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Douglas Adams wrote, "Anything that is in the world when you're born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works. Anything that's invented between when you’re 15 and 35 is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it. Anything invented after you're 35 is against the natural order of things."
I think about this quote whenever I get angry at the technology around me. When I rail against the Great Enshittening, am I simply committing the sin of nostalgia ("Nostalgia is a toxic impulse" -J. Hodgman)? I am, after all, old.
I've written before how conservatives' yearning for "simpler times" is really just a wish to be a child again. The reason times seemed simpler during your childhood is that you were a child, and if your parents did their job, they shielded you from a lot of the complexity of their adulthood so you could enjoy your childhood:
That's where the "National Customer Rage Survey" comes in. It's been surveying a panel of 1,000 representative consumers every three years for a decade, continuing a research project that started in 1976. The survey measures respondents' attitudes towards the businesses they deal with, and as of 2025, it's fair to say, customers are pissed:
We're experiencing more problems with the products and services we use. Those problems are more severe, they make us angrier, and they produce lingering stress. More and more, we are seeking revenge on the businesses that piss us off.
So it's not just me, an old man yelling at the cloud. The world is getting shittier.
The latest Customer Rage Survey inspired The Guardian's Heather Timmons to launch a new investigative series looking at how fucked up everything is. Her inaugural installment is very good, and it's drawn a massive reader response:
I spoke with Timmons this week about the series. She told me she's been deluged with emails from readers who feel that the world is different now – and many of them cite my work on enshittification. Timmons wanted to know what advice I had for her readers. I told her that I don't think you can solve this as a consumer, because this isn't a market problem, it's a political problem, and shopping isn't politics:
Later, Timmons forwarded one of those emails to me. It gave an eloquent and evocative account of just how rancid the vibe is these days. The writer said that when they and their spouse encounter this rot, they cite Stephen King's Dark Tower novels, quoting the oft-repeated phrase from that series: "The world has moved on."
At this point, I should warn you that the following contains some Dark Tower spoilers, so if you're planning to read a decades-old (but very good) dystopian western/science fiction crossover series, and if spoilers bug you, this might not be the essay for you.
Spoiler alert!
Still with me? OK, then.
In the Dark Tower novels, we crisscross a fallen world in which decay is all around us. The buildings are rotten, the machines have stopped working and no one knows how to fix them, babies and livestock alike are frequently born with deadly congenital defects. Much of the world has fallen into wasteland, cracked and barren. An army of wreckers, led by the demagogue John Farson (who styles himself "The Good Man") are slowly but surely conquering the land, laying waste to those few remaining outposts of civilization and conscripting the young men in the conquered lands to march on their neighbors.
It wasn't always this way. There was a time when the world was defined by hope and virtue and light, when the machines were fixed and the crops were harvested. Life wasn't golden – there were still squabbles and sorrows and even wars – but life was good.
And then the world moved on.
For reasons that no one truly understands, the normal push/pull of decay and renewal turned into a one-way, irreversible process in which everything that crumbled or snapped or burned up couldn't be repaired or replaced or recovered. Our mysterious ability to beat back the Second Law of Thermodynamics – an absurdity we probably should have always treated as an aberration – has collapsed. The world has moved on.
The Dark Tower series is a long, long, long Bildungsroman, with many detours through the life-stories of the characters in the ensemble cast, as well as the biographies of many of the figures they meet along the road. It's mostly an adventure novel, as road-trip tales tend to be, but those character studies and the lore that they surface – from our world and theirs – creates an overwhelming, many-layered, richly textured sense of loss and worse, of despair. For the world has moved on, and despite the love and care and bravery of many of the people in that world, the world cannot be redeemed. Each terrible day of those people's lives is the best day of the rest of their lives. From here on in, it only gets worse.
When Timmons' reader and their spouse greet every fresh depredation in modern life – hours on the phone with customer service to resolve a billing error that the company repeats every month, say – with "the world has moved on," they are invoking something heavy. This isn't just a rancid vibe, it's the fucking end-times.
For all that the Dark Tower novels are a series of cracking adventures and thoughtful character studies, they are also a mystery. Over and over again, we are made to ask ourselves, why has the world moved on? Was it John Farson and his army? Was it the Man in Black, the evil wizard whom the book's protagonist has pursued across time and space? Was it the Crimson King, the evil force whom the Man in Black serves?
Well, yes – and no.
Midway through the novels, we learn that the Crimson King and his evil minions have laid siege to "the beams," vast ley-lines that span the universe and provide the force that pushes away entropy, creating breathing room where repair and care can live. "All things serve the beams," we're told. The beams are the organizing force of the universe, the answer to the riddle of how such pitiful things as we could have fought back remorseless entropy for so long. By attacking the beams, the villains of the series have all but snuffed out that force, and so the world has moved on.
When I read that email and the invocation of the Dark Tower, I was immediately struck by how apt this comparison is. Because, as I've written many times, there were always enshittifiers who would have plundered your data and money and treated you with naked contempt:
There were always enshittifiers, but those enshittifiers faced external forces that checked their wreckers' urge. They were held in check by competition, and regulation, and workers' sense of fairness and duty, and by the threat of new products and services that might pop up to correct the defects they deliberately introduced into their products by enshittifying them.
And the foundation – the Dark Tower upon which all the beams converged- was antitrust enforcement, grounded in the idea that we could not afford to let any company – not a "good" company, nor a "bad" company – get so large that it could no longer be regulated, lest its executives become "autocrats of trade":
The same people who laid siege to antitrust law would later come after all forms of checks and balances. These are the people who gave us the "unitary executive" and Project 2025, and the collapse of accountability that has allowed the worst people to commit the gravest sins they could imagine and still reap vast fortunes. These beam-breakers wanted kings, and they got them.
I collect definitions of "conservatism," and one of my favorites comes from Corey Robin's book, The Reactionary Mind. Robins asks how it is that we can call so many disparate, irreconcilable ideologies – various ethno-nationalisms, imperialism, financialism, patriarchy, Christian nationalism, libertarianism, white supremacy, etc – "conservative"? What binds all these views together?
Robin's answer: the foundation that all these otherwise disparate views share is that some people are born to rule, while others are born to be ruled over. When these lesser people are elevated to positions of power, their inferiority creates a system of misrule, by which we all suffer. The best outcome for everyone is for us all to know our place and defer to our social betters.
That's why conservatives are obsessed with affirmative action, DEI, and any form of anti-racism. For them, the discriminatory outcomes we see in the wild are natural, reflecting the in-born defects in the people at the bottom of the social order. That's why, after every plane crash, every collision between a cargo ship and a bridge, every spectacular corporate bankruptcy, conservatives race to uncover the race, gender, religion and sexual orientation of the captain, the pilot or the CEO.
If the person who oversaw the catastrophe has anything remotely resembling a marginalized identity, then this is loudly trumpeted as confirmation that "diversity hires," promoted above their station, are ruining our society and wrecking our bridges. Naturally, if the person in charge was a wealthy, well-born, straight white guy, that's just proof that shit happens – it definitely doesn't prove that white straight guys, as a class, should be removed from positions of power.
For conservatives, virtue is "whatever the people who are born to rule desire." Hence Frank Wilhoit's definition of conservativism, "exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect." It's not a crime if the president does it. It's also not a crime if your boss does it, or if a monopolist does it, or if ICE does it. It's not a crime if the IDF do it, or if the Epstein Class do it. "Taxes are for the little people":
The attack on antitrust law was part of the attack on the rule of law, the campaign to put everyone back in the their place. It's a piece of the effort to establish a new hereditary aristocracy, and every hereditary aristocracy requires heredity serfs (that would be us):
The ideology of economism – which says that market outcomes are the only way to govern a society – cashes out to "the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must." If we interfere with mergers, or labor practices, or commercial conduct, we "distort the market," which is literally going against nature:
That's why Trump dismantled the consumer protection agencies, the antitrust agencies, the labor protection agencies, the environmental protection agencies. When someone in power cheats the system, that's not a crime, no matter how many people they rob, maim or kill. As Trump told us on the debate stage in 2016, that kind of cheating "makes me smart":
That's why Elon Musk (almost) got to force every pension saver in America to bail out his money-incinerating AI business and his failed social media takeover – because the rules that protect everyday investors are "for the little people." Musk's mistake was trying to get a bunch of billionaires to hold the bag, too. The one form of systemic violence our society will not tolerate is trillionaire-on-billionaire violence:
The world has moved on. 50 years of neoliberal rule has weakened and snapped the beams – the rule of law, consumer and labor rights, civil rights – that radiated from our Dark Tower – antitrust law, which blocked the emergence of the "autocrats of trade." The people who besieged these beams had the same motives as the Crimson King and John Farson and the Man in Black: they were willing to pay any price for a world free from consequences for people like them. They knew they were born to rule, and that the rules were "for the little people," that breaking those rules "made them smart."
They wanted "bossism." Or, as rendered in the original Afrikaans, "baasskap," which means, "the social, political and economic domination of South Africa by its minority white population":
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baasskap
Not for nothing, baasskap is the foundation of Muskism, the ideology that Elon Musk epitomizes, even if he can't articulate it:
In "The Utopia of Rules," the late David Graeber described how neoliberal deregulation produced exactly the kind of state that we were warned we'd get under communism. Thanks to monopolies, all the stores were the same and they all sold the same goods. Thanks to the dismantling of labor protection and unions, no one had enough money to get by. Thanks to elite impunity, we were ruled by monsters who committed crimes in the open and thrived as a result. Thanks to unchecked greed, we paid everything we had for healthcare, only to be denied treatment when we needed it. Thanks to the dismantling of the welfare state, more and more of us had to wait in long lines to fill out absurdly long forms in triplicate. Thanks to the intrinsic instability of such a terrible system, more and more of us ended up in prison, and protest became more and more illegal:
Graeber pointed out that the rise of the web made it seductively easy for people in authority to force us to fill in forms. When analog bureaucracies impose paperwork costs on us, they also impose paperwork costs on themselves, because processing and filing those forms requires substantial effort, even if filling in those forms requires even more effort from us.
When it comes to virtual paperwork, the asymmetry is even more pronounced. Sure, it takes some admin to set up an online form and write the scripts to process its outputs, but that's a one-off. The form-giver can perform a very little admin and still impose a giant, repeated admin burden on the rest of us.
AI has only made this worse. Now, thanks to vibe coding, everyone can produce a form and its associated processing and analytics back-end with prompts, which creates a grave moral hazard. The kinds of activities that I used to fill in a single short form to accomplish now requires ten lengthy forms, created by different people in the same organization, all asking for variations on the same information. Through AI, we have democratized bureaucracy. It's Kafka-as-a-service.
What's more, when you're dealing with a monopoly, you have no choice but to complete whatever paperwork they throw at you. And when the vibe-coded back-end scripts shit the bed and lose or misinterpret your data, you have no choice but to endure an infinite telephone hold queue (if you're lucky) or get shunted to a customer service bot (if you're unlucky):
It's entirely possible to build webforms that are thoughtful, fast, respectful of our time, and well-processed. The problem is that fielding these forms requires that the form-giver undertake some intensive, moderately expensive work (once), while skipping this step merely requires that we all perform intensive, time-consuming work (over and over and over again):
https://mohkohn.co.uk/writing/html-first/
This is how we end up with government forms that require you to list every trip you have ever taken to the USA, since your infancy, with every flight number, which you can only get help with by talking to a chatbot that emails you an out-of-date PDF no matter what question you ask of it:
This is how we end up with massive customer service queues, long lines at tills, and no one at the gate to answer your questions when your flight is canceled. Understaffing is a form of enshittification, one that shifts value from shoppers to owners, and shifts consequences from owners to workers:
This is how we end up with broken machines that no one can fix. Firing workers and replacing them with chatbots or contractors means incinerating their process knowledge – the precious, inchoate, unrecorded understanding that keeps everything working:
This is how companies that make products we love suddenly decide to wreck those products: when the only consequences for shitty products is angry customers with nowhere to go and no one to vent their rage upon except workers who have no labor rights and can't afford to quit, why not do a mafia bust-out for every business?
The world has moved on. Nothing works. Everything costs too much. No one can help. No one knows how to fix anything. The beams were broken by the Crimson King and his economism-crazed minions. The Dark Tower might fall.
So what consumer advice do I have for people who are angry about this? I don't have any consumer advice, I'm afraid. You can't shop your way out of a monopoly. Once again, shopping is not politics.
What I have for you is political advice. To restore the beams and beat back entropy again, we need a better system, not more virtuous individuals. If you feel – as I do – that "the world has moved on," then to wrench it back, you will have to join a polity. Support activist groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the digital rights group I've been at for the past 25 years:
https://supporters.eff.org/donate/join-eff
Join a union. If there's no union at your jobsite, start a union. If you work in tech, you start this process by talking to techsolidarity.org and the techworkerscoalition.org. In the UK, get in touch with United Tech and Allied Workers:
https://utaw.tech/
Get involved in party politics. Find a political party whose local organization supports your values (even if the national version of that party sucks) and then work with your fellow grassroots activists to drag or replace the party leaders. Get involved in local politics: if there's one thing Moms For Liberty has taught us, it's that unregarded, seemingly unimportant local offices have enormous potential to change facts on the ground for the people where you live. Those changes don't have to be change for the worse.
Doing politics is hard. Hell, after all, is other people. It would be great if we could make change by changing ourselves, but that's not how any of this works. The world has moved on, and you can't save it. But together, we can restore the beams and beat back entropy. Hell is other people, but only because other people are so great but it's so hard to figure out how to work together. We can do it, though. We did it with the post-war settlement, the 30 glorious years when we built the welfare state, regulated polluters and bosses, and kicked off the civil rights movement. We did it then, and we can do it again. We must. All things serve the beams.
Warnings/Themes: Explicit sexual content (18+ only), friends with benefits, secret casual hookups, quickie sex, wall sex, alcohol consumption, light possessiveness and desperation, semi-public risk (party continuing outside), dirty talk, unprotected sex, creampie, internal conflict from friend’s crush, emotional tension mixed with raw lust. Consensual but rushed and urgent.
Word count: 1.9k+
Pairing: Choi San x reader
Brief Summary: At a relaxed pool party with mutual friends at her house, long-time best friend Choi San pulls her inside for a supposed quick favor. Unable to hold back his need, he initiates a desperate quickie against the bedroom wall. She tries to remind him they should wait and that her friend has a crush on him, but his heated kisses and needy words overwhelm her, leading to a fast, intense wall sex encounter while the party goes on just outside.
——
The backyard glowed under the bright afternoon sun, the pool sparkling like a jewel amid the relaxed gathering. Music played at a comfortable volume from the patio speaker, mixing with laughter, the clink of bottles, and occasional splashes. It was the perfect chill day—friends scattered around, some lounging on towels or chairs, others cooling off in the water. No stress, just good company and easy vibes.
She had spent most of the time sunbathing on a thick towel near the pool’s edge, her skin warm and slightly flushed from the sun. Her favorite bikini fit her perfectly, the ties at the hips and back adding a subtle edge. She’d slip into the pool now and then for a refreshing swim, letting the cool water wash over her heated body before climbing back out to dry off and sip her drink. A couple of the other girls joined her in sunbathing, chatting lightly while the guys dominated the deeper end—playing around, tossing a ball, and generally acting like overgrown kids.
Choi San stood out effortlessly in the middle of the group. His toned, athletic frame moved through the water with natural power. When he pulled himself up onto the edge, water streamed down his broad chest and defined abs, tracing every line before dripping from the waistband of his black swim trunks. His dark hair clung wetly to his forehead, and that signature bright smile with the dimples flashed as he laughed at something one of the guys said. He looked incredibly attractive, sun and water making his skin glisten.
Mina, one of her friends, had been stealing glances at him more often than usual. For months she had been hinting at her crush—laughing a little too loudly at his jokes, finding excuses to be near him, and repeatedly pulling her aside to beg, “You’re his best friend. Just put in a good word for me? I really like him.” Each time, she had deflected gently: “San isn’t really interested in dating right now. I’d know—he tells me everything.” It wasn’t a complete lie. San wasn’t looking for a relationship.
The full truth, however, remained their secret.
They had been inseparable for years—best friends since college, bonded through late nights, shared secrets, ridiculous inside jokes, and an easy closeness that made everyone else see them as a package deal. No one suspected the casual hookups that had started during one too-drunk, too-horny night and never quite stopped. They happened in impulsive moments—stupid times when inhibitions vanished and the pull between them became too strong. No strings attached. No one needed to know.
Today felt no different at first. The vibe stayed perfectly chill. She floated lazily in the pool earlier, eyes closed against the sun, until San’s voice cut through the noise.
“Hey,” he called from the pool steps, shaking water from his hair. “Can you help me find something inside real quick? I think I left my phone charger somewhere and my phone’s about to die.”
The excuse was weak, but she played along with a dramatic sigh and a smile. “You’re hopeless without me, Sannie.” She quickly try to dry herself and stood. Mina shot her a curious glance, but she brushed it off casually. “Be right back, guys.”
San waited for her by the sliding glass door, his hand brushing the small of her back as they stepped into the cooler air of the house. The sudden temperature drop made her sun-kissed skin prickle. The party sounds became muffled—laughter, music, splashes—leaving them in relative quiet.
He didn’t head for the living room. Instead, he guided her straight to her bedroom, pushing the door open and pulling her inside. The lock clicked shut behind them with quiet finality.
“San,” she started, turning toward him with a mix of amusement and mild warning.
He didn’t let her finish. In one swift motion, he had her backed against the closed door, his still-damp body pressing close. His hands gripped her hips firmly as his mouth claimed hers in a hungry, urgent kiss.
She responded instantly, her body reacting before logic could intervene. His lips were demanding, tasting faintly of beer and the summer heat. When he broke the kiss to trail hot, open-mouthed kisses down her jaw and onto her neck, she shivered.
“Fuck, I absolutely need you right now,” he mumbled against her skin, voice low and rough with raw desperation. His breath was hot, sending goosebumps racing along her arms. “Been watching you all day in that bikini… the way it hugs your body, the way you look all sun-warmed. I can’t stop thinking about you, baby. I need you so bad.”
She loved it. She wouldn’t lie—she loved when he got like this, needy and unable to hold back, his usual playful demeanor cracking under the weight of want. Her hands came up to clutch his shoulders, feeling the firm muscle still cool from the pool. Heat bloomed low in her belly, her pulse quickening.
“San… we can’t,” she whispered breathlessly, even as she tilted her head to give him better access to her neck. His lips sucked gently at her pulse point, then nipped, drawing a soft gasp from her. “The others are right outside. We should wait until everyone leaves. This is too risky right now.”
He groaned against her neck, hips pressing forward so she could feel exactly how hard he was beneath his swim trunks. “I can’t wait, sweetheart. I’ve been dying since I first saw you out there. Just a quick one. Please, princess. I need to feel you now.”
His hands roamed urgently, pushing the towel away so it pooled at her feet. Fingers traced the edges of her bikini top, teasing the swell of her breasts as he continued kissing and nipping along her collarbone.
“San, seriously,” she managed, voice shaky despite the arousal building fast. “Mina has a real crush on you. She keeps begging me to set you two up. I can’t keep telling her you’re not interested while we keep doing this behind her back. We can’t keep hooking up like this. She wants to ask you out, and I feel like I’m standing in the way by letting this continue.”
He lifted his head, eyes dark and intense as he met hers. For a split second she thought he might pull back. Then he kissed her again—deep, consuming, tongue sliding against hers in a way that stole her breath.
“I don’t want her,” he murmured when they parted, forehead resting against hers. “I want you. Only you.” One hand slipped down, fingers dipping beneath the waistband of her bikini bottoms. He found her already slick and warm, groaning softly as he stroked her. “Feel how ready you are for me, baby? Your body doesn’t lie even if your words try to.”
She bit her lip, hips twitching forward into his touch. “San… we really shouldn’t—”
But the protest faded as he kissed her neck again, mumbling between presses of his lips. “Just quick, I promise. In and out. No one will notice. I need you too much right now, gorgeous.”
Her resistance crumbled under the onslaught of his desperation and her own desire. She pulled him closer, kissing him messily as his fingers continued to tease her. The faint sounds of the party—laughter, splashes, music—filtered through the window, making the moment feel even more forbidden and thrilling.
San pushed her bikini bottoms down her legs just enough for access, then freed himself from his swim trunks. His cock sprang out—thick, hard, the tip already leaking with need. He lifted her effortlessly, her legs wrapping around his waist as her back pressed firmly against the door-turned-wall.
“Ready?” he panted, lining the head of his cock up with her entrance, sliding it through her slick folds.
She nodded, whispering, “Hurry,” her arms tightening around his neck.
He thrust in deep in one smooth, powerful motion, burying himself to the hilt. They both stifled moans at the sensation—him stretching her perfectly, filling her completely in an instant. San stilled for only a heartbeat, letting her adjust to the sudden fullness, then started moving with urgent, deep rolls of his hips.
“Fuck, you feel incredible,” he groaned against her ear, pace already fast and hard. “So tight and wet for me. Been thinking about this all day.”
The door creaked faintly with each powerful thrust, but neither cared. Skin slapped against skin in a quick rhythm. His mouth found hers again in messy, heated kisses while he fucked her steadily against the wall, one hand supporting her thigh and the other braced beside her head for leverage.
She clung to him, nails digging into his shoulders as pleasure built rapidly. The position allowed him to hit deep with every stroke, the angle perfect for quick, overwhelming sensation.
“San—,” she gasped quietly, meeting his thrusts as best she could.
He understood without hesitation, hips snapping faster, pace turning almost punishing in its urgency. Sweat began to mix with the remnants of pool water on their bodies. His breathing grew ragged, forehead pressed to hers.
“God, I needed this,” he muttered, voice strained. “Needed you so fucking much, baby. Can’t get enough.”
Pleasure coiled tight and hot in her belly, building fast from the intense friction. She clenched around him, drawing a low groan from his throat.
“Come for me, sweetheart,” he urged, thrusting deep and grinding his hips in small circles to add pressure where she needed it. “Let me feel you come around my cock.”
The words pushed her over the edge. Her orgasm hit hard and fast, walls fluttering and clenching rhythmically around him as waves of pleasure rolled through her. She bit down on his shoulder to muffle her cry.
San cursed under his breath, his thrusts becoming erratic. With a few more deep, stuttering pumps, he buried himself to the hilt and came, pulsing hot inside her as he filled her completely. The low, guttural moan he released was barely contained.
They stayed locked together for several long moments afterward, breathing hard, bodies trembling from the quick, intense release. San pressed soft, almost tender kisses to her temple, her cheek, the corner of her mouth—gentle in the aftermath of the rush.
Finally, he eased out of her carefully, a trickle of his release slipping down her thigh. He grabbed tissues from the nightstand, cleaning them both with quick but surprisingly gentle motions before helping her pull her bikini bottoms back up and adjust her top.
She smoothed her hair and straightened herself, cheeks still flushed. “We really can’t keep doing this, San,” she said quietly, though her voice lacked complete conviction after the intensity they’d just shared. “Mina likes you. I can’t keep blocking her chance like this.”
He cupped her face in his hands, thumb brushing her lower lip as he looked at her with those intense, dark eyes. “I’m not interested in her. Never have been. This is us.” He leaned in for one last quick, lingering kiss. “But we should get back before someone starts looking.”
They slipped out of the room separately—her first, then him a couple of minutes later—to avoid raising suspicion.
Back outside by the pool, the party continued as if nothing had happened. The sun still shone brightly, laughter still filled the air. Mina gave her a slightly questioning look as she rejoined the group, but she brushed it off with a casual smile and another cold drink.
San jumped back into the water with the guys, his easy, dimpled grin returning as if the entire encounter had been nothing more than a quick trip inside. Yet when their eyes met across the shimmering pool water, the heat and secret satisfaction still lingered between them—fast, addictive, and impossible to fully ignore.
The gathering remained perfectly chill on the surface.
Everything, like the ocean, flows and enters into contact with everything else: touch one place, and you set up a movement at the other end of the world. It may be senseless to beg forgiveness of the birds, but, then, it would be easier for the birds, and for the child, and for every animal if you were yourself more pleasant than you are now. Everything is like an ocean, I tell you. Then you would pray to the birds, too, consumed by a universal love, as though in ecstasy, and ask that they, too, should forgive your sin. Treasure this ecstasy, however absurd people may think it.
"Does a falling tree in the forest make a sound when there is no one to hear?"
Which says something about the nature of philosophers, because there is always someone in a forest. It may only be a badger, wondering what that cracking noise was, or a squirrel a bit puzzled by all the scenery going upwards, but someone. At the very least, if it was deep enough in the forest, millions of small gods would have heard it.
Things just happen, one after another. They don't care who knows. But history...ah, history is different. History has to be observed. Otherwise it's not history. It's just...well, things happening one after another.
Desire itself is neither good nor bad. It is a natural consequence of the kind of beings we are and the way we relate to our world. Through reflective consciousness, we develop a sense of causality, time, and distinction between objects. We form beliefs about the world's present state through our experience of it, and we form desires about its future state. While we sometimes directly choose what we desire, this process more often happens automatically.
Desires are a way of conceptually realizing our needs. We perceive a need that must be met, and we find a way of meeting it through a particular goal. An intentional desire is nothing other than a conceptual pathway built out of logic and reason that leads to the completion of our goal. That we can see this causal linkage so clearly and certainly is what makes it so easy for us to become attached.
« Voici comment se mesure la force : savoir porter sa vie à travers un monde où il n’y a plus ni sens, ni vérité, ni but, ni loi, ni justice, ni causalité — et, en même temps, ne pas perdre la volonté même de vivre. »
— Julius Evola, Théorie de l’individu absolu (1927)
