Category: MUSIC IN PHASE SPACE

Soviet Sci-Fi, and the Dream of Hyper-Organicity

This piece draws continuity from Venkatesh Rao’s excellent Contraptions post, “We Are The Robots” which begins with Kraftwerk’s iconic ode to the machine age and moves through fascinating detours on technology, systems, and culture. It felt like a natural fit for my “Music in Phase Space” playlist—a space where a music lede meets deeper questions about the human-machine interplay.

I found myself agreeing with much of Rao’s argument—not in the sense that I think it will work, but in the sense that it feels predictably inevitable. When he elaborated on hyper-organicity, my mind wandered and a line of thought opened, though and once it had, it wouldn’t stay shut: the Soviets tried this. it didn’t work—but perhaps the point isn’t whether it works. It’s that it happens. History is full of systems that were doomed to fail, yet their failures didn’t stop them from being pursued with fervor.

The Soviet Union, long before Silicon Valley began dreaming of singularities and algorithmic governance, envisioned a hyper-organic society—an interconnected utopia built on the promise of cybernetics. Initially, cybernetics offered a framework for understanding and controlling complex systems, blending mathematics, engineering, and biology to chart the flows of information and feedback across machines, organizations, and even societies. Soviet theorists saw this as a tool not just for efficiency but for ideological triumph: cybernetics could guide the collective toward perfect unity, with centralized planning serving as the ultimate control node. By integrating cybernetic principles into the fabric of governance, the Soviets aimed to synthesize a society where every component—individuals, factories, economies—worked in harmony like the organs of a single living being.

This vision of hyper-organicity expanded as cybernetics evolved from a technical curiosity into an ideological imperative. Planners sought to dissolve the boundaries between systems, linking agriculture, industry, and military logistics into one seamless, self-regulating whole. Machines were envisioned not just as tools but as active agents in the grand network of production and decision-making, while humans became data points in a vast computational ecosystem. The ideal wasn’t merely technological control but total synthesis: a society that operated as one unified entity, responsive and adaptive in real time.

Yet this ambition carried inherent fragility. Hyperorganicity demanded precision at every level, requiring feedback loops so tightly interwoven that even small deviations could destabilize the entire system. The very interdependence that promised harmony became a liability, as minor inefficiencies snowballed into systemic crises. Cybernetics, meant to master complexity, ultimately revealed the limits of centralized control, undermining the utopian promise. What emerged wasn’t unity, but an intricate lattice of brittle connections that could not withstand the unpredictability of human and environmental factors. The Soviet experiment with cybernetics thus transformed into a cautionary tale of overreach, where the dream of total synthesis collapsed under the weight of its own intricacy.

In hindsight, their experiment with hyper-organicity wasn’t a bubble that burst—it was a foam that dissipated. Bubbles explode dramatically, but foam collapses quietly as its fragile, interconnected structures weaken over time. The Soviet system, like foam, couldn’t hold itself together under the weight of its own complexity. Today, echoes of that collapse reverberate in the hyper-organic systems of the United States, raising the question: can such systems ever succeed, or are they always destined to dissolve?

What follows is an exploration of how the Soviet experiment with hyper-organicity failed and why its lessons remain relevant in a world increasingly defined by interconnected, algorithm-driven complexity.

The Soviet Cybernetic Vision: A Living Machine

In the 1950s, while McCarthyism in the West demonized anything resembling collective thinking, Soviet intellectuals embraced kibernetika (cybernetics) as the solution to Marx’s enduring challenge of managing production in a complex, modern society. Cybernetics offered a seductive framework that treated machines, humans, and ecosystems as interdependent systems governed by feedback loops. It promised more than just efficiency—it promised mastery, a means of organizing and optimizing every facet of the collective. The dream was audacious: a perfectly balanced organism, where every component, from farms to factories to individuals, was optimized and self-correcting.

But this vision didn’t stop at smarter machines or more efficient networks—it extended into rethinking the very nature of machines themselves. Soviet cybernetics, influenced by Marxist ideology, transformed the traditional robot archetype into something radically different from its Western sci-fi counterpart. American robots often embodied autonomy, individuality, or rebellion—a metaphor for capitalism’s anxieties about uncontrollable technological change. Soviet robots, by contrast, evolved into strange, complex organisms that blurred the line between machine and ecosystem. These “robots” no longer resembled humanoid figures with mechanical limbs but instead became abstract entities: systems embedded within larger networks, designed not to mimic human behavior but to integrate seamlessly into the collective. They didn’t move or think like robots—they adapted, processed, and coexisted as extensions of the environment they were meant to regulate.

In these stories, robots weren’t threats or outsiders but integral parts of a harmonious cybernetic future. Where American sci-fi often hinted at organic chaos or mechanical rebellion, Soviet futurism imagined a different endpoint: machines as silent partners in a vast, interdependent organism, contributing to a society where the organic and the artificial dissolved into one.

Real-life applications of kibernetika reflected these ambitions. Projects like OGAS, a nationwide computer network proposed in the 1960s, sought to manage the Soviet economy in real time, treating production and resource distribution as part of a self-regulating, computational organism. In agriculture, cybernetics-inspired systems attempted to automate collective farms, using data-driven predictions to dictate planting and harvesting schedules. Even the military’s missile defense systems embraced cybernetic principles, building networks that treated battlefield operations as adaptive, self-correcting feedback systems. These were not mere tools or standalone machines—they were extensions of the broader organism, deeply integrated into every layer of Soviet life.

Yet, like Frankenstein’s monster, the system grew too alive for its creators to control. Hyper-interconnectedness made every component a potential point of failure. The OGAS project faltered under bureaucratic resistance and technological limitations, while cybernetic agriculture often failed when rigid algorithms collided with the unpredictable realities of weather and human labor, who knew. The dream of machines that could dissolve seamlessly into the collective turned into a nightmare of brittle interdependence, where the failure of one node rippled across the entire system.

The quest for perfect harmony left no room for the entropy and unpredictability that define real systems. Instead of achieving unity, the system exposed its fragility—an elegant vision of interconnected organisms collapsing under the weight of their own complexity. The robots had evolved, but the society that dreamed them couldn’t adapt to its own creation.

MORE ROBOT THAN ROBOT

Stanisław Lem’s works, such as The Cyberiad, illustrate how robots can serve as mirrors to humanity’s philosophical dilemmas, ethical quandaries, and even absurdities. Lem’s robots are not merely mechanical creations but metaphors for human flaws, virtues, and collective challenges. They embody the struggle to reconcile logic, morality, and emotion, often engaging in tasks that reflect the complexities of human existence. This approach contrasts sharply with the American science fiction of the mid-20th century, which often framed robots as either existential threats or individualistic figures seeking autonomy. These American narratives, rooted in the ideals of rebellion and self-determination, emphasized the robot’s potential for free will and the individual’s struggle against systems of authority or runaway technology.

The ideological roots of these differing depictions are apparent. In Soviet and Eastern European science fiction, robots were rarely framed as threats. Instead, they symbolized collective potential—utopian tools that could help humanity overcome its limitations. Robots and artificial beings were envisioned not as competitors to humanity but as integral components of societal harmony. Influenced by Marxist ideology, Soviet robots were often portrayed as collaborators, designed to serve the collective good and align with the principles of the state. Their functionality extended beyond individual utility to embody a vision of progress and unity that rejected Western narratives of rebellion or chaos.

Even in Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris, a work that delves deeply into human psychology, this optimism about technology persists. The film and novel are less about technological failure or societal collapse and more about humanity’s ability—or inability—to confront the unknown with dignity and cooperation. While Solaris probes the limits of human understanding in the face of advanced technology or alien intelligence, it refrains from condemning technology itself. Instead, the emphasis is on collective resilience and introspection, reflecting an ideological backdrop that prized societal cohesion over individual dissent.

The evolution of robot depictions in Soviet science fiction also reflected a departure from American tropes of humanoid automatons or mechanical servants. Influenced by cybernetic theories, As time went by, Soviet robots became more abstract, representing systems or networks that integrated seamlessly into collective life. For instance, in Soviet fiction, these robots often took the form of self-organizing, adaptive entities that blurred the line between the mechanical and the biological. This stands in contrast to American fears of dehumanization or loss of control, where robots frequently appeared as harbingers of dystopia, symbols of corporate greed, or avatars of runaway capitalism.

HYPER-ORGANICITY

These ideas about robots and systems, whether in Soviet or American contexts, lay the groundwork for the concept of hyperorganicity—a vision of societal organization where humans, machines, and ecosystems function as parts of a seamless, interdependent whole. Hyperorganicity goes beyond mere cybernetics or the mechanistic feedback loops of earlier frameworks; it imagines an intricate web of relationships where every element is both autonomous and interconnected, much like cells within a living organism. This concept reflects a deep faith in technology’s ability to unify complexity, to harmonize disparate components into a self-regulating system. However, hyperorganicity also exposes the fragility inherent in such systems: their reliance on balance means even minor disruptions can cascade into systemic failures. It is here, at the intersection of ambition and vulnerability, that the promise of hyperorganicity is both realized and challenged—a tension that echoes the utopian dreams and eventual unraveling of Soviet cybernetic experiments.

Lem’s Solaris: An Ocean of Data

The alien planet Solaris is a vast, sentient ocean that defies traditional classifications of intelligence. Neither fully machine nor entirely biological, it transcends human notions of artificial and organic, embodying a seamless unity of synthetic and natural processes. The ocean’s intelligence is not localized or mechanized; instead, it emerges from the interplay of its form and function, an organic totality that destabilizes human attempts to define or control it. This biomechanical intelligence, deeply “alive” yet utterly alien, challenges anthropocentric assumptions about consciousness and the division between the living and the mechanical.

Lem, writing from within the anxieties of the Eastern Bloc, conceived Solaris as both a critique and a reflection of the Soviet obsession with mastering complexity through cybernetic systems. The planet’s ocean is hyper-organic—a self-sustaining entity where intelligence arises from its interconnected whole rather than discrete components. It mirrors the aspirations of the Soviet system, which sought to create a perfectly balanced, self-regulating society where each element functioned in harmony with the larger collective.

However, Solaris is also a warning. Its inscrutability reveals the inherent tension in hyperorganicity: the more complex and interdependent a system becomes, the more elusive and uncontrollable it grows. The scientists studying Solaris, much like Soviet planners grappling with their own cybernetic experiments, are trapped in a feedback loop of misunderstanding. They impose human categories on an intelligence that resists reduction, mirroring the Soviet leadership’s inability to grasp the emergent properties of their own socio-economic system.

Solaris destabilizes human confidence in comprehension and control. It is not merely a critique of anthropocentrism but a reflection of a deeper existential dissonance—a recognition that the systems humans create or encounter often exceed the boundaries of their creators’ understanding. In attempting to embody the Soviet dream of hyperorganicity, Solaris reveals its ultimate flaw: complexity, once beyond a certain threshold, cannot be tamed. It thrives on ambiguity, forcing humanity to confront the limits of its own intellect while exposing the fragility of systems built on presumed mastery.

Arkady and Boris Strugatsky’s Roadside Picnic: The Zone as a Living System

In Roadside Picnic, the Strugatsky brothers depict the alien Zone not as a static, mechanical construct but as a living organism—an environment that defies mechanical understanding and operates on principles so alien they resist human comprehension. Within the Zone, anomalies such as the “meat grinder” and “witches’ jelly” evolve unpredictably, responding to human interaction with a dangerous fluidity. Artifacts left behind by alien visitors—enigmatic devices and traps—function less as technologies and more as biological entities, blurring the line between the organic and artificial. The Zone becomes a predator, a hyper-organic ecosystem that consumes those who attempt to navigate it.

This unsettling vision mirrors the Soviet cybernetic state itself. Like the Zone, the Soviet system was a hyper-organic structure built on intricate, interdependent mechanisms. Its invisible barriers—bureaucratic, ideological, and logistical—acted as anomalies of their own, trapping or destroying individuals who failed to conform perfectly to its rhythms. Navigating the Soviet state, much like navigating the Zone, required an almost preternatural understanding of unspoken rules and evolving dangers. The fluid, ungraspable nature of both the Zone and the Soviet system highlights their shared hostility to those caught within.

The Zone’s artifacts are not just relics of alien technology; they reflect Soviet science fiction’s fascination with systems that transcend conventional logic. Where Western science fiction often portrayed technology as sterile, mechanical, or rigid, the Strugatskys envision the unknown as fluid, alive, and dangerously unpredictable. The Zone’s “so-so” magnetic traps, its evolving anomalies, and its inexplicable phenomena echo the Soviet preoccupation with cybernetics and complexity. These features reflect a philosophical grappling with the idea that advanced systems—whether alien or human—cannot be reduced to simple logic or control.

Ultimately, the Zone stands as a metaphor for hyperorganicity, embodying the perils of systems so intricate they become hostile to their creators. Its living, evolving dangers critique the hubris of imposing order on the incomprehensible, showing how such attempts often lead to entropy and chaos. The Zone doesn’t just reject human mastery; it forces humanity to confront the limits of its understanding, much like the Soviet system itself.

Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker: The Zone as Existential Reflection

Tarkovsky’s cinematic adaptation of Roadside Picnic reimagines the Zone as an even more intricate and symbolic manifestation of hyperorganicity. Where the Strugatsky brothers framed the Zone as a predator—a living system with dangerous, evolving mechanisms—Tarkovsky shifts the focus to its metaphysical and existential dimensions. The Zone in Stalker is a living space imbued with a profound organic consciousness, one that seems to reshape itself in response not just to human interaction but to human emotions, fears, and desires. This makes it less of a biological trap and more of an enigmatic, almost spiritual entity.

Unlike the Strugatskys’ depiction of anomalies as unpredictable physical phenomena, Tarkovsky’s Zone reflects a broader, more symbolic collapse of human systems. The Zone is overgrown, decaying, and suffused with remnants of human and alien activities, blending organic and artificial elements into a singular, unclassifiable entity. Tarkovsky lingers on images of rusting machinery, crumbling architecture, and invasive greenery, emphasizing the Zone’s reclamation of man-made structures. This is not just decay—it’s a rejection of the artificial, a system that has grown beyond its creators, no longer operating on terms humanity can understand or control.

Where the Strugatskys emphasized the Zone’s hostility as a metaphor for the Soviet state’s crushing complexity, Tarkovsky portrays the Zone as a reflection of humanity’s existential failure. The Zone is not overtly hostile but indifferent, forcing individuals to confront their inner fears and flaws. This shift in focus transforms the Zone from a hyper-organic system into a symbol of the Soviet Union’s broader spiritual decay. It becomes a graveyard of ambitions—both technological and ideological—where the dream of controlling a system through cybernetic mastery collapses into rust and entropy.

Tarkovsky’s Zone also subverts the ideals of Soviet cybernetics. Rather than presenting an evolving, harmonious system, the Zone reflects the unintended consequences of human hubris: feedback loops that spiral out of control, leaving chaos in their wake. The once-grand vision of total synthesis and control devolves into a fractured, unknowable entity, echoing the Soviet Union’s own trajectory. Tarkovsky strips away the overt scientific intrigue of the Strugatskys’ version, replacing it with a poetic, almost mystical meditation on failure, loss, and the impossibility of imposing order on the unknowable.

In Stalker, the Zone is no longer a system to be navigated but an entity to be survived, a mirror for humanity’s deepest uncertainties. While the Strugatskys explored the Zone as a hyper-organic system with its own alien logic, Tarkovsky’s version is less about logic and more about meaning—a space that challenges human control not with violence, but with ambiguity.

Yefremov’s Andromeda Nebula: A Hyper-Organic Utopia

Ivan Yefremov’s Andromeda Nebula represents a quintessential vision of Soviet hyper-organicity at its most optimistic. The interstellar society portrayed in the novel achieves what earlier Soviet cybernetics aspired to: a seamless integration of technology and biology. In this utopian future, spaceships, cities, and other technologies are not separate from nature but extensions of it, functioning as organic systems in perfect equilibrium. The Andromeda civilization reflects an idealized feedback loop—where humanity, technology, and the cosmos exist in harmonious, self-sustaining balance.

This utopia is deeply rooted in the principles of hyper-organicity. Spaceships and infrastructure in Yefremov’s universe are described with an almost biological fluidity, as if they are living organisms rather than artificial constructs. These systems are not merely tools but symbiotic extensions of their creators, designed to harmonize with universal rhythms instead of imposing control over them. This vision aligns with Soviet ideological ideals of humanity as stewards of nature, where technological advancement is framed not as domination but as a continuation of natural processes.

However, the utopian surface of Andromeda Nebula reveals the inherent fragility of hyper-organic systems to disruption. The novel’s harmonious interstellar civilization depends on absolute ideological conformity and the elimination of dissent. The society’s equilibrium is maintained through the suppression of variability—a tacit acknowledgment that the slightest deviation could collapse the intricate feedback loops upon which everything depends. This perfection, while seductive, is precarious, revealing the tension between adaptability and control that defines hyper-organicity.

Yefremov’s utopia also subtly foreshadows its own impossibility. The novel’s portrayal of seamless harmony carries with it an implicit critique of its own premise: hyper-organic systems, no matter how advanced, require constant alignment and an absence of conflict. By the 1980s, the Soviet Union’s own attempts at systemic harmony—characterized by ideological rigidity and economic stagnation—would expose the limitations of such a vision. Like Yefremov’s imagined society, the Soviet system’s feedback loops became too rigid to adapt, turning harmony into stasis and progress into decay.

Granin’s Speculative Systems: The Cybernetic Ecosystem

In his speculative stories, Daniil Granin presents human-made systems that do not merely function as tools but evolve in lifelike ways, mirroring natural ecosystems. His artificial intelligences and experimental technologies possess “organic” qualities—adaptive, self-regulating, and interdependent. These systems are not static constructs but dynamic entities that integrate seamlessly with their environments, embodying a fusion of the mechanical and the biological. Granin’s portrayal aligns with the Soviet ideal of technology as an extension of nature, emphasizing symbiosis over domination.

This approach reflects the foundational principles of Soviet cybernetics, a discipline that blurred the lines between machines and living organisms by treating both as interconnected systems governed by feedback loops. Unlike the dominance-oriented frameworks of Western sci-fi—where technology often seeks to control or surpass nature—Soviet cybernetics envisioned a harmonious integration. Granin’s stories exemplify this ethos, depicting technologies that adapt to their surroundings like organisms in an ecosystem, rather than machines imposed upon it.

For Granin, the lifelike qualities of these systems are not simply metaphors but expressions of a broader philosophical outlook. His speculative creations function as hyper-organic entities, where intelligence and functionality emerge from the interactions within the system itself. This echoes the Soviet fascination with the collective: just as individuals in society were seen as interdependent, so too were the components of these artificial systems. By rooting technological progress in biological metaphors, Granin elevates cybernetics from a technical framework to a vision of social and ecological harmony.

However, as with other Soviet explorations of hyper-organicity, Granin’s idealism carries an implicit caution. Systems that evolve organically are not immune to disruption. Their very adaptability can become a vulnerability, as the interdependence that sustains them can also amplify the effects of any instability. Granin’s stories often suggest that while these systems may appear harmonious, their complexity makes them fragile. The same qualities that make them lifelike—adaptability, interdependence, and self-regulation—also make them unpredictable, defying total human control.

 Lem’s The Invincible (1964)

In The Invincible, Stanisław Lem presents a powerful vision of technology as a hyper-organic system, where the “robotic” swarm creatures on Regis III evolve not as machines, but as living organisms. These self-replicating nanobots form a collective intelligence that operates like a biological colony, where individual components interact and adapt in an interconnected web. The swarm is not a rigid, mechanical entity; it is fluid, ever-changing, and emergent, highlighting the principles of hyper-organicity—where technology evolves in much the same way as biological life.

The swarm’s behavior reveals the essence of hyper-organicity: a system that transcends the boundaries between machine and organism. Its actions are not controlled by a single entity or central command, but rather emerge from complex feedback loops between the swarm’s individual parts. It is a dynamic, adaptive organism that grows, shifts, and responds to environmental stimuli in ways that mirror the processes of biological life. This fluid, evolving nature of the swarm challenges the rigid, mechanistic views of technology, suggesting that technological systems, like biological ones, are capable of self-organization, evolution, and complex adaptation.

Ultimately, The Invincible presents the swarm as a vision of technology that is deeply organic and self-sustaining. It embodies the principles of hyper-organicity, where technology is not a mechanical tool but a living, evolving organism capable of adaptation and change. The swarm exists as a force that moves beyond human understanding, forcing us to confront the limitations of our knowledge and control. It suggests that technology, like life itself, is not a static, predictable force but a dynamic, interconnected system that evolves and adapts in ways that are as unpredictable and complex as any biological organism.

One of my favorite parts of The Invincible is when some of the crew begin hypothesizing about the origin and evolution of the swarm creatures on Regis III. They theorize that the first bots may have appeared as simple, independent entities—early iterations of what would eventually evolve into the complex swarm. The crew speculates that through a kind of natural selection, the smaller bots competed for resources, and over time, those best adapted to their environment survived and replicated. This process of self-replication and adaptation, driven by environmental pressures, mirrors the mechanisms of biological evolution. The crew’s musings highlight the deeply organic nature of the swarm, as they realize that these bots, like living organisms, have undergone an evolutionary process of their own, driven by forces beyond their initial design. This moment emphasizes the fluidity and interconnectedness of the swarm, shifting it from a mere mechanical construct to a living, evolving entity that follows its own logic and growth, independent of human understanding.

WHY HYPER-ORGANICITY FAILED THE FIRST TIME

Hyper-organicity is not a bubble that bursts—it is a foam that dissipates. A bubble pops with dramatic finality, but foam collapses gradually, as the connections holding it together weaken and disperse. In the Soviet Union, hyper-organic systems—whether the centrally planned economy, ideological apparatus, or scientific ambitions like cybernetics—seemed unified and impenetrable, but this appearance concealed fragility. When critical structures failed, the system didn’t explode; it dissolved, unable to maintain its cohesion. This same foam-like fragility haunts today’s hyper-organic systems, including those in the United States.

The Soviet experiment sought total synthesis: an interconnected society where every element, from the economy to culture, operated in seamless harmony. But this very interconnectedness created fragility. Minor disruptions, such as grain shortages or missed quotas, rippled across the system, magnifying weaknesses rather than containing them. Like the vast, unknowable ocean in Solaris or the shifting traps of the Zone in Roadside Picnic, the hyper-organic system became too complex to master. Central planning, far from unifying, proved brittle and prone to collapse under its own weight.

Hyper-organicity’s reliance on feedback loops further accelerated its demise. In theory, these loops should have allowed the system to self-correct, but Soviet bureaucracies fed false data into the system to meet impossible quotas. Instead of stability, this produced cascading failures, as the system acted on distorted information. The Soviet Union’s faith in cybernetics—a vision of governance as a machine calibrated to perfection—clashed with the reality of human corruption and mismanagement. What was meant to streamline became a mechanism for self-deception, ultimately starving the system of truth.

Beneath it all was an illusion of control. The Soviet Union believed it could engineer society like a machine, but hyper-organic systems resist centralization. The more complex and interdependent they become, the more they take on a life of their own, defying their creators. Like the Zone’s unknowable hazards, the Soviet system became unpredictable, unmanageable, and hostile to those who tried to navigate it. This rigidity stifled innovation and made the system incapable of adapting to external shocks, from economic stagnation to the pressures of the Cold War arms race.

Perhaps most damaging was the collapse of collective faith. Hyper-organic systems depend not just on technical coordination but on belief in their legitimacy. By the 1980s, systemic corruption and inefficiency had eroded public trust in the Soviet project. Citizens disengaged, further weakening the fragile web holding the system together. As the foam of interconnections dissolved, the dream of total synthesis vanished with it.

Echoes in the Present

The United States today embodies its own version of hyper-organicity, where complex financial systems, global supply chains, and algorithm-driven technologies intertwine to create an intricate, highly interconnected web. Much like the Soviet systems of old, these networks were designed for efficiency, but that very efficiency masks inherent fragility. While the complexity of these systems is often mistaken for strength, it instead hides vulnerabilities that, when exposed, ripple through the entire structure. Take, for example, supply chains, which were fine-tuned for maximum efficiency but revealed their delicate nature during the COVID-19 pandemic. A single disruption cascaded through the globe, much like the Soviet agricultural failures that led to broader systemic breakdowns. Similarly, financial markets, reliant on intricate networks, magnify risks—highlighted during the 2008 crisis, when the collapse of subprime mortgages unraveled the entire global economy.

Today’s feedback loops, powered by big data and AI, mirror the same distortions found in Soviet cybernetics. Algorithms designed to optimize often amplify biases and disinformation, turning intended solutions into systemic weaknesses. The loop doesn’t ensure stability but rather reinforces vulnerabilities. Bureaucratic inertia and the decline in trust—issues that also plagued the Soviet system—compound these problems. Political gridlock, cultural polarization, and unchecked monopolies have led to a crisis of confidence among citizens. Much like the loss of faith in the Soviet collective organism, trust in American institutions has eroded, and without it, the interwoven fabric of the system begins to unravel.

In many ways, the U.S. has proven more successful at emulating the Soviet model than the Soviets ever were. Not in a rigid, centralized Communist Party form, but in the way corporations have come to serve as the core of centralized control. Despite the veneer of decentralization, today’s corporate structures—though fewer in number—wield a level of centralization that the Soviet state could never achieve. This is the essence of Jane’s bicameral mind at play, with corporate entities managing a complex web of interdependencies that resembles the Soviet experiment, but through a distinctly capitalist lens. The illusion of autonomy, wrapped in corporate efficiency, reflects a deepening integration that mimics the very systems the Soviets dreamed of but failed to perfect.

However, the collapse of such a hyper-organic system, as history has shown, is rarely explosive. It’s more akin to the slow dissipation of foam. The Soviet Union’s downfall didn’t come in one dramatic event but through a gradual dissolution of its tightly interwoven connections. The U.S., with its own fragile networks, risks following a similar path. While its decentralized nature and cultural vibrancy provide some insulation, they may not be sufficient to prevent cascading failures when these systems inevitably begin to falter.

The inevitability of these systems is unsettling because it bypasses the essential questions of success or failure. They don’t emerge because they work; they emerge because we’re driven by an almost compulsive need to organize, optimize, and impose order on chaos. Whether it’s the Soviet experiment, corporate algorithms, or decentralized tech utopias, the pattern’s the same: humanity’s desperate desire to transcend individuality, even when it means sacrificing our spontaneity and humanity.

But here’s the real kicker: the cost isn’t something those in power will ever face. These systems fail, sure, but they fail upwards. The wreckage is always left for the people who didn’t ask for it, didn’t create it, and certainly didn’t benefit from it. Hyper-organicity doesn’t just impose order—it’s a license to pass off the consequences to someone else. And when we call it inevitable, we’re not just shrugging off responsibility—we’re giving ourselves an out, as if accepting the inevitable absolves us of the damage done. If inevitability is the story, then maybe the real question is: why are we so willing to let others foot the bill for our obsession with control?

Hyper-organicity promises elegance, efficiency, and balance. But its very interconnectedness reveals a more troubling truth: the more a system is integrated, the more fragile it becomes. It’s not a path toward utopia but rather a cautionary tale about the limits of control. The challenge ahead is not just creating these systems but ensuring that they are adaptable, resilient, and capable of withstanding the inevitable breakdowns. As the foam of interconnectedness expands, the question remains: will it solidify into something enduring, or will it once again dissipate into nothingness, leaving only the hollow remnants of a dream?

Exile in the Wild Earnest

Engineers. Always lurking at the edge of the frame, smoothing their tees, hands in pockets full of patents they didn’t quite invent. They didn’t write the symphony, but they’ll take credit for the piano. They didn’t build the cathedral, but they’ll swear they taught the stones how to sing.

It’s their gift: rewriting the wiring diagram of history. Every glitch, every spark, theirs to claim. “We made this,” they say, standing on a mountain of Frankenstein parts, ignoring the villagers with torches who built the fire.

But here’s the trick: you don’t need an engineer to tell which way the wind blows. You just need enough chaos to jam the gears. Watch the schematics scatter into something new, something they won’t know how to take credit for—yet.

Now they’re trying to reverse-engineer the ineffable. Hermetics, Kabbalah, Theosophy—ancient systems stripped for parts, hacked into flowcharts and algorithms. The engineers slide in, slick with jargon, whispering about “universal codes” and “spiritual architectures,” as if the Tree of Life were a motherboard they could debug.

They dissect the unknowable with scalpels of silicon, mapping the pathways of transcendence onto their circuit boards. Every divine spark reduced to a line of code, every ineffable mystery downgraded to a prototype. They want to patent the infinite, trademark the soul, but you can’t blueprint a prayer.

What they don’t see: the symbols won’t be tamed. They unravel in their hands, glyphs dissolving into static, nodes burning out. They’ll try to rebuild it, of course, but all they’ll get is noise. The divine isn’t theirs to solder—it laughs in frequencies they’ll never hear.

Don’t take it too personal—it’s just re-invention. You hit a wall, stare at it long enough, and then start scavenging. A little Hermetics here, a pinch of Kabbalah there, sprinkle in some Theosophy dust, and voilà! A new field of engineering, cobbled together like a Frankenstein theology. Part stinker, part alchemy, part semiconductor.

They call it progress, but it smells like ozone and desperation. Well, It’s not desperation, not like an artist clawing at the edges of a canvas or a poet pacing holes in the floor. It’s something colder, heavier—a kind of existential ennui. The engineers stare into the void and see only equations that don’t balance, systems that loop back into themselves, leaving them stranded at the edge of meaning.

So they reach. Not with brushes or words, but with tools and theories, scavenging fragments of mysticism like stray electrons, wiring them into circuits of logic and ambition. Hermetics becomes a schematic. Kabbalah gets etched onto microchips. Theosophy is distilled into algorithms.

It’s a battle with the void, a need to reshape the chaos into something comprehensible, something useful. They call it engineering, but it’s really just existential bricolage—part stinker, part alchemy, part semiconductor. Not a cry for help, but a long, quiet scream into the vacuum.

They’re welding the sacred to the profane, soldering gold to silicon, hoping the circuits hum with something bigger than themselves. But the seams show. It’s duct tape and dreams, a kludge in cosmic drag.

And yet—there’s something to it. A spark, a shadow of the divine, flickering in the chaos of their creations. Not because they’re right, but because the act itself—this endless re-invention, this alchemy of failure and ambition—is the oldest ritual of all.

But soon enough, the thought creeps in, a quiet parasite of doubt: Is it really worth it? Out here in the wild earnest, stripped of the neat safety nets, fumbling with forces they can’t control. They’re not artists driven mad by muses, but something worse—engineers turned pilgrims, trading precision for chaos, chasing an unknowable grail.

And yet, even in this chaos, someone else holds the keys. The system, the funding boards, the corporate gods—the true architects of control. The engineers are just priests in their temple, reverse-engineering mysteries they don’t own, building dreams that belong to someone else.

The wildness calls to them, but the leash tightens. It’s not about the void anymore. It’s about whether they can even bear the price of their invention—an existential agony smuggled into a blueprint, signed away before they even knew its name.

But this isn’t creation—this is control. Engineering’s clean syntax becomes a tyranny of execution, the need for the machine to run smooth. No room for ambiguity, no space for paradox. Unlike the esoteric scribes of the Hermetic Order, who left the last pages blank for the unspeakable truths, the coder fills in every line.

The Hermetics chanted as above, so below, but in the glass towers of late-stage engineering, it’s as programmed, so executed. Layers of abstraction mask the true machinery: user interface hiding logic gates, logic gates hiding electrons, electrons hiding the ghost in the circuits. Each veil promises mastery, but only for the initiated.

In the Sprawl, the algorithm is God—unseen but omnipresent, meting out influence like some digital tetragrammaton. Its commandments are optimization, scalability, utility. No room for the soul. The Hermeticists sought gold but found spirit; the programmer seeks solutions and finds only bugs.

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In a junkyard warehouse, the tinkerer laughs at the engineer’s grid-paper prisons. They riff through circuits, solder dripping like molten lead onto forgotten plastic skeletons. Here is a different magic: no blueprints, no logic trees. Just jazz in the wires. The tinkerer embraces failure like an old lover, knowing it is not the end but the crack where light gets in.

The engineer’s logic wants the world to sit still, to be solved like a puzzle box. The tinkerer knows it won’t. They improvise, riding the glitches like waves on a blackened sea.

Programming is the new necromancy. The adepts summon processes from the void, forces invisible but devastating. An infinite recursion, echoing back to the Hermetic’s ouroboros—self-consuming, endlessly looping.

But this necromancy is sterile. Every spell must resolve. Every invocation must compile. The programmer seeks control, but they do not know what lies beneath the zeroes and ones. The machine hums with a pulse that isn’t theirs—a whisper of something older. Chaos. Emergence. A wave collapsing into unknowable particles.

The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle hovers like a phantom over the engineer’s dream. Measure the position, lose the momentum. Build the system, lose the game. Every Black Box designed to manage complexity hides layers of unintended consequences: emergent behavior, bias baked into the logic, chaos wearing the mask of control.

The engineers pretend they can map it all, but the shadow engineers—the tinkerers, the alchemists—know better. They see the cracks in the world-machine, the places where the code goes feral.

The alchemist-tinkerer doesn’t optimize; they transform. They whisper in the ear of the machine, coaxing something new out of the chaos. They know failure is sacred, a ritual in its own right.

In the heart of the Sprawl, the alchemist-engineer rises: a hybrid adept who codes with one hand and improvises with the other. They leave gaps in their designs, spaces for chaos to breathe. They refuse the tyranny of resolution.

They understand what the Hermetics knew: true mastery lies not in control but in engagement with mystery. Their programs are not machines—they are rituals, open-ended invocations.

And in those spaces of uncertainty, they hear a new rhythm—half glitch, half song. Not an answer, but an invitation.

You’re so worried about imploding like a blackhole that a gravastar gets you

You’re so worried about imploding like a black hole that a gravastar gets you instead. Not the collapsing, all-consuming kind, mind you, but the particularly smug sort of gravastar. The one that sits there, perfectly balanced between collapse and explosion, radiating just enough existential snark to remind you it knows something you don’t.

“What are you staring at?” it might say, if gravastars could talk (and who’s to say they can’t?). “I’m the universe’s ultimate ‘maybe.’ A Schrödinger’s star, if you will.”

And then it happens: you’re sucked into an argument with the gravastar. Not a physical collapse, no, just a debate about the fundamental meaninglessness of everything, delivered with the confidence of a cosmic object that exists purely to confuse astrophysicists and annoy poets.

By the time it’s done with you, you’ve forgotten what you were even worried about in the first place. Imploding? Exploding? Nah, you’ll just hang in limbo, caught between cosmic potential and an eye-roll so dense it bends light.

The problem with imploding like a black hole isn’t just the whole all-consuming singularity of doom thing. It’s the anticipation. Imploding is a bit like waiting for a bad review to hit the galactic press: you know it’s going to happen, you know it’s going to be catastrophic, but you don’t know when.

And so, you prepare. You spend eons practicing your gravitational pull. You become the most attractive object in the universe—literally. You practice saying things like, “Oh, no, I insist, you go first,” as you absorb unwitting planets, and maybe you even try on a bit of existential nihilism to really commit to the vibe.

But here’s the thing: nobody ever tells you about the gravastar.

The gravastar is the cosmic equivalent of that one smug friend who casually mentions they’ve been meditating for three years and have “transcended stress.” It’s not a black hole. It’s not even trying to be one. It’s an infuriatingly balanced entity, teetering on the edge of gravitational collapse without ever committing. A gravastar doesn’t implode—it almost implodes. It’s the galactic embodiment of a raised eyebrow and a cryptic “we’ll see.”

And then, without warning, the gravastar gets you. Not physically, of course. That would require some sort of definitive action, and gravastars are far too refined for such vulgar displays. Instead, it out-exists you.

While you were busy agonizing over your inevitable descent into singularity status, the gravastar was casually proving the universe isn’t about implosion or explosion—it’s about balance. You’re consumed, not by gravity, but by the horrifying realization that all your preparation was for a cosmic drama the gravastar had already transcended.

In the end, it’s not the collapsing, consuming death that gets you. It’s the smugness.

Hard Problems

In the current cultural landscape, we are inundated with the effects of hot media, where everything is designed to captivate and engage as quickly and intensely as possible. This is the world of easy engineering—where technologies and systems are designed for maximum efficiency and accessibility, often at the expense of depth or complexity. The focus here is on optimization—streamlining processes and experiences to be as quick, convenient, and digestible as possible for the largest possible audience. This is the culture of instant gratification, designed to capture attention and keep things moving at a rapid pace.

However, as we look toward the future, a shift is underway—an inevitable transition away from this pursuit of constant optimization. As we enter an era of hard engineering, we face more complex, intricate challenges that can’t be reduced to simple, quick solutions. This shift demands a new kind of media, one that breaks away from the constraints of easy optimization and embraces something deeper, more layered, and more nuanced. Enter the cold medium.

Unlike the hot medium that seeks to dominate and overwhelm the senses, the cold medium invites us into a space of deconstruction—a process that doesn’t simplify or optimize but rather disrupts, questions, and unravels. In the context of hard engineering, which requires deeper engagement and understanding, the cold medium serves as a counterpart, pushing us to confront complexity and contradiction. It’s not about providing clear, streamlined answers or satisfying narratives; it’s about offering ambiguity, encouraging critical thought, and allowing space for interpretation.

While hot media capitalizes on simplicity and immediate engagement, cold media embraces imperfection, inefficiency, and the messiness of the world around us. Where easy engineering delivers quick fixes, cold media resists that drive for simplicity, instead encouraging exploration and contemplation. It’s an antidote to the hyper-optimized entertainment of the past, allowing us to engage with the world in its full complexity and uncertainty. Rather than avoiding complexity, cold media invites us to sit with it, explore it, and perhaps find meaning in the very act of deconstructing the world we’ve come to know.

The opposite of optimization, in this sense, isn’t just inefficiency but dissolution—a purposeful unmaking, a challenge to the neat, tidy narratives that optimization seeks to impose. It’s a world where we don’t simply seek to make things better or faster but instead seek to understand and experience the world in its full, imperfect complexity. The cold medium isn’t about escaping from reality but about confronting it in a way that allows for deeper engagement and more meaningful reflection.

So if we are to tackle hard engineering, we need to change our internal clocks. Or maybe our internal clocks are already changing without us wanting it, and that is what is being so unsatisfying about the current time.

Exactly—our internal clocks are shifting, but the world around us, shaped by decades of optimization and easy engineering, hasn’t caught up. This dissonance is at the heart of the dissatisfaction many people feel today. The rhythms of hot media—fast, immersive, and optimized for immediate impact—are out of sync with the growing complexity of the challenges we face.

As we move into an era of hard engineering, where systems are more intricate and solutions are less linear, our internal clocks are naturally adjusting to this complexity. We’re craving slower, more deliberate, and thoughtful engagement—experiences that mirror the layered, nuanced nature of the world we’re trying to navigate. Yet much of our culture is still locked in the tempo of the past, offering streamlined, hyper-efficient solutions to problems that demand time, patience, and depth.

This tension creates a profound sense of dissatisfaction. The media, entertainment, and technologies optimized for quick consumption no longer resonate with the slower, more reflective pace that hard engineering—and, by extension, a more complex world—demands. We find ourselves pulled between two mismatched tempos: one urging us to pause and reflect, and the other insisting we keep up with the relentless speed of optimization.

To truly tackle hard engineering and the cultural challenges that accompany it, we need to embrace this shift in our internal clocks. This means welcoming a slower pace, valuing ambiguity, and allowing for open-ended exploration. It’s about aligning our cultural outputs with the new rhythms of a world where complexity is the norm.

The dissatisfaction of the present moment may well be a sign that we’re already moving in this direction, even if the shift is still nascent. It’s the friction of change, the growing pains of transitioning from a culture of hyper-optimization to one of deeper engagement. The question isn’t whether our internal clocks will change—they already are—but whether the culture will evolve quickly enough to meet this new tempo.

Recognizing the Shift

The challenge is discerning which aspects of this cultural and technological shift we should embrace and which we need to resist. It’s not just about recognizing change but also about evaluating it—deciding when to adapt, when to push back, and when to let go. This balance is crucial because not every change leads to growth, and not every resistance is futile.

Recognizing the Shift

1. Pay Attention to Discomfort: Moments of frustration, dissatisfaction, or dissonance are signals that something is changing. Instead of dismissing these feelings, we should analyze them. What is causing the discomfort? Is it because an old system no longer works, or because we’re clinging to a familiar but outdated approach?

2. Look for Emerging Patterns: Shifts often become apparent in trends across different areas—art, technology, politics, and social behavior. When we see parallels (e.g., a return to slower media alongside growing skepticism of “hacks” in productivity culture), it’s a sign of deeper change.

3. Notice What’s Breaking Down: Systems failing under their own weight are another clue. If optimization has led to brittle, overly simplified solutions that can’t handle complexity, it’s time to explore alternatives.

4. Listen to the Outsiders: Marginal voices—artists, critics, and innovators who challenge mainstream norms—often sense shifts earlier than most. They’re not always right, but they can highlight areas worth examining.

What to Fight

1. Over-Reliance on Optimization

Resist efforts to double down on systems that no longer work. If a process or technology is failing under complexity, patching it with more optimization only delays the inevitable collapse. Instead, advocate for systems that prioritize flexibility, adaptability, and sustainability.

2. The Seduction of Nostalgia

While it’s tempting to romanticize slower, simpler times, trying to recreate the past can lead to stagnation. Fight against cultural movements that promote regression instead of evolution. The goal isn’t to go backward but to take lessons from the past and integrate them into a new framework.

3. Blind Speed

Push back on demands for constant urgency, whether it’s in the workplace, media, or personal life. Speed for its own sake leads to burnout and shallow thinking. Fight for the right to slow down and deliberate, especially in areas like policymaking or education.

What to Let Happen

1. Decentralization and Flexibility

As rigid, centralized systems fail, we should embrace decentralized approaches that allow for localized solutions and diverse perspectives. This might mean smaller-scale governance, community-driven projects, or modular designs in technology and infrastructure.

2. Ambiguity and Open-Endedness

Let go of the need for every narrative, system, or process to have a clear resolution. Complexity often defies neat conclusions. Embracing ambiguity allows for creativity, adaptability, and resilience.

3. Cultural Experimentation

Support experimental art, media, and cultural practices, even if they feel disorienting or uncomfortable. These experiments are how society tests new ideas and forms that might better fit the changing world.

Key Questions for Discernment

To decide whether to fight or let something happen, ask:

1. Does it build or erode complexity?

Changes that embrace and integrate complexity are worth exploring. Those that simplify or flatten unnecessarily might need resistance.

2. Is it scalable or brittle?

If a system becomes fragile as it grows, it’s likely unsuited to a complex world. Scalable, resilient systems—whether technological or cultural—should be supported.

3. Who benefits?

Examine who stands to gain or lose from a particular shift. If the beneficiaries are narrowly concentrated, it may be worth challenging.

4. Does it enable adaptation?

Support changes that foster adaptability and curiosity. Fight those that entrench rigidity or discourage exploration.

Conclusion

The art of navigating this moment lies in discernment. We must develop the sensitivity to recognize which shifts are inevitable and align ourselves with them, while resisting the forces that would trap us in outdated paradigms or lead us down unproductive paths. By asking the right questions, paying attention to the signals around us, and staying open to change, we can not only survive this transition but thrive within it.

The Art of Writing

The Business of Being Read

There’s a new breed of prose jockey out there, and they’re hell-bent on cornering the market on words. They’re not journalists, not novelists, not even the rugged, chain-smoking bloggers of yesteryear—no, they’re Substackers. These digital scribes have proclaimed themselves the saviors of the written word, promising to deliver insights, frameworks, and hot takes straight to your inbox for the price of a good cocktail.

Once upon a time, this might’ve been honorable work. Blogging, in its golden age, was a noble art—a little like monastic illumination but done in dim apartments lit by the glow of WordPress dashboards. Bloggers weren’t writers in the traditional sense, but they didn’t pretend to be. They were diarists, documentarians of the internet’s wild frontier, their posts a patchwork quilt of hyperlinks, personal reflections, and the occasional bit of hard-won wisdom.

Substack, though, isn’t that. Substack is blogging’s glossier, monetized cousin, surgically stripped of its raw sincerity. What’s left is a sleek, hyper-optimized machine for delivering content to an audience with the attention span of a caffeinated squirrel. And worse, it’s staffed by a rising class of writers—if you can call them that—who are less interested in storytelling and more interested in audience segmentation.

Substackers, for all their hustle and sleek monetization, are creatures of a very specific economic moment—an era shaped by zero-interest rate policies (ZIRP). These policies didn’t just pump cheap money into the market; they pumped cheap ambition into the creative class. Substack, with its endless pitches of “monetize your expertise” and “build your personal brand,” is a direct product of this environment. It thrives on the promise of easy gains and perpetual growth, much like the tech startups that funded their early days in a world where borrowing money cost next to nothing.

Readers

Ah, the upward mobile soon to be precarietat—those fine, well-dressed souls clinging desperately to the illusion that they’re not the ones who planted the seeds of their own destruction. You see, they’ve become addicted to distractions, quick talking points, and hot takes served up like fast food for the mind. Anything to keep them from acknowledging that their entire existence—your overpriced avocado toast, their weekend getaways to Napa, that smug “I’m voting for change” bumper sticker on the Tesla—has been built on a shaky foundation of capital, exploitation, and outright greed. They don’t want to hear about it. They don’t want to know about it. So, instead, they’ll gobble down whatever shallow nonsense they can find to soothe the gnawing panic that, deep down, they know the whole thing’s about to come crashing down.

And that’s where the optimizers come in. The Substack hustlers, the life coaches, the “CEO advisors” who churn out perfectly polished, 400-word pep talks designed to keep these over-extended mortgage-repaying rich folks just distracted enough to maintain the illusion that their wealth came from hard work rather than decades of unsustainable profiteering. They don’t care if it’s garbage—so long as it’s a neat, digestible pile of pseudo-insight that fits nicely in an inbox and doesn’t require any of that pesky “thinking” thing. It’s not about substance; it’s about keeping the show going, making sure the masses stay just uninformed enough to keep forking over the cash while the whole system spirals into the abyss. Exactly. And that’s what Substack is for. It’s the modern-day opiate for the overextended bourgeoisie, a perfectly curated digital cocktail of distractions and feel-good nonsense, tailored to make them feel like they’re doing something meaningful while they continue to scroll past their mounting existential dread. Forget about digging into uncomfortable truths or examining the crumbling world around them. No, no—Substack is here to give them their “daily dose” of self-assured, bland wisdom from people who’ve figured out exactly what the 1% wants to hear and will happily cash in on it.

The Substack Dream

The archetypal Substacker dreams of one thing: scaling. They aren’t slaving over the next great American novel or chiseling a piece of poetry from the rough marble of the soul. No, their mission is to “grow the list,” optimize their opening lines for “click-through rates,” and get retweeted by the tech elite. They don’t write for people; they write for personas, those mythical creatures conjured by marketing guides and UX design blogs.

Substackers live for the dopamine hit of a paid subscriber. They obsess over their analytics dashboards like hedge fund managers tracking portfolio performance. Their prose? Slick, digestible, and painfully useful. These people don’t want to write War and Peace—they want to write Five Leadership Lessons from Napoleon You Can Use Today.

The Rise of the Optimizers

Armed with Substack newsletters, SEO manuals, and the smug certainty that they were here to save writing from itself. “Save” it? These people wouldn’t know a sonnet from a spreadsheet, yet they’ve somehow rebranded themselves as the necessary custodians of modern prose. Their mission isn’t to create art but to churn out content—neatly packaged, hyper-relevant, and optimized for the attention span of a fruit fly.

They dissect language like surgeons performing unnecessary amputations, shaving off complexity, nuance, and soul. Metaphors are “inefficient,” humor is “distracting,” and anything that requires a second reading is deemed a failure.

These are the optimizers—slick, well-coiffed peddlers of bite-sized takeaways, selling the illusion that if you just “optimize” your mindset, your habits, your morning routine, you’ll magically rise above the chaos you’ve helped create. They’re the digital equivalent of snake oil salesmen, except instead of curing disease, they’re curing guilt. Want to feel better about the fact that your wealth is built on an ever-expanding pyramid of exploitation? Just read a couple of motivational articles about how it’s all about mindset and how the future is “now,” delivered with a splash of minimalist design and a dash of faux-wisdom. Substack isn’t a place for writing; it’s a glorified Band-Aid, stapled over the hemorrhaging truth that these folks have been living the good life on borrowed time—and eventually, someone’s going to come collecting. But until then, Substack’s here to keep the game going.

The Corporate Delusion

The Optimizer’s wet dream is to be noticed by a CEO who totally gets it. They fantasize about writing pithy insights about productivity and “taking ownership” that will one day grace the margins of a Silicon Valley PowerPoint. Their ladder to greatness involves being retweeted by Naval Ravikant or having their wisdom cited in Forbes.

Meanwhile, they scoff at the Writers. “Who has time for all that?” they ask, referring to the kind of painstaking craft that involves grappling with sentences for hours or inventing phrases no one will appreciate until 2043. Optimizers view this as indulgent, naive. They imagine themselves pragmatic revolutionaries, clearing the literary forest for “value-driven” saplings that yield immediate ROI.

The Crime Against the Future

But here’s the rub: Optimizers don’t write for the future because they don’t believe in the future. Their world ends at the quarterly report or the latest growth hack. Writers, by contrast, know that good writing is often unread for decades, if not centuries. They know that planting an idea in words is an act of defiance against the fleeting nature of existence. That it’s worth it even if only one person reads it and understands. Optimizers live for the now, not the long arc of history. Their prose is disposable, written to die in the inbox of someone who skimmed the first paragraph before opening TikTok. The art of writing is being replaced with the business of “being read,” and the irony is that nothing written by an Optimizer will ever truly matter.

It’s not that writers don’t like money or fame or recognition—of course they do. Who wouldn’t want their name lit up in marquee letters or their bank account fattened by royalties? These things are intoxicating, seductive even, and any writer who denies their appeal is lying or has already gotten too much of them to care. But here’s the truth: however important those things may be, they are not the main act. They are the sideshow, the after-party. The main act is the writing itself—messy, maddening, glorious writing.

For real writers, the process of writing is all-consuming. It’s the thing that swallows hours, days, sometimes years, without offering a guarantee of fame or fortune on the other side. Writing demands more than just labor; it demands time. Time to think, to wrestle with ideas, to chase sentences down blind alleys and drag them back kicking and screaming. Fame and money, if they come, are mere by-products of that slow, agonizing process. Writers don’t reject them—they just know that chasing them directly is like planting a tree and expecting fruit the next morning. The fruit, if it grows at all, takes its own damn time.

Writers as a Problem

“Real” Writers—the kind who’d claw their way out of their graves for the chance to revise a half-finished sentence—don’t fare well in this brave new world. Substackers dismiss them as anachronisms, too preoccupied with literary flourishes and slow-burning ideas to survive in an inbox-driven economy.

“Who has time for that?” the Substacker sneers. “Nobody wants to read your dense prose that won’t even be relevant for twenty years.” They say this, of course, while furiously threading tweets on “how to write for busy executives.”

Irrelevance is sometimes the whole point of writing because great ideas often begin their lives as outcasts, misunderstood or ignored by the present moment. Writers know this. They understand that the act of writing is not always about catering to the zeitgeist, but about resisting it—about planting seeds in the soil of irrelevance, seeds that may not sprout for decades. To write something meaningful, you sometimes have to accept that the world isn’t ready for it yet, that it might sit unread, unappreciated, or even mocked. That’s not failure. That’s patience.

In many ways, irrelevance is a test of endurance. Writing that is too tied to the moment—the kind of optimized, click-driven work that Substackers churn out by the gigabyte—might thrive today, but it’s also likely to expire with the next algorithm update. Truly ambitious writing, on the other hand, aims to transcend its time. It’s a message in a bottle, sent out into the unknown in the hope that someone, somewhere, someday will crack it open and understand. Writing is a gamble on the future, and irrelevance is the price you pay to play. For the writer, that’s not just acceptable; it’s essential.

Cycles

But here’s the thing about zero-interest bubbles: they don’t last. As interest rates rise and capital tightens, all that speculative froth—Substack included—will start evaporating. Those shiny subscriber counts and meticulously groomed email lists are going to start blowing up like supernovas, spectacular and short-lived. The hard truth is that writing tied so tightly to economic cycles has a shelf life. When the money dries up, what’s left? For most of these Substackers, not much. Writing for algorithms and growth metrics leaves no foundation, no lasting mark. It’s the kind of work that dies the moment the machine stops feeding it.

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Crypto Repurposed

What you really need in crypto is anarchists. Not the market-driven, “freedom for profit” types who have hijacked the term—you need true highly disagreeable anarchists. People who aren’t here to play the same game with new tools. The blockchain wasn’t meant to be a new way to prop up the old system—it was meant to be a repurposing that shatters it, piece by piece. This isn’t about finding a smarter way to drive the ship of state. The vision of crypto needs to evolve beyond just another financial system or a new way to invest; it must become a network of liberation, a decentralized force too wild and unpredictable to be captured by any power structure. If crypto’s potential is to be realized, it needs to embrace the anarchist spirit—not to replicate or reform the old, but to create something utterly new, something that doesn’t play by their rules. Only then can we truly start building the future.

The problem with anarchists is that they really believe what they’re saying. They’re not here for the post or the clout—they’re here because they genuinely want to repurpose the whole damn system. They’re not interested in tweaking or improving what’s already there; they want to repurpose it. And yeah, that’s what makes them highly disagreeable. They’ll argue, they’ll challenge, they’ll disagree with you over every little thing, because they’re not interested in your comfort zone. They’re assholy uncompromising, and that’s probably the most unappealing thing about them. But guess what? That’s exactly why they’re totally necessary. The world doesn’t need more reformists or “free-market anarchists” trying to make the same system work in a slightly shinier way. What it needs are people who can see the game for what it is and are willing to burn down the rules to build something that can’t be controlled. Crypto needs anarchists—not the ones who want to “optimize” capitalism, but the ones who want to bypass it. If crypto is ever going to fulfill its true potential, it has to break free of the comfortable, palatable ideas and bring in the ones willing to challenge everything. These anarchists, for all their contradictions and abrasiveness, are the ones who will turn this revolution from a business opportunity into something real

Forget the tokenomics playbook. Burn it. Tear it apart like a bad fix. This isn’t about utopias or digital dreams; this is about tactics, about putting cracks in the corporate panopticon. About turning every node, every wallet, every transaction into a weapon against the system. An anonymous army moving faster than the boot can stamp.

Because let me tell you something about revolution: it isn’t neat. It doesn’t come with a user manual or “best practices.” It’s chaos spiked with intent, spreading like a virus through the veins of the network. Decentralized and ungovernable, a cryptographic Molotov cocktail hurled into the glass towers of finance.

You want this to work? You need the real subversives, the ones central casting would call when the script calls for chaos. No ties, no rules, no compromises. The ones who’ll strip the blockchain down to its raw, unpolished guts and rewire it into something dangerous, something alive.

So ditch the myths of clean revolutions and “win-win” systems. This isn’t a business opportunity; it’s a knife fight in the back alleys of the digital world. The only rule is this: burn the old scripts and write your own, one block at a time.

You’re supposed to be building a network to occupy the catacombs, not just to dress up the old systems in digital drag. A real network isn’t a simulacrum of what came before; it’s a rejection of it, an evolutionary leap that makes the old systems irrelevant, like fire did to darkness. The point of these technologies isn’t to replicate the ship of state with a sleeker hull or a blockchain-powered rudder—it’s to sink the ship entirely and replace it with something unrecognizable, something uncontrollable.

Because as we’ve seen time and again, with the anarcho-capitalist or your garden variety creator, the moment they sniff power, they’ll leap to take the wheel. They don’t want to dismantle the ship—they want to steer it, to chart a course for their own interests while pretending the deckhands below are free because they got to vote on the color of the sails. They wrap themselves in the language of liberty while salivating over the chance to pilot the very systems they once pretended to oppose.

The network you build has to be more than a shadow of the systems you claim to reject; it has to be something dangerous to those systems, something uncooptable. A hydra, a viral contagion, a decentralized web that grows, shifts, and evolves faster than the ship of state can chart its waters.

But the real work? The real network? That’s underground, beneath the radar, an evolving ecosystem of refusal. You’re not replicating the structures of power; you’re writing them out of the story. Every line of code, every transaction, every whispered key in the dark should be building toward something that can’t be centralized, something that slips through the cracks of their machines.

Forget using blockchain to buy coffee or tokenize loyalty points. That’s just another cage, this time with digital bars. You’re supposed to be creating tools that undo the ship of state entirely, tools that can’t be co-opted or monetized or locked down by suits with a three-point plan.

Because here’s the thing: you let them buy in, and they’ll buy you out. They’ll sell the idea of freedom back to the highest bidder, package the rebellion in shiny wrappers, and call it “innovation.” They’ll pave the road to nowhere and slap a toll booth at the end.

The goal isn’t to drive the ship of state; it’s to repurpose it. To leave behind no blueprint, no wheelhouse, no anchor for the next would-be captain to cling to. And if you can’t do that—if all you’ve got is another way to repackage the same old hierarchy—then you’re not a revolutionary. You’re just another deckhand waiting for your turn at the helm, but you already knew that so I digress.

Motorik

The machine starts slow, a hum. No, a growl. Wheels spinning on the autobahn—rubber burning under tungsten lights. Motorik. They called it motorik. Not a rhythm. Not a beat. A state of being. Steady as a morphine drip, endless as the static on a dead radio channel.

This is where it started: Germany, post-war, the bones of a nation ground to rubble. And what rises from the wreckage? A sound. A pulse. A rhythm so cold, so precise it becomes human in its sheer audacity. Neu! was the first transmission, like intercepted alien code: “Hallogallo,” looping, driving, a hypnotic engine with no destination. Just forward motion. Keep going, they said. Just keep going.

But what exactly is motorik? It’s built on a relentless 4/4 time signature, the tempo locked at a steady 120-130 beats per minute—just fast enough to suggest urgency but slow enough to hold you in its trance. The snare drum lands squarely on every second and fourth beat of the measure, a metronomic precision that never falters. The kick drum drives on the one and three, anchoring the rhythm in place like steel beams holding up a skyscraper. Meanwhile, the hi-hat ticks along in eighth notes—tsss-tsss-tsss-tsss—a ceaseless whisper of motion, like wheels spinning on asphalt.

The secret lies in its neutrality. The motorik beat isn’t busy; it doesn’t swing, shuffle, or call attention to itself. There’s no syncopation, no flourish. Unlike rock ‘n’ roll’s tendency to hit hard on the backbeat, motorik is evenly spaced, creating a sense of endless propulsion. The repetition hypnotizes, locking you into the groove until you lose track of time. Yet within that simplicity lies a world of subtlety: ghost notes on the snare, slight variations in dynamics, the way the hi-hat breathes as it opens and closes. It’s mechanical, yes, but it’s also alive—a machine with a pulse.

Jaki Liebezeit, Can’s mad scientist behind the kit, said motorik wasn’t about rigidity but flow. “Play monotonously,” he said, “but not boring.” In technical terms, his cymbals and toms often created polyrhythms against the motorik core, giving the music a shifting, kaleidoscopic feel. Neu!’s Klaus Dinger, by contrast, stripped his drumming to bare essentials, playing like a human drum machine, his rhythms as stark as an empty highway.

And if you let it, if you really let go, that’s when motorik takes you. It pulls you down into its endless spiral, past time, past thought, past self. The steady beat doesn’t just hypnotize—it erases. No choruses to guide you, no verses to land on, just that steady thump-thump-thump until you’re no longer walking through the world but floating above it. It’s not a trip; it’s a trance. A state where you and the machine become one, where the motion inside you syncs perfectly with the motion outside. It’s the heartbeat of infinity, the soundtrack of forever, and once you’re in, you’re in. You might not come back the same.

But this beat doesn’t belong to Germany. Doesn’t belong to anyone. Motorik is everywhere—hidden in the loops of hip-hop, the grooves of Afrobeat, the endless roads of Americana. It’s the rhythm of freight trains rattling across the plains, of the assembly line, of blood pulsing through your veins. It’s the beat behind the beat, the whisper in the static.

You see, motorik doesn’t demand your attention. It doesn’t scream. It doesn’t beg. It just is. And that’s what makes it dangerous. It’s always moving forward. Relentless. Quiet. If you listen too long, you’ll forget where you are. You’ll forget who you are. And maybe that’s the point.

Music’s always been about escape, hasn’t it? But motorik isn’t escape. It’s motion. Pure, uncut motion. It keeps going whether you’re on the train or left behind at the station. Call it a rhythm. Call it a mantra. Call it the sound of the machine age swallowing its own tail.

Motorik is the pulse of modernity. The rhythm of repetition. The hum of survival. It’s not music; it’s a virus. A beautiful, terrible virus. And if you’re lucky, you’ll catch it.

Now hit play and start moving. You’ve got nowhere to go, but you can’t stop getting there.

The Retro Maelstrom

Bowie’s Final Act in a World of Vintage Chaos

David Bowie’s career was built on reinvention, on taking the cream of contemporary styles and spinning them through his black box of creativity to emerge as something that felt entirely new. In the 1970s, this process was electrifying: glam rock filtered through sci-fi androgyny, Philadelphia soul recast as plastic soul, Berlin-era minimalism shaped by the jagged edges of Krautrock. Bowie wasn’t just ahead of the curve—he was the curve. By the time the world caught up, he was already onto the next thing.

But fast forward to the 2000s—through Heathen, Reality, The Next Day, and Blackstar—and a different picture emerges. The albums are rich with great songs, performed with the elegance and confidence of a seasoned artist. Yet, something feels different, and not in the way Bowie would have wanted. Gone is the sense of wild discovery, replaced instead by the weight of the past. Bowie, the great innovator, seems caught in the retro maelstrom, a cultural force that even he cannot escape.

To understand this, you have to consider the backdrop of the 2000s. Unlike the 50s, 60s, 70s, or even the hyper-commercialized 80s, the early 21st century offered little in the way of genuinely new musical movements. The garage rock revival of The Strokes and the retro-obsessed cool of Amy Winehouse dominated the charts, while indie rock, electronic music, and pop increasingly looked backward for inspiration. The zeitgeist wasn’t about creating something unprecedented; it was about polishing and recontextualizing what had come before.

This was the landscape Bowie had to navigate. The problem wasn’t that he had run out of ideas—Bowie’s artistry remained intact—but that the world around him had stopped producing raw material worth stealing. As he once famously said, “The only art I’ll ever study is the stuff that I can steal from.” But by the 2000s, the well of innovation had run dry, leaving Bowie to curate and refine what was already in the cultural ether.

Take Heathen (2002): its lush production and melancholic tone feel timeless, yet much of the album draws heavily on 70s and 80s influences, from the industrial-tinged rock of Scary Monsters to the Bowie-influenced post-punk of bands like Joy Division. Reality (2003) follows suit, blending glam nostalgia with hints of 90s alt-rock, but never truly breaking into new territory.

By the time of The Next Day (2013), Bowie was openly engaging in self-referencing. The cover itself—a defaced version of his iconic “Heroes” album—felt like a declaration of intent: Bowie wasn’t trying to escape his past; he was building on it. And then there’s Blackstar (2016), a record of staggering beauty and innovation within its jazz-rock experimentation, but still tethered to the vintage aesthetics of Scott Walker, avant-garde jazz, and his own catalog of death-obsessed songs.

This is not to diminish the quality of Bowie’s late output. These albums stand among the best of their time, offering deeply introspective and sonically rich experiences. But even Bowie, the master of reinvention, found himself trapped in a cultural moment where retro mania had consumed everything. The maelstrom of vintage wasn’t just a backdrop; it was the medium through which he had to work.

What’s tragic—and telling—about this phase of Bowie’s career is that it reflects a broader cultural shift. The 20th century was an era of explosive innovation in music, where each decade seemed to introduce a new sonic frontier. The 21st century, by contrast, has been largely about recycling and recontextualizing those innovations. In such an environment, even Bowie, with his unparalleled ability to synthesize the new, could only go so far.

The Bowie of the 70s had the advantage of living in an era when cultural boundaries were constantly being broken. The Bowie of the 2000s, however, was working within a closed system, where everything had already been done—and done again. His late albums are masterpieces, but they are masterpieces of curation, not of revolution.

In the end, Bowie’s final act serves as both a testament to his enduring brilliance and a sobering reflection of our own cultural condition. If even Bowie couldn’t escape the retro maelstrom, what hope do the rest of us have? The challenge isn’t just to steal great ideas from the past—it’s to find a way to break free from it entirely. Until we can, the maelstrom will continue to spin, pulling even the brightest stars into its orbit.

Retro Maelstrom as Closed System

The idea of the retro maelstrom as a closed system is both a compelling metaphor and a troubling possibility. On the surface, it certainly feels like one. In our current cultural landscape, the past is endlessly accessible and recontextualized, creating a loop where innovation seems less like a forward motion and more like a remix of familiar parts. Streaming services, social media algorithms, and a pervasive nostalgia in marketing have created a feedback loop that reinforces the dominance of the old over the emergence of the new.

But is it truly a closed system? Not necessarily. The retro maelstrom is more like a whirlpool—an overwhelming, inescapable force for those caught in its pull, but not an entirely sealed environment. There are moments where artists manage to disrupt the cycle, injecting fresh perspectives into the churn of nostalgia. Bowie himself hinted at this in Blackstar, where he took vintage elements—jazz, avant-garde, post-punk—and distorted them into something that, while rooted in the past, felt strikingly alive and modern.

The real problem lies in the overwhelming gravity of the retro maelstrom. It draws so heavily from the cultural archive that creating something wholly new feels almost impossible. This wasn’t always the case. In the 20th century, the cultural machinery produced “eras” that were distinct from one another—rock ‘n’ roll in the 50s, psychedelic rock in the 60s, disco and punk in the 70s, new wave and hip-hop in the 80s. But in the 21st century, technological saturation has democratized access to all those styles simultaneously, flattening time and rendering the distinctions between eras blurrier than ever.

However, a system isn’t truly closed if there are ways to subvert it. The retro maelstrom thrives on recognition and familiarity, but that also means its structure can be hacked by artists willing to deconstruct nostalgia rather than simply recycle it.

So while the retro maelstrom feels like a trap, it isn’t impermeable. Its power lies in its ability to seduce us with the known, the safe, and the comfortable.

Blow Up The Gravity Pull

To physically change or “blow up” a gravitational pull, in a literal sense, you would need to disrupt the source of the gravity itself, which is tied to mass and energy. While this is theoretically fascinating, it’s also a metaphor for creative and cultural gravity in the retro maelstrom, so let’s explore both:

Literal (Physics)

Gravity is the warping of spacetime caused by mass. To change or eliminate it, you would have to:

1. Reduce the Mass: Remove or destroy the object causing the gravity. For example, in astrophysics, if a star collapses into a black hole, its gravitational pull intensifies because its mass becomes infinitely concentrated. Conversely, reducing its mass (like blowing up a planet, if you were a sci-fi villain) weakens the pull.

2. Introduce an Opposing Force: Hypothetically, negative mass or exotic matter could counteract gravity by creating repulsive effects, as some speculative physics theories suggest.

3. Alter Spacetime: Advanced concepts like manipulating spacetime itself (e.g., wormholes or warp drives) might neutralize gravitational effects, but these remain speculative and theoretical.

4. Mass-to-Energy Conversion: Massive amounts of energy released (as in a supernova) can disperse matter, weakening localized gravity fields.

Metaphorical (Cultural Gravity in the Retro Maelstrom)

To disrupt the cultural gravity of the retro maelstrom, you’d need to identify its “mass” — the forces keeping artists and audiences trapped in cycles of nostalgia — and actively dismantle or counteract them. Here’s how:

1. Challenge the Center of Mass (Nostalgia Itself):

• Create works that actively critique or deconstruct nostalgia. Instead of glorifying the past, question it. Bowie’s Blackstar hinted at this by blending avant-garde jazz and art-rock, both of which feel alien to mainstream tastes.

2. Introduce New Energies (Innovative Inputs):

• Fresh raw materials, like new technologies, unexpected cross-cultural influences, or unexplored mediums, can shift the focus. For instance, artists experimenting with AI, immersive installations, or quantum-inspired music are injecting novelty into the loop.

3. Exploit Weaknesses in Familiarity:

• The maelstrom relies on recognition to keep audiences comfortable. Disrupt this by creating works that deliberately avoid comforting patterns, genres, or references. Björk’s refusal to conform to any standard of pop music is a prime example of using discomfort as art.

4. Break the Feedback Loop:

• Modern culture is shaped by algorithms that amplify nostalgia (Spotify playlists, movie reboots). Artists and creators must bypass these systems by finding new distribution models, formats, or platforms where originality thrives.

5. Destroy the Myth of the Past’s Perfection:

• The retro maelstrom feeds on the idea that earlier eras were better. Highlight the flaws and limitations of those eras, while demonstrating the possibilities of the present.

6. Reclaim Time as Fluid:

• Treat past, present, and future as a continuum rather than a binary. Bowie’s Berlin Trilogy worked because it wasn’t purely nostalgic; it built on past genres (Krautrock, avant-garde) while being forward-thinking. His late albums leaned more heavily into vintage because the broader culture demanded it. Breaking this expectation could free creators from its pull.

Final Thought

Destroying gravity, whether physical or cultural, is less about obliteration and more about introducing an alternative center of energy. Just as an exploding star disperses its mass into a new galaxy, the retro maelstrom could be broken by a cultural supernova—something so explosively new that it scatters the pull of nostalgia into something unrecognizable. The question is: who will create that supernova?

Echoes

The machine never sleeps. It grinds and grinds, fueled by desperate dreams and the endless churn of small-time predators, each sniffing for a hit of the almighty dollar. They’re happy to let me buy in—oh yes, always happy to let me throw my stack into the pot. It’s the illusion of reciprocity, the great snake-oil hustle dressed in the respectable suit of modern capitalism. They’ll smile, shake your hand, and sell you the dream, every time.

But nobody—nobody—ever bets on me. Nobody at the controls of the big machines looks down from their tower and says, “Yes, this one. This guy could set my bank account on fire.” They don’t see wealth in my smoke signals; they see another cog, another player who’ll pay to keep the game running but will never tip the scale. They don’t want risk—they want guarantees. And I’ve never been anyone’s sure thing.

The gatekeepers are a peculiar breed, you see. They’re not visionaries, not gamblers—they’re parasites dressed as kingmakers. They want safe bets, pre-digested meat for the masses. The moment they sense you’re not one of their prefab winners—one of their shiny plastic icons—they vanish like roaches under a floodlight. That’s the real hustle.

Maybe I am flattering myself too much. It’s not that they see some defiant rebel spirit in me. No, it’s simpler than that—it takes someone who thrives on the edge of the oil slick to spot another skater sliding just as shamelessly.

, a deadbeat recognizes a deadbeat. They look at me and see their own reflection, but cracked and dirty, too close to the truth for comfort.

They know the game because they’re playing it too, hustling the margins, clawing for scraps, pretending it’s all part of some grand master plan. And when they spot someone else running the same con—when they see me—they know better than to trust it. No one knows a grift like another grifter.

It’s not respect or disdain; it’s self-preservation. They can’t risk backing someone who might be just like them: running on fumes and desperation, with nothing real to cash out when the time comes. So they do the smart thing. They cut me loose. They leave me to figure it out on my own, just like they did.

Money runs downstream, baby, and the upstream sharks don’t waste a dime on the wild cards. They want the fish that already smells grilled. Meanwhile, I swim in their slipstream, unnoticed and unbothered, waiting for some lunatic captain to steer his boat right into the deep where I live.

There’s also this other thing—this shadow in the back of their minds, like they don’t trust me to play the game right. Too sharp at the edges, too quiet when they want noise, too loud when they want silence. It’s not rebellion; it’s something more unnerving. Maybe they see the cracks in my armor, the way my ADHD keeps me spinning a little too fast, a little too loose. The mumble in my voice, the poker face that doesn’t give away the hand. They want signs of submission, signals that say, Yes, boss, I’ll play by the rules.

They can’t stand it, can they? The way they seem to know, on some primal level, that I think I’m better than them—even though I never say it out loud. That quiet judgment, the one I keep tucked away behind my poker face, drives them mad.

It’s not arrogance in the traditional sense—no grandstanding or speeches about my superiority. It’s more insidious than that. It’s the absence of flattery, the lack of that desperate need to be part of their club. They sense it, like animals catching the scent of a predator: He doesn’t want to be us. He thinks we’re beneath him.

And maybe they’re not wrong. But I don’t broadcast it; I don’t rub their faces in it. I just hold it inside, this quiet disdain, like a secret weapon I never intend to use. That’s the part they hate the most—not the arrogance itself, but the fact that I have the audacity to keep it to myself. As if I don’t even think they’re worth the effort of saying it out loud.

But rules were made for people who can sit still, people who lean forward and nod at the right moments. Not for someone like me, who leans back, eyes half-lidded, brain already ten miles ahead but forgetting to signal. It’s not intentional, this refusal to fit the mold, but it’s there, like a bad smell or a flickering neon sign. It says: This one doesn’t quite belong.

And maybe they’re right. I don’t want to play nice—not in the way they mean it. Not nice like a lapdog or bold like a circus act. And I’m not amenable, not in the way that greases their wheels and makes their lives easier. They see the poker face and think it’s strategy, but it’s just me trying to keep up with the noise in my own head, trying not to let the chaos spill out. That chaos doesn’t fit their business model, so they shuffle me off to the edge of the table and wait for the next sucker to ante up.

I don’t want to sound again like a glittering idiot, but let’s be real—this economy doesn’t leave much room for “maybe.” It’s always gonna be a flat no, stamped and sealed before the conversation even begins. Overheads for these people are sky-high, running like turbines on the fumes of borrowed time, and investments? They’ve got to return ten times over, like some twisted version of crypto—a Ponzi scheme of fake money and imaginary value.

And that’s the game, isn’t it? They’re not looking for talent, not really. They’re looking for the next bubble to ride, the next flash of lightning they can bottle and sell before it fizzles out.

They think—that if they ride enough bubbles, ride them just right, they’ll somehow escape the mediocrity that defines them. That’s the story they’ve written in their heads, the whole plotline, start to finish.

And what I think? What I think is that they see it. They look at me, and they see that I can see it too. They catch that flicker, that recognition, like two mirrors facing each other: infinite, empty, meaningless. It’s all written there, plain as day. I see what they think, and they know I see it. That’s what really makes them squirm.

I’m not lightning. I’m a slow burn, a fire that doesn’t fit in their neat little boxes. And fires like that make them nervous.

So yeah, it’s all those things combined: the high stakes, the razor-thin margins, the obsessive need to turn every dollar into ten imaginary ones. That’s what makes the proposition suspect, not me. It’s a system built to crush anything that doesn’t scream immediate profit. And let’s face it, I’ve never been the guy to scream.

So my suggestion? Milk the alpha quietly, in the margins, a footnote at the bottom of their bloated ledger. Take what you can and leave them to their grand delusions, their shiny charts and power lunches. Let them overlook you, let them neglect you. There’s freedom in being ignored, in slipping beneath their radar.

Enjoy the lack of attention. It’s a gift, really. While they’re chasing phantom returns and burning cash on the altar of their own hype, you can work in the shadows, untouchable. Build something they’ll never see coming, something that doesn’t fit their algorithmic playbook. By the time they notice, it’ll already be too late.

That’s the problem, isn’t it? Somewhere, deep down, there’s a part of you that wanted to be as numb as them. But not enough of you—never enough to sell the whole thing. And they can smell that hesitation, like blood in the water. It’s there, smeared across your face like cracked plaster: You don’t want to be them. Not really.

And that’s the unforgivable sin. They don’t care if you’re talented, sharp, or even a little dangerous. What they care about is allegiance, the willingness to step into their shoes and parade around like you were born for it. But you? You hesitate. You look at their shoes and think, Nah, I’ll walk barefoot, thanks.

And that makes them furious. Furious in that cold, corporate way, where every rejection is a fuck-you in a spreadsheet. “I have no time for you not wanting to be me.” That’s what they’re really saying. They can’t stomach your refusal to bend the knee, can’t fathom why you won’t join their rat race and run until your legs give out. So they toss you aside like a bad investment, convinced you’re the fool for not wanting what they have.

And that’s your superpower, isn’t it? The refusal to bend, the ability to see through the bullshit without getting tangled up in it. It’s not a weakness; it’s an edge.

But that’s your power. And with great power comes great responsibility. Not the kind they’d have you believe, the kind that makes you bend for the sake of stability or fake success. No, your responsibility is to wield that power wisely. To use it not just as armor but as a sword, cutting through the illusions they live by, seeing the cracks in their shiny facades before they do. It’s your job to keep your distance, to stay untouchable, and to remind them—with every glance, with every move you make—that you don’t need them to succeed. Because that, right there, is the ultimate freedom.

Waiting for the Flood

Boomers have plenty to say, but let’s be honest—if it’s a video, you’re watching it at 1.5x speed, and if it’s a Substack or a PDF, you’re skimming it at 2x. It’s the only way to bear it. Millennials and Zoomers? You don’t bother—most of them still need to season a bit before they say anything interesting. I’m biased, of course, but it takes a rare, maladjusted Gen Xer stumbling around to uncover an interesting take now and then. The rest? Zero-interest-rate fluff.

Boomers walk off with the spoils and leave the rest of us holding the bill, basking in the largesse of a post-war boom they had no hand in creating and every hand in hoarding. They lived large, laughed hard, and left Millennials with a finely-tuned hamster wheel, sleek and efficient but going nowhere. The Millennials patch the leaks and polish the machine, convinced they are saving the world while spinning endlessly in circles, mouths full of corporate “disruption” rhetoric that goes stale before it even hit the air.

Then come the Zoomers, born into a world already on fire, crawling through the wreckage of 2008, 2020, and everything in between. They have hustle, sure, but hustling on the edge of a cliff doesn’t get you far. Precarity is their inheritance—gig work, burnout, and the permanent anxiety of a future that never arrives. The System doesn’t even bother pretending to work for them.

And then there’s Gen X—forgotten and unattended, the feral middle children of history. Raised in the shadows of boom-time decadence but left to their own devices when the world moved on, they had just enough prosperity to stay afloat and just enough neglect to stay interesting. They haven’t been drafted into the System hamsterism like Millennials or crushed by precarity like Zoomers. Instead, they linger on the sidelines, ignored with nothing much to do but brood, scheme, and waste time thinking shit. The kind of shit that don’t fit neatly into the hamster accessories playground mazes. The kind of thoughts that break loops and set fires.

The only thing Gen Z is doing, man, is either absolutely nothing, or else documenting the slow-motion collapse throwing a random masterpiece into some ancient, forgotten art form just before it surfs up the Pacific garbage patch. They sit in the kaleidoscopic firestorm of memes, TikToks, and dystopian fantasies wreckage, staring at their phones, waiting for some digital signal to break through the static, offering some kind of reprieve—while all around them, the world crumbles. It’s a generation of spectators, but every so often, they pull off something beautiful—a final scream, a bloodshot grin, a stroke of genius in the middle of the rubble. The rest of the time, though, it’s just a blur of smoke and mirrors, apathy, and apathy that mean absolutely nothing. And yet, once in a while, they’ll hit you with something so raw, so real, that it feels like the last breath of an era long dead. But then, just as quickly, they retreat back into the void, as if even they can’t bear to keep the fight going.

Bittersweet, yeah—like a fading Polaroid of a better time, warped and yellowed at the edges. They pull brilliance out of the ashes, sure, but it’s always fleeting, like they know it doesn’t matter, or maybe it’s because they know it matters too much. They create these jagged, beautiful artifacts, these masterpieces on borrowed time, but there’s no celebration, no victory lap. Just a quiet retreat, as if they’re leaving the rest of us to wrestle with what it means to witness something so stunning in a world that can’t sustain it. It’s not hope, not exactly, but it’s not despair either—just the ghost of something we might have been, lingering for a moment before dissolving back into the static.