As the world watches sporting celebrities being made and un-made at the Olympics, Mike Lowe fears that if ‘our minds are focussed on other people rolling in the gutter, that is where we ourselves are likely to end up’.
Looking at the daily obsessions of newspapers and TV, there seems to be a game that our culture is particularly preoccupied with: the game of putting people on pedestals and then knocking them off. In fact the wardrobes, deeds and misdeeds of various celebrities seem to be gradually replacing all other kinds of news. We seem to take particular delight in treating celebrities almost as objects of worship, and then even more delight when they turn out to have feet of clay showing they are just as bad, if not worse, than the rest of us. Biographies of the rich and famous are guaranteed even more sales when they can reveal the ‘shocking truth’ about their subjects.
In my home I have a few icons – copies of ancient religious paintings. They, along with the mediaeval ‘hagiographies’ (lives of the saints), represent a different kind of ‘cult of celebrity’. Rather than delighting in evidence of human weakness and moral frailty, these do not claim to be realistic portraits of their subjects at all. In fact the use of stylistic devices such as reverse perspective emphasizes their otherworldliness.
Icons and hagiographies have a specific purpose. They are meant to represent a version of humanity to aspire to and move towards. ‘God made man in his own image’ says the Bible. Metropolitan Anthony Bloom makes the point that rather than faithfully reflecting the image of God, most of us are like an old oil painting, so covered by years of grime and misguided attempts to ‘touch up’, that little of the original glory can still be seen. By contemplating the ‘saints’ we are, in fact, contemplating a vision of humanity in its divine glory. As we do this, we ourselves are changed – or so the theory goes.
In fact modern neuro-science seems to confirm this. The brain, even the adult brain, is capable of re-wiring itself quite significantly. Stroke patients and people with other brain damage can re-train the undamaged parts of the brain to perform functions previously carried out by the damaged parts. When this happens the brain itself changes physically. Old neural pathways die away and new ones are created.
In fact the changeability of our brains is so much part of our nature that there are even chemicals released to promote it. The foolishness of love, for example, may be caused by a release of oxytocin, a neuromodulator, which acts as a kind of eraser, dissolving away old neural pathways so that new ones can be created, appropriate to a new phase of life where we are no longer alone.
In training our brains to change and create new thought patterns, the key seems to be where we focus our attention. Rather like muscles that become stronger through use and atrophy when not used, the parts of our brain that we use, through focused attention, become stronger. And the thought patterns that we refuse to give attention to will gradually die away.
So if we want to cultivate traits of goodness, beauty and truth in ourselves it makes sense to contemplate the saints – not as they really are, warts and all, but the embodiment of all that is best in humanity, including our own humanity.
This is not to deny the reality of human weakness – and we make a mistake if we think that the historical St Nicholas, for example, was completely perfect all of the time. The denial of the ‘shadow’ part of our nature has its own problems, and perhaps our current obsession with celebrity sleaze is the result of past habits of sweeping all scandal under the carpet and pretending it wasn’t there. There will always be parts of ourselves we fear, don’t like or are ashamed of. Fighting those traits, strenuously denying them or otherwise obsessing over them, paradoxically, keeps them strong. There is a saying, ‘what you resist persists’. Better to simply accept our shadow, but then focus our attention elsewhere.
When I was learning to drive I was taught to keep my eyes focussed on the road ahead rather than on the ditch at either side. Likewise when going about our daily lives it is better to think about the kinds of person we aspire to become. If, instead, our minds are focussed on other people rolling in the gutter, that is where we ourselves are likely to end up.
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