Page 62 - The Debased Culture of Superficiality

60 THE DEBASED CULTURE OF SUPERFICIALITY

can forgive bad actions except Allah?] and do not know-
ingly persist in what they were doing. (Surah Al ‘Imran:
135)

Conversation in a Culture of Superficiality
The conversations that people engage in, both in its con-
tent and tone of voice, also reflect their spiritual state.
Shallow people spend more time than necessary to make
a point. Among themselves, they can speak for hours
expanding on a topic that they could have dealt with in one
sentence. For example, when some women in this culture
are cooking together, they engage in endless conversation
about how to do it, even though they know very well how.
They endlessly describe the methods they themselves use
and spend useless time criticizing the methods of others.
Preparing a meal, they take much longer than is required
because they waste time talking about other things on their
minds. It does not disquiet their consciences to spend time
talking for hours about useless topics. For example they can
talk about their diets for hours.
In the same way, men in this culture can discuss football
games or a particular make of car at great length. Surely, it
would make much more sense to share real information
with others that would be of some help to them. However,
their habit is to go into needless irrelevant detail, drag out
the topic and make it trivial. Since they do not have more
important matters to occupy their minds with, they seize on
such easy topics and happily spend much time discussing
them. Although there are some very important matters for