Societies Lack of general Faith -the examination of doubt and cynicism -Robert Fullarton

Societies Lack of general Faith

-the examination of doubt and cynicism

-Robert Fullarton copyright 2017

I was meandering through the confines of a local park, all alone, but reminded of a fact. I knew of a certain political figure once held in high esteem, and one which I too respected and admired. He was in the days of my childhood a man adored by most (in circles of liberal democracy) in the public at large and of course by my own parents as well. Over two decades scandals, have since emerged of this man’s private life, which tarnished and destroyed his integrity, as the image of the “great leader” had been tarnished and the “peacemaker” was subdued into the depths of the public’s despair and hostility. With such cases and many other on a comparable level, there is this sense of betrayal when ordinary people lose hope and faith with their own leadership. The sense of identity and purpose becomes twisted in the confusion after the scandal. I too have seen such scandals, whether they been with politicians or with the Catholic church. Men feel they cannot trust the leadership of their nation anymore, what is worse is the truth that men on a broader and more philosophical spectrum, feel the union between the peoples to have been diluted with a level of cynicism, of doubt and vigilance. Society operates on doubt, it does so by the rigours and ends of the press, it does so through its superficial love for all things entertaining, all things pleasurable and wholly utilitarian. Yet the deeper questions and hard lessons of are often ignored, by the cheap offerings of pleasure, the comfort of the moment, does not compensate for the deep answers and assurances of eternal questions.

Such superficiality and doubt do not let the societal mind permeate or exceed the mundane, to ask the big questions, to take such leaps of faith, and sacrifice, where the noble virtues of chivalry, chastity, courage, loyalty and honour are bought and sold by the weight of one’s purse, or more rightly the lure of a new smart phone. Western society, consumes; is the consumer, for the consummation of great excesses, of great luxuries, previously unknown, of great abodes, of great automobiles and great health care coverage, of great access to knowledge and yet with emptiness of heart, emptiness of community spirit, poverty of meaning and yet all such as the empire of men is built upon the works of Aristotle and the splitting of the atom, the pantheons of knowledge seem frivolous and cannot conquer the deep and seemingly eternal divisions that consequentially have seen men play out the fantasies of grandeur and shown barbarism under a fancy new name. Of course the utopia sought by the reactionaries to the regime did not bring the so desired utopia of perfection, because the minds and hearts of men went on hating.

The terrible and tragic loss of faith in the Christian churches has of course been multi-faceted over the course of the twentieth and early twenty-first century. It partly happened through the attrition of ww1, the horrors of ww2, through a broad psychological rebellion against perceived conservative structures of authority and through the general desire of another generation to cling to all things pleasurable and temporal, after times of sparse material supplies, the time of plenty came, and in peace this slide unto unbelief became a torrent in time. The youth of “free love” rebelled against the government, church, family and law, and also against the moral understanding of old. The Byronic dream to have everything- to have no needs, to answer to no person- was ironically in reality a case for delayed misanthropy and disaster.

The modern media driven society of today was birthed in the self-centred, gluttonous, desire to make money, for the psychological tour de force that all people of every class could become famous, could make money and never suffer the exposures and hardships of the previous generations. The drive to make money, clouded the heads of many ordinary people, as sheer entertainment was promulgated and flooded into the senses of the masses.

Good living, recreational pleasure, entertainment and self-preservation have become the religious desires of the public, with all time allotted to these rituals, the superficial facade of the modern rigmarole, sees neighbour trying to better neighbour in the competitive spirit of consumer/capitalist society, sees the sheer pettiness and travesty of the law courts operating upon the petty system of legalism, with vitriolic acrimony and sheer apathy between neighbours on many tiers of the social order. Men still yearn for the perfect government like bears roughing up the bees nest for the honey. Such get stung in time. Likewise as the consumer consumes the corporate inflate in revenue, net worth, in sheer assets, in the expansionism of conquering the market on a global level- this plutocracy defines the age in which live, in our compartmentalised media empire, behind the entertainment and the celebrity there lies a businessman and a corporation. These changes have created walls of disparity between people, making the elite rich even richer and the poor far more considerably poorer.