Has Humankind Sunk Into a Fetal Position?

Is this still the childhood of civilization? After all human kind is only 5000 years old (give or take), allowing 2000 for AD or AC and 3000 for BC which takes us back to Ancient Greece and the Peloponnesian Wars. The mythologies of the great heroes, Odysseus and Achilles and conflicts like The Trojan War, mediated by Gods such as Zeus occupy a space of imagination outside history—that also informs historical memory and the history of culture. “Judith Beheading Holofernes” was a subject undertaken by both Caravaggio and Artemisia Gentileschi. But what about adolescence and early adulthood? There is Jaques “Seven Stages of Man” speech in As You Like It. Will human life itself end up “sans teeth, sans eyes, sans everything?” The scale of conflagration only increases. It feels as if history has gone from being Stephan Daedalus’ nightmare to a flesh eating bacteria. The wonderful thing about B movies such as Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) and Night of the Living Dead (1968) is that they offer a vision of value free horror and misery that is oddly in tune with this moment in time. Perhaps civilization has sunk back into a fetal position.

Listen to "Shake Your Groove Thing" by Peaches and Herb