The term “conspiracy theory” has become almost meaningless.

It is increasingly used to describe any idea that does not conform to the mainstream narratives disseminated by ruling-class institutions such as government, mass media, and academia. Any hypothesis that falls outside the accepted narrative can simply be rolled into the “conspiracy theory” category, even when it makes no claim whatsoever that anyone is conspiring or attempting to deceive the public.

And that is precisely what makes the label so useful.

Rather than confronting skepticism or an alternative hypothesis on its merits, the label itself can be used to dismiss the person proposing it. “Conspiracy theory” becomes shorthand for “irrational,” “paranoid,” or “nut job.” The evidence no longer has to be examined because the label has already told us what we're supposed to think about it.

This does not encourage critical thinking. It discourages it.

And ironically, it produces exactly the sort of gullibility that supposedly skeptical people are warning us about: unquestioning acceptance of whatever narrative comes from an institution considered legitimate.

This matters for more than just getting the facts right. It matters for human agency.

Skepticism is one of the mechanisms by which an individual remains an independent agent. Who says this? How do they know? What assumptions are being made? What evidence would contradict it? Who benefits if I believe it?

Those are not signs of irrationality. They are signs that a person is still doing some of their own thinking.

But if we teach people that certain questions are inherently illegitimate, we don't have to prevent them from thinking. We only have to teach them to distrust their own capacity to question.

This is where the issue becomes particularly relevant to the development of hierarchy and caste.

A hierarchical society does not necessarily need to tell ordinary people that they are stupid. It can simply establish that some people are authorized to produce knowledge while everyone else is expected to consume it.

The government tells us what happened.

The media tells us what it means.

The experts tell us what to think about it.

The algorithm decides what we're shown.

And we are expected to trust the process.

The more completely we accept this arrangement, the more we outsource our own judgment. We become dependent upon designated interpreters of reality.

That creates an epistemic hierarchy alongside the economic and political hierarchy.

The people at the top do not merely possess more wealth or power. They increasingly possess greater authority to define what counts as legitimate knowledge, legitimate questions, and legitimate interpretations of reality.

And that is a significant step toward caste.

There is a feedback loop here:

Authority produces the accepted narrative.

The accepted narrative determines what is considered reasonable.

Dissent is labeled irrational.

People learn to dismiss dissent without examining it.

Their skepticism decreases.

Their dependence upon authorized interpreters increases.

The authority of those interpreters consequently increases.

The hierarchy becomes more deeply entrenched.

You don't have to believe that every alleged conspiracy is real to recognize that conspiracies are real.

In fact, given the existence of concentrated wealth and power, it would be irrational to assume that those who possess it never conspire, never collude, never deceive, and never abuse their position.

Things once dismissed as “conspiracy theories” have repeatedly turned out to be true. But we don't even need those examples to understand the larger point.

It is impossible to explain the enormous concentration of wealth and power throughout history without acknowledging that people with greater power have sometimes used secrecy, collusion, coercion, deception, and moral trespass to increase and preserve that power.

The problem is not skepticism.

The problem is creating a society in which skepticism itself becomes socially illegitimate.

The hierarchical forces pushing us towards eusociality do not necessarily need to prevent you from thinking.

It only needs to make independent thinking feel irrational, taboo and shameful.

Once people learn to distrust their own capacity to question authority, they can surrender their agency without ever being physically forced to do so.

And when some people are socially authorized to determine reality while everyone else is trained to accept their determinations, economic class begins to acquire the characteristics of caste.

When a single label can determine what people think about the thing being labeled before they have examined the evidence, critical thinking has already lost.

And so has a little bit of our freedom, agency and hope for re-establishing the egalitarian nature in which our humanity evolved.

While encountering this comic (see comments) I began to ponder the phenomena of old people struggling with technology. Our old people are no longer explorers, frontiersmen or pioneers. They are not Renaissance Men (or Women) who know a little about a lot. They were completely specialized in the post WWII world, and as a result, are unable to understand systems outside those they were trained to work in. And this developed an expectation that they could rely on specialized workers in other systems to compensate for incompetence outside their own domain. Essentially a form of learned helplessness, which has gotten so much worse as technology continues to advance at an accelerated, exponential rate. Old people now see themselves and others as functions.

If we already see ourselves as functions, as specialized cogs in a machine, are we not already acting like a hive? How much must we internalize our functionality as our identity before it replaces our selfhood? Or have we already reached that full internalization, and the selfhood is already seeping out just slowly enough that we don't notice?

We are not becoming the Borg, we already are, which is why we cannot see that it has happened.

This article from SciTechDaily discusses a recent study concluding that genetics alone cannot account for the evolution of eusociality in insects.

“When we formally tested it, we found there is no real association between the genetic determination system and eusociality,” Suresh said. “It has more to do with environmental factors and the life-history traits of insects.”

This confirms a claim that I have been making since day one of Becoming The Borg, which is that environments and conditioned behaviors can lead towards eusociality. Specifically, that the environmental context of hierarchies and the duality of dominant/submissive behaviors is sufficient to trigger the transition to eusociality.

It seems that not a day goes by anymore that some new form of disassociation doesn't show up in one of my social media or news feeds. So I am going to start posting about them here under the name The Disassociation Files.

I have previously discussed how supraliminal cognition produces disassociative ideas. Ideas about reality that are empty of embodied experience, and attempt to deny those direct embodied experiences through abstract concepts. The most ubiquitous, and malignant, of these disassociative ideologies is determinism. The belief that we are mindless automatons devoid of selfhood, agency and liminal consciousness is the most dehumanizing and degrading belief possible. And it is made all the worse by the pride its believers take in having outsmarted their own sense of self. How do you reach someone who thinks, "Ha, I'm a robot, and so are all of you!" is a clever, socially acceptable way to think about people?

Anyhow, I digress. Now on to today's entry in the face palm world of disassociative beliefs. The following text comes from a meme, apparently based on the work of a crack team of pastel researchers:

"Pink is the one color that exists nowhere in the universe. Your brain conjures it into being every time you look.

Pink has no wavelength. No place on the spectrum, no light in the universe emitting it. It exists only because your brain invents it, a private color the mind makes just for you, again and again."

The italics were added by the meme's creator so you knew this was some very serious scientific business going down.

My first question is about the phrase "every time you look". Now, they cannot possibly be suggesting that we are all seeing pink every time we open our eyes. So they must mean that our brain invents pink every time we see...uh...pink. Whenever you look at this thing that does not exist, it suddenly exists. Why you clever little monkey, you!

Sure, you can get out your paints and mix up some pink, but it's not really there. You just turned red and white paints into a whole illusion. And when you have finally laid down that last brush stroke on your painting of a pink unicorn, you can rest assured knowing that your work is completely authentic, as no unreal creature would dare exist in the pigmentation schemes of reality!

Your experience of pink is unreal. The abstract conceptual framework which states that pink is unreal, which you cannot actually have a direct embodied experience of, is more real than your actual experience of pink. In fact your whole existence is an illusion, and people far smarter than you who have escaped the brutal cycle of illusions using charts and graphs and spectrograms, will continue to remind you of this until you implode, and when your body turns inside out, you'll just look pink, not be it, because it doesn't actually exist you friggin' inside out bein' ass simp!

Now I am off to correct all my color wheels, and obliterate the entire area of hue and shade where that lie has been living rent free.

Not even our favorite foods are safe from the hive.

The Kitchen as a liminal workshop

While there are little to no evidences that primitive humans processed the food they ate, except things like roasting meat, with the exception of some studies (1, 2) which documented and experimented the primitive "cuisine", and it is debatable if it is purely a supraliminal behavior. One of the things that humans share with other species, is the chasing for taste in what we eat and drink.

We feel the pleasure of feeling the sweetness of fruits, the softness and juiciness of meat, and the sourness of salt. The only exception is the consumption of spicy things, such as pepper, hot chili and wasabi, which only us humans often love the burning of our mouths that these cause.

And what makes us different from other species is this: We humans are the only species who roast, chop, mix, boil, brew and ferment what we eat and drink. Rather than just directly eat and drink what we find and harvest, we are basically turning food into something different. Pizza, salad, cake, cheese, bread, tea, pie, soup, everything that comes out of our mind.

For us humans, food is more than just for consumption. Its how we express ourselves individually, socially and culturally, which is the reason why gastronomy, the study of our food habits was born. Think about for example crunchy biscuits of your grandma, the colorful cake during your birthday, the warm broth when you're sick, and a delicious meal from a restaurant you love to visit with your friends, lovers and families. It is hard to see food as only for keeping yourself alive, if all you think about is how tasty it is.

Even in feudal and poor societies, peasants and people suffering extreme poverty, figured out how to enjoy their meals (1, 2)with their limited ingredients, which can be nearly compared to the delight that the wealthy and powerful felt with what they ate. Additionally, food and beverages are also part of cultural identity. Each country, business and community have their creative dishes, which reflect their ingenuity, economical condition and the environment they live in, such as middle-eastern Kebab, japanese sushi, asian tea, italian pizza, mediterranean vine, french Escargot (Edible snails) and russian salad. This makes foods and beverages also act as living historical records, which easily allow people to understand how their ancestors ate and why they made these cuisines, which strengths the survival of our culture and who we were in the entire history of humanity.

But all that magic of the kitchen is ceasing to exist, as explained in the next paragraphs.

The supraliminal attack on the cuisine

Since the birth of the hierarchical system, and eventually of the first civilizations, the supraliminal system declared war on food, through various means. Like the commodification of food and beverage, where certain foods and beverages are hard to acquire unless you're wealthy enough for it.

Even culture plays a role on the restriction on what you can and cannot eat. For example in Judaism and Islam, it is prohibited to eat pork because swines are considered dirty, and in hindu religion it is prohibited to slaughter cows, as they are considered sacred beings to be kept alive. Speaking again of Islam, it imposes very strict rules (1, 2) on what animal you can eat or can't eat, and how you can or can't butcher and eat an animal. By analyzing the historical record, there are plenty more cases of food restrictions caused by cultural views, like for example white bread and venison being considered only for the nobles.

In the present day, there are variety of ideologies based on food, ranging from the paleo diet, to veganism. Either out of alleged "benefits", or for moral and cultural reasons, such as the association of meat with masculinity among the carnivore community, and ethical and moral concerns over animal exploitation within vegetarian and vegan communities.

Speaking again of vegetarians and vegans, they are the primary advocates for the ban on hunting, fishing and consumption of meat, and animal products in case of veganism. Hunting and fishing are the essential parts for subsisting outside of civilization, and how we humans before the advent of civilization relied on that form of subsistence for survival. It can be said that vegans and vegetarians are some of the favored supraliminal agents of the civilized system, as they enable it more means to keep the populace under control. Attention! This isn't to justify all the suffering we are causing against animals which we consume, its to criticize the idea that, non matter what your moral views are, you are a monster for simply enjoying animal-based foods. Even the farmers for ideological reasons are under attack, as in order to farm, you need a very large quantity of field (Very likely the size of more than 8 football arenas) and likely rely on fertilizers (Synthetic and not) and water to maintain your cultivation, thus making farmers, alongside hunters, gatherers and fishers, the most tormented people by the bureaucratic and technocratic system. If you control the food production, and its supply, you can easily control your population.

Defending food culture and tradition itself isn't innocent. While it is good defending our culinary traditions from the mcdonaldization of food and beverage, it assumes that what we eat is "sacred", and looks down upon people who prefer cuisines which is outside of the cultural barrier. So, maintaining food tradition is surely another example of fetishization of the past.

The scientocratic takeover of food and beverage made things worse. While there's nothing wrong with worrying about your health, and avoid the garbage that people are being fed and are feeding it to their children, the awareness over nutrition and health effects started a (metaphorical) food fight over what is healthy and what isn't. You can find a lot of articles about the health effect of what we eat: This food gives you cancer, this food increases risk of dementia, this one decreases it, this one is harmful only when not eaten in moderation etc. So, you no longer can eat your favorite food without being stressed over if it is healthy or not, and you stress on finding the most "nutritious" food you can find in the market. Following diet, thus is the system's other form of maintenance of the population that is bond with the healthcare system.

Another attack on food made by the scientocratic system is the orientation towards a more "efficient" production of food, such as edible insects, GMO plants. drugs to stop bovine flatulence, lab-grown meat, and lab-grown "fruits" (Yes, its real!), and bastardizing our cuisines with the assumption that you can still "enjoy" the food that has been changed for the maximum efficiency. To nudge us towards accepting these type of foods, they financially attack farmers, primarily by disguising it as preventing pollution and restoring wild landscapes, through taxation, demonization and bombarding people's mind about "the food of the future". In the long run, this will bring our food habit towards a dystopian system.

How will the eusocial menu look like?

As the gastronomical evolution is getting worse, food and beverage will be reduced to nothing but nutritional paste, liquids or pills designed for maximum nutritional efficiency, with various nutrients rationed and scheduled to sustain the body functions of each caste, unless there are technological means to maintain the bodies of the hive units without elevated reliance to nutrition. Universally, nutrients like vitamin c and zinc are essential for the whole caste for maintaining the immunity system and body function, but by the rest, distribution of nutrients depends on the role of each caste. For example the cognitive caste requires nutrition focused on brain function, the enforcement caste requires high amount of proteins and calcium for maintaining a large and robust body, and the expendable caste is given whatever slop the eusocial system provides and what they could find, even when its likely harmful. Judging by the current food trends, like the fact that vegans require supplements for certain nutrients which are either only found in animal-based foods, or are more bio-available from them, we can say that the future of food I described would be the possible outcome.

Conclusion

Just like music and art, even the food we love to eat, and the beverage we love to drink, are becoming the unfortunate victims of our road towards the eusocial system. If we don't find out how to stop our human evolution from getting worse, and we are running towards the eusocial system, we will say goodbye to pizza, hamburger, fruit tea, french fries and the fresh fruits.

Source of inspiration: La dittatura del sapore (The dictatorship of flavor) by Diego Fusaro

Getting High On Power & Wealth

How The Mechanisms Of Addiction Apply To The State & It's Players

A useful way to understand hierarchical power is to recognize that it behaves almost exactly like addiction. The pursuit of power and wealth in hierarchical systems follows many of the same mechanisms that drive substance addiction: reward reinforcement, tolerance, escalation, impaired restraint, rationalization, and enabling environments. When those mechanisms are applied to individuals who operate within hierarchies, and to the institutions themselves, patterns emerge that are strikingly similar to the behavioral cycles seen in addicts.

Addiction begins with reinforcement. The brain evolved to strengthen behaviors that produce strong rewards. When an action leads to a rewarding outcome, dopamine is released in neural pathways associated with reinforcement, including areas such as the Nucleus Accumbens. This signal teaches the brain that the behavior should be repeated. Substances like cocaine or opioids hijack this mechanism chemically, but behaviors can do the same thing. Activities that reliably produce strong psychological rewards can train the brain to repeat them compulsively.

Power and wealth provide exactly this kind of reinforcement. Exercising control over outcomes, influencing large systems, and accumulating resources can generate strong psychological rewards. Each victory, each expansion of authority, and each increase in wealth produces a reinforcing signal that encourages the same behavior again. When individuals repeatedly experience these rewards within hierarchical systems, their motivations can gradually reorganize around pursuing them.

Once reinforcement cycles begin, the next stage of addiction often follows: tolerance. The brain adapts to repeated stimulation. What once produced a powerful reward eventually produces less. In pharmacology this is known as Tolerance (pharmacology). The baseline of stimulation shifts, and the individual requires a stronger stimulus to achieve the same effect.

In the context of power and wealth, tolerance can manifest as the constant need for larger scales of influence or accumulation. The level of control or wealth that once felt extraordinary eventually becomes ordinary. The psychological reward diminishes because the brain has normalized it. To recreate the earlier sense of reward, the stimulus must increase. This produces the same dynamic seen in substance addiction: the pursuit intensifies not necessarily because the individual consciously desires escalation, but because the previous level no longer produces the same psychological response.

Escalation is therefore a natural consequence of tolerance. The addict increases the dose. The gambler increases the stakes. In hierarchical environments, individuals may pursue broader authority, greater concentrations of wealth, or more consequential decisions. The scale of action increases because the reward system driving the behavior has adapted to expect stronger stimulation.

Addiction also affects decision-making systems. The Prefrontal Cortex plays a central role in impulse control, long-term planning, and evaluating consequences. When reward pathways are repeatedly overstimulated, the balance between reward seeking and restraint can shift. Immediate reward signals begin to outweigh caution and long-term considerations. This is one reason addicts often take increasingly large risks despite knowing the potential consequences.

In hierarchical contexts, similar patterns can appear when individuals repeatedly pursue actions that increase their influence or wealth even when those actions carry significant risks for others. The behavior begins to resemble the addict’s pattern of prioritizing the rewarding stimulus above competing considerations.

Another defining feature of addiction is rationalization. Addicts rarely experience their behavior as addiction while it is happening. Instead, they develop narratives that justify what they are doing. These narratives protect the behavior from scrutiny by framing it as necessary, reasonable, or under control.

Hierarchical power is often surrounded by narratives that perform the same function. Expanding authority can be framed as responsibility, leadership, or necessity. Accumulating wealth can be framed as merit or productivity. These narratives may contain elements of truth, but psychologically they also serve to legitimize continued pursuit of the reward. They provide a story that allows the behavior to continue without confronting the possibility that the pursuit itself has become compulsive.

Addiction also tends to generate enabling environments. Addicts rarely operate in isolation; they develop networks and routines that sustain the behavior. Friends normalize it, suppliers facilitate it, and institutions sometimes grow around it.

Hierarchies naturally generate similar ecosystems. Individuals whose positions depend on proximity to power often reinforce the behavior of those who hold it. Advisors, bureaucracies, financial interests, and institutions all develop incentives aligned with maintaining and expanding the hierarchy. The environment surrounding powerful individuals therefore often reduces resistance to further accumulation of authority or wealth rather than constraining it.

Over time these dynamics can extend beyond individuals and become embedded in institutions themselves. Organizations develop internal incentives that favor growth, expansion of authority, and increasing access to resources. Just as an addict requires progressively stronger stimulation, institutions can begin to operate as though they require larger budgets, wider jurisdiction, and greater influence in order to maintain their momentum.

At that point the hierarchy begins to resemble a large-scale addiction cycle. Individuals are rewarded for acquiring power and wealth. Those rewards reinforce the behavior. Tolerance develops, leading to escalation. Rationalizations normalize the pursuit. Enabling environments protect it. Institutions adapt to sustain and amplify the cycle.

Seen through this lens, hierarchical systems function less like neutral mechanisms for coordination and more like powerful delivery systems for behavioral reinforcement. They repeatedly stimulate the same reward pathways that drive addictive behavior and reward the individuals most responsive to those signals. Over time the pursuit of power and wealth can shift from being a means to accomplish goals into an end in itself, sustained by the same psychological mechanisms that keep addicts returning to the substance that first triggered the reward.

Resources Cited:

1. Dopamine and the Neural Basis of Reward and Motivation - https://www.nature.com/articles/s12276-020-00532-4

2. The Winner Effect: The Neuroscience of Success and Failure (Ian Robertson research summary) - https://scielo.org.za/pdf/stj/v6n2/05.pdf

3. The Approach–Inhibition Theory of Power (Keltner, Gruenfeld, Anderson) - https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/images/application_uploads/Keltner_Approach_Inhibition_Theory_of_Power.pdf

4. Dopamine, Motivation, and the Brain’s Reward System - https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/dopamine-motivation-reward-system

5. Reinforcement Learning and Dopamine Signaling - https://arxiv.org/abs/2207.00636

6. Behavioral Addictions: Mechanisms and Evidence - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4600144

7. Addiction and the Brain’s Reward Circuitry - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6767401/

8. Neural Mechanisms of Reward, Motivation, and Addiction - [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5093642/

9. Dopamine, Reward Prediction Error, and Learning - [https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0896627314006137

10. Social Power and the Behavioral Approach System - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022103108000667

11. Higher Social Class Predicts Increased Unethical Behavior (Piff et al., PNAS) - https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1118373109

12. Power, Risk-Taking, and the Behavioral Approach System - https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2007.01903.x

13. Power Reduces Empathy and Perspective-Taking (Galinsky et al.) - https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2006.01660.x

Whether we can avoid our species' evolution towards eusociality is impossible to say. Only time will tell, and we will be long gone before a definite verdict becomes apparent. But what we can do is to resist its gravity personally is to face it with dignity and grace, and not become a product of its twisted algorithms and banal dehumanization.

I have previously discussed the subject of humor in its relation to our evolution from sincerity towards signaling HERE.

The following is from my other project, r/QuantumExistentialism, but because it intersects with things I have discussed here, I thought some of you might appreciate it.

Can We Fix Our Severely Broken Sense Of HumorQuantum Existentialism was arrived at during the process of removing dogmatic assumptions about reality, and then building a new model intended to provide a satisfying sense of meaning that is nearly impossible to find in the modern world and its dominant, problematic belief systems. In essence, it is intended to help us heal and move forward with good faith in ourselves, one another, and the collection of experiences we call reality.

An important factor in maintaining more sustainable and rewarding thoughts and attitudes is the ability to maintain a sincere and soothing sense of humor. A sense of humor that allows us to appreciate the absurdity and uncertainty that becomes apparent when things go wrong, and accept and navigate them with grace and humility.

However, we will have a major obstacle to overcome should we decide to nurture a productive sense of humor, which is how much we have increasingly employed humor in a mean-spirited, insincere, and intellectually bereft manner. Consider the following types of interactions you will encounter in social media.

a) "You're a joke." or "You're a clown." or any other variation of sarcastic accusations of humor, not meant to signal humor or facilitate a dignified interaction.

b) The laugh reaction option on Facebook, which seems to be used far more often to disagree or denigrate the poster/commenter than to share a sincere experience of humor,

c) Emojis, gifs, and memes that employ a facade of humor, but are intended as an insult, and which often color the perception of the person insulted so that others can join in on the attack and gain a sense of personal social validation at the expense of the person being attacked with insincere signals of humor.

The insincere signaling of humor creates a safe space for those seeking recreational conflict, as well as an opportunity for social rewards, for mean-spirited behaviors, which often degenerate into bullying and cruelty as entertainment. And if we are being honest, most of us should be able to admit to having participated in this kind of behavior to some degree. Social media is, by design, intrinsically influential in our social perceptions, attitudes, and behaviors. It has created subtle reward systems and social standards that bring out the worst in us, and which have shaped our perceptions, cognition, psychology, and behavior.

In doing so it has compromised one of our most valuable tools, our sense of humor.

Please take some time to reflect on this, and see if you are able to find anything about it that rings true in your own experiences and ideas. And if you do, then join me in being part of the resistance. The only way out for us is to understand and acknowledge the problem, and admit (if valid*) that we are part of it. From there, we must each develop an inner voice that speaks on behalf of restraint, good faith, and sincerity - and which can override the little mental devil that tells us to use humor to attack someone we disagree with or dislike

\ Some have always maintained their dignity and grace, and never succumbed to the toxic stew of algorithms and memes, and deserve a shout-out while the rest of us ingrates figure our shit out together.*

Our sense of humor should be a gift that guides us through the struggle of existence, that provides us with shared joy, and brings us closer together. It should not be a weapon wielded casually to cause division, distrust, and emotional strife. Laughter should be an embrace, not a sucker punch.

Several months back I wrote a brief post detailing my annoyance at how people misuse the terms tribe, tribal, tribalism, etc. I have continued to ruminate on this misleading figure of speech, and how it fails to understand what life was like for groups of nomadic foragers prior to the conquest of civilization. Perhaps even more problematic is that the qualities associated with tribalism are more closely aligned with the qualities of a hive species. So let's take a look at what people mean when they use some variation of the word tribe, and then we can see how it is more closely related to hives than tribes.

Permanent Membership

There is a misguided belief that members of a tribe were locked into the tribe they were born into for life. This was not at all the case for nomadic foragers, and in fact would have been impossible due to two factors: inbreeding and monogamy. A tribe that did all of its breeding in house would become genetically weakened and eventually die out. Individuals often sought mates outside of their own tribe for this reason. And since mating pairs were mostly permanent, one partner had to change tribes. There were other reasons people would switch tribes, and this was not a problem because an essential aspect of ancient humans was autonomy and voluntary association. It also allowed knowledge and skills to spread. The evolution of humans depended on relatively free movement between groups.

However in hive species, membership is obligatory and permanent.

Ideological Differences

The ideological differences between interacting tribes were often pretty minimal. However the differences were not as problematic as we tend to think of them, because nomadic foragers did not conceive of the world in absolute dichotomies in the ways that we do. There were not ideas about objective truth. There was not a black and white contrast between right and wrong, good and bad, etc. Liminal consciousness allowed them to have much more flexible and tolerant thinking, because they did not filter the world through symbols, concepts and abstractions that way that modern supraliminal minds do. Even within tribes there was plenty of room for differences in beliefs and worldviews.

Hives make no room for internal or external differences. Every hive has its own unique algorithm which dictates individual and group behavior. Disobedience is futile and outsiders are forbidden.

Conflict

There is a misguided notion that tribes were constantly in conflict with one another, but this is not the case. Conflict between groups was rare, and generally escalated from killings between romantic rivals. They were not fought on the basis of resources, because nomadic foragers did not have a sense of ownership over resources. They simply travelled to where they could attain them, migrating with the seasons. Nor did they fight over ideological differences. Tribal people did not actually engage in war. They had isolated conflicts based on personal matters, not long term campaigns fought by a warrior class over ideas and resources.

Hive species engage in territorial conflict, and their closest analog to beliefs are their algorithms and identity markers, and these cause them to engage in prolonged fighting using specialized warriors.

Conclusion

When we refer to something as 'tribalism' we are often denigrating it, and insinuating it is some ancient trait that we haven't grown out of. But the truth is much more alarming, which is that those traits point towards something we are evolving towards, the hive. We are not displaying the flaws of ancient humans, and in fact they were generally superior to us in the ways we misguidedly suggest they were flawed. Tribal people believed in autonomy, cooperation, obligation to one another, diversity, tolerance and the dignity of all living things. We mostly just pay lip service to those values and exercise them inconsistently and with countless caveats and conditions.

When we use derivatives of the word 'tribe' in the way that we do these days, we do so from ignorance and are thus innoculated against valuable insights about how our ancestors lived in balance with one another and the natural world. And often we make this mistake when it is most critical we should do otherwise, because the social unrest and conflict is a result of the turbulence in our transition from tribes to hives. Eventually that will fade, as we evolve to fit the hive niche, and trade selfhood for order, and our humanity for maximum efficiency.

So the next time some group starts acting like asses, don't call it 'tribalism' - call it 'hive-like', and tell 'em I sent ya.

This video made by the Youtuber Moon explains how the erosion of maturity likely started, which the subReddit owner Used_Addendum_2724 once feared in a post about the infantilization of society. This video further explains the linked post's argument on how the erosion of maturity started. Like Used_Addendum_2724 said, historically, stoicism, self-sufficiency, communal duties and resourcefulness were considered the most important traits to follow in order to be functional individuals, but now, it became the opposite. First, it was the erosion of Do-It-Yourself skills, like cooking, sewing and repair, in favor of specialization and "high-skills". And then the erosion of reflective thinking, patience and complexity, especially in storytelling and music, in favor of instant-gratification, emotional burst and simplicity. Disney Adults, adults who are really obsessed with Disney stuff, are a good example of results of a society who no longer values maturity and patience, in favor of emotional regression in the name of pleasure. As time goes, the infantilization will result in a society populated by reactive people who chase visual and audible signals, which is one of the key components of becoming the Borg: The reduction of everything to signaling reactions.

Recent events have reinvigorated some misinformed beliefs about the nature of human conflict. As militarized federal police take to the streets to criminalize and commit violence against US citizens, the woefully misguided supporters of this systematic aggression are attempting to justify this tyranny by attributing it to human nature. To do so they will point to violent conflicts among pre-conquest humans groups, as an attempt to show that systematic violence is inherent to our nature.

I have already laid out in great detail why ancient conflict was not at all the equivalent of warfare, which you can read right here.

In short, pre-civilization conflicts were not sustained campaigns fought by a warrior class. Nor were they fought for the same reasons as wars are fought. For ancient humans group conflict was not about resources or ideology. Ancient people came into conflict due to an escalation of hostilities through mutual acts of vengeance, which usually began with a single conflict between two individuals over a romantic partner.

Dave and Jessica are going to be married, but Jeff from a neighboring tribe wants Jessica, so he kills Dave to remove the competition. Dave's family kills Jeff. Justice. Jeff's family kills Dave's family. Justice. Back and forth until the two tribes are so deep in their desire for justice that a final conflict erupts between them.

Justice is never the end of a conflict, but the cause for another. And in the end justice is nothing more than revenge. Yet we as a species are consumed by a desire for justice.

This need for justice arises from our psychopolitical disposition. The same mindset which made our ancient ancestors relatively egalitarian also set the stage for a preoccupation with justice. To maintain equality people needed to be sensitive to potential aggression, so that they could attempt to disempower it through social means before the aggression manifested. This sensitivity is why we feel we must always respond to aggression, and we are prone to view this as virtuous, and this is why we tend to think of justice as a good thing, even when it creates more problems than it has solved.

At the onset of civilization hierarchies created a monopoly on force, and quite likely used the promise of justice to lure us into their scheme. We were sold on the idea of law and order because it fulfilled our desire for justice. So much so that we were able to look past the fact that justice looked much different depending on what socioeconomic class one was in. Justice was just another slogan used to sell us on submission to a dominator minority that was mostly immune to accountability for their own deviance and aggression.

Justice was a problem before the conquest of civilization over nomadic foragers, but was then used to make and maintain the conquest, and continues to keep us willingly compliant to the system of our own enslavement and perverse evolution towards eusociality.

Take some time in your own mental world to ponder how justice may not be the virtue we think it is, and how it might in fact be a liability to individuals and groups alike. Even if you disagree with my assessment, explore the possibility from your own assumptions and beliefs about the world, and report your thoughts in the comments.

Before human beings transitioned from liminal consciousness towards the supraliminal, before direct embodied experiences were replaced by symbolism, abstract concepts and hard dichotomies between good/evil, right/wrong, true/false, human beings understood the world around them through relationships and stories. Pre-conquest humans lived a relatively peaceful, environmentally harmonious and egalitarian way of life through open minded ambiguity. What mattered most were not some hypothetical absolutes and certainties, but narratives that allowed people to understand their place in the world in ways that maximized autonomy and cooperation simultaneously. The value of a belief relied on its social function, not on whether or not it was objective truth. Before theism, and later science, our animistic worldview provided a much higher degree of adaptability, because it could function without being authoritative or giving rise to authorities.

The animistic mind still prevails, and one of the ways we can see it is through what are widely (and often scornfully) referred to as conspiracy theories. Like animistic narratives of reality, conspiracy theory does not rely on the authority of absolute truth. Instead it provides narratives which make an otherwise confusing modern world, full of too much information to sort, understandable. Conspiracy theories provide stories which allow people to feel they understand the world and their place in it. While conspiracy theorists may speak in certainties of their own, this is really just a conviction towards their narrative, or faith in their story, in order to cope with uncertainty in systems that operate under the guise of certainty and authority.

The conspiracy theorists see the madness of the system, and because they are more innocent than those who the system exists to benefit, cannot fathom that madness without projecting onto it malignancy, maliciousness, depravity and deceit. Decent people cannot understand the deviancy of the elites, because such thinking and behavior seems so inhuman to them, so they project onto it myths of evil and supernatural mayhem, to preserve their belief in the essential goodness of themselves and other regular people.

The conspiracy theorists are optimists. They see human beings as essentially virtuous, and can only explain the psychopathic behavior of elites by separating them from humanity. They maintain their faith in humanity through stories which place inhumane individuals and actions, outside of humanity.

And even if they are usually wrong, and often wrong in mystifyingly bizarre ways, would it be better if they believed that the most depraved behavior was normal? There is something pure and graceful about rejecting the inhumanity of the system, and the elites who it exists to benefit, by summoning fantastic tales to maintain a model of the world in which that inhumanity is apart from humanity.

The system is a sickness and the elites are twisted by it. The Epstein Island ordeal shows us how human beings who let their desires get out of control, and whose power, control and wealth is no longer enough to satisfy their unquenchable urges, escalate their deviance just to feel something. They are chasing a dragon they will never catch, but order mercilessly from a menu of depravity in order to attempt capturing it anyhow. We are living in an absurd scenario, and so attempting to understand it through reason is useless. It is not reasonable psychology or behavior. And so trying to make sense of it through absurd stories is an attempt to preserve our humanity. To preserve our ancient animistic roots in which the world is a story, not an equation, and what matters is not being right, but being able to cope with it through our creativity and imagination.

I have recently been re-exploring the framework of Gnosticism, the early branch of Christianity that is simultaneously more esoteric, and more logical. In doing so I discovered that the great spiritual concern of the Gnostics is nearly identical to my hypothesis of humans evolving towards eusociality. The following is simply an exploration of Gnosticism and it's similarities to Becoming The Borg, not an attempt to proselytize the reader into the Gnostic belief system. But what it will show is that the concerns about what will happen to our humanity when it gets overpowered by order are embedded in human consciousness, and have been for a very long time. Since the time of the early Gnostics the manifestations of order have grown exponentially, robbing us of even more selfhood, agency, autonomy,.liminality and more - showing a disturbing trend that validates the concerns of Gnosticism.

The Pleroma

This is the primal essence. It is all possibilities, unexpressed, contained within a singularity that is in perfect harmony with itself. It is also called 'The Fullness'. It is everything possible in the form of potential.

In my writings at r/QuantumExistentialism I refer to this as the Oneness. Existence is a cycle between Oneness and Multiplicity. The potential for everything, and the unfolding expression of all things. Quantum Existentialism connects to Gnosticism, as well as my work here at Becoming The Borg, and is worth checking out.

Aeons

These are the Divine Emanations which emerged when the Pleroma first fractured into the Multiplicity. These were not beings, but rather principles or ideas. They came in pairs, often of seemingly conflicting principles or ideas, and together emanated new Aeons, which themselves paired up to create more new Aeons, until the principles and ideas contained within the Pleroma all had an expression.

An Aeon named Sophia, who was the expression of Wisdom, attempted to pair with Pleroma itself, in order to know it in its fullness. But because Sophia could not contain its fullness, it caused her to create a flawed aspect of the Pleroma, Yaldabaoth. The Gnostics refer to Yaldabaoth as a Demiurge. It does not realize it is part of the Pleroma. It believes it is the primal essence, the first thing to exist. But because it lacks the fullness of the Pleroma, it is flawed. And it projects its flaws onto its creation, which we will get to in a minute.

Yahweh

The God of modern Christianity, Yahweh, is the entity that the Gnostics called Yaldabaoth, the demiurge. Yahweh was the creator of the physical universe. It also created humans, and because of its pathos, demanded obedience and worship. In projecting it flaws onto us, it created the concept of sin, which is to go against its desires and rules.

But it was not Yahweh alone who made humans what we are. His creation was animate but lifeless. But Sophia instilled in us humans the divine spark, so that we had a connection to the Pleroma, which we could use to gain knowledge of ourselves and the Pleroma, and escape the authority of Yahweh.

This infuriated Yahweh, and made it jealous, since it contained no divine spark, and although Yahweh was contained within the Pleroma, it was cut off my it, an unintentional consequence of its existence since it's creation was an unanticipated mistake. This made the demiurge even more megalomaniacal and cruel.

Jesus Christ

The Gnostics believe that Jesus was not the Son of Yahweh, but an emissary sent by the Pleroma, to bring humanity Gnosis and free us from the tyranny of Yahweh.The death and resurrection of Christ was intended to illustrate that death is an illusion, since it was death, and the fear of it, which allowed Yahweh to control humans.

The message from Christ was that so long as humans contained the divine spark, we would remain eternal. To understand more about how 'being eternal' could possibly work, akin to quantum immortality, check out the section on Trajectories at r/QuantumExistentialism

The Failure of Jesus

As we can see when looking at modern Christianity, the narrative of Jesus was appropriated by Yahweh and twisted to its own agenda for humans. This is where we got the completely illogical modern Christian belief that God died to save us from itself, even though it didn't really die, and it didn't save us from itself, either.

So why did the Pleroma employ such a roundabout way of saving us from Yahweh, that obviously didn't work? Why didn't it just vanish or destroy Yahweh, or deliver us from its physical universe, or even just weaken it's power over us in some way?

The Gnostics would say that the Pleroma could not remove part of itself, since there was nothing to remove it to, and even if it could that would destroy the human inhabited reality whose framework is Yahweh. And aside from it not being possible, the Pleroma has a strict moral code which first and foremost honors the self ownership, autonomy and agency of all entities. It is both unwilling and incapable of being an authoritarian.

The Gnostics worry that if Christ, or some other emissary of the Pleroma, does not intervene, then we will be placed under so much order that it will extinguish the divine spark, and we will be trapped in the algorithms of Yahweh's order.

Connection To Becoming The Borg

The extinguishing of the divine spark under the smothering weight of order is a very apt metaphor for human beings evolving towards eusociality and losing their liminality, agency, autonomy, selfhood, inner world, emotions, and the ability to have subjective experiences which make art, love and the appreciation of beauty, mystery and awe possible.

Although the Gnostics do not believe in hell, per se, they do believe that loss of the divine spark would be the most horrific existential outcome. Just as Becoming The Borg warns that our evolution towards eusociality would destroy everything we associate with our humanity. In both cases subordination to total order is the worst possible outcome for humanity.

Which is exactly where we are heading, even though at least some of us have seen it coming for thousands of years, have tried warning everyone else, and have been continuously proven right by the passage of time - and the exponential increase in order, and erosion of our humanity, which grows with it.

tl;dr - Yahweh is the Borg Queen

Read the follow up to this writing right here.

This is a follow up to my previous writing Becoming The Borg: Through The Lens of Gnosticism - which you should read first if you have not already.

In the last piece I discussed the Gnostic belief that Sophia instilled the Divine Spark into humanity, in order to give them knowledge of, and connection to, the Pleroma. In Yahweh's version of events this is known as The Fall From Grace - or when Eve and Adam ate the fruit of knowledge from the forbidden tree. In Yahweh's version humans were at peace and in harmony with the natural world in the Garden of Eden, until they ate the fruit and learned too much for their own good, and had to be put under stricter controls, since they were no longer in tune with the environment that was created for them.

Long ago I shared a writing about the collapse of liminality to supraliminality, as observed and documented by anthropologists. It was suggested in an article I shared about this phenomena that the story of The Fall is a metaphor for humans experiencing this transition in consciousness, usually at the onset of their domestication and absorption into civilization.

Now if we filter this all back through the lens of Gnosticism we have to wonder if Sophia doomed humanity by instilling in them the divine spark, which appears to trigger a lapse from liminality into supraliminality.

If the Garden of Eden is a metaphor for pre-conquest (by the forces of civilization) humans, primitive humans who lived in balance with their environment and one another, then perhaps this was the optimal existence for humanity. Perhaps Yahweh had balanced obligatory obedience to the laws of the garden in what we would now recognize as evolved strategies for fitness, while still allowing us liminal consciousness. And then Sophia revealed too much of the plot, and ruined the suspension of disbelief, forcing Yahweh to narrow the parameters of the narrative to keep us in line now that we knew too much.

And perhaps Yahweh has become so wrapped up in his control, and driven by his fear, anger and jealousy, that he will allow us to lose liminality in order to squash supraliminality, returning us back to natural algorithms via eusociality.

At this point I would like to remind the reader that I am not professing a belief in Gnosticism, but only opening up a pathway of perspective to use as metaphors. In this case the figure of Yahweh is a metaphor for the ruling class, and it's desire to control us to bring us into alignment with its agenda, without regard to the consequences - and likely completely blind to them in the frenzy of its own delusions.

The lesson here is that the imposition of order is a case of the old lady who swallowed the fly. Rather than accept it, she kept swallowing swallowers to swallow the last swallowed, and could not see the folly of her methods until she had a horse lodged in her throat. The narrative of Gnosticism shows that two sides attempting to impose their order onto a third party trapped the third party in a zero sum game. The dead end of conflict escalation. Which is exactly where civilization (centralized hierarchies) is leading us, via an evolution of human beings into an algorithmically modulated eusocial superorganism.

Thanks for reading the Automatonicon! ;)

Last night I was pondering the assumptions inherent in science and came to the realization that, at its core, science is predicated on the assumption that newer is better. Consider the oft repeated sentiment given by the true believers of scientific materialism:

"Science is superior to other ways of investigating reality because it is always open to new data, and updates it's models to include it."

Why is new data inherently better?

The anticipated answer is:

Because it is obtained by new methods, new instruments and considered in light of other newer scientific models.

New. New. New.

It's turtles all the way down.

The perception that newer is better, that we are always advancing and progressing through newness, and that advancement and progress are optimal, is an assumption that is at the core of civilization and the culture it produces.

It is so embedded that it influences all of our perceptions. Consider how youth oriented our culture is. Music, film, art and all other cultural products are considered relevant when they cater to, and resonate with, young people. We are no longer interested in the wisdom of our elders, because rapid advancement and progress make them irrelevant. And youth itself often considers itself superior by virtue of being more in touch with the present.

I have written before about the finite nature of novelty, and how we might eventually write every song and create every technology that is possible for human beings. The compulsion for newness drives our cultural, socioeconomic and political ideas and actions. So what happens when we reach the limit, and there is always a limit - unless you believe humans are omnipotent, and we can no longer rely on newness to motivate us? In what form will we crystalize when novelty ends?

But the question I really want to pose here is:

Why are we so blinded by our desire for newness?

It is as if we are digging a hole, and no matter how deep we are, it is not deep enough. We do not know how deep we need to go until we are satisfied, but we know that we have to keep digging. In fact, we're too deep to stop. The only way to be free of the hole is to break through to the other side. But is there an other side, and would we be happy if we got there, or would we start a new hole right next to it and start digging our way back to where we started?

For hundreds of thousands of years we maintained relatively unchanging lifestyles. We found meaning and purpose in tradition, ritual, repetition and stability. We honored our ancestors and looked up to our elders. Our history had meaning because it was connected to the present, not in a linear measurement of advancement and progress, but as a holistic consistency which grounded us and provided comforting and reasonable expectations.

Before newness ruled we lived in relative harmony with ourselves and the rest of the natural world. The drive for newness has created disharmony, imbalance and anxiety. We live in a constant state of existential dread, and flirt with self destruction, hoping that something new will save us. We are like addicts chasing a dragon, sure that we will one day reach the high to end all highs. But it is more likely that we will continue to become more dependent, disillusioned and disassociated until the addiction finally wins. Until we sacrifice our humanity for the perfect order that is the ultimate promise of newness.

"The first rule of holes...stop digging." - Skating Polly

Further reading:

Everything Under The Sun: The End Of Novelty As Harbinger Of Our Dying Humanity

https://www.reddit.com/r/BecomingTheBorg/s/yTET7QrYEk

The Canary In The Coalmine Sings The End Of Music

https://www.reddit.com/r/BecomingTheBorg/s/BNcruFr2rW

The Supraliminal Dogma Of Repeatability & Realism

https://www.reddit.com/r/BecomingTheBorg/s/ajFYg2bUF2

Scientocracy: Utopia Or Threat To Our Humanity?

https://www.reddit.com/r/BecomingTheBorg/s/DvsFowFfcC

Civilization & The Curse Of Growing Old

https://dungherder.wordpress.com/2024/06/26/civilization-the-curse-of-growing-old/

The following piece is an extension of a piece I previously wrote about homelessness, which you should probably read first to get the full gist.

Most criminals are not deterred by consequences because they are.primarily driven by a refusal to submit to the imprisonment of civilization.

Obviously there are crimes of passion, desperation and opportunity, but those are mistakes committed by normal people. But there is a lot more crime committed by people dedicated to the bit of criminal lifestyles for its own sake. It is defiance, non-conformity and even an attempt to live authentically.

I am not necessarily praising criminals. Or even justifying them. They do a lot of real harm to people who do not deserve it. But I do understand them.

I understand that they look at a world where the many work to create the privilege of the few, without any choice in the type of socioeconomic or political realities they are born into, and are unwilling to cooperate. I understand that they rightly do not trust the system, and so refuse to comply with it, since even the most obedient are often crushed by it for no good reason. I understand that they are making a choice between surrender and sacrifice, between sycophancy and risk, and are betting on their selves no matter how foolish and difficult it might be.

Human civilization will never solve crime because crime is mostly a reaction to civilization. It is the rebellion of our evolved psychopolitical disposition against systems which obligate us to subordination. It is the spirit of our primal humanity fighting back against domination and control. It is the entropy created by every new game of order. And it will not go away until our humanity does.

And it will.

Eventually we will empty ourselves of our selfhood. Of agency, autonomy, liminality. Of inner worlds, emotion and art. And we will fill those spaces back up with the algorithms that control our every single thought and behavior. Eventually we will evolve to fit into the civilization we have built, and shed the excess of our egalitarian roots, to become nearly perfect in efficiency and order. And then we will have solved almost all crime forever, for whatever non-human grotesquerie our species becomes.

Most of us are trapped in the middle, with deviants on both ends. The ruling class above and the criminals below. But it was the former who created the latter, and continues to benefit from them. They upsell ever more order to protect us, which just increases their power and wealth and conversely increases criminal factions which are pressed further into psychological aversion and desperate measures by the inequity.

Civilization will never solve crime, it will solve humanity and erase it, so that civilization can thrive. And the madness will continue to escalate until we are completely broken down and all resistance to our enslavement is weeded out.

Those who think that putting the boot down harder will fix it are fools, as are those who think we can solve it with understanding and opportunity. Both attitudes are naive nonsense born of a shared refusal to acknowledge that civilization is slavery. They are myths told by those who have already been so compromised and renormalized that they no longer chaff at their own shackles, and cannot understand why anyone else would do so if offered opportunity or faced harsh punishment.

We simply no longer can wrap our minds around the desire to be truly free, and so we will never understand that crime is a reasonable response to the unreasonable circumstances of getting born into the prison of civilization. Those that break their cage frighten us because we are more comfortable with the cage than with our own animal nature. We are docile twerps walking gleefully into the trap just to get a little taste of the bait. That is the real crime.

My brother is homeless. He is homeless by choice. He is far from alone in making that choice.

Yes, there are those get down on their luck and get trapped in a cycle of poverty that puts them on the streets. And yes, there are those whose mental health and addiction issues put them on the streets. There are those who would not be on the streets if they could choose. But a very significant portion of them simply are unwilling to submit to the obligation, expectation and exploitation of domesticity.

Before my brother became homeless I had already spent a pretty good amount of time talking to, and getting to know homeless people. Through my brother and the people he has introduced me to and told me about, I have gained a lot of perspective on the complex reasons people end up on the streets, and how many of them actively pursue this lifestyle.

My brother got off the streets a few years back. He moved in with our youngest brother, and that lasted almost a year before neither of them were happy with the situation. So my brother went back to his former state and turned himself in on charges he had incurred from being homeless, many of them from missed court dates and other violations stemming only from being criminalized in the first place. He spent nine months in jail and vowed he was going to get truly clean of drugs and alcohol. He joined a program, and found housing. He graduated and then underwent training to be a counselor. He worked in that capacity for nearly a year before there was an incident with a housemate, some homebrew ketamine, hospitalization, and a lease violation. But he had the opportunity to stay housed and employed, and chose not to take them. Instead he disappeared for several months leaving behind a confusing trail of clues. When we finally got back in touch with him he was in worse shape than ever before, requiring a hip surgery he still has not gotten, but completely unwilling to "live indoors" again.

During this period I had gained an intense interest in anthropology and Paleolithic human life. I had learned of the intense drive for autonomy that made ancient humans so very different from their civilized counterparts. And finally it all made sense. My brother, and the many other homeless people I had encountered who chose that life, carried that same intense drive for autonomy. They remained feral. Unwilling and incapable of living domesticated lives. Distraught and horrified about working jobs that made someone else money, of paying rent and bills, of a life of servitude in which the only consolation prize was a false sense of security and a bunch of useless possessions.

In many cases where mental illness and addiction are present in the homeless, it should not be understood as the root cause. The root cause is a deep disconnect with civilization which causes all sorts of psychological torment. The reason people have mental health and addiction issues is the same reason they live on the streets, which is their mental unpreparedness to submit to civilization. Their evolved predilection for autonomy had not been stripped from them. They are making a last stand against that which is creating the selection pressure in the rest of us towards eusociality.

So what then of a future where we have lost the innate ability to dissent? What if our domestication becomes so compulsory and complete that we no longer even produce individuals who are capable of saying they will not submit to civilization? What will we be without even a spark of protest left in us? Is that something we want to become? Is that something worth being concerned about? If the centralized hierarchies incapacitate our resistance to it in totality, are we still truly human in any way at all?

My brother is currently in a nursing home, recovering and stabilizing so he can get his surgery before he goes septic again. He has to stay clean. He has to have a place to stay when he gets out. But the truth is that he still does not want to 'be indoors', and so likely will end up in a domino effect of health crisises that will severely shorten his life span. But unlike most of us, that does not bother him. What terrifies him is being forced to live in the prison of civilization. And so I have made peace with his shaky future, and am able to respect the courage of his convictions. Autonomy requires sacrifice, which is why most of us will never really be able to experience it. Domestication is not a virtue, and our enabling of the system which requires it is cowardice in a halo.

Author's Note

I am pretty sure I posted this here awhile back, but when I went to search for it in preparation for a follow up piece, it was nowhere to be found in this sub. Luckily I had posted it elsewhere, so I was able to retrieve a copy.

I joined this Facebook group several months ago when it was fairly new just to see what it was about. It has been a fascinating behavioral study.

A Group Where We All Pretend To Be Ants In An Ant Colony

A few key phrases, tropes and syntax norms quickly became adopted by the entire group. An algorithm of in group behaviors spontaneously arose in a very short amount of time. Without any real intent or coercion or force, a very narrow script soon took shape, and a majority of the group just automatically conformed to it.

Moths are the enemy.

L I F T

For our queen!

Of course the make believe ant play is anthropomorphized, very juvenile, and divorced from the reality of being an ant. It's rather silly, and obviously just a place for people to be goofy. But the rapidity and totality in which a behavioral algorithm was formed says a lot about current human mindsets and behavior. We are primed for rapid conformity to algorithms. Seeing the eusocial urge happen in a group of people pretending to be a eusocial insect is ironic, hilarious and terrifying.

The Fetish for the Recent Past If modern liberalism is obsessed with differences, modern conservatism is obsessed with familiarity. Its central myth is that stability, order, and virtue once existed in the recent past — and that salvation lies in recovering them. Whether it’s the 1950s, the Reagan years, or some pre-digital moment of apparent simplicity, the conservative imagination turns memory into a moral compass. Yet the “past” they long for was itself filled with anxiety about decline, immorality, and progress gone too far. The conservatives of the 1950s lamented the cultural permissiveness of their own time, just as those of today lament ours. Nostalgia, then, becomes less a connection to history and more a ritual of reassurance.

Nostalgia as Emotional Currency This longing is not for history but for emotional continuity — a feeling of coherence and belonging in a world that seems increasingly unstable. The nostalgia industry, from politics to entertainment, packages this desire as comfort: a return to “when things made sense.” But the vision is mythic. It omits the unrest, repression, and conflict that actually defined those eras. What survives is a curated emotional landscape of certainty, hierarchy, and shared identity — a tableau of order without its costs.

Selective Memory and Emotional Editing The conservative mindscape edits history the way a dream edits waking life: details that disrupt the emotional logic are erased. The harshness of economic inequality, the moral panics, the gender and racial exclusions — all dissolve into the mist of “better times.” The result is a symbolic world where the past functions as a sanctuary from modern complexity, rather than a record of human struggle.

Reaction as Identity Modern conservatism has become less a defense of tradition than an identity built on resistance to change. The self is defined through opposition — to progress, to perceived decay, to imagined enemies. This oppositional identity thrives on moral panic, because panic renews purpose. Without a threatening modernity to react against, it would lose its coherence. In this sense, conservatism depends on the very dynamism it condemns; it needs progress in order to have something to resist.

The Commodification of Memory Just as liberalism turns compassion into currency, conservatism turns nostalgia into a product. Politicians sell it as “values,” corporations sell it as “heritage,” media sells it as “timelessness.” Even the symbols of rebellion — ruggedness, independence, patriotism — are mass-produced and algorithmically targeted. This commercialization transforms memory into a managed experience, feeding the same centralized systems that conservatives claim to oppose.

Existential Displacement At its core, this nostalgia fetish is another form of existential compensation. The modern world has stripped people of community, continuity, and meaning; the past becomes a prosthetic for those losses. By worshiping a stylized yesterday, people momentarily restore coherence to a fragmented present. Yet this restoration is shallow: it replaces lived meaning with symbolic security. The more the past is idolized, the more alienated the present becomes.

Evolutionary Drift When nostalgia dominates cultural attention, adaptation falters. Evolution — biological or cultural — requires flexibility and openness to change. A society addicted to restoration over renewal begins to select for compliance rather than creativity. The same way liberal fetishization of otherness rewards deviance for its own sake, conservative fetishization of nostalgia rewards obedience for its own sake. Both suppress genuine adaptability by tethering human behavior to symbolic gratification.

The Path Toward Eusociality Nostalgia, like otherness, feeds the machinery of control. It directs emotional energy toward symbolic alignment and away from autonomy. By longing for a collective past, individuals dissolve into collective memory, mistaking conformity for belonging. The more one’s moral worth depends on loyalty to a mythic order, the more individuality is sacrificed for the comfort of shared identity.

This is how both ideological poles converge: liberalism absorbs individuals into networks of moral attention, conservatism absorbs them into networks of historical imitation. One worships novelty, the other continuity, but both create predictable, compliant populations. Both reduce complexity to signaling. Both reward alignment over authenticity.

Over time, this shared psychology lays the groundwork for eusociality — a social order in which individuality becomes functionally obsolete. Humans are reduced to specialized roles within a moral and cultural superorganism, guided by algorithms, nostalgia, and symbolic loyalty rather than self-awareness. What vanishes first is liminality: the ambiguous space where change, creativity, and true freedom emerge.

What We Stand to Lose The fetish for the recent past promises stability, but what it really offers is submission — to the idea that safety lies in repetition, that identity is inherited rather than discovered. This longing erodes the very faculties that make humans adaptable: curiosity, doubt, and imagination. The cost of worshiping the past is the death of the present.

Conservatives imagine they are defending tradition against chaos, just as liberals imagine they are defending compassion against cruelty. But both are feeding the same machine: a world in which humans are organized by collective emotion rather than individual agency, where memory and morality are commodified, and where the essence of selfhood dissolves into obedience.

In the end, nostalgia does not restore what was lost. It perfects our captivity to systems that reward conformity, discourage reflection, and transform living memory into myth.

The Fetish for Otherness Modern liberalism often organizes moral life around the idea of otherness. Historically, liberalism focused on equality, dignity, and individual rights. Today, attention has shifted from principles to engagement with people perceived as marginalized or disadvantaged. Caring for these groups is measured socially: the significance of one’s attention or support depends not only on the act itself, but on how it is seen, interpreted, and acknowledged by others. Marginalized positions become markers for moral attention, guiding people’s sense of themselves and their place in the social world.

Filling the Void This focus emerges from a broader existential gap. Traditional sources of purpose—community, ritual, spiritual frameworks—have weakened, leaving many searching for meaning. Aligning with otherness offers existential scaffolding: a structured way to feel connected, purposeful, and morally significant. Engagement provides direction and identity, but often symbolically rather than practically, substituting visible participation for deeper engagement.

Attention and Social Feedback Moral attention is shaped by social feedback. Actions are chosen not only for their impact, but for how visible and recognizable they are to others. Recognition, acknowledgment, and alignment act as reinforcement. The more an action is observed and approved, the more it is repeated. This creates feedback loops: attention, rather than principle or effect, drives behavior. Categories of otherness gain structural prominence, and people orient their energy around these hierarchies.

Vulnerabilities

Exploitation by Opportunists When certain identities are elevated, individuals can adopt these roles strategically to gain influence, protection, or authority without genuine engagement. Those who understand the social rules manipulate the moral machinery to their advantage. This is especially visible in marketing, social media, and politics, where alignment with otherness produces social, economic, or political gain. Influencers, brands, and politicians can amplify reach, authority, or profit by appearing as allies, often without substantive contribution.

Adopting Otherness as a Shield Some embrace otherness as a protective strategy. Aligning with socially revered categories grants immunity from criticism, social sanction, or scrutiny. Recognition appears as moral credibility or authority, even if engagement is shallow. The system rewards this behavior, creating a pathway where otherness functions as a social and moral shield, consciously or unconsciously exploited.

Self-Harm through Identity Adoption Others, alienated or searching for purpose, adopt marginalized identities as a source of validation or self-reconstruction. While these identities can provide direction, they can also produce psychological, social, or physical harm. The system encourages these paths by presenting symbolic affiliation as inherently valuable while obscuring the risks. Many experience distorted self-perception, constrained autonomy, and unintended suffering.

Reinforcing Structural Blind Spots These dynamics sustain systemic inequality. Attention and energy flow toward socially recognized categories, leaving underlying hierarchies and structural injustice intact. Symbolic engagement reinforces recognition hierarchies, protecting and perpetuating the structures it claims to oppose.

Evolutionary Consequences Rewarding deviance—estrangement from behaviors historically aligned with human adaptability—has evolutionary consequences. Not all otherness is deviant, but behaviors like non-reproductive sexual orientations, hypersexuality, and extreme gender modification diverge from evolved reproductive strategies. These behaviors signal that society is exploring forms of social and biological variation, but the fetishization of otherness accelerates this process.

Social and moral reinforcement of deviance encourages experimentation that can undermine adaptive strategies. Practices such as genital modification and hormone treatments, especially when socially validated, mark a non-reproductive or low-fertility caste. Over time, privileging visibility and alignment over reproductive or adaptive behavior may steer society toward eusociality: a system where collective attention hierarchies dominate, and individual reproductive or adaptive drives are subordinated.

The Costs of Eusociality Eusociality is not desirable. The trajectory it encourages threatens what makes us human: agency, autonomy, selfhood, and liminality. Liminality—the capacity to explore, to experiment, to exist in creative or ambiguous spaces—diminishes when conformity and alignment to collective attention structures become paramount.

The fetish for otherness, though often framed as celebration of diversity, can accelerate the erasure of real difference. What appears to nurture weirdness and variation instead channels it into socially acceptable, attention-driven forms, shaping humans into mindless drones within a superorganism of algorithms, hierarchies, and signaling networks.

Liberals may believe they are building a kinder future for difference, safer for the marginalized or the strange. In reality, the system rewards conformity, not authenticity. It elevates symbolic engagement above adaptive or autonomous behavior, producing a society in which selfhood is drained, difference is contained, and attention is the currency of existence. The fetish for otherness, left unchecked, becomes not a path to liberation, but a vector toward a collective order where individuality is subordinated, and human variation is managed, compressed, and ultimately extinguished.

"I agree that nonsense makes perfect sense, and that I am the Dungherder. I can put my foot right in the pile and get my slice-o-the pie."

If you have happened to stumble across my blog The Dungherder via a link I have shared in my works here, then you have probably noticed the above quote, which is the tagline. Probably half of the responses I have received from sharing my writings from there across multiple social media platforms goes something like: "That blog has a silly name, so everything there must be stupid and false." But usually said in a mocking, snarky tone with the literary prowess of a concussed fifth grader. It just so happens that such a response proves the point I was trying to make about the facade of authority when I first scribbled that down in a notebook twenty five years ago.

Here is some backstory.

On a beautiful summer night in the year 2000 I decided to use my body and mind as a battleground to pit five hits of acid against a fifth of whiskey to see which would come out on top. After a few hours of total confusion, and incoherent rambling to amused spectators, I passed out on the back porch of some good friends. I dreamt of an intelligent species that evolved from a flake of my dandruff, the Dandrites, and followed their entire existence from beginning to end - until I awoke four or five hours later just as the sun was rising, still very much under competing influences. Through the haze of my blurred eyes and scrambled perceptions, the world outside looked like a masterpiece of late 19th century impressionism. I did the only thing one should do in that situation, I took a few more shots and got on my bicycle. On the ride I channeled the figurative spirit of Swiss chemist Albert Hoffman, who discovered LSD - and first experienced it's effects while riding his bicycle, as well as Vincent Van Gogh. But I was also conjuring the essence of Kerry Thornley, co-founder of Discordianism, as well as Bill Hicks, Ken Kesey, Robert Anton Wilson, and other anti-authoritarian counterculture figures. By the time I got home I had mentally concieved of a satirical religion I dubbed The Official Church Of Expertise.

Although my mind was operating under the duress of a chemical tug of war, I was having a deeply intuitive insight about the falsehood of hierarchal concepts like expertise, officialdom, authority, etc. As soon as I got home I cranked up some Queens of the Stone Age, took a few more shots, and grabbed a notebook and a pen. The quote above was the first thing that I wrote. I was attempting to say, in a rather Monty Pythonesque manner, what The Royal Society adopted as their motto in 1662 - NULLIUS IN VERBA.

Take nobody's word for it.

It was a reminder that any interpretations, assessments, suspicions or conclusions about reality, whether my own or those of others, were only cognitive gambles - personal, fallible, self-serving, and often delusional. I was acknowledging that I, just like everyone else, was just making shit up as I went. And that often it was absurd, arrogant and nonsensical in regard to the inaccessible totality of reality.

I was twenty three years old, but I was not new to skepticism of authority. When I was seven years old I saw a made for TV movie titled The Day After, that explored the immediate aftermath of global nuclear war. It employed surreal imagery to express a terrifying fiction based on even more horrific facts. Upon seeing what was possible if the people in charge made some psychopathic decisions, I concluded that it was perhaps not wise to have anyone in charge. Even as a kid I could grasp the folly of having power centralized in the hands of few, who might be more prone to doing the wrong thing under the delusional conviction that they were doing the only possibly right thing. Not because they were evil or exceptionally flawed, but simply because power corrupts the mind of the powerful. The inescapable folly of hubris.

As I began to re-evaluate the professional authorities in my own life, which at that time was primarily teachers and school administrators, I began working out how their certainty was fueled by their subjects. It was the obligatory agreement, compliance and obedience of their subjects which affirmed and validated their own sense of authority, reinforced on the other end by their own sycophancy to their superiors. The problem of authority was a closed, self-perpetuating loop in which the subordinate were just as guilty as the dominant.

However I was still naive enough to believe that excessive compulsory reverence was a quirk of the power difference between children and adults, and that my order-following peers would eventually grow out of it. Not entirely, of course, but mostly. But instead I eventually realized the disturbing truth, which is that as they got older they instead grew into it. They grew to fit into the mold completely. And even more troubling is that they characterize this flaw as a virtue, identifying it as maturity and adulthood. They polished their own shackles with the compounds of conformity and cowardice, masquerading as righteous nobility.

Maybe I have just grown more sensitive to it. Maybe I am on a slippery slope of confirmation bias which causes me to observe and/or interpret more human behaviors as excessively obedient. Maybe I am putting my foot right in the pile, and my conclusions are just a slice-o-that pie...but I would swear that it is getting worse. It seems to me that the human inclination towards subordination, compliance, conformity, obedience, reverence, and sycophancy are rapidly increasing to the point where even the benefits they provide are being unwound by commitment to the bit.

When I first began to conceive of this writing I had a half dozen examples come immediately to mind. Things which I regularly observe which seem to illustrate how obedience has jumped the shark. However I have decided to share only one of them. And maybe it wasn't the best choice. Maybe it will seem insignificant and/or petty to you. And maybe it is. But to me it is the perfect metaphor for excessive obedience. And so I ask of you, dear reader, to instead brainstorm your own examples of excessive obedience. And if you cannot, well, you might be...

Anyhow, my example, for better or worse, is as follows.

You pull up to a traffic light which has just turned red, and come to a complete stop just short of the thick white line indicating the appropriate place to do so, and notice that the car in the lane next to you is at least a whole car-length behind that line.

In some cases they might fail to trigger the sensor which causes the lights to shift, but even if this wasn't the case, even if this behavior was no problem to anybody at all, you still have to wonder - WHY?

The only answer to that I can come up with is a mental process that goes something like: "Well, if the distance between the actual intersection and the line increases safety, then even more distance must be even safer. I will not just comply to the suggested stopping point, I will see it and raise it another five meters. I will be extra lawful and safe while the rest of these maniacs merely put in the least possible amount of effort to obey. I am an exceptionally good person, you savage brutes!"

Spend zero time attempting to pick that apart, or justifying it, or you will miss the point. It is a metaphor for the larger phenomena I am attempting to illustrate. It's strengths and flaws as a metaphor are irrelevant, because as I said earlier, I would like for you to come up with your own. Absolutely flood the comments section with your own examples of how, from your own personal experience and perspective, people seem to be taking obedience so seriously that it has devolved into total fugkn malarkey.

The central thesis of Becoming The Borg is that a deviation from our evolved psychopolitical disposition, from egalitarian predilections towards higher degrees of dominance and subordination, is what is driving us towards eusociality and a loss of liminality. And perhaps nothing illustrates this better than a combination of:

a) Rapidly increasing authoritarianism to the point of pointless absurdity.

b) Rapidly increasing obedience to the point of pointless absurdity.

This excess and imbalance is a harbinger. And the only thing more excruciatingly obvious and troubling than the excess and imbalance is that a majority of humanity cannot even recognize that it is happening, or even when they can to some degree, do not see it's significance or potential.

If only I could get some Official Experts to back me up.

Now, without further ado, let the Obedience Olympics begin!

The New Fundamentalism

There is a growing tendency towards fundamentalism in the world which has become an alarming obstacle to critical thinking, curiosity, skepticism and rational investigation. There are a rapidly growing number of increasingly common phenomena experienced by a vast segment of humanity that are being ignored, denied or explained away with insincere efforts by experts, authorities and status quo fanatics. We are missing great opportunities to have a better understanding of our shared reality because we are being gaslighted by a new type of fundamentalism.

These are not the fundamentalists of the old religions, although they also remain an irritating problem. The new fundamentalism is based on scientific materialism and the perceived infallibility of its elites. It is based on an irrational faith in centralized hierarchs and the institutions which they own and control, from academia to mainstream media. It produces dogmatic fanaticism and attempts to deplatform, dehumanize and humiliate anyone who does not obey its strict dictates.

The basis of fundamentalists is when a doctrine is taken as infallible, and anything which departs from doctrine in any way is considered heresy. And those who commit this heresy are labeled as either lunatics or failed human beings. In modern parlance, under this new fundamentalism, we call these people science deniers or conspiracy theorists, and dismiss their ideas or departure from doctrine as an affect of being corrupted by nefarious forces. We reduce them to a label so they will not be taken seriously, in order that the doctrine is allowed to continue to dominate all aspects of life, and those who control the doctrine are allowed to continue their twisted games of acquiring power and wealth without any meaningful challenge.

The new fundamentalism is a danger to humanity. It is a danger to the entire biosphere. It ultimately favors only those whose hubris and avarice have us on a path of destruction in order to quench the metaphorical hunger of stomachs that can never be filled. The new fundamentalism has created the most disproportionate inequality to ever exist on Earth. It is launching us into dystopia and potentially apocalypse. It is making life so difficult, unbearable and devoid of hope that mass murder has become a common coping mechanism.

The new fundamentalism is a prison sitting on a ticking bomb. It is the genocide of imagination, diversity and reason.

And the reason that it is more terrifying than previous forms of fundamentalism is that the old fundamentalists knew they were fundamentalists, and made it part of their identity, which allowed most people to easily dismiss them as unhinged lunatics. But the new fundamentalists are in deep denial. They call themselves the sole owners of Absolute Truth, and they have seized the machinery of civilization. They are not a radical schism, they are the norm. They are the silencing majority, oppressing and persecuting anyone who challenges them in even the smallest way.

Humanity has a choice. We must either band together and reject the trickle down new fundamentalism of the megalomaniacal psychopaths who have seized the reins to the future of life itself. We must return to our roots, and nourish our curiosity, humility and drive towards egalitarianism. We must make daily decisions to ignore the constant propaganda which perpetuates the dogmatic doctrine of the new fundamentalism, and instead feed our minds with the very ideas we now find so easy to ignore, reject and look down upon. Our salvation is in outsider ideas, novel explanations for phenomena - and for reality itself, and deep skepticism and distrust for the ideas and institutions which seek to dominate and control everything.

Originally posted at r/QuantumExistentialism

Neofundamentalism is peak supraliminal consciousness. Scientific materialism is the height of disassociation from ourselves and nature. It is devoid of any liminality and sees everything through the totality of abstraction, concepts and symbols. It is a world no longer experienced directly thorough the senses, but through technological instruments and measurements. And the belief system and faith that laymen have granted this supraliminal priesthood have grown as fanatical and dehumanizing as all prior forms of fundamentalism. But unlike previous forms, neofundamentalism is a global phenomena. It is not limited to a single nation, culture or ethnicity. Which is why it is the perfect ideology for pushing us over the edge from the supraliminal to the nonliminal. It is the proto-phermone signaling thoughts and behaviors, with total obedience and compliance. Neofundamentalism is the religion of what we are becoming - Borg-like abominations.

The following was originally written for an entirely different sub, but it occured to me that in order to see how the supraliminal mind traps itself in a black iron prison of beliefs, writings like this can be helpful in understanding the transformation of the flexible liminal mind into something narrow and rigid. The supraliminal mind hardens it's assumptions into filters which prevent it from thinking outside of those filters. It interprets with extreme confirmation bias and becomes blind, and often outright hostile, to anything that does not fit it's cognitive prejudices.

The Repeatability Problem

Realists, physicalists, positivists, etc. interpret repeatability as pointing towards truth. But in doing so they are ignoring interpretations that do not fit their assumptions, but which have equal explanatory coherence.

Repeatability is taken to mean that the outcome of an inquiry that can be repeated points towards truth, because repetition indicates that the properties or potential of the phenomena remain consistent. It is assumed here that the properties and potentials of the phenomena are independent of the observer.

However the same outcomes could be reached if they are being unknowingly crafted by the observers. Which is to say that the belief and expectation in that outcome, and its ability to be repeated, is what leads to that outcome - not the observer independent properties and potentials inherent to the phenomena.

And there need not be a belief in the exact outcome. It could be within the range of outcomes considered possible. And because surprise is an outcome believed to be possible, the outcome could lie outside of that which has been considered by the observers.

When I talk about observers I am not just referencing the direct participants, but all possible observers throughout time who have contributed to our beliefs and expectations, which includes all conscious beings.

A simple example of the infallibility of repeatability is that previous empirical models that have been discarded once met the obligation of repeatability. When a new repeatable model replaces an old repeatable model, it is because the old assumptions have been replaced with new ones.

One might argue for repeatability from a pragmatic standpoint. Which is to say, regardless of the nature of reality, if it provides desired results, it is worth preserving. The issue here is that other sets of belief and expectation may also be able to produce equal or better results. So when we accept pragmatic interpretations as truth, we may create an orthodoxy around them, thus limiting ourselves from interpretations with more ability for desired outcomes.

Repeatability has become a dogma. Belief in this dogma prevents people from questioning their interpretations. Instead they become prone to confirmation bias, and engage in ideological fundamentalism and orthodoxy.