Devolution

by Max Brooks

I’m not the one saying it, the whole country’s acknowledged it as far back as the 1960s when we realized that our standard of living was killing us. What good is all this progress if you can’t eat the food or breathe the air or even live on the land when the ocean rises up over it?

You can’t ask people to give up personal, tangible comforts for some ethereal ideal.

No, no, I love Elon, he’s a good guy,

This aged badly.

I tried not to compare, sitting there next to who he’d become, across the table from who he thought he’d be.

“I like to think that beauty can come from fire.”

“What was it?” she asked, watching Dan carry our groceries home. “Couldn’t get the job he wanted? First business failed? Couldn’t get back up because his parents never let him get knocked down?” How did she know! “Trust me, Katie, fragile princes aren’t new.”

I love this woman. Absolute murder just happened.

“Allow the forest to heal you,” she said. “Release your pain. This land gives you permission to unburden yourself with each step.”

But is it so wrong to want to be watched over? When you’re feeling small and scared—which, let’s be honest, is pretty much how I feel all the time—isn’t it okay, just for a moment, to want someone, something bigger than you to have all the answers, to have everything under control?

Mood

“Go through it all. Catalog everything edible, right down to the last calorie. You must know how to do that, you’re an American girl. I bet you’ve been dieting all your life.”

Those poor bastards didn’t want a rural life. They expected an urban life in a rural setting. They tried to adapt their environment instead of adapting to it.

It’s great to live free of the other sheep until you hear the wolves howl.

All positivity all the time. Learn to fly, even if it’s in the Hindenburg.

Carmen and Effie waving up to Palomino, who stared down at them from her upstairs window like in a ghost story. I’m sorry. That’s not fair. But it is how I felt. Spooky little horror-film girl maniacally squeezing her beanbag fidgeter.

I don’t know what made me feel worse, that I suddenly didn’t have the world’s knowledge in my pocket or that up until that moment, I’d always assumed I was entitled to it.

You can’t blame the people in Greenloop for having their cupboards bare. The whole country rests on a system that sacrifices resilience for comfort.

“Need. That’s what makes a village. That’s what we are now, and what holds us together is need. I won’t help you if you don’t help me. That is the social contract.”

Village. Need.

And yes, I know I saw something. We both did. But knowing you saw something is different from knowing what you saw.