Every so often I read an Analysis of the Modern Condition by some offbeatly insightful commentator like @raggedjackscarlet or @hotelconcierge or someone.  And at some point, after it’s diagnosed the suffering of modern life and painted a really compellingly horrific portrait, the piece will come as close as it ever comes to offering a solution – it will talk about the need to (somehow) get past the madness and the validation-seeking and the self-absorption so that you can take action, so that you can be strong and free.

Which demands the question: Take what action?  Be strong, be free, in order to accomplish what aim? 

Because I’m pretty sure that this knowledge is the thing that that is actually lacking here.  And all the “obvious” answers are total failures. 

Be strong and free so that you can act to defeat the enemy?  Please.  There is no enemy, the enemy is some shmuck who’s as dumb and lost as you, the very idea of an enemy is a pornographic fantasy designed to foster the fantasy that you can undertake an unambiguously worthwhile enterprise in fighting him.  And all the Analysis of the Modern Condition writers understand this perfectly well. 

Be strong and free so that you can provide for your family, or otherwise become a Decent Productive Upstanding Person?  Nice thought, but you don’t actually need strength and freedom to do that, if anything they make it slightly harder.  The world of worldly success mostly rewards dumb luck and to some extent rewards feverish validation-seeking.  The kind of integrity that’s being prescribed here is really good on its own merits, but like much of the best stuff in life it’s taboo and genuine-not-pretend-countercultural, it’s not going to make you more employable. 

Be strong and free so that you can pursue all your wildest ubermenchlichkeit desires?  Plausible at least in theory.  But unless the recommended endgame is “think about the sun, Pippin, immolate yourself and flare bright and burn out fast, dash yourself to pieces against a system that is infinitely stronger than you are,” there’s not much future in it. 

I’m a little more optimistic about the psychology of the Modern Condition than these essays tend to be.  I don’t think that we atomized anomic contemporary folk have allowed our souls and our wills to wither as we shoot social media into our veins, or whatever – most people today are kind of contemptible, sure, but most people have always been kind of contemptible, and for various reasons (to be discussed elsewhen) I suspect it’s probably better-than-the-historical-average now rather than worse on the spiritual-strength front.  

But we’re closing in on science-fictional post-scarcity levels of ease and comfort for the most fortunate tiers of society, which means that we’re just starting to wrestle with the Next Very Big Problem.  What do you do when there is no task to which spiritual strength can be usefully applied?