colonial road network in Delaware and Salem County, New Jersey, follows routes first established by Swedish settlers moving between their sundry plantations. Sinnicksons Landing Road in Salem County preserves the folk memory of one such forgotten river crossing. Locally, the most famous example of this may be Swedesford Road. The name refers to a Swedish crossing of the Schuylkill River near what became Matson’s Ford, later Conshohocken.

Even the legal and civil foundations of Pennsylvania and Delaware bear distinctively Swedish fingerprints. Despite the collapse of the colony in 1655, the Swedish courts continued operating under Dutch and later English rule until 1681. The Swedish court in Upland (modern Chester, PA) was in unbroken operation until the time when William Penn arrived and reorganized the colony under British provincial lines. Settlers accustomed to Swedish legal customs often retained them even after formal Anglicization. Some of the oldest landgrants in the region are etiologically Swedish, and remained valid with the arrival of Penn and his English Quakers. This would prove a challenge for Penn’s surveyors, who had to translate the colloquial ‘Swedish mile’ (6.2 miles) into the Imperial system, sometimes to great frustration. Even today, portions of Philadelphia’s modern real estate market still rest upon the original Swedish claims surveyed a generation before the official establishment of the city.

The outside observer might point to the lack of linguistic continuity. There are no Swedish words that entered into American parlance in the same way that Dutch did through the conduit of New Amsterdam. This is true. However, the Swedish colony endowed North America with one of its most indelible symbols- the log cabin. Finnish settlers brought with them the tradition of hirsirakentaminen (log building), utilizing their familiar method of homestead construction technique, drawn from their own heavily wooded homeland. In turn, this tradition would be adopted by Americans in their travels across the Western frontier. Future generations would assume this to be a purely English tradition, quickly forgetting its provenance. By some fluke of providence, or perhaps real estate development, a few of these 17th-century cabins do survive to this day, remaining as some of the oldest continually occupied buildings on the continent.

Common to the region is also the term ‘Brandywine,’ which is seemingly ubiquitous, as it is reflected in various institutions and place names. However, even those who live along the Delaware rarely recall the word’s original meaning. The local waterways of the region once had Swedish names, most of which were later replaced with more familiar Dutch or English terms. Among them, the modern Brandywine Creek was once touted as Fiskiekylen (Fish Creek), but usually on older maps of the period as Brännvins kilen (Vodka Creek), named for the dark color of the water that resembled a familiar Swedish spirit. This 17th-century drinking joke was defanged and eventually adopted into common speech as a distinctive regionalism of the lower Delaware Valley. Brännvin remains a popular Nordic spirit in Norway and Sweden to this day.

As is commonly the case, churches perhaps provide the most tangible link to New Sweden. Holy Trinity Church, better known locally as ‘Old Swedes’ in Wilmington, still stands near the site of Fort Christina, where Swedish settlers first landed in 1638. Additionally, Gloria Dei Church in Philadelphia, often called ‘Old Swedes Church’, remains one of the city’s oldest surviving buildings. It was here that Swedish was still being spoken until the middle of the 19th century, when the distinctiveness of the ethnic Swedes in South Philadelphia faded into the patchwork of the new nation.

Historically, Americans have been encouraged to think of themselves as rugged, self-made individuals, free to detach themselves from any place or history. Our national roots are comparatively shallow beside those of many nations, which claim their origins deep in antiquity and prehistory. Yet our landscape offers a different kind of lesson. Our towns and cities have distinctive personalities, sometimes born from the vision of their respective founders, sometimes the result of their political histories. Every community is built upon foundations laid by older ones, and is at times the unconscious heir of the forgotten past. We inherit places we did not build and civilizations whose origins we do not fully comprehend. Understanding the cultural layers of our own civilization deepens our attachment to it. To know a place well, to be a denizen of a specific locale, is to know something of those who loved it before us.

It is fitting that there are no surviving Swedish inscriptions. The cemeteries attached to old Swedish parishes are either in English or their texts have been washed away by four centuries of rain. The ancient Psalmist writes, “As for man, his days are as grass: as a flower of the field, so he flourisheth. For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone; and the place thereof shall know it no more” (Ps. 103:15–16). Such is the fate of New Sweden. Its people were scattered, absorbed into a larger American story that is still unfolding, and its institutions and cultural distinctions disappeared from the banks of the Delaware. The kingdom that sponsored the Swedish colony would never again possess a foothold in North America, and the descendants of its settlers gradually ceased to think of themselves as being Swedes at all. Like the weathered foundations of an old homestead hidden beneath newer construction, New Sweden is overlooked, woven so deeply into the fabric of the Delaware Valley that most who live there no longer recognize what they are standing on.

Image Credit: American Swedish Historical Museum

A friend—no dog lover himself—once described Magnolia as having kind eyes. It was true. She also had an outsized bark that led strangers to expect a massive German Shepherd, rather than the fifty-pound bundle of nerves that greeted them with sheepish curiosity when they entered our home. She was also a strikingly beautiful dog, fawn-colored with the statuesque head of a Weimaraner. My wife brought her home from a shelter when I was on a work trip. I returned to find a scared puppy hiding in her crate. I remember asking out loud, “Will this dog ever wag her tail?” And then one day my wife descended the stairs and Magnolia flattened her ears and her little tail started thrashing. When our children eventually arrived on the scene, she proved to be as patient as she was gentle, though she did develop a habit of filching their snacks in her twilight years. As my sister would say, “She’s retired from being a good girl.”

My kids are naturally curious about the eternal fate of our beloved pooch. Will we ever see her again? Will she look the same? If not, will we recognize her? Will she recognize us? As it happens, I do think we’ll see her again, but I’m hard-pressed to provide the kind of details they crave. Kids are never satisfied with platitudes. It’s one of the many reasons they’re such blessed misfits among adults. Not only has Magnolia crossed over. She’s managed to go bounding straight into the troubling territory of heaven.

“Heaven is a wonderful place, filled with glory and grace./I wanna see my Savior’s face,/’Cause heaven is a wonderful place./I wanna go there!” So begins a song from my childhood. The trouble with heaven is that we don’t want to get too specific, but we also don’t want to get too vague. No kid can desire a placeless place, but if you ruthlessly hammer home the fact that heaven bears no resemblance to anything we know here on earth, that same kid might well grow into the proverbial adult who prefers a lecture on heaven to crossing the actual pearly gates. In this sense, to exclude a deceased family pet is to exclude a vital part of a child’s world. Worse, to drill this message into the heart of a child is to cultivate lifelessness in their soul, and if heaven is anything at all, it’s filled to the brim with life.

Still, we get into trouble when we try too hard to locate heaven on a map. Down that road lie many traps—sentimentalism and kitsch on the one hand and idolatry and utopianism on the other. But we don’t want to dissolve it in the acid of over-spiritualization either. Heaven used to disturb me as a kid because, the opening children’s song notwithstanding, it didn’t seem like any kind of place at all. I felt I was being asked to get excited about some evanescent realm that was alien to everything I loved—the rich smell of grass in the summer, the big blue sky, the brush of my cat against my leg. Was it really a mark of spiritual maturity to outgrow my love for all these earthly things? In his Prelude, Wordsworth said the earth “is the place in which, in the end/We find our happiness, or not at all.” Belinda Carlisle says much the same thing in “Heaven is a Place on Earth,” admittedly in more colloquial terms.

Maybe we can make more headway if we think about Eden. W.H. Auden believed it was the duty of poets and critics to be forthright about their idea of Eden, since it constitutes an integral part of their aesthetic vision. True to his skills as a poet, Auden’s own description is replete with everything from landscape and climate to language and architecture. Personally, I always come up shorthanded in these exercises. This might have something to do with my background as a third-culture kid with no real homeland of my own, but I suspect the real problem is that I’m often “in my head” and have a tendency to drift through my physical environment like a Victorian ghost. There’s a story about Vladimir Nabokov quizzing a student about the type of tree outside his office window. When the unfortunate girl drew a blank, this imperious devotee of details replied that she would never be a writer. The story used to produce real despair in me. I desperately wanted to be a writer, but if someone repainted the walls in my office it’d be a miracle if I noticed it within a week. If Auden (or Nabokov) cornered me and asked me to describe my Eden, I might mutter something about the ocean or the mountains and then realize with horror that I was just describing a generic vacation spot.

Addressing the troubled hearts of his disciples, Jesus says, “Let not your heart be troubled; believe in God, believe also in Me. In my Father’s house are many dwelling places; if it were not so, I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also. (John 14:1-3)”

Jesus is talking about heaven and he uses the word place with all its specific hazards. It’s obvious that he’s not talking about a timeshare, a cruise, or an all-inclusive—all of our late-capitalist gropings for paradise. But he’s also not talking about a final destination. I think heaven is a kind of blessed waystation—the site of our fellowship with God before the divine consummation of history. Though we certainly don’t spurn heaven, we do await a new heavens and a new earth.

We may not be able to locate heaven on a map, but we can get a lot closer to a new heavens and a new earth. After all, we have before us a vast and teeming world. We know full well that it’s not all susurrous meadows and babbling brooks. Forget the fearsome symmetry of a tiger, how about the grotesque anatomy of a cockroach or the alien visage of an angler fish? Eat your heart out, H.R. Giger! Yes, our Lord made the galloping stallion, but he also made Leviathan. We may need a Wordsworth to sing nature’s praises, but we also need a Darwin and a Lovecraft to capture its wild and unwieldy dimensions. Look at the world one way and the view is majestic. Look at it another way and we see something closer to cosmic horror. Am I saying that the wedding supper of the lamb will also be swarming with flies? Not necessarily, but I am saying, however clumsily, that God is infinite and that the uncanny exuberance on display in our present world is only the tip of the creative iceberg. “I wanna go there!” Maybe a better line would be, “Buckle up!”

All that to return to the question posed with great emotional urgency by both of my children. Will our dog be present in the new heavens and the new earth? Put it this way: I can’t imagine a restored world without Magnolia in it.

Image Credit: Cameron McAllister

For example, the libertarian economist Murray Rothbard has criticized the idea of a just price (different from the market price) on those grounds: “Economics, by tracing the ordered pattern of the voluntary exchange process, has made it clear that the only possible objective criterion for the just price is the market price.”

What I want to suggest here is a way of understanding the idea of a just price that has no difficulty coexisting with modern price theory. (After I arrived at this understanding, my subsequent research showed me that I was not the first to do so. For example, see this paper by Pietro Maffettone, which contains references to earlier developments of this idea. Nevertheless, since this compatibility is not widely known, I hope my essay can do its bit to make it more so.)

Carl Menger, one of the founders of the marginalist revolution in economics, argues against this Aristotelian just-price tradition as follows:

the… error of regarding the quantities of goods in an exchange as equivalents. The result was incalculable damage to our science since writers in the field of price theory lost themselves in attempts to solve the problem of discovering the causes of an alleged equality between two quantities of goods.

And Menger attributes this error to Aristotle in particular, when he writes “The error of regarding the quantities of goods in exchange as equivalents was made as early as Aristotle.”

If Menger has properly understood Aristotle, then he is correct that the philosopher was mistaken. As I explained in Economics for Real People:

If two people exchange when they consider the value of what they are getting to be equal to the value of what they are giving up, there is no reason that they shouldn’t simply reverse the trade a moment later. If you sell your house for $200,000, then you valued $200,000 more highly than you did your house. Conversely, the buyer valued your house more highly than he did $200,000. Otherwise (ignoring transaction costs), there is no reason that, as soon as the exchange is made, you wouldn’t immediately take the house back and give up the $200,000. In fact, if the exchange took place at a point of equal valuation, there is no reason you and the other party shouldn’t swap the house back and forth any number of times.

However, let us pause for a moment and consider how exactly Aristotle defines a just price. He Aristotle develops the concept by proposing a reciprocity between a shoemaker and a farmer: “Let the farmer be α, his food γ, the shoemaker β, the work of his that is being equalized, δ; if it were not possible to have reciprocity in this way, then there would be no community.” Aquinas develops this further, positing that a transaction “should equally benefit both parties, so should be based on an equality of material exchange.”

I suggest a closer look at Aristotle’s text suggests that he meant something quite different than what Menger thought he meant. The key passage supporting my belief is the following: “To achieve proportional reciprocal giving, α must conjoin with δ and β with γ, and so, in the simplest sense, the equation must work out along the diagonal as α + δ = β + γ.”

Perhaps this image will elucidate his point.

I think this passage makes it clear that Aristotle is not claiming that the produce bought and the shoes used to buy it must be equal in value. Instead, the claim is that the satisfaction or utility the farmer gets from the shoes must in some sense be equal to that which the shoemaker gets from the produce.

What could this equality be, and how could we go about determining when we are close to it? Here, we will introduce the idea from economic theory of a bargaining range. Most transactions in any economy do not occur at a point where all of the gains from trade have nearly vanished. Most of the time, a seller can get a price somewhat higher than the absolute lowest price he would sell for. (That lowest price he would sell for is called the seller’s reservation price.) On the other side of the transaction, a buyer will often pay somewhat less than the absolute highest price he would pay for a good. (And that highest price is called the buyer’s reservation price.) The gap in between those two prices is the bargaining range; it is the area in which deals are made and negotiations occur.

Anyone who has sold and bought houses is familiar with this bargaining range. You might accept $250,000 for your house, a potential buyer might pay $300,000, you bargain for a while, and wind up agreeing on a price somewhere in between.

How does this relate to the just price? In the above situation, there is a $50,000 gain from trade available. The concept of a just price being forwarded here suggests that this gain should be split equally. (And note that this fits perfectly with Aquinas’s statement above: a transaction “should equally benefit both parties equally.”)

Let us say that I’m selling a rocking chair at a flea market, and a buyer makes me an offer of $12. But I was prepared to accept as little as $8. So here, the just price is approximately $10.

Now, I might notice that the potential buyer is a mother, with three young kids in tow, who does not look to be particularly well off, judging by the state of her and her kids’ clothes. Once I see that, as an act of charity, I might say “No, $10 is too much: just give me $6.” That, of course, is morally praiseworthy. But it is going above and beyond the just price: everyone should be encouraged to perform acts of charity, but everyone has some limit as to how many such acts they can perform. We cannot expect everyone to engage in acts of charity in every interaction they have throughout their entire lives.

This understanding offers us an insight into the pricing situation of an area that has just suffered a natural catastrophe. Increased prices for vital goods in such an area are typically a matter of great contention. Consider a place that has just experienced a terrible hurricane. The people there are in dire need of drinkable water, food staples, materials for rebuilding their houses, and more.

In response, many suppliers send those goods to that area, while charging a higher price than they would in other places. This leads to complaints about “price gouging”: these businesses are taking advantage of people’s distress, it is claimed, to earn high profits. In fact, majority of US states have passed laws forbidding what they take to be exorbitant price increases after a disaster, typically by specifying some maximum permissible percentage increase.

In response, defenders of free markets often point out that is the higher price that, in fact, motivates suppliers to redirect goods to the disaster-stricken area. If we follow the suggestion here that the just price is roughly in the middle of the bargaining range, then we can acknowledge some truth in both of the above positions.

It is certainly not right to take undue advantage of people who are already suffering. At the same time, businesses exist to make a profit: they are not the Red Cross or Habitat for Humanity. The doctrine of just price suggests that the price should be set where both parties are happy with the deal. The victims of the disaster should understand that it is perfectly reasonable, and, in fact, their best chance of getting the goods they need, to pay a somewhat higher price than normal in the wake of a disaster. Businesses, on the other hand, should not try to squeeze every penny they can out of those victims. The basic idea would be captured in the phrase, “let’s split the difference.”

So, if a lumber company would be willing to supply plywood to the affected area at a minimum price of $1 per square foot, while those in the affected area would be willing to pay up to $2 per square foot, then we might say that the just price is roughly $1.50.

I keep saying “roughly” and “approximately” because this is not a concept that will yield exact numerical answers! We are engaged in moral reasoning, not in mathematical calculation. The basic idea is that both parties should walk away feeling that they have each gained roughly the same amount from the transaction.

Furthermore, my understanding of a just price in these situations does not therefore yield any pat answer as to what the authorities ought to do in such a case. The authorities might always be tempted to play the populist card, and legally require that no price increase is permissible when selling goods in the disaster area. But that approach lacks prudence: it will, with very high probability, reduce the quantity of needed goods sent into that area. The government might instead, as many states do, set some percentage limit on the amount a price may increase in the emergency zone. But given the difficulty that officials will always face in determining the actual reservation prices of the buyer and the seller, such an attempt encounters a serious knowledge problem in determining where to set that percentage.

In any case, I do not mean to recommend any particular policy in such situations. Rather, my primary aim has been to show that there is a perfectly sensible meaning we can give to the notion of a just price, and this meaning is entirely compatible with modern economic theory. But furthermore, whether there is a useful policy application of this concept or not, I believe it offers a moral guide for how one should behave within the bargaining range.

As I was writing this essay, I closed a real estate deal to buy some land in South Carolina. After the closing, I called the seller and told him “It’s been a pleasure doing business with you.” And he responded, “And it has been with you as well.”

While I can’t put an exact numerical value on what a just price is in every situation, I can state with confidence that this mutual feeling of equal benefit, much as Aquinas recommended, is the result of negotiating with such a concept in mind.

Image Credit: Fernando Amorsolo, “Marketplace during the Occupation” (1942)

Why didn’t the guys want to dance? I guess if you’re not very good at it, you don’t really want to participate. You want to hide and not be the center of attention.

As I understand it, the situation used to be the exact opposite: people weren’t afraid of attention at a lovzar, but rather, they willingly accepted it.

Human attention works almost like magic. Anyone who’s performed in front of even a small crowd understands how powerful its effect is. It affects us on a biological level: we sweat, breathe faster, and experience stress. And so, khelkhar (this is another word for the dance, more precisely describing the dance itself, while lovzar means the whole festivity. Khelkhar translates as “dance”, lovzar as “game”) is also a powerful emotional experience. Because many people are watching you, dozens, maybe hundreds. Perhaps these guys felt that dancing wasn’t worth the stress.

The Courage to Participate

It’s rare to have the opportunity to look at another person, especially a stranger. Providing such an opportunity is one of the functions of dance. You voluntarily become the focus of everyone’s attention and accept it, saying, “This is how I behave and how I control my body. Draw your own conclusions.” Those observing have the opportunity to draw a brief portrait of them. The dance, gestures, and facial expressions reveal what kind of person they are, what their personality type is.

A peculiarity of North Caucasian dances is that the main moving body parts are the shoulders. Why is this interesting? In the ancient world and the Middle Ages, a common conception of consciousness was that it was divided into three parts. First came the head, or logos—the rational part of consciousness, responsible for calculation and logic. Then came the heart, or thumos—the part of consciousness associated with pride, ambition, courage, and egoism. And third eros, or the belly—responsible for desires and appetites.

The peculiarity of North Caucasian cultures is that they often emphasize ambition, pride, and respect for human dignity. I don’t think it’s surprising that in their dance, the main part of the body that moves is the heart area—the shoulders, arms, chest. Through the wide-set shoulders and straightened arms, you show your dignity, your own place, your point of view, you declare yourself in dance.

In Chechnya, when people meet, they hug, so to speak, only with the shoulders. People hug each other sideways, with one arm under the other’s. This also shows an emphasis on thumos. The younger person places their hand under the older person’s, regardless of power, wealth, or beauty, but in accordance with a “neutral” hierarchy. Age here functions as a neutral hierarchy, like a listing of something in alphabetical order.

Another characteristic of the dance is that people stand in a circle and clap. They celebrate their shared identity, acting as part of this group. It’s similar to how people at a football stadium stand in a circle around the field and clap. They dress in their team colors and congratulate each other on sharing the same identity.

Dancing also often involves wearing clothing that is characteristic of a particular identity. And this is not surprising, as we physically embody our identity through the very act of gathering and dancing together, thus celebrating our shared belonging to this group of people.

Structure and Liminality

Anthropologist Victor Turner studied “primitive” cultures, focusing on ritual events. He identifies two main states of society: the first is stable, when it is structurally organized, and the second is a transitional state of liminality. Liminality refers to a state of uncertainty and disorientation during rites of passage, when participants lose their previous status but have not yet acquired a new one. They are in a state of transition between two statuses. For people in a state of liminality, their sense of identity dissolves and new perspectives open up. Turner argues that liminality can be understood as a time and place of withdrawal from ordinary modes of social interaction, a period when the usual constraints of thought, self-understanding, and behavior are erased, and “the very structure of society is temporarily suspended.”

During liminality, society transitions to “communitas”—a state characterized by a sense of camaraderie and a strong emotional bond between a group of people experiencing the same transitional experience. In the normal, structured state of society, a hierarchical system of political, legal, and economic positions functions. In “communitas,” the community is unstructured and undifferentiated, a union of equal individuals subject to the authority of ritual elders.

A temporary suspension of familiar social hierarchies is necessary for the changes that occur during a transitional moment to truly take hold. For example, if someone in a village gets married, the social structure of the village may change, new family ties and dynamics may emerge. A liminal state is needed to “digest” this. Another example is when someone gets promoted at the office, everyone gathers and celebrates. Everyone needs to be aware of the new social dynamics in the office, and the moment of celebration is the liminal transition between the old and the new.

When social hierarchies are suspended, they are simulated and updated, as in children’s play or sports. This is one of our favorite activities—simulating and modeling situations. We constantly model real processes. And khelkhar is also a game where the processes occurring every day are simulated. Games, sports, and dance are these intermediate spaces of simulation.

Binary Symbolism of Dance

In Chechen and other North Caucasian dances, the circle in which the couple dances is arranged with women on one side and men on the other. If we imagine the man dancing on the women’s side and the woman on the men’s side, the entire arrangement would look like a yin-yang symbol from above. This is a coincidence, but it can be explained by the fact that this symbol also represented a model of reality as it was perceived in ancient times.

In general, when reading about the symbolism of Caucasian dances, people often talk about the eagle and the swan, or birds in general, or the sun and moon. All these are ways of describing the same dynamics. The man embodies the masculine archetype, which corresponds to both the sun and birds, or the element of air. And the woman embodies the feminine archetype, which corresponds to both the moon and the swan, as a water bird, or the element of water.

In the ancient world, many cultures understood reality as something composed of ideas and their realization. And everything works like this: first comes the principle, for example, the design of a chair, and then comes its realization—the chair. If you make five chairs from one design, you’ll get five slightly different realizations of that idea.

Ideas were associated with the sky, the sun, and the masculine principle. And realization, facts, and embodiment in physical, three-dimensional space were associated with the earth, or the feminine principle. Water in this cosmology was underground.

Therefore, the man in our dance is like the sun, or like an eagle that rises above all the birds. He seems to be above everyone, using the height and the light, dominating through his position.

In dance, a man simultaneously reacts to a woman and leads her. The woman, too, leads and reacts to a man. However, the woman’s movements are more fluid, while his are more angular. She, one might say, is running away from the man, yet simultaneously controlling him.

The masculine archetype is associated with ideas, creation, and work. Feminine energy, or the archetype, is associated with rest, restoration, and recreation. We work during the day when the sun is shining, concentrating on embodying our idea—for example, building a house—in physical material: bricks, clay, or earth. We take the earth as raw material, process it, and shape it to fit our idea. And in the evening, when the sun sets and the moon rises, we rest, dance, and recuperate. And that’s how all life works: first there’s an idea, then its realization (and then a renewal of that realization). At every moment of creation, a hierarchy is immediately established. Those who create better rise to the top. And dancing is a model of both processes—creation and recreation.

In this regard, the state of liminality corresponds to a chaotic state and water. Circular movements, like round objects, are less stable and correspond to the element of water, while square objects are more “hierarchical” (i.e., stable, their parts are more firmly connected) and correspond to solid ground. When a person dances, they also depart from the body’s usual state, when they walk in accordance with gravity or with a purpose—we usually go where we need to go. In khelkhar he moves without purpose, and part of the dance entails moving his legs as if he’s sliding, as if water had spilled on the floor (the term for this is “kog sharshbar”, which translates as “to slide the feet”). He departs from his usual structure, and during the dance, he finds himself in an intermediate, twilight state, where everything is slippery and uncertain. He also doesn’t always walk straight, in line with his body’s axis; he may go sideways, or backwards, or in circles—that is, without a goal or a clear hierarchy of priorities, as if he’s lost.

Archaeologist Lechi Ilyasov also wrote that the khelkhar expresses the eternal cycle of the sun and moon. Petroglyphs depicting circles and spirals are among the most common in Chechnya, and the couple’s movements during the dance also draw spirals.

Historian Said-Mokhmad Khasiev believed that in khelkhar the myth of the Minotaur and the labyrinth is expressed, which is confirmed by the couple’s spiraling movements in the dance. He also wrote that labyrinths, including spirals, have been featured in the ornamentation of North Caucasian cultures since ancient times, for example, among the Koban culture.

For the people of the Koban culture, Turner’s theory would have been very understandable, as they also believed that the cycle of life is expressed in the sun’s initial high rise—a time of concentration and stability—then its descent into the waters, when the world is renewed in the liminal nighttime, then for the day to return again. Khasiev also noted that when a man extends one arm to the side and raises the other above his head, bending it, he is thus depicting another solar symbol—the swastika.

Two Types of Dominance

Given these basic principles of dance, we can move on to the specific processes it simulates. These are the processes of establishing relationships between people, establishing status and competing for dominance, determining who sets the agenda, who defines what is good, and who gains the upper hand.

The unique feature of Chechen dance is that everyone performs in turns. Everyone is given the opportunity to express themselves and showcase their talent but without dominating the entire show or taking over the entire space. Space is always left for others to showcase themselves in fair competition.

So, theoretically, everyone gets what they’re entitled to—according to their merits and talents. And ideally, those who get less should accept it. And those who get more shouldn’t brag about it. And if everything goes as it should, everyone is satisfied with their lot and happy for others if they receive more attention. Then the group is characterized by cohesion and loyalty among its members.

There are two ways to stand out from others, or to dominate. They can be roughly described as ethical—through strength or power—and aesthetic—through beauty. The first is more associated with the masculine, the second with the feminine. ” I think here we have an example of what C.S. Lewis was talking about when he said that gender is more fundamental reality than organic life.

It may happen that someone wants to take over the entire conversation, to grab attention by force. For example, instead of honestly demonstrating their dancing skills, charisma, or humor, they might display signals of power. They might shout loudly, make sharp, aggressive gestures, or even do a somersault. These are all ways to show that you’re prepared to be aggressive in this competition and are willing to go to great lengths if it comes to violence. This is how you escalate the competition. And the quickest and easiest way to do this is to show off a weapon. Sometimes guys come out displaying a gun holstered on their belt. Throwing money on the dance floor is also an escalation of competition through the “exposure” of one’s wealth and power.

Historically, in the Caucasus, drawing a dagger from its sheath was forbidden, including in such situations, precisely because it signified a sudden escalation. When you display a weapon during a dance, you abruptly focus all attention on yourself. It’s as if you’re saying: even if I don’t deserve something, I’m willing to obtain it through violence. The design of the Caucasian shashka took this rule into account as it differed from, for example, the sabre. The shashka is drawn with a forward motion (not upward, like a sabre), and the strike is delivered at the same pace. Drawing the shashka and the strike are a single motion, with no room for bluffing in between.

Someone who “escalates the situation” can become a more significant person—gaining more authority, more space in the social structure. This is a path through ethics, or through its violation, through a distorted understanding of power and dominance. This way, you can carve out a place for yourself, and this can change your life: connections, status, attention, relationships—to the point where a girl might choose someone who is stronger.

Another aspect of provocative behavior is that the provocateur demonstrates their willingness to push boundaries because they are confident that no one can or will dare to put them in their place. In anthropology, this is called a costly signal. For a signal to be credible, it must be costly or risky, because you risk being expelled.

This disrupts the state of liminality, or uncertain status, and introduces signals from the normal, “stable” state of society, where someone is stronger or richer. This contradicts the fundamental meaning of the entire event. It is an escalation of competition in ethical terms.

There’s another type of escalation, through aesthetics. Here, we can talk about how girls (mostly) express themselves through beauty. They also compete with each other, and dance is their chance to show off and gain attention.

And if this is done meritocratically, when everyone is given a chance, and no one takes all the attention for themselves, then society functions more harmoniously. Then everyone can handle both victory and defeat calmly. Then society remains cohesive, and it maintains a unified identity.

But if someone starts to hog too much attention—as with the guys through weapons or with the girls through excessive displays of beauty—an unfair escalation occurs. There, power was gained through excessive displays of force; here, it’s gained through excessive displays of beauty. It’s a kind of “cheating.” Tension arises: pride on one side, envy on the other. This “rope” stretches and breaks the group. Therefore, those with an advantage must curb their pride, and those with less must curb their envy. Our modern notion that everyone deserves equal conditions would have seemed strange to ancient people. We are all born different, and we live different, very unequal lives. They saw the solution as not trying to make everyone equal but rather not attaching so much importance to someone’s beauty or wealth, including one’s own.

The “most bombing” of the Caucasus

About 15 years ago, videos featuring rich young people dancing called “самые бомбящие Кавказа”, or the most bombing of the Caucasus became exremely popular. It really just meant the coolest of the Caucasus, i.e. the richest and the most beautiful. They exemplified this escalation of competition—the guys through displays of wealth, i.e., power, and the girls through displays of beauty. They “bombed,” that is, they greatly escalated the situation at lovzar. Generally, two narratives can be identified at lovzar, which simulate two narratives in real life. The first is about fair competition without escalation, the second is about excessive displays of power or beauty. These guys were pulling lovzar’s narrative in the second direction. The fact that we agreed with them, judging by the number of views on their videos, speaks poorly of us.

Similar to the rule about unsheathing a blade, there used to be a tradition surrounding the uncovering of a woman’s head and hair. When a woman threw her scarf during a dispute between men, they would stop. This tradition has several interesting aspects.

The fact is, men can fall into a “ladder of escalation” when one signals dominance, and the other doesn’t accept it. They can find themselves in a situation where the only response to each escalation is further escalation, because the one who tries to “calm the situation” ends up losing, unwilling to accept the potential consequences of escalation. One of the functions of a woman removing her headscarf is to allow both sides to escape the situation without losing face, that is, out of respect for her, not out of fear of potential consequences for themselves.

Perhaps not everyone who found themselves in such a situation resorted to this step. Perhaps women, when witnessing a conflict, assessed the participants to determine whether it was worth intervening.

Likewise, men may not have listened to every woman. If a disrespected woman rushed to break up the fight, she might have had her opinion disregarded. The emphasis on removing the headscarf makes one think so. Symbolically, at this moment, she’s doing the same thing they do when their conflict escalates. With each iteration of the escalation, they raise the stakes, demonstrating their readiness to accept the consequences until they go all in. She, too, is placing a bet between them, symbolically putting her “female reputation” on the line. She goes all in and instantly defuses the situation, symbolically sacrificing herself. Therefore, I think it’s important what kind of reputation the woman who did this had; a simple passerby couldn’t have pulled off such an incredible feat. She differs from the “most bombing of the Caucasus” in that she was putting her reputation on the line to de-escalate the situation in order to save other people, and the “most bombing” put their reputation on the line to gain more dominance.

You might get the impression that these interpretations are arbitrary, and there are many possible other ways to interpret all of this. Perhaps, but what seems important to me is that all these aspects of the interpretation fit together to form a coherent picture. In our interpretation, everything is built around organizing fair competition without escalating conflict. This creates a competition where there is room for everyone. Everyone comes out, plays their part, and humbly returns, without hogging all the attention. Some emerge superior, some inferior. And those who are superior don’t boast about it or allow their pride to overcome them. And those who lose don’t allow their envy to overcome them and also come to terms with their position.

A simplified way to look at it is to divide society 50-50 into the more successful and the less successful, even if in reality this isn’t the case and everything is more complex. Symbolically speaking, these more successful 50% establish order in society and define its structure—cities, villages, streets. And then they receive feedback, reflection. When one of the “successful” dances, that is, presents themselves, everyone evaluates them. In life, as in the simplified simulation of life—dance—it’s determined if the current order of things suits everyone, and the top 50% receive positive feedback. If so, the current order will continue for another generation, as women will “choose” them, and they will repeat themselves. If not, and women prefer someone less successful, from the periphery, the order of things can be renewed.

This is a very popular motif in fairy tales, myths, and film. The plot often revolves around a girl choosing between a more successful and a less successful man. The more successful man represents the current order of things, the center and stability, while the less successful man represents liminality, the periphery, and a state of transition, and the girl chooses between them.

The Hero’s Journey into Liminal Space

We may have accumulated enough aspects and layers in our dance, but there’s another one to consider. Fairy tales and myths from different cultures feature recurring motifs. The most frequently recurring male motif in fairy tales and myths is the hero’s journey. He sets out for an unknown place, undergoes a trial, and returns home with new knowledge or valuables. While not quite similar, a frequently recurring female motif is the dance at a ball.

While the hero undergoes a test of strength—confronting a monster, where he usually always emerges victorious—the heroine’s test of “beauty” involves attending a ball, where she usually emerges as the most beautiful. Accordingly, both of these motifs play out simultaneously in the khelkhar. The boy abandons his familiarity and enters a transitional, twilight state to undergo the test. The girl also undergoes her own test, where it is revealed whether she is a princess or a slob, as aunts and stepmothers claim. Both processes are added to the list of everything simulated in the khelkhar.

As I understand it, the khelkhar was an intermediate space where these processes were simulated and orchestrated so that society maintained a sense of belonging and prevented pride and envy from tearing it apart. Through shared participation, people reproduced their identity, allowing each other space to be the center of attention, achieve success, and earn a reputation—either through ethical or aesthetic dominance.

And those guys we started with, the ones standing above and simply watching the dancing—they essentially refuse to participate. Which means they refuse to carry on the identity of this group. And because of this, that cultural identity is under threat.

Image Credit: Sahab Shamilov

Both reasons proved true for me when I read Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death for the first time earlier this year. When I began, I wasn’t convinced that I needed to read this book for myself. I grew up hearing references to Postman frequently in sermons and talks, so I assumed I already understood his central thesis: digital technologies are degrading our ability to think and live well. I didn’t doubt the importance of this thesis, just the usefulness of spending time unpacking a mostly outdated book. Little did I know how wrong I was.

From the very first pages, I began to realize that Amusing Ourselves to Death held more depth than I had assumed. Postman lays out his thesis right at the outset: “Huxley, not Orwell, was right.” The contrast in view is between the dystopic visions of George Orwell’s 1984 and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World—that is, in Huxley’s summary as quoted by Postman, between a dystopia in which people are controlled by pain and ruined by hate, and one in which they are controlled by pleasure and ruined by love. Postman elaborates on the crucial differences:

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance.

Postman’s central concern in Amusing Ourselves to Death is that television didn’t only provide plentiful cheap entertainment; it also absorbed all serious information and discussion into its communicative logic and gave us so much of what we liked that we could no longer function as we ought. As a media scholar, Postman understood that television, like all technologies, could never be truly neutral: “in every tool we create, an idea is embedded that goes beyond the function of the thing itself.” News, religion, politics, education: as each became televised, it assimilated to the over-arching form of televised entertainment, thereby losing its ability to make a unique contribution to human culture.

Postman identifies television as the “command center” of the media and communications culture of the 1980s: “There is no audience so young that it is barred from television. There is no poverty so abject that it must forgo television. There is no education so exalted that it is not modified by television…. Television arranges our communications environment for us in ways that no other medium has the power to do.” As an “ironic” example, Postman points to the computer: although it was being referred to as “the technology of the future,” in Postman’s view “the most important fact about computers and what they mean to our lives is that we learn about all of this from television. Television has achieved the status of ‘meta-medium’—an instrument that directs not only our knowledge of the world, but our knowledge of ways of knowing as well.” Postman could scarcely have imagined just how ironic this example would turn out to be!

When I first read this metaphor of television as the command center, I wanted to laugh at the idea that television, of all things, could be so central to American life and thought. Television’s place in my life has never been much more than negligible, so I can hardly imagine it directing our uses of other media and our very ways of knowing! Yet there is a technology that very much fits that description: the Internet. Only substitute “the Internet” for “television,” and Postman’s description of the command center suddenly sounds eerily true. In fact, the Internet is more of a “command center” than television ever was. With the Internet, I don’t just learn “what movies to see, what books, records and magazines to buy, what radio programs to listen to;” I actually buy those things online, and in many cases I consume them online too. In my home we don’t have a cable box or network subscription, just a TV monitor and an HDMI cable to the nearby desktop, so even the relatively little television I watch comes through the Internet.

As I continued to read Amusing Ourselves to Death, I found myself wrestling to make sense of how Postman’s critique of digital technologies could be simultaneously laughable, prophetic, and understated. And I ultimately concluded that the differences between the Television Age and the Internet Age are just as illuminating as their similarities. In what follows, I’ll unpack this by considering three features of electronic media (which includes both television and the Internet): 1. Electronic media is based on images rather than words. 2. Electronic media is fast and decontextualized. 3. Electronic media is driven by what is entertaining.

Electronic media is image-based

Postman mourns the transition from word-based communication (e.g. pamphlets, letters, and books, but also speeches and debates) to image-based communication. He argues that prior generations, steeped in a print culture, were able to attend to and understand complex sentences and chains of reasoning even when presented in an oral form, such as the multi-hour Lincoln Douglas debates. Television, in contrast, privileged visual appeal over reason, even in areas like politics and religion that should be based on rationality. For example, in a television world, more photogenic candidates and preachers fare better, regardless of the merits of what they actually say; likewise, the credibility of TV news is more a matter of the newscaster’s attractiveness than anything else.

Postman’s reason for preferring word-based over image-based communication is, in a word, reason. He claims that reason is amplified by long-form alphabetic writing (what he called “typography”). According to Postman, written language necessarily fosters rationality because it privileges meaning and because it can be held at a distance in order to be examined and argued with:

Almost all the characteristics we associate with mature discourse were amplified by typography, which has the strongest possible bias toward exposition: a sophisticated ability to think conceptually, deductively, and sequentially; a high valuation of reason and order; an abhorrence of contradiction; a large capacity for detachment and objectivity; and a tolerance for delayed response.

I am a philosopher by both disposition and training. I cut my philosophical teeth on Christian apologetics, and I come from the particular strand of Protestantism that takes the Second Commandment (“thou shalt make no images”) most seriously. I love reasoning, logic (both formal and informal), and careful analysis and argumentation. And yet Postman’s unqualified preference for human reason and its handmaiden, alphabetic writing, made me deeply uncomfortable. Why?

Here is my best answer: for all my love of logic, I know well that human reason makes a powerful tool but a poor god. In the words of sixteenth century French polymath Blaise Pascal (my organization’s namesake), “Two excesses: to exclude reason; to admit nothing but reason.” In his effort to show that a television culture commits the former error, Postman himself commits the latter. It was startling that Postman makes no mention of the atrocities that have been committed in the name of rationality (and democracy and capitalism), nor of the many cross-cultural differences in ways of knowing and ways of communicating. Nowhere does his account of written language leave room for imaginative uses of language, such as poetry and story. Does a nursery rhyme have meaning in the same way that a policy brief does, or is it closer to a television advertisement? While I agree with Postman that making decisions based on reason is typically preferrable to the alternatives, I also know that human beings cannot wholly separate thought from desire or habit.

Keeping these concerns in mind, we are now ready to ask what becomes of Postman’s preference for words in the transition from television to the Internet. At first glance, the Internet Age appears to further entrench the dominance of images. What, after all, are YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram if not an endless stream of visual appeal? But it only takes a moment to realize that reality is more complicated than that. I wrote nearly all of this essay on a computer. You are, I can say with near certainty, reading it on a computer or computer-like device. The birth of the Internet has facilitated a revival of written language even as it has seen a proliferation of images and videos. These coexist and interweave because the Internet is a more complex technology than television. True, most Internet-based writing hardly rises to the high standards of rationality that Postman desired. But, as we have just noted, printed writing too can range from children’s stories and political doggerel to extended philosophical or theological argumentation. The breadth of linguistic expression available through the Internet is not a critique of the Internet, so much as it is a critique of Postman’s simplistic equivalency between alphabetic writing and reason.

Of course, none of this means that the Internet is above critique. In response to those who insist that “there is more printed matter available today than ever before,” Postman points out that “from the seventeenth century to the late nineteenth century, printed matter was virtually all that was available,” and therefore the loss of this “monopoly” of the printed word must be recognized even as print continues to enjoy widespread popularity. Just so, it cannot be denied that watching YouTube shorts has made it harder for me not only to read and write longform essays like this one, but even to watch YouTube videos longer than three minutes. Every part of the media ecology affects every other part.

Not only that, but the sheer volume of written content available online is precisely part of the problem. Postman argues, “The influence of the printed word in every arena of public discourse [during the Typographic Age] was insistent and powerful not merely because of the quantity of printed material but because of its monopoly.” I push the point further: the power of the printed word was as much in its scarcity as in its dominance over other forms of communication. As Postman later points out, in

a culture that provides little opportunity for leisure … [t]here would have been little casual reading, for there was not a great deal of time for that. Reading would have had a sacred element in it, or if not that, would have at least occurred as a daily or weekly ritual invested with special meaning…. What reading would have been done was done seriously, intensely, and with steadfast purpose.

Faced today with an uncountable abundance of words (both printed and electronic), how much of our reading is “casual” rather than “serious”? And how much reading do we intend to do but never get around to? For every article like this one that you do actually read (thank you!), the Internet will provide you with half a dozen more that you could read, that would likely be at least as interesting and edifying as this one. Don’t believe me? Just scroll to the bottom of this page and count the links.

The bulk of our reading today is casual not simply because there is so much we can choose to read, but because what we do read is connected not to any enduring chain of argument or cultural project, but merely to the preoccupation of the moment. This leads us directly to the next feature of electronic media that Postman critiques.

Electronic media is fast and decontextualized

Postman charges electronic media with producing “information glut” by making information available to us without reference to any context, either of other information or of action we might want or need to take: “For the first time, we were sent information which answered no question we had asked, and which, in any case, did not permit the right of reply.” For Postman, this decontextualization of information clearly accompanied the transition from word-based to image-based communication because language argues about the abstract while images merely present particulars. Yet his own historical account belies this idea. He locates the origin of decontextualized information not with the image-centric television but with an information technology that, more than any other, absolutely necessitated alphabetic language: the telegraph. According to Postman,

The telegraph made a three-pronged attack on typography’s definition of discourse, introducing on a large scale irrelevance, impotence, and incoherence. These demons of discourse were aroused by the fact that telegraphy gave a form of legitimacy to the idea of context-free information; that is, to the idea that the value of information need not be tied to any function it might serve in social and political decision-making and action, but may attach merely to its novelty, interest, and curiosity. The telegraph made information into a commodity, a ‘thing’ that could be bought and sold irrespective of its uses or meanings.

Postman asserts that print culture “would have withstood [the] assault” of the telegraph had the photograph not been invented at almost the same time. Of course, this is mere counterfactual speculation; we can never know for sure. Regardless, in the context of the newspaper, the telegraph and the photograph worked together to convey the idea that they were telling us something we really needed to know: “Thus [the photograph] provided the illusion, at least, that ‘the news’ [delivered by telegraph] had a connection to something within one’s sensory experience. It created an apparent context for the ‘news of the day.’ And the ‘news of the day’ created a context for the photograph.” The symbiotic relationship of words and images in the newspaper further confirms that decontextualization can be a feature of either.

Despite this critique of his historical narrative, Postman’s observations about immediate access to irrelevant information certainly sound a prophetic note today. Simply substitute “social media” for “telegraph” in this quote: “The telegraph is suited only to the flashing of messages, each to be quickly replaced by a more up-to-date message. Facts push other facts into and then out of consciousness at speeds that neither permit nor require evaluation.” I have often tried to revisit a social media post, only to discover that it had disappeared into the shifting sands of my news feed. Not to mention how often auto-refresh has changed the page out from under my very eyes! The social media platforms of today also offer no effective way to sort relevant content in proximity to one another, so cute baby videos and food pics jostle side-by-side with protest announcements and war updates. It is not just the case that each individual post is decontextualized but that the interface itself produces a decontextualization soup. Postman’s newscasters at least had to signal the shift to a new topic verbally with their “Now…This” catchphrase; today’s social media consumers need only scroll to the next post.

Beyond the specific ways that social media platforms work to flatten widely disparate content, the rest of the Internet also lends itself to speed and decontextualization. A fiction novel or philosophical work will sit calmly on my shelf for years, even decades, until the right moment arrives for me to read it. (So, for that matter, will a photo album or a book of comics—two repositories of well-contextualized images.) The Internet offers no such guarantees. Pages and whole websites can be edited with ease or even disappear into thin air. Moreover, most content-producing platforms—from large streaming sites like Netflix and Disney+ to podcasts and even small magazines like Front Porch Republic—feel pressure to update their offerings frequently or risk losing their audience’s fickle attention. In part, this is because of our own media habits. We understand content as something that we consume rather than something we savor, ponder, examine, evaluate. So we expect a constant stream of novelty rather than a steady pool of excellence. (Could it be that the toddler demanding the fiftieth rewatch of the same Bluey episode has better media habits than the rest of us?) But that same constant stream of novelty in turn trains us to pay attention only to what is most recent, disregarding the rest. How many of you are reading this essay more than a few weeks after it is first posted?

At the same time, it’s possible to see the very connectivity of the Internet as an antidote to decontextualization. Just as the Internet permits more extended, alphabetic, logical discourse than television does, so too it supports a richer network of interconnected information. I can attach links to corroborate and contextualize any claim that I make. There are real gains here, not only over television but even over print-based discourse, where each book or letter or pamphlet can in principle stand apart from any other. Yet we must not allow these gains to obscure the fact that this very proliferation of links contributes to the problem of information overload. As another tech critic, Nicholas Carr, has pointed out, “Information overload has become a permanent affliction, and our attempts to cure it just make it worse. The only way to cope is to increase our scanning and our skimming, to rely even more heavily on the wonderfully responsive machines that are the source of the problem.” Every hyperlink that provides valuable confirmation and contextualization also nudges me to skim faster so that I can take in all the available information.

Overall, then, speed and decontextualization are very much problems for the Internet Age, no less than the Telegraph Age and the Television Age. The root cause of these problems is the overwhelming volume of content available to us online. As we grow more weary from trying to stay on top of it all, we find ourselves looking for a break, something that will keep us amused without requiring us to think too hard. And electronic media provides.

Electronic media is entertaining

We come now to what I take to be the heart of Postman’s argument: television as a medium turned every kind of programming into entertainment: “The problem is not that television presents us with entertaining subject matter but that all subject matter is presented as entertaining, which is another issue altogether.” In particular, Postman raises concerns about the amusement-ification of four areas of culture that he believed ought to be treated much more seriously: news, politics, religion, and education. I’ll focus here on my own field of education.

Unsurprisingly, I share Postman’s disdain for cutesy, prepackaged “educational” television (or computer programs), especially if they are treated as a substitute for real interaction with a caring teacher rather than as entertainment that also happens to convey some interesting information. And it is certainly true that learning to live within limits and to take consideration for the future (much less for other people) is difficult and even unpleasant, especially when every other part of our culture (including our technologies) pushes us in the opposite direction. But Postman goes farther: not merely deflating the hype around educational television, but implying that education should be not just hard but unpleasant, and that making learning enjoyable inherently makes it less effective.

Education philosophers have assumed that becoming acculturated is difficult because it necessarily involves the imposition of restraints…. Indeed, Cicero remarked that the purpose of education is to free the student from the tyranny of the present, which cannot be pleasurable for those, like the young, who are struggling hard to do the opposite—that is, accommodate themselves to the present.

But there is no reason to assume that making learning easier and more enjoyable necessarily makes it less effective—only that we should not substitute an easy but less educational path for a harder one that involves real learning.

In fact, this idea of substitution is key to the whole issue. Postman was not opposed to entertainment for entertainment’s sake. I doubt he would even be opposed to the kind of educational YouTube channels that I enjoy—provided that I am using them to make my entertainment educational rather than to make my education entertaining. In other words, I wouldn’t want a practicing lawyer or nutritionist to get their information only from YouTube—any more than I would want to stop wrestling with difficult but important books in my own fields of study. But if slick graphics, musical backing, and fast-paced voice-overs help me learn a little legal theory and food science, is there any harm in that?

Maybe not for a grown adult enjoying a few videos to wind down at the end of the day. But content sites like YouTube make the substitution of education for entertainment not only unavoidable but often unnoticed. For example, although YouTube can be blocked on school-issued Chromebooks, the mix of educational and entertaining content available on YouTube incentivizes schools to leave the site unblocked, without any effective means for monitoring whether students are actually using it only for research during school hours.

The same problem of substitution plagues Postman’s other cultural domains: news, politics, and religion. The hyper-connective and functionally infinite Internet can be an asset in each of these domains, just as it can be for education. Yet those very same features make it nearly impossible to separate profitable from superfluous uses of the Internet. Like many younger Americans, I get a significant portion of my news coverage (not to mention my political views) from social media. But I don’t go searching intentionally for this information, as genuinely valuable as it is; rather, it comes to me, or not, at the mercy of the algorithm, which interleaves the silly and the serious into a single “news feed.” When a citizen of the Peek-a-Boo World tuned in to cable news or a popular televangelist, they at least knew what they had signed up for. When I open up Instagram, I literally never know what I will see. I may be informed, edified, or challenged—but no matter what else, I can always expect to be amused.

The Internet Age: Amusement Goes Supernova

Near the end of Amusing Ourselves to Death, Postman turns briefly from television to computers:

Although I believe the computer to be a vastly overrated technology, I mention it here because, clearly, Americans have accorded it their customary mindless inattention; which means they will use it as they are told, without a whimper. Thus, a central thesis of computer technology—that the principal difficulty we have in solving problems stems from insufficient data—will go unexamined. Until, years from now, when it will be noticed that the massive collection and speed-of-light retrieval of data have been of great value to large-scale organizations but have solved very little of importance to most people and have created at least as many problems for them as they may have solved.

The computers of Postman’s day were little more than word processers: they had not yet been connected to one another via the Internet, and no one could have imagined how easily everyday people would be able to produce and consume content and connect with one another via personal computers and smartphones. Bearing this in mind, Postman’s prescience in this brief remark is astonishing. After all, what differences stand out most clearly between the Age of Television and the Age of the Internet? Surely two of the starkest are the proliferation and accessibility of media choices—Postman’s “massive collection and speed-of-light retrieval of data.” It is precisely these two factors that make Postman’s portrait of the whole family joined around the TV set for the nightly news appear quaint, even nostalgic. As we each sit glued to the bespoke streams on our own personal devices, available at any time of the day or night, we might wish for a return to the centrality of television. As Carr poignantly observes, “People weren’t carrying TVs in their pockets and pulling them out every few minutes. With smartphones, all time is prime time.”

If television turned everything into entertainment by requiring shows to attract a wide audience that expected to be entertained, the Internet further trivializes all “content” by offering a functional infinity of novelty and stimulation. Unlike television channels, the algorithms of today have no incentive to show us anything that will not appeal to our precise demographic, and infinite scroll has no natural breaks to nudge us to take a walk, pick up a book, or talk to a human being. It is true that I can access (relatively) longform analysis of current events or politics or religion via YouTube or podcasts; competition for viewership and ad revenue notwithstanding, the niche audiences of the Internet do enable certain kinds of content to, if not thrive at least survive, that would never have “made it” in a network television market. But I don’t have to choose such serious discourse instead of yet another dumb cat video. Nothing in the app pushes me to choose one over the other or judges me for my choice.

As Postman points out, “The television screen wants you to remember that its imagery is always available for your amusement and pleasure” (emphasis added). This constant availability has only grown exponentially with the advent of the Internet. It is now truer than ever that “we are never denied the opportunity to amuse ourselves.” In fact, not only is digital entertainment available to us at any hour of the day or night, but we now have infinite options for how to amuse ourselves online. This is the crucial difference between Postman’s day and ours; understanding the Internet as an amusement supernova is the real value in reading Amusing Ourselves to Death today.

Image Credit: Erró

Affectionately known by her grandchildren as “Lulu,” I knew Katherine Walbert Walker, of Oklahoma City, only as “Aunt Kathy.” Although we only saw each other a few times a year, I can’t remember a time I didn’t know and love Kathy.

As her obituary makes clear, Kathy Walker lived an extraordinary life of “purpose, grace, and generosity.” She received many accolades and held elected public office. Anchored by her Christian faith and commitment to her local church, she was also a lifelong volunteer, community servant, and leader.

She was a devoted wife to my Uncle Russ, and a celebrated mother to my cousins Katherine, Lizzy, Rosie, and Russell. Each of the kids eulogized her beautifully at the funeral service celebrating her life.

As her nephew of nearly forty years, I will not remember Kathy because of the roles that led to the awards or the appellation “Madam Mayor.” Rather, I will remember Kathy because she excelled in those roles that allowed her to be with the family and friends she cherished so deeply, namely: hostess and gatherer.

My mother and father (who is Kathy’s husband’s brother) divorced more than thirty years ago. In the wake of the divorce, I suppose I wouldn’t have faulted Kathy if she had opted to keep us on the outside looking in, opting for a kind of familial “social distancing” long before that phrase became part of our common parlance on account of COVID-19. But she never did. Despite my parents’ divorce, for more than forty years we were always welcome at Kathy’s place—my mother and my father, my brother and my sister, and, of course, me.

Kathy’s hospitality grew as our families did. In 2015, I got hitched to Abby. Abby hails from south of the Red River and earned her undergraduate degree in Austin, from the School That Shall Not Be Named. But not even a proud Longhorn could deter Kathy.

No, Aunt Kathy lovingly welcomed Abby into the fold right from the get-go. Abby and I never talked about it, but I know Kathy’s kindness and warmth meant something to her. Upon learning of Kathy’s death, Abby immediately texted the family: “I am so sad to hear this. Kathy was always so kind to me, she will be missed!” For this Sooner-born-and-bred family of ours, Kathy’s willing embrace of Abby was as compelling an argument for the existence of God as Anselm’s is in the Proslogion.

Starting seven years ago, Abby and I poisoned the family’s Sooner bloodline with offspring born of the womb of a Texas Ex, and we’ve spawned several additional little Bevo fans since then. But not even that altered Kathy’s disposition toward us: She graciously threw—and hosted—a baby shower for our firstborn, and she remained interested in all our children’s lives till her untimely death. If that doesn’t epitomize true love, nothing does.

But it wasn’t just a family thing. Over the years, the Walkers often dined with Mère (Kathy’s mother), Cousin Tom, Nat, Marilyn Meade, and Dee Colley. The Conroys and Buxtons and Berklacys always had seats and placards, assuming they were in town. Various members of the Bob and Nancy Anthony family were wont to join us, and I have faint memories of occasional sightings of the Schonwalds, the Sullivans, and the Weirs. There were countless others. One time Megan Mullally and Nick Offerman even stopped by. (For Parks and Recreation fans: No, Mr. Offerman didn’t demand all the bacon and eggs Kathy had, but I digress.)

Whether for Thanksgiving dinner, Easter brunch (epic Easter egg hunts included!), or assorted special events, truly all were welcome at Russ and Kathy’s. Always on account of Kathy’s gracious, and nearly always late, invitation.

Kathy really was the most gracious host, an exemplar of hospitality on the order of Abraham. Genesis 18 recounts Abraham’s encounter with three strangers. After making sense of their approach, Abraham immediately rushes to welcome them, offering rest, refreshment, and a feast. The lesson, as my pastor has described it, is that guests, especially unexpected ones, are not merely folks to accommodate but gifts to treasure and receive. Abraham treated hospitality not as a chore but as a privilege and joy. Kathy did too.

At Kathy’s place, meals were often served on fine China on top of crisp ivory tablecloths, and they were accompanied by gleaming flatware (including the tiniest little condiment spoons!) and lavish table settings. At Kathy’s place, Thanksgiving football games were caught by dipole antenna (into the early aughts, mind you). At Kathy’s place, guests tended to dress to the nines (apart from my father, who has been wearing his own version of athleisure for decades). Spring and summer meant bright pastels and seersucker; it was cashmere and khaki if the leaves or snow had already fallen. At Kathy’s place, craft beer and homemade cocktails were served in slightly frosted KAΘ-stamped glasses, a beverage napkin always clinging to the condensation. At Kathy’s place, we heard holiday prayers—always delivered by the paterfamilias, first by Barth (my grandfather), then by Uncles Russ—worthy of collection and publication in a volume all their own. All this and more. These are things I won’t soon forget.

Even after Kathy and Russ moved into a condominium following the sale of the Hillcrest house they called home for more than 50 years, we continued to find ourselves at “Kathy’s place.” Just this spring Kathy hosted a reception at The Commons #1 for no reason other than to “give us all a chance to visit with family and remember” Barbara, my uncle’s cousin’s late wife, whom the extended family laid to rest on a windy day last March.

Of course, things weren’t perfect—even at Kathy’s place.

Very often there were heated political debate, sibling rivalries, and overindulgence of all kinds. Meals were rarely served on time, and they often featured gourmet items my ten-year-old self could have done without. (I have vivid memories of being particularly terrified of one Thanksgiving’s chilled butternut squash soup.)

Over the decades there was an oversalted ham and an overcooked turkey or two, one of which my Uncle Russ audibly described as “tougher than an old boot” as he tried, but totally failed, to delicately carve it.

But who cares.

Imperfection is part and parcel of our lot till the Lord calls us home. Besides, it’s always the imperfections that make for the best stories, isn’t it?

My Uncle Russ, my cousins, and our extended family are still grieving. But what a joy it is to know that after nearly eighty years of life—vivid life—marked out and hemmed in by marriage, parenting and grandparenting, friendship, worship, service, and yes, much hostessing, “Lulu,” my hospitable Aunt Kathy, has been called home.

In the Lord’s providence, I trust her happiest moments in this life—gathered around a table with family and friends—will come to fruition again in the next. Although she’ll have to wait for now, one day soon she’s going to be welcomed bodily into her eternal home. Then and there, she’ll be seated at Someone else’s table and invited to feast on a meal prepared not by her, but for her.

Rest easy, Aunt Kathy. We’ll all sup together again soon.

Image Credit: Georgia O’Keeffe, “Lake George Reflection” (1922)

I spoke recently with Leah about a talk she gave at a Front Porch Republic conference, wherein she built on this idea of dependence through a theological lens: We are finite creatures made by an infinite God, and our finitude teaches us not only who we are in relation to God, but also of the love of our Creator. For Christians especially, it should be clear that the goal of human life is not to eliminate suffering altogether, but to be present in the other’s suffering, to serve and love one another, just as our Creator suffered for us for the sake of love.

This idea affects every area of our lives, from our everyday choices of how to run a household, to how we treat our neighbors, to how we rule the household of a town, state, and nation. And we can begin right where we are: Leah concludes with practical tips of what we can do now to serve our neighbors and be served by them. (Leah’s book Building the Benedict Option: A Guide to Gathering Two or Three Together in His Name contains more practical tips and wisdom on how to serve others from within our own limitations.) To ask for help from persons, rather than a search engine, is a crucial part of recognizing the dignity of our neighbor’s humanity, and of our irreplaceable need for personal relationships.

Tessa Carman: Leah, you spoke recently at a Front Porch Republic conference on “The Gift of Finitude.” Can you explain briefly how we should see being finite, being limited, as a gift, rather than, say, a curse?

Leah Libresco Sargeant: I’d say, first, before we weigh whether it’s a gift or a curse, we should start by admitting it’s true. Pretending we are not what we are—finite, dependent creatures—limits our freedom to act rightly in the world. It’s always harder to act justly if you start with a false understanding of the human person.

Finitude might be tragic if we were creatures without a creator, but we are not. Our limitedness is a pointer to God’s infinite love and our potential to participate in His plan for the world as subcreators. Our physical limits turn us outward, towards each other and ultimately toward God. The noisiness and obviousness of our physical need (in infancy, in illness, in injury, etc.) help us practice the habits that allow us to recognize our moral neediness.

TC: What does it mean to be a created being? How should being a creature inform the way we understand ourselves?

LLS: Being a created being means recognizing we live in relationship. As Psalm 139 says, “For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made.” Before we attain any merit through our deeds, we are loved into being. God loves us perfectly and knows us perfectly. Each of our mothers knows us only dimly in pregnancy—a beloved stranger she wants to see face to face—and begins a love that depends not on merit, but on givenness.

I find the metaphor of stewardship very helpful. Life, and being itself, is a gift placed in our hands. We want to take care of ourselves, for our own sake, but also as a way of returning love back to God, loving ourselves for His sake. To steward something or someone well, you have to begin with curiosity—who am I? How should I treat myself to act in accord with my nature?

TC: “Independence” of one kind and another has been all the rage for a good few hundred years or so, but you’ve been writing and arguing for the dignity, rather, of dependence. Can you respond to this objection: Isn’t it in general better to be independent rather than dependent? Shouldn’t we want to make our own decisions and not rely on others, as a rule?

LLS: Again, I return to the language of stewardship. We should all want to be good stewards of what we have received as a gift. But what we receive is not only our talents, but also our debilities. I have a duty to make use of my strengths (for however long God lends them to me) and to put them at the service of others, but I have a parallel duty to make use of my illnesses, my weaknesses, etc., and to see how God works through them and how they can connect me to others.

I think of how Richard John Neuhaus described the dying of Pope John XXIII in Death on a Friday Afternoon:

I recall being deeply impressed as a young man by the death of Pope John XXIII. It was slow in coming, and over the days there were regular news bulletins reporting that he was offering up one day’s suffering for those with cancer, another day’s suffering for homeless refugees, another for mothers with difficult pregnancies and so forth. He seemed to be going about his dying with such purpose, with almost workmanlike efficiency, wasting none of it.

We are not ever, in the most important things, “independent.” So, in our periods of strength, when our dependence is less apparent, we should still be trying to live in a way that will build up the habits we need to die well and die generously.

TC: One of my favorite lines from a conference I once attended is this, from a talk on Charlotte Mason: When in a rut, “always go back to the philosophy.” How does understanding both being dependent and created help us to a better picture of who we are and how we ought to live?

LLS: Part of my test for any philosophy is what it has to say to the harder parts of life. Whenever I’m in a conversation about various theories of marriage, I ask, “Does this theory say something true about how to live in love with a spouse who is dying?” A lot of theories (that the man must always be a provider, that the wife has an obligation to keep up her looks) fall silent in these moments.

I like to look at the stories of the saints for a throughline on what a good life, given completely to God can look like for people living in a wide range of times, with a tremendous range of talents. Someone like St. Rafael Arnaiz Baron, a Trappist whose illness prevented him from taking his vows, found a way to live a saintly life even as door after door was closed to him, because he tried to faithfully steward whatever God set before him, no matter how small. (I strongly recommend this children’s book about him!).

TC: What are some ways we’ve misread or misunderstood our place in the world that have affected our relationships with our neighbors?

LLS: When people seek euthanasia, they’re much more likely to cite the fear of being a burden than the actual pain they’re experiencing or expect to experience. People acquire that perspective about the end of life through the slow catechesis of all the ways they offer and ask for help up to that point. You see it in the smallest ways in the habitual “it’s no trouble” people offer as reassurance that, of course, the help you need did not burden them.

Sometimes what we need from each other is costly! It’s good to have practice giving and accepting help that does mean someone went out of their way for you, or cancelled their plans, or adjusted their budget. If it never happens before you’re dying, it’s hard to learn how to accept that kind of love for the first time at the end.

TC: What are some practical things you’ve noticed that help us imaginatively grow in a sound philosophy of the human being—i.e., what are some practices of a family or neighborhood that grow out of the truth that we are both created and dependent?

LLS: The biggest thing I would recommend is having a lively noticeboard (virtual or physical) where neighbors frequently post prayer requests and other requests for tangible help. When this is a norm (as it is in my neighborhood) strangers become more transparent to others.

It feels less like everyone leads a “normal” life except for strange, rare eruptions. It becomes quickly obvious that there are always multiple people, within a few blocks of you, living through acute or chronic crises and attendant needs. It’s a bit of a return to seeing each other (and yourself) as fundamentally permeable, not buffered, in the language of Charles Taylor.

Plus, of course, you get and give more help! I’d add that it’s good to make a special effort to ask for the kinds of help teenage boys are best able to give. Teenage girls are often called upon as babysitters, but people default too much to getting paid professional help with the kinds of tasks teenage boys need to learn how their strength can be used for service.

TC: Thank you, Leah!

Image Credit: Jóhannes S. Kjarval