It is the mark of a wholly self-absorbed society that can be found in the labyrinthine mechanisms and structures it erects to perpetuate itself, which serve as hellish landscapes that trap, deny, displace, and ultimately destroy the living systems that surround them.
Steel, concrete, and glass-sealed buildings, vehicles, and infrastructure create vast and incomprehensible vacuums within them for the many lifeforms and micro-organisms that accidentally wander or drift into their bounds, and the same goes for the endless rows of fenced in agricultural, industrial, and residential landscapes.
Derelict mines dot the rural hillsides, with their poisonous gases, unseen chasms, and open vents ready to claim curious or unsuspecting passerby. And undetonated ordinance in faraway lands regularly claim victims of their own. I could go on and on with examples; their number and diversity are depressingly great.
Differing attitudes have always existed within a given society, and sensibilities of the dominant society itself are always changing, but this is a state of affairs that is difficult to entirely escape.
I for example still have to use existing technologies and techniques to go about daily life. As an industrial citizen, I only have so much time and energy to move down a given technological ladder as far as possible, though some simplification is always possible, which does free up time and energy, but there are still my existing sensibilities as well.
If I were to construct a shelter for myself at this point in time, I'd still attempt to avoid sleeping on a dirt floor, or dealing with loose slats that admit wind and weather, so long as I have the resources at hand to do so.
And that is sort of the rub. Save some sudden calamity, most of us will slowly and continuously attempt to climb down the tech ladder as far as resources, time, and energy will permit. It is very difficult to enter into extreme privation willingly, without being forced. And meanwhile the earth trembles.
