The Fall
I remember when I was younger I was fascinated by archaeology. I was fascinated with the ruins of once great civilisations. I’d always wondered how they’d got that way. How those towns and cities went from being bustling, inhabited places, full of life and people, to being empty shells, abandoned and forgotten. I wondered what it would be like to live through the decline and fall of a civilisation. Would you be aware of it? Would you be able to see it happening around you?
Then I saw the pictures of Detroit. The abandoned buildings, the streets and houses being reclaimed by nature. A city falling to ruins, crumbling, being consumed by neglect and decay. It sent a shiver through me as I realised that I was seeing the start of what I’d wondered about so many times. So many failed to see it as the beginning of the end. They couldn’t see it as the first fraying at the edges of civilisation. But Detroit was only the beginning, and the decay spread well beyond the shores of America.
Now I see it in my own town. The abandoned and boarded up shops on the high street. Old men, without shoes, wandering around town, with a can of beer for breakfast and an empty look in their eyes. I see people packing up and moving off, not sure where they’re heading, or what they’ll even do when they get there. I see desperate messages scrawled on walls. People clinging to the last shreds of hope.
I see a desperate government struggling to keep control. I see kids on the streets being beaten and brutalised just for standing up for their beliefs. And I wonder, how many times has this happened before? How many empires have to fall before we start learning the lessons that history has to teach us?
I watch a civilisation fall and I simply think…good riddance to it all.
