"Don't be so gloomy. After all it's not that awful. Like the fella says, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock."
-Harry Lime in The Third Man
We are exhausted. We have faced adversity, unjust war and corruption on an almost unbelievable scale. Our economies are in ruins. Friends and loved ones are losing their jobs. Instead of relief and rest, for too many the holidays are bringing stress and grief.
On this first day of Saturnalia, the old Roman holiday of inversion and excess, we await some sweet harvest of redemption that will blossom in our Wasteland. We scan the night-sky for signs. Some pin their hopes to that latest in a series of virgin births, the Baby Jesus. But pirates have lifted the babe from the manger. New twisted Christianities have fashioned a gospel of greed from the once-revolutionary faith of poverty and forgiveness. The Beatitudes can't bear the freight of hatred, tyranny and intolerance that typify too much of modern "Christianity." We are beset, on all sides, by terrible inversions that make no sense. Naked emperors wave their bloody cocks at cheering throngs. Corrupt plutocrats seek new ways to spin gold from misery. Ignorance is the fashion du jour among certain politicians who, like Pol Pot before them, sow distrust of intellectuals. It's hard to tell if we are emerging from a mini Dark Age into the Light or just about to make the plunge into a deeper pit. How long have we been waiting for that pendulum to swing back? Perhaps it's time to ascend the pendulum to its pivot point, to see what that new view has to offer us.
For too long we have waited and watched for signs of redemption. In our passive consumer society, many wait for the Spectacle to self-correct, the Messiah to appear in the heavens or on television. Too many of us have lost our connection to the Earth, farming, compassion, empathy, humor, cooperation and the hard work it takes to foment positive change.
Our season of adversity has been relentless. We have wandered alone in the darkness for too long and we seek a glimmer of hope. We have earned our Golden Age but in doing so we have lost much of our innocence. We have earned brotherly and sisterly love, but we must emerge from our electronic isolation to manifest it. We desire to make a raucous, joyful noise, but first we must cast off the scraps and garbage of our top-down, mediated "culture," and remake ourselves and our communities in new intentional modes. We yearn for togetherness, yet strife and divisiveness have never been so popular. We lay claim to responsibility, but the appeal of scapegoats remains strong.
On this first day of Saturnalia, let us consider something improbable: a new Golden Age. No, it won't be given to us or revealed. We will have to seize it and apply our effort and imagination to the task. We have, at our disposal, all of history from which to learn. The simple fact is that we have all of the ingredients for a long-lasting new Renaissance. We have only to manifest it on a small scale, a template to show that it can be done. I have seen what a small, interdisciplinary group can achieve. True, we can be easily sidetracked by warring egos and insipid power-trips. But it is also possible that we can lose ourselves in hard work and vigorous play as we build a solid future from the stuff of our dreams.
So as we officially plunge into the holidays on this advent of Saturnalia, consider the possibilities of the Renaissance at hand and what we can do to to assist with its own remarkable virgin birth. Let us face adversity with courage, for it will always be with us. Let us grow strong in its face so that we aren't doomed to a cuckoo-clock future. And let each of us manifest an inner revolution, whether pragmatic or esoteric, so that we may come together and make a difference, each according to his or her gift.