This quote caught my attention. It isn’t, however, that no one seems to care. Rather, it is that our supercultures are uncontrollably destructive, and the common people are largely if not completely deprived of meaningful agency in their shadow.

Though we participate in them… we did not establish these cultures; we were born into them, like people born into a kind of prison that, outwardly, appears relatively benign. But it isn’t. In fact, it never was….

“I know a lot of you are really upset about the Notre Dame fire in Paris and I’m really sad, too. To see something so beautiful and so carefully constructed be damaged by forces out of your control is very painful. As a scientist who studies species that are going extinct right now, this is the feeling I grapple with more often than I’d like. The irreplaceable work of art that I worship is nature and to watch it senselessly crumble to the ground every day hurts my heart. I highly respect your feelings about what happened today and I hope the parallelI described can help you better understand how many of the people who have devoted their lives to conservation feel quite often. We know you get tired of us shouting about species going extinct and we’re sorry for the broken record but we’re surrounded by burning cathedrals built across millennia and no one seems to care.”

~Jonathan Kolby (National Geographic)