The Post-Modern Era and Lost Souls

I think liberals are brainless, conservatives are heartless, and neo-cons.. well, let's just say that I put more faith in 20th c. philosophy than 18th c. theology. We've taken all of the good parts of any Steinbeck novel and ripped them out. Now we're left only with blind progress and authoritarianism. It's illegal for me to walk in a park after sunset, and I can be issued a citation for doing any of a hundred other things that should be at my discretion. Environmentalism and Libertarianism are just counter culture; environmentalists lack an important element of "carpe diem," and Libertarians have no real concept of culture in the first place. So here we are in the 21st c., lost. We have no just war to fight and space is no new frontier. We are a nation, a developed world, of lost souls with the luxury of debating some of the most meaningless minutia.

The upshot is that many generations have felt the world resting on the eve of destruction or moral turpitude, yet some of the best human beings have sprung up after those supposed endings. Maybe this is a curse though, for so many generations of people to feel that the world constantly turns in the wrong direction. If we believe that humans have control over this direction then we are left feeling alienated by the efficacious majority, but if we believe that this direction is outside of human control then we are united only by our impotence and helplessness.

Why is the world this way, where is it going and what ought we to do? Every sect of man proposes a different answer to these perpetual questions. They may provide an ideology, a lifestyle, or a saying or two. What many or most of these sects fail to realize is that because of the limited nature of human understanding it might be more earnest to live with the questions posed and unanswered. This is not to say that we should be shocked into a state of inaction, but rather that we should not act with such certainty on prescriptions for living.

Modern medical science will not cure your 21st c. ADHD child, a child who would have been normal or rambunctious a few years earlier, and it won't cure your depression. Science has treatments for those dispositions, not cures. Sometimes depression will peak through the heavy linen cloth that these drugs drape over it. It seems strange that we no longer accept that sometimes the world is a dark enough place to render depression a natural and acceptable reaction. Maybe post-modernity is the era in which man decides that the lowest lows and highest highs are no longer worth experiencing and tries to do away with them completely.

For my part, I will focus on the people closest to me and those who are ideologically similar. If I spend too much time fighting with those I disagree with then I will spend less time choosing a way of life for myself. A way of life shouldn't be solely a reaction to an opposing ideology; I won't choose to embody all contrary statements just for the sake of showing my displeasure. The smaller the area I focus on, the more likely I am to change it in ways that I deem beneficial. I'll focus on my immediate family and my friends for now, and if I ever have the influence then perhaps I will later focus on a slightly larger community.