SECTION I: CULTURE IS BREAKING
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The world you were handed was already broken before you arrived. The War of Wills begins with knowing what you are actually fighting.
We forgot how to gather (20), and so we the plebians were herded like sheep, around meaning which is not our own. This is where it started. We oversaw the death of local community (5) and shuffled meekly into the panopticon. Now, our Utopi-open-air prison cushions it's collapse with convenience (3), offered freely and accepted without question, until the accepting became the whole of our submission to Apathy.
Attention became prey (12) before anyone identified the shape of a predator. The algorithm stepped in where proud and respected elders once stood (8), and nobody noticed because the collapse of rites of passage (19) leaves no ceremony to mark the leaving of tradition. There is no before and after. Only during. Only the endless, scrolling during.
And every day man scrolls further from the path to progress, and is consumed by the perversions of chaos
Enter: Entertainment, who came swift and took permanent residence; (2) now the very furniture of our individual and shared identity has been rearranged. If we are not made to compare ourselves to others and cry out for what we do not have, we are made to hate ourselves for simply being who we are.
It seems, all that once was is now lost to us, and there is no trust in the powers that once held prestige. (4) What flavor of internet does your echo-chamber permit you to taste?
The Great and Ravenous Societal Sea of Discordia rewards noise over substance, (14) and thus, everyone began to perform. (6) Performance became indistinguishable from living, and living became a thing people watched other people do. Irony arrived as the shield (7) for those unwilling to be caught wanting something real. Cynicism circulated as currency (17) because it spent easy and asked nothing of the spender.
Craftsmanship was the last thing to go (15), because it could not be faked at the speed the culture required. Mastery followed shortly after (13), too slow, too private, too unfit for a distribution channel. Comfort completed the coronation (10) and called itself a reward.
Its congregation was full.
Its theology was simple:
feel nothing difficult, and worship that sacred numbness as peace
Why the hollowness (18)? Because the brands we handed our meaning to (9) were never built to carry it. They, like we, buckle. Because shared standards dissolved (16) and we lost meaning and all means of measurement.
What horror to realize that silence became terrifying (11) and we filled it with everything except the one voice that could have answered. It would confirm that everything is indeed fake now (1), and we are adrift in darkness.
We are broken. We are correctly reading a broken thing. The War Is Within, But Hannibal Is At The Gates; The Fabrications of Modernia Must Be Destroyed. Man drowns in the Sea of Discordia not because he lacks the ability to swim, but because he has been convinced drowning is living, through apathy. Build the vessel that will take you to greatness, cobble the path to progress and it will find you.
This is The Work Which IS Required, rather than the distractions that we have been persuaded to quickly and so completely to chase. This is The Way Forward; to Crusade against Apathy, and Campaign on the Chaos that invades the lands of our lives.
I will speak fire into you, but will you cast thunder upon your own life in return?
