Flowing Underground

I have to confess that I am feeling not a little beaten down this week.

To be fair, it has been a long week. The election.  The continuance of The Plague (yes, I am aware of the news of the potential vaccine.  No, it does not work as quickly as the media is telling you.  There are still plenty of questions).  The oncoming dread of the annual review and the outcome of it (none of which, I assume, will really work in my favor).

But added to all of this is rather troubling realization that the era of the individual is over.

Communalism is ruling the day.  We are to care about others - not in the abstract way that is sometimes used or in the specific way that we as individuals may define it but (as I have noted about before) in specific, pre-authority approved ways.  The government, the group, the collective is telling us what constitutes "responsibility" and "caring".  "We" are responsible for "Us" with no more connection or relationship than simple existence.

And more and more, the collective is telling all what to think, what to feel, how to be involved and hip and "perceived" as caring.  

To be honest, the whole thing is a little dispiriting.

It is not depression.  Depression I am familiar with, know its feeling and ways.  It is not anger - there is no burning sense of rage that is fueling anything.  There is just a great sense of the loss of any value of myself an individual with opinions and preferences, replaced with a sort of blank numbness that sighs and only sees an endless run of group mandated approvals or disapprovals.

It is, in a sense I suppose, the final "Going Galt" of the soul, the final removal of anything that will reveal success or interest or support in a system which seems to have become on the one hand highly embracing of the individual, but only in the approved formats and forms.   

It pushes me more and more to find my expression and my life here amongst my writing friends, in the quiet of my own home and mind, among the very few whom are kindred souls and in the flesh, and hopefully in some place that is not an Urban Jungle. 

Maybe I could have made a difference in the larger system.  It is unknown now and will never again be a question.  The power and torrent of myself and my individuality and preferences and tastes is pouring underground like a river which, having broken through the crust at some point, creates caves of wonders and ecosystems of magic under the surface.

Minus the water, of course, the surface will eventually bake and dry away.  But the surface dwellers never seem to notice that until too late.