Friday, September 14, 2012

The Ubiquitous Tylers, Dylans, Camerons and Codys

Who wants 'Pop'... Riley, Jayden???

As the decline of civilization imploded into it's final entropic footprint, it's demise was witnessed first hand, and courtesy of WI-FI,  by the likes of the ubiquitous Tylers, Dylans, Camerons and Codys.  

There were so many abominable names given to children toward the end, that the facade of our societies better mirrored a hollywood soap opera, than anything resembling a civilization forged by our noble ancestors. 

In that time of The Great Forgetting, we had made a terrible mistake; we had abandoned naming our children after our Fathers and Mothers, and loving Grandparents, all in the name of asserting our child's 'individuality'. 

A monstrous precedent had been set, of naming one's child with stylish, trendy, designer names which had little or no connection to our collective lineage or ancestry. Names like Brooke, Britney, Taylor, Harris, Blake, Bryce, Hunter and Madison, had become 'all the rage'. It was trendy to name one's child's first name with an arbitrary surname. Old names, like Abraham, Martin and John, Tom, Dick and Harry were simply not considered 'cool' or interesting enough in those forlorn days. 

Yet sadly, we had somehow forgotten that 'a name' was something more eternal, something which should ultimately transcend the superficial packaging of our corporeal bodies. However, during that wanton and woeful era, consumer culture was engaged in the rabid and diabolical process of reducing all aspects of the human experience to that of a commodity.

When these children finally matured into adulthood, this disconnect would consistently and persistently prove to be a formidable challenge for them, and this reality was especially disheartening for those whose first names were either Dwayne, Dakota, Dylan, or Dallas… but in the end, it was the Codys who had suffered the most.

It was my generation though, who were most culpable for having betrayed this sacred trust. We had become so detached from our roots, and fallen so 'in love' with immediate gratification culture and the sensationalist celebrity provided by superficial ego. The cult of personality encouraged us to forget the simple fact that one's name is a link to one's past, and a chance to pass the spiritual baton from one generation to the next.

We had also seen how this base mindset had metastasized in simpatico with the sudden rise of 'Tattoo-culture', yet media-culture had been such a powerfully invasive force by the end of the 20th, and beginning of the 21st century, that it became all too easy to lose sight of our primal imperative, and the responsibility we had to our ancestors.

Sometimes this 'name game' would venture into the realm of the absurd. I can remember watching a professional baseball game once, and seeing a player whose first name was 'Jhonny'???!  Yes, that's right, JhonnyWeird, I know, but in the end, the joke was on him.

The belief was, that if a child was given an arbitrary or 'unique' name, let's say: 'Kayla', (or worse 'Keighlah' or even 'K'lagh') she would early in life begin to identify with her own 'uniqueness'. But actually, the opposite effect took place. Often, as the child matured into adulthood, it would begin to feel isolated and alienated from it's lineage, at times searching desperately for any ancestral connection or historical reference. 

Many of the young adults here in Nova Avalon have now since changed their first names to be in accordance with the souls of their forbearers. We now recognize, like those within more spiritually rooted cultures, that one's first name is a link to one's heritage, and a respect for those who had worked so hard, and sacrificed so much, to bring us a life of prosperity. And this was a fact made painfully apparent by our inevitable rendezvous with destiny.

Yes, trendy and ephemeral names came and went, yet even 'old' names like 'Adolf' had somehow managed to virtually vanish from planet Earth… not long after that very strange man had foolishly attempted to conquer and lay waste to continental Europe. Likewise, in our era, there are precious few Baraks, Osamas, Benjamins, and Mahmouds milling about... but then again, maybe those names have just simply fallen 'out of style'.


Future CT   Village 5, Nova Avalon.   Year 17 P.T.E.

1 comment:

  1. LOLs! And, let's not forget those pompous individuals who only went by a single name, like: 'Bono', Rihanna and Cher, just a few names taken from the pantheon of dysfunctional egoists.

    Ppierre

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