The Narcissism of Now

Posted By Chris Talbot on Sep 8, 2013 | 6 comments

“Is that the iPhone 5?” “No,” I reply, “It’s just an iPhone 4S.” This is just one of countless questions I answer when making small talk with the teenagers I minister to. It seems that every time I turn around there is a new phone, new gadget, or new app that the teenagers are conversing about. I reveal my magnitude of un-coolness when I inquire about new fads (if that’s what they even call them anymore).

With few exceptions, the majority of products we use are marketed as “new and improved.” Our computers, phones, and tablets need constant updates to stay current. Wait too long and the razor you use or the clothes you wear will be archaic, or worse yet, passé. Simply put, we live in a world that is hooked on the “now.” We want what’s new, hip, and current—especially if we can get it before anyone else. Unfortunately, this is almost always at the expense of the past. Therefore, we must do some personal triage and diagnose whether we are guilty of “chronological snobbery.” To begin, we should understand the problem, and then we can investigate a treatment.

What Is It?

C. S. Lewis, the one who coined the term chronological snobbery, ironically struggled with the relevance of Christianity. Before his conversion, he couldn’t see how a nearly 2,000 year-old religion could have relevance to his time. Thankfully, his friend Owen Barfield helped him understand that the antiquity of Christianity was the exact reason it was relevant today—it transcended time, and thus was not under the bondage of an era. After coming to this realization, this became a main tenet in Lewis’ philosophy which would saturate his writings.

Lewis defined chronological snobbery as “the uncritical acceptance of the intellectual climate common to our own age and the assumption that whatever has gone out of date is on that account discredited.” Lewis went on, explaining the problems of this mindset:

You must find out why it went out of date. Was it ever refuted (and if so by whom, where, and how conclusively) or did it merely die away as fashions do? If the latter, this tells us nothing about its truth or falsehood. From seeing this, one passes to the realization that our own age is also ‘a period,’ and certainly has, like all periods, its own characteristic illusions. They are likeliest to lurk in those widespread assumptions which are so ingrained in the age that no one dares to attack or feels it necessary to defend them [1].

Simply put, chronological snobbery is the perception that all things new are good and all things old are bad. The only qualifier given to ideas, people, and objects is whether they are current or not. Whether something is true, noble, or simply good is irrelevant— only its contemporaneity matters. This haughty snobbishness throws the baby out with the bath water and then replaces the tub.

Why Is It Bad?

Some may wonder whether chronological snobbery is really all that bad. Should we really have to worry about the past when it seems like we have everything figured out in the present? It is for that precise reason that we do need to worry about the past. Whether we realize it or not, there are dire consequences when we focus only on today. Lewis writes in his inaugural lectures at Cambridge,

[I]t is not the remembered but the forgotten past that enslaves us. I think the same is true of society. To study the past does indeed liberate us from the present, from the idols of our own market-place. But I think it liberates us from the past too. I think no class of men are less enslaved to the past than historians. The unhistorical are usually, without knowing it, enslaved to a fairly recent past [2].

Although it might echo as cliché, those who forget about the past are doomed to repeat it. While that is a problem with chronological snobbery, there are others. Lewis is right to point out that the study of the past not only liberates us from our own era’s snobbery, but also other eras’ snobberies too. However, if we keep our eyes focused on the now, we lose sight of the rich treasures of the past. Such amnesia keeps us under the bondage of both today and yesterday and will always come up empty-handed.

Case in point, if we only have is the contemporary, then we miss the great tradition of Christian hymns, books, and preachers. For example, we forget about Isaac Watts’ melodic “Alas, and Did My Savior Bleed,” John Owen’s address on The Mortification of Sin, or the wonderful sermons of Chrysostom [3]. It doesn’t stop there though. We also lose the development of theology and God’s working through church history too. When we are stuck in the now, we have nothing to build upon. We are trees without roots, buildings without foundations. It’s not only a bad perspective; it’s a losing one.

It isn’t that new things aren’t good, but when we accept them all uncritically, the outcome can be dangerous. Certainly, there are terrific things that are new, but newness does not always equal greatness. On the contrary, because new things haven’t been tested by time (through decades of scrutiny), they can’t hold the same testament as those older things that still remain. Lewis rightly noted, “All that is not eternal is eternally out of date” [4]. This forces us to think about how we critique the culture around us. Do we accept new things wholesale, or do we look for the transcendence in the new and the old?

What’s the Cure?

Chronological snobbery is certainly bad, but fortunately it can be fixed. The prescription is to allow tradition (specifically the great Christian tradition) to speak to us. We allow the most excellent and enduring writers, books, ideas, and philosophies to guide our decisions today. G. K. Chesterton noted,

Tradition means giving a vote to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about. All democrats object to men being disqualified by the accident of birth; tradition objects to their being disqualified by the accident of death. Democracy tells us not to neglect a good man’s opinion, even if he is our groom; tradition asks us not to neglect a good man’s opinion, even if he is our father [5].

When we bring to bear the great tradition of the past on today, we are able to evaluate the present with a host of witnesses. Ironically, when we commit chronological snobbery we are isolated and alone. We have few people to lean on who have different perspectives and experiences then we do. By listening to tradition, we no longer discount the past simply because it’s the past, but allow the ideas and people of ages ago have a say in our lives today.

Lest we become confused, there is a grand difference between tradition and traditionalism. Jaroslav Pelikan said it best, “Tradition is the living faith of the dead; traditionalism is the dead faith of the living. Tradition lives in conversation with the past, while remembering where we are and when we are and that it is we who have to decide” [6]. Traditionalism is just another from of chronological snobbery, focusing on one specific time while forsaking all others. Tradition, on the other hand, allows the eternal truths throughout history to speak to us today. The words may sound similar, but their purposes are as different as night and day.

Conclusion

It may be time to take a personal inventory. When listening to music, do you opt exclusively for the latest pop hit or do you enjoy the folk and classical songs of years past?  Does your book selection lean towards new releases, or do you enjoy the treasures of classical literature? What about spiritual insights—have you sought the wisdom of saints throughout church history, or are you constrained by “today”?

New isn’t bad, but neither is old. The great traditions of the past have been tested by time and have survived the gauntlet. In the same way that we listen to mentors in this life for wisdom, we should also turn to our mentors from ages past. Above all, we should let the Scriptures speak into our lives today. Listening to the church’s teachers from past can be difficult. Their use of language may seem archaic or we may not know where to start. However, like good exercise, the struggle is worth the gain. Let us not be guilty of forgetting the past, but instead, allow it guide our future.

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[1] C. S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy (Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1966), 207-8.

[2] C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves (New York: Harcourt, 1988), 137.

[3] For readers interested in older books that bear a “Classical Arminian” tradition, here is a very abbreviated list:

Consolation of Philosophy by Ancius Boethius

On Grace and Free Choice by Bernard of Clairvaux

The Works of Jacobus Arminius by Jacobus Arminus

A Short and Plaine Proof by Thomas Helwys

Christianismus Primitivus by Thomas Grantham

Lectures on Systematic Theology by Ransom Dunn

[4] C. S. Lewis, De Descriptione Temporum, Inaugural Lecture from the Chair of Mediaeval and Renaissance Literature at Cambridge University, 1954.

[5] G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy, (New York, Random House, 1908), 45.

[6] Jaroslav Pelikan, interview with U.S. News & World Report, July 26, 1989.

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