The End of the Age of Bullshit
Welcome to Loving Spoonful
Dearest Reader,
Welcome to Loving Spoonful! My intention is for this to be a stimulating, (tough) love-laced newsletter exploring current events or current trends in our global culture. Before I get into that, I want to introduce myself and what brings me to you. I’m Agunda, no nickname so use it or lose me. I’m a writer, producer and alchemist with a passion for social good. When I sat down to pen my first love newsletter to you, I was thinking what do the fine people of earth wish to or need to hear right now? I suppose what comes to mind is that we are living through history in a way that breaks from the past in that the rate of change is exponential, confrontational and frankly kind of unfocused.
From record breaking news in the morning to climate disasters at night, we find it harder and harder to grasp a stable collective experience through which to organize the flow of culture, ideas, mores, values, and laws in society. Things are a bit wonky. I mean what does a “generation” even mean anymore when time is this compressed? Now, what I just highlighted is kind of the downside of this technological age. The upshot is that hopefully we can stop bullshitting each other so much. I mean, is it just me or has the past decade been a parade of bullshit leaders, bullshit agendas, bullshit miracle tech, bullshit revisionist history, bullshit art, and bullshit clout-chasing virtue signaling bullshit? I know we're all Instagram famous now, but I think I would prefer universal healthcare and a forgiveness of my student loans.
As the age of bullshit slips away, the most recent line of bullshit folks are pedaling is that 19th century style colonialism is the answer to the decline of Western democracy. I’m sorry, what? It’s not entirely surprising that there will undoubtedly be a number of last ditch attempts to seduce increasingly multi-ethnic Western electorates with delusions of manifest destiny and neo-colonial wet dreams, but “methinks thou dost protest too much.” Since Western leaders have no original ideas and/or will to augment the status quo for the betterment of all, this is their last gasp at galvanizing Western democracies around unsustainable perpetual inequality.
I don’t think it will do much else, other than hasten Western democratic decline, shatter whatever so-called moral authority they have and soften the terrain for fascistic leaders to present themselves as the tonic for our tumultuous times. But even as these “strong man” dodos continue to emerge, as they did in the early 1900s when Western civilization was in economic freefall, ain't nobody buying this bullshit. Yeah, I suspect a bunch of ill informed people will take the gamble, but ultimately these men will fail as they always do with their tired bullshit ideologies and schemes that benefit hardly anyone but themselves ensuring their eventual ouster.
So, where does that leave us dear reader? Exactly where we need to be: ready, willing and able to leave this age of bullshit behind and hopefully start facing the fact that we are all roommates on planet Earth and maybe beyond lying to ourselves or repurposing dead ideas, we can (re)imagine something closer to a just world where authenticity and collective responsibility is simply “The Shit.”
With Love During End Times,
Agunda