'They all seem like game show hosts to me.'
'If I Ever Lose My Faith in You' for #FreedomMusicFriday
Sting’s “If I Ever Lose My Faith in You” is, first and foremost, a love song. Yet right beneath that message is another…
(Videos at the bottom of this post: Sting’s version and Disturbed’s cover)
Sting lays out a series of social institutions—things in which people tend to place great faith. Science. The Church. Celebrities. Politics. The State. Each time, he juxtaposes a loss of faith in these institutions with the steady flame of his love for someone.
Tell me that you haven’t been feeling some of that yourself over the last few years!
Maybe you are lucky enough to have someone for whom such a flame burns. But even if not, you have yourself. And as the world has gone increasingly mad, you have survived, in part, by relying on faith in yourself. Those of us who are still standing…those of us who resisted…had to have some of that faith in order to make it.
He begins…
You could say I lost my faith in science and progress
The medical and scientific fields have utterly beclowned themselves over the last decade-plus.
First, with the near-universal adoption of ‘climate change’ orthodoxy—a tool of oppression in search of any actual scientific evidence. Then, with the monstrous crime of covid. Lockdowns. Poison injections. Masking. Denial of ivermectin. Social distancing. Everything that they did to our children. Here too, we have a tool of oppression (and worse) supported by zero actual data. And don’t even get me started on the Trans Industrial Complex.
Lost our faith in science? Yeah, you could say that. More precisely, I suppose—we still have faith in real science, just not TheScience™ we’re told we must accept unquestioningly.
You could say I lost my belief in the holy church
He’s not saying he’s lost his faith in God. But as official mainline protestant churches continue their leftwards slouch…as the Catholic Church is taken in bizarre directions by Francis, who is more communist activist than actual pope…as many churches go along with every woke fad… can you really say that your faith in organized religion has increased over the last couple of decades?
You would say I lost my sense of direction
I think many of us felt like we had our pathways blocked, or the floor beneath us removed, after 2020.
You could say I lost my faith in the people on TV
Uh, yeah…you could say that.
Do you even watch TV news anymore? Do you believe a word they say? At this point, if they tell me it’s raining, I go out and check for myself.
And celebrities? How many of you have started caring more about the lives of celebrities over the last five or ten years?
You would say I lost my belief in our politicians
They all seem like game show hosts to me
That has to be the money quote for me. In comparatively short order, I have gone from caring about electoral politics to not even being entirely convinced that politicians are actually real.
Okay, that is an exaggeration, but not by much. Game show hosts? Yep.
I never saw no miracle of science
That didn't go from a - a blessing to a curse
See above.
I never saw no military solution
That didn't always end up as something worse but
This does not have to be precisely true for absolutely every conflict through all of history. It’s true enough. For a long time, I never fully understood the phrase “endless war.” I do now. And I know I am not alone.
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When I was in the USSR in 1991, I noticed among my Russian friends a focus on visceral pleasures (perhaps we could mirror Bukowski and say “smoking, drinking, and f___ing”). The reason seemed all too obvious to me at the time: communism left them with few options for advancement in other areas. Might as well focus on the sensual pleasures.
That observation was true, but I have come to see a positive aspect to it that I didn’t fully appreciate at the time: They were focused on things close to home. The visceral. The personal. The close.
We got so wrapped up in the infinite possibilities offered by Western civilization that, sometimes, we missed what was right in front of us. Now that Western civilization is in obvious decline, I see the appeal of that close-to-home approach.
That is not to say that there aren’t new reasons to hope and new areas for advancement. But they’re not on the stage to which our attention is always being drawn. They’re not behind that stage. They’re not even in the building.
They’re in the sunlit uplands of a future that we must build. And they’re also in the smiling face that’s right in front of us.
I'm right here with you! I agree, nothing "out there" has my trust anymore! I made the worldview shattering decision this past September that I will no longer participate in electing my slave master!
Wow. This song keeps coming up in the readings. Recently again as well.
This is interesting. I'm going to do some digging, find the posts, and chuck the paywalls on them. Back in a few.