On the other hand, it’s spring

Politics in the modern sense — the muddy search for individual liberty — is dead.

Philosophy in the ancient sense — the soul’s longing for eternity heightened through reason into the search for wisdom — is dying.

Religious faith in the humane sense — the communal subordination of souls to the shared belief in a being and truth higher than ourselves and our material satisfactions or sufferings — is now most prominently the instrument of death cult extremists, whether of the genuinely devout sort or the secularized dogmatic sort (aka progressives).

On the other hand, we may take solace in the thought that all things are circular, even if some circles, perhaps including the ones we would most like to see retrace themselves to a better moment immediately, may take an infinity to turn round upon their axes. Symbolic of this universal circularity, of course, is the cycle of the seasons. True, we humans may seem to be in the midst of an interminable winter of the spirit, but this does not stop the non-human world, with its own constitution and political arrangements, from continuing on its merry way, forever exacting justice by means of its cosmic retributions, as Anaximander taught. 

In short, things look pretty horrible right now from the point of view of individual souls and their hopes of freedom; on the other hand, my morning stroll today informed me beyond any doubt that in a world ultimately more lasting than ours, it is already spring.