Our Age & It's Idols by Photis Kontoglou
A person gets dizzy and is overcome with despair, looking at what age we live in. We live in a completely stupid and dark age, where madness and stupidity dominates the whole world, so much, that the few who have not become mad, do not dare to talk against this situation. If some-one finds the courage to say that "our great era" as its fans call it, is actually an era of desperation, others will turn and look at him with contempt, as if they are seeing some-one who has lost his mind.
More than the madness that takes place, one gets disgusted by all the nonsense which is being said in order to praise it in the first place. You see some people who seem serious and that they are not the types who accept to bear any nonsense, but instead they are full of nonsense, stupidity and absurdity, and are fanatical fans and defenders of "this great era", being vigilant guardians of our great madhouse "!
From the same reason that I write today, I already wrote "The Mad Water", an oriental story, one of those wise stories, in which an astrologer vizier said to Sultan who kept him as his adviser, that in a few months Allah would rain down a kind of mad water, and anyone who drank it would become mad, and asked him to give an order to have all the water gathered from the cisterns of the palace, the good water, the normal one , so that the sultan and his vizier would drink from this, and not go mad, and be able to govern the people judiciously and with fairness.
And truly, after a short time, a kind of water was rained down, that after drinking it, people became mad, even animals. People lost their senses and started looking at everything the other way around, good was now evil, the just now was unjust, the beautiful was looked upon as ugly, absurdity as decency.
The sultan and his vizier, having their minds still sane, governed well, as before. But the mad people, who before loved and respected them for being fair, now cursed them as being unfair criminals, and threatened to kill them. After a while, when the sultan realized that there was no way he could cope with such a mad people who turned against him, he said to the vizier "Vizier my Lord, I have come to realize that as time goes on, at the end we will be killed by those crazy people. I think that will do well to also drink from the mad water, in order to be able to communicate with them. " And so it happened. The sultan and his vizier became mad as well and started the hangings and slaughterings, but the people wished them well and shouted from joy.
This myth fits well with today's people and shows how difficult it is for some-one to sustain himself and not become mad, living in an insane world which has turned mad from one end of the earth to the other, as if an evil disease has struck humanity, some kind of terrible syphilis.
But there comes a time when we say inside us, that maybe we are not being fair and that we exaggerate things, because we are unable to understand today's people and that we are unjust to them. But as we look at the world around us, in newspapers, at the so-called "spiritual" movement, to the pallid activity which is undertaken like madness by this possessed humanity, when one sees which ones are the current "idols" of this world, he understands then, that what he says is been said fairly and well, that he is doing good talking against this mess, and that he is even showing great restrain in his expressions.
These thoughts came back to my head and felt a deep sadness, as I feel every time I ponder about all the darkness that covers the people of today who say that they are enjoying life, this mad life of despair, away from the hope of God. These thoughts came again in my mind, after reading that the world has lost at once, two of its most cherished idols, a singer called Édith Piaf, and a jack of all trades and dandy called Jean Cocteau. The global media called out across the world about " the great loss" that happened to the universe, because these two sacred persons who fed it with their works, died! Oh lement mountains and meadows, oh mourn seas and oceans! Piaf and Cocteau died! Humanity does not look at its disastrous situation, its poverty, the knife of war hanging over it, the hunger that will overcome all of us, the cruelty of life which has become an everyday anxiety, but rather weeps and laments because it lost who? Those maybe that gave it sound food, food which raised its spirit high, to the hope of immortality and the knowledge of truth, food that cleans it from the poisons of its sinful life, and that could cure it?
No, humanity did not loose any saintly guides, but lost on the contrary, two of these sinners, which has for its consolation, two of those who put in its soul, its favorite poisons, so that they can turn it mad. That is why humanity loves them, that's why it worships them. It hates the saints, detests those who talk about real and spiritual things, those that advocate the purity of the heart and immortality, it does not want to listen about the peace of the soul, about Christ, about a future life, and salvation. For humanity " the word of God has become vomit ", the word of God makes people vomit. It wants to roll in the mud of sin like a pig, and to have its bully being pleasurely scraped by its beloved "great artists" Those who make funny stupidities, those who say disgusting paradoxes, those who stain painting and music which is the most despicable action, those that have degenerated all the arts, that every person who is not a liar becomes angry thinking about it, these cold entertainers who are not ashamed to roll on the floor, and make various acts and sleights, and who want others to call them intellectual persons and artists. keep note that nobody has the courage to shout: "mummers, crooks, murderers of the human soul, and morphine and drug addicts, who have turned humanity into an unrecognized corpse, so that it will worship you as its benefactors and saviors!
And who are these great souls which the stupid world mourned, with the hysteria that it does in everything today? Jean Cocteau, a great magician, an acrobat who walked on the threads of the venomous spider, which envelops the crazy minds of today's humanity. A poet, a writer, an actor, a director, a filmmaker, a thinker, a seer, and a jack of all trades artist! He mixed everything with the large spoon of his genius, an multi talented preacher of sin as the salvation of humanity. Without having any sense of responsibility, like a ragging bull, he trended all sacred things which man has treated with respect since the down of his existence in order to give expression to his feelings and his imagination.
As far as I know, his so called works are improvisations of all sorts and kinds, about everything that his mind came up with, the bringing out to the open of everything that man keeps inside him and hides it because it is not worthy to be known, bringing out a terrible incoherence that today passes as multilateralism , but is nothing but shameless nonsense, and a disgusting originality. And all this roll of the drums ends up being a useless nothingness. Seriousness is the enemy of the artist who wants to be idolized in today's rotten world. That is why Cocteau became an idol and was worshiped, and the drum beatings became louder with his ultimate death. Imagine what humanity is been deprived of and we still have not managed to know about it! The deceased did not leave alone even hagiography, an art which we the insignificant and the backward serve. Because he painted a church. I leave out the fact that his "hagiography'' are scrubs and scribbles which make one feel ashamed for the person that made them, and as for his religious icons, they are so artistic that they could take the prize for antireligious propaganda.
Where are we going, you guys? Especially, we Greeks, who used to have so much light in our souls. To mourn together with these stupid people who live in the mold of the North for who ? For Cocteau ! And for Piaf!
This Piaf again who broke down the world, who was she? She was an badly made little woman, a Frank, one of those types that love to talk too much, full of feelings and superficialness, a popular singer of that type that comes out of Paris, by matching several sentimental words that don't mean anything and say the same things over and over again "amour!" and "amour!", and sing in the sidewalks and at the crossroads, and the Franks gather together all excited, and sing with them, moving together, and this is how they become their idols.
Such a singer with a trembling voice like a spinsters, who sings some ordinary monotonous, songs, as always slowmoving, with the passionate cries of the tavern, here, this was the miracle of Édith Piaf, who the human race mourned the other day, and along with the rest of the civilized mankind, many of our people (Greeks) also put on their black clothes in order not to be left behind. Alas for us!
So. Is The Mad Water a fairytale or has the mad rain truly fallen, and all humanity drinks from it throughout the earth?
Photis Kontoglou
Translated from Greek by noctoc
Written in 1963 but still very relevant, especially in the last few days.
