A Desert of Meaning
0Many have pointed to the lack of meaning and purpose to contemporary life. Émile Durkheim called it anomie, where the bonds between individuals and their society break down and individuals become atomized and rootless, without a cultural grounding or a meaningful connect to others to bring meaning to their lives.
Nietzsche illustrated a contrast in how art, philosophy and reality are understood, between realism and idealism, and how perhaps the opposition to idealism in favour of the what the natural and the real, has led us to the realm of the wax museum. This is the opposite extreme where the meaning found in creative expression is stifled in favour of a realism that somehow lacks in life and meaning.
This is how we arrive at a desert of meaning, a symbolic wasteland which provides no comfort for a beleaguered soul navigating the trials of life. Where does this leave us? How does this affect society?
This was a reading from Friedrich Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy. This version of the text was translated by Shaun Whiteside, edited by Michael Tanner and published by the Penguin Group, London (among other places), in 1993.