here's a fun one...

So the happiness has subsided--the productivity, too, as my lack of posts in the past month might indicate. My mind has been on a more degenerative path. I don't know that I would call this prose, but it's not necessarily indicative of how strongly I'm thinking. (I'm not so much an anarchist as I am a person who mocks the intent of anarchy.)

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Don’t be disappointed. Or do—it doesn’t really matter anyway. What I’m about to say is nothing new. It’s been said before, and it will be said again. It’s a funeral toll shouting over the sidewalks on which we walk, the streets we get stuck on. Still, not everybody will listen to it. There are those who take the message to heart and some who merely dance to each note that sounds.

What are we doing? What have we been doing? We’ve been making progress. Damn the archaic structures! To hell with tradition! We’re living in a world where the rules don’t work. We can marry an appropriate member of the opposite sex at 27 years of age and have 1.5 children, and we won’t be happy. So what do we do? We get rid of marriage. It’s a rule, and it’s not working. We modernize. We start revolutions. We throw out our morals, our values, our ethics. They’re old, obsolete. But we don’t replace them with anything. We leave the space open. Rules don’t work, but when we abolish them, we only succeed in making worse ones. We break what we have made, and we relish the destruction. Damn! This institution has Fucked me over, so destroy it. So what’s worse? Giving up or continuing to try—imprisoning ourselves in the process? Damn good survival instinct there. Live another day; be cut another way. Now we embrace the moment; dance to the note. Don’t look down. You’ll step into your grave soon enough.
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So I showed this to a friend, and we had a long talk about modernism, postmodernism, and different reactions. I've always felt that meaning in life if fabricated and that much of this depends on how able people around you (and circumstances) are to fit into this scheme. (Basically: the fantasy not being refuted, or being embraced) I think the turn to nostalgia is the realization that the new rules aren't working either. People knew the old ones weren't working but weren't necessarily able to completely trash the old value system behind those rules. Unfortunately, old values don't fit in with "living in the moment," and we end up lost in our search for meaning in actions that we won't even let ourselves attach meaning to. The longing for meaning and the acceptance of meaningless don't mesh, and the result is a world fraying at the edges.
I think it's important to recognize that this is not a new phenomenon. I'm fairly certain every generation experiences this: idealism and disillusionment. I'm still not quite sure what comes out of it. I can't say that the meaning we place in things gets us anywhere, but I'm afraid to say that it gets us nowhere.

So, yeah, there's a terribly disorganized, emo-type post for you.

x a.h.