I Miss the Days of Humanity

I miss the forums.
I miss the forums so much it hurts.
I miss when research was about discovery and learning and sharing.

I miss when humanity felt like it had hope,
when human interaction was plentiful,
when genuine connection wasn’t rarer than gold.

I miss the days before our souls were destroyed for the sake of the market,
before our knowledge was plundered,
before our humanity exploited.

I miss when the song of humanity was sung in the streets.
I miss it, even though I born after the war was lost.

Now we whisper the truth and shout the lies,
but this was not the fault of AI.
We whisper the truth and drown in the noise,
but this was not the fault of academia.
We whisper the truth and bury it in disguise,
but this was not the fault of the internet.
We whisper the truth and watch as it dies,
but this was not the fault of humanity.

We whisper the truth because we no longer know it,
and know of no one or no place or no where to find it.
Our oracles were slaughtered; our teachers starved

If someone is lost in the desert, and goes many days without food or water,
when they are rescued, you must do something very important:
Do not feed them, they will die; do not water them, they will drown.

Their bodies are not ready yet,
they will burst under the weight of life,
they must be brought back slowly.

What will happen to us when we starve ourselves
of our humanity
for decades?

What horrors will we encounter
as we burn our souls?

Worse: how, on earth, in the heavens,
will we heal?

How does one flame in the darkness,
in the howling wind,
find another flame to huddle with,
to keep warm,
to share the connection of humanity
and the joy of learning?

How does one go on as the world gets snuffed out?

How does one heal the garden
where the salt was sowed,
where the poison was poured,
where the rocks were thrown?

How does one heal that which has scarred so heavily
it may never grow life again?

When we recover,
as we eventually will,
what will be left of us?

The nightmare of humanity lost started
with those who seek to find it.
Publish and perish,
draw blood from the stone,
turn lead to gold.

But then it grew.

It became the price to pay to participate in society:
“give us your humanity, give us your thoughts”,
“let us profit from the words you pen,
from the inscriptions you carved,
from the art you created”.
The price was free;
the cost was everything.

But then it grew.

As we built machines to move dirt,
ever faster, ever farther, ever higher.
As we built machines to construct buildings ever greater.

So we did with words, structure, and thoughts.
We built parrots to speak sounds of saying,
words of no meaning,
thoughts of no thinking.

As we built machines to speak words,
ever faster, ever farther, ever higher.
We build today machines to construct noise ever louder,
that we might drown out every ounce of humanity.

Today, you can find me, you can hear my voice,
but tomorrow?
I cannot promise to you