Baudelaire once wrote about the modern age like this:
“The transitory, the fleeting, the contingent”
and it is true… we “Moderns” live within the “transitory” we exist within
the “fleeting” and we think within the “contingent”
You can’t go home again for the simple reason that home has been torn down
and rebuilt to the point that one is no longer able to navigate that
home, the past… our previous homes of church, state, society,
family and education have been torn down and rebuilt to the point of
no return… not too long ago, I looked up the very first home I can remember,
in Lincolnshire Illinois… The house has been changed so much I didn’t recognize it…
the address was still the same, but everything else was different… I could no longer
go home again because it was now unrecognizable…and that is the modern fate…
we cannot go home again because it has change so much as to be
unrecognizable…
and what is true of our physical surroundings is also true of our mental
and emotional landscape… I read a lot of Goethe, and I try to think of
the mental and emotional landscape of 1800… and I try to imagine what
has changed since 1800… and the conclusion is… everything…
From our understanding of science to the politics, to physics, to
psychology, to philosophy, to music and the ARTS… Are we even
recognizable to Goethe given our vast number of changes, well everywhere…
I haven’t even mentioned the changes in technology… from the steam engine
to spaceships to cell phones to the GPS system which can locate one
to within 5 ft of their actual location…
Goethe wrote at the start of the Industrial Revolution…
and I must say, that we lost… we human beings lost
the revolution and we are paying the price for that loss…
every single day…
ask yourself, what remains the same from 1800?
and the answer is… nothing… we have lost all contact with
the values and beliefs of the values of 1800…
instead of trying to regain lost values that once had some value,
we should try to have an engagement with values that
can take us into the future of human existence…
instead of holding to the values of the 1800’s, values like
belief in god and the state and the fix nature of the universe,
we now hold to the values that can guide us into the future,
values like love and peace and hope and justice…
but as I have pointed out, it isn’t enough to just hold these values,
we must put into practice, we must practice what we preach…
we must live our values, not just preach them, but live them…
we must engage in values as a way of life… not as we would
engage in a student’s life where we learn the values and then
once leaving the classroom, forget all about them…
values are meant to be lived, not just mentioned as being abstract…
connect our values with actual life…
our outer existence may be “transitory” and “fleeting”
and “contingent” … but we can overcome that by
an internal engagement with and by using our values
as a way of life…
we may not be able to go home again, but we can build a new house for
us to live in… a house built on values that we produce and practice
and engage with as a way of life…
begin to build a new house of values that give us meaning, and purpose…
a house worthy of living in…
Kropotkin