Condolences on Humanity's Return to a Modern Dark Age

From the moment cinema was born, humanity slowly shifted—from imaginative readers who shaped the world with their minds, to passive watchers mesmerized by giant screens. Heroes once born of paper and thought became three-dimensional spectacles: hyper-masculine men, impossibly beautiful women, shaping the modern psyche with illusion and desire.

Then came the internet—pulling us even further from the real world. Instead of nature, family, or one another, we now gaze endlessly into glowing screens, desperate for validation in the virtual realm. Being a good human in the real world? No longer a priority. In this age, even the darkest crimes can feel legal—if they’re distant enough.

Actor Keanu Reeves once shared a haunting anecdote:

Two teenage girls, after hearing the plot of The Matrix, laughed and said, “So we already live in the Matrix.” Their father added: they rarely leave their rooms or speak to their parents—lost in their screens.

That is the world we now inhabit.

This detachment has turned the ongoing massacre in Gaza into just another muted headline—stripped of urgency, reduced to spectacle. Smart screens whisper: This is just another Marvel movie. Look away. It’s not your world.

But it is the world. And in it, children are killed in food lines, as powerful governments applaud war criminals like Netanyahu. The U.S. Congress rises to honor a man responsible for 17,000 orphaned children—perhaps out of fear, perhaps out of complicity. Digital blackmail, political theater, and mass distraction have paralyzed our collective conscience.

Our morality, sterilized by Instagram and WhatsApp, now fits into hashtags and fleeting protests in safe streets. We are heroes of comfort, not courage.

Meanwhile, Trump and Netanyahu’s modern inquisition punishes even the brave voices of truth—like Francesca Albanese—treating them as enemies for standing with the powerless.
Albanese said it best:

“The powerful punish those who speak for the powerless. That is not strength. That is guilt.”

This modern Galileo will not bow to power’s false gods. But many leaders will.

And so we must awaken—from our digital slumber, from our Matrix dream.
Because only by returning to the real world can we stop the killing of the innocent—those who die every hour for a bowl of flour.

Condolences on our descent into a modern Middle Ages. May we rise before it's too late.