Life's biggest questions are very much on our plate right now

Even as the flames rage around us, those interested in answers must engage in the requisite reflection

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It’s time to admit that mid-2020 post-America is out of control.

A mere, let’s say, two years ago, the argument could be made that, for all the drastic alterations to the nation’s cultural landscape, a critical mass of people were able to live lives characterized by at least reasonably rewarding work, some combination of family, social and civic bonds that provided the sense of connection that is among the most basic human needs, a sense of basic safety as they went about their daily lives, the convenience and comfort provided by technological advancement, and even a sense that somehow an America that was on some kind of recognizable continuum with its existence to date could be retrieved.

Now, in a time when statues of historical figures are not only torn down by mobs, but gun violence is ensuing as a result, when a fast food establishment goes up in flames because it was the site of a resisted arrest that ended in a police shooting, when neither suspect nor officer so much as set foot inside the business, when a Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone is being characterized by the mayor of the city in which it’s set up as a block party, when in fact it’s an environment of protection rackets, rapes and robberies, when friendships and indeed families are torn apart by ideological differences, when the notion that just because someone feels that he or she is actually of the sex other than the one his or her genitals and DNA indicate that that is indeed the case is given legal credence in the land’s highest court, when the president of the nation is utterly incapable of understanding the depth and the real nature of its fundamental crisis, much less address it meaningfully, and when his party cravenly gives him free rein to be a national embarrassment, and the opposing party foments that crisis at every opportunity, we are in a qualitatively new set of circumstances.

Are a flattened curve of COVID-19 spread and a May retail-sales figure that more than makes up for April’s downward dive going to be our salvation? There are those who will settle for such a sad and small view of what human life is all about. It may be enough to drag certain aspirants to political office over the finish line in a few months, barring reversals on either front.

Is that really good enough?

Will the damage to the family dinner table, the classroom, the community commons and the sanctuary see any repair? Will art that reflects human nobility begin to reappear? Will a respect for the linage of thought throughout history about the nature and preciousness of human freedom rise phoenix-like?

At any previous time in the nation’s existence that it came this close to the entire enterprise being scuttled, a fundamental commonality stepped in to rescue its prospects. Even during the Civil War, both sides worshipped the same God, read the same literature, adhered to the same behavioral norms. In the upheavals of the 1960s, which gave birth to the counterculture that has now morphed into such a ghastly form, there was a confidence that society’s institutions were in good enough shape to absorb the assaults they were undergoing.

Who really believes that now?

We don’t even forthrightly proclaim what common sense and the evidence in front of our noses tell us about the architecture of the universe. Quite the contrary; it’s the kind of thing that must be said in hushed tones with the curtains drawn.

The essential questions that have persisted throughout human existence, even through all the distractions and the fits and starts of material advancement, have not gone away. Indeed, even as the flames of anarchy rage all around us, making that inquiry has never been more pressing. Why are we here? What is worth valuing? Is there any agreement to be had among us on what is noble and righteous?

Few people are going to realize that and do the inquiring. But our prospects for avoiding the abnegation of a status above that of a mere animal increase or decrease by the number of us who do.