The Peripatetic Philosopher asks,

Are We Trapped Between Two Worlds?

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.

© July 26, 2015

THIS IS NOT SOMETHING NEW

We have to go back to the time of St. Paul in the late first century to register some understanding of the madness of our time.

Paul was so convinced that it was the “end of days” and that man was on the cusp of seeing the return of man’s savior in the form of Jesus Christ that he preached that penultimate message.  

But time was not on Paul’s side, and as a result his followers increasingly had to face the hard reality of continued life in a world that remained very much as it had always been.  They were truly trapped between two conflicting worlds.

Today we are trapped between the surreal world of electronics and the real world of daily life.  

Evidence that we are so trapped is the bizarre behavior that has become so common to be the norm.

Take Paul’s view of men and women.  He describes to his followers in Galatia the ultimate ideal of God’s kingdom:

“For as many of you were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.  There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave or free, there is neither male nor female for you are all one in Christ” (Galatians 3:7-28).

THIS IS NOT A RELIGIOUS AGE

Less and less people are comfortable with this reference as this is not a religious age, far from it.  

Religion even in the time of Paul, which in many ways was as weird as our own, was central to the conduct of life be one Christian, Jewish or Pagan.  

There was an implicit sense of connection to something bigger than man, something outside man that was the miraculous and timeless, something believed to be God.

In only a single lifetime, a mere four generations, if you are lucky to live that long, you have seen this reverence, this sense of humility and modesty completely erode.  

Now, man is his own god, and for it he is trapped between the transformative surreal world of electronics and science and technology and the reality of everyday life.

So trapped, he was bound to act weird.  Men have forgotten what it is to be a man and woman have forgotten what it is to be a woman.  

We are moving so swiftly in this robotically devolved world that one day there may be no need for either men or women, but only robots.   

If robots want a few human specimens to entertain them, they can store male sperm and female eggs and clone a whole new race of a genetically controlled species. 

Meanwhile, like man of the first and second century, a new religion or a new surreal world in our case needs to be invented to give some focus, direction and sense of man’s destiny as tentative as it may be. 

Paul was the inventor of Christianity with many interpreters and elaborators over the centuries up through the 16^th century.  

Since that time, Christianity, which never had much to do with Jesus in any case, has eroded to its present status today, more a curiosity than a force of consequence.

WHEN SANITY TAKES A HOLIDAY

Human nature, or the nature of being human can get quite weird when feeling disconnected, and predictably it has.

People have lost their sense of identity not only in terms of sex roles but in terms of who they are. 

The evidence is there for everyone to see as people paint their bodies with tattoos to declare who they are just as primitives did those many eons ago.

Then, thunder and lightning, tornadoes and hurricanes, floods and earthquakes shattered their delicate psyches.  This shattering was done with such force that soothsayers and medicine men could tell them anything and they would believe because belief became their shelter.

Now, these medicine men and soothsayers are pundits, professors, scientists and politicians.  They are also the weird and the different and the fringe people of society who now have a powerful voice in this surreal media age of electronics. 

Eighty years ago, there were transgender people but today they have a national or international audience.  There is nothing wrong with being gay or a transgender person as this is a free country and sex role identity is a private affair.  

But we see Bruce Jenner, the former Olympic Decathlon Champion is going digital with his own television show on the “E” (standing for entertainment) channel. 

Something is wrong with this picture when we have to promulgate our personal choices of the most sensitive nature.  Where is the dignity, where is the self-respect, where is the modesty? 

Hollywood films were once monitored or classified by the Legion of Decency.  Now the most outrageous, most bestial, most gut wrenching disgusting are profitable business, and profit means everything in a surreal economy.

Now, we have a young man in one case and a middle aged man in another case going into a movie theatre and killing innocent people out for an evening’s entertainment.  

In another case, we have a young man going into an African American church prayer meeting, sitting down and being invited to participate.  Instead, he takes out a gun and kills several of them for no other reason than he hates the color of their skin.

IS SOCIETY HAVING A NERVOUS BREAKDOWN?

Nothing happens in an instant.  Breakdown is a gradual almost imperceptible affair.  Watching this happen over eight decades, common sense has been seen to be increasingly uncommon. 

When you aren’t comfortable in your own skin, and you get attention acting weird, in an earlier day, you either got your act together or you were isolated.  Now, you can get on television and have an audience.

Once individualism and freedom were celebrated, but now there is little or no individualism or freedom.  Instead, there is the prominence of the herd mentality and intrusive drones or surveillance cameras recording your every move.  This is the surreal world of today, while reality has come to be suffocating.

Emotional breakdown is common to some in every generation and in every age.

When an entire society is undergoing emotional breakdown, it isn’t even noticed.

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