This is how the future falls, on the weak first, like a predator. On the babies in incubators, the dialysis patients, the disabled, the stateless people of Palestine, the statistics of Congo, and those even more forgotten.
Like a predator, the Hegemonster goes for the weak of the herd, and culls. It preys on the poor, on the sick, on the elderly. All the people that motivated the Buddha to find a way out of suffering, that’s precisely who this fake enlightenment heaps suffering upon. This thing we call Western Civilization, this is how it falls. On the weak first, like a predator.
We were told western ‘development’ was a steed, to carry us forward, but it is, in deed, just a predator. It devours Gaza, while we just gaze on. It digests Congo, without us even noticing. It chews up the planet, inexorably, leaving just bones, plastic, and radioactive undertones. That’s how the future falls, on the weak of the herd first, like a Predator drone, but eventually on everything and everyone.
If you were designing an apex predator, atop human prey, you couldn’t do much better than the genus industrialization, species military-industrial-complex. These incorporated beasts have a DNA devoted to profit above all, and humans predictably end up underneath, with animals and planet even further down. Anyone cursed to be born on top of oil gets chewed up and spit out. Meanwhile the emissions of the artificial genus choke out all natural species, including us. And we vainly think we’re in control. We’re just human cogs in corporate cyborgs, if we’re lucky. We’re at best collaborators and at worst collateral. We are just carbon-based lifeforms at the end of the day, falling prey to those that devour carbon as an energy source. And the end of the day is now.
We are, culturally, at a moment William S. Burroughs called ‘naked lunch’, “the frozen moment when everyone sees what is on the end of every fork.” In those frozen years after COVID-19, we saw the poor, the sick, the disabled, and the entire south get sacrificed to pharmaceutical companies. Artificial patents were more important than real people. We should have known. Now, in the frozen horror since October 7th, we are watching the entire population of Gaza get sacrificed so America can keep its aircraft carrier near the gas station. And so babies, children, women, and men get industrially slaughtered, while the resistance are called terrorists.
But those words don’t work anymore. It’s a naked lunch now, and their propaganda falls as flat as the apartments and hospitals they level. We can see what’s on the menu for our mercantile overlords and it’s us. The weakest among us are first on the end of the fork, but we’re all on the plate eventually. There’s only one Gaza and they can’t leave and there’s only one Gaia and we’re stuck here too. This is the fall and when it falls on you is just a timing difference.
If you haven’t felt it yet, just look under your feet, at the crushed people and species your world is collapsing on. You are not immune to their fate. They are you, after all. The weak of the herd get picked off first but the whole herd is careening off a cliff soon enough. We ate all the grass and had way too much gas, and now there’s nowhere to go but down.
Spacetime is ultimately one phenomenon and where collapse happens is just a matter of when, in the long run. If you picture yourself, like a spaceman, falling into a black hole, there is a moment where your feet get stretched out by the massive force of gravity, like a long spaghetti into the abyss. You might look down, curiously, thinking “how have my feet gotten 1,000 kilometers in front of me?” but you are your feet, just as we are the world. You are attached to your feet, and the shit underneath, just as we are attached to the meek, and matter we eat. So just as the spaceman’s body snaps like a strung-out spaghetti, so snaps our body politic, in parts first, and then in totality. A Black Hole’s gravity and White Empire’s demand for growth are both exponential functions, and there’s only one way they work. At some point, you cross event horizon, into the singularity, and things get fucked up real fast. That point is now.
If you’re lucky enough to see collapse on television, just know that you’re only looking forward in time, like a telescope looks backwards. The White Empire collapses from its proxies and provinces first, but the weight of collapse is deep in the heart of whiteness. Where most of my readers are. My country, Sri Lanka, has already fallen. So has yours. The printed money just allows you to imagine a little longer, but you’re just playing Monopoly on the Titanic. Just ask the people in steerage, who are already underwater.
This is how the future falls. Whether you understand it through the metaphor of predators or physics is immaterial. I am just describing an illusion in illusions when reality will enlighten you soon enough. None of us can know death but, in the end, we all do, that’s the paradox. When the Buddha saw the suffering of sickness, old age, and death he was just seeing his own future, the future of all things that exist and are reborn. When you see the suffering across the world today, you are just seeing your own future. Life is suffering — the word dukkha poorly translated — and the end of 99% of life on Earth is a lot of suffering, all at once. There’s no way around it. Time is a flat circle.
This thing we call Western Civilization, this is how it falls. On the poor, on the weak, on the children first, and then finally on us all. We were told it was a steed but, indeed, it was just a predator. It picked off the weak of the herd first — babies in incubators, babes in arms, mothers, disabled, elderly — and killed anyone trying to help — doctors, journalists, first responders, UN workers, men in general. And we just watched on, like we had all the time in the world. But we don’t.
Both world and time are running out. It’s one phenomenon of spacetime, one crushing force of entropy, one black hole of White Empire. When we look at what they do to Gaza, we’re just staring at our own feet and startling at our own fate. It’s just a timing difference. We have all been eaten by the Hegemonster, and it devours everything living, if not with its mouth, then with its toxic farts. To paraphrase Gramsci, the old world is dying and a new world struggles to be born. Now is the time of the Hegemonsters.
Author
My name is Indrajit Samarajiva and I'm a writer. People also call me Indi or Jit. I was born in Canada, raised in America, and live in Nugegoda, Sri Lanka.
Editor
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent or reflect the views of Titanic Lifeboat Academy or its Board of Directors.
