If our civilization fell, it would likely do so in such a way that no one would notice.

People would keep watching their TVs. Politicians would keep vying for office, and those in office would keep rolling the pork barrels around and shouting for importance. Preachers would keep warning their parishioners about hell, not knowing they were in it. Husbands would still mow their lawns on the weekends and turn the sprinklers on at night during the drought season. Mothers would still pack lunches for their kids, who would still go to school to learn about our world, our government, our history, our language, and the people in other "uncivilized" societies way out in the rainforests and plains. The writers and poets would prophesize with their pens, unaware that their chance has already been lost.

All but a few. A few of us will know. A few will see it come. Perhaps one or two will even seen the moment it happens, when the tower crumbles to the ground. But most likely it won't be like that. There is no tower, only a million little buildings being taken down by our own hands brick by brick to build our tiny thatch huts. But still a few of us will come to see that the castles are now but ruins, unrecognizable from their original forms.

Those of us who would see would be wise enough not to speak of it. After all, we have the clarity to see it, and so we naturally have the understanding to know that the unknowing ones would never believe us if we told them. They would laugh at us, they would yell at us, they would call us crazy, they would lock us up. Or far worse, they would ignore us completely.

< BR>But somehow we would speak. A word here, a phrase there. A quick trap of wit dropped at a small gathering of friends, just to see who chuckles with a knowing look. And in this way we would find each other, for we would be few and far between I think, only known to each other in twos or threes at first.

And what could we do? Perhaps let the world gorge on itself and simply work to weave our individual threads together to make a net to save as many as we can. Where the world rots we will plant our own seeds in the manure and wait to see what grows.

Just something I wrote a month or so ago. Appropriately, and without any forethought, I happened to write it the day before September 11th. It was not meant to come across as depressing, and in fact I made a point to add a glimmer of hope there at the end.