Pies In The Sky, 1752 vs 2022

A French peasant, circa 1752, is living a bitter life, deprived of faith and sick from the injustice that can be seen all around.

His neighbour, also a poor peasant, has a solid faith and lives a serene life, watered by his hope in a better one to come.

It is a big paradox of the universe that the most important thing of this life it’s actually not in it, because it is what happens when this life ends.

Some, unable to understand – or better said, to accept in serenity and obedience – this simple fact of life, did all they can to ruin this life before completely destroying all hopes of happiness in the next. Others, who had that serenity and obedience and, therefore, understood, created a better life for them on this earth before an inconceivably happy one in the next.

What does this tell us? A Believer is not deciding to suffer now, so that he may live better later. A believer is deciding to embrace now whatever suffering is sent to him, and make of it fuel for serenity in this life, and happiness in the next.

How bitter it must be to be an atheist, both in 1752 and today. To see some born beautiful, rich and happy, and other deformed, poor and resentful.To see everything that does not work, and believe that there is no second dimension in which everything works out right, and a sense is made of every injustice. To live, perhaps, in strict contact with iniquity, and knowing that at the end of it there will be no consolation and no justice, only a meal for worms.

Is it, today, so much different from rural France, circa 1752? Today is not rural France in the middle of the XVIII Century, but many a young software engineer in San Francisco or accountant in New York must feel not very differently, when he realises that he is, like countless of his pears, working 50 or 60 hours a week in a qualified job, but still living hand-to-mouth with no possibility in sight of even buying a place to call his paid home in retirement; a destiny which, in fact, has more than a passing similarity with the one of the peasant; a peasant who certainly worked less, had no student debt, possibly owned a small cottage, and had a lot of time for his family, friends, and simple leisure activities.

The new proletariat is, or so it thinks, well educated and very intelligent. It thinks of itself as intelligentsia, cultural elite, spearhead of a new world. But it is still that: proletariat, useful cogs in a huge machine that does not even allow them to buy a place they can call their own. Only, the new proletariat has no prole (can’t afford them anyway), no faith, and no quality of life. Their existence is, often, dominated by the constant apologies to someone they have offended, the terror of being considered racist or cut off from their acquaintances’ social media, the excruciating choice of which flags to put beside their profile, and the constant bitching about what goes on in some remote part of the planet or, for the most advanced, about what is going to happen with the planet itself. For the Modern Peasant, being miserable is an entire way of life.

So we see that the situation, compared to 1752, hasn’t really changed, only the angry people are way more, and they likely live a much worse life. There are, also, the happy ones. But, particularly in great cities, they seem to be a minority. Bitterness, resentment, fear, and insecurity (about the future of the planet, their own future, even their own sexual identity!) seems to be the mark of the 2022 atheist.

Miserable then, and miserable now. But now there is a Twitter handle, a rainbow flag, a collection of pronouns, likely one or more abortions, and the same quiet desperation of walking toward nothingness. As to food, entertainment, free time, and friends: the 1752 peasant guy probably wins hands down.

Meanwhile Good Peasant, 2022 Edition, lives a serene life in the Lord, hopes for better times but has no illusions on humanity’s improvement, lives in serenity, suffers in faith, and dies in hope.

Then as now, he gets a better life down here.

And he gets the pie in the sky, too.