Essence of the Age

"Don't punish me brutality,

talk to me so you can see

what's goin' on..."
-Marvin Gaye "What's Going On" 1971

What is the spirit of the times we live in? What are the defining moments of this age? I know. It's hard to tell. Generalizations are difficult but they work well as tools, as unofficial measuring sticks of the paradigms we hold to.

Times past, we had religion or science or the need to explore or the need to investigate. In the recent past it was attempts to free our troubled minds, spiritually or chemically, to stop feeling the madness, to stop feeling the pain. We had goals, good or bad, but we had a defining direction.

Starting from the late 1800's, we had the age of Neitzche, we witnessed the breakdown of thoughtless religiosity and ignorance. We wanted to be better people, intellectually and, I believe, morally. From there, we segued into the age of Freud and clinical attempts at explaining how our weird little psyches work. At the same time we had the parallel age of Einstein, the making sense of the physical world we seemed destined to eternally inhabit. The last half of the American century was one of cold war paranoia but the greatest era of exploration since the British ruled the seas. Kids and inquiring adults read Huxley and Kesey, Malcom X and Gandhi, Kerouac and Wolfe. We were a nation of astronauts and pranksters and freaks, all yearning to be free.

But what are we today? Have we succumbed to the brutality that Marvin Gaye lamented in his song? We destroy our enemies as we always have, but we brutalize our children as well, children killing parents in retaliation.Even our children's play shows it. When boys used to play "war" they tended to take prisoners. Now they just die, unless it's in a video game and they have earned enough extra lives to finish the game.

We insult and degrade each other regularly. I'm not talking about the occasional bad joke or mis-used word. No. We insult and degrade each other because we disagree. We terrorize, slaughtering innocents and guilty along the way, with virtually no discrimination. Regard for life does not exist as it once did, as it should. I'm beginning to suspect we have no spirit of this age, no zeitgeist. We wander thoughtlessly as well as aimlessly, but always cruelly.

"Mother, mother

There's too many of you crying

Brother, brother, brother

There's far too many of you dying

You know we've got to find a way

To bring some lovin' here today"