I’m a gamer, by nature. When I was growing up, I spent many, many a Saturday afternoon gaming. It’s been a hobby of mine for 30 years now. I’m very much a solitary gamer, preferring single-player RPGs over co-op games.

If you’ve seen my Substack, I have been currently working my way (backwards) through the Horizon Zero Dawn/Horizon Forbidden West games. I promise, this is relevant to the nature of this article. The premise, for those who don’t know, is that we essentially nuked ourselves back to the Bronze Age, and the game takes place about 1000 years after humanity’s near extinction, where we live in tribal societies again. The game is also “Rich people fuck everything up and fuck off to space,” but that is less important to what I’m talking about now, and more relevant to reality, unfortunately.

The other night, I was a little inebriated (OK, I was quite stoned) before bed, and I wanted to show my partner a scene from the game, where you just sit by the fire and listen to a shaman tell the creation story of the tribe you are helping. I wanted to show them because the voice actor in this scene is one of our favorites, and he absolutely kills it. Now, this is not even a plot, or an achievement. You get no reward for sitting there and listening. You just can. Here is the actual scene:

And as I listened to the story and watched the scene play out, something hit me. A deep, deep sense of sadness. Watching this fictional scene, where the shaman of the tribe goes into their creation myths, I felt loss.

Our modern technology, with all of the good it can and does bring (vaccines and medical science, sanitation, the internet when it wants to be, among other things) disconnects us from the actual magic of this world. I wrote about this when I first started my Substack—about how humanity was not meant to be working jobs we hate for 50 fucking years to MAYBE retire. About how our modern society is killing us from stress and manufactured scarcity. About how we aren’t meant to be stuck inside at a desk all day staring at a screen. but it goes deeper than that.

There is real, tangible magic in this world. I’m not talking about spells, or spirits. Magic is watching the moon come out over the mountains on a dark night. Magic is walking through a forest and hearing the sounds of life around you that you can’t see. Magic is listening to a loon symphony across a lake. This IS magic. Yes, science can explain things, but that doesn’t matter. This is the heartbeat of a world that is, currently, fighting for its life against a parasitic infestation. Us.

All of the modern societal architectures we have today are made up by us. The concept of money, of "bullshit work”, of land ownership. Those are things we made up. Back when humans lived in tribes, these things did not exist for the most part. The barter system, while not without fault, was far better than what we are dealing with. Our ancestors were free to create, to dream, and to actually live.

Now, I am doing my best not to romanticize this, because there were absolutely issues, the most obvious being sanitation and lack of modern medicine. And of course, people being people, we always find some way to shit it up. But humans, cognitively, cannot comprehend caring about so many people.

Can you comprehend and have empathy for 8 billion people? Conceptually, maybe. But could you make decisions that affect millions of people, and know that you were doing right them? Could you resist the temptation to fuck over as many people as you can for your benefit? Look at where we are at now. Our politicians right now are fucking around instead of actually doing something.

I say I could, but I’m a broke desk jockey struggling to make ends meet. We don’t know how we react to situations we haven’t been in.

Tribes were small, usually about 100-200 people. You knew everyone. They knew you. You see it the same in very rural America. When I went to the small lake community over the summer, everyone would greet us, shake our hands, ask us how are stay was. My in-laws explained the dynamic. If you are in trouble, your neighbor, no matter their political or religious beliefs, would help you. And you would do the same. Obviously there were squabbles and disagreements, but at the end of the day, if your boat capsizes, your neighbor would pull your ass out.

I did voter registration in Black neighborhoods in 2012. I am very much a tiny white bitch. Initially, I got a bit of mild harassment (and it was one guy, and another guy told him to shut the fuck up.) After people realized I was registering votes, we were offered water, food, invitations to block parties. It was like night and day. These people took care of each other, and offered hospitality to those who respected them. It also helped that, while I couldn’t share my political affiliation outright, most people realized very quickly which side of the aisle I was on.

You don’t get that in predominantly white suburban/urban areas. Not anymore, anyway. The days of really knowing your neighbors are long gone. I watched this in real time on my own block.

Again, it was not perfect. Obviously people will be people. And again, sanitation, electricity, and our creature comforts were not available.

But you know what was? The stars. You could see galaxies without light pollution. The water was clear and clean. Your soundtrack was the ambient sounds of life. Instead of doomscrolling all day, or doing meaningless busywork in the name of “Productivity,” you would tell stories, sing, create. You would share your meals with your community. You would hunt together and share your bounty. No one was homeless, because no one owned the land. Your needs were met, and you were supported. You worked together, because you had to for survival.

It’s even more obvious now. Studies have been done that show that show that politicians might be more likely to be psychopaths. Obviously, this is inconclusive, but look at the way Musk and Trump are systematically destroying our nation While the opposition is just lets them. We’re in an unprecedented time, where we can begin to work towards a post-scarcity society, yet our wealth divide has never been larger. And if you’re American, every drop of blood has a price.

This is the only way forward. We can’t ignore that time is running out, for us and the world we live in. The problem is so much bigger than one person. So we need to build. Our technology, when used correctly, can be our tools to build in new and compassionate ways. Humans have a capacity to pack-bond with anything. We need to start doing that. Even online.

And this can be done. We just need to try to think differently about community and the capacity for empathy. And I see many people on here doing just that. To fix the big things, we need to start small and band together. Build community online and in person. (As someone with a goddamn Trump store within 10 minutes of my house, online is my go-to for now.)

I have been having a hard time, but seeing all of the outreach that is being done is giving me some hope.

Love should end with hope.

Take care of yourselves,

Ana