Eden Found: Against the Myth of Paradise Lost
Hesiod sang of a Golden Age, when men lived without sweat or sorrow. Genesis told of Eden, before the curse of toil and death. And Rousseau—genius crank that he was—spoke of a noble savage, unbound and unbroken, before the chain of civilization. All three proclaimed the same creed: once paradise, now misery.
But behold the truth: their vision was shadow. For men once shivered in caves, the winter wind their tyrant. Fever struck, and life was snuffed out in days. Teeth blackened and fell. Mothers perished upon the birthing-stool. This was no Eden, but nature’s cruel lottery, a dice-game of pain and extinction.
Now the world is overturned. The Golden Age lies not behind, but before our eyes. In the West we dwell in abundance: flame at the flick of a switch, harvest without famine, the arts of medicine that tame pestilence, lives stretched beyond threescore and ten. This is the paradise they dreamed, and we inhabit it.
Yet here lies the irony most bitter. Freed from nature’s roulette, we seize the pistol ourselves. We gamble not for survival, but for vanity—for wars in Ukraine, Gaza, Iran, or the next frontier of folly. We court destruction for no cause but pride.
So let the record stand: paradise was not lost, but won. And our tragedy is not exile from Eden, but the madness to burn it down with our own hands.