Killing Monsters

We have largely dealt with the most obvious and pressing threats to life and health. We have killed the wolves and the lions and we now look at them in the zoo or in the movies. We've killed the monsters. In most developed countries wild animals do not pose a serious threat. We have managed to beat hunger. In a strange turn of events nowadays obesity is the larger threat in terms of deaths and sicknesses connected to it. The cold does not pose a real threat anymore and neither does thirst or famine. Many infectious diseases can be cured. It seems like we are winning against death himself. But are we?
I want to take a different approach. The wolves aren't dead, they’ve just changed their appearance. The monsters of modern times are both external and internal and are still devastating and dangerous. They are still roaming around. They come in different cloaks, wearing different masks. They come through loneliness, purposelessness or depression. They come through absurdity, greed and apathy. They come through chronic illness, inner imprisonment, environmental poisons and detachedness. They come with the food we eat, with the information we consume, with the air we breathe and with our way of thinking. They come in the form of a faceless system destroying culture and the foundations of human life on the planet. They can hurt and kill, devour and lead astray. They cause fear, doubt, pain - they cause suffering.

Now I don't want to - by any means - create an amphitheatre of danger and fear. I want to question concepts of progress and our current way of dealing with suffering and death. I argue that the manner in which we are dealing with these modern monsters is poor and dangerous. Fuelled by a fear of death and an urge to avoid suffering, we use technology to create a comfortable, numb and meaningless world which degenerates. We have to come to terms with the reality that wolves are living in the very same valley as we do and that we cannot change that. Even if we kill the wolves, the monsters will remain. The way out starts with realising that there is beauty in that. That the presence of monsters is not a flaw of reality to be fixed, like a broken machine, but a lively necessity of existence. The way out is in accepting that there are monsters and loving that, by appreciating the wolves and the lions and the ultimate death. That the existence of death is beautiful.