On Tokens

I have been thinking a lot about tokens lately. By this, I don't mean the small bits of metal or plastic that you use to play arcade games (though those might sometimes apply). Rather, I am using the psychological definition of something that serves as a substitute or an intermediate step in acquiring something else. Experiments have shown a monkey inserting a small wooden token into a slot to receive a banana. Although what the monkey wants and needs is a banana, it begins to do whatever it can to gain tokens, because the tokens become equivalent with the idea of the banana.

It is easy to see where this example will lead: our present use of currency. Primitive societies exchange goods or services for other goods and services. More developed societies trade some sort of currency or money for those goods and services. And in our most "developed" societies, the most "successful" people trade money for money. it is silly when you think about it. money used to be just a means to survive, but by our society's definition, it is now both means and end in itself. No matter how many times we hear that money doesn't buy happiness, most people believe that qcquiring more money will, in fact, improve their happiness. But money is just a token. This fact is most brutally tragic when it comes to spending. We associate money with the ability to buy all sorts of things to entertain us, or better yet, to entertain others so that they are impressed with us. This makes money a means to affirmation and a shallow sort of affection. This, then, makes us associate money with receiving love, even though the money brings us nothing in and of itself. Love breeds love, and we end up loving money (the root of all evil, an ultimately fruitless love.

This same pattern exists everywhere in our culture. It is highlighted with startling clarity in the halls of junior high and high schools where the style of a person's hair or clothing or the type of music they listen to or the type of recreation they enjoy will determine whether that person is accepted. All of these insignificant external factors are the basis for whether the entire person, inside and out, is accepted. We end up valuing the external over and above the itnernal, but as we know, "Man looks at the outward appearance, but God looks at the heart." Our identity is so much more than how we look or the way we speak, but we substitute these for a person's identity, often to a negative effect.

I find this same process to be at work when it comes to receiving academic grades. Waht was intended to be a measure for scuccess has come to signify success itself. Or failure--depending on the grade. So often, people work themselves to death pursuing the highest grade because they think it will be a means to something else: the right college, the right grad school, the right job, or maybe just a nod of approval from a parent. Eventually, the grade becomes the only thing to achieve--not the lessons along the way, perhaps not even the school or job that was the original goal. I have know people who will torture themselves just to achieve a certain grade because that letter has come to be a substitute for approval or affirmation or self-worth.

I guess what I am trying to get at is the question of what the world would be like if we could somehow get rid of these tokens and cheep substitutes and just affirm one another. We wouldn't have to love money or clothes, or the letter "A" written on a paper; we could love the person who smiled at us and said, "Good job." This sounds like an ideal worthy of the hippy generation, and I am sure that it will never be realized until all of Heaven and earth have been made new and become one, but I long for such a world. In that place, there would be no need for poverty because a sincere thanks would be enough for the farmer who no longer needs to pay taxes on the land, and love would teach us to show grace to one another, just like the grace we have received from God.

On Cause for Celebration

This was taken from an e-mail I received last night:

"As Chair and Vice-Chair of the National Playwriting Program for Region 3 of the Kennedy Center's American College Theatre Festival, it gives us special pleasure to inform you that your one act play has been selected for the One Act Play Festival at this year's regional festival in Lansing, MI January 4-8. All the plays were read anonymously by a panel of three readers from outside the region. This year's selection was particularly competitive as we received over sixty one act plays (double last year)."

Saying that I am excited would be a definite understatement.