The Realization of Edgar Allan Poe's Nightmarish World

We are living in Neo-Antebellum times where the wealthy and powerful have divided society into strict class regiments so entirely there is no semblance of solidarity anymore. People have been so alienated from each other we are even divided from ourselves, our sense of self-preservation heightened to both extreme highs and dulled to the point we care not for own health any longer. We are each of us walking contradictions fleeing from imaginary dangers and sleep-walking into apocalypse.

Edgar Allan Poe in his prose, specifically "The Masque of the Red Death" and the poem "The Raven" wrote of death. Both stories present an opposing perspective of death: the former is of death whilst revelling in company, ignoring it entirely; and the latter is of death whilst wallowing in it, seeking only solitude and nothing more. This dichotomy must have haunted Poe, that people would either pretend death was not at their doorstop, and that if they let it in would merely lament its presence in their home instead of themselves leaving for safety.

Of course, being well over a century since his passing, there is no telling what Poe actually felt or thought. We are left with his stories, and nothing more.

But we are in the Neo-Antebellum times, slow-walking toward war with each other for reasons unfathomable to each other: one side that opposes the other simply because they need an opponent; and the other side chomping at the bit because they feel slighted.

But below all that, simmering anger, not at all directed toward anything. And despair, capping the anger in place, for now. However, whenever and however the conflict should begin, it'll soon turn into true opposition, each side overturned from within by the forces they themselves have been courting yet ignoring and abusing. The conflagration will likely grow and grow, and burn all that can reach, and it'll spread quickly, with sparks flying and alighting new fields of battle, and the war will rage, becoming a war of attrition, consuming as many as will toss themselves and each other upon the pyre.

That is not here nor now however. Now, it is all simply ridiculous nonsense. Real world problems that have no solution, and a march toward unavoidable chaos that could've been avoided had different choices been made previously. Wiser, sensible decisions that were never even considered because some greedy fool would not have solely benefited rather than it being of service to a multitude of people.

We are living in a world ruled by those without empathy, an ability to comprehend the suffering of others due to the choices being made, that those in power have themselves made, quite deliberately and without hesitation or forethought.