not the motorcycle diaries

Umberto Eco suggests that we currently live in a new Dark Ages. I believe him: feudalism, superstition, despotism, the falling away of culture, of civil organisation, the rigidity of inequality, scorched earth, hysteria. We even will darkness on ourselves; atonement for the darkness daily growing in our bellies.

Rebecca Solnit thinks that there is hope in the dark. And I do have hope, though there is little in my secular, suspicious, spleeny vocabulary that can account for this.

I am feeling my way in the dark. But I am not hoping for Enlightenment. Running from darkness just invites more of it. If I look back, I misfire. In staring down the dark present, Nietzsche’s abyss, I can only hope.

(Image from: crummy.)