"We hardly need to be reminded that we are living in an age of confusion — a lot of us have traded in our beliefs for bitterness and cynicism or for a heavy package of despair, or even a quivering portion of hysteria.Opinions can be picked up cheap in the market place while such commodities as courage and fortitude and faith are in alarmingly short supply."Edward R. Murrow
Certainly sounds like a description for today, doesn't it?
The concept of alienation is nothing new, resounding throughout various authors and schools of literature from even the ancient classical period. We are strangers in a strange land.
In its most recent manifestation, in philosophers like Hegel, Marx, and Rousseau, it is the idea that in the past people lived in harmony, in a sort of natural state, and then the structures of production and civilisation caused people to feel disassociated, separated from the fabric of their own world grown to large for interaction, separated from their fellow men, and ultimately from creation itself.
We fantasize about the naturally good and brave pioneer, hands deep into the soil, living harmoniously with the land and the animals, with a natural kindliness and spirit of cooperation with others.
I have come to believe that this is nothing more than an echo of the transition from child to adolescent, and from adolescent to adult.
Readers see the above quote and say, 'yes this is how it is.' But they forget that this is how Edward R. Murrow was describing things in the so called golden days of the 1950s, which I remember reasonably well, and that were anything but placid and golden. They were filled with turmoil, tension, and fear, that gave way to the youth revulsion, rejection, and revolution and of the Sixties.
Each generation grows up and faces the challenges of adulthood, and they seem new to them, especially if they have no real sense of history. And this phenomenon can be exacerbated if the demographics favor a generation with larger than usual numbers.
We face NOTHING that has not been faced before, many times. It seems new to us, because we personally may have been able to move through life in happy ignorance, while our parents and grandparents took care of the harder tasks of resisting corruption and fighting for their families.
The main difference is that it is our generation's turn to carry the baton, and burdens, of history. And so we must brace ourselves for our duty, both large and small.
We can take some comfort from this, and some equanimity from this when the thought leaders attempt to sow fear, cynicism and confusion in the public.
Terrorists, bomber, civil unrest, economic collapses, corruption and anarchists? Read some of the less glamorous history of your own country and see what the last two generations faced.
There is nothing really new under the sun, and 'modern' and 'new eras' are too often old cons and misbehaviours in different sounding wrapping. Read the quotes from Wendell Berry in the stock commentary below this posting. He cuts to the heart of our problem. We think it is all new, when it is the same, age old struggle between the common good and private privilege, between justice and corruption and the need for like minded good people to associate for their own mutual protection.
The Banks must be restrained, and the financial system reformed, with balance restored to the economy, before there can be any sustainable recovery.
