80 The Malaise

Humanity could deal with the Malaise. Waves of discontent said otherwise.

Was it a ticking bomb hardwired into our DNA? Or Chaos theory, the infinite number of small perturbations throughout history summating, finally?

A malady, passed not from person to person but from the æther to the soul, relentlessly emptied so invaded.

Beauty remained only as the standard against which ugliness was judged. Charity survived only when tax-deductible. Music still moved people, but atonality segregated those listening from those who simply heard.

The pure of heart, resisting the Malaise, were called uncool and neo-Luddites. They were also called non-seculars, which were fighting words.

Untethered to Creation, the devout of organized religions experienced, euphemistically, a time-out for re-evaluating the meaning and sacrifice of devotion. From there a defiance matured into an agnostic apostasy.

Financial markets crashed, recovered, and then crashed again. Market corrections reset the stock averages, making billionaires millionaires and made millionaires start over.

Doomsday apologists began announcing Judgment Day. No one took them seriously; but no one laughed at them, either.

Mental quirks and tics increased. Scientific journals debated whether there was an increase in the incidence of autism or whether there were just new subcategories previously unrecognized. People began claiming they were seeing more ghosts than usual.

Suicides spiked.

Children exhibited an underlying sadness. Cancer patients gave up their brave fights, becoming cowards. An insidious surrender said that nothing mattered. Crime increased.

Dogs didn’t understand it, but they didn’t care; cats did, but also didn’t care.

People became different. They quarreled more often and more viciously. Divorce became the expected, natural consequence of marriage, as its anti-sacrament. Parenting suffered; delinquency increased.

The young determined the new spirituality--hollow, portending poorly for the last churches that remained empty.

There was a lifespan, life during it, and nothing after. Self-indulgence became existentialism. Countless generations had evolved convolutions around the brain to suppress the amygdaloidal thinking of everyone’s private reptile, but the Malaise engendered devolution.

A new paradigm, once inscribed on cavemens' walls, re-emerged as the One Commandment:

If you want it, you take it: then it's yours.

It easily replaced the ten previously handed down from Mt. Sinai.

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AUTHOR'S NOTES:

Word count (excluding notes): 365

Submitted for Wednesday, March 20, 2024

2024: A Story-a-Day for the whole year. This one is #80.

Title picture is Rene Magritte's "The Castle of the Pyrenees," 1959. 

Ending picture "The One Commandment," from divinely inspired A.I.

Story background: Every generation experiences a culture shock when they are replaced by the next generation(s). The world that's replacing theirs--they don't like it--they don't get it. Yet, history's older generations have perennially complained about how rotten things have gotten by the time they hand off the baton. That, not the Malaise, is the sentiment hardwired into our DNA. This story takes that idea to a twisted apocalyptic level: if each replaced generation is right, then things should be getting worse and worse until the final generation turns off the lights. With only the First Commandment (of one), who wants to live like that?