I want to be impervious to fads and trends.
Today I was listening to Chuck Colson and Nancy Pearcey's How Now Shall We Live in the car. They mentioned that, as Christians, we can influence society, even among the unconverted, by helping create or sustain moral virtues and taboos. But, they said, it is hard to create taboos in a culture with no moral compass.
I thought not being influenced was a virtue. What I heard in the car checked that value-system of mine. Societal taboos can be a good thing, especially if it's a general discouragement of homosexuality or abortion or divorce.
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| one of my 3 bookshelves |
On Facebook, the friends I have tend to be book fanatics. You're obsessed with books? Awesome! One of my abnormally zealous friends just confessed that when she house-hunts she rules out places that do not have enough space for her books.
Despite my desire to be above such things, I have shamelessly, willingly fallen into the fad, the trend, the pressure of bibliophilia (though perhaps most of my friends would be better termed "bookworm," per definition). I have chosen to be among this nerdy group because 1) I personally enjoy it, and 2) I highly value literacy.
The result has been a ridiculous amount of 25 cent, 50 cent book buys from the local library. I also just finished a great book on Galileo called Galileo's Daughter, which you should read. :-P
So combined with what Colson and Pearcey said and my own experience, my new thought is that perhaps peer pressure is actually a good thing. Perhaps living in a pressure vacume is really a synonym for living in a valueless, morally relative, don't-judge-me-even-when-I'm-wrong society. We just need to choose carefully which pressure we'll succumb to.
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