Beraishis 4L The futility of a Godless society

This verse is written in poetic form, lending to Midrashic interpretation.
The verse reads: Lemech tells his wives: I have slain a man to my own hurt, and a child to my own bruising. If Kayin shall be avenged seven-fold , then Lemech shall be avenged seventy-seven fold.

Rashi cites a Midrash: Lemech was the grandson of Kayin, and was blind. He and his young son went out hunting, the boy acting as his eyes to help him locate animals to hunt. When the child spotted what appeared to be an animal he directed his father to shoot. Lemech mistakenly shot Kayin, his grandfather. When Lemech and the boy approached the dead “animal” the boy told his father that it wasn’t an animal, he had actually killed their grandfather, he clapped his hands together and exclaimed, “Woe is me, I have killed my own grandfather Kayin!” In that hand clap he inadvertently struck his son’s head and crushed it. In this way Lemech came to kill his own grandfather and his own son on the same day. Lemech reacted by saying, “By a bruise of mine (my blindness) I killed a man (Kayin) and by a blow of mine (clapping my hands) did I kill a child (his own child)!”

RSRH develops this Midrash further, explaining this episode metaphorically and as a continuation of the previous verses (which spoke of Kayin and his descendants setting out to harness and develop the creative thoughts and skills they possessed to build a city-world of industry and culture, removed from God) as follows:

“Adah and Tzillah, my wives, what we have achieved, setting our children on the path they have taken is no source of pride. The world of the city and all its productivity and culture doesn’t atone for Kayin’s sin. Rather, I have killed him. I have also murdered the youth, and by doing so I have wounded myself most of all.”

Culture is only holy and brings happiness if it is in the service of God. But when the previous generations were set on removing God from their lives and this is the culture they developed as an expression of the aspirations of those generations, this results in being just the same or worse than Kayin himself.  Such a generation sacrifices the past and the future without gaining anything for itself.

Beraishis 4:23-24
pages 144-146