Surviving the Test of Time

Photograph of the Apollo Temple at Side
By M. C. Dutt

Surviving the Test of Time |
Wednesday – August 12, 2026

Time is a real menace, O' Lord... But do not fear. Do not fear, for in the end only confrontation with our perceptions may provide insight and pain. Yes, becoming me, becoming you, is painful and you will resist, your brain, as the profane scientist would put it, will resist, as it should, and some would even go as far as to assert that this is for your own good. But one thing is clear: some people, some ideas, some cultures, and some conditions survive the test of time, while others simply perish – this is perhaps the best case for conservatism. The Apollo Temple in Side featured in the picture in the upper right corner has thus far survived the test of time but barely. Whatever happened to most ideas of say the previous century? Almost none of them survived, as should have been the case and as will be the case with whatever monsters that will emerge out of this epoch in the peculiar history of humanity, for in the end almost all of it will be for nothing, as it should be and indeed as the case must be, for better and for worse. Now, there may come occasions where newer and emergent generations may find the need to correct the path of the old, or rather intervene on behalf of the old, on behalf of memory, so that some knowledge can be carried forth to newer generations, and this is truly a noble act and goes to show that still there is some sparkle of true wisdom within humanity, though ever fading, and I suppose that for each new generation there are new mutations inherent in the information being carried forth, which is one reason why the moderns are so obsessed with the concept of evolutionism,* or at least this is how they perceive of their ideas and inventions, read "My Views on the Progress Maxim", but even their evolutionism must survive the test of time, which is why the concept of mutations carrying the eggs that will lay the foundations of the future, of the next generation is so devious, for it allows for the constant redefinition of the present in order to suit the agenda of the day, read "Ideological Indoctrination" and "The End of History". Of course, this drama, this love triangle like Columbine and Pierrot, is a self repeating tragicomic incident that we may never resolve, for these things must not be resolved; if we actually wanted to resolve this recurrence we would actually be forced to gain higher, supra-human, knowledge, something that appears quite impossible in these days of disease and decay.

    Yes, the so-called "mutational load" or "mutational factor" is growing at an alarming rate and the culture, the tradition, is suffering, but to tie this to my previous statement: do not fear, for what we are currently engaging in are observations, we are taking note without positioning ourselves in the currents of our times; reall, we are floating above the waves, and some scholars would argue that we are "riding the wave". Now of course, the wave that is heading in our direction is an enormous tidal wave capable of erasing the last and, what appears to be, the most permanent fixtures of the great tradition, read "My Views of the Unity of the Source". What we are considering here is how disease has been allowed to infiltrate our world; to this extent nothing more is required, and taking a position in this great confusion would only make you another countless victim. But the Apollo Temple here in Side is still not a victim, for time, destruction really, has not deemed it righteous for the Roman Empire to fall into the abyss beyond times' reach and beyond hope. Now, disease, disintegration, death, and drestruction, these are all forces that converge towards the same end, and as long as we should remain willfully ignorant of our own position in the universe, in this cycle, we ourselves should be lost to history, and really one might even say that we are lost to the universe, stuck outside the so-called "observable universe" – truly lost. If most of history lies beyond the "observable universe", I suppose we may never know what we have lost, which indeed is a tragedy, but this does also allow us to reach beyond hope, to enter into meditation and active presence, read "My Views on the Bodhicitta". The point is not to abandon the past; the point is to accept the present, and if you are unable to accept the present, you may at any rate find the ability to accept the fact that you are unable to change the present. Again, there is no hope in this state of clarity, but no hope is necessary, read "Radical Peace". In the end, only the luckiest among the brave may wash up on the shores – the rest will remain beyond the reach of time and outside the "observable universe". Indeed, let them... They deserve their fate, for their fate has been decided for them. Only aimless men, beasts really, deserve to drown in the ocean of the great depths of time, the great time, even though they may have begun in the lesser time, and even though they may have wandered on the shores of the lesser times themselves.

    Tragedy aside, as I stated in a recent post, the Apollo Temple and the Amphitheatre here in Side, to give an example has so far survived, but I strongly doubt that the same could be said about the cars, the aeroplanes, and the other inventions of the mechanistic struggle. The Roman Empire is still relevant, and still one could say that all roads lead to Rome, and that the Emperor remains nonpareil in the history of man. Well, that last statement may be somewhat hyperbole, but I am here arguing from a present point of view; after all, here the Roman Empire makes itself ever apparent, and to a lesser extent the same could be said about Greece, but Ancient Greece is of course much more lost to history than Ancient Rome; the temples here in Side should be enough proof of this, and the fact that on the Roman Temples it is written in Greek, as if to suggest that the Roman mutation of the old Greek world was so inevitable that it had to be written in stone, which it indeed has been. Now, do mind that scaffolding, for without it there may be no Roman history tomorrow, and subsequently no point of reference for the Western world, a point that we are quickly approaching, read "Can Western Civilization be Restored?". The scaffolding of history and of memory is all that remains...

Reginald Drax (AKA, M. C. Dutt) – August 12, 2026.

Footnote(s)

* For more on this, I direct you to my post: Naturalism and Its Confused Opponents.