Incepted to Discontent

Inception. It's a crazy movie that leaves you guessing at the end... is Cobb in a dream or not? Is that spinning top about to tip, or not? It provides a good night of action, drama, confusion for the brain, and maybe a couple minutes (or hours!) of conversation after the credits roll. But when it comes down to it, inception is just an idea. Or is it?

Our culture has been clever, very clever. Some may say too clever. I would like to suggest that the culture has found a way to perform inception upon us, and while we are awake no less.

Now before you think I've totally lost it, please give me a chance to defend myself. Cobb himself, in the movie, claims that the most resilient parasite is an idea, and thus this is what the culture has sought to shape. Tell me that music, movies, books, TV, even the commercials themselves, do not do this, and I will call you a liar. Music champions everything from love to sexual triumph, from wealth of possessions to pride in oneself, and on down the list. High schoolers in movies are portrayed by flawless twenty year olds, and a failure to have flat abs is the cardinal sin. A party with pumping music and the requisite alcohol is necessarily a good time, and it is a proven fact that whiter teeth make anyone of the opposite gender flock to your door.

We are told what looks good, smells good, tastes good, sounds good, and feels good. All five senses are accounted for, as well as your consequent morality. If partying feels good, it must be right. Gratification of the self becomes the chief virtue, the less delayed the better (because, of course, if you are delaying, you are wasting time that could be spent shoveling money in to the companies).

Then comes the creation of a vicious cycle. We are both the consumers and producers of culture. As we are told what to desire, we desire said object. Our increased demand perpetuates the existence of said object and others of its kind, though each modification is acclaimed better and more satisfying. However, for all the culture seems to promise us flawless skin, thirty pounds off of our current weight, and a life that will never make us cease smiling, we have not found satisfaction. We have not found the end of the race, for then we would lose the need to chase these temporal remedies.

The culture offers not satisfaction but dissatisfaction, for it is only the dissatisfied person that feels the need for a product. Contentedness brooks no need. Rather than offer us hope, ads point out that we have none and then offer a quick, 100% guaranteed solution that will have us panting before them.

The culture has performed inception upon us, but I suggest that we starve the beast. Let us not buy in to the images that fail to satisfy, that project lies to our consciousness. Let us be critical consumers, ones that recognize the falsity behind the billboard models and swimsuit ads. We may throw off the inception of culture's ideas, not by disclaiming their method, but, ultimately, by claiming contentedness.

How are we to do this though? I suggest that we claim contentedness, not by finding it, but by having it given to us. It is given by none other than Jesus Christ the son of the living God.

Everything on earth is vanity. What wisdom, virtue, or riches will not pass? Build a legacy, and even that will fade and twist with memory and time. The righteous and the unrighteous die; the wise and the fool perish. Death comes to all. Make a change in the world and the next generation undoes your work, or someone else inherits that for which you toiled. Where is the fairness on this earth, where is equality? Nowhere but death.

Contentedness cannot be found on this earth. Mere resignation is the best that can be achieved. However, contentedness can be found in something eternal, something untarished and good. Only if contentedness is rooted in something that does not change can it be called true satisfaction; otherwise it is a mere mountain peak between the rolling hills of dissatisfaction.