... in the later days of the empire:

perhaps those few that could see the shape of the times knew that their perspective was, at best, an anomaly; they knew that the larger population would actively and vociferously deny that perspective, and could therefore never unite in the collective effort that would be required to reverse conditions. some of these few went mad, delighting in orgiastic ecstasies, believing tomorrow would never come. some others held to what they deemed their responsibility in these troubled times, arguing with hoarse voices to a world that could not hear, feeling anxiety and panic and despair consume their humanity, until they too were driven mad.

and some, considering that the end of the world was not a sufficient justification for the end of their humanity, calmly lived their lives as they had always lived them, waking with the dawn, working an honest day, and returning to laughing children and loving spouse... sleeping deeply and well, with dreams of tomorrows that somehow transcended the real abyss interrupting the future.

this was the thinking of this misunderstood few: the end of the world had pretended to come many times before. there were the middle ages, for instance, or various periods of uninterrupted and pointless war. why would today's situation be any different? and even if this WAS different, and the world was unequivocably going to end, well then, so what? PEOPLE DIED EVERYDAY. the end was always coming to someone somewhere. and while it may seem different for the end to come piecemeal, as opposed to a all-in-a-piece, for each individual dying soul, such difference was academic. death would come to everyone, eventually. should certain death stop people from living, and the world from turning?

thus it was, at the end of the empire, that the greater part were ignorant, and the few bifurcated into madness and sanity. and those who isolated few who knew but remained sane, resembled in almost every way the vast ignorant masses...