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.

The honest philosopher is rewarded with poison; the hypocrite is rewarded with power.

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.

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.

There's no human building that can survive without maintenance. Roots are stronger than concrete.