(cont.) "I think a lot about history, not because I'm so interested in what happened per se, but because I want to understand what people in declining civilizations were thinking. I'm interested in mental states, psychology, all the things I thought were a total waste of time in college, when I actually had the time to study."
"Were people aware that things were going downhill? Or did certain segments of the population know while others were in denial? I think the latter is more likely to be the case, but it would still be interesting to know what was going through the heads of the deniers, probably because I've always related more to the decliners. Or maybe that's not completely true, because I went from oblivious to less oblivious."
"Or did some people vacillate? Or maybe evolve or devolve, as the case may be?"
"It's no secret that there have been some big civilizations and empires that went the way of all flesh, but I think we know more about the psychology of some more than others. Like the Maya civilization: they're pretty notorious for having ruled a big empire -- they had cities the size of Los Angeles -- and then fizzled out for reasons that I don't think are completely understood. But I often try to imagine whether there were people at the time who were saying things like 'umm, we used to be very nimble and innovative, but over the past few hundred years, we've become far too bellicose and rigid, and we're relying on too few crops, and we're about to step off a cliff. And the leaders, who like leaders throughout history were not exactly starving and probably had a lot invested in the status quo, were like 'don't listen to those Cassandras, we're in great shape.' "
"Or what about the ancient Greeks? They went through what everyone agrees was a period of enlightenment, which -- again for reasons that I don't think anyone really understands -- was followed by a major decline. All of a sudden -- by which I mean over the course of a few hundred years -- you have this increasing interest in things like oracles and rites of catharsis and all sorts of superstitions that are what you would expect to find in a less-evolved society. Or how about Vienna at the end of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Of anyone, they seem like the most death-obsessed, neurotic society in history, like for a century before World War One everyone was like 'oh my god we are so fucked' and they were drowning in bureaucracy and civil unrest, but it still took like a hundred years, which is a long time in some respects -- like from the perspective of a person -- but not long at all from the perspective of five-thousand year old tree, if such a being can be said to have a perspective, which I think probably could, because right now, the ancient trees must be like 'damn, this weather is really bad, what the hell is going on?' And the weather could be literal and metaphorical as such things go."
"But the question of decline can be turned inward, too. We all die, of course. We all lose strength along the way, in whatever way you want to think about it. I don't think it's a revelation to say that most young people -- assuming they have enough to eat and some job prospects -- tend to be more idealistic, but then time passes. And even if you have enough to eat and an income, something happens and you're like 'I don't know what I'm doing anymore except I'm not sure I like it.' Unless you're maybe a leader, in which case you're probably thinking that things are pretty good and you want to ride the gravy train forever. But those people die too, thankfully."
"As this process -- which you could call time or aging or both -- goes along, if you're like me, you start to obsess about it. You become your own civilization in a way, divided by the optimists and the pessimists, and as the latter take hold, you start to wonder if you ignored the signs that were there earlier. You ask yourself: why didn't you listen when you still had the chance to do something about it?"
"Because speaking personally I didn't listen. And the signs were there."
"Other people saw the signs, too, and I ignored them. The bellicose rigidity. The personal fascism. And then it was the chasm. The decline. The end of the empire. I'm not claiming to be unique in any way, but you asked so I'm telling you."
"But not everyone ends up in here, so maybe I'm more unique than I want to admit, which I say with the understanding that 'more unique' doesn't really work from a grammar perspective. Anyway, I was officially an empire -- albeit a very small one -- in official decline when I saw something I couldn't explain. I'm not going to describe it in detail because I know you've heard it before from others. My point is that it made me rethink everything. Not in terms of my own trajectory, but in terms of my mental state. I had to make a choice between this sort of cold, pessimistic analysis and a kind of belief. Not a belief in a higher being or even a religious 'faith' -- or at least not in the 'organized' sense -- but in a way that made me realize that, as long as I'm going to be stuck in this declining body in a declining society, I'm going to carve out a space for something that can't ever be destroyed because it doesn't have any basis in 'reality.' Needless to say, everyone told me I was crazy. But you know what? I would rather be crazy if that's what it takes. I know what I've seen and I'm not asking anyone else to believe me. I might be a lunatic, but I'm not raving about it. I feel calmer than I ever have. You might say 'consoled.' "
Pictures taken in Fort Tryon Park on May 21, 2016. Text excerpted from The #Gods Project: A Training Manual (Section 2 Interviews with the Institutionalized.)