A More Pessimistic View

A letter in the April 1 issue had the plea “Do Something About Gun Violence” as its title. “Call your legislators. Join a group.” Somehow the writer is “filled with hope.”

 We’re now at an astonishing level of mass shootings. Will we ever be at the level of truly asking why?

 Community is gone. Social ties are in tatters. It’s about the nature of mass society in the possibly terminal stage of late civilizations. Now we can see more clearly why all civilizations die. They, most simply, consume their hosts.

Meanwhile, pathologies abound. Ever greater affronts to social existence, to the soul, mount, just as the affronts to a collapsing biosphere mount as never before. Pandemics arrive, one after the other, etc.

Surface gestures do nothing but guarantee even greater levels of disaster.

John Zerzan

Eugene