In New Harmony, Indiana I found an inscription
of Father Laurence Freeman’s words: “A culture that does not teach prayer soon
runs mad with desire.”
The Father’s implicit assertion is the
conviction that most human desire is not genetically fixed. It is formed by
prayerful words and images and practices.
Advertisers know this is true. They
manipulate cultural images so as to create longings within us. The sociologist
Raymond Williams once called this cultural messaging a kind of “cultural
hegemony” where consumers are molded to want the things the powerful want to
sell.
Madison Avenue knows what the literary
critic Rene’ Gerard taught: we tend to desire things because we see other
people desiring them. Our subconscious
strategy is to obtain what others want so we will feel valuable in their eyes.
We saturate ourselves in this consumer practice, pretending the hole in our
heart can be filled if we purchase things others want.
My basic point is that such desires and preferences
are acquired tastes. Since childhood my
favorite color has been red—the color of the Santa suit in the Christmas books
my mother read to me six months out of the year. My Dad coached at three high schools in my
youth. All of them had red as their team
colors, and we ritually rooted for the team in red every Friday night.
Memorable rituals like this develop psychic
associations which in turn form desire. Once
formed, these desires resist “simple changes of will.” I might wish to change my favorite color, but
I’m still going to like red unless I spend a long time sunburned, staring at red
in the desert heat. I have no reason to
engage in such a practice, but it’s apt to make me a lover of damp greens and
blues.
Desire can be changed. Life-long lovers of Cheetos may discover with
practice they can acquire a taste for green beans. Habitually angry people may learn to love mercy.
Achieving this new harmony between what we
need and what we crave takes practice--the practice of prayer.
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