I heard a preacher say once: Amusement is a sort of diversion of our time away from meaningful pursuits. I thought he was a kind of sour puss.

However, “muse” originally means to wonder, to ponder, like Rocky the hen who sat in the tree at night watching the sunset. Muse is like a place of inspiration where artists and poets reside, but available to all. A place of questions and insights. It’s a place of purposeful pursuit.

Compare that to a-muse. A-muse is a place where no meaningful pursuit exists. No thought is necessary, no inspiration required. Sort of like the older generation’s Carnival, or my generation’s T.V.. The young people now have Tik Tok.

I asked a graduate from a Massachusetts’ High School last summer what her interests were (inviting her to share what excited her about her future). She said: “Tik Tok.” I sort of poked around gently – sharing my own ideas. She insisted she works and in her free time looks at Tik Tok. This may be viewed as “amusement” in the negative sense the pastor warned.

Perhaps a cataclysm like a volcano, or an earth-shattering quake is not a bad thing, in view of our nation’s current addiction to a-musement. Words change in meaning, they adapt and evolve. What one generation means by a word, is not necessarily the same to the next.

Generally, an earthshaking cataclysm may be viewed a bad thing. In light of the world’s obsession with meaningless pursuits, maybe it is a good thing. Words change meaning, maybe what we view as “good’ and “bad” also changes depending on our perspective?

I never believed the idea that there is no such thing absolute truth, or all truth is subjective. That sounds like someone trying to justify lying to me. A sort of Orwellian doublespeak. But, drawing on my experience in ethics (which is not much), it’s possible a crisis is a good thing right now.