Modernity's Suffering

The structure was hollowed from the inside, made frail and malnourished. Wrecked and too apparent to deny, they hold still and pretend all is as ever, whispering soothing lies that everything will be okay.

They affirm every botch, failure, and compromise as wonderful, for to criticize implies someone could have done better. Demonstrative results prove otherwise, obviating debate.

Nothing materializes except perpetual struggle, loss, and self-defeat. Desperation provokes desperate actions, the unnecessary deemed essential, the essential ignored, the inoperable assigned demands it can't possibly perform, and with all direction lost, escape is sought in a haze of fantastical delusion.

It cannot endure inspection, so defends against it.

The chaos is interesting in that it gives an endless supply of new problems to push back against -- always work to do, accepted as important so long as you don't trace its origins to inherent structural defects that even a government inspector could immediately notice.

This trivial toil achieves nothing and drives away all purposeful activity. Operose nihil agunt!

The once-taut thread begins to fray. The implications are too apparent. You try to reason with it, then sensing defenses, switch to manipulation and pacification. Maybe it will turn aright or come to sudden awareness? Can life prevail? -- surely, assuming the malignant and chaotic spontaneously self-organizes to eternal principles.

The boat noticeably takes on too much water; they turn manipulation and pacification on themselves to avoid the psychological damage of the needless spectacle. Denial is a delicious opiate.

This is why truly devoted terrorists blow themselves up.