Accursed freedom

There is a swing afoot in western consumerist society.

In counter point to the failing of the institutions that once orchestrated our actions like the innards of a Swiss watch, regulating our collective moral compass and setting in stone the bench marks for acceptable behaviour, accursed freedom is on the rise!

On the side of the balance we have churches and institutions of moral absolutism and the other the individual. Now his own personal jesus – with a small ‘j’ or insert here your own local deity. And either because of, or as a result of, this shift in social tectonics we have creeping, insidious unwanted side effects.

The geological analogy is not totally without intention. I see both tectonic plates and social moral communal norm as slow moving grinding phenomenon. Neither move quickly. Neither moves without some huge unusurpable macro force. The process of interaction between the two, no matter which is cause or reaction leaves behind it great swathes of detritus from the necessary grinding that is a consequence of its existence.

I have no intension of trying to unravel which came first or which is responsible for which. That’s a job for social anthropologists and is largely irrelevant.

So what are the protagonists?

Broadly let’s call the institutions that have dictated and enforce our collective minimum moral standards, ‘the church’. That’s not to say that organised religion is the sole arbiter of acceptable social boundaries.  

Railed against the church is us. More correctly ‘Me’. Me as an island without concern for anyone or anything as succinctly described in that annoyingly catchy 1980’s Depeche Mode  song, “my own personal jesus”

So before I unleash the apples of my military grade intellect, let’s talk about which came first the chicken (church) or the egg (me) - let’s take a gander (no fowl pun intended) at the farm – the fertile environment in which this dervish whirl is being played out.....................