The incident was that I got some piece of paper that told me (as best I can barely remember it) that I was something like in the top 1 percent of high school students in the United States for academic achievement. My first reaction (in light of my observation that I felt like I had been basically coasting my way through what would turn out to be somewhere around a 3.7 GPA) was "Really? This generation is doomed!" If yours truly was in the upper echelons what hope did my generation have? You could infer from this that I have always had that sunny disposition that appears in these blog entries.
Yet I have been tempered since that time by more than a few readings of Ecclesiastes. The past was not really all that good and it is foolish to ask where the good old days have gone that were better than these. The only thing I'm less optimistic about than the future is to look back fondly on the past. The past was not, really, all that great. If the future is so bright I have to wear shades then that future is the explosion of crisis.
I don't feel particularly bad for what may be considered the decline of Western civilization because I'm no longer convinced that the alternatives are better or that the decline is actually preventable. We are ourselves the decline of western civilization we see in others. Even those who would consider themselves the solution are merely another manifestation of the problem. Hope that things will improve here and now is a luxury for fools. No, I haven't read any Lovecraft and have better things to do with my time. As I was writing earlier, the incident from high school comes to mind as a memory of how I have long had this positive disposition.
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