Clearly, the “powers” and “elements” which in Paul’s day dominated men’s minds through pagan religion or through religious legalism, today dominate us in the confusion and the ambiguity of the Babel of tongues that we call mass-society. Certainly I do not condemn everything in the mass media. But how does one stop to separate the truth from the half-truth, the event from the pseudo-event, reality from the manufactured image? It is in this confusion of images and myths, superstitions and ideologies that the “powers of the air” govern our thinking-even our thinking about religion! Where there is no critical perspective, no detached observation, no time to ask the pertinent questions, how can one avoid being deluded and confused?
Someone has to try to keep his head clear of static and preserve the interior solitude and silence that are essential for independent thought.
A monk loses his reason for existing if he simply submits to all the routines that govern the thinking of everybody else. He loses his reason for existing if he simply substitutes other routines of his own! He is obliged by his vocation to have his own mind if not to speak. He has got to be a free man. What did the radio say this evening? I don’t know.
Thomas Merton, OCSO
Faith and Violence, p. 150
