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The Arrogance of the Present

How, I wonder, do present people not
realize that what they do has been done?
That all their new fads, their new ideas,
have all had their day under the sun.
That we have lived without religions,
that gay unions have happened before,
we’ve muddled up family structure often,
and have lived both as prudes and as whores.

We’ve lived ruled by the smartest people
who though they could just rewrite the rules,
we have tried so many permutations
and usually been made to look like fools.
We’ve done everything imaginable
to try and change basic human nature,
but point this fact out and today’s folk
get all red-faced and call you hater.

Even simple studies of history
will show how very often people are wrong,
the human soul craves the spiritual,
social slutiness never lasts that long.
Polygamous families lead to deprived kids,
while single-parents are overworked,
and missing fathers just lead to our sons
running around with gangs like jerks.

Yet somehow we think we’ll escape that,
I look on this and I wonder why?
What makes people think they are so special
that the trends of mankind they’ll defy?
When every generation that’s gone past
has fallen prey to the same damn conceit,
be it the flappers, hippies, or snowflakes,
why is it so hard for people to see?

Perhaps much of it is just ignorance,
especially among younger minds,
so plastic and inexperienced,
not yet schooled by the passage of time.
Young folks are usually so confident,
they have not yet learned they can lose,
and have no idea that even passion
cannot change the hard words of truth.

Perhaps the arrogance is just a belief,
a blind faith; things must always succeed,
that the universe must somehow ‘progress,’
an all-to-common human fantasy.
Thus we must be better than those before,
to think back on the past is disgrace,
I hate to tell minds that proffer such thoughts:
reality does not work that way.

Or Maybe it’s just an unwillingness
to admit that you made a mistake,
fear of admitting that you got it wrong,
that doing so might make the ego break.
Easier to ignore what you do not like,
to keep shouting with every breath,
you identity based on feeling ‘right,’
to give that up would be worse than death.

But then again is it death itself
that pushes arrogance subconsciously?
We puff ourselves up with grandiose thoughts,
vainly striving for immortality,
perhaps that’s why we act so important,
to hide from that inescapable fear:
knowing we’ll end up a name on a stone
no matter what we do with our time here.

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