"There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream, the earth
and every common sight, to me did seem appareled in celestial light."
__Wordsworth, "Intimations of Immortality"
"Does anyone think it's easy to be a creature in this world?"
__Patchen
"So, this is Mars?"
1950's 'Space Pioneers' TV
"So, this is Mars?"
1950's 'Space Pioneers' TV
To my mind, we are all refugees, orphans of the storm, strangers in a strange land. And this, quite apart from our cherished illusions to the contrary. My own included.
For the past two days I have been staying with my friends, Matt and Jennifer. After dinner, last night, we took a tour of the city. I wanted to see something of the streets and landmarks remembered from the years I had lived here during the 1980's and 90's, and I suggested a walk past "People's Park" on Kirkwood. "It's changed a lot, recently" Matt warned. He was right.The park had lately become a site of heavy drug dealing and dereliction. The same fate has turned the historic park at Seminary Square into an encampment of lost souls, wandering ghosts looking for a fix or a bottle of anything to quell the pain of their exile.
Seminary Park had once been the home of Indiana Seminary, which later became Indiana University. This was at a time when education was prized under the banner of "Lux et Veritas" and touted as "an energetic quest for the meaning of life". Today the students gather for their notion of the "wide and luminous view" at Kilroy's on Kirkwood where they can souse themselves into manic oblivion and perpetual fun. The university has a 49 % dropout rate. I don't know what the current rate of "wilted & forlorn" might be, but I would suppose it to be even greater than it was only a few years ago, before the opiod crisis took hold.
Matt, who is a psychotherapist, told me that opioid addiction accounts for growing numbers of the permanently lost and forgotten of this once shining city of learning and culture. As we were walking around the central square this morning, we came upon a man lying in a heap on the sidewalk. Scores of people looked at him briefly and then crossed over to better hear the music that blared from mega megawatt amplifiers set up on the courthouse lawn. Some pointed and giggled. I was reminded of the Eloi in H.G. Wells' tale, The Time Machine. "You see it all the time," said one who stopped to wonder if the man was still breathing. The condition has become commonplace, meaningless, invisible. We give it a name, "the opioid crisis", but this crisis has its roots in deeper ground and gives rise to that yet more pervasive Crisis of Despair about which even less is known, let alone understood.
The psychologist C.G. Jung already understood the matter, and with brilliant insight in his own era, believing that "the more secular, materialistic, and compulsively extraverted our civilization becomes, the greater the unhappiness, senselessness and aimlessness of our lives". Moreover, in an essay Jung wrote in the 1930's, he described what he termed "psychic epidemics", the outward manifestations of disorders rooted in the psyche of man. The "crisis of despair" that is emerging in our world and time can be recognized as just this kind of epidemic. And there is no pill, not even "as seen on TV" that will cure it.
Hurricanes, earthquakes, forest fires, and rampant lunacy in high places notwithstanding, I will end today's travel notes with another quotation from the venerable Dr. Jung, certainly as pertinent today as ever and ever:
"Finally, the best antidote to the menace of the times lies in the cultivation of a more comprehensive consciousness."
For the past two days I have been staying with my friends, Matt and Jennifer. After dinner, last night, we took a tour of the city. I wanted to see something of the streets and landmarks remembered from the years I had lived here during the 1980's and 90's, and I suggested a walk past "People's Park" on Kirkwood. "It's changed a lot, recently" Matt warned. He was right.The park had lately become a site of heavy drug dealing and dereliction. The same fate has turned the historic park at Seminary Square into an encampment of lost souls, wandering ghosts looking for a fix or a bottle of anything to quell the pain of their exile.
Seminary Park had once been the home of Indiana Seminary, which later became Indiana University. This was at a time when education was prized under the banner of "Lux et Veritas" and touted as "an energetic quest for the meaning of life". Today the students gather for their notion of the "wide and luminous view" at Kilroy's on Kirkwood where they can souse themselves into manic oblivion and perpetual fun. The university has a 49 % dropout rate. I don't know what the current rate of "wilted & forlorn" might be, but I would suppose it to be even greater than it was only a few years ago, before the opiod crisis took hold.
Matt, who is a psychotherapist, told me that opioid addiction accounts for growing numbers of the permanently lost and forgotten of this once shining city of learning and culture. As we were walking around the central square this morning, we came upon a man lying in a heap on the sidewalk. Scores of people looked at him briefly and then crossed over to better hear the music that blared from mega megawatt amplifiers set up on the courthouse lawn. Some pointed and giggled. I was reminded of the Eloi in H.G. Wells' tale, The Time Machine. "You see it all the time," said one who stopped to wonder if the man was still breathing. The condition has become commonplace, meaningless, invisible. We give it a name, "the opioid crisis", but this crisis has its roots in deeper ground and gives rise to that yet more pervasive Crisis of Despair about which even less is known, let alone understood.
The psychologist C.G. Jung already understood the matter, and with brilliant insight in his own era, believing that "the more secular, materialistic, and compulsively extraverted our civilization becomes, the greater the unhappiness, senselessness and aimlessness of our lives". Moreover, in an essay Jung wrote in the 1930's, he described what he termed "psychic epidemics", the outward manifestations of disorders rooted in the psyche of man. The "crisis of despair" that is emerging in our world and time can be recognized as just this kind of epidemic. And there is no pill, not even "as seen on TV" that will cure it.
Hurricanes, earthquakes, forest fires, and rampant lunacy in high places notwithstanding, I will end today's travel notes with another quotation from the venerable Dr. Jung, certainly as pertinent today as ever and ever:
"Finally, the best antidote to the menace of the times lies in the cultivation of a more comprehensive consciousness."
If there would be any further doubt about our collective demise, see what the Brookings Institute said about the matter:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.brookings.edu/research/unhappiness-in-america-desperation-in-white-towns-resilience-and-diversity-in-the-cities/
Matt