Culture Disgusts

This culture disgusts me.

Where’s my time machine?

That’s what I started writing, then I realized: where would I go?  What time period would I choose to live in?

When has there ever been a time where there was peace, prosperity, security, true enlightenment (not to be confused with the endarkenment falsely sold as enlightenment)? 

Where was there ever a place where there was peace, prosperity, security, and true enlightenment?

Must there always be strife and struggle this side of heaven?

I am a history buff and lately these past couple of years I’ve been reading about the Civil War and the Second World War.  But do you know what?  It’s starting to depress me.  Yes, I feel lucky not to have lived through either great conflict; I cannot fathom what I would do had it been decreed I been born, say, in New York c. 1840 or, say, Warsaw c. 1922.  But though we in contemporary America face none of the lethal repercussions faced by those in 1860s America or 1940s Europe, I can see the seeds of those earlier conflicts germinating in the washing-machine spin cycle of our current socio-political climate.

Or am I just being histrionic?

It’s a well-known fact, is it not, that mankind does not learn from history.  Didn’t some Spanish philosopher (Unamuno?  Santayana?) say something to that effect a hundred years ago?

Ah, I dunno.  Maybe it’s time to shut off the news, stop surfin’ the web, and read some sci fi.  Or take up birding.

This culture disgusts me.

Where’s my spaceship?