Bleak House is not merely the perfect title for a commodiously baggy 19th-century novel, but it can be seen as a dazzlingly claxon-clear metaphor to portray a failing society. A society shrouded in its foggy notions and bogged down in a seemingly endless search for any purpose for which it stands. Certainly, its potential remains not merely unrealized, but more than that, has become, it seems, unrealizable.
Now, whether this collapsing is due to the afflictions inherent in the residents of a house without a landlord, that is, in the acceptance by the majority of its tenants that they reside in a godless universe; or whether it has come to a head because of the negative accumulation of godly aspirations among the multitudes has become rather moot, don't you think? Bulldozers are unrequired to demolish that which is sinking under the weight of its own waste.
Looking about, no matter how piercing, or how casual one's gaze, one can see less and less reason not to welcome a rapid implosion of the whole godforsaken structure and a fervent desire to have it rebuilt upon a much sturdier foundation than mere "common living" quarters.
Conservatives are, surprisingly, because, counter-intuitively, it seems, those members of society who feel it most that we are in the throes of the utter destruction of our distempered temple to civilization, the "shining beacon on a hill", so to speak. Progressives, for their part agree with them, for when does "the Other" not recognize a part of himself in his opposite number? Only when not looking in the mirror, I would chance to guess.
Ironic, is it not, that the things we make believe are true and the things we refuse to believe are true haven't come crashing down upon us much sooner. It is only optimism and its counterpoint that has put off the Apocalypse this long. Optimism, however unjustified, is immanently more sustaining, must be the answer.
