ESSAY: The Great Disappearing

How Populations, Communities, and History Are Being Erased Before Our Eyes

I have been watching something unfold in slow motion, something that many people barely notice—yet it is happening everywhere around us. I call it The Great Disappearing. It is not just about people vanishing, though that is part of it. It is not just about communities dissolving, though that too is central. It is about the erasure of population, culture, and even physical structures—entire ways of life swept away, often without so much as a murmur of resistance. Most are too distracted or too accustomed to the gradual change to realize what is being lost. Our psychology is trained to notice what is new, not what is missing. That is the trick of this managed decline: the world looks “normal” on the surface, but only because the roles have been filled with replacements, the silence has been normalized, and the ruins have been bulldozed.

I want to take you with me through my observations—some lived personally, others pieced together from witnesses and researchers. Together they tell a disturbing story. In this essay, I will break it down into three great vanishings: the disappearance of people, the disappearance of habits and community, and the disappearance of physical history itself. Each layer, when combined, reveals the engineered hollowing out of our civilization.

1. Where Did the People Go?

The first vanishing is the most obvious, yet the hardest to confront. I look around and I see fewer and fewer locals in ordinary life. The grocery clerks, the baristas, the fast-food workers—all roles once filled by the young, the struggling, or the retired looking for part-time wages—are now overwhelmingly filled by newcomers from abroad. I do not begrudge those individuals the work. What troubles me is the silent absence of the locals who used to be there.

It is as though the regular population has been swept to the margins. When I talk with people living on the streets, I find a recurring pattern: locals who have been destroyed by drug policies, economic strain, and government mismanagement. The official economy still functions because replacements are slotted in, but the original inhabitants are quietly shunted aside. This is why most people don’t notice the missing—because someone is still serving the coffee, someone is still stocking the shelves. The machinery of daily life hums along, masking the emptying of the people who should be there.

The COVID lockdowns accelerated this. The slogan of “two weeks to slow the spread” was the velvet glove over an iron fist. It was never two weeks—it was an indefinite grinding down of social routines. Those who complied often found themselves broken of their habits, severed from community, and permanently dislodged from their livelihoods. The deception was carefully crafted: if the state had announced permanent lockdowns from the beginning, the people would have rebelled. Instead, it was delivered in two-week installments until years had passed and the landscape of life was unrecognizable.

The result is a demographic and psychological vacuum. A third of the population complied willingly and eagerly; a third complied under duress, often losing their health or employment in the process; and the remaining third resisted, providing just enough drag on the narrative to prevent total consolidation. Yet even with resistance, the cost was severe. Millions are gone—not just physically but spiritually, absent from the spaces they once filled in the fabric of ordinary society.

2. The Hollowing Out of Community Life

The second disappearance is subtler but just as devastating: the evaporation of habits, routines, and communal practices that once defined our towns and cities. I remember when streets bustled with activity—families strolling, young people cruising up and down main street, fitness groups doing yoga or tai chi in the parks, mothers pushing strollers in cheerful little convoys. That buzz of shared life has dwindled.

After COVID, the social clock was reset. It takes only a few weeks for a new routine to become habit, and after months of fear-driven restrictions, people’s rhythms of life were permanently disrupted. Bars closed. Dance halls went silent. Public gatherings shrank. People retreated into screens and learned to accept isolation as normal. The communal joy of “being out and about” has been hollowed out, replaced by a sterile digital imitation of social connection.

And when people did venture back out, they encountered barriers: vaccine passports, arbitrary closures, surveillance, and mandates. These were not accidents; they were tools of social re-engineering. The goal was never to “return to normal.” It was to destroy normal and replace it with a new order in which movement, interaction, and assembly were conditional upon compliance.

The tragedy is that many surrendered their community for an illusion of safety. Parents sacrificed their children’s development. Friends sacrificed fellowship. Neighbours grew suspicious of one another, divided into camps of compliance and resistance. Even now, long after the mandates have relaxed, the habits of fear remain. Nightlife in small towns fizzles out early. Public squares lie empty where once they bustled. The collective heart of society has been deliberately broken.

3. Erasing the Physical Past

The third disappearance may be the most haunting of all: the vanishing of physical infrastructure and historic architecture. Buildings that once housed vibrant communities, beautiful structures crafted with care, are systematically torn down and replaced with soulless glass boxes or left as empty lots. It is not simply decay—it is deliberate erasure.

I once rented space in a grand old red-brick building that spanned an entire city block. Inside were solid oak doors, brass fixtures, handmade shelving, and the unique smell of aged timber. It was a hive of eclectic activity—photographers, musicians, societies, artisans. The building itself fostered community because it was affordable, character-rich, and welcoming to people of vision. Then one day, word came that it was to be demolished. No preservation, no repurposing—just total destruction.

I watched as antique oak doors, worth a fortune, were ripped off their hinges and tossed into dumpsters. Stained glass windows, newspapers from a century past, artifacts of history—all consigned to the landfill. Even the demolition crew could not believe the waste, but they were under orders. When the wrecking was complete, the foundation revealed hidden tunnels—catacombs connecting across the city, relics of a forgotten subterranean past. These too were sealed over, erased from memory. In their place rose yet another bland glass-and-steel monstrosity: profitable, yes, but stripped of soul.

This story is not unique. Across North America and beyond, historic districts are gutted, replaced with sterile developments or parking lots. Photographs comparing city streets from a century ago to today reveal a shocking truth: once-thriving, ornate streetscapes reduced to emptiness. Where there were once hundreds of stone and brick buildings, now there are a few survivors surrounded by asphalt or grass. The physical reminders of our heritage are being methodically erased, ensuring that future generations inherit a landscape with no visible memory of what was.

Conclusion

The Great Disappearing is not one phenomenon but many converging: the removal of local populations from public life, the destruction of social habits and communities, and the erasure of physical history. Each by itself would be tragic; together they constitute a civilizational hollowing-out. And because humans are conditioned to notice what is new rather than what is missing, most people remain oblivious to the losses until it is too late.

I have seen it with my own eyes—empty streets where once there was bustle, vacant eyes behind masks, buildings destroyed with no effort at preservation. I have talked with those pushed to the margins, with those who realize too late what they surrendered. And I am convinced: this is no accident. It is a managed decline, a planned disappearing designed to dissolve our heritage, our confidence, and our cohesion.

The question now is whether enough of us will recognize it before the vanishing is complete. Will we notice what has been stolen before it is replaced with something barren and artificial? Or will we, like the hypnotized masses, simply accept each loss as the new normal? The Great Disappearing is underway, and only awareness, courage, and conviction can stop it from becoming the Great Erasure of all that once made our civilization human.