The mediocrity of the masses

While Elon Musk catches rocket boosters falling from the heavens, the masses scroll their socials watching people they’ve never met and checking the scores of games that are aimed to entertain and distract.

The likes of Jensen Huang and Sam Altman lead the world into the unknown of artificial intelligence while the masses’ intelligence is degraded by the mind-numbing effects of a digital age. Does it not bother anyone else that we can quote movies or TikToks but few can quote Scripture? Our problem seems not to be memory but something else much more sinister.

Does anyone remember the days of great speeches? When our leaders put together speeches that led us through war, through internal conflict, through hard economical times? Speeches that made us believe that our collective unity in this great country could yield great results? Speeches in the past led us to sending men and women to the moon. Speeches in the past helped heal wounds from our own Civil War. Has Trump or Harris inspired you in their speech? Our diminished quality of political speech has certainly infected the everyday person’s speech as well. We all are looking to create viral sound bites rather than deep and thoughtful conversation.

Did you know that we are heavier than we have ever been? That we embody our spiritual state of being consumers rather than producers. Less than 2% of the population farms in any capacity. We’ve lost our connection to our food. Meanwhile, the products that surround us also mean less and less to us. We buy things not because their usefulness, but simply because we want them right now in the moment. And Amazon delivers overnight.

Influencers make millions of dollars posting videos of the most useless entertainment online, like a growing number of them sitting on couches talking pridefully of their sexual debauchery. Meanwhile, the everyday individual making the products and preforming the services that benefit society struggle to feed their kids.

Our work, once unique to the individual journey, has been absorbed by the large conglomerates surrounding us. Our work is no longer an expression of our person but is simply for a paycheck. It’s safer to work to fulfill someone else’s ambition who sits at the top of a large corporation rather than risk working for our own dreams and ambitions.

Religion and spiritual pursuits continue to fall in importance in the everyday individual’s life. When people consider what makes them happy or the way they spend their time, these categories are only thought of by the minority. Fewer and fewer people see the Bible as relevant to their lives, and fewer and fewer in the upcoming generations will have exposure to the biblical story at all.

Aren’t you tired of the lie culture espouses us? Aren’t you tired of just getting by? Aren’t you tired of the malaise that blankets much of our modern existence?

My next few posts will be surrounding this idea: together we must defeat the mediocrity we’ve accepted and trade it for the pursuit of living exceptionally; whether that be as a parent, a spouse, a coworker, in pursuing religious life, or whatever.

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