Friday, March 12, 2010

The Good Old Days Are Gone

The last two decades of the last millennium, the eighties and nineties, were the beginning of the decline of those wondrous days of innocence. From the Roaring Twenties to the Sixties and Seventies, this was the hey day of real stardom and entertainment when cinema and music had the genuine feeling of human creativity, before the home computer, microwaves, vcrs and cell phones took over what was once the role of natural and organic functioning. Can we even trust what they call "organic food" today?

Back in the days of innocence baseball players weren't pumping themselves with steroids to win the home run title, back then the game meant something.. now it is hard to take seriously. If you lived through the sixties and seventies as an adult, you maybe got to goto Woodstock or see Jimi Hendrix live in concert... thus you got to see more than I ever got to. Back in the heyday of human society we had some real superstars, inventors and creators, and now we have celebrities full of nothing but glitter and ego.

In noticing my younger brother, who turned 22 yesterday, I see in his expression alone what the new millennium is... not the beginning of anything wonderful but the realization that all of that has come and gone. Never can we go back in time and see the greatest of the greats. Kids today bring guns with their lunch boxes to school, disillusioned, desensitized and rightly mistrustful of their elders and authorities. There is nothing but chaos and destruction descending upon the Earth, morality in action has reached an all time low... It seems to me that we had our chance for a golden age and blew it, now it is too little too late, nothing is really getting better (the illusion of the matrix) and those good old days are gone forever.

So what does it mean for me as an individual? To see beyond the external, not looking to the place and time for my own cue to shine. I can live this life to the fullest, for as long as this ongoing earthly moment lasts, even as the world is crumbling all around me... and do my part (even if in vain) to leave this Earth a better place than I (upon losing collective-personal innocence) originally found it, growing up in my teens, twenties and thirties over the past three decades.

JDZ

Afterthoughts/Clarifications to Reader:

Discussing these not so pleasant subjects is not to scare myself or others with predictions of doomsday, for truly I know nothing of the future. I know to some extent what has been, where it has lead us to today, and how I honestly feel about what I see, hear and observe around me. I hope that "future events" unfolding will prove me wrong, as I have no special need to be right but only a desire to know and understand the nature and unfolding of reality.

I have thought and written much in the past about the dawning of the Aquarian Age, and belief in December 20l2 as (contrary to Nostradamus' predictions) marking the beginning of this. Now I find that holding onto such high expectations as these, based upon speculation and wishful thinking alone, makes it that much easier to get bitter, disappointed and disillusioned. So I am happiest seeing things as they are, by immediate observation, and working with this reality, the present moment, in the best way I know how.

JDZ

5 comments:

  1. It is not technology itself that is leading to the downfall of civilization, but rather the ends it is used for... for the power of the corporate and war machines, and the focusing of human values on the appearance of things, the outer form enhancement at the expense of inner peace in harmony with natural rhythms.

    I am not ungrateful for technological advances that I enjoy today, but recognize that they have come at a HUGE price to the collective/personal life of the human Spirit on this beautiful planet, attuned to the nature and its ancient healing/rejuvenating wisdom.

    The greater the outer expanse/abundance the greater the feeling of inner poverty and alienation from my true nature. Progress at all costs can only lead to decline, and it is here that I can only turn my back on what is beyond my power to change and "be the change" in my own psychic corner of the world, without any greater expectations which too often are just disappointments in advance. ... See More

    The Power is Now... this much positive wisdom I do accept, where Heaven meets Earth without need for civilization and high society.

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  2. It is necessary to really grieve the past, fully and completely, especially "my lost youth", so that maybe I do discover what lies beyond the illusion of memory and experience... taking a walk in the woods, looking and listening mindfully to all that is around me I begin to get something of a clue.

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  3. This is not a message of doom but a coming to grips with and letting go of all that I believe keeps me (and so many others) stuck in the past and disillusionment, alternating between this and projected hopes for the future. In reference to this essay and topic I highly recommend anything written by Pema Chodron, like "Comfortable with Uncertainty" or Chogyam Trungpa, founder of the Shambhala Buddhist Lineage, who speaks of the dangers of "spiritual materialism" in the modern age....

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  4. In the two replies I've thus far received, Hermann Hesse was recommended by both (quite synchronously I thought...), as well as another classic piece that I had originally thought of mentioning, Alan Watts' "The Wisdom of Insecurity", and "The Glass Room by Simon Mawer.

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  5. The Aquarian Age conversely could be the destruction of all that is truly human, for the purpose of emphasizing utopian ideals that are totally in the head, and not at all from the heart. It is our choice... to learn from the Piscean Age rather than condemn it, and take with us what matters most out of the past 2000 years.

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