Loved it.
People with no historical perspective think of society as a platform that we stand on or a set of walls hemming us in, that we should push back against. But if everyone is pushing, then there is no society and we revert to pre-society all-against all shockingly fast.
It’s like teenagers in a stable family always testing the bounds, which they have the luxury of doing because their parents and extended family keep the family intact. But when everyone is a teenager and no one is the parent, the family disintegrates.
Agree, very well said.
What has been more upsetting than anything to me has been seeing how fast we are reverting to what you aptly call “pre-society.” I think the so-called shutdown has helped to speed it up, because it has broken a lot of social bonds and isolated people and left them vulnerable.
But it’s quite frightening to see how fast it can go.