The Cycle of Decadence / The Opiate of Society

In addition to the grave political situation in the world today, we are witnessing the emergence of a wholly new situation, a crisis of unknown nature, one completely different, one entirely non-political. We're approaching a major turning point in world history, in the history of civilization. It can be seen in various areas by various specialists. I could compare it only with the turning point from the Middle Ages to the Modern Era, a whole shift of civilizations. It is a turning point at which settled concepts suddenly become hazy, lose their precise contours, at which our familiar and commonly used words lose their meaning, become empty shells, at which methods have been reliable for many centuries no longer work. It's the sort of turning point at which the hierarchy of values to which we are dedicated all our lives, which we use to judge what is valuable and what is not, and which causes our lives and hearts to beat, is starting to waver and may perhaps collapse.
And these two crises: the political crisis of today's world and the oncoming spiritual crisis, are ocurring at the same time. it is our generation that will have to confront them.
--Alexander Solzhenitsyn, 1975

Five basic reasons for the fall of the Roman civilization are listed by Cardinal Gibbons: [1] the undermining of the home, which is the basis for human society; [2] higher and higher taxes; the spending of public money for free bread and circuses for the populace; [3] the mad craze for pleasure; sports becoming every year more exciting, more brutal, more immoral; [4] the building of great armaments when the real enemy was within...the decay of individual responsibility; [5] the decline of religion; faith fading into mere form, losing touch with life, losing power to guide the people.
--The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

She comes and whispers that she's here
I watch the curtains sway with morning
Close your eyes and you will hear
The mice and men to her are calling

I drink her in again my bottle full of dreams
Every man's desire and queen she
Tucks me in beneath her heavy sheets in
Layers of gray
And kisses all my breath away

Sleep on son of man
The wind to you speaks
The skies are dimming and the pain is weak
Keep on dreaming
In my dreams I'm always free
When the Night Light shines her opiate on me.

Contented in my loneliness
I have been too long in slumber
Enchanted by her sweet carress
I have been too far and under

She is the earth, she is the pain, she is the cure
She is the cycle of my sanity
I've never lived without her cords inside electrocuting me
Is there any life outside of her?

Sleep on, son of man
The wind to you speaks
The skies are dimming and the pain is weak
Keep on dreaming,
In my dreams I'm always free
When the Night Light shines her opiate on me.
-(c) 2006 Florence McNair "Night Light"