Even our talk about taking ourselves less seriously is tinged with concern that this very serious societal flaw is wrecking the social order. As if it mattered.
In the final analysis, it doesn't. "It." Code for "everything."
The common concerns about decorum? Way too serious. The strident insistence that our society needs a better social safety net? If our collective will could change it all, maybe...but in the overal scheme of things that are, by and large, outside our realm of control? Overly serious.
What about tsunamis and earthquakes and nuclear holocaust? Surely those deserve to be taken seriously? If we (the collective we...humankind and all) actually mattered, sure. And in the context of our own individual lives as of this evening on this planet, yeah, they deserve to be taken seriously. But in terms of humankind's actual value in the universe as we know it? Probably not.
So, it shouldn't matter, in the overall scheme of things, if I were to decide tomorrow morning to invite an attractive woman I happen to encounter on the street to engage in a hedonistic sex orgy in the middle of the esplanade on Midway Road during rush hour, right? Well, yes. But there is that part about "in the context of our own individual lives." That's where the argument that we take ourselves too seriously gets in trouble.
I still believe we take ourselves too seriously. I just don't know exactly where to find the bright line that divides what is too serious and what is not serious enough. Not that it matters.
2 comments:
That bright line is kind of the whole point, isn't it, Mr. Kneeblood? That which separates a hedonistic sex orgy in the middle of the esplanade on Midway Road during rush hour and, well, *not* a hedonistic sex orgy in the middle of the esplanade on Midway Road during rush hour.
But it's fun trying to figure it out, is it not??
Ellie
Love you end line. It doesn't. Not really. Not in the big scheme. What was that line in Casa Blanca? You know the one about us not amounting to a "hill of beans?" We don't. But we do.
Read Anne Morrow Lindbergh's Gift from the Sea. She writes eloquently about our growth and rebirth in the middle years. The book is more than 50 years old, itself, and it still packs a punch.
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