God help us. Has it all truly ever been like it is now, the flimsy veneer of something we like to call “civilization”, over all the brute, savage gestures that underlie it? The veneer of which seems at times altogether desiring to collapse, to fail, and then we know not what to become of everything we ever have come to understand? Is it actually a better world now, as if it were the case it has ever been like it is, that these days things are merely more transparent, and so it seems the worse than when things were only done under cover of darkness and ignorance? For this is an evil world, which is why the Devil could offer it to Christ as that greatest temptation. To hope for better — when was it ever not a fool’s errand? Yet it is only in the darkest darks that some lights can be seen, and we must be such candles, through wind and rain, to preserve these fragile fires as we must. The alternative is no alternative, for what profit a man to exchange his soul for anything? Sometimes so tempting to give in, and be done with it… God help us.