Episode 128 - The Catcher in the Rye

J. D. Salinger’s 1951 novel, The Catcher in the Rye, retains its relevance in the present year as the very existence of artificial intelligence prompts everybody to wonder about the phoniness of a thing.  This is, after all, protagonist Holden Caulfield’s favorite epithet.  Everyone – his teachers, his friends, the individuals who populate his universe – is a phony, a fake, a walking and talking lie.  It is precisely this worldview that aggravates his sense of alienation: a feeling that he does not belong – that he is perpetually out of alignment with the world and all he can do is suffer through it.  Holden Caulfield the character became emblematic of an entire generation – the Baby Boomers – who were birthed into a world of Allied victory over the Axis powers only to question American exceptionalism, lose themselves in hyper-materialism, and eventually take to the streets to violently protest a police action taking place in Southeast Asia.  The narratives that had once kept the peace were beginning to be questioned for their true agendas, and the conclusions many reached was that these narratives perpetuated falsehoods that, in many cases, funneled money to the already rich and powerful. So phony it was.  Holden Caulfield and a generation of the likeminded called out the lies and lost themselves as a consequence.  How do you build a world from scratch?  You can’t.  One can only rearrange the pieces and hope for a better outcome. It has been my observation, dear listeners, that human beings can rarely if ever outwit their own proclivities.  We are fallen by nature, which means that being phony is, regrettably, our common default.  If we are apathetic, we wallow in this default.  If we strive to be better, we acknowledge and confess our sins.  Salinger seems to be making a similar observation when he writes, “It's funny. All you have to do is say something nobody understands and they'll do practically anything you want them to.”  Here, he is making a point about human behavior.  Ignorance and fealty go hand in hand.  Human history is propelled by dedicated individuals doing things they do not fully understand.  Phonies.  We are all phony.  Faking it until we make it, though the final aim is never really achieved. It is understandable, then, that Holden Caulfield feels alienated – that an entire generation feels alienated.  How can one operate in a world they know to be false?  Surely, this recharacterizes bizarre behavior into desperate acts.  I will not list them here, dear listeners, because I am sure you can generate a list just as quickly on your own. Artificial intelligence, therefore, only exacerbates the problem.  If we did not truly know what was true before AI, we really do not know what is true with AI.  This, of course, refers to the things of the world and it even might explain, in part, why so many are migrating to Christian orthodoxy: Roman rite, Latin rite and Eastern.  When small t truth is in chaos, a seeker can only cleave to capital T truth. Salinger ends The Catcher in the Rye with a nod toward saving children from despair and alienation – in effect, saving them from a phony world – and while that effort remains noble even today, it seems that a more effective solution to the AI problem is one that very much includes a recalibration of what we should be pursuing, a rethinking of the problem long at hand. If we cannot do this, the vicious cycle will only continue, and the spiritual malaise and all the self-destructive behavior that goes with it will only deepen.  Perhaps artificial intelligence will ignite a revolution in the way that The Great Awakenings sparked religious revivals.  Perhaps it is the threat we need to change our ways and embrace authenticity.  We simply must decide how long we are willing to put up with the phony and not be resigned to being yet another generation that, as Holden Caulfield puts it, “never notice anything.”