I. We are all waiting in a global line, single-file, to die. Each year the world acts shocked when so-and-so actor or this-or-that musician dies. “Aww,” they lament, “she was such a treasure,” and they thereupon return back to their banal lives. Not too many stop to ponder when this death shall come for them, whither they shall go and wherefore we die. The truth of the matter is, however, much more simplistic if not unapproachable. There is no reason why we are thrown into existence, mature, and then die. All of life is an inscrutable vital force that strives towards growth and individuality. However, it is ever and anon beaten back by its opposite. Whether we–as the mind of God (or more apropos: the hands and feet of Christ!) will ever achieve a universal synthesis, where spiritual and material distinctions are absolved and God is All in All, we can only wait and see.

For the modern busybody is mostly concerned to shuffle about in the name of self-achievement. “Next!” yells the reaper, eager to claim another victim. The old race courses, the carriere, set the stage for the great horses of old to be whipped and run in circles for the entertainment of others. So too does Death goad us and society spurs us to run around in circles…behold! the birth of the modern career! Blessed is he who rejects this carrus and commences on a pilgrimage by foot. For in so doing, he is embracing a life that is anything but pedestrian. Is this not why so many imaginative minds voiced protestations against the rise of the automobile? Indeed, we much prefer unprescribed paths.

II. A softening of the spirit follows an expansion of the mind as a stream flows naturally from its font: Be Ye Challenged!

III. The mind is likened to a pond. When one reads, a stream continually flows into the waters, stirring, refreshing, renewing, and enlivening; when one does not read–or worse, only passively consumes modern media–the source is dammed up and the pond becomes a bog: tepid, unimaginative, putrid, rotting.

IV. Become who you are! You shall become who you are! Logos is the ego’s essential medicine for becoming–like the doctor’s stethoscope on one’s chest: inhale…exhale.

V. The journey of life is much like a story that must be written by the main character. Whether one decides to be a protagonist, or a sort of anti-hero, is up to them. As a child grows conscious of his surroundings he accumulates these experiences into his being. This is a necessary part of self-development and one that happens organically, as a plant photosynthesizes light as it matures. Nevertheless, there comes a point in one’s life wherein he is forced with a decision to embark gallantly on the odyssey or shirk back into complacency. An acceptance of this calling-forth whether by freewill or by fate, invariably leads to a broadening, an opening up. As a dam is finally bursted open, or a levee breaks, when new waters flood the source, so too does the human soul expand by this voyage, this departure or broadening.

For it is written that man shall leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife (Gen 2:24); but, it is also written that a prophet has no honor in his hometown (Mark 6:4). Thus ought man to leave his town of birth and cleave to his new mistress: the world! For too much of the same results in noxious affects and deleterious consequences, much like the inbreeding of a closed-off community. Thus, the magnanimous man is a cosmopolitan man. Whereas the small-souled man is a provincial man: complacent, feckless and incorrigible. Is it any wonder that he speaks but one language?

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VI. Notwithstanding nationality or skin color, all men yawn just the same: thus it is that boredom attacks indiscriminately.

VII. Survival of the fittest saw that the fastest, most cunning, strongest, &c, of our species survived. So, too, shall our finger length increase in order to grip the iPhone 23.

VIII. Trans-humanism has arrived earlier than expected and the futurists are sorely disappointed: smart phone in hand and…scoliosis!

IX. Human beings are desperate to find extraterrestrial life so as to justify their forlorn existence and satiate their feelings of desolation–unfortunately, Mars lies uninhabitable and earth remains inhospitable.

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X. After the attacks on 9/11/2001, there was a revived patriotism in America. The “glory years” were yet again relived. This is no more encapsulated than in the photograph by Alfred Eisenstadt called V-J Day in Times Square. Church attendance rose starkly, and a jingoist fervor (or more accurately a fever, that is to say, sickness) swept over our nation. This, however, was short lived. A country that still unabashedly calls herself “the greatest country in the world” is utterly devoid of any and all real culture. We have satisfied ourselves on imitation of past epochs of genuine creativity and have only the remnants of a military industrial complex that justifies our alleged American democratic values. Yet, even this is waning weaker with the waxing of the Orient.

Do we as a society still know the suffering that once made us great? One need not look further than the industriousness of a nation’s workforce for the answer. But, fear ye not, and in no wise fall into a panic. Rome languished for another generation after the sack by the Visigoths in CDX (410) A.D. For all of Rome’s enduring legacy, they nevertheless were supplanted. And all this talk of reforming our public education, or rather, of the abandoning thereof in favor of private institutions through school choice…for what? And what of return to classical pedagogies? Well, we still speak English and wear pants. Togas are reserved for fraternity parties only!