I must believe that I, and many people smarter and more learned and older (and hopefully wiser!), are wrong, too, that civilization is not in mass decline, the American / Western hollow-ism is more histrionics and fiction than fact, and that we can still connect to other people, form communities, give and receive love, and leave the analytical thinking and measurements and judgments in the box, on our desks, in our offices and cubicles where they belong.
I must believe this. If I need say it like a mantra, I will. I must believe this. I must believe.
I must believe.
Because, if I don’t believe in the fallacy of my own logic (and that of many people smarter and more learned and older and hopefully wiser) then why do we go on? If the point of man, of civilization, is for the continuation and propagation of man and civilization, but modern civilization is less about man – and so more about machines and processes and things – and less about civilization – and more about the indulgement in reptilian pleasures and self-gratifications – then, well?
So, yes, I must believe. And I do. I do.
I believe that the hollowism is real and on the rise; I also believe that the individual has a choice whether to live unconsciously, buying into it, or to consciously choose another way. You have. That gives me hope.