I often reflect on Theodor Adorno’s theory of negative reasoning, which locates meaning in what is absent or lost rather than in instrumental value. As he notes, when one learns to fear a knock at the door as the Gestapo’s arrival, one comes to truly understand the meaning of freedom.

Raymond Williams’ The Country and the City comes to mind here. In essence, his argument is a dialectical one: you can’t have one without the other.

See Theodor W Adorno / Frankfurt School, particularly The Authoritarian Personality and Dialectic of Enlightenment. It’s kind of all there, the answer to your question.

It is the kind of question I ask myself constantly and is my fascination and trust in history. I believe capitalist history, as ongoing catastrophe, may demand new barbarism before opening a horizon of possibility. Pessimistic, I know, but such is the trajectory of human existence.

I have ‘the brick’ for you.