Straw bears in Whittlesey on Plough Monday - but not this year...
I have always been very keen on 'folklore' - even when I am not present, and even when the practices are revived or 'instant tradition', I find it comforting to know that such things are happening.
On the one hand, folkloric activities are a link with the past; on another hand, they seem to serve a function of connecting people to the present, to nature, to something a bit more and other than the mundane.
Naturally, therefore, the New Global Totalitarians have focused on suppressing (and ultimately eradicating) all types of public folklore: costumed 'guisers' or mummers, country fairs and agricultural shows, processions, morris/ molly/ country dances - such things have fallen to the birdemic imperatives.
Folklore is a practical expression of much that the Leftist Mainstream most desire to eradicate from human life.
The situation is a microcosm of the bigger picture. Such happenings are nowadays administered by committees - i.e. bureaucracy. Committees are intrinsically totalitarian - voting (and all such matters are decided 'by vote') works by eradicating judgment and responsibility, which can only be personal.
What the birdemic has revealed, here as elsewhere, is how shallowly- and weakly-motivated modern secular people really are - whatever they may claim. How externally-controlled are their desires and convictions. How how temporary and feeble are their enthusiasms and principles.
When a whole civilization officially and in public discourse believes that the universe has no purpose or meaning, then the same applies to each individual person's subjective life.
It is then natural that short-term expediency becomes the 'ultimate' moral principle; and cowardice become the norm - after all, in a senseless reality, what is there to be courageous about?
As soon as any practice, tradition, hobby, art, personal relationship or other 'valued thing' becomes a threat to someone's immediate sense of security and well-being; then it will be discarded. Life satisfaction narrows down to some combination of terrorized obedience with spiteful scapegoating.
The lesson is clear. When there is no help but only harm from 'society' - each individual person must discover his own real, deep, solid motivation; and if this is lacking must re-examine the assumption that have led to this state of existential suicide.
This requires some kind of a personal quest; a prolonged process of inward discovery of truth to be done in the face of pervasive discouragement. But an inward search seeking objective - indeed cosmic - purpose and meaning, and seeking our personal link to that purpose and meaning.
Nothing else will suffice; unless we really are content to watch everything we once valued be eradicated from life - and not replaced.
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