Weekend Reflections: Literally and Figuratively

Modern civilization is going to hell in a handbasket. (Hence Limbo.)

The political realm, worldwide, is a bottomless pit of pig slop to which there is at present no alternative but abstention. (Hence Limbo.)

The philosophical world is a postmodern “Battle of the Books” in which one side does not believe in books, while the other side only believes in books. (Hence Limbo.)

Modern art, literature, and music are going down for the third time, leaving the past — and the more distant the past, the better — as the only respite from the worst of all possible artistic worlds, namely a lifeless sea of snobbish coarseness and vulgar pretension. (Hence Limbo.)

Education has lost all sense of the distinction between teaching and indoctrinating, all threads connecting the individual to the cosmos, and all concept of human life as a continuum of civilizing maturation. (Hence Limbo.)

Through it all, however, the real world, Nature, life itself, Being, call it what you will, is still there, unperturbedly ignoring our folly — and, mercifully, providing the reflected light that enlivens the dim paths and caves of Limbo.

A few moments to reflect on reflections then, and to feel grateful that we are still able to sense, however tentatively and indirectly, a world more substantial than our ill-begotten, all too human illusions, and more permanent and impassive than the earthly practical life we have collectively, catastrophically, corrupted.