been flipping through a book on Shinto and there's an interesting point the author, Motohisa Yamakage, makes about a materialistic view leading to a lack of appreciation for the continuity of the world, and how that changes attitudes towards it
it's exactly the issue with how people take the idea of the world being a simulation to justify being a shitty person
sadly this same rejection of the continuity and import of the world can be found in some forms of Christianity
and as much as he gives room for this not being wholly part of Western values of modernity, I honestly think it goes deeply into them
both of the two main modern ideologies that aren't just the dressed up conservatism of liberalism (fascism and communism) there's often the rhetoric of breaking free from the current world to recreate it
whether that also includes appeals of a return to the past or to a new glorious future really depends on who of that ideology is making the argument
but in liberalism, we see the cultivation of an eternal present
the past is bad and must be left there, while the future is not here yet and thus a dream
but the past, present, and future are all necessarily connected
the very fact that my skin is this caramel color and I'm speaking in this language from this area is the result of many factors of history that could have easily been different
and what form I take in the future can only be created from the sculpting material of the now
