by Chris Alexion, Copyright January 10, 2008, all rights reserved. 550 views
I guess I'm not quite done with the song "Believe" by The Bravery. Another great thing about Sam Endicott's lyrics is how the bridge shows up materialism for the enslaving system that it is:
I am hiding from some beast, but the beast was always here,
Watching without eyes, because the beast is just my fear
That I am just nothing–now it's just what I've become.
What am I waiting for? It's already done.
In one interview, Sam explains the band's name: "We're called The Bravery because that's the mindset I was in when I was writing the songs. Everyone in my age group wants to know what they're going to do with their lives. They all think that they're worth nothing and they're heading nowhere. People are drowning in these thoughts and I just got sick of it. I didn't want to be like that. The name is also connected with living in New York in this really weird time. People are constantly waiting for something bad to happen. I wrote these songs and formed this band to make sure I didn't get overcome by that sense of fear. That's what this band is about–standing tall and not being afraid."
The fear Endicott sees results from our flirtation with nihilism, a philosophy which holds that meaning is impossible; nothing really matters. And while it's great that a courageous few will stand against it, most people don't realize how closely related nihilism is to today's acceptable Darwinian, materialistic evolution.
"Materialism" means simply the view that nothing but matter exists–no spirit, no soul, no God or devil. Somehow, preexistent matter gave rise to life, which slowly developed into more complex living forms. Eventually we get humanity, but there's nothing particularly special about man. He's kind of smart, a good tool user. A collection of chemicals. Nothing more.
The key word is accidental. Everything happens by chance. Logically, then (not that logic means anything in a nihilistic worldview), even the thoughts in our heads would be the accidental by-products of random neuron firings. Ironically, that gives us little reason to trust the materialist's explanation of the world; as C. S. Lewis pointed out, it's like upsetting a milk jug and then expecting the shape of the spill to describe how and why the jug was upset. One person happens to think "atheistically" and another might think "theistically," but the difference is like preferring Pepsi to Coke.
In other words, if humanity is nothing more than an accidental collection of molecules resulting from some previous accidental explosion, there seems little use in trying to explain anything or make something of oneself. To use Endicott's phrase, the "beast" of fear is inescapable, because it's housed in our very worldview. The last line has a dual meaning: In one sense, Endicott points to the foolishness of waiting; There's nothing to wait for. Everything's over before it begins. The other meaning has to with Endicott's fear of being a "nothing"–he realizes that the atheistic worldview already makes us nothing anyway. It's already done.
Humanity's secret fear is that being human, in the end, really has no meaning. But as Endicott points out, living that fear only feeds the beast.
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