Be Not Idle

People sense something slipping away, a world receding, not only an economic one but a world of old structures, old ways and assumptions. …I suspect more than a few see themselves, deep down, as “the designated mourner,” from the title of the Wallace Shawn play. – from ”There’s No Pill for This Kind of Depression”

Peggy Noonan has discovered that people are anxious about the economic crisis. More people are going to church; city folks are looking for farms. Gun sales are up; some deep-pocketed persons are pulling large sums of cash from their banks. (Or perhaps, being of Irish descent, Noonan is merely on a mortality rant.)

She thinks that anti-depressants and anti-anxiety medication contributed to the financial crisis. I jest not. She writes: “In New York their use became common after 9/11. It continued through and, I hypothesize, may have contributed to, the high-flying, wildly imprudent Wall Street of the ’00s.”

Perhaps she should do a little informal study of how many users of anti-depressants and anti-anxiety medication work on Wall Street. Then, to compare, see how many users of anti-depressants, etc. voted for politicians who had their hands in the pot of various bailed-out institutions.  It ought to be downright interesting, to say the least.

Instead, she talked to a writer, a psychiatrist, etc. to take the pulse of the nation. And the patient isn’t well.

I know what she means. An aquaintance of mine (I’ll just call him “Max”) ignored the signs of the times: environmental change, the devastating cost of gas, man’s inhumanity to man.

He lived as he pleased, a loner speeding around in his gas-guzzling car and having conflicts with nearly everyone he met. But he reconsidered his ways and really thought what kind of world the younger generation would inherit. And that’s why he’s known far beyond Thunderdome.

Yes, I totally dropped Mad Max into this post. If Ms. Noonan can pseudo-namedrop, so can I. Plus, if you’re going to envision the destruction of society, you might as well go whole-hog.

“Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, Dyin’  Time’s here.” – the Collector, Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome 

Noonan’s column reminds me of Atticus Finch telling Scout and Jem, “It’s not time to worry yet. I’ll tell you when it’s time to worry.” (I admit to making fun of Ms. Noonan’s friend who wants to move to Atticus’s town. Fictional Maycomb, Alabama, was smack in the heart of a county so entrenched in its caste system that a white man had to pretend to be perpetually drunk in order to “explain” why he married a black woman. I dunno; I’d prefer tough economic times to entrenched classicism and racism. But perhaps I’m being harsh. Perhaps Noonan’s  friend isn’t much of a reader and merely watched the Gregory Peck movie.)

On a more serious note, Patrick Archbold at Creative Minority Report and his readers are also a bit worried that something is coming - they know not what.  Then again, they’ve primed the pump a bit by having a tongue-in-cheek running series about signs of the Apocalypse. If you worry about it, you’ll see it.

We’re always closer to the End than we care to think, both as a world and as individuals. We may be heading into an awful time when our country seems to be dying and our economy falters. But it’s not like it hasn’t happened before.

We’ve tended to romanticize such times: the oft-referenced Fall of the Roman Empire, the last cowboy as civilization closed in, the Greatest Generation, etc.  However, we live in a post-romantic world, and it would be fitting if our cultural descendants don’t bother to eulogize us. Maybe they can give us a fitting name, though: The Laziest Generation, the Navel-Gazers, the Self-Pitying Wasters of Everything.

I like to think that this is a chastizement only. I pray that the younger generations will find beauty and peace in the world they inherit.  I hope that they see beyond materialism and meet Jesus without fear acting as a goad.

“God sees you out of the corner of His Eye.” - from screenwriter Jay Wolpert’s version of The Count of Monte Cristo 

Besides The Road Warrior and Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome, I also suggest a few other entertainments to tide your over to the approaching Apocalypse:

The Count of Monte Cristo  ~ This is Dumas’ classic tale of a man whose world is destroyed: his career, his name, his relationships. It remains a favorite of mine. The English translation  runs more than 1,400 pages in the Modern Library edition, so it will certainly keep your mind occupied. You may enjoy the movie version with Jim Caviezel, especially the (gasp!) happier ending. 

Last Exile ~ This anime series is set in an hourglass-shaped world upon which environmental extremes have created a near-constant war between the struggling nations. As in most anime, there is a brooding man with a dark past, a lost love, a fey boy, a small cute girl – but the main characters are childhood friends who work as couriers using their deceased fathers’ ”vanship” – like a tractor crossed with a World War I biplane (sans wings). The attention to detail is stunning; e.g. a princess is locked in a bedroom that evidentally once was a chapel, complete with a mural of the Crucifixion. Enjoy it while you still have electricity.

The Man Who Was Thursday by G.K. Chesterton. ~ You thought I was going to recommend that knock-off homage Good Omens by Gaiman and Pratchett, didn’t you? Sure, it’s about the end of the world, but it lacks the subtlety and dreamlike quality.

Stranger at Killknock by Leonard Wibberly. ~ What if the Second Coming happened very quietly in an Irish village?  This is out of print, but perhaps you can look for it as you rummage through the abandoned libraries and used bookstores of a decaying city. Just remember: The kindling is filed under Brown, Dan.

UPDATE: The inimitable Bob Parks is sickened by Noonan’s love of the new President.

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