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| My video game and media station. Visible devices, including those barely visible are: an original SNES (top left), an original NES (top middle), a Nintendo Gamecube (top right), a Nintendo Wii (bottom right), a SNES Classic Mini (bottom right of centre), an N64 (bottom left of centre), a PlayStation 2 (bottom left), and a DVD player (centre). Also present but not visible are a Steam Link and a Nexus Player, and various switches and adapters behind the TV. |
I recently finished a personal project. I got all my old-generation consoles and some bits of newer game-playing kit hooked up to our spare TV, on a trolley stand in our spare room/library/study (picture included for those interested). It’s got me thinking.
The oldest bit of kit I hooked up was originally released, in Japan, in 1983, not too long after I was born (although the particular item I have is from the European release, so can’t be any older than 1986, and is most likely from a later production run). I also have one that could date back as far as 1992, the original Japanese release being 1990, and a much more modern piece of kit that provides a selection of games from that platform in a modern, easy-to-use, small device. Successive devices from the same and other manufacturers span my childhood and teenage years, and into early adulthood; the only things newer than 2006 are a simple Android TV device that has some free or cheap games that are fun to play, and the much-maligned Steam Link, to play PC games on my TV over the network.
What does this have to do with the usual subjects of this blog, you might wonder. Well, consider some other examples, not ones that I have engaged in, but that are, like retro and vintage video gaming, not uncommon. Fashions in decorating and interior design, and in clothing, go through ‘retro’ phases all the time, vintage clothing shops often do a roaring trade, and antique furniture has always been popular. Sometimes this is just an old style coming around, or a fad for a period, or just a preference for the solidity of clothes and furniture from before rapid-cycle consumerism. Sometimes, though, it is things from our own life that we choose to bring back. Music particularly, most people seem to reach a stage in their life where they have little interest in new music, especially things in new styles, and listen mostly to things from their youth.
Not far from my little vintage gaming shrine is a table that has come down through my wife’s family – it once lived in her grandparents’ home, and came to us already because we had space and a desire for it, while her parents did not. They were glad to see it in a welcome home, though. That table has a powerful meaning for my wife, and the video games of my childhood do for me. I’m sure everyone has some things, concrete or abstract, from their childhood or youth that have a powerful resonance for them. We seem to like to keep these things close to us.
This sort of reified nostalgia (nostalgia given form or substance – to reify meaning to make something abstract more real or concrete) can have positives and negatives. If my little video gaming setup remains unused, it is a waste – a waste of space, a waste of time and energy to put together, a waste of money spent on the trolley and additional cables to connect everything up. It is a waste of potential, as there are quite likely people who would like each of those vintage consoles to use themselves. It becomes a form of idolatry, a golden calf to my past, and perhaps to what I wish I were doing.
On the other hand, if I use it I am making good use of things that might otherwise be in landfill (or processed through the waste electrical and electronic equipment system, for whatever benefit that gives). I am drawing positives from my past. In the case of the Wii and its Balance Board, I am even getting exercise. Overuse of it might bring accusations of living in the past, but I can’t see how that really applies as an admonition in the case of video games. Used properly, it is a positive connection with things I value in the past, and keeps me in touch with the thoughts and feelings I associate with earlier experiences.
My wife’s table is a much more clearly positive example – at least in the way we have used it. If it weren’t there, some other table would have to be. On a practical, economic and environmental basis, it is better we use this table than buying a new one. It also gives my wife a feeling of connection to her own past, the table having been in the family home as she was growing up, and to the grandparents she never knew. It prevents potential waste, as the table may have ended up simply thrown out if no-one wanted it; if it were not thrown out, there would still be some sort of waste, it being kept without good reason, potentially taking up space that could be better used for other things, even if that were storage space in someone’s garage.
If we had it only because of my wife’s connection to it, however, and it were not fulfilling a necessary purpose – if it were a table that was only used because it was there, a dumping ground for things on their way to their proper places, or those that have no proper place – then it would be simply a very large keepsake. There’s nothing wrong with keepsakes, but it’s best if they not be so large and heavy.
(It so happens that much of the use of the table is as a dumping ground, but that’s mostly because it’s intended purpose isn’t needed much of the time and I am extremely prone to putting things down on whatever surface is to hand, which is perhaps not a surprise given my recent diagnosis.)
So far, so practical – you could take this as being about not devoting time, space, or money to things out of proportion to their practical and emotional value. But that’s not all I have to say. The same principles extend to our spirituality, our personal and collective religious artefacts, practices and processes.
Early Friends were very keen on abandoning “empty forms” in worship and observance, doing away with the Eucharist as it was then known (and is still in many forms of Christianity) and a great deal of rote prayer, just to give the most obvious points. We cannot keep that spirit, that principle alive and allow it to guide our spiritual life just by continuing to ‘not do’ those things that early Friends stopped doing. We must continuously examine what we do, understand why we do it, and not do things simply because that’s how they’ve ‘always’ been done. We must not take the superficial as essential, but instead see to that essence, that root, to see that we do things rightly without being encumbered by surface features that may be comforting in their familiarity, but able to obfuscate the real spiritual value.
Take silent worship itself. Silence is a means to an end, not an end in itself. If we hold silence as more important than being able to attain an inward state of waiting on the Spirit, or if we claim near-absolute silence is required to achieve this when it plainly is not, then we have made a golden calf out of the familiar.
Or take the practice of opening worship during Meetings for Worship for Business. It is common for most Meetings of which I am aware to have some sort of opening worship, but far from universal is this really understood as true opening worship. If it is opening worship, then it is expectant waiting into which people may speak if led, yet it is far from unusual that a community would consider it shocking for someone to minister during opening worship, people having grown used to using it as a time to ‘settle into the silence’. If you, as a community, feel the need for time to settle into the silence at the start of a business session, say that’s what you’re doing – and if you have opening worship, then be sure you mean what you say.
Many of our meeting houses have a certain style of bench, with variations regionally and related to the time the meeting house was furnished. These aren’t, in a practical sense, very good seating. In many meeting houses still using such benches, portable backrests are provided so people can sit in them with good posture to help with their back health. Not only are they not comfortable – there are those who believe that one should not have too comfortable a seat for Meeting for Worship, and their reasons have some validity – but they are, in fact, potentially harmful. Yet we don’t keep one or two benches as a reminder of our history and to be available to those who prefer them. In many meeting houses, a large proportion of the seating is on these benches, sometimes with only a few other chairs available – often bought (or otherwise acquired) specifically because some existing members of the community needed a seat with arms, with better posture, with more cushioning.
Those are just some of the examples that come to my mind readily. I could probably make this an extremely long post, if I chose to do so, cataloguing all the things that I am aware of among Friends that are possible instances of holding on to things without good reason. I’m sure many of my readers could add more. I shan’t belabour the point with too many examples.
This idea, of holding on to things for the right reason, should be particularly borne in mind as Friends in Britain Yearly Meeting continue in the process of revising our Book of Discipline. We have a great many writings by a great many friends, from the seventeenth to twenty-first century. Some dearly loved passages are fiercely held on to, yet might not be the best way of expressing their ideas today. If we kept my wife’s table despite it being not really suitable for the purpose for which it is used, we would potentially have sacrificed practicality to nostalgia; the trade-off might be worth it in some cases, and not in others. If we hold on to these old passages despite their dwindling ability to express their ideas, we must accept that we may need to take up more space by including an explanation, or at least a clearer-to-modern-readers expression of the same ideas.
It is also relevant to our structures, practices and organisations. Do we need as many committees as we have? Quite likely most if not all are doing work that needs to be done, but does it need to be broken down into as many chunks as it is? Does a Yearly Meeting have more (or fewer) layers of organisation among its constituent worshipping groups than it needs? Are there even, perhaps, some Meeting Houses which we only continue to use, and own, because of their history? Even if some of those answers would seem to indicate something should change, we shouldn’t rush into it; sometimes nostalgia and history are important enough to do something in an impractical way, and sometimes the reason for a process or structure is not clear without a lot of time and close inspection.
Our past is important, and shouldn’t be forgotten. It has made us, individually and corporately, what we are today. Indeed, we should be careful not to forget the darker parts of our past, as individuals or as the Religious Society of Friends – including the times when Friends resisted the abolition of slavery, and many prominent Friends profited from slavery, directly or indirectly, profit which contributed to some of our property to this day. Even as we remove the names of Friends with problematic business interests from buildings or rooms, we mustn’t let the disappearance of those names become a whitewashing of that history.
But still, we should be clear that what we hold on to has been retained for a good reason. Our practices should not become empty forms, our texts should not become progressively harder to understand due to their remoteness from the language and world of today, our structures should not stay as they are simply because they’ve ‘always’ been that way. In our lives as individuals we should hold on to reified nostalgia only in ways that are actually beneficial, and the same is true of our life as a Religious Society.
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