T
he world is definitely, measurably, and in important ways, worse than it used to be. The world is also definitely, measurably, and in important ways better than it used to be. There are serious things about the world in which I live that I would like to see differently, and there are a lot of pretty recent developments that I'd be sorry to see go. In the past, I've spent a lot of time bemoaning the era in which I was born, imagining some halcyon better days, either ahead or behind, depending on what phase of my life I was doing the imagining. I think I'm starting to lose interest in this game. I'm in the time that I'm in, and I'm very much a product of this time -- it's hard to imagine my personality and style of living occurring under historical circumstances. And for all the faults of the world (and they are many, and terrible), I do like where I am, what I'm doing, who I am. From that stable vantage point, I think I might be able to accept the world. I'll try to make it better, in ways becoming of my station and vocation; I'll try to learn from the past, and make the most of the gifts of the present; and I'll continue to despise those poisoned pleasures of modernity that I've identified as evil. Everywhere and at all times we have to practice discernment; there's no easy way out.
“It is hard to be sure of anything among so many marvels. The world is all grown strange...How shall a man judge what to do in such times?' 'As he ever has judged,' said Aragorn. 'Good and ill have not changed since yesteryear; nor are they one thing among Elves and Dwarves and another among Men. It is a man's part to discern them, as much in the Golden Wood as in his own house.”
-- The Two Towers