I ran across this article this morning and it has resonated with me. It asks (and answers not so well) the fundamental question, "Where are we going?". It uses Japan as the answer as to what happens when you replace bedrock values with nothingness. http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/2013/09/were-turning-japanese-now.html Anyway, I thought it was a thought-provoking read.
On face I'd say one of the biggest existential problems we face as a society - and this holds true for many societies - is that we don't actually "do" much anymore. We've taken the toil and the challenge out of life, leaving us groping for something to take its place and we find that the replacements are wanting.
I found the article to be mostly hollow. He harps on the values lost to "the Left" and modernism but makes no mention of what they are. What are these values that the Japanese lost? The only thing he mentions is marriage and children. If conservatism is the answer, which brand of conservatism? Is it the emperor-worshiping, nationalistic ideals that brought so much progress to Japan in the early 20th century? It's easy to get conservatives on board with the problems (immigrants, pop-culture, materialism, Obama) but the trick is to get everyone to agree on a solution. I don't see any answers in this essay.
Yeah, I didn't dig the left vs. right thing. To me, it was much more about what are your values, what are your goals. It's easy for me to say because I've gathered enough assets to live a pretty comfortable life, but once you've covered the basics and have a little breathing room, you need to find a deeper meaning to life. Thinking about the next gadget or fashion trend doesn't really cut it.
Hedonism on its face is so appealing, but in practice one tires of it pretty quickly. Look at the lives of the idle wealthy and/or famous, and the lives they lead are often unhappy ones. I think we has humans were meant to strive for some kind of meaning to our existence, something bigger than ourselves. Our God, our community, our progeny, what have you. The reality is that we've been sold an empty promise--work hard and here is your reward--and the material goods don't do much to feed the soul. Like I posted in the OP, I didn't really like his answer, but I thought the question he posed and the angle from which he examined it was quite interesting.
Yeah, the liberal vs. conservative conflict falsely diagnoses the root of the problem and misses the mark. It seems much more important that we've completely devalued work and removed ourselves from those tasks that ensure our survival - farming, hunting, husbandry, weaving, carpentry, etc. To make matters worse we mostly replaced all of those tasks with passive consumerism. Television, computers, sports, politics as a spectator sport to name a few. Of course I say all of this as somebody who is as guilty as anybody, but I've been trying to make conscious decisions to change my ways in the past year or so: Remodeling my house by myself, helping neighbors with some carpentry projects, working on writing a book and less posting on message boards ...
