The Collapse CXXXV: Ruminating

03 July 20XX +1

My Dear Lucilius:

Pompeia Paulina encouraged me to write this; I have had almost zero interest in doing so since my return. More power to her for suggesting me to do so; left to myself I doubt I would have done so for another week or more at least.

You may ask “What is the problem, friend?” I wish I could define it for you more completely.

Oh, it is not from any sense of recovering injury. Yes, I slept for hours and hours upon my return – a slug-a-bed, as Shakespeare might have referred to me. Pompeia Paulina generously let me sleep and took care of everything in my absence.

I have tried to keep myself busy in ways for the last three days – obviously no matter what has happened outside, the work here still needs to be done: Quail need to be fed, the garden needs to be looked after, food gathered, rabbits need to be fed and reminded they are the only pet in the world - the small things of living preparing for a Winter that is coming all too soon that need to be dealt with.

We had dinner with Statiera and Young Xerxes at least twice as well. The conversations were not as fluid as they had been before, with Statiera and Pompeia Paulina carrying the conversation. I plugged in as I was able to; Young Xerxes seemed lost in some other place, although by the end of the second meal he was at least making an effort to act as his old self.

It is not the fact of what happened that haunts me, Lucilius. It is the fact of what it represents.

There have been significant bad events in our own lifetimes: economic, political, even attacks on our soil. And each time, no matter how how bad or difficult things were, they eventually swung back to some semblance of what they were before – maybe not perfect, but the lights still worked and money was still accepted and we could drive across town or across state in safety and ease.

Not now Lucilius, not now.

The implication of an armed group of Looters making their way through settled lands, looting and stealing (and likely killing) as they go, makes a statement about the state of the world now in a way that missing power and isolation did not, at least for me. It speaks to two facts.

The first is that (apparently) all civil authority has broken down. Yes, I know – we are on the “fringes” of modern society in the minds of most in that regard, but still there was a real sense of belonging to a larger whole where the rule of law was accepted and practiced. That is gone, it seems – gone for how long is anyone’s guess, but my suspicion is that once such a thing is gone, it takes a great deal for it to be re-established.

The second is that this now seems more than the sort of events that happened in the past where things eventually “snapped back” into the established tracks. There is no snapping back now, only the alarming scenario of a flash flood breaking across a plain with no channels whatsoever.

The signs have been there for a while now, my friend. Perhaps through willful ignorance or a genuine vain hopefulness, I though things were different. I was wrong in that assessment: there are no evidence of things getting better, only gradations of things going poorly.

It is not the bodies of The Looters that haunt my thoughts, Lucilius. It is the body of a civilization lying there by the road, picked away at by the vultures and carrion scavengers until only the bones are left.

Your Obedient Servant, Seneca