Notes from the End of an Age

Photo by Charles Kinnaird

                       

As long as the sun and the moon are above,

As long as the bumblebee visits a rose,

 As long as rosy infants are born

No one believes it is happening now.

   ~ Czeslaw Milosz

   (From “A Song on the End of the World”)

This is how the world ends – not without struggle, yet so slowly and subtly that one can spend a lifetime in denial. Mislosz, in his poem, “A Song on the End of the World” depicts scenes “on the day the world ends” of everyday life that include a bee circling a clover, sparrows playing by a rain spout, and people going about their daily lives. He wrote as one who had indeed experienced world’s end, having witnessed life under two totalitarian regimes in Poland (first Nazi Germany then the Communist bloc). He gave us a clue about how world systems end.

Signs and Symptoms

We have seen and heard clues in the stories we tell. For example, those who give credence to the existence of ghosts often explain that ghosts are people who have suffered tragic deaths and linger in this world because they cannot accept the fact that they have died. This concept was skillfully presented in the 1999 film, Sixth Sense, starring Bruce Willis where we see a story of reluctant transition.

Could it be that the reason for our fascination with such tales is that those stories are signals from our own unconscious that the world as we know it has already passed? Our history books tell of civilizations that have come and gone, but how many who lived in those past civilizations realized that they were at the end of one age or at the beginning of another? Did the Fall of Rome make much difference to the fisherman and the farmer, or the weaver and the candlestick maker?

In our own day, the U.S.A. seems to be in the midst of transition. Half of the country wants to “protect our way of life” (as they see it) while the other half is frantically concerned with “preserving democracy” (or their understanding of it). Each side, while at odds with the other, looks back with reverence to stories of our founding fathers.

What we are seeing, however, is a society whose institutions are failing. Our educational institutions are increasingly ineffectual, our religious structures seem hollow even as they attempt to be relevant, and our government is paralyzed. We have a congress that for many years has been unable to legislate. The best they have been able to do is to go along with the executive orders of whoever happens to be president, to reluctantly pass 11^th hour budgets, and to frantically seek reelection. The truth is, so much of what we know is in the process of dying.  

Many of our major institutions – government, banking, schools, and churches – were born during the Industrial Revolution. We are living with 19th-century institutions and have not yet figured out how to organize ourselves in the post-industrial 21st century.

It is unthinkable for most of us to ask at what point the broken becomes past mending. Are we now living day to day, unable to see that the world we thought we lived in has ended? What would we do if we realized that the system has failed? What if the government which all parties left and right seek to rectify is beyond rescue?

Life at the End of an Age

Living at the end of an age might simply mean that we are caught between the times. Old societal structures are giving way to new structures more suitable for where society is moving. But where is society moving? It is difficult to tell when you are living between the times as we are today.

Looking at the sweep of history, one can get a sense of what structures were needed for different stages of our social development. What served the hunter-gatherer tribes was not sufficient for the agrarian city-states as urban life became possible. The Roman Empire was one of many organizational structures that arose as civilization continued to advance toward a global as well as urban orientation.

Just as those living at the end of the hunter-gatherer period or at the end of the Roman Empire could not see that they were at the end of an age and heading toward another, neither can we fully grasp where we are or where we are going.

Finding Our Way

This is how the world could end – with struggles over outmoded systems. One person honors the old while another celebrates the new – neither knows the outcome. Neither understands that the world has ended. Both are unable to see the dying embers. How then do we find our way?

When things fall apart, perhaps we can learn from those who have made a life in the margins. Minorities, refugees, and other displaced people often must learn to find connections within a society whose structures do not necessarily work for them.

Or perhaps we could think of what we do at the funeral wake or when sitting shiva. We tell stories of life; we pay our respects; we connect with friends; we learn the art of letting go; we heed the admonition to prove all things and hold fast that which is good.  For those who find themselves between the times, death throes and birth pangs are comingled. It is in our own small daily encounters that we carry our lives from one world to the next.  

                                                                                                                                     ~ Charles Kinnaird

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