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.
@MLClark cable, satellite, streaming media, citizen journalism (of all quality), and more has contributed to social fragmentation and isolation. In the past, for better or not, fewer options in media increased cohesiveness.
I too am ready to live in a cabin in the woods. I will be on my porch in a rocker and suspenders, with a lazy pet who stirs only when the whiskey wagon comes 'round.
I'll send you pigeon from time to time, if I ever make it!
@MLClark another consideration in social fragmentation is opportunities for socialization itself. Here were are “socializing” but without the garlic, pepper, olive oil, and basil of in person face-to-face communication. And there’s the influence of privatized socialization; gotta’ pay to play (or pay investigate play).
yes, the myth has lost its power to unite people in their common humanity and suffering. too many. as is said, the centre cannot hold.
now we're seeing
the rough beast which was trekking to Bethlehem to be born is now grasping at the levers of power in its last gasps of reassertion of relevance.
civilizations have come and gone before, but this number of Homo sapiens have not before been involved.
this too sharp pass. life always finds a way. it's happening under the radar.
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.
I'm having a confluence of Rancid-related posts over various social media today, so I will share this to keep the loose thread connected, @MLClark
#CoSoMusic
Rancid - Nihilism
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ilg_16c-KXw