I watch very little television. I have never really liked the medium because I find it much too passive. But every now and then, I do begin to watch a movie. There is even the rare occasion that I am able to stay to the finish, despite all of the commercial interruptions. Our contemporary cultural pluralism precludes a real celebration of anything.
Real celebration requires a sense of wonder and awe.
We no longer wonder, for example, at the birth of a child. Instead, we plan to use our technology to determine the sort of child that might be adequate to the needs and tastes of the parents. We are told that, with a little genetic manipulation, we will soon be able to determine everything from intelligence to height, weight and eye color. Instead, they consider it fragile and threatened, more an object of pity than of wonder. Our poor, miserable little culture seems to have lost its capacity to wonder and with it, its ability to celebrate.