The best way to Shore the Fragments of Our Higher Selves

And why would you not really feel this manner? In any case, you’re younger, presumably in glorious well being, and feeling just like the world is your oyster.

The world could have its troubles, however the younger are usually much less exercised about threats of drought, illness, conflict, and armageddon. Sure, they could take up social and environmental causes, however they’re additionally targeted on discovering love and satisfying careers.

These nearing the winter of their lives are totally different.

They usually really feel the world’s threats extra deeply. Advancing age, poor well being, and stuck incomes make them extra weak.

All the things will get tougher for older adults. Muscle tissue ache, psychological acuity suffers, and typically a way of irrelevancy and dread units in.

New know-how and cultural shifts really feel international. The information is scary.

One clicks for the older motion pictures, performs the basic music, and longs for the previous (even with its warts). As a result of they’re acquainted.

For the growing old, it typically feels just like the world is fragmenting.

The drug of goals in opposition to the ache of dwelling

The late, celebrated poet T. S. Eliot knew a factor or two in regards to the altering landscapes and vicissitudes of life.

As a toddler he suffered from congenital double inguinal hernias, thus denying him entry to the athletic preoccupations of his friends. In his isolation he found literature.

The creator Robert Sencourt, in his memoir of Eliot, wrote that younger T. S.“would usually curl up within the window-seat behind an infinite e-book, setting the drug of goals in opposition to the ache of dwelling.”

By means of associates in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Eliot met and fell in love with a girl named Emily Hale in 1912. They corresponded for a few years however sadly by no means got here collectively.

Eliot’s first spouse, Vivien, suffered from each bodily and emotional problems, and finally was institutionalized. In the course of the years of Eliot’s sad marriage, he was neurotic.

An essay within the New York Instances notes:

In 1921 T. S. Eliot teetered on the point of a psychological collapse. For 2 years he had been struggling at evening to complete an extended poem whereas working by day within the international transactions division of Lloyds Financial institution. His neurologist — as they had been then known as in Britain — informed Tom to get three months’ sick go away after which journey to Lausanne to see a number one psychiatrist. He did. His escape from London freed him from negotiating alternate charges and his sad marriage. Whereas in Switzerland, he was capable of full his poem “The Waste Land.”

Written within the aftermath of the primary World Conflict, Eliot’s lengthy poem The Wasteland explores the disorganization and collapse of society. Eliot could have written the poem within the throes of psychological anguish, however it captures the actual concern of a declining world.

Then as now, the specter of a fragmenting world appears increasingly pressing.

The degradation of human dignity

It appears I’m all the time battling know-how.

In the future my tv works superb, and the subsequent it received’t work. I juggle between two remotes, switching from one HDMI to a different.

Nothing.

So I summon my 24-year-old son, who’s finishing his diploma in laptop science. He has a go.

Nothing.

Ultimately, in exasperation, we disable your entire cable unit after which hearth it up once more. Very like the capricious nature of a rebooted laptop, abruptly the TV cable is working once more.

I’ve related tales about my Sony digital camera, with its dense menus and infinite complexity.

Picture: John P. Weiss

Because of this, I discover solace in easy issues. Analog units like fountain pens and typewriters. They really feel a lot extra pleasant and dependable than digital know-how.

I go searching, and everybody as we speak has their face aglow in entrance of a digital machine. Individuals appear more and more disconnected.

Cartoon: John P. Weiss

The very know-how we thought would free us appears to have enslaved our consideration in a digital hellscape of clickbait, social media piffle, and divisive banter.

Perhaps T. S. Eliot’s The Wasteland was on to one thing. An essay about The Wasteland from Boston College notes:

One main theme that Eliot treats intimately is the position of know-how and industrialization within the downfall of Western civilization. In contrast to earlier trendy poets reminiscent of Walt Whitman, Eliot makes use of The Waste Land to attract connections between the mechanization and technological development in on a regular basis life and the degradation of human dignity.

The degradation of human dignity is one thing I take into consideration rather a lot.

These fragments I’ve shored in opposition to my ruins

Look no additional than the miserable information.

The conflict in Ukraine. Misplaced lives to the pandemic. Droughts, floods, fires, and local weather change. Mass shootings. Rampant homelessness and dependancy. Inflation and rising crime. Chinese language saber-rattling. Declining tutorial requirements and efficiency. The erosion of manners, ethics, and adherence to the Golden Rule.

From social media’s mass anesthetization of society to the mounting challenges confronting the world as we speak, it’s no marvel a variety of Boomers and Era Xers really feel a rising kind of Wastelandian fragmentation.

Perhaps even the younger are beginning to really feel it, too?

There’s a line in Eliot’s The Wasteland that all the time stood out to me:

These fragments I’ve shored in opposition to my ruins.

In line with Interestingliterature.com:

Fragmentation is each a theme and a proper function of The Waste Land. The fragmentary nature of sure passages from Eliot’s 434-line poem mirrors the social, psychological, and non secular fragmentation of Europe after the First World Conflict.

There appears to be a variety of fragmentation happening as we speak.

So what will we do? How will we flip issues round? How will we reassure the aged and encourage the younger?

Interestingliterature.com notes that “the speaker is trying to offset his personal destroy by supporting the ‘fragments’ that stay, preserving them in opposition to additional decay” and likewise “The fragments are the fragments of European civilisation, repeated and quoted in Eliot’s poem in an try and shore them up and protect them.”

How in regards to the fragments of as we speak’s civilization?

If we’re to outlive, then we have to begin shoring some fragments of our higher selves in opposition to the ruins that appear to be closing in on us.

Meaning transferring previous divisive politics, cancel tradition, and demonization of everybody you disagree with. It means treating others as you wish to be handled. It means utilizing know-how to higher your self and others, as an alternative of being utilized by know-how. It means respecting the surroundings, and specializing in how we will guarantee a greater future for all.

It means remembering our humanity in order that the world doesn’t turn into a wasteland.

Earlier than you go

I’m John P. Weiss. I draw cartoons, shoot basic black and white pictures, and write elegant essays about life. For extra, take a look at The Saturday Letters.

—

This put up was beforehand revealed on Medium.com.

***

—

Photograph credit score: Unsplash