It is language
which has worked originally
in the construction of ideas;
in later times it is science.

Just as the bee works at the same time at the cells
and fills them with honey,
thus science works irresistibly
at that great columbarium of ideas,

the cemetery of perceptions,
builds ever newer and higher storeys;
supports, purifies, renews the old cells,
and endeavors above all to fill that gigantic framework
and to arrange within it
the whole of the empiric world, i.e,.
the anthropomorphic world.

And as the man of action binds his life
to reason and its ideas,
in order to avoid being swept away and losing himself,
so the seeker after truth builds his hut
close to the towering edifice of science
in order to collaborate with it and to find protection.
And he needs protection.

For there are awful powers
which continually press upon him,
and which hold out against the “truth” of science
“truths” fashioned in quite another way,
bearing devices of the most heterogeneous character.

On Truth And Falsity In Their Extra-Moral Sense by Friedrich Nietzsche p. 154, trans by Oscar Levy

Earthquakes are terrifying.  The earth’s core is magma.  Under the mantle of soil, further down beneath granite and limestone and sandstone is seething viscous rock.  At times along subterranean fault lines massive tectonic plates slip to release the roiling magma. The ground moves.  Earthquakes are terrifying, even lessor tremors compel attention.  Underneath what we can see, are forces that we cannot imagine.  At worse there is total devastation.

Not so long ago, the earth moved. As if shaken by a quake that left fissures in the social solidarity we assumed we had, “fake news” and “alternative facts” emerged in public discourse.  A darker interpretation of America in these not-so-United-States, has been building for some time.  The advent of social media, technology enables a coalescence of existential discontent, causes the heretofore stable earth to violently move under us.  Asserting “alternative facts” is not a benign offer of another point of view meriting consideration.  Rather it is incipient violence, an assault upon everything that now stands.  It is impossible to ignore the predator-poster child, and the host of acolytes eager to drink their fill of his promises.

Reason and truth which we thought to be our high wall of defense against the chthonic, a guarantee of sorts, that the dark and bloody days of pre-history were behind us, — has been a misconception. The ground rolls, pavement splits open.

Science, a method, a system of disciplines has produced a cornucopia of medicine, tools of every scale, transportation our ancestors couldn’t dream of, etc..  These “benefits” together have been a misdirection, a rose-colored-lens cloaking a monster that was stalking us all along.

There are “truths” fashioned in quite another way which bear down upon us.

There is one question, one alone that needs be asked:  Is the apogee of the West, our way-of-life, a columbarium of ossified ideas, a morbidity past repairing? OCD worker-bees, are always in demand to maintain our global hive! Is democracy, free-trade-capitalism only a simulacra, a faded copy?  So far, no one has come up with the misplaced original. Would that even help?

To do nothing will mean one thing: what happens is the inevitable.