The elevation in tempo of the cultural process is
wreaking havoc across the spectrum of human interaction and the degree to which
it is bringing about crisis, both within the Church (speaking as a whole) and
without it, is perhaps unparalleled in history. There is a psychological/ emotional/spiritual bubble that is quite close
to bursting in a manner just as precipitously and as catastrophically as the
economic bubble burst in 1929.
I am not certain how it will ultimately show up but at
present it is most prevalent in the 25-40 age group. These are the generally artificially dwarfed
products of the educational/cultural experimentation that reached its peak in
the late 70's through the 90's. They are
discovering just how precariously founded are all the assumptions which they
had hitherto taken for granted. They are
realizing that they have been sold a bill of goods and now they see all the
glittering promises that was to be their inheritance passing to "foreigners"
who have the requisite educational expertise and discipline to "pass them
by". For all practical purposes
they are drifting into a generalized mob of cynical, disgruntled, resentful,
entitlement-oriented factions bound together through the internet.
The circumstances have more than a little correspondence
to that of the city of Rome at the turn of the eons. Displaced from
their traditional roles as the supporting infrastructure of empire, their jobs
and lands taken from them by large land owners who profited from the abundance
of slaves (read illegal immigrant labor), the Roman proletariat formed into the
mass of hysterical plebes who had to be supported on the dole and pacified by
the games for the government to continue to function. Our political process has degenerated into an
explicit pandering to the whimsical mood of a very similar unstable, ill
educated, undisciplined, and generally unprincipled mass. Their thinking is entirely visceral and their
relationships are all tentative. Yet
they are a potent and powerful force because of the internal communications
which gives them an evanescent unity. They resemble a school of shoal fish, unified in mass, sparkling in the
light, changing directions instantly, individually featureless but constantly
in motion together. Neither the Church,
the political institutions, nor the educational establishment are currently
able to do with these folks that which has to be done in order for a crisis to
be avoided. Their essential identity
must be altered into a different form of existence. Otherwise this generation will pass into
oblivion to be replaced by another, in the same manner as did that of the post
Great War 1920's. Cultural
disenchantment is a deadly condition.
Gaining a hearing, awakening them to an entirely
different possibility of existence and reinstituting the fundamentals of hope,
is a consuming and daunting task, but it is one that must be accomplished.
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