Theme and tone of the Broken Verge

[Superfluous Crow]

As many have done before me, i have written down a few tenets that describe the feel and tone of my setting (Broken Verge). There are five of these themes, each with a short description to give you a deeper understanding of the meaning and tone. I have two questions:
1) Is the writing good?
2) Are the themes interesting enough?
I know it's a matter of taste, but then let me hear whether it accomodates yours.

Note: you might have to read the Broken Verge Primer to make sense of some of this.

Isolation
Silence. No sound except the wind rustling in the trees and the dry grass. No birds. No life. This new world is not as vibrant with life and energy as it once was. Everywhere the miasma of isolation fills you as the human need for civilization and order gnaws at your soul.  The world isn't dead, but it is broken; not only are the humans isolated from each other, the World itself is isolated from its own past.
 
Fear
Although people often claim that they follow a path of joy through their lives, we all know, deep down, that this is a lie. But a necessary lie. Exposing the fear that underlies our most basic choices can be a harrowing experience; one that most people would prefer to avoid. But through the ordeals of the cataclysm many people had to confront their worst fears and nightmares, and many were left scarred by this meeting. Fear pervades every aspect of life, although not always in an obvious way; the fear of death that leads people to survive, the fear of the future that leads to preparation, and the fear of solitude that leads to civilization.
 
Panta Rhei - everything flows
Many religions throughout the ages have claimed that the world moves in cycles. They claim that things return to what they once were; that the world has no end and that it is eternal. This is not true. Ancient philosophy states that you can't bathe in the same river twice, and this holds for the world as well; the world will always change and will never be the same. The Cataclysm was a great shift in the reality of the world, but it wasn't the first and it won't be the last. The world will always change, and not every change can be for the better.

Strangeness
Even after the cataclysm ended, there was a hint of something different in the air. The physical world clearly wasn't the same, torn apart as it were, but the intangible world didn't seem quite right either. The very foundations of our world had seemingly been disturbed somehow. It wasn't something people talked about, after all there wasn't much to say, but everybody could, and still can, feel it; that tiny odd sensation in the back of their heads that told them something was, if not wrong, then different. And sometimes the strange things ceases to be pure imagination and become real. In a world that has been remade the rules are remade as well, and not until we discover them anew can we tell what is beyond reality and what isn't. One way or another the world is a stranger place.
Adaption
After the Cataclysm, it has become very apparent indeed that humans aren't as timeless as we were led to believe. We are equal in many ways to every other species on Earth in that none of us has a reserved placeof survival.  we just have a different set of capabilities. The only thing that keeps us alive is our ability to adapt to the challenges the World sets before us. The question is, how far are we to go? Is being human an ideal in itself, or should we strive to become something more? Did our Creator make us this way so we could remake ourselves and fulfill our purpose? Learned men and aristocrats alike seek the answers to these questions as well as the solution to the riddle of immortality; both through science, occultism, and macabre self-modification.  

[Ishmayl-Retired]

Ask and ye shall receive (sometimes).

The writing is pretty good, your flow keeps me reading, you have everything broken up in easily-recognizable paragraphs.  However, there are parts of your presentation that are ambiguous that don't seem to me that they should be ambiguous.  For instance.

"The New World is not a world vibrant with life and energy as it once was."  Now, being a world builder myself, I can take some guesses and make some assumptions about that sentence that will help me understand that there have been many ages in your world on the many continents that (presumably) exist.  However, I've read a lot of settings, some with fantastic writers, and some much, much poorer than you.  If I had not, I may be confused by you describing the "New World" essentially as "old" in the very first sentence.

What is the fear you're speaking of in the second paragraph?  I'm assuming it has something to do with the Cataclysm you've mentioned in later paragraphs, but what if I had never read your setting before and didn't know anything about the Cataclysm?

I like the "Everything flows" paragraph, very evocative of some ancient philosophies that I'm a big fan of.

Under "Strangeness," you seem to be implying (or am I just inferring?) that the past is coming back to haunt the present in some form or another.  Or maybe I'm just making that up.  However, all the "strangeness" you mention seems to just be saying "the world's getting darker, either physically or psychologically."  Is there more to it?

So humans are adaptable.  Remind if there are other races in the world, or is the 'Verge humancentric?  My main question about your last paragraph is, what do most of your questions have to do with adaptability?  It seems that the answers to your questions would focus more on willpower and purpose than adaptation.

Looks good so far.

[Superfluous Crow]

Ah, yes, i should probably have realized that it would be slightly hard to understand. I had a primer up not that long ago that explained the concepts, but nobody commented on it, so i decided to post pieces individually. The Cataclysm was a great catastrophe that changed the world dramatically and people refer to the world before as the Old World, and the world now as the New World. So they aren't different continents, just changed continents.
The fear paragraph isn't so much a by-product of the cataclysm as the natural fear that we all possess and guide many of our choices without us realizing it. I'm just putting a focus on doing things because you're afraid of the consequences rather than the typical view of doing things because you want to.
I like everything flows as well, and i wanted to get out of the trope of "cyclical" worlds.
Strangeness isn't necessarily equal darkness; the world is just... odder.
the Verge is humancentric as of yet, although that paragraph also goes for non-human creatures (it's just written from a human perspective). The questions focus on whether humans should remake themselves (magical body-modification/other sinister things) to ensure their survival, or whether changing themselves ruins the purpose of survival as they are no longer that which they wanted to preserve.

[Scholar]

Strangeness isn't necessarily equal darkness; the world is just... odder.

what doesn't kill you makes... stranger.^^ [/joker]

the Verge is humancentric as of yet, although that paragraph also goes for non-human creatures (it's just written from a human perspective). The questions focus on whether humans should remake themselves (magical body-modification/other sinister things) to ensure their survival, or whether changing themselves ruins the purpose of survival as they are no longer that which they wanted to preserve.

this is a great underlying conflict for human life. i really like it and in my opinion you should devote a lot of focus to this. basically: what makes a human human?
what i don't like about this is that what i'm writing at the moment goes along similar lines, but you beat me to posting, making me the copycat. :( (joking. :P)
all in all you paint a bleak picture (i like that), but you should flesh out the strangeness some more. :)

[Kindling]

I now have to have a proper look at your setting, as it's themes look fascinating. The first passage, on Isolation, I found especially compelling.

[Superfluous Crow]

Well, there sadly isn't a lot to look at yet :)
especially since i just fleshed these out yesterday. But i'm very happy i caught your interest :D
Mind you, the wiki is outdated.
@Scholar: Yes! i beat you to it! :p Joking aside, i think there is plenty of room in that theme for a multitude of approaches. But i think it will be one of the defining factors in my societies. Hmm, yeah, my strangeness examples aren't the best; i'll look into that.

[Superfluous Crow]

I did a new version of Strangeness. Which do you prefer?

Strangeness
Even after the cataclysm ended, there was a hint of something different in the air. The physical world clearly wasn't the same, torn apart as it were, but the intangible world didn't seem quite right either. The very foundations of our world had seemingly been disturbed somehow.  It wasn't something people talked about, after all there wasn't much to say, but everybody could, and still can, feel it; that tiny odd sensation in the back of their heads that told them something was, if not wrong, then different. And sometimes the strange things ceases to be pure imagination and become real. In a world that has been remade the rules are remade as well, and not until we discover them anew can we tell what is beyond reality and what isn't. One way or another the world is a stranger place.

[Scholar]

i prefer the new one. :)
even if it contains a lot of "some-"s. ;)

[Kindling]

Ditto, new one's better.

[Superfluous Crow]

Hehe, true, hadn't noticed. Is it bad? Or okay?

[Ghostman]

I think the new one is overall the better, although I miss this part of the old one:

The sun doesn't seem to shine with the same warm glow as it once did, plants seem less vibrant with life

I really liked that sentence.

[Superfluous Crow]

I was planning on including those in a non-theme paragraph describing the world after the cataclysm. Since those aspects are of a more physical nature and actually don't have a lot to do with strangeness.

[Matt Larkin (author)]

"The New World is not a world vibrant with life and energy as it once was."  Now, being a world builder myself, I can take some guesses and make some assumptions about that sentence that will help me understand that there have been many ages in your world on the many continents that (presumably) exist.  However, I've read a lot of settings, some with fantastic writers, and some much, much poorer than you.  If I had not, I may be confused by you describing the "New World" essentially as "old" in the very first sentence.

You might change the feel of the sentence by simply changing it to "This new world is not" (or "This new world has lost the vibrancy of life.").

[Superfluous Crow]

That wasn't a bad idea, so I changed it as per the first version. The second one seemed to cut the sentence a bit too short. I also took the liberty of updating the first post with the new version of the strangeness. :)