Thread by @ebonstorm

AFTER THE PLAGUE
By Thaddeus Howze [@ebonstorm]

It has been said in
many a public place

“After the Plague
Came the Renaissance.”

Pithy, toothsome.
Rolls off the tongue.

It might have been
the truth once.
But that time is long past.

Alas, we haven't had
nearly enough plague
for a Renaissance.

The world will
return to normal
in a couple of years.

Then the return to
the race
to the bottom.

Where pampered,
“first world nations”
lord it over a world

Kept poor and struggling.
While their corporate masters
decide which elements

of our collective Humanity
to sacrifice
in the name of progress.

A world where nations wield
the Four Horsemen
like golf clubs.

Laying waste as they move across an ever-changing map of false borders, playing through, with devastation and lives lost, the score.

Who resists?
More and more often
The will has been worn away.

The populous, little more than
pleasantly distracted cattle,
fatten at the corporate trough,

Slaughtered in the ICU.
Regrettably,
at great cost.

Stripping away the
last vestiges of
your illusion of wealth.

Held hostage, In a society designed from birth to death, to extract value from your presence, taxing you, to mine your very existence, the way the gemologist finds the precious gem and carves it to be of great value, to him.

We are shaped to be used. Not freed.

We aren't ready for Renaissance because we haven't suffered enough to change our ways.

We haven't been scared enough.

We haven't been collectively desperate and connected in our misery enough.

Plagues do that.

They remind you of how alike we are and how alike is our suffering and how mean our mutual deaths can be.

We will need a bit more of that I'm afraid, because we are only going to change when there's no place to go back to.

When you can only go forward, freed from your preconceptions of what was possible, having seen and understood the outcome of not choosing.

Death and dissolution.

Or the Renaissance.