The Time Machine
The Traveller leaps toward entropy and human descendants split into Eloi and Morlocks — a dark mirror on comfort, exploitation, and the long arc of civilization.
The line I kept
“We are always getting away from the present moment.”
The core claim
Technology and time do not guarantee moral advance. Stratification can hollow out empathy until predator and prey share a species but not a soul.
What to steal
- Second-order effects — who pays for convenience and “progress”?
- Long view — today’s arrangements echo in distant outcomes.
What to ignore
Reading late-Victorian evolution tropes as modern biology. Take the moral puzzle, not the dated science.
This week
Pick one system you benefit from (delivery, cloud, supply chain) and trace one hidden cost or worker upstream — one concrete gratitude or advocacy action.