Playing with Fire

We are all playing with fire now. Every analysis becomes ammunition, every insight a potential weapon, every observation we make is data for the next demagogue. We think ourselves objective observers, but we are accelerants—the pathology learns from us, the manipulators study our story, fire consumes analyzer along with the analyzed. There is no safe distance from which to examine a burning world; we illuminate the darkness only to discover we’ve been throwing gasoline on flames. The greater the precision of our insights, the greater the danger, yet silence is also complicity when the house is already burning. We examine the fire because we are already inside it, already breathing smoke, already choosing between different kinds of burning. The question isn’t whether to play with fire—the fire is everywhere now. The question is whether our burning will light the way toward something better, or simply add to the inferno that consumes us all.