Discernment in an Age of Disorder
Ordering the Soul in an Age of Counterfeits
Episode IV
Vanity: The Performance of the Self
Episode Thesis
When identity becomes performative, discernment weakens because the soul begins seeking validation from the crowd rather than truth from God. Vanity disorders our relationship with neighbor, replacing authentic charity with image, performance, and external approval
Karen Opening Reflection
In our last episode, we explored sensuality as a disorder of appetite, the moment when desire begins governing the soul rather than serving the good. But human disorder does not stop within the self alone. Eventually it begins shaping the way we relate to other people. The soul becomes increasingly concerned not merely with satisfaction, but with appearance.
Vanity is often misunderstood because we reduce it to superficial concerns about beauty or status. But the Christian tradition sees vanity much more deeply than that. Vanity is the temptation to construct the self through external approval. The soul begins performing rather than living truthfully.
Modern culture intensifies this temptation constantly. Social media trains people to curate identity, measure worth through visibility, and seek affirmation through performance. Even suffering can become performative. Even morality can become performative. We begin presenting ourselves rather than offering ourselves.
Christ warned repeatedly against this disorder. In the Gospel of Matthew, He speaks of those who perform acts of righteousness “to be seen by men.”[1] The problem is not merely public action. The problem is the relocation of the heart. The soul slowly begins seeking its center in applause, affirmation, attention, and visibility rather than in God.
C.S. Lewis observed that pride and vanity are intensely competitive because “each person’s pride is in competition with everyone else’s pride.”[2] Vanity traps the soul inside comparison. Peace becomes impossible because identity now depends upon reaction, visibility, and affirmation.
When identity becomes performative, discernment weakens because the soul begins seeking validation from the crowd rather than truth from God. Vanity disorders our relationship with neighbor, replacing authentic charity with image, performance, and external approval.
Josef Pieper warned that modern culture increasingly destroys the contemplative foundation necessary for authentic human life.[3] The result is a society constantly performing, reacting, consuming, and comparing, yet rarely remaining interiorly still enough to encounter truth honestly.
St. Augustine described fallen humanity as becoming “curved inward” upon itself.[4] Vanity intensifies this inward curvature because every relationship slowly becomes filtered through self-consciousness and performance.
St. Thomas Aquinas taught that vainglory disorders human action by directing it toward external praise rather than toward the good itself.[5] The saints understood something modern culture often forgets: authentic charity does not constantly seek witnesses.
A civilization is renewed not by panic, but by rightly ordered souls. And rightly ordered souls must learn again how to live truthfully rather than perform constantly before the eyes of the world.
Sara
Yeah, and we are inundated with constant images and constant sound. You go to the gas station, there is a skinny woman telling you about the latest diet drink. I mean, that is at the gas station. You go to the grocery store and they are piping music in. You go to a restaurant, even some of our high-end restaurants, and you are inundated with the television.
I was shocked a couple of months ago. My husband and I went to Mass in Wisconsin, and we went in and on either side of the altar there were screens advertising Menards. I kid you not. That was before Mass, I will say that it was before Mass, but it is just astounding. So everything is a distraction. Everything is noise.
We only think of noise as sound. But noise is not just noise. It is anything that distracts the soul from God. Visual noise, all of the eye-popping images. You are looking at your phone or the computer and the side screen is just bleep bleep bleep, that kind of element. It is an exterior presentation of vanity. The phone demands, “Look at me.” The computer demands, “Look at me.” The screen at the gas station demands, “Listen to me.” The radio at the grocery store says, “Hear me.” All of these things are the world demanding our attention when that attention, particularly in those moments, should not be given to something abstract. It should be given to something concrete and real, either the person that is directly in front of us, to God, or if we have to have a moment of introspection, to ourselves, our true selves.
But that noise prevents that and ushers in unnecessary comparisons between how we look, how we feel, how we should act, how we compare, how do we rate. Everything feels like a competition. There is just not a moment.
I was talking to a priest yesterday, and I just had the opportunity to be at a Latin Mass again, which was very pleasant. But the one thing that I really noticed about the Latin Mass is that our Lord speaks to us in mystery. So all of the words that are thrown at us on the television screen, on the radio, from our phones, words either spoken or written, we understand them, quote unquote, and so we become inundated by them.
But when you are put into the Latin Mass, our Lord allows the body itself to rest so that he can communicate directly with the soul. We do not have to worry about understanding. We can enter into that comprehensive element of meditation and contemplation, and in that the soul will settle itself. It will take itself out of the worldliness.
I love the way that you drew those connections. Pride being a negation of truth. Sensuality being a disordering of listening to the appetite rather than informing it, using it to inform ourselves. And then vanity puts us into constant performance mode and competition with the other, which is not what we are called to. Instead of vanity, we are called to communion with one another. And that is a real sorrow when we become inundated by the things that stimulate us to performance instead of to communion with one another
What happens when identity becomes dependent upon performance and external approval?
Karen Closing Reflection and Prayer
Where have I sought visibility more than truth? Where have I become performative rather than authentic? Where has comparison weakened charity or disturbed peace within my soul? Where have I allowed the approval of others to shape my identity more than the love of God?
The Christian life does not ask us to construct a false self for public display. It invites us into freedom, integrity, and truthful love. The soul becomes peaceful again when it no longer needs constant applause in order to know its worth.
Let us pray.
Lord Jesus Christ, free us from the temptation to live performatively before others. Quiet the restless need for approval, recognition, and comparison. Teach us to love sincerely, serve quietly, and remain rooted in truth rather than appearance. Restore simplicity within our hearts and integrity within our lives.
May we seek not visibility, but faithfulness. Not applause, but holiness. Not performance, but love rightly ordered toward You.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Sources
[1] Matthew 6:1–6, The Holy Bible, Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2006).
[2] C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: HarperOne, 2001), 122.
[3] Josef Pieper, Leisure: The Basis of Culture (South Bend, IN: St. Augustine’s Press, 1998), 46–48.
[4] Augustine, Confessions, trans. Henry Chadwick (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), XIII.
[5] Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (Westminster, MD: Christian Classics, 1981), II-II, q.132.