Superficial Rejuvenation

Who needs the attainment of wisdom at the foot of one's mortality when we have rejuvenation cosmetics? Where once we had faith, now we have so-called rationality, and while one produced simple humility in its adherents, the other produces little but vanity. Mankind no longer goes gently into that dark night, but instead spends the rest of it actively fighting the natural aging process. If life is all there is to this body and soul, it behooves the holder to hold it as long as possible--regardless of whether it's natural or healthy to do so. Where once the aging were encouraged to feel humbled before the infinite, we now have a population vainly empowered by the shorter number days they have left (thus making everything a "limited time offer").

Civilization shirked off this deference to a charismatic authority hell-bent to improve the soul and character of mankind, and in its place, built the establishment of consumerism to cater to their psychological defects instead. Is that the end of the saga? Hundreds of years of rationalism so that we can now have superficiality and vanity in the place of integrity? So that we can have anti-aging lotions, wrinkle creams, and "hair removal" regimen? It's as if we have nothing better to do with the remaining 50 years of our lives than try to make ourselves look like we did in the first two decades. When eternal deference was cut off to the heavens above, it seems like human beings then had no problem turning the same so-called "blissful ignorance of reality" onto themselves instead.

Most children are encouraged to do little else more universally than "get bigger" or "grow up." For children, aging is a prime directive, and the older and more mature one is, the more that simple status is regarded with coveted dignity. As soon as a "child" passes the threshold of adulthood though, all that anticipated growing has come to its final and premature peak, and society expects the young person to then look out on the road ahead and see nothing but a repulsive downward trajectory. How quick are we to really experience life when we are either stuck in an upward current or in a downward spiral? One way or the other, we're made to feel destined to a particular fate, with no acknowledgment of our life in the present--the "right now."

Imagine feeling as though you're on the death bed at the age of 21. Such is how we seem to expect our 21-year-olds to feel. On the contrary though is everyone over that age, who is then expected to want to be that age the rest of their lives! There is no period of human life that our culture has reserved for us to revel in the fact of being a whole individual at one place and time, without either "needing to be older" or "needing to be younger." Being whole is not as profitable as needing a hole patched. The perversity of it is revealed through close observation of nearly all commercial media surrounding anti-aging products, and nearly all products in general to a greater or lesser extent. I say perversity because this is a perversity, forged by Babylon itself, and is no less disgusting to my tastes than any other form of perversity.

Reality dictates that we all grow, decay, and eventually die, and yet only the most rational of the so-called later-day rationalists would accept this to be true. They'd rather bust out all their science to fabricate products to profit off the widespread lack of fulfillment that infects so many a person over thirty these days. Most seem to think or have been bred to believe that wasting one's good time is preferable to using it toward constructive ends, but only because nothing profitable for someone else has ever had anything to do with a consumer being constructive. And since those idolized "first 20 years" are the same years that the average human being exists simply to make money for other people, it's no wonder why that same individual would then want a refund after that time has passed and has gained them little. It is all too easy to "grow up" lacking fulfillment only to "live" a mature life in continuous want of a refund.

That "refund" is another way of saying "rejuvenation." Where once the passage into adulthood meant something to the primitive roots of culture, now it is simply the age at which a youth realizes for the first time that he or she has been gypped for the first 15 or so years of life. It is no matter though, for God willing, there is another 50 years left to waste trying to earn back the time that was lost during their so-called "good years." Who needs to be "born again" in the so-called eternal spirit when superficiality and artificiality accomplish the same trick for twenty-seconds at twice the price?