DANIEL BERNARD
Contributor
The movie “Crash” won an Academy Award for Best Picture in 2005. In that movie, the creators stressed very poignant intersections between people on earth that extend to every aspect of our lives.
Living in Malibu offers an interesting choice of lifestyles for individuals wishing to find their true identity. We live just outside one of the most diverse cities in the country, but are rarely exposed to the lives of those who experience the most gruesome physical, financial and emotional struggles. We live in arguably the richest, most lopsidedly white place just outside the boundaries of the country’s most diverse city.
Our circumstances dictate that unless we, as educated and responsible humans, choose to go out and expose ourselves to the lives of others, we will not be handed that exposure. By making the choice to remain in isolation, this new generation of pseudo-informed adults will continue to remain sheltered by the limited reach of popular media in our lives, much of which is very misinformed. That misinformation and materialistic perspective gets shuttled along to the viewing public, who is then left to decipher the intent of the original message, whatever it may be, while also sifting through the sizable loads of crap they continue to ingest.
The occupational and sometimes lifestyle decisions of many in our newest generation often no longer reflect a desire to experience personal significance. Instead, they offer an opportunity to achieve a high level of personal financial success, which is OK because of its economic benefit. The government tells us this creates more jobs and creates more fuel for our monster economy (which ironically is crashing down) — all the while increasing all of our already exceptionally massive economic value, as citizens.
We must recognize that our media outlets constantly feed us with a consumerism mentality. This capitalist mindset creates an environment among many of those who possess privilege that fosters a feeling of being “left behind” if they don’t keep up with what the media dictates our needs to be. What if rims, cars, jeans and houses could no longer define a large percentage of our exceptionally blessed group of students? Where would we be then? What if, as a society, we no longer felt the educationally, culturally and
family-based pressures to immediately find financial success? Could we still define meaning in our lives?
Our generation is the first one to have had unlimited access to all of the information we can possibly handle. This includes the information about what everybody else has AND doesn’t have. This desire to be informed as to the material possessions of others promotes increased consumption and spending in our own lives. This is all OK though, because it’s creating more “American dreams.” The creation of that dream, ironically, encouraged individuals to work hard to achieve success and have the freedoms missed by a previous generation.
Those of us comfortably reclining in the upper middle rung of our socioeconomic system are privileged with possessing the ability to easily transition to an occupation that produces more money than is necessary to exist. We often forget about those pursuing this “dream” which doesn’t possess anything. We must ask ourselves the question, “When is IT enough?”
If we are truly striving for the financial success that allows us to live a life not dictated by others, then nearly all of us, because of our education, will always have “it.” Everyone struggles and is occasionally broke, but us, as students, all have access to one of the most valuable pillows a person can ever buy: our education. A massively high percentage of the pool of students who graduate from Pepperdine will never have to seriously fret about a sluggish economy removing all possible opportunities to make a living wage. As a future alumnus from a selective top 50 Christian school that graduates less than 1,000 folks a year, I truly believe that we will always be able to find an occupation which allows us to provide ourselves with, at the very least, a suitable wage by which to exist.
If we are all moseying along this path leading to material “success,” which we then think will create a sense of personal significance, and we are all having trouble finding satisfaction when we get the material things we want, we should change our perspectives. We should consider finding significance in our lives first, which I argue, might then beget success.
Perhaps this entire time, we have been searching for a needle in a haystack of needles. The thing for which we have been searching is actually all over the place. ‘It’, this financially based system of determining achievement, is in every shopping center, in every parking lot, and on every beach around.
There is nearly a tenfold difference in the number of substance abuse treatment facilities in Malibu as compared to numerous third world counties. Maybe people in these other areas can’t afford drugs, not because they don’t need them. But at the same time, crack is a very cheap, very addictive street drug most widely found in poor, mostly minority-based communities.
We’ve found it all, but somehow continue to find nothing but emptiness. Maybe in our pursuit of the dream we have created a variety of different dreams for different people. We neglect to recognize that our decision to pursue what we think will give us satisfaction may leave us completely disconnected from those who strive for that same satisfaction, but under much harsher conditions. Many individuals living all around us in Los Angeles would die if they experienced a day in any of our shoes of privilege.
As children of opportunity, I believe our generation of educated individuals is called by God to serve. At a Christian university, above the instruction necessary to achieve material success, we should be constantly reminded that the day we were born into a world of technology and human connection is the day we gave up the right to be ignorant and uninformed. In Luke 12:48 it is written, “… when someone has been given much, much will be required in return; and when someone has been entrusted with much, even more will be required.”
Our generation’s ability to expose ourselves infinitely to the entirety of the world around us means that we have a unique opportunity to affect the world more then any other generation ever has. This also means that we have been entrusted with more responsibility then any other single generation of humans ever.
As those residing at the tiptop of the food chain, we must stop this sense of material competition and realize we are all in a position of great influence and power. We are required by God to give of ourselves because of our elevated social positions.
If we continue this destructive path of defining ourselves by the material success, we, or our loved ones, have created, we will never discover the true significance of our time here on earth. We must make the collective decision to define ourselves by the significance we all possess within our souls, and not the significance of knowing a rich prince from a poor African nation.
03-27-2008
