The Madness of the Modern

According to Blur 'Modern Life is Rubbish'; and they definitely have a point. Partly it's the dissociation between ourselves and our environment. We live in concrete and steel bunkers, work in concrete and steel towers and one is connected to another by the sterile blacktop. Food comes pre-packaged in plastic (and the contents often taste as bland as the wrappings) and these food items often bear almost no direct relationship to the natural state of the produce. Perhaps this (along with various scares whipped-up by the media) is why we're distrustful of much modern food.

Then again, as more people crowd together into towns and cities our iteractions become more complex and more stratified. The relatively simple pyramid of the family and the tribe becomes an inter-connection of relationship pyramids each with its pecking order. It gets even worse in the world of work where we're in hierarchies of managers and seem to have little or no control over our own lives. Which is why those who do not do well in hierarchies fall between the cracks of modern society.

And therein lies the main problem: modern society has many, many, craks. All those people feeling disconnected from life and society. Perhaps this is why we turn to other avenues, explore the past and art and poetry as relievers of stress. All art is born of and most creativity is engendered by conflict — be that conflict either internal or external. It is this tension that leads to the greatness of the creative persion, the enjoyment of the audience but ultimately results in self-destruction. For we cannot live in an eternal tug-of-war between the internal and external selves.