Christ, so long the paragon, looks somehow subdued. And in this state i've suffered too long.
Then what's left? Bare self-promotion? Building up wealth? Preparing for death?
This is the state of a secular life. For centuries, there was a ready-made mythology, for artists to slip into, albeit laden with dogma and laced with intolerance.
A completely secularized artistic state, or a philosophical one, is founded on uncertainty. Is its first principle humankind? Lost confidence even in that. Mankind as a virus infecting the planet.
Our first principle must then be the individual. Merely personal musings, insubstantial fluctuations of the heart. And our "way to heaven", our "salvation"? You might say there never
was such a thing, that it's all an empty myth, but at least it was a goal, and a goal whose spirit was perhaps more important than its substance.
So, what to do with my soul and what to give myself to? Shall i give myself to TV? Give myself to videogames? Give myself to endless gorging of an appetite? Give myself to myself, to my own caprice and whimsy? Give myself to love, another disproved myth?
The good old libertarian Aquarian approach would be to give myself to "an ideal"; some principle, some humanitarian cause or other, or such a vague idea as "freedom", personal or general.
America has got "liberty" enscribed on its coins- But what is the nature of that liberty? Liberty is an end in itself is a beautiful idea, but a deceptive and unrealistic one. Personal liberty, for me, is great up to a point. How do i stave off the anxiety that comes from such a surfeit of freedom, as a thoroughly secularized, too-well-read, disappointed western man of the 21st century?
Coping, as well, with the layers of real bondage and lack of freedom i see in this country.
My problem is that it's hard for me to enjoy things.