It is easy to deplore market capitalism and “modern city life” and the many ways they depersonalize people, but most of us who are well-to-do enough to bother about this concern actually live in the thick of them. (Or maybe it’s just that the other less urban voices are not as loud.) We have indoor plumbing, electricity, and grocery stores; we take for granted such conveniences as taxis, toothbrushes, and Internet connection; and we choose jobs based on what we believe are the best that employers can offer. And often the employers, incidentally, are multinationals.

Our condition refuses easy dismissal. We have to pay more attention to this than just the occasional comment about idealism as being something for the young.

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We may decry the obsession over the next best thing in gadgets and technology, but that is simply an effect of the all-too-familiar drive, year on year, to make products and services better, faster, more efficient in the companies where you and I work. As Norman Lear stated, “Maximizing shareholder value is the central disease of our time.” And even if your job is not in a multinational, it’s likely that the fruit of your labor is still part of this whole system.

In what ways should we engage in our culture? Just how should ordinary folks like us “cultivate the talents entrusted to them” while being “in the world but not of it”? How do we “render unto Cesar” without forgetting to “consider the lilies”? There must be some way to have better balance. Or to at least get a better perspective.