Another Week Ends

1. You may or may not have heard the news, but twenty-something girls all over the world (myself included) were shocked by the sudden death of One Direction band member Liam Payne. At only sixteen, Payne rapidly rose to pop-star status after being placed in a band with four other boys. And after the band took a (permanent) hiatus in January of 2016, that pop-star status was forever altered.

His first solo album, released three years after the band broke up, just didn’t reach the record heights like those of his bandmates Harry Styles or Niall Horan. Post breakup, Payne would go on to deal with substance abuse and mental health issues, both of which he wasn’t afraid to talk about publicly.

Yesterday, the Rolling Stone released a never-before-published interview with Liam from 2012. In the interview, they discussed everything from what career he would have chosen if he wasn’t in the band, whether or not he wanted to release solo music, and the unusual nature of fame:

[Interviewer] Have you thought about making a solo album someday?
[Liam Payne] No, not at all. I enjoy being in a band too much to ever go back to being on a stage by myself. It’s such different vibes with your bandmates and all the traveling and stuff that goes along with it. You just enjoy it a lot more. There’s a lot more fun to come out of it, rather than being stuck on the road by yourself. […]

If you guys are twice as big this time next year, can you imagine what that would be like?
It’s so hard to imagine, let alone gain more fans…it’s very difficult to actually picture those sort of things. I’m a bit worried, actually, about when we go home, because we’ve had a lot of success in America, so we’ve been in the media a lot more at home, so I wonder if more people will recognize us. It’s quite a scary thought, but it’s a nice scary thought. It’s a lovely position to be in, so who knows. […]

When you guys are alone, do you ever say, “What the hell is happening in our lives? This is really crazy.”
All the time. Literally, I sat down a few weeks ago and we talked through everything — because I think it’s important to talk about these sort of things, to understand them and what they mean to your own work. Because now that we broke the records in America, it’s such a huge thing.

It’s possible that it won’t really sink in until about three years from now. 
Yeah. Completely. I do believe that, actually, that we don’t really fully understand it, and that our parents don’t really know what’s going on.

It’s easy to speculate what led to Payne’s years of struggling with addiction and his sudden death — many news articles are doing that very thing. But despite all of the difficulties he experienced with becoming famous at a young age, Liam was a father, a son, a brother, a friend, and a childhood crush to many girls now in their twenties. And he will be dearly missed.

2. You can’t drive anywhere these days and not be slapped in the face with political bumper stickers and campaign signs (some more in your face than others). Whether it’s on social media, in the news, in commercial ads, or in that second cousin’s Facebook post — almost everyone has an opinion on the subject that they willingly shout from the rooftops.

But, as with most things, it isn’t enough to simply share your view. Despite where we may stand on the political spectrum, everyone is looking for the same thing: Validation that I am right and you are wrong, that my beliefs make me a good person while yours make you a cotton-headed-ninny-muggins.

Joshua Rothman in the New Yorker takes a look at Keith Payne’s new book, which explores the psychological roots of America’s political derangement. The central claim? That we all share what Payne refers to as the “psychological bottom line”:

Payne argues that, although our identities are infinitely variable, we share a “psychological bottom line”: the conviction that we are “good and reasonable people.” It’s not necessarily true, of course. We treat each other badly, do and say mean things, and repeatedly discover that we’ve been mistaken, ignorant, careless, or worse. Yet, despite our missteps, we still see ourselves as basically decent, and decades of work in psychology have affirmed that we freely rewrite history to maintain this view. When psychologists convince people that they’re wrong about an issue, for instance, those people often later misremember their prior stance, forgetting that they ever thought differently.Our tendency to rewrite the past can annoy our friends and significant others. But its political consequences are far graver. For one thing, our determination to see ourselves as good, reasonable people extends to our tribes: we pledge our strongest loyalties to those groups that can “create and sustain our sense of identity as a good and valuable person. […]

Journalists and policy experts focus on the issues, and our changing views of them. But “the reasoning loops we go through are less like the linear thinking of a computer and more like painting,” he writes. “If something doesn’t feel right, you can always go back and change it. News channels and social media are constantly serving up an assortment of arguments to fill your palette. If one combination doesn’t work you can keep mixing and shading, until everything feels right.” Our pictures alter from day to day, but a troubling status quo is preserved.

The bottom line doesn’t just extend to politics. Our desire to be perceived as good people (whether self-perception or that of others) permeates all aspects of our lives. If we all just stopped talking in circles upon circles, perhaps we’d discover that our neighbor with the questionable banner also has a kooky second cousin who updates their Facebook status every hour.

3. Speaking of neighbors, when was the last time you invited a friend over for dinner or vice versa? It’s started to feel rare these days to actually share a meal with another person. Between the soccer practices, basketball tournaments, work meetings, and the various activities that get in the way of a normal schedule, it’s no surprise that only 38 percent of Gen-Z report regularly eating dinner with their family growing up.

We don’t even have time to eat dinner with our own families, how in the world can we make time to share a meal with a friend — let alone a new acquaintance? One wonders if time is truly the issue or if that form of hospitality has become a lost art. Perhaps there’s something to gain from taking a break from our busy schedules to welcome a guest into our home. In First Things, Carl R. Trueman writes about the postmodern cynicism surrounding hospitality and how it conflicts with the human experience:

Here is the cynicism of the postmodern condition on display. Kindness to others in the form of hospitality becomes yet another power play, another way of putting somebody else beneath us in the hierarchy, of asserting superiority. Nietzsche for the win.

That is not only a deeply cynical view of hospitality; it is also one that denies human experience. Anyone who has ever been alone in a new city and has found himself invited to someone’s home for a meal will likely not have experienced it as manipulative but as liberating. The reason is simple: The reality of being treated as a person, not as a thing, is always liberating. It is surely why hospitality is a key element of numerous religions. When I invite people to my home, I acknowledge their humanity and personhood. In the same way, when I wish them a blessed day, I do much the same. […]

… Christianity gives hospitality a place of honor, for it is a practical realization of the character of God and a practical acknowledgment of the humanity of others. That is one reason why Paul makes it a qualification for eldership in the church. Christians are to treat others as persons, as subjects, not as things or objects. And hospitality is one obvious way of doing that.

Hospitality is not one-sided but a grace that is shared. While creating space to acknowledge the humanity of our neighbor we, in turn, are met with the same acknowledgement. It doesn’t have to be so complicated, we need only ask.

The term isn’t a new one by any means, take the Beach Boys’ “Good Vibrations” for example. But it has become a more popular and colloquial expression with the younger generation. Kyle Edward Williams, over at the Hedgehog Review, wonders why this is the case:

One reason might be the premium we put on experiences — and on the curation of experiences. Not surprisingly, music is a big part of this (and, come to think of it, so are drugs). The convenience of streaming music on smartphones, as well as the ability to create or listen to playlists that convey particular moods, allows us to literally set the vibes for our day, for a party, or just for a task — like writing an essay such as this or going on a run after work. The ready availability of, say, THC or Adderall only contributes to this ability to curate experiences. Vibes are more than just music and drugs, of course. It seems that the smartphone, through apps such as TikTok and Instagram, has also contributed to greater sensitivity to how such things as lighting, fashion, vocal affects, and scenery evoke ever more refined feelings and connotations. Life seen (and performed) through the lens of the smartphone is a life in which everything is curated — and for what? Perhaps for the vibes.

Spotify even has an AI feature which creates a playlist for your morning, afternoon, and evening based upon your listening habits. Your “Daylist” (the app’s name for the playlist) has a specific title and description. Take mine, for example:

DAYLIST

Title: Truck Glamorous Friday Morning

Description: You listened to British indie and glamorous on Fridays in the morning. Here’s some: truck, glamorous, guitar, British indie, indie disco, and seclusion.

Confused? That’s okay, my heavily curated playlist is just for the vibes as Williams’ noted.

But it is fascinating just how much the younger generation values content that is curated specifically for them at a specific time of day. It’s also worth considering whether our commitment to “good vibes” is actually bringing us true comfort or if it’s really being used as a numbing agent for life’s problems.

Kyle Edward Williams takes it a step further:

Today’s vibes, then, can’t be accounted for without taking into consideration the role of Internet culture. We might talk about the norms of discourse online in such terms: Some have called the backlash against “woke” progressivism a “vibe shift.” Or consider the consequences of the fact that most of our culture’s communications takes place in disembodied spaces where people can fashion their identities and styles according to more malleable intuitions or aesthetics. […]

But it shouldn’t be surprising if both the meaning of vibes and the reasons why the term has become so popular again are difficult to explain. We reach for vibes when we’re trying to explain something that can’t easily be expressed.

Vibes may be an easy way for us to talk about our emotions, but at the end of the day vibes are just vibes — they won’t solve our problems.

5. For kicks and giggles, the New Yorker created a comprehensive list of all the things you can (and can’t) recycle:

PAPER

What can I recycle?

Most clean, dry paper can go into your curbside bin. This includes things like newspapers, magazines, cardboard, and greeting cards.

Are there exceptions?

God, yes. For example, if a greeting card includes glitter, it goes in the trash. If a cardboard box has a slightly waxy feel to it, it cannot be recycled and frankly you shouldn’t have brought it into your home in the first place…

How about pizza boxes?

Pizza boxes are fine, unless they had pizza in them at some point.

Wrapping paper?

Who still uses wrapping paper? Gift bags are so much easier.

Can I recycle gift bags?

No.

If you think recycling is complicated, don’t even get the liberal aunts started on composting.

We can always trust Reductress when we need a good laugh — here’s “Woman Pretty Sure 2024 Goals Can Still Be Squeezed Into Next Two Months“: “For sure! They definitely weren’t year-long goals for a reason!” Anyone else feeling overwhelmed that November is almost upon us?! And finally, McSweeney’s provides us with another helpful list, “A Sociological Guide to the Parents at Your Local Playground.”

6. Finishing off this week is a poem by George Herbert entitled “Easter Wings.” The poem, Karen Swallow Prior writes in her Substack, is a petition to God to “With thee/O let me rise”:

Lord, who createdst man in wealth and store,
Though foolishly he lost the same,
Decaying more and more,
Till he became
Most poore:
With thee
O let me rise
As larks, harmoniously,
And sing this day thy victories:
Then shall the fall further the flight in me.

My tender age in sorrow did beginne
And still with sicknesses and shame.
Thou didst so punish sinne,
That I became
Most thinne.
With thee
Let me combine,
And feel thy victorie:
For, if I imp my wing on thine,
Affliction shall advance the flight in me.

Prior further reflects on what George Herbert intended to communicate when he wrote, “Then shall the fall further the flight in me.”

“The fall” refers to the fall of humanity through sin. But notice that the poem says that it is the fall that will “further the flight in me.” How can we fly higher because of the very thing that brought us down? As I mentioned in an earlier post, this is an allusion to the doctrine of the “fortunate fall” (“felix culpa” in Latin). It expresses the idea (one that Milton also illustrates in Paradise Lost) that our fall is “happy” because being saved by Christ’s death is better for us (and for God’s own glory) than our condition before the fall.

Redemption is better than perfection.

Sit on that thought for a moment because I think many of us hardly believe that (or don’t believe it at all). We would rather be perfect, independent, not in need or reliant on salvation and redemption, wouldn’t we? But the doctrine of the fortunate fall says otherwise. It says that being glorified by Christ is better than not having ever fallen at all.

Redemption is better than perfection.

Strays:

• At the Field Museum with Father Teilhard
• Dopamine-ing ourselves dilutes the real power of joy.
• Atheist age has spawned its own superstition.