On Modernity

I truly believe that the loudness of youth is so deafening it drowns out even the echo of values past.
Attempts made to reintroduce defunct values, wrapped in nostalgia, and sold to the willing consumer are manufactured, as all values have been. The manufacturing of values happens in accordance with the time and place of their manufacturing; the current social climate dictates the heat with which values are promoted or destroyed. I see but one true, time tested value which may be more of a human obsession: progress.
Our understanding of progress gives it a positive value with setbacks only visible to those citizens of a time past. Progress, the game of hide and seek with modernity, has permeated every aspect of human life leaving values to either progress with progress or wither. The story of values is the story of the Tower of Babel; we seek deification via values only to have our egos backfire. We have truly made a mess of things, all in the name of values.
If you wanted to wanted to find the stoic preservation and memory of values past, where would you look? I would suggest the poor, the uneducated, the virgin spirit untouched by progress and the modern. I would also suggest you not look for them with the sands of modernity in your eyes.

This is a shortened version of an originally handwritten work.
- Alex