In Go to Heaven, Fulton Sheen describes modern man:
“The modern man is no longer a unity, but a confused bundle of complexes and nerves. He is so dissociated, so alienated from himself that he sees himself less as a personality than as a battlefield where a civil war rages between a thousand and one conflicting loyalties. There is no single over-all purpose to his life. …
“If the frustrated soul is educated, it has a smattering of uncorrelated bits of information with no unifying philosophy. … Such a man projects his own mental confusion to the outside world and concludes that, since he knows no truth, nobody can know it. His own skepticism (which he universalizes into a philosophy of life) throws him back more and more upon those powers lurking in the dark, dank caverns of his unconsciousness.”
This was written in 1949.
There is no way someone can work himself out of the prison of alienation Archbishop Sheen describes relying only on his intellectual resources. But so much in our culture pushes us into isolation, it is hard to blame anyone for being imprisoned. Social media is isolating; the internet in general is isolating. Remote learning (education by screen), virtual offices, broken families, children growing up in daycare, masks, social distancing, lockdowns, Uber Eats instead of dining out, Google search instead of the public library, Amazon deliveries instead of in-store shopping, texting instead of talking, emailing the sick instead of visiting the sick, video games instead of scavenger hunts, virtual reality instead of reality — all of these things drive us into our own minds There seems to be no escape, and only new technologies and edicts of isolation ready to make their attack, close enough that we can feel them.
At some point, if we are lucky, if we are given sufficient grace, we will sense our inadequacy to meet the challenge, and then take the first step to avoid annihilation, the only possible step to march out of the corner caverns of our mind and back into the light.
The first step is to cease being estranged from God — a baby step that can change one’s eternity.
Reflection
I have taken the first step. Now, God, give me the wisdom and perseverance to move toward Your light. Help me discover ways to free myself from the isolation the world tries to impose on me.
