Telos

For those whose end are their means, what happens when they have reached it? An essay on reaching pinnacles. By Lerion.

The sharper of the pundits today have alluded to it, and the comedians poke at the wound, if indirectly. Our politicians skirt around the issue, hoping to placate the symptoms with distracting side-projects and debates.

But, I do think that everyone in our society, indeed the entirety of the culture, is intrinsically aware of it. It picks at the back of our minds, though everything we have been raised to believe tells us to ignore it. We are in denial, or worse, sloth. Or what I fear most, apathy.

We are in decline. Our great efforts have been eclipsed by trivial fawnings, and the focus and will of the people have been splintered. Normally, I would not fret over the dividing of the passions. Sometimes differentiation, even chaos, is necessary for advancement. But therein lies the key; there is no more progress. The momentum has slowed, and now it is stalling.

But the decline is not the cause of the problem. And while the answer lies before each of us, we willingly turn away. We are lost, and we would rather wander aimlessly than try and find our way.

But, others would argue, how could we be lost? We have probed the secrets of magic and found even its deepest intricacies. We have explored the far corners of the world, and then laid order and law to its people. We have forged a lasting peace and prosperity not only for ourselves, but for others. Our very thoughts, our will, creates reality. What more do we need?

In this mindset, we need nothing. That is the crux of the matter, that is the weight upon all our shoulders. Nothing. We have no reason to explore, no reason to dive deeper or try harder. We may have very well reached the end, and we might have actually done it all. And now...what is there?

We are shocked, stunned and dazed, over our own achievement. I look to the other people of this world, and I wonder. Perhaps they are not too slow to advance, maybe we were just too quick. It might be that our culture triumphed in everything there was for us too soon. We have rushed to map every tree in the forest, and now that we see everything we are irrevocably lost. No more blank patches remain in our map, and without them we have no clue as where to go next.

We are victims of our own success. How haughty a thought, how much more filled with hubris can any other realization be? Rather than contemplate the validity of such a conclusion, we plant our minds into vanity and fickle trappings. It is easier, it is less confusing and tedious.

There is no challenge that we, the deimos, have ever shirked away from. Except ourselves.

There is nothing left on this world that beckons to us, that tempts with the allure of impossibility. Nothing to provoke that instinct to break the barriers of our own limitations, only to discover a whole new frontier beyond. Nothing on earth can do that for us anymore. We drained the land of its trials. We scoured the landscape for the gods, and found only ourselves. And we were disappointed.

But there is hope. We hold in our minds the power of creation, and in our hands the capabilities of actualization. If we cannot find a goal worthy of ourselves, then we must create one. If there no longer exists anything to spur our deepest and truest passions of curiosity and ambition, then we must forge it.

We are not content to rest yet, and perhaps we never will. But for the moment, we must explore other avenues, we must vault over the borders of the known into the impossible Other. It is what we have always wanted to do. To not is to deprive ourselves of what we need, to choke our own throats.

We must find more. We must do more. And if we have to, we must make more. Even if it means making a stone too heavy for ourselves to lift, and then trying to raise it.

-Lerion

Author's Note

I usually proofread my works, however as always I'm sure there are typos and syntax errors. I appreciate any and all notices of that, and will work to correct those. If I haven't do know that I did acknowledge your notice and try implementing it, but found that it detracted from the effect I wanted and so omitted it.