PASSING FOR NORMAL

Who pays the price?









(painting: Susan dorothea white)

Faced with the demands of the modern life, we have transcended above our bodily sins and human-bound inclinations only to embrace a new set of sins. Life on the fast track has made it difficult for us to maintain our romantic nature that allows us to be more in contact with our emotions. This phenomenon is deeply rooted in the nature of our urban existence and its impact is directly implemented and reflected in the contemporary artistic and literary work. Instead of ‘anger’, we now react with indifference and we have lost our lust for a more practical celibacy. Lust that could include our lust for life and our thrive to love and to react and be angry and happy. Our emotions are dampened since we have a very narrow window for emotions and human interactions. Workaholism has taken the place of sloth. In case we considered workaholism as a synonym for restlessness defined as one the five hindrances holding from enlightenment in Buddhism, then we have not adopted a new sin. Our workaholism is feeding our indifference and has replaced those intermittent instances of sloth that could very well be a window to self-meditate as well as reach out for moments of clarity and spirituality. Instead of pride that has created immortal pieces of work and ballades chanting with the glory of humanity, we now dwell in self-effacement and self-doubt and ego phobias that will portray our generation as cowardice and voiceless. Along with self-denial we have adopted all forms of sins of the memory (as defined by Daniel Schacter). And while the sin of bias results from forgetfulness that is a healthy part of our cognitive nature, it gets aggravated in our modern times due to workaholism and indifference. The lack of empathy with the human race comes from our indifference to issues that do not directly affect us fueled with self-doubt and the necessity to excel in order to survive the economical demands of our modern societies.
In short we’re in trouble but we don’t care because we’re too busy.
The question that remains though is who suffers from our indifference?
Who suffers from our biases and misjudgments? who are we working so hard for?
Are we sucking up to the system that is killing us?
Who is paying the price?