Perhaps the "macro" of humanity's current collective delusion, for me, is best described in work of J.T McIntosh's - "The Million Cities". In the book, in an alternate future timeline - the solar system's planets are seeded with alien life, and Earth is a sprawling and densely overpopulated metropolis - firmly kept together by a highly authoritarian and tyrannical world government under strict rule and regulation. Any form of space travel is banned. In answer to this, a rebellious wing of humanity called the Chartists claim to hold knowledge about star charts and maps on how to construct spacefaring ships again, in hopes to deliver the decaying humanity onto other planets, ensuring its survival - and saving the day. In the story, it is later revealed that the knowledge behind the construction of spacefaring ships, among the Chartists, was in fact planted by an external alien force. And that the secret agenda of the Chartists was never to travel to other worlds successfully but to deliberately sabotage their own colony ships as they ascended into space. The intent was for the ships to crash and burn back onto Earth, claiming the lives of a massive proponent of its population - a 'solution' to the planet's overpopulation problem. What is interesting here is that the Chartists are cautiously warned by the external authorities regarding the 'ruleset' of evolutionary expansion, where each planet's endemically inhabiting lifeform (no matter big or small) claims absolute sovereignty over the world. And that no other species may claim or conquer another world until it itself has managed its own population through sustainable living. Earth is then existing in a state of 'self-inflicted quarantine', contained in a space of its own problems and its inability to address them - which serves as the predominantly accepted reality. It is exactly this desperate search for outside saviors, the constant need for more space and facilitation from the external world that has crippled the mind of man in his modernity. If there is no more space, if he cannot make more - then he must take more. And the problem remains unaddressed. The mirror of life is promptly avoided. Yet life, in its grand and secret designs, is such that it does not allow this to happen. When we look away from the mirror, ashamed and fearful of what we may see there, we simply turn towards another, grander mirror - one in which we seem smaller than the previous. So that our shame, and our guilt, and our universal apathy and personal nihilism shrink in the reflection alongside us. Yet even this is simply delaying, just a larger and more spacious fishbowl to have entrapped ourselves in. There is a fundamental flaw in such sentiments towards reality that will always fall back onto mankind with a passionate and painful whiplash until it has learned its grandest of lessons. That the solution is never 'out there' somewhere but found in simply looking inwards, in addressing the imperfections, darkness and blindness that exist in its own designs, and has plagued its many decades of existence. The great cosmic question then, in this case perhaps, would not amount to: "How may we escape the problems we've created?" But rather: "How and why have we chosen to become a problematic and parasitic species?" It is exactly this grand theatre that is being played out in our modern age, in our own timeline, for even the blind masses to finally see and question the many faults of our civilization as a collective entity. Perhaps, at this point, it is destined for the universe to reflect unto mankind the inevitable folly of its ways, and for the myth of our species being a fair one to finally shatter - and for all to see. In the coming age, man will be forced to find himself pondering both the collective and individual value of his own existence, of its history and legacy: How did we get here? Why did we? What was it all for? And was it ever worth it? It could be argued, in terms of conscious and spiritual advancement - that in this particular case - the questions are more pressing than the answers. As the first few symptoms of a civilization's cosmic awareness being born. ![[52238373-507C-4C94-9246-8E9BD1CB8A4E.jpeg]]