I KNOW NO MORE WHERE I BELONG

Why are the times so dark?

Men know each other not at all.

But government’s quite clearly change

From bad to worse.

Truth and justice, nowhere to be found.

Days dead and gone were more worthwhile.

Now what holds sway?

Deep gloom and boredom

I know no more where I belong 

Eustace de Champse  (1346 - 1406) 

This lament by a renaissance poet is not uncommon.   When our comfortable and familiar world undergoes a seismic shift or even a gradual transformation, deep gloom is often the result. When we reach a point where we no longer recognize the norms, values, standards and styles in which we came of age, when we feel powerless to stop the relentless altering of the society we thought we knew, then alienation, demoralization, depression, disorientation, anger, frustration and fear are going to be widespread.

Thanks to Substack writer, David Poe, who recently wrote about TEOTWAWKI,

 The End Of The World As We Know It.

…the actual crumbling of civilization, in which case there is no help  coming from anywhere, and things won't improve for a very long time. There is an entire genre of fiction concerning life in such a situation, but people generally take this to be a far more remote possibility than having to endure local disasters. It's often called   TEOTWAWKI, The End of The World As We Know It…

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History is replete with comfortable civilizations undergoing painful spasms - from external attacks and/or internal disruptions. 

ANCIENT EGYPT – THE LAND IS IN MISERY

Ancient Egyptians lived a secure, predictable and orderly life for an extraordinary three thousand years.  The warm climate, the life-giving Nile River, few enemies, a benign afterlife for everyone from Pharaoh to peasant, would go on forever.  The foundational basis of this order was ma at, loosely translated as truth, justice and order.  For ancient Egyptians, change was an abomination.

An ancient Egyptian wrote:

I am meditating upon what has happened, on the things that have come to pass throughout the land.  Changes take place; it is not like last year, and one year is more burdensome than the other.  The land is in confusion...  Ma at is cast out and iniquity (sits) in the council chamber.  The plans of the gods are destroyed and their ordinances transgressed.  The land is in misery, mourning is in everyplace, towns and villages lament.

  “When order breaks down for the ancient Egyptian”, wrote Professor Frankfort, who translated the hieroglyphics, “demoralization and confusion” follow.  When their “world is upside down…When the established order from which the Egyptian way of life derived its orientation was destroyed, life became meaningless and, therefore, unbearable.” It seemed like The End of The World As They Knew It.

THE ROMAN EMPIRE – THE WHOLE WORLD PERISHED

 In 410, for the first time in eight-hundred years, Rome was sacked by the Visigoths’. Rome could not defend itself.  410 was not the end of the Empire, but the end was not in doubt. The tragedy sent shockwaves around the civilized, Mediterranean world.  To many, it seemed like the end of civilization. “In one city,” St Jerome wrote at the time, “the whole world perished.” 

ANCIENT GREECE – FALLEN ON DISASTER

When Greek culture was surpassed by Christianity, a Greek pagan poet and teacher, Palladas, watching his world disappear wrote the following:

 Is it not true that we are dead, and living only in

 Appearance,

  We Hellenes, fallen on disaster.

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION – LIBERTY, EQUALITY, FRATERNITY AND CHAOS

After beheading the King and Queen, French revolutionaries imposed a new social, economic and political order.  In something of a chaotic frenzy, they changed the calendar; 1792 would be the year one of a new and glorious era. No longer would there be stratified social classes.  Monsieur and Madam were replaced by Citoyen and Citoyenne.   (Citizen).  Catholic holidays and days honoring saints were eliminated.  Christmas was replaced by Isaac Newton’s birthday. The prisons were emptied, the oppressed became the oppressors.

 For the Old Regime, it was the end of the world as they knew it.

WOUNDED KNEE – THERE IS NO CENTER ANY LONGER

 In 1890, the Plains Indians faced extinction.  As winter set in, the bedraggled remnants of this once-proud people huddled on reservations under the watchful eye of the cavalry. After almost four hundred years of bloodshed between the indigenous peoples of North America and the European settlers, their lives, culture and civilization were at an end.  Senator John Logan, announced the end of their cultural existence when he said, “The government feeds and clothes and educates your children now, and desires to teach you to become farmers, and to civilize you, and make you as white men.” 

“There is no center any longer,” said Chief Black Elk, “and the sacred tree is dead.”  The massacre of over 250 people at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, marked the end of the Lakota Sioux. Wacova, the Indian holy man, urged his people to give up. “The only trail now open—the white man’s road.” TEOTWAWKI.

THE CIVIL WAR

 The primary theme of Gone With the Wind, is that the war decimated the old south.  For Scarlett O’Hara, and the rest of the south, it certainly was TEOTWAWKI

 In 1929, Hermann Hesse wrote the following in Steppenwolf:

…every age, every culture…accepts certain sufferings as a matter of course, puts up patiently with certain evils…(but) human life is reduced to real suffering, to hell, only when two ages, two cultures and religions overlap…when a whole generation is caught up in this way between two ages, two modes of life, (the result) is that it loses all power to understand itself and has no standard, no security, no simple acquiescence.” 

 Are we going through a similar period described by Hesse?  Today our citizens are tearing down statues, torching buildings, burning our flag and killing people in the streets.  Frenzied mobs act like they are “drinking chalices of serpents.” Hamas rapes, murders, mutilates and burns 1200 Israeli civilians and hundreds of thousands of college students chant, “we are Hamas.”  Well-meaning doctors mutilate boys and girls with “gender affirming care.”  Lia Thomas, a 6’4” man with a penis, competes as a woman swimmer. Millions of illegals from China, Venezuela and dozens of other countries, cross the southern border, while sanctuary cities like San Francisco and Denver, declare they will not follow the Federal law mandating illegals be retained.  A supreme Court Justice cannot define a woman.  Men dressed as women read stories to children in libraries during “drag Queen Hour.” Teachers are suspended for not calling a boy with female pronouns.  A boy is suspended from school for wearing a tee shirt reading, THERE ARE ONLY TWO GENDERS.  Rioters loot with impunity.  It feels like a society in transition; or a society that has already gone from transition to transformation.  We no longer recognize our country.  We no longer know who we are. It feels like the end of the world as we know it. 

 The land is in confusion... Maat is cast out and

iniquity (woke madness) (sits) in the council chamber. 

 Truth and Justice, nowhere to be foun

Allister Heath, editor of The British paper, The Telegraph, framed it thusly:

There is a fatal contradiction at the heart of Western societies, anihilistic impulse, a pathological self-loathing that threatens to destroy our way of life. We live in the freest, wealthiest, healthiest, fairest and most technologically advanced polities in history,and yet millions of young people are being taught to hate thWest, to despise the liberties that make their lifestyles possible,to tear down every institution and tradition.  

His conclusion:

     “We are the West’s last generation before the new Dark Age begins.”

                            Afterword

Take a deep breathe.  Doom and gloom.  New Dark Age. The End of the world as we know it.  Obliterated civilizations.  Truth and justice gone.  Are you depressed yet?  Are you tired of hearing about the (misspelled)           

 I get it. But the beat goes on.  As I write this on October 12, 2024, a partially armed mob of around thirty people, looted a train in Chicago.  In another incident, police arrested four Venezuelan migrants for allegedly strangling and robbing a man on a train.

There are more uplifting subjects to discuss.  Most of my past newspaper columns have been in the category of human interest/human behavior. Some subscribers of CRISIS are focused on the political and social.   Others lean to the human side of life.  Still others prefer reminiscing about “days dead and gone are more worthwhile.” One nostalgia piece received many more likes (and new subscribers) than my other 63 posts combined.  Here’s the link. THE OLD LADY IN THE WINDOW - by Fred Singer - CRISIS (substack.com)

THE OLD LADY IN THE WINDOW

There seems to be an intertwining relationship between nostalgia and TEOTWAWKI:  if the past is golden, and the present is coming apart, there is bound to be a longing for the better days of our childhoods.  Consequently, CRISIS will go in all those directions – Human Behavior, human interest, nostalgia and (take another deep breath) TEOTWAWK.