100x

Everything that hurts in this society, hurts a hundred times more than it should.
To lose a child, hurts.
To lose a lover, hurts.
To lose a friend, hurts.
These things have always hurt, and always will.
But nothing like they do at this moment in history.
Inside your blood, inside your bones, nothing has prepared you for this life. You may understand it in the abstract, but in the very threads of your DNA, the life you were born to live, the life humans lived for 99% of our history, is community life. Communities of 150 at the very most. The maximum number of people we can relate to as individuals. If you've ever played or worked in a group of much more than one hundred, you know that your brain had to start relegating individuals into dehumanized abstractions.
In a community, every adult knows every child. Every adult invests a part of themselves in each child. If a child dies, every mourner has another child close at hand, whom they can hold a little tighter until the sadness fades.
In this lonely society, where can a grieving parent with no other children go? Nowhere. Picture a shattered soul, curled up in a fetal position in a bed only a child would fit. Even if there are other children, nuclear families are so insulated and isolated that the hole left by a missing child is often a wound that never heals.
Everything hurts a hundred times more than it should. We cope. Because no one ever offered us another choice.
In a community, with no resources to count on other than each other, everyone takes care of everyone else. Even the most annoying neener in town would instantly put themself in harm's way for you, and you them. Your lives are interwined. Survival is the currency of community living. To be alone in such a world is to perish.
In this modern world, the loss of a child hurts on another level, because we know we've lost someone who might have taken care of us when we are old. Some even consciously choose to have children, for this reason. Is this fair to the child? No. But we know no other way. All around us, we see people who slip through the cracks. Even if we're isolated from the world's castoffs, we can never avoid their images. We know they're out there...and that some of them once looked just like us. The fear of being forgotten is one of the fundamental motivations of modern life. When you've lost your vigor and beauty, will you be tossed aside?
Losing a lover also hurts, far more than it should. In our lovers, we seek someone who will cleave to us. And never leave. Such heavy weight to attach to something so light and beautiful. In a community, the thought of ending up alone is as alien a notion as sprouting a second butt.
But in this world, ever underpinning the love with which we cling to our beloved, is fear. Love and fear, the gifts we lay at their feet. So when we lose a lover, the little child inside us takes a wide-eyed gulp. The further along we get, each year bringing us one step closer to no longer being fuckable or able to tame our environment with ease...the greater this fear howls in our lonely nights.
In this world, we all know the stress inherent in parent-child relationships. Many of us spend a lifetime disappointing, or being disappointed. This hurt is amplified immeasurably because of the isolation of nuclear families. Every little friction gets rubbed raw, over years and decades.
In communities, the stresses of any single relationship are buffered by the depth inherent in all relationships.
Fear.
And loneliness.
Above all, loneliness. Something your genetic birthright has given you NO ability to deal with, or even understand. At least fear, in some form or another, is something your ancestors understood. To run into a cave from a storm, and suddenly hear a rumble that might be saber-toothed, is a fear humans of any epoch would understand.
Our ancestors, however, would have no frame of reference for modern fear, where the presence of metaphorical saber-teeth are always there, lurking in our darkness.
Plop one of our ancestors into your life, and he or she would literally go insane. Or at best, flee to coping mechanisms that would sedate a rhinoceros. Drugs of every conceivable effect. Addictions of every conceivable design. Materialism. Adrenaline. Cults of god, cults of celebrity, cults of sport. Sometimes this sedation works. The alternative is hyper-aggression, against others or oneself. Anti-sociality most multi-sided...suicide, homicide, patricide, fratricide, infanticide, regicide...and yes, even (shudder) copacabanicide.
You weren't made to live this way.
I'm sorry.
I cry for all of us.
Everything that hurts in this society, hurts a hundred times more than it should.