Saturday, April 21, 2007

The Unworthiness of Egypt

There was a line in a film that came out about a decade ago that has always stuck with me:

"I see all this potential, and I see squandering. . . . An entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables; slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy junk we don't need. We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War's a spiritual war... our Great Depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off."
These sentiments are uttered by a protagonist who is desperately searching for something to restore a semblance of hope to a generation obsessed with materialistic consumerism.

What haunts me is that if someone like him can see it, or to reference another film from that era, if someone like Neo could ask, "What is the Matrix?", does it not stand to reason that the believer, of all people, should see through the charms and enticements of this age? If the wealth of Egypt was unworthy of Moses' pursuit and devotion, what does that say about the treasures that we insist on consuming?

I'm not saying the delights of this world are all necessarily sinful or evil. But that's the wrong question, anyway. The real question should be, are these pursuits worthy of us in the first place?