Above is the cover of a book written by Hiroo Onoda, the fabled Japanese WWII soldier who was sent to fight in the Philippines in 1944 but didn’t surrender until 1974, nearly 30 years after the war’s conclusion.
His dogged stance strikes me as symbolic of much conventional wisdom today. That is, we focus exclusively on the ephemeral ideas of the last few decades that only seem new, but that’s shelf life has come and gone. In much the same way as our blinkered hero, Onoda, we seem neither willing nor able to perceive, much less reorient to, life’s innate dynamism. (And don’t get me started on the underlying structural clarity of existence, both moral and spiritual.) We’re determined to fight tired old battles, all the while pretending they’re the wave of the future.
Which is ironic given that all I’ve heard over the last few decades is how we all must change. It’s our age’s official dogma.
Continue reading “The Long and Unending 20th Century”