In the World, Not of It

Artist Unknown

My sister Solveig and I could not wait to go to bed at night. Children in the early 1950’s in a small town in North Dakota, when we had said our prayers and turned out the lights, we rolled the blankets and covers to the bottom of our double bed to create hills with small caves in them. In these caves we imagined Snow White and Rose Red lived, sisters represented by small dolls. According to the Grimm brothers’ fairy tale, Rose Red was outspoken, lively and cheerful. She loved being outdoors and, Solveig remembers, could often be found pounding flax. Snow White, on the other hand, was often indoors, doing housework and reading. She was quiet and shy.

One winter night the girls open their door to find a bear who wants to warm himself by their fire. After their initial fright they realize the bear is friendly. All winter he comes at night to warm himself, but in the summer he disappears. That summer the girls try to help a dwarf whose beard is caught in a tree limb. Helpfully cutting off his beard to free him, the dwarf rails at them for cutting it. They help him other times, but he is always ungrateful. When they come across him about to be killed by a bear, the dwarf begs the bear to eat the girls instead. The bear kills the dwarf with a swipe of his paw and instantly turns into a prince, who marries one of the girls, while the other marries his brother.

I think the significance of this story for us was the fact that the girls were sisters, very different from each other, but partners. There was no question who was Rose Red! That was Solveig, while I was the meek Snow White. This early dichotomy set up between us persisted until much later, when I discovered my own insouciant streak, my own rebel tendencies.

We had other night time play, including one in which we vied over who would wear our pair of red socks to bed. We had seen a pirate movie in the school auditorium and the socks were dark enough to look like pirate boots. Dad made a crystal set at that time, a tiny coil of wire, a capacitor and a crystal set into a clear plastic cigarette case. It was attached to the bed springs which became the antenna, and we tuned  it with a matchstick, while listening on headphones to any radio stations we could find. 

My sister remembers these exact same things. We had been taught to be “in the world, not of it.” This requires a powerful inner life. The sparse population of the town where we lived, its isolation and long winters, plus our rich diet of books and tales all contributed to this development. Siblings helped. We had our own unique culture, as do most families. In a Catholic family we know, I watched the five brothers create elaborate games between themselves. In this family, as in ours, as the kids grew up, they remained close.

No one can resist the world altogether. We are human animals with all the needs and hopes for the future with which humans are blessed. This includes needing mates outside our immediate cohort, scope to educate ourselves and animate our gifts, as well as the safety and comfort within which to raise healthy children. Both our physical world and our meme-driven cultures provide places in which to accomplish these things. But there are also reasons to make careful choices as we steer ourselves through a life. It is easy to see why Christ told his disciples to resist some of the world’s traps and set their sights on higher things.

Perhaps the biggest traps are when we take natural drives, such as the one to consume, to extremes. We need to eat and array ourselves in clothing. We need to move around, host each other in our homes. All of these things can be done simply or with ostentation. How we do these things reflects our status, our view of ourselves and our tastes. We can copy the ways of the world we see around us, or we can operate out of internal principles which we have set for ourselves. It is clearly an area in which we can act in better or worse ways, affecting ourselves and those around us.

We also consume mental food for our minds and occupy our time either wisely or unwisely. I dislike the concept of ‘entertainment.’ It sets up the idea that we are empty vessels, that we must buy things to be distracted from the sadness life has become. It may be true that there is less need for us to be productive as we move into the future, but there is all the more need to educate ourselves, becoming more sensitive, more aware, more thoughtful and compassionate individuals. We can learn practices of physical, emotional and intellectual development, doing our best to become our most impeccable selves. This study and practice is much more involving than “entertainment.”

The trans-humanist project, which aims to extend the reach of human life, digitize the world so we can experience it virtually and even go into space when we’ve destroyed this planet, spells disaster. It will never benefit more than a few people, disempowering the rest. It makes everything fragile and soaks up billions of dollars which could be better spent improving life on earth. In this project, we all contribute to what “the technium” (Kevin Kelly’s name for the technological machine reverberating around us) wants, giving our data, our thought and energy to the stored database which the world has become. Rather than transcend human life, however, we need to finally inhabit it.

So, go to the farmers market, buy the best food you can find, bring it home and cook it. Sit down with your family and listen to what their day has been like. Defy the corporate world’s intent that you be satisfied with fast food and circuses. Go out into nature without a camera, a bike or your phone. Look up at the night sky. Walk through a city without a guidebook. Keep some of your life for yourself, without giving it to “the technium.” This is what it means today to live in the world, but not of it.

My sister Solveig, Rose Red, will be 75 this coming month. It is many years since we were little girls, learning to inhabit our bodies and live our own lives. The world constantly changes, masking its blandishments in new and alluring ways, but we are not deluded. The real world is kept alive by the replenishment of inner lives by old stories and the natural world in the raw; by vegetables with some dirt on them and fruit off the tree; by families extending in every direction; and friendship.