The Malaise
Humanity, used to earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes, wars, and pandemics, could deal with this. Waves of discontent said otherwise.
The Malaise.
Perhaps it was a ticking bomb hardwired into our DNA. Perhaps it was Chaos theory, the infinite number of small perturbations throughout history summating, finally.
A malady--unmeasurable, then immeasurable--passed not from person to person or demographic to demographic, but from the æther to the soul, relentlessly emptying all it invaded.
Beauty remained only as the standard against which all ugliness was judged. Charity survived, but only when tax-deductible. Music evolved and still moved people, but atonality segregated those listening from those who simply heard.
The pure of heart, steadfast against the Malaise, were called uncool, retards, and neo-Luddites. They were also called non-seculars, which were fighting words.
Untethered to Creation, the devout of organized religions experienced, quaintly put, a time-out for re-evaluating the meaning and sacrifice of their devotion. From there, a defiance matured into an agnostic apostasy.
Within a decade there would be only 150,000 Catholics left, mainly clergy. There would remain only 220,000 Muslims. There would be only 8,000 practicing Jews. There would remain no Protestants whatsoever. The Mormon count projected would be only 150—hardly enough to proselytize adequately in even one city—so wouldn’t count at all. The Amish numbers wouldn’t change (but the Amish never changed). The Jehovah’s Witnesses, it was predicted, would fall from eight million to only 144,000, which they claimed was just perfect.
Financial markets crashed, recovered, and then crashed again. Market corrections reset the stock averages and made billionaires millionaires and made millionaires start over.
Doomsday apologists, the only religious zealots who would persevere, began announcing Judgment Day on Bourbon St., in the Latin Quarter, in Rembrandtplein, on Kuta Beach, in the Skadarlija district, Taksim Square, and Puerto Banús. Still, no one took them seriously; but no one laughed at them, either.
Mental quirks and tics increased. Scientific journals debated whether there was an increase in the incidence of autism or whether there were just new subcategories, previously unrecognized, applicable to the spectrum. People began claiming they were seeing more ghosts than usual, attributed to a new anxiety state that had its own ICD code.
Suicides spiked due to the tangled web of economic decline.
Children were tested and demonstrated an underlying sadness. Cancer patients became more likely to give up their brave fights for cowardice. An insidious surrender began building that nothing mattered. Crime increased.
Ecosystems faltered, effect begetting cause begetting effect, trickling down, inexplicably, to the life cycles of nocturnal species, in turn influencing all circadian life. The 17-year locusts would never re-emerge. Migratory birds would stake out permanent residences, giving up their nomadic lifecycle and suffering deadly seasonal realities. The fishing industry was decimated in a complex, undecipherable interaction among dozens of species. Dogs didn’t know what had happened, but they didn’t care; cats did, but also didn’t care.
People became different. They quarreled more often and more viciously. Divorce became the expected, natural consequence of marriage, like its anti-sacrament; parenting suffered and delinquency increased. Erudite studies about all the changes were published in learned journals, but it was only speculation.
The next generation would be expected to determine their own spirituality, hollow, and portending poorly for the last churches, which would remain empty. Next, even the hollow personal spirituality would erode away, not even a shell remaining.
There was a lifespan, a life during it, and nothing after it. Self-indulgence became the authenticity of existentialism. It became wrong only to get caught doing wrong. Countless generations had evolved convolutions around the brain to suppress the amygdaloidal thinking of everyone’s private reptile, but the Malaise engendered devolution.
A new paradigm defined success, ambition, celebrity, and worth, inscribed on the caveman’s walls but re-emerging in modernity as the One Commandment:
If you want it, you take it; if you take it, it's yours.
It easily replaced the ten previously handed down from Mt. Sinai.