We need stronger and stronger shocks, it seems.
How do we return, not just to a functioning economy, but to a functioning society? When our children are fed twisted and sick images and ideas virtually from childhood?
The oldest daughter of a friend of mine who watches a lot of horror movies LAUGHED the first time she saw the Exorcist. What are we becoming?
As I mentioned a few posts ago, I watched 21 Jump Street two weeks ago (and was gratified that both of my kids thought it was stupid), and it vaguely traumatized me–not, of course due to content, but because the thing was filled with brain crushing stupidity, vulgarity, and a complete lack of thematic consistency. I felt myself getting dumber, less empathetic, more aggressive, and more alienated, watching this movie.
Now, I am an adult. I can of course compensate for those feelings, but one of my skills, I think, is looking into the emotional core of things. This movie is very popular, I am told, in the young teen crowd, roughly 12-17. It talks about oral sex often, uses constant crude sexual imagery, portrays parents as irresponsible adolescents, and even invokes the “1%”, which in the real world is Obama and his super-elite banking patrons, but here is a motorcycle gang we are somehow supposed to hate because they deal drugs.
As I meditate, sit in silence, process, these images keep coming up, because nothing MAKES SENSE. There is no latent social order. There is no moral activation, or call to goodness. There is nothing in there which would shape a young mind to do good, or find value in anything but evanescent and sybaritic pleasures. It is decadent, in other words, and those souls unfortunate enough to fully imbibe this brew will in short order find themselves profoundly confused, depressed, and alone, even if they surround themselves with people. This is a malady you cover up, but do not fix, with incessant texting and Twittering.
I will add that, for myself, I have reached my emotional core, and found fear, great fear, unreasoning fear. It is hard to look oneself emotionally in the eye, to see the darkness, to let negativity flow over you.
These worries of mine, about cultural decadence, are simultaneously valid, in my view, AND indicative of a habit I developed when I was still in my infancy, as a condition of survival.
I am done with this fear. It is going to hard for me, for a time, as I sit still and watch it sweep over me, and as I AMPLIFY it, which is how you fix it. But it clear to me something is on the other side, and I want it.
We need leaders. Leaders are those willing to go where they have never been, to go where no one can lead them, to find new things, new paths, new knowledge, and bring it back, knowing full well their best work may win them nothing but scorn and obscurity. Still, such work is what makes life interesting.
Paradoxically, that last paragraph made me smile. I feel better now. I don’t know why, but hell, there it is.