27 January 2011

They had to invent their own answers

The entire pre-occupation of the 'lost generation' with the meaning of life and of existential questions came out of a looming sense of collapse of the older social order. They could not rely on the standard answers to those questions, the answers society ordinarily provides without even the interlocutor having to ask the question. They believed they had to invent their own answers. 
They didn't understand they could return to the answers the ancient world long ago had provided, answers the prevailing order had obfuscated and thereby brought the world to the situation of collapse they were beginning to experience. The invented answers of the modern world were uniformly individualistic identities; the answers of the ancient world were uniformly identities based in the community. 

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