Stop for a moment, and take a breath.
Slow down from the monotony and bleakness of modern life and look back at a world, now perhaps shunned by modern media and critics, but a world nevertheless still at your fingertips.
The world the Romantics walked, a world of unregulated pleasure at art, beauty, literature, and an unbounded appreciation of nature, a world where one may consume entertainment and yet live free from the shackles of society, where one may drink from the earth’s nectar of poetry and song without worry of responsibilities or pressures.
This, is the life (or perhaps simply the eye, covered by rose-tinted glasses) of the Neo-Romanticist, and this is what I have made my life’s purpose; perhaps it could be yours too?
To be more precise, my personal definition of “Neo-Romanticism” is the perspective that (perhaps founded on modern absurdism) life has no inherent meaning or goal, and it is up to the individual to create one; for Neo-Romantics, this is the very same that the Romantic writers and poets of yore sought, the enjoyment of art, nature, and all things pretty, without concern for the harsher plights of life (or, if one wishes, a romanticised view of just that), but filtered through the troubles and joys of a modern, 21st century life.
Before I sing it’s praises any further I might mention the detriments of such a philosophy: most you will meet that hold this view will likely be self-obsessed, so-called “deep-thinkers” that take up the study of such things as literature and art because they believe it makes them seem more appealing, while caring not for it’s deeper intricacies.
To be a Romantic, or in truth a critical-thinker in any sense, one must maintain the most humble, inquisitive, and self-conscious of personas.
Yet aside from these arrogancies one can truly find a fulfilling and (in my experience) learned life in Neo-Romanticism, a compelling escape from the trials and tribulations of contemporary responsibilities and the increasing public stigma toward intelligence and media-literacy.
I see everywhere (primarily on social media) the shunning of critical thought and it’s effects on youth; and perhaps most damning of all: the treatment of artistic, romantic subjects like literature and philosophy as “useless” and “a waste of time,” simply because they do not earn the wage that, for example, a STEM job might.
The world is more critical of passionate pursuits than ever, drowned and blinded by corporate greed; and in this modern world it is all the more necessary to fall back on philosophies and centuries of work regarding true foundational pleasures of human life- chiefly, the Romantics.
So I urge you, reader; the next time you sit and admire the beauties and intricacies of nature, or you take up your pen for pleasure and not out of duty, think about how your life might be if you indulged in scholarly pleasure and pursuits, and made Neo-Romanticism your calling, as it is mine.
