Here is part of the article from Wired Magazine:
Jonathan Berger, a professor of music at Stanford University, recently completed a six-year study of his students. Every year he asked new arrivals in his class to listen to the same musical excerpts played in a variety of digital formats—from standard MP3s to high-fidelity uncompressed files—and rate their preferences. Every year, he reports, more and more students preferred the sound of MP3s, particularly for rock music. They've grown accustomed to what Berger calls the percussive sizzle—aka distortion—found in compressed music. To them, that's what music is supposed to sound like.
What has happened with the MP3 format and other “good enough” technologies is that the qualities we value have simply changed. And the change is so profound that the old measures have almost lost their meaning. Call it the MP3 effect.
After reflecting on this article I started to think about how the “Good Enough Revolution” seems to be infiltrating Christianity. Instead of seeking the gold standard (“Be holy for I am holy”) we settle for mediocrity—which we believe costs us less. We don’t come right out and say we don’t want the best, but we say just that with our actions. We make the small compromises, or at least small in our opinions, and think that it won’t affect the way we live our lives in any significant ways.
There comes a point when we are likely to believe that stretching ourselves further is beneficial for the kingdom of God. Instead of only being able to do “X” we can now do “x y & z”. Much like a CD can only carry a dozen or so high quality songs, yet can carry a hundred or more MP3’s, we think we the trade-offs we are making are good. However, much like frequencies have to be nixed in MP3’s to shrink their size, something must be cut out in order for us to replace quality with quantity.
At first we may not notice much difference in the quality, but as time goes on the proof shows itself in the pudding. Just as a first generation MP3 may not have major noticeable flaws, the further you get away from the original (read: pure) recording, the more the flaws will begin to show. Or if we trade our rifle approach for a shotgun approach we may cover a wider area, but our accuracy and effectiveness suffers.
As we move from one generation to the next what philosophy are we passing on? Are we encouraging those that come behind us to pursue the gold standard, or are we saying –with our actions, if not our words—that “good enough” is,…well, “good enough”?
