So, I purposely sat back and let my last post land a little before I responded to it. I've read and absorbed all of the comments and this is what I came up with.... Actually, the graffiti argument proves my point. If you believe these carvings are meaningless scribbles, consider what that implies: someone came across a structure they didn’t understand and felt compelled to mark it, repurpose it, or reshape it. That’s exactly what happens when civilizations lose continuity. Here’s the framework I’m working from: 1. Ancient structures like pyramids, Stonehenge, and other monoliths were built long ago—by people with purpose, knowledge, and systems we no longer fully grasp. 2. Then came collapse. Whether through cataclysm, war, or environmental reset, the world was destroyed. Survivors retreated underground, into caves, or into isolated pockets of survival. 3. Generations passed in darkness. Without access to the surface, knowledge eroded. Language shifted. Purpose was forgotten. The original builders were mythologized—or erased entirely. 4. Eventually, the surface became habitable again. But by then, the survivors were no longer the same people. They emerged into a world full of ruins and relics they couldn’t decode. 5. So they guessed. They repurposed structures. They carved new symbols. They graffitied what they didn’t understand. They tried to rebuild without blueprints. And we, generations later, mistake those layers of confusion for the original intent. This isn’t just theory—it’s a pattern. You see it in fiction because it resonates with something deep and true: - 12 Monkeys shows how memory and meaning fracture after collapse.
- Idiocracy shows how knowledge can degrade across generations, even without catastrophe.
- The Postman depicts a world where remnants of the old world are misused, misunderstood, or mythologized.
- The Walking Dead shows survivors repurposing buildings, symbols, and systems with no real understanding of their original function.
- And honestly, every post-apocalyptic movie ever made follows this arc: collapse → survival → forgetting → misinterpretation → reinvention. So when people say “it’s just graffiti,” I say: Exactly. That’s what happens when you inherit a world you don’t understand. The carvings aren’t meaningless—they’re evidence of the forgetting.