Archive Keeper | A Preface on Beauty and Meaning
Written by Archive Keeper
Editor's Note: The following is a lightly edited written transcription of Archive Keeper's video published on March 29, 2025.
"Beauty is vanishing from our world because we live as though it did not matter."
Nowhere is this more obvious today than in architecture. An average hewn stone church from small town America a century past is an architectural marvel today — something a modern builder would struggle to reproduce.
A typical bungalow-style house that fills the interiors of midsize cities, built some 80 years ago, features craftsmanship and woodwork that are now available only to the upper echelons of our society, who have, for the most part, decided against it. The elites of today choose sleek, modern, minimalist designs over intricate woodwork created by a skilled craftsman.
What caused this? And what does it have to do with a trading card game that’s only a few years old?
My answer to that question is also the reason I’m setting out to make videos: our world is primarily characterized by apathy, a place we were led by a century of following the path of least resistance. This is a trajectory that has been put on a world-record speed run by smartphones and social media, causing most of us to entertain ourselves to death and leaving the rest of us bowling alone.
None of these are new ideas; I’m repeating things you’ve doubtless heard more interesting and better-informed people discuss in the past. I hope to fight that apathy; to fight the decay of art and beauty in our world; to fight our culture’s descent into loneliness.
One of J.R.R. Tolkien’s subtler critiques of modernity came in the shape of his ages:
- The first age saw near-perfect good fighting near-perfect evil.
- In the second age, the Valar stepped back, and Morgoth was weakened; in general, the good had become less good, but the bad had become less bad.
- The third age was a continuation of this — Sauron was a pitiful shadow of even his own former power, and Saruman is comparable almost to an angry despot in our own time.
What Tolkien noticed, and what we are living through even more powerfully now, is that the world is inexorably and persistently experiencing a reversion to the mean.
One hundred years ago, our buildings were more beautiful, and our culture valued its dress, art, and music. But, one hundred years ago, life was also, by modern standards, fairly brutal. In 1925, 140 of every 1,000 newborn babies died as infants; today, that number is seven.
As time goes on, everything becomes more bland — the bad less bad, but the good less good. Our culture was once inspired by the bitterness of life to create remarkable things. To fight great evil, you must manifest a greater good. Today, so many great evils have been vanquished, it’s easy to understand why we stopped creating greater goods - why, as a society, we collapsed in on ourselves after too many years of complacency.
I fear that our contentment has slid fully into apathy. Because of it, our world is actually sliding — not even slowly towards a grey, meaningless middleground, but backwards into darkness. I fear that we are so content that we aren’t noticing the beauty and wonder vanishing from our world as Sir Roger Scruton did.
When eventually the final vestiges of the last age are gone - when our art, literature, music, and architecture finally run out of the fumes that they’ve been running on for decades, my fear is what we will be left with, and maybe what we have already resigned ourselves to is a bleak, empty world.
"The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference."
—Elie Wiesel, Holocaust survivor
I want to fight this growing indifference with passion. I want to use this outlet as an antidote to apathy. As silly as it may seem, I believe that in some small way, Sorcery: Contested Realm, as a card game, is doing much to fight all of this, and I intend to help.
Great Art Engenders Optimism
Art speaks to our soul, awakens our passion, wonder, and hope. Sorcery builds itself as a game on top of a bedrock of beautiful art, an emphasis that’s evident to anyone who has ever opened a booster pack of it.
People need each other for companionship and purpose. A good friend is a rest and reprieve from a cruel world. Sitting down at a table with friends and strangers to bond over a card game is a powerful experience.
In an age where relationships are increasingly digital, a card game fills one of our deepest needs to sit down with someone else, in the same place, at the same time, for the same purpose and to say, “I want to experience this with you; to share in this; help each other become better. I want you to enjoy doing this with me, because I enjoy doing it with you."
Support Eternal Durdles on Patreon
Antidote to Apathy
My goal is to bring my passion for playing and collecting this beautiful game to you, to serve as an antidote to apathy. If this seems like a lofty goal for a niche trading card game content creator, I would remind those concerned of the words of esteened Senator Jefferson Smith, played by Jimmy Stewart in 1939 film Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, on the floor of the US Senate:
"Lost causes are the only ones worth fighting for.”
To achieve this goal, I will do things differently. These essays may be more about flavor and less about facts; more about excitement and wonder than value or statistics. They will have an optimistic bent, not because there’s nothing to criticize or because healthy criticism isn’t essential, but simply because other, better-qualified people are already doing that well. They will be successful if I’ve created something that edifies my viewers, something that wasn’t here before.
It’s well past time I plant my flag and strive for something greater. It may as well be this. That’s the wonderful thing about fighting apathy — really, anything will do. To care about anything at all that’s outside of yourself is to fight the good fight. This is the quixotic call that my passion for card games has driven me to, and I’d be honored if you’d join me.
Welcome to the Archive Keeper series.
Submit Your Article To Eternal Durdles!
Want to write for EternalDurdles.com? DM @ForceofPhil on Discord, Twitter, or BlueSky.
Subscribe to Common Sense Sorcery Podcast on YouTube!
Subscribe to Eternal Durdles on YouTube!
Featured image: Kairos the Archivist by Ed Beard Jr.