A Manifesto of Indifference

No containment box will hold back the mess we've made of the world, when football heroes are rapists and a man disciplines a three year old boy by scalding him with boiling water. I can't contemplate a world like this. Mark Twain called it a dreary space-lost bulb, and that was before yahoo and youtube and CNN, before the twenty-four hour news cycle and Tennessee flood and the volcanic eruption of bad news that haunts our waking hours and our dreams. I don't have an answer or a hope, not for this and the way things are. All over the world press conferences are held, and self-assured men in suits stand before podiums and assure us that this is the best course of action and everything possible is being done, when nothing can be done. Will the end of days be anymore frenzied and chaotic? Can anything reverse the momentum of senselessness? Was Sodom or Gomorrah any more lost than we are now?

Men behave badly and undo themselves with unchecked appetites and perversity. Greed leads inexorably to ruin and incalculable losses. Who set this all in motion, and what can make it stop? I get tired if I think about it for twenty minutes. If I watch the evening news I'll fall into a pit of despair. Unless something fundamental changes in how we strive to master ourselves, the grip of uncertainty will overtake us all. From Iceland and Tennessee came the grim reminder of the words of Will Durant, "Civilization exists by geologic consent, subject to change without notice." The Permafrost is melting, and our hopes and certainty with it. We are the fools who think we are in charge, unaware the kingdom of humanity hangs by a thread, a thread that the jackals of violence and greed and mayhem lunge at viciously every day.

I can't think about it anymore, at least not today. The ruin and suffering and cruelty is too much. I have five beautiful grandchildren with another one kicking merrily in the womb. It's a sunny day in Spring. I won fifty dollars playing poker on Monday and another sixty yesterday. I'll take my superficial comforts and small victories. I haven't got the strength or wisdom to take on the world. I'm not sure anyone does. I don't have any confidence in the men standing at the podiums. They've told these lies before.