Wednesday, September 05, 2007
Thomas Merton Quotes - Pt. 2
This is the second in a series of quotes I'm posting from Thomas Merton's "New Seeds of Contemplation", possibly his best work. (First quote is below). This quote, when I read it, was so incisive, it really doesn't need any exposition from me:"Mere living in the midst of others does not guarantee that we live in communion with them, or even in communication with them. Who has less to the communicate than the mass-man? Very often it is the solitary who has the most to say; not that he uses many words, but what he says is new, substantial, unique. It is his own. Even though he says very little, he has something to communicate, something personal which he is able to share with others. He has something real to give, because he himself is real.
Where people live huddled together without true communication, there seems to be sharing, and a more genuine communion. But this is not communion, only immersion in the general meaninglessness of countless slogans and clichés repeated over and over again so that in the end one listens without hearing and responds without thinking. The constant din of empty words and machine noises, the endless booming of loudspeakers end by making true communication and true communion almost impossible. Each individual in the mass is insulated by thick layers of insensibility. He doesn't care, he doesn't hear, he doesn't think. He doesn't act, he is pushed. He doesn't talk, he produces conventional sounds when stimulated by the appropriate noises. He does not think, he secretes clichés.
Mere living alone does not isolate a person, mere living together does not bring one into communion. The common life can either make one more of a person or less of a person, depending whether it is truly common life or merely life in a crowd. To live in communion, in genuine dialogue with others is absolutely necessary if one is to remain human. But to live in the midst of others, sharing nothing with them but the common noise and general distraction, isolates a person in the worst way, separates a person from others and from one's true self."
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