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Show Editorial Love of Death Although still in the incubatory stage, a new vogue in contemporary thought is emerging the death wish. A convincing syndrome indicates a crescendo in frequency of the death-nostalgia motif. No small number of autobiographies recently submitted sub-mitted for a course here were found to express such yearnings yearn-ings Wednesday some students at a nearby college tried their hand at Russian roulette. An article published recently re-cently in the Chronicle imputed motivation of this genre to the green-bereted Special Forces. Psychologist Erich Fromm, scheduled to speak on campus during the first week of May, will expound on the "Love of Life and Love of Death." Current films flirt with this theme. "Red Desert" and "Juliet of the Spirits treat the subject in a flamboyant and fantastic manner, while "The Loved Ones" offends everyone by killing it with bathos. . . ,. .., Frustration is a sign of the times. The implicitly American ultra-systematic tradition of problem-solving short-curcuits when a situation is suddenly encountered which doesn't fit the established pattern. Viet Nam is a typical example of such an unfamiliar and illogical dilemma. We are told that we're at war. We are spending, fighting, and dying. Yet we are not allowed to win. Why not quit and supplant this fiasco with a more promising enterprise? Because we are also told that we're fighting for an important cause and upholding up-holding moral committments. Ergo, we must fight on. For what? , . . The overwhelming success of Batman and KoDin shows how thoroughly an appetite for escape pervades everyday life. The dynamic duo are refreshingly novel. Here absurdity is a comfortable haven from the routine treadmill. These protectors of Gotham City always do get the baddie-baddies. But this ostensible triumph of good over evil does not parallel the traditional cowboys-and-Indians or cops-and-robbers morality. Not only are the heroes arrant ar-rant clods, but even the villians painfully lack savoir faire. Just how could any member of the Great Society want to escape? America is more affluent economically, advanced ad-vanced technologically, and more fantastic in general than any previous nation in history. Evidently some see no gold behind the glitter. No matter how it is gift wrapped, some persist in finding horrors, of alienation, loneliness, and purposeless striving. The national campus pasttime is being apathetic. Viva l'ennui! Moving ahead to the next age group we find the famous "detached Americans." They aspire to building build-ing ticky-tacky houses where they can live tick-tackily ever after. The most glaring ramification of the trend is embodied em-bodied in the question: "Is God dead?" That man can envision God only in terms of himself is axiomatic. The Greek thinkers recognized that if man looked like horses, then God too would look like a horse. Of greater significance than His body, parts, and passions is the role which God serves in personifying absolutely ab-solutely all values and characteristics which men esteems desirable. This desire often feeds on man's jealousy of the Ultimate. Wanting this virtue himself, man ascribes death to God. Naturally if God were really dead, man wouldn't be wasting so much energy to resuscitate Him. Instead, humanity would be worrying about its own problems of existence. |
