I had a thought about The Void earlier this week, the kind of thought that usually follows from a blinding hangover and a shitty day at the office.

It occurs to me that it mirrors the real world far more closely than I feel comfortable with. You have a strange and hard to fathom ecosystem, relatively untouched until you make an appearence in it. Suddenly, things start changing all around you, pockets of activity where once things were left alone. To begin with, these changes are relatively small in the grand scheme of things and then voices of dissent start springing up, arguing about what's going on, wringing of hands over the state of the Void. However, while all these voices damn your actions with words, each of them persues their own agenda, milking the Void for every last drop of resource. Eventually the arguement degenerates into full scale war as the resulting corruption grows larger and harder to control, damaging the very resources everyone his fighting to save.

Does humankind deserve to Ascend to something better, such as space and distant stars? My feeling at the moment is that the we wouldn't know when we are cast down to the Nightmare. We may even be there already.

/end of philosophical, yet extremely grumpy wall of text

Sure, I can see it that way too. I also think, on a microcosmic level, it's a good analogy for relationships between people or in a group of people too. You have a stable group of individuals, which may or may not be particularly happy with its 'lot': there may be some bullies, some who accept their role as followers, and a sort of self-appointed or at least accepted 'leader' figure. Then a newcomer to the group arrives. This newcomer offers a fresh look at things, new ways of doing things, their faults are easily ignored at first (e.g. they're generous, and we can ignore that this is disruptive or breaks the existing rules of the group until later on). The group's followers are enamoured with them because they offer the prospect of a fresh look and the possibility of helping to realign allegiances within the group - they offer a chance of something new, and of escaping the dominance of the existing leadership. The self-appointed leader, and/or bullies, are unsurprisingly suspicious. They have to walk the fine line of keeping their followers loyal, but also keeping them under control: the newcomer threatens the cohesion of the group which they oversee and 'manage'.

Eventually it reaches breaking point as the newcomer divides the group and destroys the stability which existed before. Usually some of the followers will break off and form a new group with the newcomer as their new 'leader' figure, and the others will retain their old structures and the old ways of doing things.

In a way it mirrors the situation when a new queen is born in a hive of bees: the hive will fragment, and the new queen will leave with her newfound followers.