The culture of liberalism
should be one which was enlightened,
secular, through and through.
It would be one in which
no trace of divinity remained,
either in the form of a divinized world
or of a divinized self.
Such a culture would have no room
for the notion that there are nonhuman forces
to which human beings should be responsible.
It would drop, or drastically reinterpret,
not only the idea of holiness but those of
“devotion to truth” and of
“fulfillment of the deepest needs of the spirit.”
The process of de-divinization….
ideally would culminate in our no longer being able
to see any use for the notion that finite, mortal,
contingently existing human beings might derive
the meanings of their lives from anything except
other finite, mortal, contingently existing human beings.

–Richard Rorty
excerpt Contingency, Irony And Solidarity, p. 45

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Yesterday a friend and I exchanged viewpoints on the apparent growing ineffectiveness of major institutions of our society.  I offered the example of the unrestrained expense of medical care, and the bureaucratized nightmare of using insurance to pay for procedures and medication. His example was inefficiency of the Veterans Administration system that remains resistant to remedy. His observation was that these systemic problems can be solved, but the solutions would be painful.  My rejoinder was that the anticipated pain is such that many with a stake in the status quo will unconditionally resist change.

Perhaps you agree with me, that we are embedded in a society that is unsustainable in its present form.  It is anybodies guess that we will find solutions, suffer the changes that will result in a way forward. On the other hand, are we to anticipate a form of collapse?

I think this song is apropos.  The lyric is about delirium tremors in order to break substance addiction.  The melody rocks, but the lyric is grim, wrenching, threatening.  An individuals life hangs in the balance.  Two courses of action are presented.  The one is another “goddamn drink,” for one more night.  The alternative is getting clean which entails feeling like a son of a bitch.

Is this not the fork in the road facing us collectively?

Nathaniel Rateliff composed and sings this song from personal experience.