Inner Perseverance, Outer Order and a Faustian Bargain

The simultaneity of continuity and change is one of the greatest paradoxes that shapes the way we lead our lives.

Humanity has more or less perfected the art of passing down elements unique to cultures across generations. Culture ensures we carry the useful things forward with us. Things that aren't get changed.

While we execute this at varying efficiencies, this is like our very own version of natural selection in play.

Individual verdicts on what stays and what goes collectively decide the natural order in societies.

After all, culture is an aggregation of individual actions. A homogenisation of sorts.

It's hard to put a finger on what that natural order is today.

One reason I can think of is the era of decentralised information we live in. This makes marshalling individual action rather difficult. Institutional machinery used to be able to do it quite well - think nation building, ideology propaganda, etc.

Some are still very good at it, but it takes a certain kind of zealotry that is inaccessible to everybody but a minuscule fraction of us (for which I am very thankful for).

This makes me wonder.

Is the era of influenced outer order through homogenised individual purposes a thing of the past?

And has it taken with it the many 'individual purposes' that the less-certain among us could simply borrow and persevere with during our lifetimes? The same 'individual purposes' that used to be passed down through generations. I am afraid so.

It is on us to find inspiration and go after it with unrelenting passion.

It is on us to find infinite fuel for this inspiration.

It is on us to find our inner perseverance.

That seems to be the Faustian bargain we made when we welcomed technology to colonise our lives.