Making Peace with this New World
The world has become a very creepy place for me the past few years. My nature is all about stability and that has pretty much vanished in this new millenia. As I prepare to turn 60 next year I'm trying to find a Center that I can build a stable old age around. All of the chaos around me is not helping me in this effort.
The world that I grew up and worked in for 60 years is utterly gone. I barely recognize a thing. Every model of human behavior, from marriage and family to work and community to social interaction has broken down and failed.
Marriage is a thing of the past, a curiousity to most young people. It has been replaced with temporary relationships where children are born, shuffled between temporary households and are brought up to various bewildering standards of behavior. My wife and I face this situation daily with our daughter and her son who live in our home. The six year old's mother says this, the other grandparents say that and we have our own ways. Meanwhile the government has it's own set of standards that don't match well with anyone else's.
For forty years work has been a refuge from chaos where authority, responsibility and duty reigned. The past ten years in the workplace have seen the chaos of society creep into then flood the workplace. No one is in charge, routine responsibility has to be assigned every minute and there is no sense of duty for company or employee. Everything is temporary and negotiable.
The idea of community is gone, neighbors don't know neighbors, nor do they want to in most cases. In this zero sum society anyone elses gain is your loss. As the government forces tolerance for sometimes disgusting behavior, intolerance grows privately. One neighborhood at a time we become a nation of strangers who are suspicious of, or even hostile to, one another. Modern political discourse is instructive.
For all of our communications technology we have become a nation that can't interact socially in a civilized manner. As language skills fail, mostly we have to communicate by reading the signals that are sent by clothing, body art, piercings and postures. Every day I see fat ass cracks at work and in public exposed by skimpy clothing. During conversation, the other party rudely answers the text message or cell phone, showing me that our conversation is over. People sprawl out in chairs at meetings as if they were lounging on their couch at home. I hear the most personal, private details of ghastly lifestyles from people that I barely know.
Longing for the world that I'm accustomed to is a fool's errand. It is gone and there is nothing I can do about it. I must mourn it's passing and accept the loss. Perhaps I should create an effigy of the world that is lost, place it in a coffin and bury it so I can move on.
Living in this new world is difficult for me. I despise much of what passes for the new normal behaviors hence I tend to treat it with contempt and bitter cynicism. I struggle to find anyone or anything that I admire in this new world, except my wife.
I must make peace with this new world that I will grow old and die in. But first I must give up this crazy idea that I can or should pass the ideals from my world into this new world. For they are dead. I can only only harm those who must live in this new world with my ideals, for they are false in this new world. Ideals such as honor, truth, responsibility, duty, morality and humility are things of the past. Self-interest and expediency are all that matter today.
I must fortify my Center where I can live by my ideals in a world that has no use for the ancient ways. A redoubt that cannot be penetrated by the fallen new world. I must bury the old world and cut my losses with what replaced it, for I cannot change it, or even influence it. Then I must make peace with this new world.
The world that I grew up and worked in for 60 years is utterly gone. I barely recognize a thing. Every model of human behavior, from marriage and family to work and community to social interaction has broken down and failed.
Marriage is a thing of the past, a curiousity to most young people. It has been replaced with temporary relationships where children are born, shuffled between temporary households and are brought up to various bewildering standards of behavior. My wife and I face this situation daily with our daughter and her son who live in our home. The six year old's mother says this, the other grandparents say that and we have our own ways. Meanwhile the government has it's own set of standards that don't match well with anyone else's.
For forty years work has been a refuge from chaos where authority, responsibility and duty reigned. The past ten years in the workplace have seen the chaos of society creep into then flood the workplace. No one is in charge, routine responsibility has to be assigned every minute and there is no sense of duty for company or employee. Everything is temporary and negotiable.
The idea of community is gone, neighbors don't know neighbors, nor do they want to in most cases. In this zero sum society anyone elses gain is your loss. As the government forces tolerance for sometimes disgusting behavior, intolerance grows privately. One neighborhood at a time we become a nation of strangers who are suspicious of, or even hostile to, one another. Modern political discourse is instructive.
For all of our communications technology we have become a nation that can't interact socially in a civilized manner. As language skills fail, mostly we have to communicate by reading the signals that are sent by clothing, body art, piercings and postures. Every day I see fat ass cracks at work and in public exposed by skimpy clothing. During conversation, the other party rudely answers the text message or cell phone, showing me that our conversation is over. People sprawl out in chairs at meetings as if they were lounging on their couch at home. I hear the most personal, private details of ghastly lifestyles from people that I barely know.
Longing for the world that I'm accustomed to is a fool's errand. It is gone and there is nothing I can do about it. I must mourn it's passing and accept the loss. Perhaps I should create an effigy of the world that is lost, place it in a coffin and bury it so I can move on.
Living in this new world is difficult for me. I despise much of what passes for the new normal behaviors hence I tend to treat it with contempt and bitter cynicism. I struggle to find anyone or anything that I admire in this new world, except my wife.
I must make peace with this new world that I will grow old and die in. But first I must give up this crazy idea that I can or should pass the ideals from my world into this new world. For they are dead. I can only only harm those who must live in this new world with my ideals, for they are false in this new world. Ideals such as honor, truth, responsibility, duty, morality and humility are things of the past. Self-interest and expediency are all that matter today.
I must fortify my Center where I can live by my ideals in a world that has no use for the ancient ways. A redoubt that cannot be penetrated by the fallen new world. I must bury the old world and cut my losses with what replaced it, for I cannot change it, or even influence it. Then I must make peace with this new world.
posted by lugh lampfhota at 12:43 PM
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