I was reading the newest post by Richard Fernandez regarding how upside down our world has become, which echoes my lament of a few days ago, “Irreconcilable Philosophical Differences.” I was so pissed off I forgot to follow through on what I meant by Irreconcilable Philosophical Differences. Won’t happen tonight either, but… in the Belmont Club comments, one of the contributors named Roughcoat 2, wrote of the past, which perfectly captured my sense of things today (though for the record, I am so glad to be alive and to have been born):

“There truly is nothing new under the sun, including the sense that the pillars have fallen. Hesiod, writing in the seventh-sixth century BC, lamented a similar state of affairs:

Far-seeing Zeus then made another race,
The fifth who now live on the fertile earth.]
I wish I were not of this race, that I
Had died before, or had not yet been born.
This is the race of iron. Now, by day,
Men work and grieve unceasingly; by night,
They waste away and die. The gods will give
Harsh burdens, but will mingle in some good.
Zeus will destroy this race of mortal men,
When babies shall be born with greying hair.
Father will have no common bond with son
Neither will guest with host, nor friend with friend
The brother-love of past days will be gone. . . .
Men will destroy the towns of other men.
The just, the good, the man who keeps his word
Will be despised, but men will praise the bad
And insolent. Might will be right and shame
Will cease to be. Men will do injury
To better men by speaking crooked words
And adding lying oathes, and everywhere
Harsh-voiced and sullen-faced and loving harm,
Envy will walk along with wretched men.”