Thread by @wretchardthecat

Civilizations can collapse from information corruption, including its foundational morality, its respect for the facts and its cultural mental health.

bbc.com/future/story/2…

If the 20th century can now be described as the age of materialism and conflict, the 21st may be known as the age of information, the time we discovered angels and demons are real.

The world will not reduce itself to a "lifeless husk" from CO2, but it may destroy itself through a collective madness a loss of sense of right and wrong, an addiction to fantasy and compulsively perverse behavior. It's the demons we must fear.

What the BBC article calls "temporal exhaustion" isn't imaginary. It's real. If the 21st century taught us anything it is that software, the ideas that run things, is absolutely, indisputably real.

The Left thought they could spread madness and retain the power to switch it off. But now they're discovering it's spread to them and they ... can't ... turn ... it ... off ...

Gramsci never thought that far.

The danger is we will finish up in a Bird Box world, without trust, hope or love. Without what the ancients called faith, hope and charity we may just switch ourselves off. The civilization that survives will be the one that can face the demon and master it.