Poem: "Sometime After the Lights Go Out..."
Article voiceover
Sometime after the lights go out we stop reaching for the switch, but usually not until we’ve helplessly and with growing irritation tried to flip it on, then maybe off, then on and off repeatedly— darnit! This is the collision of a habit with a structure that no longer responds. Might as well get used to it. I suspect there’s going to be a lot of helpless throwing of dead switches going forward: habits attempting to operate in systems that no longer do. The question is how to gracefully lay old habits to rest and how to make new ones, because we don’t want to end up putting our old dead switches on altars, their wires leading nowhere, only to light candles beside them, hoping for things to return.