In Alasdair McIntyre's work After Virtue, a section almost at the end of the book has stuck in my mind since I read it:
"It always dangerous to draw too precise parallels between one historical period and another; and among the most misleading of such parallels are those that have been drawn between our own age in Europe and North America and the epoch in which the Roman empire declined into the Dark Ages. Nonetheless certain parallels there are. A crucial turning point in that earlier history occurred when men and women of good will turned aside from the task of shoring up the Roman imperium and ceased to identify the continuation of civility and moral community with the maintenance of that imperium. What they set themselves to achieve instead - often not recognizing fully what they were doing - was the construction of new forms of community within which the moral life could be sustained that both morality and civility might survive the coming age of barbarism and darkness." (Emphasis mine)
It struck me because in popular history, the idea of a "collapse" has long been portrayed as the extinguishing all at once of the civilization known as Rome. In point of fact, individuals continued to think of themselves in the mold of Rome at least a century or so past the traditional date of A.D. 476. In that sense, "Rome" did not fall until the men and women who saw all things good (in that sense) made the conscious decision that trying to maintain the society that enabled that - "Roman" - could no longer meet the needs.
What, you might ask, has all of that to do with a person and cat turning away?
One of the best things that I have done in the last six months - largely as a result of "The Election" - is turned away from virtually all sorts of news, media, and social media. Never quite 100% of course, but enough that there are entire days I have no clue what is going on "out there".
On the whole, I find myself less stressed and more joyful.
But as I have continued down this road (imperfectly of course; there is far more I should ignore than I do) the ramifications of it are rather astounding to me: I care less and less about the struggles of the age.
To be fair, the things I do care about at this point tend to revolve around the nature of economics and finance - not so much that I can impact those any more than I can impact other national or world events, but I tend to be impacted by them more directly. And even understanding those events is confusing enough. As for the rest - it exists, much like the sun exists: It rises and falls with neither my blessing nor work nor permission.
Which, of course, is fine for me. Not so fine, I suppose, for those that derive power and influence from such things.
I have written several times before that we live in the Age of Attention, where the self is the product and attention the currency we exchange for it. That attention is derived from two things: The outlandish and extreme (I discount the interesting and harmless here; after all, things about bees and button quail and rabbits hardly move the outlandish meter) and the "Them" which are not like us and our beliefs (that, of course, being true of both "Sides" of the Aisle). As a corollary to the Age of Attention, I have also noted that we now effectively live in the Age of Rage, where it seems so many people are defined by what they are against and the rage that consumes them against those things.
Neither item, of course, particularly helpful for someone looking for internal peace.
I have been checking out. I get the idea more and more people are.
This is, of course, no danger to those that are checking out. This is a huge danger to those that bank on people being involved in the Age of Attention and the Age of Rage.
The difficulty is that once someone checks out of something, it becomes very easy to check out of more things. Before long, we move from caring about those things to carrying about the superstructures and understructures that create those things. Quite often we have moved on to other models and other structures where attention is not the currency and rage is not in fashion.
All of a sudden, those that have checked out are no longer a mere fad. They are a danger to "everything" because they fail to care (about the "right" things of course, but fail to care nonetheless). They must be made to care, made to pay attention. If anything, all mediums become saturated with whatever "the thing" is.
At least for me, the more saturated things get, the less I find myself seeking to be involved. Honestly, the less I find myself involved in maintaining the status quo.
It is not that I, in McIntyre's words, am building "a civil and moral community". That sounds too pretentious. All I am trying to do is maintain my personal equilibrium. It does make me wonder though, what a huge number of people "maintaining their personal equilibrium" would look like.
