The Flesh Failures: Back to the Future

Some time ago, I postulated that we were leaving behind the shadow of the "Long 1980s," and that we were about to see what came next.

As G.B. Trudeau's Uncle Duke once famously said, "Hellooo, more of the same!"

Except it isn't.

As Elizabeth Sandifer has explained:

The key thing to know here is that there exists a model of spiritual enlightenment in which enlightenment is a horrifying and bleak thing. The adjective I'm going to use for this sort of enlightenment - Qlippothic - is important. Basically, it suggests that there is a form of enlightenment that can be found by encountering and contemplating the darkest parts of humanity. The Qlippoth refer to the hollowed out, vacant, and rotted shells of spiritual concepts. And the whole radical idea of Kenneth Grant is that there's not actually a difference between those, which are basically the horrible nightmares within humanity, and actual enlightenment.

And that's what we seem to be living in, all too often--a hollowed out, vacant, rotted shell of the culture wars on the 1980s, all the old cliches and tropes, but with none of the belief, none of the hope, none of the conviction.

None of the life.

As Trudeau once wrote, "Backlash never plays like the original."