What is Modernity?

My worry is that, as alienating and bad as things are now, that the cessation of modernity might be followed by merely swapping one savagery for another. We like to believe that the world is growing less brutal and less violent, but the moral arc of the universe doesn’t bend towards justice: there is no arc. There is no absolute, inevitable progress. Everything that we get, we need to push for, fight for, argue for. It’s possible that the world might be a better and more just place if the modern era had never happened, but it has happened. If it is undone, it will most likely be undone through a great deal of suffering.

Living in the Burn Down

The world is burning down around us, and we’re going to work. We’re going to the grocery store and the laundromat and watching Netflix. We have no ability to productively imagine what we have to do in this situation, because the obvious option – taking to the streets, going on strike, making actual demands – are things that we have been conditioned not to do. We continue on as we have been, because the alternatives are either outright unimaginable or are the objects of horror and anti-fascination.