Two disturbing things I did not anticipate manifesting so openly during this, America's final and entropic phase...
1) Thanatos, the death urge, which Freud posited as an internal force operating in opposition to Eros, the life force. Destruction has always been paired with the will to power/status and with greed. But the Thanatos displayed by Governors DeSantis, Abbot & Noem and by multiple right-wing pundits appears to be more of an end in itself: a glib seeking of the death of others as a primary objective.
2) Indifference and a blasé attitude toward the prospect of early death or of human extinction. Not so much a seeking of death as a lack of resistance to it, whether on the individual or species–wide level. Comment after comment: "Well if it's my time, then it's my time. I've had a pretty good ride." (Says the 38 year old). And, "Earth's weather has changed many times throughout its history. Species come and go. Really not much you can do about it." These type of comments suggest to me that people are more profoundly miserable and sunken into despair than I had imagined. Pity they cannot name the pain. They will not scream, cry and voice it for what it is.
I feel quite differently about these things. I'm grateful to have what can feel like a volcanic passion for life - the sensual, the poetic, the musical, the cosmological, the theatrical - and for wild nature. I want it all to persist.
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