When Salvo Magazine first came out a few years ago I subscribed. For whatever reason I let that lapse for a few years, and have just come back to it. Here is what they say about themselves as a publication.
A publication of The Fellowship of St. James (www.fsj.org), Salvo is dedicated to debunking the cultural myths that have undercut human dignity, all but destroyed the notions of virtue and morality, and slowly eroded our appetite for transcendence.
From an article that explores rising rates of prescription drug addiction (opiates) and overdose deaths…
One of the defining features of the modern culture is that it does not have a shared account of what constitutes happiness, or the good life. People can choose autonomously from any number of ideas of fulfillment, and any number of moralities, deciding for themselves which ones to follow. But such decisions are essentially arbitrary for there is no sure way to determine why one might be better than any other.
Without a common notion of the good life undergirding it, the gift of autonomy comes with the curse of fragmentation, loneliness, and boredom. When the answer to the question “What is the purpose of my life?” is “Anything you want it to be,” but you have no way of knowing what is truly worth wanting, the result is not optimism but nihilism.
Dying to Feel Good – Heather Zeiger
Multiculturalists would have a field day with that kind of thinking. Are they saying there is one definition happiness and people must follow that? Not exactly. It’s more that there appears to be expanding cultural vacuums in a culture that people fall into, and to escape from it more and more of them appear to be turning to addictive behaviors as a coping mechanism. In this case it is opiates that were made widely accessible (Hydrocodone, OxyCotin, etc) by ‘science’ for pain management just in advance of the now decades long expanding addiction problem to them.
It’s an interesting piece of writing.
By the way. The magazine has always survived on subscription rates and donations–all of the ‘ads’ in the magazine are fake and use that space to make fun of the culture. You can check a few out here.
