a new age
The lack of culture is beginning to take its toll on me. From my creativity to my drive, everything takes an unbelievable amount of effort. There is a void where my creative voice should be. I have no inspiration, no muse, no reason to create anything at all. There are of course the mildly cliché and hopelessly over done topics: war, poverty, environment etc. but I cannot seem to take any of the former and make them my own. I have not seen enough. I have no experiences to draw from. I am lacking any sort of depth, any meaning or understanding. There is one thought in particular that keeps flitting through my mind…”there has to be something more”. It must be so…otherwise I am lost.
To some, this might seem romantic. I am seeking change, looking for an irregularity to draw out inspiration. Change, being the major point, is seriously in order. Every aspect of my being could be categorized as romantic. It is merely enough that I yearn to feed my imagination. I have no outward interest in logic. I do not seek broad meaning. Custom and convention remain on the backburner. Rather, I seek a personal understanding. I dream about opening my awareness to the abstract and the weird. To see logic in things that has none at all.
I have always been drawn to nature. The structure and rigidity of architecture is typically repulsive to me. I have never had a desire for an urban life. I turn down a comfortable urban existence in a heartbeat if it gave me the freedom to roam. However, there is an imbalance in my ideas. I am being hopelessly drawn to Europe. Somehow, I feel that my inspiration lies somewhere within its ancient cities and rich cultures, culture being the major word here. I am seeking out work of Augustan thinkers in order to have a better understanding of what makes romanticism tick.
So what do you call a romantic who looks for inspiration through Augustan lenses? Insane? Hypocritical? Any of those terms would fit. What I really think is that the literary world has reached a new age. We have come closer the “utopia” that the romantics fantasized about. The mere fact that we can choose a path of personal understanding and live comfortably with that speaks volumes. There is no danger in forming an opinion. Individuality has become the norm, and being outlandish is the newest fad.
In the age of information, there are no questions that are left unanswered. There is no need to ponder when a problem can be solved by simply clicking a button. The fear of the unknown is no longer ruled by religion and mythology. We are instead afraid of those things that cannot be solved simply. Questions of science, medicine and nature become the focus of our fears. More specifically, a problem that we cannot fix or control with technology.
The past romantics, who lived in an age phasing out of rigidity, dreamt of being able to choose comfortably. My question remains, what path do you take when your decision will be accepted no matter what?
This new age is composed of those people, like me, who are mildly unnerved by this ability to choose with no argument. We look back into the past, back to the classics, in order to seek a more romantic future. Augustan and Romantic ideas have inexplicably joined forces, creating a new breed. We use philosophy and history to broaden our horizons. Art, in any sense, becomes a respectable outlet for any opinion. Literature is picked apart to its bones; we remove its beauty to understand its beauty. We study ceaselessly in order to understand our existence, for we are not comfortable with this somewhat unnerving “freedom”. We are all philosophers, historians, theologians, mathematicians and artists. Those in our generation are trained to be well rounded; every man is a renaissance man. Together, this new breed of artisans is hoping to dissect life in a different way.
Perhaps I am eccentric for wishing that there were more great problems (other than the former) in our society to gripe about. Somewhat selfish even, to hope that I had a concrete idea to stand for. I am going to boldly make a generalization and assume that the majority of these thinkers are in the upper middle class or children of the upper middle class. Being such, I feed off of the idea of standing up for a cause. Some of us who are lucky enough to live on this cushion of money are plagued by a need to be significant. We have no need to fight for something when we can already see a comfortable existence ahead. Why bother thinking about the distant future when we can see our own safe happiness within our grasp? Seeing as how the middle class is the majority in our nation, I believe this will be our downfall. My greatest wish is that the people who have no need for great change, who do not need to be worried about the future will be fueled by the idea that making a real difference in the world will be the most gratifying choice they can make. I think it is up to these people especially, those who have the financial flexibility to make such choices without many negative repercussions, are the ones who are truly responsible for seeking out a better tomorrow, mostly because there is absolutely no reason for them not to. The real selfishness lies within those who have the ability to make a difference but choose not to. The courage to put everything you have on the line in order to seek a better understanding is a beautiful thing.
However, I digress. This new age of middle class renaissance thinkers are molding a new way of understanding. Without that fear of the unknown, we have the freedom to think in any way we wish. We can look back on classical thought with new intentions. We can hope to use the logical ideas of Augustan thinkers to create a more abstract idea of how our world works. Equipped with the knowledge of the past, the new age of thinkers can look at an idea from every possible angle.
To some, this might seem romantic. I am seeking change, looking for an irregularity to draw out inspiration. Change, being the major point, is seriously in order. Every aspect of my being could be categorized as romantic. It is merely enough that I yearn to feed my imagination. I have no outward interest in logic. I do not seek broad meaning. Custom and convention remain on the backburner. Rather, I seek a personal understanding. I dream about opening my awareness to the abstract and the weird. To see logic in things that has none at all.
I have always been drawn to nature. The structure and rigidity of architecture is typically repulsive to me. I have never had a desire for an urban life. I turn down a comfortable urban existence in a heartbeat if it gave me the freedom to roam. However, there is an imbalance in my ideas. I am being hopelessly drawn to Europe. Somehow, I feel that my inspiration lies somewhere within its ancient cities and rich cultures, culture being the major word here. I am seeking out work of Augustan thinkers in order to have a better understanding of what makes romanticism tick.
So what do you call a romantic who looks for inspiration through Augustan lenses? Insane? Hypocritical? Any of those terms would fit. What I really think is that the literary world has reached a new age. We have come closer the “utopia” that the romantics fantasized about. The mere fact that we can choose a path of personal understanding and live comfortably with that speaks volumes. There is no danger in forming an opinion. Individuality has become the norm, and being outlandish is the newest fad.
In the age of information, there are no questions that are left unanswered. There is no need to ponder when a problem can be solved by simply clicking a button. The fear of the unknown is no longer ruled by religion and mythology. We are instead afraid of those things that cannot be solved simply. Questions of science, medicine and nature become the focus of our fears. More specifically, a problem that we cannot fix or control with technology.
The past romantics, who lived in an age phasing out of rigidity, dreamt of being able to choose comfortably. My question remains, what path do you take when your decision will be accepted no matter what?
This new age is composed of those people, like me, who are mildly unnerved by this ability to choose with no argument. We look back into the past, back to the classics, in order to seek a more romantic future. Augustan and Romantic ideas have inexplicably joined forces, creating a new breed. We use philosophy and history to broaden our horizons. Art, in any sense, becomes a respectable outlet for any opinion. Literature is picked apart to its bones; we remove its beauty to understand its beauty. We study ceaselessly in order to understand our existence, for we are not comfortable with this somewhat unnerving “freedom”. We are all philosophers, historians, theologians, mathematicians and artists. Those in our generation are trained to be well rounded; every man is a renaissance man. Together, this new breed of artisans is hoping to dissect life in a different way.
Perhaps I am eccentric for wishing that there were more great problems (other than the former) in our society to gripe about. Somewhat selfish even, to hope that I had a concrete idea to stand for. I am going to boldly make a generalization and assume that the majority of these thinkers are in the upper middle class or children of the upper middle class. Being such, I feed off of the idea of standing up for a cause. Some of us who are lucky enough to live on this cushion of money are plagued by a need to be significant. We have no need to fight for something when we can already see a comfortable existence ahead. Why bother thinking about the distant future when we can see our own safe happiness within our grasp? Seeing as how the middle class is the majority in our nation, I believe this will be our downfall. My greatest wish is that the people who have no need for great change, who do not need to be worried about the future will be fueled by the idea that making a real difference in the world will be the most gratifying choice they can make. I think it is up to these people especially, those who have the financial flexibility to make such choices without many negative repercussions, are the ones who are truly responsible for seeking out a better tomorrow, mostly because there is absolutely no reason for them not to. The real selfishness lies within those who have the ability to make a difference but choose not to. The courage to put everything you have on the line in order to seek a better understanding is a beautiful thing.
However, I digress. This new age of middle class renaissance thinkers are molding a new way of understanding. Without that fear of the unknown, we have the freedom to think in any way we wish. We can look back on classical thought with new intentions. We can hope to use the logical ideas of Augustan thinkers to create a more abstract idea of how our world works. Equipped with the knowledge of the past, the new age of thinkers can look at an idea from every possible angle.