Thread by @sighing_sadly

@EthicalSkeptic This is true, and the last sentence is of particular relevance.

@EthicalSkeptic When I predict a near-future fall of civilization out loud, people keep thinking that I'm in need of reassurance, because they don't get it: I'm being optimistic.

The fall of this civilization isn't just inevitable, it's desirable.

@EthicalSkeptic When over 99% of the population is this eager to sell its souls just to win a little popularity, there is no healthy normal for a society so afflicted to return to. If a civilization like that one lives on, the nightmare it creates will just get deeper and darker.

@EthicalSkeptic The time has come for the decent remnant of Humanity to step away from the rotting corpse that is its civilization, and to find peace, solace and refuge in remote, easily defensible places.

As far as we can, to go off grid and prepare for the bad times, ahead.

@EthicalSkeptic As others have noted, one can't use reason to talk people out of positions that they didn't use reason to find their way into, in the first place. The last few years have shown us just how right that bit of pessimism was.

@EthicalSkeptic We're not going to be able to wipe those bland, stupid smirks off of the faces of the groupthinking masses, but there is something that has repeatedly proven effective in curing all known variants of what one might call "the Dunning-Kruger virus" (confident collective idiocy).

@EthicalSkeptic That would be the threat of impending death. That sobers a lot of people up, in a real hurry, and that's why dark ages aren't always a tragedy. Sometimes, they are needed moments of societal healing.

Healing isn't always a gentle process.

@EthicalSkeptic Life in a developed nation (in the short run) grants people the freedom to be stupid and dishonest and go insane, en masse, because after they make a true mess of everything, the authorities will come swooping in and save them from themselves.

@EthicalSkeptic Until one day, that cycle gets broken, because it was never sustainable in the first place. Resources are finite. The government that keeps bailing out people who take more from Society than they give must, at some point, run out of resources.

@EthicalSkeptic Once personal ego and social standing come to matter more to the people than the truth, the end can no longer be averted. The Dark Age has to fall.

@EthicalSkeptic Once it does, once people are thrown on their own resources and maybe those of a few friends and relatives, those left alive are left with a simple choice - mentally take up residence in the Real World or die.

The herd gets thinned, and Sanity is gradually restored, again.

@EthicalSkeptic Decency, too, because in practice, what is Morality other than a codification of a collection of instincts that allow us to worth together with each other, productively and without fear?

The struggle to survive ennobles us, after ease allows our corruption to grow unchecked.

@EthicalSkeptic This is why one steps away from a dying civilization without undue regret.

@EthicalSkeptic Where the well-being of those one loves and the Greater Good is in near-perfect Harmony, and those who are left to suffer are to blame for their own suffering, how can there be any doubt as to the choice to be made?

@EthicalSkeptic One steps to one side, out of harm's way, and prepares for the rebuilding to come, while letting Nature take its course, as it needs to, and as it inevitably will, anyway, regardless of one's wishes.

@EthicalSkeptic All that stalling the inevitable will achieve, in this case, will be to expose those around one to the danger of becoming the egg that some fashion-obsessed lover of authoritarianism will break to make the omelet that is his supposedly perfect society.

@EthicalSkeptic For a preview of where we're headed, read about Ethical Utilitarianism, and then go look up "the Survival Lottery." Read it, really think about it, and then listen to people talk about it.

Forget about kindness. Sometimes, one has to be cruel just to not be depraved.

@EthicalSkeptic When the cruelty demanded of one by one's fortunes is nothing more awful than turning one's back on a social order that can not truly be redeemed, and tending to one's garden off in some wilderness, somewhere, relatively speaking, one has been handed an easy choice to make.

@EthicalSkeptic Be grateful that's all that any of us have to do. At least, for now. As with almost any relatively good deal, if we hesitate too much, we will find that time has run out and the offer is no longer ours to be had.

Let us move on it, now, when the time is right.