2022 already feels like a period piece. Nature has become so cannibalizing, so self-cannibalizing, that nothing remains vital or vibrant or fresh for more than a nanosecond. Memes, scenes, ideas, theories, form and un-form. Everything in the chattersphere distracts us from the fact that there's really no meaningful progress or egress. There's a sickening stuck quality to life now.
As the recession deepens and becomes clear, we won't be able to consume. At the same rate, to console ourselves, what's left of the spirit—its scars—will be laid bare.
Someone from Hellenic civilization or late antiquity—which has lived entirely in the digital public sphere, in the forum—would simultaneously be baffled by, and recognize, hyper-modern civilization, which is lived almost entirely in the digital forum.
Privacy and silence are quickly revealing themselves as historical anomalies.