Cataclysm

There is no beginning to this story, as there is no end. It's just the relentless unfolding of events with neither context nor resolution. There's no time to learn either about or from and if you try, you'll be washed away into irrelevancy by the frenetic pace of developments, issues, and incidents. We see, react, move on. See, react, move on.

There's a murder. There's killing spree. There's a genocide. Do we know them? Nobody knows them until everybody knows them. It's our genocide. We are genocide. We're the victims. We are complicit. What is complicity? There's a school shooting. There's a plane crash. There are more, there are many. There are guns, bombs, drones. There's an election. There are more, there are many. There's voter fraud, more, many. There's a car crash. There are riots. There's a car crash in a riot. Was it accidental? How could it be accidental? You'd be an idiot for thinking this. You'd be an idiot for thinking that. You'd be an idiot for thinking. There's a dictator. There's another. There are more. There are many.

The constant, uninterrupted spin and spill of news; the scrolling chyron eating up events and hungry for more. BREAKING: Assassination; BREAKING: Natural Disaster; BREAKING: War Declared; BREAKING: Illegal Deportations; BREAKING: Genocide; BREAKING: Everything. It was a numbers game. Like a tv show that had to build a sense of urgency with each episode and season, cranking up the threat with each climax at the bottom of Act 2, the news tickers needed bigger. 1 CEO = 2 Senators = 150 school kids across 10 schools = 2,000 riots = 50,000 brown foreigners in a far-flung land. All measured in ratings, in thoughts and prayers. In violence.

Some said, "We didn't know life was so cheap," and some said, "It has always been." From the Colosseum to The Hanging Tree it has always been.

Historians studied the patterns, scientists studied the impact, artists studied the expression. Everybody produced more and more material -- reports, dissertations, books, music; all was fed into the chyron, all was grist for the mill. The conspiracy theorists seemed to produce the most material. When you don't know how anything works, everything seems like a conspiracy. Rainbows, space travel, aliens, diseases, creepypasta and cryptids, the Death of Diana, and the Assassination of Abraham. Conspiracy theories became an industry and an area of expertise under anthropology.

By this time all power, art, and science was largely driven by shame, greed, and nihilism. The world was on fire, any local or national crises were immediately global. We were force-feeding ourselves every morsel of unfolding and impending doom and at the same time committing the small daily rituals of subsistence; work, dating, sports events, art galleries, cinema, tv. Wake up, breathe, keep breathing. Time after time.