This story sprung from a sense of despair regarding civilization, so my first thoughts were about romanticizing a return to a nomadic culture of personal experience, kind of a narrow way of experiencing the world. Nature worship without being tied into a world of materialism, caste, or obligation to waste away one's time alive serving some great inescapable machine.
Something I want to remind myself: because of civilization and globalization (particularly the exchange of information via film and text, spread by the internet; all of which are high technology), a person is able to share these rare and beautiful encounters with the grandeur of nature in a way that was never before possible. From a helicopter I can watch waves crash on the craggy bluffs somewhere in the Netherlands... without leaving my home. If I can make this project, somewhere in Norway, perhaps someone will see my memories of a sun-drenched nap in the midday sun.
This made me realize that maybe, the machine I designed to call attention to the things others tie themselves into, is more about me than just a judgement of civilization. Tying up one's heart in a thing that then siphons energy away. In my case, it has been relying on others. Placing my heart in the hands of others and waiting for their energy to come flowing into me; when all along, I have been free to take back my heart, generate my energy for myself, and become autonomous. But to keep my heart inside myself, I, like the mothlike, become blind and only able to experience the world through immediate trial and error, lost and seeking an abstract situation I won't know until I happen on to. He invites the city folk to come with him, but does not attempt to sacrifice himself to save them or their machine. He is free of them, separate from their reason for living, and distant from the meaning they find in their communal life and death.
I don't want to forget that this is not a story about someone being right and others being wrong. Worshipping the "overworld" is something I would like to do. But the mothlike's way of life is not so much more glamorous than those in the city. Freedom is blissful, uncertain, tiring, and when all the time has passed, what trace does a free creature leave behind? Will the mothlike ever settle, or is this just another insect flying into open flame?
This is also an important element.
