Pluggers, 5/11/22

The historian Ronald Syme wrote that the Emperor Augustus, who died at 77, "outlast[ed] the friends, the enemies, and even the memory of his early days," and I think about that a lot as I get older, about the way that, if you're lucky enough to live to a ripe old age, you become something of an alien, as the world you grew up in recedes further and further in the past. And what do you get by way of compensation? Well, there's more life, I suppose, which is not to be sneezed at. And old age maybe takes the edge off a bit by softening our vision and our minds, so we come to perceive the world through a comforting and gradually thickening haze. Unfortunately, modern society and so-called "advanced" medicine has allowed us to reverse this process, so that we can see, with abrupt clarity, the ruin that we have become. As usual, Pluggers, a strip I have been forced to respect more and more, has given me much to think about today.

Gil Thorp, 5/11/22