💡 Incandescent

Incandescent

Gone are the evenings near the lamplight that warmed me in the cold months, along with the memories highlighted by such radiance. Soon, the vivacious warmth that gave shadows an organic depth will no longer be experienced. Another thing from the old ways is fading away into a distant memory, and the beauty among all that it once touched will soon disappear.

It is meaningless to those who see utility as a value that precedes the decadent nature of what came before it. Crunching numbers to justify the degradation of quality through a singular benchmark to save energy, rather than pursuing human ingenuity to sustain beauty and strive for its abundance.

And those who choose to make such decisions on behalf of all without the proper authority do so with claimed justifiable ends based on amoral judgments. They may appear favorable—seemingly well-intended, but even if they are, there are no consequences. Bureaucratic accountability is always a collective abstract entity that rarely holds an individual or many responsible.

There are limits to refinement, and going beyond them is redundant. The perfection that is incandescent, having lived through wars and a multitude of various generations, has been forgotten, only to be replaced with something that bears a similar resemblance. The claimed unequivocal alternative comes with a mocking flicker that reminds everyone of its "efficient" energy-saving premise, made without merit.

Now, freeways that used to glow in the middle of the night are a gamble due to the severe impairment caused by the headlights of the latest car models beaming behind me. The stores that are proud of their renovations make me feel unable to focus and overly surveilled from the piercing white light above every aisle. The soulless LED’s have created problems that never existed before. The self-guided altruism only creates more depravity on their crusade for illusory perfection.