Disillusionment

 Every age of humankind has been an Age of Disillusionment. It isn’t unique to the time we’re living in now. The sense of imminent doom is just part of the arc. What’s almost amusing is how often people across all walks of life proclaim that society is going downhill, as if this is suddenly a new development. “This is the worst it’s ever been!” That line has been said forever.

   You can trace it back to the Agricultural Revolution ten thousand years ago, through the Black Plague, the French Revolution, Hitler, and now into the global conflicts of today. Again and again, the fear that everything is falling apart resurfaces. At some point, you’d think the pattern would become obvious.

   I was sitting in a boba tea shop recently, visiting a friend who works there. She’s someone I care about, but she also ended up being the catalyst for this line of thought. I overheard her talking about how bad everything has suddenly gotten because of the political climate in America. Her feelings are valid, but they’re also revealing. In many ways, she represents this recurring Age of Disillusionment.

   What seems important to recognize is that this disillusionment is largely context dependent. It often feels universal, but it isn’t evenly shared. It’s collective, yes, but not specific to a single time period. I think of it like a talking stick being passed around. Some groups experience the world as ending while others experience it as a golden era. Then the tides turn, and those positions switch.

   Following Nietzsche, this starts to look less like moral collapse and more like power struggle. Whoever is benefiting from the prevailing structures tends to feel fine. Whoever isn’t tends to feel alienated. This isn’t just about who has food or lives in a first world country. A lot of it comes down to the abstract constructs we live inside of, whether social, political, or religious. As strange as it sounds, this is simply how we operate. Even when we aren’t conscious of it, once you peel back enough layers it becomes clear. We act within accepted frameworks. We value what we’re taught to value. We make choices based on ingrained ways of being that have been impressed on us since we were capable of understanding the world.

   These frameworks are always in conflict with one another. That’s why humanity ends up looking like a page covered in uneven blotches of ink. Some blotches get highlighted for a while, others don’t. Which ways of being rewarded changes over time. When someone’s prescribed way of being loses precedence, dissatisfaction follows. That’s not mysterious. It’s almost inevitable.

   Personally, I find a lot of this exhausting and, at times, pointless. The rigid ways we’re told to live and move through the world often feel arbitrarily enforced. Why does fulfillment have to be tied to a high-status job? Why do there seem to be rules for everything, down to how a home should look or how a paper should be formatted? Why does stepping outside these scripts feel so unacceptable? Sometimes it feels like we’ve mistaken the scaffolding for the building itself. Once those structures are stripped bare, the life people chase might be much closer than they think.

   Call me naive. I understand the counterargument. Societies function because of shared frameworks. Without them, things really would fall apart. We’re held together by the very systems I’ve just criticized. But that doesn’t mean those systems need to define the core of our lives. Why can’t they be set aside and picked up only when they’re actually useful?

   I’m trying to make money. I’m pursuing an education. I look like a semi-functioning member of society. I play the game well enough. But none of these things sit at the center of how I define meaning. In that sense, the system can be navigated without being mistaken for reality itself. A lot of this comes down to how you see it. Decide that nothing will stop you from finding meaning, live from that assumption, and things start to shift. I don’t have a concrete formula for how to do this. All I can really say is: look.

   Society always seems to be on the verge of collapse, perpetually caught in its recurring Age of Disillusionment. Power struggles continue, prescribed ways of being rise and fall, and fear keeps circulating. But none of this needs to bar someone from joy or contentment. No matter how unstable the world appears, there is always something intact. Something quietly magnificent. There is beauty even in the shambles we fear, if we’re willing to look.