Midday beat to let nihilism have its moment.
There was an era when people had midlife crises, but the age of hitting traditional markers (coming of age, job, marriage, house, kids), then running out steam mid-race is kind of outmoded now.
What I see instead isn't individual decline; it's a larger lost belief in the myths that bind us as a society.
Rough stuff!
But where the social contract has been undone, it can be remade. Has to be.
So we let the nihilism move through us, and begin again.
Perhaps we need new shamans.
The tribes have gotten too big, too polarized, forgetting the sacred and confusing it with religion. Shamans used to be respected because they cracked the door open to the sacred. They broke the bonds of nihilism, by invoking the mysteries. The journeys they took one on commented the social contract.