The Brave Nothing

"Consider the billboard as any spritz of noise that obtrudes between the mind and the sky: 'cheap rates,' 'you can be sexy too,' 'billions and billions served.' The itch to be what is called 'important' functions as a billboard, as does the itch to be 'doing something productive' or to be playing a video game or to be sitting in front of a television.  Fill the visual field with neon lights.  Smog is useful, too: I mean both the fumes that come from millions of automobiles, and the smoky darkness of lust.  A child that has been blared at and distracted all his life will never be able to do the brave nothing of beholding the sky. He will not be able to ask, with the Psalmist--

'When I consider the heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?'

He will find the psalm itself too dull. He will want to change the channel."

--Anthony Esolen, Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child