Dallas Green of City And Colour has penned what I believe to be the best lyric of the last decade in his 2019 song, Strangers. The second verse goes thus:
We look to the heavens above
For advice on our lives,
Searching for God
In the bottoms of bottles
And in strangers’ eyes.
We’re living in desperation,
Drowning in medication,
Lost in the folly of our age.-Dallas Green, City And Colour
No lyric that I’ve seen, captures better the empty nihilism and pointless pursuits of this current generation, than Strangers. Now, I have no delusions that Green is religious in any meaningful sense so I don’t think he is referencing God, as in a sovereign being. The verse opens with the following metaphor: ‘We look to the heavens above for advice on our lives’; or in other words, in this directionless age, people look everywhere for meaning and purpose. ‘God’ in his usage (Searching for God…) is a search for meaning. They have rejected the traditional mores of generations past and this dismissal of the old modes of guidance has left them empty and wanting, walking a nihilistic path of despair; always searching and never finding.
They look for significance, as is in our nature as humans to do, in places that only serve to strip real meaning from their lives. They search for ‘god‘ or meaning, in the ‘bottom of bottles and in strangers’ eyes‘ which is in alcohol and casual sex. Alcohol is used as a drug to cauterize hearts and minds from despair and hurt, and they think casual sex with near total strangers will fill the void of loneliness in their lives. What they’ve done is assume lust and love are interchangeable; they’ve wanted to feel a real connection with someone and have realized that sex devoid of emotion, while enjoyable in the moment, has left them more lonely than they ever were before. The pursuit of pleasure on its own is a trap; the more pleasure we garner, the greater our need of it grows, and the greater the void we need to fill. Pleasure as a sole/soul pursuit will empty their lives of contentment when it’s divorced from anything meaningful.
People are living lives of desperation and they’ll use all manner of drugs to help themselves cope; from alcohol to illicit drugs that promise a temporary high but deliver them into addiction and harm, to prescription drugs and anti-depressants, which are being used at alarming rates, to cope with the stresses and anxieties of every day life. Their emptiness drives them and they look to fill it with drugs, alcohol, and sex, to alleviate their pain and responsibility, if only for a few hours, only to find they are left more empty than before. And the cycle repeats itself. They have believed the lie that substances can soothe them, that casual sex can make them feel wanted. But they are left used up, lonely, and addicted with no way out of their nihilism. That indeed, is ‘the folly of our age‘ that they are lost in.
Folly is such an apt word to describe how most people live: foolishly with a lack of good sense in how to live a content and full life. They pursue the short term thrill of alcohol, drugs, and sex at the expense of their long term health and mental well-being. They have nothing to believe in, nothing to guide them; they are functional atheists lost and drowning in their own nihilism. Until they put away the substances that enslave them, and live purposeful vibrant lives with direction, and pursue worthy things of value, their folly will continue to keep them in crippling anxiety, fear, and depression. This is an empty and lost generation and I fear it will take some calamitous events to quell the decadence and return us to a way of life filled with meaning and purpose; with joy and contentment which seems in short supply.