The Modern Lotus-Eaters
In Homer’s The Odyssey, Odysseus and his men land on an island populated by a tribe of people who live on only one kind of food: a lotus flower. When Odysseus and his men arrive, the people share their lotus flower with several of them. But, the ones who try it forget all thoughts of their families and homes. Instead, they become obsessed with the idea of remaining on the island, so they may continue to partake of the lotus flower. In the end, Odysseus drags them kicking and screaming back to the ship and forces them onboard, commanding his other men to set sail immediately.
The lotus-eaters are people who have left off caring about the world, and instead prefer to lie forever in a marsh, consuming a flower that does them no good. In Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s poem about them, “The Lotos-eaters,” they sing about prizing rest above all things—that it is unfair for them to have to “toil” every day forever, and that they should be able to rest and watch the world go by like the gods do, or like a leaf, that sits idly on a tree until it dies. What the flower makes them forget is that it is this “toil” that makes a happy life. It is through the “toil” of existence that you build relationships with loved ones, share experiences with them, learn to love new things, practice skills, and experience success. But, in the name of this flower, the lotus-eaters just lie down and eat until they die.
I am horrified by these people. I am horrified because the image they call to mind is one of a child, etherized by an iPad, sitting at a dinner table with his parents and yet taking no part in their animated conversation. He pays no mind to his surroundings. He cares solely for the bright and meaningless images dancing before him. The far-off gaze in his eyes lets us all understand that he knows not where he is, nor does he care, as long as he has his lotus flower.
I become more horrified still when I think of my classroom. I have been saying for years that all an experienced teacher has to do is look at a classroom while the students are engaged in work, and it is a simple task to pick out which of them has transformed into a lotus-eater—they do not focus as long, they cannot follow instructions, and their souls are unreachable by even the most passionate teacher. In recent years, this exercise has become less and less informative, not because the problem is getting better, but rather because the disease is spreading. As the years have progressed, more and more of my students have fallen prey to the modern lotus flower. The youngest of my lotus-eaters care only for games and funny videos, while the older ones spend their spare time in endless, inane text message conversations and watching TikTok videos.
Everybody knows that screens are bad for kids—that is not new. But, the side effect of excessive “screen time” that nobody talks about is no less than the death of the child’s very soul. Yes, the lotus-eaters eventually die after long lives doing exactly what they want—indulging in their slothful whims—but long before the death of the lotus-eater’s body comes the death of his soul. Just as nothing green can grow in a trodden garden, nothing beautiful can bloom in a mind that is numbed day after day by cheap stimulation. When a child only knows how to seek pleasure through screens that are designed to flush dopamine through his body every several seconds, he will never seek it elsewhere. He will not read, create art, participate in sports, or even spend time with his friends outside the confines of the internet and text messaging. The child’s soul is starved and killed when fed exclusively on the modern lotus flower.
I look at my lotus-eater students, and I feel like I have the task of Odysseus in front of me: drag them back to the ship. Save them from this slow, idle destruction of themselves. And I try my best. My job is to share literature with them, and I believe whole-heartedly in the power of great literature to awaken even a young child’s soul. By modeling my own love of literature and studying many different approaches to sharing that love with students, I have converted many non-readers into passionate lovers of literature. So, I apply my skill and my love in earnest, and we do great work together at school.
But, then they go home. And that’s where they keep their screens—their lotus flowers. That is where they find the meaningless delights of YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram. And my day’s efforts of dragging them back to the ship of the useful and the good is completely negated. Once more, they submerge themselves in the marshes, deadening their senses and their very souls with loud, meaningless, loveless content. Like Sisyphus, I renew my task each day, knowing full well that, without a sea change in the values of our culture, I will continue to renew the same task each day, forever, without hope of success.
That is toil.
And yet, it is toil that I will never leave off. It is toil that fills my heart with determination. I may only make a small change—a ripple in a vast ocean—but the world will have been made better by that ripple, if only by the smallest degree. The lotus-eaters of today are children, and I refuse to abandon children to their island of sloth and destruction.
Instead, I teach my students values like those embodied in another poem Tennyson wrote based on The Odyssey: “Ulysses.”
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!
As tho' to breathe were life!
In other words: just breathing isn’t living. Through teaching meaningful literature, like The Odyssey and poetry by Tennyson, I will drag at least some of the lotus-eaters back to the ship. Feeding the lotus-eaters with real beauty and meaning can and will resuscitate their starved souls.
