Question 6.111

6.111 Do you think therefore that modern man loses himself in deceptive pastimes so as not to face the real problems?

A Godless society, which considers any spiritual questions a dead letter, masks the emptiness of its materialism by killing time so as better to forget eternity. The farther material things extend their influence, the more man takes pleasure in sophisticated, narcissistic, and perverse amusements; the more man forgets God, the more he observes himself. In looking at himself, he sees the deformations and the ugliness that his debauchery has encrusted on his face. Then, to delude himself that he still shines with the original splendor of a creature of God, he puts on his make-up. But the hidden evil is like the glowing coal beneath the ashes.

Without God, man builds his hell on earth. Amusements and pleasures can become a true scourge for the soul when it sinks into pornography, drugs, violence, and all sorts of perversions.

There is great sadness in claiming to want to indulge in limitless pleasures, whereas the most beautiful joy is to remain simply with God, allowing him to clothe us in light and purity.

In his Pensées Blaise Pascal writes about diversions: “When I have set myself now and then to consider the various distractions of men, the toils and dangers to which they expose themselves in the Court or the camp, whence arise so many quarrels and passions, such daring and often such evil exploits, etc., I have discovered that all the misfortunes of men arise from one thing only, that they are unable to stay quietly in their own chamber. A man who has enough to live on, if he knew how to dwell with pleasure in his own home, would not leave it for sea-faring or to besiege a city. An office in the army would not be bought so dearly but that it seems insupportable not to stir from the town, and people only seek conversation and amusing games because they cannot remain with pleasure in their own homes. . . [Diversion is something so necessary to men of the world that they are miserable without it.] We seek repose by resistance to obstacles, and so soon as these are surmounted, repose becomes intolerable. For we think either on the miseries we feel or on those we fear. And even when we seem sheltered on all sides, weariness, of its own accord, will spring from the depths of the heart wherein are its natural roots, and fill the soul with its poison. The counsel given to Pyrrhus to take the rest that he was seeking through so many labours, was full of difficulties.”⁵ “To bid a man live quietly is to bid him live happily. It is to advise him to be in a state perfectly happy, in which he can think at leisure without finding therein a cause of distress. As men who naturally understand their own condition avoid nothing so much as rest, so there is nothing they leave undone in seeking turmoil. So we are wrong in blaming them. Their error does not lie in seeking excitement, if they seek it only as a diversion; the evil is that they seek it as if the possession of the objects of their quest would make them really happy. In this respect it is right to call their quest a vain one. Hence in all this both the censurers and the censured do not understand man’s true nature. [Vanity is the pleasure of making a show to others.]”/

According to the philosopher, since men could not remedy death, misery, and ignorance, they decided that it would make them happy not to think about them at all. This definition of diversion is indeed connected with several of Pascal’s concepts: misery, because one seeks diversions in order to forget it; vanity, because there is no worse proof of vanity than this remedy to human ills; the supreme good, because ignorance of man’s true good is what drives him to pursue illusory goods.

Diversion has a twofold origin. It is reminiscent of Montaigne’s diversion, which consists of the ability to turn one’s thoughts away from the evils that one is suffering so as to endure them better, but it is also inspired by the Augustinian idea that man is capable of excluding his final end and God from his thoughts. Saint Augustine is right: the search for different pleasures is connected to the abandonment of God.

The man who ignores God and turns his own instincts into godlike standards for all things is headed for destruction. Today we are confronted with one of the last stages of the civilization of diversion. The alternative is simple: if mankind reforms itself, it will live, but if its headlong flight persists, civilization will become a hell.