Externalities
Back when smoke first kissed the sky
We drew a line and called it “why”
Built a system clean and straight
Measured time, accelerated fate
Cradle born to cradle grave
Every corner cut to save
What we lost was out of frame
Still it counted just the same
We said the earth could take the weight
Like it always would regenerate
But silence doesn’t mean it heals
It just forgets to say how it feels
Designed to produce, designed to win
Counting profit, not the skin
Of the soil or the years ahead
Just the numbers neatly fed
If the cost don’t show up here
Call it growth and call it clear
Future’s bill gets filed away
Somewhere we don’t have to pay
Rows in rows in perfect lines
One idea a thousand times
Fields that used to sing in chords
Now just hum in single words
Small hands, small farms fade from sight
Couldn’t scale the endless fight
Bigger wheels and fewer names
All compressed into the same
Efficiency became the crown
And anything slow got taken down
Diversity was “inefficient”
So we paved it, line by line, obedient
Designed to produce, designed to grow
Faster than we’ll ever know
What it costs beneath the ground
Where the missing things aren’t found
If it runs, we call it right
Even if it drains the light
Borrowed time in borrowed air
But the ledger doesn’t care
We outsourced the consequence
Wrapped it up in innocence
Let the industry decide
How to regulate its side
No allegiance, no remorse
Just a well-optimized course
Not a villain, not a friend
Just a means without an end
Paradigms like shorthand notes
Passed around in practiced quotes
No one stops to ask them why
They just learn them, then comply
Designed to produce, designed to last
Long enough to outpace past
But the future’s not a line
It’s a web we leave behind
If the system doesn’t bend
It won’t break, it just won’t mend
And the quiet cost we hide
Grows teeth on the other side
It looked so simple from the start
Just a line drawn through the heart
Of something bigger, something wide…
We just called it “simplified.”