Some Aspects of the New Man

Having forsaken all existential categories and concerns, the new man's head, like a helium balloon that can be inflated ad infinitum, is now light with the many delights found in the hedonist's confectionary.

The new man does not sing or dance.

The new man merely drags his feet through existence. This morally ambivalent, joyless entity is only moved by the sensual pleasures that a twenty-four hour period can offer.  Only concerned with the sensorial vagaries of the day-to-day, the new man lacks all imagination to engage true sentiment.

Lacking all semblance of imagination, the new man can never reap the pleasure supplied to those who convert vague, passing impressions into vital understanding. The work involved in this process is too taxing for the new man. Yet the new man, like a child in a toy store, wants anything and everything that he sets his eyes on, never paying heed to the paces that the resistance in all things human puts us through.

Ours is a disingenuous age. We lie to ourselves about the nature of the self and its role in the human condition. This serves the self-serving purpose of granting us the necessary rationalization to satisfy our hedonistic ways. Unbridled appearance is all the rage today. 

The new man – a wretched, self-absorbed, ultra-modern soul – is a slave to his misguided and misappropriated passions. Moved along by destructive whims and inspirited fervor, the new man finds himself unfazed by anything of lasting substance. He is equally at home in Plato's cave. In the world of the new man, illusion and reality are viewed as being merely the result of our whimsical constructs. The new man takes great pride in this assertion.

Having lost all capacity to engage and be moved by the sublime, the new man instead drinks from the fountain of excess. Consciously careful not to seem like he discriminates, the new man embraces the ridiculous and vile with unprecedented zest. The new man relishes vulgarity. This self-described "post-modern" caricature does not bother in giving things their due, for he knows not how to differentiate between higher and lower.

This circus-act entity has been trained to accept everything regardless of rational discernment. This gullible creature has been instructed to accept that this is the mark of an "open" mind, the progressive course that the world of the future must embrace. Is this what Hemingway meant when he said that we ought to be careful of opening the mind too much, given the real danger that our brains might fall out?

The new man's thought, when this can be called such, is always stereotypical. How else can it safeguard itself from genuine reflection, from the "bite of reality?" And why should human reality sting in the first place?  The new man can't conceive of the latter. This is the extent of the form of "rebellion" that his life takes. With his blind, promethean passions unleashed, the new man is free to move about as if a magistrate in the kingdom of the god of self-absorption and feel-good illusions.

The new man is a cardboard being who is devoid of entrails. Being one-dimensional in constitution, the new man keeps himself abreast of his singular, stale dimension by keeping a close tab on public perception and opinion. The illusion is simple: many one-dimensional beings coming together to create a forged, sun-beaten kaleidoscope of sickly hues. This is the leveling effect that the conceit of the new man has on all lasting values.

Predictably, the new man has created the only kind of world that it can inhabit and succeed in. Like a pack animal, his habitat is replete with the conditions necessary for it to propagate and flourish. Strength in numbers means that there are no longer any essences, qualities or axiological hierarchies that can cast a shadow over human existence. The new man muscles reality in order to soothe his shallow existence.

Lamentably, the new man is a third-rate science-fiction entity manifested in the flesh. Having forsaken all existential categories and concerns, the new man's head, like a helium balloon that can be inflated ad infinitum, is now light with the many delights found in the hedonist's confectionary. The new man is arrogantly full of himself. This is in direct proportion to his degree of moral/spiritual bankruptcy. This lazy entity fails to understand that we sleep in the bed we make.

Until today, the new man has never enjoyed such a fertile world to exercise its every caprice and passion. Primitive man was afraid of lighting and thunder. Sunset meant eminent danger. The Dark Ages saw the dissolution of law and order. Incivility reigned supreme, as it always has in man's primitive state. The new man wants nothing more than to romanticize such a primitive human condition.

The new man, not being capable of creating anything, siphons off the sweat of culture and civilization for its own self-serving, predatory purposes. This may be a case of historical irony, but the new man can only exist in a parasitical state. While the host fashions a world from the depths of its being, the new man waits behind the scenes and licks his chops. The new man lacks all capacity for transcendence.

Thinkers like Nietzsche, C.S. Lewis and Eric Hoffer were accurate in predicting the day when this hollow entity would rule the world. Ortega y Gasset certainly got it right when, in 1930, he showed us to what extent man had become demoralized. Not surprisingly, the new man has brought his moral, spiritual and intellectual bankruptcy to our most sacred institutions. Having exhausted all viable avenues to safeguard him from his depleted nature, the new man looks in the mirror and only witnesses the void that his myopic vision has accustomed him to see. As they say, the eyes are the mirror of the soul.

His use of logic, or what is essentially the appearance of this, is always plastic, flexible, utility-driven and lacking all semblance of sophistication. Evolution has evolved logic right out of the path of the new man. This entity praises himself for having vanquished history and tradition.

Not reason or logic, but fashion is the thing for the new man.

The new man sustains himself by embracing everything that is publicly expedient, as long as this makes him feel good about himself. Like good hedonists, the new man lives solely for pleasure. This is an entity that demands that the world be perpetually a happy place . . . or else . . .

The new man must be happy at all cost, or he will pluck out the eyes of those who lead contented lives. The new man, as we can easily discern, is a carapace of everything sincere, profound. He is a farce and a twenty-first century tragedy. Long ago we were warned about the arrival and impact of this being. C.S. Lewis does so in The Abolition of Man.

The new man seeks to triumph over the exigencies of human existence, but kneels before the altar of a vague god which he calls "nature." Nature is the glue that binds the new man to his former self. Nature serves as a formidable substitute for his lack of a genuine human core. The new man wants us to believe that nature makes no demands on us.  The new man craves sophomoric abstractions. These abstractions are tailored to the fulfillment and satisfaction of his many irrational desires. Happiness at all cost. This is his panacea. Flexibility defines the paradoxical nature of the new man's ever expanding embrace of anti-values. The new man is never spontaneous. Instead, he thinks of himself as an innovator – except that this, too, he attacks self-consciously.

The new man is cooler, chicer than man has ever been. Modish values are always on his radarscope.

It appears that this entity only lives to promote fashionable emotions. This anti-historical entity has made himself into a straw god.  Yet like the spouse that is the last to know, the new man does not suspect that he has already attained the status of post-humanity. Of course, the new man does not view himself as such. On the contrary, he sees himself as being on the cutting-edge of "progressive" enlightenment, of belonging to the next great wave of the future. Sadly, the new man ignores the meaning and history of the word progressive. "If God ever existed," the new man consoles himself, "it certainly would resemble me."

"The future is upon us," the new man urges us to understand. Whoever does not tag along – those who embrace an orthodox morality – will only delay the development of the fulfillment of our timely "higher" consciousness. The new man is fashionably angry. But this entity is also practical, calculating, and expedient in the utility and channeling of his anger. The new man will not lose an ounce of his vital energy in places where he knows he cannot be seen or heard. To be noticed is the thing.

The new man has made the solicitation of awards into high art.

The new man is at home in the technological age, where it can expediently export the message of its meandering and miserable existence through radio waves and television sets worldwide. Because what matters most today is the show in neon lights, the new man has found a home in today's flippant world. Lenin and Gramsci taught this spineless creature well. Ironically, some of them don't even suspect this. 

Yet the only reason that we can even talk about the evolution of this human aberration that we refer to as the new man, is because we still encounter those who have not joined in this carousel of sweet pleasures.

The new man is easy to spot given his ability to procreate in numbers that inspire frightening legions. The new man is the opposite of people of sound convictions, people who do not opt for the glare of the popular.

The new man has declared war on common sense.

Thus, a major characteristic of the new man is his desire to control everything and everyone around him. Not the least of these is his need to take human reality by the throat and squeeze it until reality surrenders itself to his needs. The new man is audacious and shameless: "If human reality seems unpleasant and inflexible to my perspective, then so much for reality," he consoles himself.

Human evolution is currently undergoing a truly catastrophic stage in the forms of de-evolution that the new man promotes. We can be certain of one thing: the new man has arrived en mass.

While the new man fashions himself the conqueror of earthly time and death, it is the Wise man instead who knows how to keep the score. And while the new man is crafty and sinister in its ability to asphyxiate tradition, his gains are all transparently forged out of a pathological desire to suppress objective values. The new man is the new and unfortunate face of human evolution.