" A long period of rot " . That was my old friend Ed Maguire thinking about the future of the USA way back in 1973. Ed died of a heart attack just before he turned 40 in 1990.
I don't know of ANY cure for depression in the later years. Cheap red wine might be as effective as dreamy metaphysical fantasy . My niece -now in her mid thirties- just had a first child, beautiful baby girl - a prescription for hope, I guess.
There is solace in the thinking of the Roman philosopher Lucretius . But I can't get over his ending that beautiful epic poem " On the Nature of Things " with those last horrible images of the great plague in Athens. The last pages of Saint Augustine's " City of God " were less depressing- unless you were among the wicked damned.
Well another wild Irish common man philosopher friend ( Vietnam War veteran ) of mine said : " Life sucks and then you die " . He died at 63 . He did keep his hospitable refrigerator full of beer. I did scold him - in vain - to stop smoking. He always called me " Radical Ron ".
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