GPT

Yes, and in this light, the "forgiveness" Cioran speaks of is no absolution—it is merely the permission to persist within the machinery of harm, as long as one bears the proper insignia of usefulness. The subtitle, the trade, the seal—these are not markers of personal meaning but of legibility within a system that demands extraction and conversion.

Jensen’s formulation of civilization as a structure of harm maximization reframes the banal violence of daily life: it is not a series of unfortunate byproducts but the very engine of the system. The world-as-resource paradigm ensures that to exist within it is to be complicit. Even those who resist must negotiate with the logic of the machine, must find ways to "make a living" while trying to avoid the grim arithmetic of exploitation.

So, perhaps the Satan of Christianity and Jensen’s civilization are the same—forces that demand participation in destruction under the guise of necessity, that transform survival into an alibi for complicity. And yet, the question remains: where is the crack in the machine, the fissure where something else might emerge?