Unanswered Questions... and then Some More

Back when I was a kid, a lot of questions popped inside my head the answers off which I thought I would be able to come across as I expose myself to more literature. Those questions troubled me deeply as a child, I felt I could not be at peace if I couldn't find the answers to them. Now that I have finished my post-graduate studies in Archaeology (though really, I need to immerse myself more in the discipline), I am disappointed to find that there really is no way of finding answers to those questions that baffled my childhood and adolescent years.

Looking back, I wonder how I could come up with the idea of origins. I would always wonder what life was before the present. Way way back in time. I think it must have sprung from my love for reading historical fiction where I am introduced to a time when girls wore long dresses, swords were THE weapon, and theatrical performances and folksy songs were THE entertainment. That question led me to ask many other questions, for instance, why do we need a government? How can man stomach the idea of being governed? (I obviously have been an anarchist ever since my childhood days.) Why are there rich and poor men? (I didn't buy the idea that some men are poor because they do not work hard, because as I have seen throughout the years, those men who work hard the most are those who are poor.) If nations do not agree with something, who do we turn to as authority? Is it possible to have a WORLD GOVERNMENT while respecting each individual culture as unique?

I have read so many books, though most of them fall under fiction since that is my sole escape from this mad mad world of trivialities and superficiality. As I read through each narrative and get inside the psyche of some of the characters, I begin to understand more about human nature. Why does man covet power? Why does man want to be put on a pedestal and be worshiped by his fellow men? Why does man seek after that which is not permanent? Why do man bother with so many things and cannot seem to like living simply and peacefully?

When you come to the point of not understanding why people behave the way they do because you have seen the vicissitudes of life and everything seems to be nothing in this tragic life of all humankind, you get depressed and disillusioned which then causes you to be on a seemingly perennial stump. Mankind has not learned from history. Mankind has not heeded the calls of a past which were marred with so much misery and tainted with too much blood. Mankind has ceased to converse with nature as in the olden days when shamans and priestesses conduct rituals and spend days on meditation as they listen to the voice of in the wilderness.

Having all these questions swirling inside your head makes you sick in the stomach, as you cannot fathom anymore the excesses and vices of the present. You cannot be at peace thinking why on earth you have been born in this kind of world where common sense, said to be common, is not so common at all? And because you cannot accept the fact that you ARE part of this society, that you part of the NOW, you feel like you are forever in bondage to the follies of man. It is that or you pack up your things, leave this world of nonsense, and live a solitary but simple life somewhere in the mountains.