Hard Times―
IT WAS A TOWN OF MACHINERY AND TALL CHIMNEYS, OUT OF WHICH INTERMINABLE SERPENTS OF SMOKE TRAILED THEMSELVES AND WE’RE NEVER UNCOILED.
IT HAD A BLACK CANAL AND A RIVER THAT RAN PURPLE WITH ILL-SMELLING DYE, VAST PILES OF BUILDING FULL OF WINDOWS WHERIN THERE WAS A RATTLING AND TREMBLING ALL DAY LONG, WHERE THE PISTON OF THE MACHINERY WORKED MONOTONOUSLY.
IT CONTAINED SEVERAL LARGE STREETS ALL VERY LIKE ONE ANOTHER, AND MANY SMALL STREETS STILL MORE LIKE ONE ANOTHER, INHABITED BY PEOPLE EQUALLY LIKE ONE ANOTHER, WHO ALL WENT IN AND OUT AT THE SAME HOURS WITH THE SAME SOUND TO DO THE SAME WORK,
AND FOR WHOM EVERY DAY WAS THE SAME AS YESTERDAY, AND TOMORROW AND EVERY YEAR THE COUNTERPART OF THE LAST AND THE NEXT
CHARLES DICKENS HARD TIMES 1854
By: Christopher Maffei
Unlike today’s petty academics that are lost in a black hole of existential overthought and confusion. Thomas Robert Malthus―an Imperialist was born in the late 18th century and ended his life as a petty nobleman. He peddled the philosophy of human overpopulation―or what I like to call: The Philosophy Of Human-Annihilation. At the time, many of his feelings of existential dread were shared by the other petty nobles.
But Why?
These feelings were most likely spawned from the fact Malthus was born right before the industrial revolution just outside of London. In so being, Malthus would have seen the picturesque English countryside turned into a polluted and poisoned landscape. In a world that was once pristine to Malthus became hellish. To Malthus, humanity was the problem. Not the fact that he lived in a heavily polluted London.
Most likely, Malthus, a Jesuit was struggling with a deep-seated psychological need for human salvation― and the deep need to reject those feelings. Or the inner conflict that we all struggle with. Of course, just as today, Malthus needed someone to buy into his academic thoughts.
180 years later―someone did…