In a recent interview with the National Catholic Reporter, Father Ronald Rolheiser --- one of the preeminent theologians and Catholic writers of our time --- told about a journalist who had moved back to New York after living in France.
The journalist's 8-year-old son had no television growing up in Paris, and had watched perhaps a total of five hours in his life. Father Rolheiser said the journalist was asked on National Public Radio if his 8-year-old son had withstood the onslaught of American culture upon his move to the U.S.
The journalist replied, "Of course he didn't hold out. American culture is the most powerful narcotic this planet has ever perpetrated."
That sentiment fit well with an article I read in the May 14th issue of New Yorker magazine. Called "Pixel Perfect," it tells the story of a man whose career makes him "the premier retoucher of fashion photographs."
We all realize pictures in magazines are retouched. Even school photos can be retouched now, the odd pimple removed or the freckle tamed. At the preschool where I taught, we even had a photographer who, when confronted with a bad group shot, would digitally take a smiling head from one photo and attach it, not always too skillfully, to the same small body in another shot.
But the "retouching" in this article makes the disappearing wrinkle or even a reattached head seem downright archaic. We're talking about bad plastic surgery being refashioned, legs lengthened, tummies flattened, lighting altered, hair rearranged, busts expanded, eyes reformed, shadows and color added.
If a computer can do it, it's done --- all in the interest of creating the American ideal of beauty, down to the last perfectly straightened tooth.
Remember that old cliche, "Seeing is believing"? Better alter that to "I can't believe my eyes," because when it comes to photography, you absolutely can't.
When Father Rolheiser told NCR the story about the 8-year-old and television, he went on to say that St. John of the Cross "warned us about over-distracting and numbing ourselves, because then when you face life-changing events you are not ready, you lack the depth."
I would add that what our popular culture feeds us on a daily basis doesn't just distract us from the essentials of our lives, although it certainly does, but it creates for us a false reality, a picture of life that doesn't really exist.
If we live with integrity, we live with the reality of aging, of death, of wrinkles, bulges and imperfection. We don't have an artificial sense --- a sitcom sense --- of what constitutes attractiveness and success in life.
As a middle-aged woman, I'm sensitive to the fact that news programs can have crusty-looking, overweight old geezers reading or commenting on the news, but if a woman takes his seat, she's made up, trussed up, and in the rare event she's nearly 40, it's obvious she's had "work" done.
Does this send a message to women? You bet it does.
For those of us who try to keep our equilibrium in this culture, it's frustrating. But to those who have little sense of self, who have nothing to support them but the narcotic of our consumer, youth-oriented society, it's a crash course in self-loathing and self-doubt.
St. John of the Cross may seem like an unlikely anecdote to this powerful narcotic, but the closer we can come to a true prayer life the closer we come to an authentic life all the way around, a life that recognizes what's of value and what's important in this passing world. Effie Caldarola is a columnist with Catholic News Service.
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