Blog Archives from June 2010

Why doesn't anyone have any time today? Where did all the time go? Peter Kreeft suggests that, when he asked this question of philosophers, theologians, sociologists, historians, and other learned people, not one could give a good answer. And that perhaps the best answer he ever received as to where time went? "Cleveland." :)

As he suggests, the question is more puzzling than at first glance. While in ancient civilizations, if you were rich you had slaves to do your menial tasks so you could be free to pursue your leisure time, today we face a modern day conundrum. One would think that with all of the "time-saving" devices, we would have an abundance of leisure time, certainly more than our ancestors, yet we know this simply isn't the case.

Since we are indeed impatient people, all of us, Kreeft gives us Pascal's answer without delay: "We want to complexify our lives. We don't have to, we want to. We want to be harried and hassled and busy. Unconsciously, we want the very thing we complain about. For if we had leisure, we would look at ourselves and listen to our hearts and see the great gaping hole in our hearts and be terrified,…

The water's blue, the waves are lapping. Geez, it's hot. Do I have enough sunscreen on? Why did I wear this bathing suit? How long have we been here? I wonder what's happening at the office. Have they finished that project? Where is that cellphone? Wait, don't tell me there's no service! Can't slow down? Even on vacation? You've got plenty of company.

So begins an insightful article in a recent Wall Street Journal  that covers a litany of the issues we face in our 24/7 work culture. Here are some of the highlights of the article, written by Melinda Beck, in the Health Journal of The Wall Street Journal.

As curious as it may seem, only 53% of working Americans say they come back feeling rested and rejuvenated after vacation, and 30% say they have trouble coping with work stress while they're away. These statistics come from a survey conducted by an Expedia.com survey of 1,530. Some try to cram in so much activity that they come back more exhausted than when they left. Others stay so plugged on BlackBerrys and cellphones that colleagues and clients don't even suspect they're away. Here are some other interesting statistics:…

Woody Allen once opined, "I'm not afraid to die, I just don't want to be there when it happens!"

Despite all of the attempts by modernity to harness "eternal youth," (cosmetics, cryonics, etc.) and to stave off the inevitable via science and other stratagems, death is the one fact of life, actually one of the few facts of life, that we can count on. Peter Kreeft suggests that Pascal saw death as one of the key proofs of man's wretchedness: "Death is the most unsentimental of facts: simple, decisive, businesslike. Therefore Pascal's pensees on death are also unsentimental, simple, decisive, and businesslike. There is no nonsense, no evasion, no 'nuancing,' no little mental two step about death..."

Listen to Pascal:

"Anyone with only a week to live will not find it in his interest to believe that all this is just a matter of chance. Imagine a number of men in chains, all under the sentence of death, some of whom are each day butchered in the sight of others...This is an image of the human condition." (#326, 434)

"The last act is bloody, however fine the rest of the…