“If we consider that we have to grope through a fog even to understand the very things we hold in our hands, then we will certainly find that it is not knowledge but habit which takes away their strangeness; such things, if they were newly presented to us, would seem as unbelievable as any others.”
“Sometimes I can't see past a day
I know I'm growin' tired and I feel it, yeah
And the song that I sing when the notes begin to ring
It's hard for my head to get into the melody, yeah
Day to day, I tell you
Day by day
I see faces all around me
When they start to smile
I just stop for a while
And I say baby let me love you
…
Summer is hot and the winter is cold
People all doin' just what they're told
It's too bad, it's too sad
Thinkin' for yourself is a hard thing to do
Well, don't you know they're depending on you
To see them through, yeah
To see them through
It's the only thing you can do
You know you got to see them through
Shinin' my light like a candle so bright
Show me the way to my future, yeah
With your hand on my face
Take me far from this place
Honey, I'll be the key to your heavenly door”
— The Doobie Brothers, “Song to See You Through” (songwriter, Tom Johnston)
After covering politics day to day, day by day, for more than a decade, I have discovered that sinking into a maddeningly stale state of mind is one of the easiest things in the world.
Watch the political scene long enough, and eventually, the intrigue stops being all that intriguing. No matter how catchy and captivating the melodies political players sing, you grow tired, your head and heart aren’t in it, and you feel as if you’re watching the same old song and dance again and again while feeling it less and less each time through.
The regular rhythms and refrains of modern politics — the poll-tested talking points, the scripted speeches, the contrived sound bites, the ideologies and “isms” too numerous to name, the endless appeals to tribe and ideals as well as the incessant shouts of hypocrisy, hype, and blame — they can become all too familiar, enough to drain the drama from the political stage.
Consume enough propaganda, and you will feel downright depressed, almost inhumanly numb to the cold and calculated vices of the infernal political machine.
I suspect this is, in part, because the aim of modern political and corporate systems seems to be to spread conformity and dependency amongst men at all costs, to reduce men to a series of easily predictable habits and anxious desires as consumers, voters, and donors, to squeeze out any dangerous novelty among men that might challenge the status quo, all while obscuring the undiscovered mysteries of the wide world by supplying familiar answers from some authority on high who is still south of heaven.
The modern ruling elite seem bent on reducing men to their preferred outcomes through the top-down conditioning of men’s habits. Control man’s nature by controlling what is familiar to him, and a more perfect world (for whom we may ask?) is just a few familiar habits away.
If only this were true and not a primrose path to hardened hearts through hardened habits.
Hardened habits can easily become a peculiar form of madness – one that slowly wrings the mystery and strangeness out of life, leaving life too neatly hung out to dry on the line of our routines, beliefs, and conventional patterns of thought. Our hardened habits become our madness when they trick us into thinking that we truly understand the wide world and ourselves because of what is already familiar to us.
So, how to shake this madness? How to enliven one’s leaf out of this spiritual torpor?
By attempting to see the world anew, to see it through, into the unbelievable heart of things beyond the demands of the day.
Consider that you may not fully understand the familiar things you take for granted, whether it be the habitual vices of modern politics or an old song you once loved as a kid.
Revisit them again and again until madness and sadness relent to some surprise or new discovery.
Consider that there is always something new to be found even in the most familiar of things, especially in the people you take for granted, even the politicians you deeply distrust – a new perspective, a new reason, a new horizon, a new frontier, a new potential you may have missed or initially lacked the capacity to see, a new chance at love.
Simply look for a smile and shine your light through.
Joey Clark is a native Alabamian and is currently the host of the radio program News and Views on News Talk 93.1 FM WACV out of Montgomery, AL M-F 12 p.m. - 3 p.m. His column appears every Tuesday in 1819 News. To contact Joey for media or speaking appearances as well as any feedback, please email joeyclarklive@gmail.com. Follow him on X @TheJoeyClark or watch the radio show livestream.
The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the policy or position of 1819 News. To comment, please send an email with your name and contact information to Commentary@1819news.com.
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