Snow White

As I was sitting in my Modernist Lit lecture today, it occured to me how closely the academic world and the religious world really are.  We were studying Donald Barthelme's Snow White this week, which (among other things) is about a post-modern world and the ruin left after World War II.  How do we define ourselves and how do we live in a world dominated by hyper-consumerism?

Just last week we had the pleasure of hearing from Professor Jim Galloway.  He spoke to Canterbury on the topic of our nitrogen footpritns.  You all have probably all heard much about carbon footprints, but not so much about nitrogen footprints.  Basically everything we eat or drink or anything that we consume costs the environment nitrogren - and not just in what we eat.  For example, the food used to raise the cattle that are then killed, cleaned, processed, shipped, eventually finding its way into the local grocery store.  It all costs nitrogen, but nitrogen that ends up back in the atmosphere where it reacts with other chemicals eventually furthering the Greenhouse Effect.

In hearing Professor Galloway speak and in reading this interesting Post-Modern novel by Barthelme, it struck me that our generation is trying to take a step away from hyper-consumerism, while looking forward to a future where we can reclaim some sense of self- and communal identity that is not saturated by media outlets; however, in order to achieve this goal, I think we must be able to really know what we want and what it means to be an individual in an increasingly globalized world.  For all the remarkable outpourings of individuality, it is amazing how much our culture is still somewhat uniform.

The question is then, how can we take a step back from our hectic lives and revist the idea of a community, so that we can once again figure out how to live and enjoy life :)?