This Empire will fall. All do and will. It’s not a matter of ‘if’ but ‘when’. There is a beauty of a falling empire.
So, what are you afraid of? A beheading or losing 70% of your savings in a fortnight? I venture the former is less stressful than the latter. Your days are numbered. The holocaust has peaked. You murdered your future.
There is a point of no return and your ship called ‘Folly’ has passed it. You are adrift.
I am encouraged by your predicament because people are going to finally realize what matters in life as first world comforts are stripped away like a winter wind removes the last leaves of autumn. The entitlements vanish and we face the reality of life together.
Arm chair atheists and classroom relativists will find themselves searching for ultimate truth and meaning in reality as the prosperity preachers abandon their pulpits destined for the threshing floor. The free ride is over and as you exit the train, you’ll find out what you owe. Your wealth, power and status were illusions. You are beyond bankrupt. Control is an illusion.
The bar is closed, your dealer won’t answer your call and there are no vacancies in any hotel in town. The jester at the club gave you directions to a bogus after-party. The streets are empty. As the snow falls and chill sets in, you arrive at the destination of everything you thought was important to find it meaningless. Everything you thought was meaningless is held in honor.
The homeless man you ignored every day going to your office is at home with his family sitting by a fire and pondering his royal position. As you sink into the sands of a fallen empire, you ask the blind beggar on the corner, “Do you have any good news?” She replies, “I told you of the better country just over the horizon and you called me a fool. You mocked me because I am blind yet I see and I live without a home.”
As you search for answers, your Ivy League knowledge leads you to dead end streets with names like ‘Arrogance’ and ‘Futility’. There are no doors on any of the homes and the laughter of madmen loom from the shadows at night. Where is your friend, your brother? Even the prostitute on Wall Street has gone to an upper room where she has been adopted like a little child.
A cold wind blows and your eyes water. Your teeth grind.
You once saw a brilliant sunrise painted in the sky as a child and you knew then who painted it. It was warm, remember? It was perfect and beautiful. It was given to you to have and hold forever. But you decided to paint your own version and put it on display in your temple. You loved it more than the real thing. Even as your temple fell, you stared at it. Even as it burned, you believed it was there. Over a pile of ashes blown by the wind you stare into the darkness looking for the sunrise you painted for yourself. It was an illusion you admired.
“Do you have any good news?” you say.
“Why, yes I do indeed. But, it’s foolishness to you.” Replies the blind woman.
“Who are you?” you say.
“I am Wisdom.” she says. “You have have been walking around with your eyes shut as if blind. You loved darkness so, it was suited to you and formed for you. It’s devoid of light, glory and power.”
“Can I leave here?” you implore.
Wisdom responds, “Actually, you want to be here don’t you? This is where your path led. You chose it for yourself. The poor leper is cleansed in the place of honor and your loving father is waiting with open arms. Do you want directions?”
Muggeridge states it well; “So the final conclusion would surely be that whereas other civilizations have been brought down by attacks of barbarians from without, ours had the unique distinction of training its own destroyers at its own educational institutions, and then providing them with facilities for propagating their destructive ideology far and wide, all at the public expense. Thus did Western Man decide to abolish himself, creating his own boredom out of his own affluence, his own vulnerability out of his own strength, his own impotence out of his own erotomania, himself blowing the trumpet that brought the walls of his own city tumbling down, and having convinced himself that he was too numerous, labored with pill and scalpel and syringe to make himself fewer. Until at last, having educated himself into imbecility, and polluted and drugged himself into stupefaction, he keeled over–a weary, battered old brontosaurus–and became extinct.”
– Religion and Society
Romans 1:18-31 states it with magnificent precision.