The modern european attains a masters degree in executive change management and takes an elective in "Marketing in the Metaverse" and "Measuring Sustainability in Finance". No code was written, no forest was visited. But alas, such practical work shall be left for others. The elites here, the last few supposed aristocrats of this fallen continent, have decided to simply do absolutely nothing. Where previously at least a building would be donated to a university or a the local music school would get some more funding, nowadays this is mostly abandoned
I sit here, in this auditorium surrounded mostly by old french- and englishmen. In between the rows of grey and bald heads there do mingle some younger people. These however, are not french or english or dutch, but mostly the heirs and heiresses of foreign fortune. An attempt to ascend them into a supposed "high society" that is eradicating itself, for it does not know what purpose it still has except hating itself. Like most of europe, we now only think about our place in the dirt. It mostly just surprises me why people would do such a thing; attend such a school, take such a job, live in such a way. Do they not, in the consequences of their own actions, see that what they're doing is of no real purpose? Do they remain delude that the world goes on despite them, not because of them. That their actions are in direct contradiction to the hallowed few, elsewhere, that must now work double?
Later in this event I go for a walk alone through the halls of Fontainebleau. It is, quite simply, gorgeous. Yet there's a crushing weight of expectations that sets in as you walk there. If we keep this up, never shall we build anything as beautiful as this again. If we don't revert back to our golden path quite quickly, salvation may not come. It doesn't matter what we lose, even if it is the castles and arts of old, if we do not achieve victory we will sit among these gorgeous old ruins and smile, for we knew once what they were for, even if the civilization that created them might as well be from another planet.