Profile of a Steel Age Psyche

I am a prodigal son
engaged in a religious protest
against Iron Age Scriptural dogma
I am welded fast to independent self-expression
scientific determination
and ideological political argument
I shun Mother Earth’s bestial breast
for I am ashamed of my primitive past
and therefore I suppress my evolutionary heritage
Half blinded by my pseudo-intellectual brilliance
and almost totally reliant on my technological support
I can no longer consciously access my natural instincts
I have lost the stealth of the hunter
the green touch of the farmer
even the journeyman’s eye of the craftsman
and thus the full import
of one hundred thousand generations
of ancestral disciplines and genetic imprint
lies semi-dormant in my sub-conscious
Enamored by the empirical stance of science
and cynical of supernatural claims
I am spiritually numb
to the intuition of the animist
the magic of the shaman
and the faithful devotion of the religious martyr
While I gamble unmindful
with the stored bank of my ancestral heritage
I am divorced from God
and barred from Heavenly contact
With my feet no longer rooted in Earth
my head not hallowed by Heaven
I am a lost soul
fl oating between two States of Being
My social life is anchored in materialism
My mind is engaged in idealism
I peer through telescopes and microscopes
searching synthetically for reality
and my reason for being
My baronial home is long forgotten
My clan is dispersed
all of its members are modern migrants
seeking individual purpose on the money market
human robots on the mass production line
seduced by consumerism
and chained to debt
dreaming get rich quick schemes
while scratching out numbers on lottery stubs
My commitments to extended family are barely honored
My surname is no longer relevant
I live in relative anonymity in the city of MAN
A stranger amidst a vast throng of strangers
I have been schooled for two millennium
in the doctrine of logic
I allow the State to force my children out of my home
at an ever earlier age
and systematically indoctrinate them
in a capitalistic mind-set
that corrupts their sharing ethic
with the lure of private wealth
I leave them locked inside classrooms
unsupervised in the playground
for twelve boring long years
open to adverse peer-group influences
I no longer even pay lip service
in the Church of Christ
I live my life as an agnostic
too busy chasing the buck
to be particularly concerned
if there is a God or not
I have broken all the Mosaic Laws
I have killed and slaughtered Nature’s creatures for food
hunted them for sport
and eaten animal flesh
without sacrificial ceremony
I have engaged in the abortion of unwanted children
I have lusted after my neighbor’s wife
I have committed adultery
I have deceived my wife and son
I have broken my marriage vows and sued for divorce
I have envied those who are richer than I
I am a Capitalist
I have engaged for decades in a ruthless pursuit
to improve my profits at another's expense
I gamble with commodities and stocks and bonds
on the temple floor of the global estate
My Faith is based on gold
I worship at the Altar of Baal
I genuflect in the Cathedral Halls of Big Business
I have looked down upon those
who have humbled themselves to serve at my table
and given no thanks
to those who toil in the soil and labor in our mines
so that I might eat and live a comfortably manufactured life
I have raped Mother Irth
eaten Her fruits without grace
helped to foul Her air
and poison Her water
I have spat in Her dust
and dumped my waste in Her Garden
My society has waged endless wars
in the name of God and Totem
We have a history of enslavement
and ethnic genocide
We rain death on women and children
and blame it on collateral damage
while we pin medals on our general’s breasts
We legislate endless new laws
install vast bureaucracies of oversight
and pay through the nose
for armies of enforcement officers
to police our lives from cradle to grave
And the richer we get
the more expensive it gets
to guard our wealth
from the hunger and the anger of the poor
I have stood by and done nothing
while governments engage in the suicidal dare
to play Russian roulette with nuclear guns
I breathe the air like an automaton
and take for granted the warmth of our Sun
I am a Steel Age man
I live my life in the 20th Century
amidst White Anglo-Saxon Protestants
and strive like them after fame and fortune
neither worse nor better than my neighbor
I am not aware that all my ambitions
all my hopes and dreams
and the training I have received to realize them
can never be fully satisfied by corporal aims
My full identity has been lost in translation
I am a technocrat
A spiritless man
My future fate depends on transformation
‘er I die in nuclear annihilation
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