One day I decided to take a step and it hurt less than standing still. 

For some time already, I witness a phenomenon which I would call “the shift to cynicism of the younger generation”. It is some sort of disappointment with the fact that the childhood fairytales turned out to be unreal, that almost nobody has the opportunity to live as a hero from those stories and even the concepts of God, heaven and afterlife are completely overrated, in the sense that they are simply empty stories, myths that are not verifiable in any way; the Sacred, if any, is elusive, if not impossible to locate altogether in the reality of this world. In other words, not only Santa Clause doesn’t exist, but one cannot be Superman, Captain Planet or Sailor Moon. This disappointment comes with the collapse of the old traditions, with the disappearance of the group pressure to conform to well-established rules and values; the younger generation has set itself free, only to find out that it doesn’t know what to do with this newly achieved freedom. Or, to put it bluntly, the well-tested rules and models of how one should live one’s own life have been replaced by… nothing, actually. An immense void, an empty space, a field of opportunities, yet nothing sure about a certain direction or another. No guidance, no beaten path, only a crushing freedom to do whatever one pleases.

The enthusiasm of this newly found freedom has given place to some sort of silent finger pointing, as if the younger generation is blaming the older adults for the lack of guidance while at the same time rejecting any guidance. A truly logically complex situation in which leadership is expected while being denied at the same time (or, “tell me what to do in life but don’t tell me what to do with my life”). A world in ruin (morally speaking), a God that hasn’t been found yet by unequivocal tests & experiments (or confirmed & validated by the scientific method), a sense of bewilderedness at every step… Faced with an increasingly voided world, the younger generation has turned cynical – an easy solution after all. In a more or less chaotic world, plagued by moral relativity and ambivalence, with an absent God (or father), without rules (and the accompanying punishments for not respecting those rules), doing “good” (or whatever that means) has become more a matter of “taste” or “personal choice”… and not an obligation. And when the amount of energy required to “do good” exceeds the amount required to do “whatever else one pleases”, it turned out that it is easier and more comfortable to do the bare minimum. And the “bare minimum” – unfortunately – is NOT what a hero does… Santa Clause does ride a sledge and goes down through the chimney, Superman does fight, lifts weights or does paper work as a journalist in his “free time”, but the younger generation expects “passive income” and “recognition” without any effort…

In almost each of us there still is a reflex, a desire, a hidden hope… that our own life means something… that our life is important for something… or someone… But after a number of years we discover that we are nothing more than the proverbial “member of the public”, the “no name” who slaves for a salary, pays debts and saves for the old age & the illnesses that inevitable come with. A truly dire image that silently replaces the heroic expectations of our childhood, when we were the ones who were supposed to save the world or, at least, save the day…

Yes, some people turn to ideologies or religion and manage to belong to some sort of artificially-made heroic story. They manage to convince themselves that those ideologies and religions are virtuous. In the end, they trap themselves in their own lies. And perhaps they manage to feel important… killing some folks in the name of an ideology or religion, participating in various wars – all this – could be seen as virtuous for someone who has managed to convince oneself of stupid things. It depends, as I said, from which angle you look at things… But then, there are people who are simply too connected to reality, who can’t trick themselves into believing that murder can be justified and some things are simply relative. For this kind of people, belonging to a stupid movement is more disgusting than living the empty life of an outcast on the edge of society.

People can endure a lot of pain. In general, the human being is unbelievably tough. We can go to immense lengths with physical pain, with the psychological pain, with every horrible thing you can imagine… as long as there is some sort of meaning for that… as long as there is a justification for that… In the past, the inherent suffering that is built-in in the human existence was blamed on angry gods or personal sins or involuntary mistakes. There were prescriptions, in the frame of tradition, for what to do so as to please the annoyed god, to repair the sin or correct the involuntary fault. But in the present, after the collapse of tradition (and the “killing of God”), the explanation, the justification, the significance of the human suffering is… voided. There isn’t any external moral judge (a god) or internal critic (one’s own awareness of committing a sin). There is nothing. Pain happens, suffering happens, life happens… and we don’t know why it happens that way… We have no explanation – no satisfying explanation – for why life is the way it is, for why someone’s life is better or worse compared to someone else’s, we don’t know why we ache, for what reason or as a consequence of what…

And this is how we have to contend with the absurdity of this life; things happen in a random manner, some get punished for no reason, others get advantaged for no reason, there are no cognoscible rules and therefore we cannot know if we break them or not. If we have a good life we don’t know why… and if we have a nasty life we don’t know why either… And there is no compass to show us the polar star, to show us what we “ought” to do so as to – obviously – decrease the pain and, if possible, increase the pleasure. In these marshes, in the fog, in the pitch-black night… there is nobody to guide us…

Obviously, this is a depressing landscape. It is also an accurate landscape for many people. It is a silent drama that one has to contend with. If I could sketch “the mother of all summarizations and generalizations about life as it is lived and felt today”, I would say that this image is the most accurate and the most evocative.

In such a morbid psychological (or should I say “spiritual”?) tension, it is no wonder that people commit suicide or ask to be euthanized. Or cease to have children. Or trash the environment. I mean, why would you go on with your life if all we could do for eons was to arrive at these conclusions?!? And why would someone sane bring to life children that are supposed to go through the same ordeal of living completely absurd lives?!? There are countries who struggle with negative replacement indexes (fewer and fewer births in aging populations), with suicides (more or less assisted and legal), and I never saw someone asking perhaps the most important question: Why are we complacent? Why we lose our time and energy with wars, idiots who “play the tyrant”, sick individuals who can’t get enough power, while life is already hard by its intrinsic quality of being absurd? Why instead of enhancing our lives – which are already miserable by definition and by the fact that they happen – we spend our time adding layer upon layer of garbage, extra suffering and extra misery?!? We are in the mire already and we make our existence even worse, by our own wish, by our own focused determination, blindly following impulses and failing to contain them…

The younger generation needs to find an acceptable answer for its torment. This answer does not lie in the past. The older generation is self-sufficient but doesn’t possess a decent solution. If it were the case, if a solution would have existed, we wouldn’t be here struggling with the absurd and its consequences. I guess – because it’s about guessing at this level – that the answer to “why live an absurd life” is deeply personal. There are many types of personality and people function differently, and for this reason the answer is not a “one size fits all”. But I guess, again, that the answer exists, because, again, the human race has made it until here and didn’t commit suicide in its entirety and children kept being born. Therefore, people have been tough enough to keep living in the face of absurdity (those who are intelligent and understand what happens) and an indestructible spiritual foundation has been found.

The current crisis of meaning is temporary. The collapse of the old has left many naked (from a spiritual viewpoint). But not everything is relative; not all the rules are stupid and not all advices are killing one’s originality or taste for adventure & freedom. We still have the decency, the common-sense, the hands-on wisdom that tells us that not everyone can be a hero and nothing can be achieved without effort and from thin air. There are people who cannot accept this, who live in imaginary worlds decoupled from reality, people who are prone to fade away. The pragmatics will continue the journey, perhaps with less fantasy, rooting the imagination in reality and not in childish aspirations.

Because even Santa Clause works, even if for just one day…