Allegory.

Where’s the method to human madness
Where’s the cure to divine sadness
I have little to say, so few listen
A very few do stay, human fission
I put words on paper, as evidence
As proof of my life, ethereal existence
Will I be but a distant memory?
My words, simple melancholic allegory?

Digest.

Joy lingers as torment breeds
Light shines away where night feeds
A home is built on empty land
Men fall on knees where others stand
I hold my word when actions falter
Right my wrongs, the future I alter
That future never came as told
My youth taken before I got old

The abyss

Our society, most probably due to its Americanisation, is determined to succeed in its “pursuit for happiness”. Despite an exponential growth in technology, science, and material prosperity it is debatable whether we are coming any closer to a successful pursuit. Most jarringly, it appears that society has unanimously decided what the definition of happiness is. It has canonised the parameters of happiness and its synonyms: joy, success, content, amongst many others.

The meaning of life still alludes us, neither science nor religion have been able to convince us. Many of us will convert from one belief to the other in our lifetimes, quite often faith in religion will seem appealing as we reach the last of our days. However, if you are to believe society and its capitalist tendencies then the meaning life is nothing more than achieving happiness.

Happiness is the epitome of a fulfilled life; it is the dominant philosophy of humanity’s contemporary understanding of what reality is. Our current understanding of what it means to be human, and most importantly how we got to be here, is bespoke to our generation. Of course, as a whole, there is a continuity throughout history in our understanding of humanity and it’s characteristics. Whether these are moral, philosophical, political, or biological, there are many tropes and common understandings that exist today that have existed since the first civilisations.

However, we can only understand, or begin to believe that we understand, a subject with the information that we are privy to. We delegate our understanding to the written books of history, to the published discoveries of science. Whilst many of us delegate our opinions to the media platforms that do the best job at stroking our ego, or those that provide the comfiest of blankets to our sensibilities. On a similar topic, any act of “logic” will only remain logical within the framework, based on knowledge of facts and a common understanding of agreed outcome, imposed on the act. A great example of a change in logic is the field of physics. Logic in physics existed within a mechanical or Newtonian framework; then quantum theory and the theory of relativity shifted the definition of logic in physics.

The gatekeepers of our society have made us believe that our current societal trajectory is logical, and is the fruit of our total understanding of the human condition. As children of the internet age, we are the sum of human knowledge, and the inundation of information and our uncurbed access to knowledge has put us on a pedestal. To me, this pedestal hovers over an abyss which is inherent to the human condition.

The abyss is where the unknown breeds and where uncertainty festers. The abyss lives beneath society, and lingers behind our society of spectacle. Advertising, entertainment, and culture are edifices that try, and fail to obscure the reality of this abyss.

Happiness, and its pursuit is another failed attempt at covering the cracks of the matrix within which we reside in. We mustn’t believe that this pursuit is divine, nor that it is the endgame of the human condition. Happiness, is subjective, and it is a temperamental state of mind, one which only exists as a juxtaposition of an of opposite state of mind. It is hard to understand whether happiness is pegged on a state of mind, therefore an abstract understanding of your own internal processes, or whether it is pegged on tangible factors such as consumption, success, power, or philanthropic acts.

The nefarious aspect of this failure to not only attaining happiness, but simply understanding what happiness is, has consequences on the individual psyches of humans today. Whereas pain, misery and grief were integral and understood concepts of human life in societies gone-by, we have fallen into an amnesic dream.

We are sleep walking into the abyss, and we all know that it is dangerous to wake a sleep walker.