The Price of Forgetting: From Hiroshima to Heatwaves

August 5th is the day before Hiroshima.

What happens when history is erased, the past is politicized, and the present burns?


The world changed on August 6, 1945โ€”and since that day, every August 5 has become a kind of psychic limbo. A reckoning. The last breath of innocence before the mushroom cloud.

Thatโ€™s how I always feel on this date.
Like weโ€™re holding our breath in a forgotten waiting room of historyโ€”blind to what came before, numb to what unfolds now.
The silence before the sirens.
The moment before the blast.

Todayโ€”August 5, 2025โ€”we are back in that limbo.

But this time, the sky is not split by one bomb.

The destruction is slower, more dispersed, less cinematicโ€”yet no less final.

This time, itโ€™s heatwaves that break records.
Rivers that dry to dust, then overflow in torrential floods.
Forests that burn unchecked, fueled by massive rains that feed new vegetationโ€”only for it to dry, then ignite, as heatwaves and droughts return like the ticking hands of a doomsday clock.

It is rights that vanish. Books that disappear. Truth that crumbles like ash.

This time, the bomb isnโ€™t dropped.

Itโ€™s embedded.
Woven into the system.
And we are its architects.


IThe Myth of the Clean Bomb

The atomic bomb was sold to the American public as a necessary evil. A weapon that saved lives by ending the war. That version of reality still persistsโ€”scrubbed clean of childrenโ€™s shadows burned into concrete, of survivors coughing up blackened blood, of generational trauma encoded in irradiated cells.

The lie of the clean bomb persists because it serves empire. It allows America to remain the hero of its own myth.

And that myth is still being weaponized.

Only now, it’s turned inwardโ€”against its own people.

Todayโ€™s warfare is economic, psychological, algorithmic. Yet the logic remains unchanged: justify atrocity with a false binaryโ€”us or them, freedom or chaos, purity or infection.

Todayโ€™s โ€œthemโ€ are immigrants.

They are scapegoated for the damage inflicted by the billionaire classโ€”that paltry 3% who not only own the means of production, but also control the distribution of goods, truth, and even hope. Theyโ€™ve spent decades engineering a system where they get moreโ€”and everyone else gets less. Less pay. Less power. Less time. Less life.

And now, as the American Empire fractures under the weight of its own excess, the billionaires are panicking.

The moral calculus never changes. Only the delivery system. And the scapegoats who bear the cost of the sins committed by the ultra-richโ€”men who molest truth as easily as they molest children.

Protected by wealth. Worshipped by media. Shielded by spectacle.


II. The Climate as the New War Zone

While politicians posture and billionaires build bunkers, the planet keeps the receipts.

July 2025 was the hottest month in recorded historyโ€”for the third year in a row. Massive wildfires are displacing thousands across the Pacific Northwest and Mediterranean. Crops are failing in Africa and Latin America. Major cities are approaching wet-bulb conditions too dangerous for human survival.

But itโ€™s not just weather. Itโ€™s the slow-motion collapse of the world we were promised. A world built on endless growth, fossil-fueled prosperity, and the illusion of safety for the โ€œcivilized.โ€ That world is burning down, and too many still think we can shop our way out of the flames.

The climate crisis isnโ€™t just about carbon. Itโ€™s about power. Extraction.

It is a system that treats the Earth like a warehouse and people like units of productivity.

It is war by another nameโ€”waged on the body of the planet and the psyche of the people.

It is something I write about in Sapience: The Moment Is Now.


III. Erasure as Strategy

As the temperature rises, so does the campaign to make us forget.

The Project 2025 blueprint isnโ€™t just about rolling back regulations or gutting federal agencies. Itโ€™s about destroying institutional memory. Banning books is not just censorshipโ€”itโ€™s conditioning and control. Erasing queer history, Black history, labor history, climate truthโ€”itโ€™s all part of the same project: obliterate the past so the present can be reprogrammed.

And itโ€™s working.

What happens when a nation forgets not just Hiroshima, but Tulsa? Not just slavery, but Flint? Not just the Dust Bowl, but Paradise, California?

Such a nation becomes unmoored. Untethered. Easily manipulated. Easily distracted by pleasure, products and propaganda.

Memory is not nostalgia. Memory is resistance. When we forget, we become malleable. Controllable. Willing to call cruelty โ€œorder,โ€ or fire โ€œprogress.โ€


IV. What Is Worth Remembering

Today, on August 5, I am remembering not just the blastโ€”but the silence before it. The illusion that everything was fine.

Thatโ€™s where we are nowโ€”algorithmically embedded and entombed in illusion. Trained in the art of forgetting. Forgetting that we are space-time beings of staggering magnificenceโ€”sentient sparks capable of perceiving, feeling, and dancing with the mystery of life. One of the rarest awakenings in the known universe. And yet… here we are: sedated by spectacle, indentured to the machine, clocking in for our slow extinction under corporate rule.

(A truth explored in depth in my book, Sapience: The Moment Is Now.)

It is a myth has never relied on fact. It relies on meaning. And meaning is forged in remembrance.

So let us remember:

  • That humans made the bombโ€”but we also made peace.
  • That fire can destroyโ€”but it can also purify.
  • That forgetting is dangerousโ€”but remembering is defiant.

Let us remember the land before it cracked. The sky before it choked. The soul before it was bought by billionaires and oligarchs.

Let us remember that we are not separate from the story. We are the storytellers.

And right now, the story is breaking.

But so are we.

And maybeโ€”just maybeโ€”thatโ€™s where the fire of renewal begins… like the mythical firebird.

Call to Action:

๐ŸŒ This week, remember something real.
Tell someone a story about your ancestors. Read a banned book. Visit a site of historical pain and power.
Because remembrance is not passive. It is protection.
It is protest.
It is a portal.

Tags:

#HiroshimaDay #ClimateCrisis2025 #Project2025 #HistoricalAmnesia #CollectiveMemory #SapientSurvival #WisdomGuardians #ErasedHistories #AuthoritarianCreep #AmericanMythos #ClimateJustice #PoeticResistance

๐ŸŒ€ Supplement: Echoes of Empire โ€” From Galactic Collapse to American Decline

In my book Sapience: The Moment Is Now, I trace how empires have risen and fallen across human history in patterns eerily familiar to those imagined by Isaac Asimov in his Foundation series. Asimovโ€™s Galactic Empire, like Rome, like Britain, like America today, collapses not from a single blowโ€”but from accumulated rot: arrogance, bureaucracy, inequality, and the silencing of truth.

What Asimov understoodโ€”and what history confirmsโ€”is that humans rarely respond to collapse with wisdom. We cling. We deny. We search for scapegoats. We double down on failing systems out of fear of the unknown.

Empires donโ€™t just fall because theyโ€™re conquered.
They fall because they forget what they were for.
Because the story that once united them becomes hollowโ€”and the people stop believing.

Sapience explores this moment as not just political, but mythological. The American Empire is in decline, and the question is not ifโ€”but how we respond. Do we fracture into chaos, or awaken into something wiser?

That, as Asimov might say, is the true test of a civilization’s soul.

Foundation โ€” Official Trailer | Apple TV+

๐ŸŒ€ Supplement: The Now Scroll

My Now Scroll minis are myth-infused micro-essays or 3-minute soul jolts that confront the collapsing empire in real time. Each one distills a powerful truth at the intersection of myth, psyche, and political reality, using poetic insight and piercing clarity to expose the deep structures of controlโ€”whether it’s cultsfascism, or the subtle ways we co-create our own enslavement.

They aren’t just commentaryโ€”they’re living scrolls that remind the reader to stay awake, to question the spectacle, and to reclaim their inner authority in a world designed to numb and domesticate human consciousness. This one is relevant to today’s blog.

๐ŸŒ€ Supplement: Sapient Survival Guide

Part mythic handbook, part political manifesto, part psychological field guideโ€”this 62-page survival document is a razor-sharp reckoning with the world as it isโ€ฆ and a rally cry for what it could be.

The Sapient Zombie Survival Guide is not your average prepperโ€™s pamphlet. Itโ€™s a call to those who still feel, still think, still careโ€”those not yet devoured by the hollow hunger of authoritarianism, consumerism, or despair. It charts the psychic terrain of a country in collapse, exposing how propaganda, greed, and mythic forces have turned millions into the walking dead.

But it doesnโ€™t stop there.

This guide arms readers with 10 survival strategies rooted in ancient wisdom, archetypal truth, and modern resistance. It invites the reader to awakenโ€”not just politically, but mythicallyโ€”and to ride the dragon of consciousness through a world set ablaze.

With poetic fire, biting satire, and unflinching honesty, this publication lays the foundation for the volumes to comeโ€”The Houses of Wreckage and The Dragon Ridersโ€™ Guideโ€”offering not just survival, but transformation.

Sapient Survival Guide
Part mythic handbook, part political manifesto, part psychological field guideโ€”this 62-page survival document is a razor-sharp reckoning with the world as it isโ€ฆ and a rally cry for what it could be.

Check it out on Mixam.

๐ŸŒ€ Supplement: The Quip Collection’s Firebird Series

The Firebird is a powerful mythic symbolโ€”radiant, untamed, and eternally rising. It evokes transformation, fierce beauty, and soulful renewal. These products capture this important symbol of soulful regeneration and transformation.