Ads or Algae?
"This is the way the world ends/ Not with a bang but a whimper," sung the Hollow Men in Elliot's same-name poem. Crushing mediocrity, not a grave disaster, will end the world.
People in the developed world rarely worry about survival. Stable economies and a social welfare secure most individuals from starvation, and housing shelters, as squalid as they may be, allow a roof. We have modern medicine to combat disease and supermarkets to furnish us with a fresh, steady supply of food. Public education allows intellectual growth and combats ignorance. In short, modernity provides well for its people, and it liberates much of the energy formerly lost to gathering food and fighting disease.
But where does the energy go? We still feel swamped by nightfall, spending a further stint awake with the creamy glow of modern lights to guide us. We still feel rushed despite modern convenience.
The hellish worlds of Franz Kafka always carry a motif of bureaucracy, becoming comical with the amount of red tape. In The Trial, the system buries an innocent man with litigations and petitions spewed from dim offices. In The Castle, another innocent man, K, is lost amid a tangled system of paper work and protocol. In another story, Poseidon must complete paperwork for eternity.
Indeed, bureaucracy has deep roots. In David Copperfield, David, likely echoing Dickens, describes Britannia "like a trussed fowl: skewered through and through with office-pens, and bound hand and foot with red tape." Czarina Cathrine the great earned renown and gained enemies by reforming the notorious Russian bureaucracy.
But the modern world in particular seems to mirror Kafka. College requires one to negotiate a treacherous sea of regulation regarding loans, and taxes tie one to countless social systems. Extended payments leech from accounts for decades. Insurance, while helpful, seems parasitic in the way it hikes interest rates or lowers the ax on minor lapses in memory. When we call for help we receive the cold voice of a machine. People gradually give way to system.
The push of ads saps more energy, pulling us to stores, instilling the mindset of a consumer. We hunt for the next bargain, the next new product. Technology further taxes time with maintenance and expectation. Everyone can relate to lost e-mail or a bugged computer, and cell phones allow one to monitor calls from vacation.
Thus, we no longer worry about survival. We worry about fashion trends and social norms, bills and loan payments, news stories, jobs, pesticides, pandemics, etc.
As the world becomes systematized, it becomes more alien. No longer facing the savage state of nature, we face a cold state of man-made indifference. We face social specters, spurred by a media and a cordon of bureaucratic oversight. I'm not saying we should close our bank accounts, burn our worldly possessions and crawl into a cave to eat algae spread over mushrooms. That's
ridiculous.
Yet it seems strange to me that humanity liberated itself from nature to chain itself to social structure and systematized indifference. I'm sure that there is a middle path to find, but it remains illusive.
As our surroundings fail to provide happiness, some increasingly cling to family. Others cling to New Age religions. Others retreat into themselves or run in a frantic back-and-forth shuffle from work to pleasure. Some over-indulge. It is difficult to find a balance.
I feel lost, and I know I am not the only one.
People in the developed world rarely worry about survival. Stable economies and a social welfare secure most individuals from starvation, and housing shelters, as squalid as they may be, allow a roof. We have modern medicine to combat disease and supermarkets to furnish us with a fresh, steady supply of food. Public education allows intellectual growth and combats ignorance. In short, modernity provides well for its people, and it liberates much of the energy formerly lost to gathering food and fighting disease.
But where does the energy go? We still feel swamped by nightfall, spending a further stint awake with the creamy glow of modern lights to guide us. We still feel rushed despite modern convenience.
The hellish worlds of Franz Kafka always carry a motif of bureaucracy, becoming comical with the amount of red tape. In The Trial, the system buries an innocent man with litigations and petitions spewed from dim offices. In The Castle, another innocent man, K, is lost amid a tangled system of paper work and protocol. In another story, Poseidon must complete paperwork for eternity.
Indeed, bureaucracy has deep roots. In David Copperfield, David, likely echoing Dickens, describes Britannia "like a trussed fowl: skewered through and through with office-pens, and bound hand and foot with red tape." Czarina Cathrine the great earned renown and gained enemies by reforming the notorious Russian bureaucracy.
But the modern world in particular seems to mirror Kafka. College requires one to negotiate a treacherous sea of regulation regarding loans, and taxes tie one to countless social systems. Extended payments leech from accounts for decades. Insurance, while helpful, seems parasitic in the way it hikes interest rates or lowers the ax on minor lapses in memory. When we call for help we receive the cold voice of a machine. People gradually give way to system.
The push of ads saps more energy, pulling us to stores, instilling the mindset of a consumer. We hunt for the next bargain, the next new product. Technology further taxes time with maintenance and expectation. Everyone can relate to lost e-mail or a bugged computer, and cell phones allow one to monitor calls from vacation.
Thus, we no longer worry about survival. We worry about fashion trends and social norms, bills and loan payments, news stories, jobs, pesticides, pandemics, etc.
As the world becomes systematized, it becomes more alien. No longer facing the savage state of nature, we face a cold state of man-made indifference. We face social specters, spurred by a media and a cordon of bureaucratic oversight. I'm not saying we should close our bank accounts, burn our worldly possessions and crawl into a cave to eat algae spread over mushrooms. That's
ridiculous.
Yet it seems strange to me that humanity liberated itself from nature to chain itself to social structure and systematized indifference. I'm sure that there is a middle path to find, but it remains illusive.
As our surroundings fail to provide happiness, some increasingly cling to family. Others cling to New Age religions. Others retreat into themselves or run in a frantic back-and-forth shuffle from work to pleasure. Some over-indulge. It is difficult to find a balance.
I feel lost, and I know I am not the only one.