Straton wrote that the most common error we commit is to think that ideas determine reality, when in fact the opposite is true. Ideas follow from material conditions; belief systems are formed to explain and justify the way we live. We did not have kings because we believed in the mandate of heaven; we believed in the mandate of heaven because we lived in monarchies.

Is it possible that on some level, people want to believe that everything's going to get worse? That it's comforting to think that humanity is bad and every solution will just go wrong? Because that way, you're never responsible. You never have to take on responsibility for anything outside yourself and never have to grow up.

We live in a decaying system, which in turn produces ideologies of decay to justify its existence.

No matter what cultural signifiers they get packaged with, these ideologies come down to the same material result: a future in which for the average person there is less of everything. To paraphrase Mark Fisher, we find it easier to imagine the decline of civilization than to imagine a civilization worth living in.

It's not right to make fun of Melville's comically absurd inability to take decent pictures.
She's a hyper-advanced humanoid machine, not a photographer.

Identity has no meaning without society, and society has no meaning without the individual.