I have been thinking back some recent discussions about the fate of the world and human society. Those ruminations led me to revisit a book by Marshal McLuhan I read as an undergraduate at the University of Texas – The Medium is the Massage. Given that it was written in the late 60s. it shows a remarkable anticipation of things to come. Here is a link to a free pdf: https://www.organism.earth/library/document/medium-is-the-massage – you might find it interesting.
That time traveling took me back a bit more to something that A.N. Whitehead wrote in the early 20th century. “The major advances in civilization are processes that all but wreck the societies in which they occur.” Whitehead (1861–1947) was an English mathematician and philosopher best known as the defining figure of the philosophical school known as process philosophy. It seems that “everything old is new again” can be more discomforting than comforting thought.
We can be captive of our moment and slaves to what we must become while also being locked out of our time. Locked into what we must be, we are still aware of what is becoming of each of us. Like a diver who has left the springboard, falling is a given and only form is left for us to manage. Fantasyland is not a book – it is us. As an ancient Hindu text puts it, “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds”.
So, what is left? It occurs to me that Orson Welles said it well in the move F for Fake: “Our works in stone, in paint, in print, are spared, some of them, for a few decades or a millennium or two, but everything must finally fall in war, or wear away into the ultimate and universal ash – the triumphs, and the frauds, the treasures and the fakes. A fact of life: we are going to die. “Be of good heart,” cry the dead artists out of the living past. “Our songs will all be silenced, but what of it? Go on singing.“
Whimsical fatalism is an essential ingredient of a life well lived.
Earl R Smith II, PhD
Chief@Dr-Smith.info
Dr-Smith.info
© Earl R. Smith II, PhD
