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As with the previous chapter, chapter 10 really begins with chapter 9 verses 13 through 18. As stated earlier in chapter 1, there’s nothing new. What has been is what will be, what has been done is what will be done. It has all been done in ancient times before us.
As we ponder the maze of thoughts which have overwhelmed us as we try to find our way out, we realize we’re simply going in circles. We start where we ended, we end where we started and there’s no end to it. The mind battles with the heart, we cycle back through arguments we’ve already made to re-adjudicate them as if they’ve been presented to us for the first time.
One way to begin to find light at the end of the tunnel is to realize there is an order to things. There are some things which are better than others. Intuitively we all know there are objective guiding principles which dictate life. This was referenced in chapter 7.
5 There is an evil I have seen under the sun, as an error proceeding from the ruler: 6 Folly is set in great dignity, while the rich sit in a lowly place. 7 I have seen servants on horses, while princes walk on the ground like servants.
-Ecclesiastes 10:5-7 (NKJV)
I think this is the perfect verse to sum up this chapter. It says a lot. Nothing will make the consequences of the perversion of the proper order things more evident than having unqualified people in positions of power/ influence. A very real example of this today is the once prestigious Ivy League schools. It used to be a degree from one of these institutions would guarantee the holder a certain degree of fanfare by an adoring crowd. These days such degrees are becoming a joke. I’m seeing more and more very wealthy businessmen stating publicly they refuse to hire graduates of these institutions as their actual skills are questionable. These once great institutions have chosen to make the mistake of discarding merit for a participation trophy method of education. It’s taken some time for them to reap the harvest of the seeds they’ve sown but now, the crop is ready to come in.
Unfortunately, this inversion of reality also manifests itself in other ways as well. Good is now called evil, evil is now called good, etc. This is being seen across every aspect of our society, and the world. As the “theater kids” (performers/ slacktivist class, etc.) have been mistakenly enabled to believe that because they have specialized knowledge in one thing, their opinion on everything is valuable and unassailable, the world increasingly devolves into chaos.
But…
Why is it true that some things are objectively better than others? Why is there an objective form of truth? Why are there standards for best practices? From where do these principles come? How can what is crooked be made straight? How do we resolve the hot mess of all these micro-cycles within macro-cycles within meta-cycles which keep us endlessly spinning in circles?