Behold the triumph of the European Union’s transport initiative: a jagged heap of extruded aluminum and shattered aspirations resting in the Spanish dirt. If you’re looking for a metaphor for the current state of Western civilization, you needn’t look much further than the ‘tangled mess of metal, wires, and broken glass’ that used to be a train. At least 39 people have reportedly shuffled off this mortal coil in a manner significantly more violent than they had planned when they checked their watches at the station.

Modernity is a series of shiny, expensive promises designed to keep the livestock from stampeding, and high-speed rail is perhaps the most seductive of them all. We are told that we can conquer space and time, that we can hurtle across the Iberian Peninsula at speeds that would make a Victorian faint, all while sipping lukewarm espresso in a climate-controlled cabin. We forget, in our infinite arrogance, that we are merely monkeys in a tin can, and when that can hits a snag in the grand design of physics, the result is less ‘scenic commute’ and more ‘industrial-grade meat grinder.’

The survivors, bless their traumatized hearts, are currently providing the media with the requisite ‘hellish scenes’ descriptors. We love these words, don’t we? ‘Hellish.’ ‘Apocalyptic.’ ‘Nightmarish.’ They allow us to pretend that what happened was an aberration, a freak intrusion of the demonic into our otherwise perfectly managed lives. But there is nothing supernatural about kinetic energy. When several hundred tons of steel decide to stop pretending they are a vehicle and start acting like a projectile, the ‘tangled mess’ is simply the universe correcting our hubris. The wires and broken glass are the decorative tinsel on a monument to human fallibility.

Predictably, the political vultures are already circling the wreckage before the blood has even dried on the upholstery. On the Left, we will soon hear the rhythmic chanting for more ‘infrastructure investment’ and the inevitable decrying of any austerity measures that might have touched a single bolt on that track. They’ll argue that if we just threw more of other people’s money at the problem, we could build a train that defies the laws of nature. On the Right, the ghouls will look for a scapegoat—perhaps a low-level technician or a ‘woke’ safety regulation that somehow distracted the driver from the looming curve. They’ll demand efficiency and privatization, as if a profit motive can somehow lubricate the wheels of fate. Both sides are, as usual, spectacularly missing the point. The point is that your systems are fragile because the people running them are incompetent, and the people using them are delusional.

The photographs from the scene are a voyeur’s dream. We stare at the twisted metal and the blown-out windows, safely buffered by our smartphone screens, experiencing a flicker of evolutionary relief that it wasn't us. The media feeds this ghoulish hunger with high-definition panoramas of the carnage, ensuring that the 39 dead serve their final purpose: generating clicks and ad revenue for conglomerates that find tragedy to be the most reliable quarterly growth driver. We treat these deaths like a seasonal television premiere—shocking for twenty minutes, then forgotten once the next celebrity scandal or political gaffe provides a fresh hit of dopamine.

Let’s be honest about what this is: a reminder. A reminder that for all our talk of ‘connectivity’ and ‘European integration,’ we are still just fragile biological entities living in a world that doesn’t care about our schedules. The ‘hellish scenes’ in Spain are not a glitch; they are the logical conclusion of a society that prioritizes speed over substance and optics over engineering. We build these sleek, silver bullets to save ourselves fifteen minutes on a trip to a job we hate, only to find that the shortcut leads directly to a morgue.

So, as the authorities begin their ‘thorough investigation’—which is bureaucratic shorthand for ‘finding a way to bury the liability in a mountain of paperwork’—let us appreciate the irony. We live in an age where we can track our delivery pizza in real-time but apparently cannot keep a train on a track. We are masters of the digital universe, yet we remain utterly defeated by the simple geometry of a curve and the stubborn reality of gravity. Enjoy your next commute, assuming the metal holds and the glass stays in the frames. But don’t hold your breath; the universe has a very dark sense of humor, and its next punchline is already scheduled for departure.