>be modern civilization
>2022
>largest land war in Europe since WWII suddenly starts
>tanks crossing borders
>cities getting shelled
>millions displaced
>entire governments screaming about historic turning points
>everyone glued to live maps like it’s the Cuban Missile Crisis with push notifications
>“holy shit this could spiral into WWIII”
>“global order has changed forever”
>“nothing will ever be normal again”
>fast forward a few years
>war is still going
>front line updates casually sandwiched between NFL scores and celebrity divorce news
>“anyway Russians advanced 800 meters near some village you’ve been hearing about for fourteen months”
>scroll
>new iPhone announced
>scroll
>missile strike
>scroll
>Costco seasonal items are back
>scroll
>drone footage of a tank exploding
>scroll
>guy reviews a new chicken sandwich
>human brain has apparently installed the Long War Compatibility Patch
>markets open Monday morning as usual
>people complain about traffic
>Europe still goes on vacation
>some dude in Ohio is furious his DoorDash arrived cold while two industrialized states conduct attritional warfare with artillery barrages visible from space
>nuclear powers issue ominous statements every six weeks
>everyone briefly looks up
>“huh, concerning”
>goes back to comparing mortgage rates
>turns out “unprecedented” has an expiration date of roughly eighteen months
>after that it becomes “ongoing”
>and once something is “ongoing” modern society immediately builds a little mental shelf for it
>war
>cultural deterioration
>economic crisis
>political instability
>whatever
>as long as civilization still has Wi-Fi and next-day shipping the machine simply absorbs another historically insane condition into the baseline
>grandpa lived through “THE WAR”
>you live through “the war”
>lowercase
>background process
>CPU usage: 4%
>modernity is not actually fragile
>it is a horrifyingly flexible operating system capable of making almost anything feel normal if you force people to look at it long enough