What the story exemplifies is that we are linear, goal oriented creatures, in a cyclical, reciprocal, feedback driven reality. Even “freedom” is a goal that fades when we examine it too closely. We are nodes in our network and it’s a two way street. When we lose sight of the connections, we become like a scab, that becomes gradually disconnected from the underlaying organism.

Yet in our goal oriented worldview, we are constantly seeking the signal to extract from the noise, but the noise is context for the signal. So those bright shiny things we chase around, seem meaningless, when we finally catch them.

Money, for instance, is the medium which enables markets to function, but we treat it as signal to extract from the noise of society and the economy, requiring ever more to be added and ever more inventive ways to store what has been extracted. Since money is largely a contract, with one side an asset and the other a debt, we supposedly save for the future by incurring debt from each other and the government. All leveraged to infinity and beyond. So the tool that enables mass society to function, becomes the cancer consuming it.

Our idea of freedom is a pile of money. Extracted from a destroyed world.