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The Philosopher Between the Capitalist and the Communist Chapter 41 : A Final War to End All Wars By Punkerslut
War began between those two high and mighty powers of the world, Capitalism and Communism. Every possible resource of humanity and material was utilized for the ends of destroying the enemy, and the rest of civilization was left with a world full of catastrophe and destruction. Millions of people were displaced from their original homes, often dying in starvation, falling victim to slavery, being conscripted into the armies, getting abused by local natives, and suffering from new diseases and maladies that couldn't have touched them in their homelands. Cities that had been important for thousands of years were burned to the ground, their concrete sidewalks broken up with ballistae, their buildings broken down by flame. The war between Hammurabi and Solon raged on and on, with one side conquering part of its enemy, and then, after another long battle, a quick reversal, with the only result being the loss of human life, the destruction of cultural centers, and and the uplifting, dispersal, fear, and risk that all human life was suffered. Everyone had this fear, it drew them away from the cities, it pulled them out of them the fields, it made them disappear to far away lands where they could escape such miserable pains. It was this destruction that ended all of civilization, sometime around the year 400 BC, between Hammurabi and Solon -- between the Communist and the Capitalist empires. The Apocalypse is what it's called when the world ends. But for ideas, the world is culture and civilization, and once that's gone, then so is the world. It was thoughts that guaranteed that grain was cultivated, it was thinking that produced forged metal in the mills of the cities. The Communist and Capitalist worlds weakened, partly from fighting each other, and partly from the severe repression their Authoritarian orders would naturally have upon their people's thinking, particularly during a period of severe war, or "the period of Artificial Famine," as the Philosopher had been known to knickname it. Humanity decayed and decayed, capitals were reduced to rubble, the fields turned barren, and the everyone felt both fear and desperation, rulers and ruled, Capitalist and Communist. That is what it is like for the world to end -- it is not necessarily one single struggle between two groups that leads to everyone killing each other; it's one single idea, which dominates two opposing groups, that causes them to chip off one piece from each other in every contact that they have. Together, they share Authority, apart they differ on Property. The Red and the Blue, but altogether, slightly stained in the White of obedience to Authority, and not the Black of defiance towards Authority. So dark Red and light Blue -- the one to deceive the people, the other to disguise itself -- these were the colors that separated the dying world.
What makes a Communist and what makes a Capitalist? A peasant in any village would have a million answers to this question. But with the Final War, and with the clash of two mighty powers, there weren't many left to give a definitive answer to this question. Solon and Hammurabi still had their own answers, and those that diverged from those two main streams still had their own answers, too -- but those two pulsing rivulets of water and wonder quickly merged closer and closer together in their own mutual self-destruction. Soon society and civilization was not defined as a series of rivers joining each other at disparate points and making connections at unusual joints; soon it was nothing but a tremendous flood of suffering and violence, a tidal wave of hunger and hatred. In the chaos and disorder, there was a drowning of those great minds that would've given us invention and science and art and thought. There was an internal death to humanity, there was a quiet death-like hibernation to humanity's soul. Everyone was busy fighting to talk. Everyone spent more time in fear of dying than in enthusiasm at living. The Apocalypse destroyed everything, entire villages deserted, cities reduced to humble gatherings, capitals full of pestilence and poverty.
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