Leonard Cohen's Prophetic Vision

In Leonard Cohen’s “The Future”, the overarching theme is of a world inexorably spreading nihilism. What happens to human Being once humans come to evaluate their conduct in ways that no longer serve the growth and enrichment of human existence? Or at least, what happens when those human beings collectively capable of impacting on the rest of humanity, only evaluate human Being in such ways? Take this where you wish. It causes me to think of commercial culture in general, materialism as mere consumption and a general self centred seeking out of base stimulations serving mainly to marginalize the deeper more substantive human capacities; capacities whose development require a measure of self-denial, sacrifice and effort to bring about; capacities that serve to forge a world where attending to the suffering of human beings is more important than a tenth pair of shoes or privileging one’s in-group at the expense of the outsider.

“Things are going to slide in all directions
Won’t be nothing
Nothing you can measure anymore
The blizzard of the world
has crossed the threshold
and it has overturned
the order of the soul

When they said REPENT
I wonder what they meant”

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