| part 4: insulated by facts |
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| it was funny, how prepared we thought we were - with all of our charts and dials, our readouts and diagrams, encrusted with statistics and facts like barnacles on the hull of a sinking tanker. we insulated ourselves from the truth with inconsequential data, insubstantial polls, and we numbed ourselves with the drone of a hundred million voices shouting their empty air on our radios, our televisions, our magazines, our books. when the proverbial volcano started rumbling, our best and brightest studied it and wrote in journals, and our pundits spouted their endless theories while the rest of us ran in circles and pulled our hair - but nobody moved from the disaster's path. nobody moved. after the collapse the most use we could find for the scraps and tatters of all our prized findings was to stuff them into our shoes for insulation, to burn them for a few moments of warmth. it was just too painful to read them, to see naked reality glaring at us with burning red eyes laughing silently through its bloody, toothy grin as if to say, i told you so. you knew all along but you chose to look away. |
after the fall
