God is dead

The principal flaw in our design is our confusion regarding several vital concepts, the understanding of which is integral to our success or failure as a species. We often confuse conjecture with knowledge, and tend to equate this “knowledge” with power. We like to think of ourselves as individuals, capable of our forming our own opinions of the world around us and able to differentiate truth and trickery easily enough, but theorists influence us more than most would care to admit; the truth, of course, is that we are only capable of something to which we earnestly apply ourselves.


With the advent of our modern society, we’ve come to depend on technology more than each other, as we once did: we seem to have forgotten that, were every man for himself in the days of our swinging from trees and picking gnats from each other’s backs, we would never have come this far. These days, we’re so entranced by all of our neat gadgets that we’ve forgotten how to cope without them; the pace of our lives is such that, were there still a patch of green to speak of, in the industrialized world we’ve created, we would summarily put it out of our minds to take our noses from the grindstone for a while and smell the roses while we can.


Once in a blue moon, someone comes to this very conclusion. Once he does, one of several things may happen: it’s possible that he will shut it from his mind, content to spend the rest of his life ignorant of anything outside of the monotony of his daily routine (or equally afraid of what others will think of him); if the offending thoughts persist and he feels the need to let the cat out of the bag, he will soon discover that most of us don’t care to abandon those things to which we’ve become well accustomed. Despite the disastrous consequences of our excess, it offers a certain measure of security that we don’t seem to be able to find elsewhere in our lives. So, what if your girlfriend dumps you? Drink your sorrow away. Your weight is beginning to bother you? Sit in front of the tube with a bit of Ben & Jerry’s, and chances are, things won’t seem quite so bad. Quite frequently, the possibilities are limited only by our imagination. Thus, it is plain to see that it is our inclination to destroy ourselves in search of a magical solution to our problems that prevents us from stopping long enough to think about what’s really happening to us, and reassess our strategy. Essentially, we’re more concerned with the greenness of our lawns than with what goes on inside each of our houses.


There are doubtless those that think that, if a man likes to drink, so be it; if someone’s road to happiness is paved with M&M’s, we oughtn’t interfere with the way that he chooses to live out his life: it’s none of our business, they say; It’s a free country. Without a doubt, freedom is a nice idea, but freedom without discipline, knowledge without wisdom and thought without action (as well as action without thought) are some of the deadliest weapons of all. The trouble is, even if this were a concern, freedom is a hard thing to take away.


Freedom is, unfortunately, so deeply entrenched in our consciousness that people are willing to sacrifice their lives in pursuit of it: with this in mind, it’s hard to be optimistic about our future. Instead of thinking about the state of the world in another hundred years or so, we tell ourselves to “live in the moment” (expand your mind, man!) and try to find meaning in meaningless things.


Bertrand Russell was definitely on the right track, when he suggested that “many people would rather die than think”: quite apart from physical death, we lose a bit of ourselves, when we avoid voicing our opinions for fear of the ire of misguided bureaucrats; when we’ve lost confidence in our own ability to change the course of the world, there’s little to do save stock the bomb-shelter and batten the hatches.


All of this has certainly been said before, but has anything changed? If all we do is complain about the way things are—rather than put some thought into feasible solutions to our problems—it never will. I hate to disappoint, but there ain’t no magic potion to save us from the mess we’ve made.