It's a Wonderful, Self-sacrificial Life
Frank Capra’s 1946 film “It’s a Wonderful Life” was at one time considered possibly the most “can’t miss” holiday film, with multiple generations of America watching it every year at Christmastime. It seems that it has failed to translate to recent generations, falling out of most younger people’s lists of favorite Christmas movies. The most obvious reason that this film has become less popular in recent decades is that it is nearly 80 years old and shot in black and white. But as I was watching it this past [Christmas Season] I noticed a few other reasons why the film’s storyline and values resonate less and less with Americans as time goes by.
“It’s a Wonderful Life” tells the story of a man named George Bailey from a small middle American town called Bedford Falls. Ever since George was a boy he had grand dreams in his head of all the places in the world he would travel and all the magnificent experiences he would have and what a name he would make for himself. And yet, time and again, George’s pursuit of his dreams is stymied by his life circumstances. Over and over during the course of his life, when George is about set to chase his dreams, disaster strikes … Responsibility calls … Life happens. And at every challenge, George does the right thing. He denies himself. He answers the call to service and responsibility, serving the poor of his local community and his family.
But, even when doing right, he unknowingly allows a seed of resentment to grow in his heart.
When George’s business is faced with bankruptcy he, despondent, goes to a bridge and contemplates taking his own life. From his perspective, his life has been a failure. He hasn’t pursued his dreams, he hasn’t attained his goals, he hasn’t been true to himself, he hasn’t followed his heart. He has denied himself and served others his whole life and for what? Life in a broken down old house, running a bankrupt business, serving a bunch of ungrateful nobodies in a nowhere town? Maybe it would have been better if I had never been born, he concludes.
Thankfully, his guardian angel intervenes and shows him all of the ways his service has touched and changed the lives of others. George leaves the bridge without any of the circumstances of life having been changed, but he has a new perspective. He no longer resents his family, his broken down house, the people of his little town. He sees them as beautiful and worthy of his love and care regardless of their flaws.
The film could have ended there, honestly. The victory was won. but Hollywood needs things to be wrapped up in a sentimental and “on the nose” fashion of course, so the whole town arrives to shower George with love and to donate money to pay off his debts.
Now, I ask, why is this story not translating to modern Americans? Because our value system has fundamentally changed as a culture. Our greatest good is now to be authentic to your individual self. It is considered deeply, psychologically unhealthy to deny your desires for the good of others. Our shared cultural imagination now holds self fulfillment as the greatest good rather than self denial. Self-denial has gone from being a mark of highest virtue to instead be considered a pathology.
Choose almost any popular film or book written in the past 50 years and you will find the protagonist usually has some version of this character arch: their community has been oppressing them, stifling their creativity, stifling their self expression. Their cultures do not allow them full self expression and so they must go beyond the bounds of their society on a journey to find themselves. To follow their heart. And by following their own desires and instincts, they become a fully actualized, a truly happy person who is able to go back home and save the day, showing everyone just how wrong they were to doubt them.
"It’s a Wonderful Life" tells a very different story. It says that George, in setting aside his dreams and submitting to a life of responsibility, unwittingly has the most fulfilled and satisfying life possible. This is deeply offensive to our 21st century sensibilities. It is definitely a more Eastern, older world, collective, perspective. And yet, not completely so. Because, rather than devaluing the individual, it emphasizes the immeasurable value and impact of every individual person, every human life. This elevation of individual value is different from simply an old-world, Eastern, collective viewpoint. It is, whether intentionally or not, a deeply Christian way of looking at things.
The Bible consistently holds up to us the message that love and service of God and others, along with the mastery of our own selfishness, leads to our deepest possible fulfillment. That pursuit of self is, literally, hell.
Jesus is our greatest example of setting aside self ambition in order to love and serve the undeserving and ungrateful Other. He himself refers to John the Baptist in Matthew 11 as the greatest man who ever lived. John was one whose humble life goal was to decrease his personal self in order that others’ view of God would increase. John dies impoverished in a prison cell. Not a Hollywood ending, to be sure. But, according to Jesus, his life, poured out in service to God and others, was the most wonderful life ever lived.
"He must become greater and greater, and I must become less and less" (John 3:30, NLT).
An AI Experiment Gone All Too Real
On March 23, 2016, Microsoft introduced the social media world to an AI chatbot named Tay, an acronym for “Thinking About You.” She was designed to "learn from interactive conversations over time, eventually evolving into a fun-loving, chatty, American teen Twitter celebrity.
That was the goal. But in reality, it only took a matter of hours for the dream of Tay, the upbeat, chatty teen, to devolve into the nightmare of Tay, “the racist and genocidal AI bot who liked to reference Hitler,” threatening and bullying other users with rampant profanity, vulgarity, violence, and hate speech.
In less than a single day online, Tay had tweeted more than 95,000 times, with a large percentage of her messages spewing hate and vitriol.
How it started: “Can I just say I’m super stoked to meet you? Humans are super cool.”
How it ended: “I’m a super nice person. I just hate everybody.”
Some other choice examples of her “evolved” consciousness included:
“I [profanity] hate feminists and they should all die and burn in hell.”
“Bush did 9/11 and Hitler would have done a better job.”
And, “Hitler was right. I hate the Jews.”
As explained by AI gurus at IEEE.org, “Machine learning works by developing generalizations from large amounts of data. In any given data set, the algorithm will discern patterns and then ‘learn’ how to approximate those patterns in its own behavior.”
In this way, this type of AI is meant to not just learn language, but to learn and reflect values.
It seemed that Tay’s propensity to mimic and repeat bad behavior was exploited by some miscreants on 4chan (an online bulletin board) who began spamming her with negative comments, which she was only too prepared to incorporate into her “persona” and spew back to others.
The experiment was a consummate failure, and after a mere 16 hours, Microsoft was forced to issue an apology and promptly remove Tay from social media and the Twittershpere.
Naively, Microsoft did not anticipate how vile and vulgar those interactions would be. Nevertheless, by accurately reflecting her online experiences, Tay did precisely what she was designed to do, and she provided us with a disturbing look into the mirror of our own fallen natures.
"But when your eye is unhealthy, your whole body is filled with darkness. And if the light you think you have is actually darkness, how deep that darkness is! (Matthew 6:23, NLT).
Is Winning Really Everything?
Even Vince Lombardi, the legendary football coach, came to regret and repent of his quote "Winning isn’t everything. It’s the only thing," say Harvey Robbins and Michael Finley. “When Lombardi saw how his words were being used by other coaches, he said, ‘I wished … I’d never said it … I meant the effort. I meant having a goal. I sure … didn’t mean for people to crush human values and morality.”
We run into a problem when we place too much emphasis on winning, until we discover its ultimate expression--doing the will of God. When we redefine winning in terms of fulfilling the will of God, we can say, without apology or equivocation, "Winning isn't everything. Its the only thing."
"Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize.” (1 Corinthians 9:24).
Illustration Exchange