There's been a pattern of me posting something critical of civilization and someone getting *really* mad and coming for me in replies. I was pondering this the past couple of days after the latest iteration of this phenomenon.
I came to the conclusion that the folks doing this are *terrified* and reacting like a wild creature that's backed into a corner. Lashing out in anger as a form of defense against the possibility that the Leviathan they've been embedded in since birth is actually a force for their destruction wrapped in a shiny package.
I was discussing this with my eldest, a very perceptive spawn of mine and he said it's existential dread on the level of eldritch horror. I can't say he's wrong.
The problem is, how can we have a discussion about this with people in feral wounded animal mode? It's one of the reasons I've come to the conclusion that we're not going to be able to walk away like the inmates of prior civilizations were able to do. We're going to have to ride the falling giant to its inevitable end and forage off its rotting corpse in the aftermath.
This makes me really melancholy. But then I remember back to when I was assimilating all the anti-civ stuff I was reading about a decade and a half ago, and how it made me feel like I was losing it for a while until I found a balance in my head, and I guess I can't fault folks for reacting like this. I've long lived on the knife edge of paradox of various kinds and am no stranger to navigating the cognitive dissonance that occurs while figuring out how to fit it into my worldview. Most folks just aren't, and can't, and we'll just have to sink or swim when the time comes.
