Trendy Rebellions

It may not yet be fully understood just exactly what the meaning behind the current age is, but it is not a meager insight to conform to the notion that it is indeed a meaningful age. Not since the 1930s has the United States and the world seen such a cultural divide among the masses grow to the extent that it presently has, nor has the economy been so dysfunctional — so geographically massive. Everyday the lives of citizens, US citizens, are becoming increasingly damaged by stresses that have emerged from economic problems that were seemingly forbidden in America until recently — or since the ’30s.

Why this is comes down to the determinations of a great many people, leaving their observers to come under the impression that there is no one left to trust — merely biases to peddle to those seeking answers to the tense situation building among the varying classes and beliefs. A cultural war is developing, it appears, but just how drastically it will elevate is questionable.

The current age, so referred to here, has been assigned a position in history that is difficult to play, but, albeit, to announce an outcome to it before it has reached its conclusion is an act of fallacious commentary. The future has not yet been arrived at, and the present is, if the realities in it are to be understood, contingent upon an age with which to compare it to. The only phenomena, then, that can explain the present to the inhabitants living in the space of the present resides in times past.

The era of “past” that is sponsoring this attempt, the 1930’s, has already proclaimed its duty to the present here in former references, but just what is to be said about them? It is not as if this comparison between today’s recession and The Great Depression is anything new, but it is perhaps not always clear to a large share of the people actively forming the present political atmosphere that their knowledge is deficient in empirical understanding.

This observation having been rendered, what can be obtained by comparing the ’30 s and today? Well, the economic comparisons are obvious, and apart from great technological advances available in the current age there is most certainly not much difference in terms of there existing a swelling impoverishment among various classes of people. But where is it that this notion is most overt to the senses? Who is its most potent purveyor? The media and press — whether mainstream or new, of course, are those shills. But what of art? What of philosophy? The function of the humanities is, after all, crucial to any recorded age in history that wishes to keep its lights on, as it were.

George Orwell, whose artistic and polemical prose was to engage humanity very powerfully with Animal Farm and 1984, wrote, in 1940, a lengthy essay called “Inside the Whale.” The piece begins with a literary criticism of Henry Miller’s “Tropic of Cancer” in order to segue into a comparison between the political literature of the 1920s and 1930s, and how it was evident that the popular literature during the ’30s was inclined to make Marxist and leftist idealism a dogmatic fad, lest an author of the time matter. Miller Is ultimately a muse throughout, and for several reasons.

For example, Orwell held Miller to represent the common person’s passive attention to the political environment, and declared “Tropic of Cancer” to be the sine qua non for the apolitical outlook, in that Miller did not use his literary prowess to confront or challenge the politics of his time with his personal views — making him a political nihilist devoid of any sense of obligation or necessary participation.

The citizens of Italy during 1920s, for instance, did not vastly possess an obligation in understanding the issues taking place around them. Every system’s opposition is always made up of minority factions. Most of the population consisted of people too deeply involved in the perpetual intent to juke poverty to be resistant to any energetic, seemingly indomitable, zealot hell bent on obtaining power. The Italians were transformed culturally by the Fascist state of Mussolini (a man infused with fanatical passions, his influence over people was greatly due to a mass lack of knowledge concerning the polity of their nation.

The Biblical tale of Jonah and the Whale is also used by Orwell to suggest that people on the whole, once captive in any given environment, such as being forced to accept living inside a whale/fish from which no escape seemed possible, will eventually, on the whole, become obediently submissive to their fated situations.