Tranquilized by trivia, yearning for those good ole pagan days

Looking out on Great Bay: 12/27/15
CC Jean Stimmell

What a wonderful solstice present!

Hiking along a pristine path

bordering Great Bay estuary

we came across evergreens

adorned with dried fruit

simple and natural

as if hung by pixies and elves

harkening back to pagan times

before the invisible hand

of rationality and “affluensia”
consumed our souls.

Ah yes, rationality and affluensia, the modern epidemic of denial:

...you can see that basically our lives are, to a large extent, spent in avoiding confrontation with ourselves. And then you can begin to make sense of the enormous amount of our culture's daily activities, which attempt to distract us from ourselves, from deep reflection, from deep thinking, from existential confrontation. There's a wonderful phrase by the philosopher Kierkegaard, "tranquilization by the trivial." And I think our culture has mastered this better than any culture in history, simply because we have the wealth and means to do so. – Quote by Roy Walsh, psychiatry professor, in The Search For Meaning by Phillip L. Berman