Have We Become “Junkified?”

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One of my favorite all-time Saturday Night Live characters was Debbie Downer, a fictional person created and portrayed by the show’s regular, Rachel Dratch. Debbie could always be counted on to pour cold water on ideas, trends, and life in general.

The term, Debbie Downer, according to Wikipedia, “eventually became an established slang phrase referring to a pessimistic person who frequently adds bad news and negative feelings to a gathering, thus bringing down the mood of everyone around them.”

In life, and in this blog, I try not to be a Debbie Downer, but it strikes me that trying to address the issues important to people who have given up on God and religion is harder today than at any time in my lifetime, and part of the reason is the cultural climate.

Fewer People Read?

For one thing, fewer people read – the newspaper, books, instructions, the Bible, and blogs like mine (except that a substantial increase in reading occurred during the pandemic). That’s true even though some subjects seem to lend themselves to print, such as blogs about God and religion.

It’s an ongoing challenge. People, especially young people, are accustomed to the instant gratification of lightning-fast technology. The subject of this blog requires thoughtfulness, which is seemingly in short supply in society.

One of my favorite authors, David Brooks, recently had an interesting article in the New York Times entitled, “The Junkification of American Life.”

“Back in February,” wrote Brooks, “the music historian Ted Gioia wrote an essay on the state of American culture. He argued that many creative people want to create art (work that puts demands on people), but all the commercial pressures push them to create entertainment (which gives audiences what they want). As a result, for the past many years, entertainment (superhero movies) has been swallowing up art (literary novels and serious dramas).

David Brooks
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“But now, Gioia observed, even the entertainment business is in crisis. Hollywood studios are laying off employees. The number of new scripted TV series is down. That’s because entertainment is being swallowed up by distraction (TikTok, Instagram). People stay on their phones because it’s easier. Each object of distraction lasts only a few seconds and doesn’t require any cognitive work; the audience just keeps scrolling.”

And it’s not just happening on the cultural scene.

“We could all be eating a Mediterranean diet,” writes Brooks, “but instead it’s potato chips and cherry Coke. We could enjoy the richness of full awareness, but booze, weed and other drugs provide that quick reward. Think of all the things in American life that seem to offer that burst of stimulation but threaten to be addictive — gambling, porn, video games, checking email.”

The irony in all this is that immediate gratification fails to satisfy. That’s always been true, seems to me, but there are now so many opportunities for immediate gratification and advertisers are expert in arousing and manipulating our cravings. 

People's Higher Desires

“Our culture used to be full of institutions that sought to arouse people’s higher desires — the love of God, the love of country, the love of learning, the love of being excellent at a craft,” writes Brooks. “Sermons, teachers, mentors and the whole apparatus of moral formation were there to elongate people’s time horizons and arouse the highest desires.”

Too pessimistic? I wish. Sometimes, being a Debbie Downer is being realistic.

Still, there are a lot of thoughtful, committed people in the world, and I believe people still have a thirst for meaning, and for God. And it’s for these “thirsty” people that I continue to write this blog.

I believe I’m doing a VERY small part of God’s work with no good idea about its benefit. As in so many other things, I leave that to God.