What we build now, today, in the small ways we know how, with the small things we are able to do, is what will remain when the empire falls.

What do you want to see? What do you want to put in its place? There will be wreckage, chaos, problems. We cannot avoid that, I think. (If we can, I don’t know how. If you do, please tell me.)

But we can think about what might come after the empire. What might be able to arise from its ashes—not a reborn version of the hideous beast itself, but something new and better. We can plant those seeds and nurture them now, grow them as much as we are able now. True, some of those seedlings will probably get crushed in the wreckage. But some will not. And roots will remain. And a habit of planting and tending those seeds will be there already.