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Title: Illuminating reflections
Review: Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander is a collection of reflections on the world in the 1960s which illumine what is happening now. Merton discusses JFK, LBJ, Pope John XXIII, Gandhi, truth and violence ("lying is the mother of violence"), dissent, the "death of God," war, racial strife, as well as the thought of diverse authors including Camus, Bonhoeffer, and de Chardin. Here are excerpts from Merton's conjectures on our technological culture: "Our civilization is strictly servile. . . We are so obsessed with doing that we have no time and no imagination left for being. As a result, men are valued not for what they are but for what they do or what they have -- for their usefulness. When man is reduced to his function he is placed in a servile, alienated condition. He exists for someone else or even worse for some thing else. Hence he cannot enjoy life." Do yourself a favor. Hang out with Thomas Merton.
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