Sometimes, on quiet afternoons, I envy those for whom God, King and Country were (or still are) a reality. For better or worse, things made sense. There were causes to die for. Good and evil existed, mostly to fight each other. People had roles, as stifling as they may have been. Progress was real, objective and pure. Industry equaled emancipation. Consumer goods equaled pleasure. Cars equaled freedom. The good life was real, standardized and available, as long as you put in your hours to pay for it.
Say what you will about modernity, but at least it was numb bliss compared to the maelstorm into which my twenty-five years of reality swirl, as lost as they are well spent. I was born, raised and educated in the age of the post-modern. I have thus been taught to question everything I know, including those who ask questions. I have been encouraged to critically analyze critical analysis of a critique, and then receive criticism of my own analysis. I have been taught that ‘objectivity’ is a dirty word, laughable in its impossibility. I have seen that ‘truth’ is merely a matter of opinion, an unfortunate victim of circumstance. God? Dead. King? Replaced with instant gratification and the inalienable right to consume. Country? Just imaginary boundaries on a map. Oh, and I’ve also heard that Henry Kissinger killed irony.
Strangely enough, I have been taught that the means of modernity are still valid, to be chased and cherished. I have been encouraged to pursue the material pleasures of life, to build a career and contribute to consumer confidence. I am supposed to feed myself, sleep, defecate, work and maybe, if I get the chance, produce some offspring who will do the same thing as I, only with cooler gadgets in a different year. I am to devote myself to accumulation, to producing things people don’t need so I can afford to buy things I don’t need.
At some point in modern human thought, however, the means crowded out the ends. The determinism and objective good of modernity, the ends to which we were all supposed to be striving, well- they got gutted, disected and discarded. The ‘truth’ has been critiqued, ridiculed and forgotten. Subjectivity and experience are now the name of the game. I’m told how I should live, what I should want and why I should want it. What I’m not told, however, is why. Or for what.
When you think about it, post-modernism is a bitch. Everything is valid but nothing is true. All voices are considered but no one is right. Evil becomes subjective, and morals become marketable goods. Bring this all to its logical conclusion, and it’s quite possible that I don’t even exist. I’m just a figment of your imagination. The whole world could be in your head, not mine. How would you ever know?
That is why it is so tempting to be conservative, to pretend things mean something when they don’t. We all try to latch onto meaning: a place, a job, a person or a cause. Why? Well, not because they really do mean anything, but just because we need to latch onto something. I wish I could believe that gay marriage is wrong. I wish I could look at congested highways and bloated buildings and see progress. I wish I could pray to a loving yet vengeful God every night before falling asleep. I wish I could look up at my flag and feel my eyes moisten with pride. I wish I could believe that Jesus drove an SUV. I sincerely wish that I could see things in black and white, promoting Good ™ and crushing Evil ™.
But I can’t. First, because it is too annoying. Second, because I exist in a society that has run out of things to do with itself. It is in the throes of self-destruction, a victim of its own success. Through some evolutionary fluke, through the wonders of mass production and antibiotics, we’ve had a glimpse beyond the misery of basic survival. And what do we see? A scary void staring back at us. If a society has enough time and energy to contemplate itself and its actions, well then it is doomed. Were we really meant to get here?
And so there are a number of us in this afterglow of history, overeducated and aimless. We are too smart and too witty, or at least we think we are, to believe anything or anyone. We abuse our bodies and numb our minds- why? Well, why not. We seek meaning in visceral rushes, in moments. We live life not for the experience, but rather for the memories of the experience, the chance to capture something real and show it to others on a screen. We are all trying to be our own independent film, in which everything is impossibly stylish but nothing makes sense because it doesn’t have to. We all want to be different. We decry society but enjoy the fruits of its labour.
We are the ultimate hypocrites, mocking the world that has allowed us to flourish. We have not only confused style and substance; we have made substance stylish. We are political, worldly and wary, dismissing tactics as erroneous and any strategy as hopeless. We question our lives as much as we live them. We forget to savour the moment by instead thinking about how cool that moment must be. Through the haze of gin and tonic, our powers to sound intelligent impress the less mentally fortunate (and the more sober).
Our education is a joke we played on ourselves, and we know it. Our ideas are big precisely because we know they will never work. In this world, nothing does. Everyone is out for a dollar, or for themselves: compassion for others depends on profitability.
Inevitably, through all of this, it all comes back to the same question:
What is the meaning of anything?
And like all those who came before us, we have absolutely no fucking clue.
So we sit overlooking a summer sunset and a city in the throes of perpetuating itself. The soundtrack to our lives plays on a small scratchy radio. As the next drinks are poured and consumed, a calm glow overcomes us. We look out at the world, we look at our friends, and we smile.
Why? Because for that one moment, things are real. And absolutely wonderful.