We are in a perilous situation, my friends. But before discussion moves forth, let me pose a scenario. You are floating at sea during a thunderstorm. The sky above you shudders with each bolt of lightning, each peal of thunder. Momentarily paralyzed, you gaze upwards in terror and wonder as the light of the stars stretch toward one another, forming rifts in the heavens, cracking the dome of the world. This situation falls squarely within the realm of Fear, one of the grander deities in the hierarchy of psychological constructs. Imagine further, that while you are at sea during this thunderstorm, there appears beneath you a long and wide shadow. You do not notice it, but it is there. It consumes, not out of necessity, not even necessarily out of pleasure, but out of sheer ability. It is unstoppable, it is absolute, and it is coming. This is the deity of Foreboding.
This is a terrible situation. I wish to be clear; when I say terrible, I do not mean it in the colloquial sense of “bad,” or “unfortunate,” but rather the incarnation Yeats used in Easter, 1916—terrifying, without connotations of good or bad. I have been taught by legends, fairy tales, and morality tales, how to confront these constructs of Fear or Foreboding, but what we are dealing with, my comrades, is something far greater. We are dealing with the deities of Apathy and Routine.
I believe it was Mill, who, at the beginning of his treatise, Utilitarianism, stated that he had decided to write this book after he was at a point in his life when he had time to sit and think; deconstructing his previous beliefs, and fashioning those still-standing truths into a more ideal form of thought and consideration. This is not that time. Perhaps when we were younger, perhaps when we are older, but there is not time enough now, nor will there be for a while.
Are we, then, to simply resign ourselves to the command of these “lesser” deities? As a clever man once put it, “the question hardly survives its statement.” Perhaps, flowing with the stream of bleakness, our power of defiance lies within a narrowly defined box, much like Bartleby’s “I would prefer not to.” Or perhaps, we steal precious moments away, bit by bit, from their dominion, keeping our selves hidden, keeping our selves safe, for a day when there is time enough, and world enough again—this, at least, we must do, for as it goes:
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends...
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