Was It Only An Illusion?

The disquieting problems we have experienced in recent years - the rise of hate groups, our fear of “the other,” of a politics always riven with fear of not being up to the task, refugees on a record scale, our ineffectiveness in the face of climate change, the loss of work and faith in the future - have exposed the global failure to realize the promises that were given to us regarding endless progress and wealth for all.  Traditional ties, supports and restrictions have been left behind along with their assurances about a person’s self-worth and identity.

Was what we built together following the Second World War only an illusion?  Was our equilibrium, our hegemony, really that fragile?   A world where all social, political and economic forces determining our lives now seem opaque.  We are disconnected from one another, our future, ourselves.

Traditional religions and philosophies used to offer most people the basic and essential interpretation of the world that can give meaning to life and create social ties and shared beliefs. There was a time when we respected institutions that defined the common good as well as personal identity.  In our fear and disconnectedness we have cast off such restraints in search of personal liberty and identity.

And where has that gotten us exactly?  When no authority exists in matters of great importance, people soon become frightened in the face of unlimited independence.  Fake truth has ultimately led us into false security.  With everything in a state of perpetual agitation, we become anxious and fatigued.  Eventually, despite their better instincts, we vote for the extremes.

Despite all our differences, we have been herded by the forces of our modern world, our capitalism, technologies and politics, into a common present where we all feel lost.  

There remains a great, sometimes undisclosed, fear that our global leaders have cast off the constraints of social democracy in their pursuit for power and wealth.

Are new technologies and digital resources helping us?  Apparently not.  As humanity collectively journeys into cyberspace, we find ourselves far away from one another and those shared institutions and foundations that kept us together.

All of these crises of modernity were once absorbed by our inherited social structures and had their harder edges rounded off.  But now we are directly exposed to these traumas, leaving us insecure and isolated at the same time.  There is now this almost universal vexation of everyone with everyone else - a trait most easily discerned in social media.  For all its advantages, it poisons our civil societies and undermines our confidence in our shared future, leaving many, millions actually, turning to unfeeling and uncaring authoritative figures in hopes for some stability, some clear direction instead of the incessant fog coming from everybody else.

We are now caught in an era of endless drift - a malaise born of the loss of human faith.  Institutions historically mediated our understanding of history and the pressures of life.  They formed the reference points, our series of North Stars, that assisted in orienting all of humanity in all times.  They are now fading. 

We need to examine our own role in the culture that stokes alienation and narcissism.  Above all, we need to reflect more penetratingly on our complicity in it all.

We need reminding that the promises of our struggling modern life can’t be righted or overcome without those things that got us here.  This practice of just casting off those ethical forces that restrained and refined us only leaves us more angry and alone.  

We need to be reminded of how we once were with one another and can be again, but only if we rediscover history’s essence  through our greater lights and better angels  in all this darkness and turbulence.