“I sat in the dark and thought: there’s no big apocalypse. Just an endless procession of little ones.” –@neilhimself
Once upon a time, there lived a race of beings called homo sapiens that were extremely resourceful. They tamed the wilds of their environment, survived inestimable natural threats, and crossed oceans on tall wooden structures called ships. /1
They invented all sorts of ingenious contraptions and tools to improve their lot in the rugged default state called life. Things like the wheel, cloth, and the spear. Simple stuff, elegant and invaluable. From there, they just kept building and expanding. /2
Eventually they created wondrous civilizations and touched every inch of the planet, went to space, and created markets of ideas that incubated the most outrageous and brilliant thoughts into full fledged technologies that improved standards of living by orders of magnitude. /3
Then their crowning achievement, a place called America where the capacity for free inquiry, civil rights, and material prosperity reached unprecedented heights and was so well known that millions began to take it for granted that humanity guarantees comfort and convenience. /4
In fact they were able to create a society with economic mobility so fluid that more people in the poorest 20% of the population made it out of that depressed state than the number who stayed in it. This hadn’t happened anywhere before on the planet through 1 million years. /5
Resourcefulness continued to be their strength and defining characteristic. At one point (recently as it were) the average American hominid could remember long number sequences, navigate w/ the sky, repair machinery, & recognize the names and properties of plants and minerals. /6
Inevitably, as with most heroes’ journeys they fell upon dark times. They took cruelty, violence, greed, and nihilism to previously unseen low points. But being the resilient bunch that they were, they bounced back and didn’t let it define them. /7
But all their successes took a toll. They got lazy. They invented computers powerful enough to store and instantly recall all of the world’s collective knowledge from small devices that everyone wore on their person. People slowly and then suddenly stopped to think critically. /8
Average people stopped writing by hand, charting the movements of celestial bodies, recognizing signs of health, remembering key facts, making their own food, or doing the math. When you could push a button or speak a voice command and get what you wanted, what was the point? /9
One of these people’s best thinkers, said that if you took a jungle highlander out of his habitat and put him in a modern city he’d need a few months to create a good life. But if you took a city dweller and put him into the bush he’d be dead in a week. @JaredMDiamond /10
For all their modern marvels, they became soft, prisoners of their own success. Their innovations so impressive and sophisticated that no single individual had any idea how to manage them. Precious fewer even cared. Just as long as the food and energy showed up… /11
So it went. Until it got worse. For they began to notice a hole in their own lives the very shape of their creator. Feverishly they attempted to fill the hole, first with pride, then gold, then finally with their accumulated intelligence and technical wizardry. /12
And so it was that the nation’s denizens surrendered their personal sovereignty. All their compounded wisdom led them to a crossroads, a simple choice between freedom and security. These once great and proud Americans, fat and egoistic, happily chose comfort. /13
Many years later, descendants of their survivors looked back on the Americans and marveled at the structures they built, and all their mighty works, and they despaired. From the colossal wreck, boundless and bare, the lone and level sands stretched far away. /14
“This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang, but with a whimper.” -TS Eliot /The end
Originally tweeted by Joey Campbell (@jrok78) on March 7, 2021.