An apocalypse is a relative thing…
“Ah, my love. An apocalypse is a relative thing, isn’t it? When the earth shatters, it is a disaster to the life that depends on it — but nothing much to Father Earth... When a slave rebels, it is nothing much to the people who read about it later. Just thin words on thinner paper worn finer by the friction of history. (“So you were slaves, so what?” they whisper. Like it’s nothing.) But to the people who live through a slave rebellion, both those who take their dominance for granted until it comes for them in the dark, and those who would see the world burn before enduring one moment longer in “their place” — That is not a metaphor... Not hyperbole. I did watch the world burn. Say nothing to me of innocent bystanders, unearned suffering, heartless vengeance. When (one) builds atop a fault line, do you blame its walls when they inevitably crush the people inside? No; you blame whoever was stupid enough to think they could defy the laws of nature forever. Well, some worlds are built on a fault line of pain, held up by nightmares. Don’t lament when those worlds fall. Rage that they were built doomed in the first place.”
— N.K. Jemisin, from the prologue to The Stone Sky
I won’t lament the passing of the nation state, the end of the illusion of human sovereignty. I won’t lament when our transient love affair with nostalgia finally comes to an end. For some, these endings will be painful. They still think that all that history has something to do with who they are. They still think that it is the source of their identity. But the land does not belong to us, we belong to the land.
So let us take care of one another in the best way we can. Let us allow that which was built on the fault line of pain to pass away, so that we can see each other, care for each other, have compassion for each other, and love each other in ways unclouded by the distortions of a past held too tightly.
