Amerika

The human creature faces the same fate as animals, to grow old and die. With each passing year, the tension becomes greater. Is today the day? Will it — or how much will it — hurt and be disgusting? The weakness accelerates; the loss of vision and hearing intensifies. Death becomes part of life before death has its day.

Perhaps animals handle it better, since they seem to be born with a belief in a divine order to things and perhaps a not-so-unpleasant destination after death; anyone sane wants to believe this, as well. For humans, doubt is always present, and this lends to a growing tension as the years roll by.

However, what seems to affect humans the most is interacting with the world. We start out young and idealistic, full of hopes and dreams, but then collide with the brutal reality of a planet where earning money and buying things dominate most human activities. It seems pointless, but it also determines our survival, so it takes over the mind.

After a decade or two of interacting with this world, most people get bitter and cynical. They start to see other people as threats and withdraw from any sense of comradeship. Their dreams become forgotten, guitars stored in basements and typewriters hidden in attics. Bitterness replaces optimism and selfishness replaces hope.

Jobs factor heavily into this equation. To succeed at a job, you must be there and do what they tell you, which turns out most of the time to be disorganized and unnecessary activity. You have to tolerate people who are obviously dumb, and ignore those above you when they go on power trips and unnecessarily humiliate you.

To get a good job, you go to the city. Just like on the job, living in the city entails lots of toleration of the bad or stupid behavior of others just to get along. Getting along with others, working out compromises, and avoiding conflict replace any pursuit of goodness, beauty, excellence, or wisdom.

Eventually this extends to the family unit. Is your wife cheating? Are your kids on drugs? Perhaps they are just using you as a checkbook. What was once love becomes a relationship like employer-employee, where you use money to control others so that they do not slow you down or sabotage what you are doing.

In this lifeless world, people have no purpose except to have enough wealth to avoid its problems. There is a disproportionate focus on problems and negativity as a result. People become paranoid. They seek to earn their pile and retreat to some safe and pleasant home where they can forget the world.

It is funny how human successes bring failures. The more we succeed, the less we need the world, and we ignore its invisible underlying order which predicts things like future outcomes. Consequently, we lose sight of anything beyond the individual, including culture, social interaction, and meaning.

What the medieval era offered us we have forgotten: rich culture, small villages where everyone served a necessary role, an optimistic faith in the divine and afterlife, a sense of our cultures as rising to excellence, goodness, beauty, and wisdom. No wonder it haunts our imagery with a sense of what once was and could be again.

Tags: anomie, bitterness, medievalism, purpose