That's all it ever was though. Different arrangements of matter, molecules, atoms, quarks, quanta. Different frequencies of wave. Different arrangements of letters and words. Everything that is can be quantified as patterns of presence and absence -- ones and zeroes. The patterns are complex and elegant and incomprehensibly high-resolution, but they're still patterns of presence and absence.
I've always been tickled by the idea that evil cannot create, only corrupt what already exists, because no man in all of history has ever created anything at all. We turn trees into shelter and fire and parchment, plants and animals into food, food into energy into ideas, wood and stone and metal into useful shapes and pipes and circuits to trap lightning in, and patterns of presence and absence into glyphs, letters and words, which we rearranged endlessly, just like we rearrange matter, all the while telling ourselves we're creating. All anyone has ever done is take what's there and move it around, like ants or birds or Satan.
Life is pretty shit now but I don't think that's a reason to mysticize how it used to be, especially when everything they did then got us where we are now. Like how tradcaths idealize the idyllic nuclear family lifestyle which collectively birthed the most childish entitled selfish coddled short-sighted generation of Americans that's ever existed. We are living the consequences of their lives and the appropriate response is not jealousy, it's indignation.
