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[In]Significance

Douglas Balmain
2 min readSep 27, 2019

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Photo by Anthony Intraversato on Unsplash.

We know nothing of moving freely.
Our work is transactional,
existing under the rule of friction and heat.
We are forever trading away pieces of ourselves
to a world that grates and burns.

But that’s not the way to say it, is it?

The way we reference “the world” —
the world I’ve just referenced
and the way I’ve referenced it —
does not name Earth.
It does not name a planet
nor does it indicate nature
nor the cosmic order.

“The world”—
as we like to use the phrase —
names our human environment,
the fabricated conditions of the human experience.

Limited. Self-centered. Self-indulgent. Narrow.

We are so used to maintaining
our critically singular views.

The grating, braking, heating friction of our environment
is a product of our own forces
that we cannot help but to exert back
onto ourselves —
back onto our manufactured world.

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