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1 “But Enough about Me” What Does Augustine’s Confessions Have to Do with Facebook? How to Live Well In a New Yorker essay titled “But Enough About Me: What Does the Popularity of Memoirs Tell Us about Ourselves?” Daniel Mendelsohn notes that our culture is inundated with “unseemly self-exposures,” in a rich variety of forms: reality TV, addiction and recovery memoirs, Facebook, tales of sexual and physical abuse by parents, and so on. “The greatest outpouring of personal narratives in the history of the planet has occurred on the Internet,” which has provided a cheap and convenient means to broadcast one’s fascination with the self endlessly and without censorship. This outlet for our narcissism is a new phenomenon, at least in its current breadth and depth: never have so many been able to share so shamelessly with so many others the secrets of their personal lives. There are several contributing factors to this situation, such as the blurring of the real and the artificial (does “reality” TV show “real” people?) as well as the confusion between private and public life (why are we forced to overhear private cell phone conversations in public places?). Things used to be quite different—in fact, very different. Memoirs, autobiographies , diaries, and journals were considered not only private but also questionable. They occupied an odd and ill-defined place among the various genres (history, fiction, philosophy). Were they “true” and if so, in what fashion? How do we know that people don’t “lie” (or are in denial) about their stories? Are these forms history or fiction? Are they closer to photographs or paintings? They are highly suspect these days too, because they assume a stable author with a privileged point of view, when in our postmodern context even the existence of a “subject” is questionable. So, why has the personal narrative gained such widespread popularity? I suggest the reason is both simple and deep: personal narrative addresses the most central issue of human life—how to live well. Regardless of the 1 2 Blessed Are the Consumers corrupt forms it has assumed in contemporary culture, it is concerned with the same question that motivated Augustine to write the Confessions: who am I and what should I be doing with my life? Whether this question takes the form of one of the greatest pieces of Western literature, as in the case of the Confessions, or a desperate report by a recovering alcoholic at an AA meeting, the intent is similar. How to live well? This question has been at the heart of my own life and theology. Two essays, written almost forty years apart, one in  and the other in , illustrate my journey with this question. The first essay is a proposal for submission to a publisher, in which I outline one avenue for investigating the question of who we are and what we should do from a Christian perspective. While I never sent the outline to a publisher, I have taught a course (with many variations) on this topic since  and have learned a great deal by doing so. I have come to the conclusion that that outline contained a germ for one way of addressing the question, a way that has parallels in most religious traditions, although I have conducted my investigation from within Christianity. Before sharing this document, I would like to suggest why I think it might have contemporary relevance. We are facing an economic and environmental meltdown of more serious proportions than any generation of human beings before us. It is no exaggeration to speak in apocalyptic language, at the most elemental levels of basic physical needs, of the prospects for people and the planet. The years since the  report by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the  crash of the stock market have opened our eyes to the seriousness of our planetary health at all levels and for all creatures. Every field of endeavor, including the religions, is being called on to offer its deepest and best thinking and action to address this crisis. In studies of the contributions by the sciences and technology, the closing sentence is often something like the following: “But of course it is really a spiritual problem—a problem of changing hearts and minds so that people will live differently.” And there is probably nothing more difficult or discouraging than such a conclusion, for people do not change easily. In fact, can they, will they, change at...

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