《Cascading Potentials》


 Introductions are in order

    The world rarely ends with a bang. It¡¯s not doing so here and now, in this particular timeline we¡¯re going through the linearity together.


    Time, you see, isn¡¯t linear except in past tense. Future tense is a compounded consolidation of potentialities that collapse as people enter present tense. I live in future tense, with a window into past. Present tense is, frankly, so fleeting that it¡¯s hard to keep in mind. So I ignore present tense.


    But in a way, it doesn¡¯t matter. Your future tense is my past tense; whether it¡¯s the right past tense is a matter of the compounded choices of everyone currently alive.


    Yes, even asleep, even in a coma, even if they are not actively making thoughtful choices, a person who may have to experience the results of the lack of choice contributed to the outcome. A lack of choice ¡ª allowing the way to be paved by others without a back and forth of complex opinions and facts ¡ª is still a choice. It¡¯s passive. It¡¯s fateful. But it¡¯s still a choice.


    The world is ending ¡ª present/past tense ¡ª with a wail in the distance; a whimper from your neighbor; and a silent, gut-wrenching pain all around. There is more strum and furor coalescing around the insistence that life will be normal than there is in hearts breaking as people die.


    It¡¯s ending with a few in control who think they can maintain control if the herd will comply. The herd will comply. The question is how many of the hoi-polloi will, too.


    There are phrases I¡¯ll use that are not in your current lexicon, or at least not with the same meaning I intend to invest into them.


    Herd. Hoi-polloi. Cupids. Rowans. Mass-pop. Pops.


    First, though, a note about cognitive biases. Everyone has them. I, a Rowan, a finder of pops, have my cognitive biases. To rethink every experience and decision from scratch for every moment of life is too much, at least until there is an experiential subsystem that lives outside of time (some Rowan have that; guess what, they don¡¯t use it to rethink every experience and decision from scratch).


    Cognitive biases are like experiential automation, leveraged by every intelligence currently thinking. They are used by beings humans currently deem ¡®animal¡¯ (every time your dog fetches, they are leveraging cognitive biases). They are so deeply embedded in how humans process their world that they are as necessary as breathing.


    The difference is the individual¡¯s personal combination of biases they lean on frequently, their ability to see where they are leaning, their willingness to admit and potentially change, the will and energy to support the effort, and the efficacy of their course corrections.


    People, you see, tend to fall into a few mental models in how they leverage cognitive biases. This is where herd, hoi-polloi, cupids, and Rowans come in. Mass-pop is, simply, the accumulation of all the individual decision. Pops are currently outside your current reality, but I¡¯ll overview them a bit once I get around to explaining Rowans.


    The first of the mental models is the herd ¡ª those who don¡¯t want to think, who depend on their cognitive biases to get through the day and hope that tomorrow they can depend on them again. It¡¯s easy for them to just follow the strongest voice. It¡¯s a way of life, and it¡¯s a life with minimized thinking. Life is hard enough already (it is, really, so hard; it will always be hard, but that paen doesn¡¯t belong here).


    The herd believe in fate, the trudge of time, and the relevance of religion. The herd believes because every day they review a life that is resplendent with the evidence of fate. Their days progress in a relevant sameness of predictable trudge. And religion makes a definitive positive impact in their lives.


    The why all comes back to their unquestioned acceptance of their individual matrix of cognitive biases.


    We all have our personal set of cognitive biases. That¡¯s about where the herd stops. They might not even belief cognitive biases exist ¡ª just chalk it up to some elitist psychological malarky (or at least, I think that¡¯s in this timeline; apologies if I¡¯m disparaging the herd too deeply here). Their ability to see which they lean into is non-existent.


    Because they can¡¯t see their cognitive biases, they continue to make the same decisions when shown similar problem sets. Each problem set compounds over time. Life just keeps moving forward, seemingly always in a preordained direction. Fate.


    If they don¡¯t believe in fate? Well, life then feels a bit like a trudge. It just keeps throwing the same issues at them over and over again, thinking any other outcome might come to be. It doesn¡¯t. The same cognitive biases are aiming the individual into the same corner and same decision. Trudge, trudge, trudge.


    Religion is a true panacea for the herd. Why? Because it gives them a roadmap to a different set of cognitive biases that will at least change their perspective (fate instead of trudge, god¡¯s plan instead of fate). And by giving the herd a different blueprint, the decisions change.


    Yeah, by telling people not to murder or god will getcha, suddenly the probability of not having your own life end violently increases ¡ª assuming at least a handful of people listen.


    Another mental model is the hoi-polloi. They want to think, and often do. They get so tied up in their thoughts and ideas that they often forget to interact with any consistency. Society goes on, they continue thinking, and wake up one day to realize that society and what actually works doesn¡¯t sit in the same reality. They are left, in timeline after timeline, to try to wrestle the herd back to reality. It rarely works.


    Their biggest difference from the herd is that they have gotten further along on dealing with their cognitive biases. They believe biases exist. They understand that they have them, and have even clued into at least a fraction of them.


    The cool thing about cluing into cognitive biases is that, once you understand that one is a cornerstone of your personal automation, suddenly you can make decisions that contradict the cognitive bias. You question the efficacy of this cognitive bias to this particular problem, and get out of your rut.


    Fate? Oh, yeah, that was just depending on cognitive biases and feeling out of control of your circumstances. Trudgery is only as trudging as you¡¯re willing to let it remain.


    Religion can still be good, depending on the religion and the community they buy into. ¡®Do what I say because I say it¡¯ kind of priests and ministers won¡¯t fly. Humanist leadership will. Inclusive community will rock.


    But for the hoi-polloi ¡ª the cognitive-bias-awakened¡ª religion can be replaced with therapy, with friends, and with other forms of community.


    The last of the major mental models are the cupids. They are called many different things in each of the timelines, but the only element that stays the same is the accumulation of whatever can be leveraged for broad control. Sometimes it¡¯s tools, sometimes its abstractions like money, sometimes its land and resources. Whatever it is, its considered wealth, and they¡¯ve somehow pulled together a disproportionate control of it.


    Cupids are so named for their crazily inappropriate avarice. There is not a have not worth having. Here and now, in this timeline along this linearity (and for so long now; one of the curiosities of this timeline is how you get out of it), the cupidity centralizes and has bastardized money as wealth, and has leveraged it multiple times to convince the herd to experience mass-pop hardship while they bask in ease.


    I really don¡¯t get why this is such a hard lesson to learn in this timeline. That¡¯s why I¡¯m here, to see if the patterns I think I¡¯ve sussed will finally break this timeline out of the thrall of cupids. Gods, I hope that I read this timeline right, and it¡¯s not just another slavery-by-a-different-name.


    I¡¯ve already seen that in this timeline cupids are considered cute little flying babies that shoot arrows at people to make them want to have sex, hopefully with enough hormones and interpersonal generosity to foster love. All symbolic, of course. Yeah, my cupids are not that. They aren¡¯t even abstract. Same language derivation, different aspect entirely. Baby cupids are so named for the lust they inject.


    My version of cupids - the version from my timeline, my future yet-to-collapse - are a compendium of most of the synonyms for cupidity. They crave, they hunger even when sated, they lust. They are rapacious, voracious, greedy, avaricious, acquisitive, covetous errors of humanity.


    There is little that they deem worthy that they do not want to have. And the best part of having for them is for others to not have.


    Cupids, thanks to their cupidity.You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.


    There are edge cases in each of these. Herders who are aware of their cognitive biases; hoi-polloi with a spot of cupidity; cupids that follow their cognitive biases unthinkingly. But they are relatively easy to spot, and rarely make a difference.


    Rarely. But when they do, the difference can lead to the likes of me. It¡¯s in the breaking of the pattern that the likes of me can emerge ¡ª somewhen down the line.


    Who am I? I am the traveler, the magic man, the elf and the demon. I¡¯m the psychosis and the kernel of creativity. I slip through the timelines, observing the confluence of our synergistic destruction and elations, hoping to study the minutiae of the patterns that can be applied to win more of the likes of me until maybe humanity can survive long enough to understand more than just ourselves.


    I am the Rowan. I pop.


    Time, you see, is fungible. Timelines are fungible, too. Given perception, given knowledge, we can slip from one line to another. There are a few key reference points, but other than that...we pop.


    The real reason you don¡¯t seem to see the timey-whimy signs except in storytelling is that it¡¯s a rare skill brought about by a rare set of circumstances. Society has to be a true society, with generosity built in and cupids kept short of true & excessive cupidity. Mass-pop needs to be thriving.There¡¯s a genetic mutation involved, and a rare capacity for a certain mental model. And then¡ªonce all those things are in place¡ª individuals need to think their way into understanding.


    It doesn¡¯t come easy, and every individual¡¯s path is different. Some can zen their way there, some have to approach it with the right balance of distraction, staring straight ahead and being aware of the movement at the very edge of their perception. Some dream into it, some don¡¯t, and there¡¯s no telling how someone will get their first pop.


    It¡¯s not like we come here physically, anyway. It¡¯s a pop. In, out. Sometimes we ride a few interesting weeks, sometimes we ride a lifetime. Sometimes our real bodies fall into a coma, sometimes its a dream, sometimes its a sneeze¡ªreally, it¡¯s just as diverse as the path to pops.


    Pop. We perceive and experience our primary life, in it¡¯s current linearity where future conditions are collapsing to a straight-path past. Pop, we perceive a period of what was straight-line past, potentially in alternative potentialities, with all the attendant non-collapsed future conditions possibilities before us and yet known to our perception, because we¡¯ve seen those futures before.


    Pop.


    And so I¡¯m here to tell you: your world ends. All experiences end, but here and now, in this time and place, your mass-pop agreed reality is soon to fall to shambles. When the shambles are rebuilt into coordination, it won¡¯t be the same. If the shambles are rebuilt ¡ª that potential is here, too. There is a path where the likes of me never evolve, where the mass of humanity falls into a mental model where only the elite thinkers manage the same level as today¡¯s herd.


    Cupids really are very stupid overall, no matter how smart they may seem to the outside, no matter how well they¡¯ve played the greed game in their small span of time. They are so focused on their cupidity that they can¡¯t see they need the herd and the hoi-polloi; that the true goal is to lift mental models beyond the herd and mass-pop be predominantly hoi-polloi, start producing masses of gurus, and eventually Rowans.


    Cupids are so intent on having the haves that they prefer the herd over hoi-polloi. They want control so they can have the haves, and the herd is easier to control. Lie a little, spin a little, and the herd will comply.


    Sure, some of the herd is complying. They are complying into a rank, steaming hill of future-tense death, leaving a residual herd so beaten into submission that they will entirely give up thinking.


    The sane, intelligent portion of those who don¡¯t believe they need to be in control of masses, who haven¡¯t given up their freedom to think ¡ª the strongest of the hoi-polloi? They¡¯ll fight, and die in the residual virus. Where the herd died, they lived ¡ª but not long enough for a vaccine. The vaccine was kept by the cupids, for the cupids.


    The cupids win. For a year or three. The vaccine will be proven non-viable, too late. They¡¯ll have killed off those with the training and intelligence to thwart them, who also happen to be those with the training and intelligence to thwart the virus.


    So in the end, the virus wins with the willful help of those who believed they had finally found the leverage they needed to fully enslave mass-pop ¡ª all while calling it something else.


    There will be a few who are naturally immune. There will be a few who will harbor the virus non-symptomatically for the rest of their lives, a new breed of Typhoid Marys. No one without immunity or a pool will live more than 6 months.


    Unless the other path is chosen by a significant enough portion of mass-pop, and the cupids lose their control. I think this is the timeline. Maybe. I hope.


    I see I¡¯ve captured enough of your attention to keep you reading. You poor thing.


    The chances are good that you are most curious about the coming destruction.


    ¡°If we know the path, we can thwart it,¡± you¡¯ll think. Good luck. It¡¯s rare. It can happen ¡ª I¡¯m proof of it ¡ª but don¡¯t depend on it. So many cognitive biases have to be course-corrected. Have you seen the stickiness of racism?


    So reading this history of what¡¯s to come is more like reading a dimestore romance. What are they here? Ah, Harlequin Romances.


    It¡¯s formulaic and makes you feel like something unrealistic might be possible. The formula is one that you might not see from your perspective, but it¡¯s there. The story is short and easy to digest ¡ª an afternoon of your time, snacking on your favorite eats and drinks while the rain or snow outside promises you that you¡¯re not missing much of import. It makes you feel good. It makes you feel like love is possible, no matter how broken or ugly you might be. Yes, the heroine is always broken. He or she thinks they are somehow ugly only to find that they¡¯re not necessarily, if they find the right person. There always comes a moment that tips them from believing they are unlovable, to understanding that they are loved, right now, by this one other person.


    It¡¯s mind candy. The path is implacable. The setup unrealistic ¡ª those who don¡¯t believe they are lovable will never truly believe they are loved. All the story is doing is setting down a path to an inevitable, unrealistic end.


    All this story can do for you is set you on the path to an inevitable end, and unrealistically give you hope. You might think you can thwart it, but it takes more than one to thwart an avalanche. Can you rally other hoi-polloi? Can you get the herd to wake up? Can you convince the cupids of their illness?


    Realistically, no. Probabilistically speaking, you would be the rarest amongst the rare.


    But then, a part of you believes that the unlovable can learn to be loved, tipped over in the span of a moment.


    The history of what¡¯s to come is intricate, pulling in a domino cascade from so many networks that it¡¯s already well past the point of inevitability once the cupids have found their network of preference in their timeline.


    The details change, but the formula remains the same. In a word: apocalypse.A societal reset button, catalyzed by almost anything, paved with death, and resulting in a different society ¡ª all aboard, no schism allowed. What is today no longer is tomorrow, and the population will be decimated.


    But you already know that, in your heart of hearts. It¡¯s in all the stories that you eat up, trying to wrap your head around the coming end before you have to experience it.


    So let¡¯s get a little more detailed. Go ahead, read the history of time to come. Read it, understand it, try to do something about it in your world ¡ª prove me wrong. Find the better path, the patterns that can be used to pull more of us into a future worth living. Take me along for the ride of a lifetime.


    Please. I don¡¯t want to be right. I want, desperately, hopefully, to watch you find the safest path through to the next level of civilization.


    But there will be some who want to skip straight to that meaty, tantalizing scent of time-whimey-ness.


    ¡°If it¡¯s inevitable, let it be. What¡¯s this other trail of wonder?¡± you¡¯ll posit.You¡¯ll be tempted to skip ahead.


    Here¡¯s a clue, though: you¡¯re likely going to die in the upcoming history. No Rowan has yet emerged from this timeline. But, in all honesty, we think that Rowans might spawn their own timelines as a first step to Rowanship, so who am I to say I haven¡¯t met you already?


    We all have stories of the ah-ha moment, and our fumbling into time. They are never one and the same. We never understand and immediately start popping into different times and timelines. We build towards it, far earlier than the first ah-ha moment; and the ah-ha moment is far before the first pop.


    It wouldn¡¯t be impossible for your ah-ha moment to come from reading this. Highly improbable, but not impossible.


    The probability is that you¡¯ll chalk this up to being another novel (it is, really¡ªdon¡¯t you believe me?). The probability is that you¡¯ll die in the coming culls; it doesn¡¯t matter which one. It only takes one death to snuff out all probability.


    In the end, you need the coming chaos to understand. Time isn¡¯t simple. It¡¯s actually not linear, and until you can rise far enough above linearity to understand that, time is nothing but linear.


    Yeah, wrap your head around that: time is linear until it¡¯s not. In your current time, in your current culture and society, humanity is barely lifting its mental models above the realm of networks and into systems. You don¡¯t even have a word for the next step. It will likely become (at only a 64.25% probability) ¡°wohshialis¡± in this timeline, if the history of time to come doesn¡¯t cancel out all the people who would get there (itself only a 11.98% probability). Then there¡¯s another two levels of major intersectionality before we get to timyness.


    The best way to understand the intersectionality is to understand the fall of humanity. So, yeah, go ahead and read the history of time to come. Yeah, I know I just told you destruction was inevitable. Yeah, I know I then followed up with the mind-buggary of what it takes to get into a mental model that might lead you to a time pop, if a series of highly improbable maybes come to fruition.


    If you don¡¯t try, it will never happen.


    In all reality (all the realities, ever, really), this will be simply a tantalizing, masterbatory told-you-so. Enjoy the time spent; it will be a delicious ride. Chalk it up to a non-fiction-like non-narrative fiction. Read the history of time to come in the hope that it¡¯s a different time line, or in a different phase. Read the time pop as a lark, keeping all traces of hope that it¡¯s actually dropping some knowledge so deep in the back of your mind that you can¡¯t acknowledge it. When you finish, chuckle and posit and keep doing what you do.


    There¡¯s no point to changing the world. This isn¡¯t really about your world, right? Even if maybe there¡¯s a little too much reality for it to be fiction, it¡¯s still fiction. Even if a few things ring true, it¡¯s about a time to come that¡¯s so far beyond where you live now that anything you do will be erased.


    As a Rowan, I¡¯m here to tell you that I¡¯m just overly creative, with too much time on my hands, or maybe a creative urge that will.not.be.silenced. It¡¯s fiction. Really.


    But what you do with it really is your own decision. You have cognitive biases you can follow, or you can take a few of the nuggets here to see a cognitive bias for what it is, and make a different decision than you have before. It¡¯s scary. Hell, it¡¯s terrifying.


    There¡¯s not telling what will really happen when posited a question with a preconceived A or B answer, and suddenly realize that the answer is really, ¡°take a breath, watch a bee, and choose the unposted path.¡±

 Setup for failure

    Trump became president of the most powerful nation on earth through a series of obsolete systems.


    The first obsoletesystem was an ancient one that no longer made sense, but it was how things were done. See, once upon a time the nation was hours, days, and weeks of travel wide¡­and back then it didn¡¯t even reach as far west as Ohio. It was not a simple thing for someone to get from where they lived to where everyone agreed to meet to build policies. Yet the idea was that people who didn¡¯t have a voice were habitually abused, so to help maintain fairness and better enable the whole to thrive in a far-flung nation, somehow their voices had to be included.


    It made no sense to have everyone pick up and go to the seat of government. So instead, they created a system where groups of people based on defined geographies would choose a proxy, whom they trusted to vote with what the majority of them felt was correct (or would be smart enough to skedaddle if they didn¡¯t, effectively ending their run of power). These proxies would aggregate and choose a smaller set of proxies to negotiate and build policies.


    It was all very civilized, reasonably trusting ¡ª and very much a stopgap to outright chaos, and a product of time and availability. It was far from perfect, but it hit the major points (include a broader set of people, a viable and replicable system shared by all the organized entities, accountability) even while it had to fudge the nice-to-haves (one person/one vote, no hauling voting slips for months, able to reasonably turn as circumstances evolved). The delegate system was born.


    The mass-pop understanding then was that surviving was the key, and policies based on honest understanding would help bootstrap them up to thriving. Time was a resource as much as food, water, sky, land, and shelter.


    So, a system was posited and tried, and lo and behold it seemed to actually work. It did, for decades and then generations. It coalesced into being, and then history, and then into unquestioned ¡°the way it is done¡±.


    Technology happened along the way. Better tools were made. Travel became faster, communication across large geographies could happen even faster than travel. Did the system change?


    Nope. It worked, and the consensus was you don¡¯t fix what works.


    Technology changed more. Tools were built that could tabulate in real time what people¡¯s opinions were, surface rolled-up scores, and allow for thoughtful contemplation. Did the system change?


    Nope. It worked, right? You don¡¯t¡­.fix what works??


    Voting doesn¡¯t happen regularly enough to be a screaming pain point, and so it feels like less of a pain point. But it shouldn¡¯t be. Other timelines dealt with it as soon as mail became dependable, or phones phased out party lines. They understood that a more elegant, less trusting approach was available, and cut out the middle men before the numbers game was really seen.


    Eh, that was the odd timeline. It was a matter of an absence of nascent cupids and an idea being posited at the right time to an unusually attendant listener, and then spread. It¡¯s such a rarity, and outside of possibility for Rowan intervention ¡ª we simply don¡¯t have that many or that kind of hooks into the timelines we visit.


    Keeping an ancient system that seems to work is always more palatable to the human psyche, especially on a mass-pop level. Keeping it until the first real, undeniable crack was found is the norm.


    Letting it continue until it fractured and started dropping pieces is not. Denying cracks for what they are because you¡¯re able and some poor schlub is believing you is not.


    The norm is for the idea of delegates to be seen and understood as a gamifiable, unnecessary complexity around the turn of the millenium. This timeline is behind. For all intents and purposes, there¡¯s not much time left to remove the delegate system before most of the timelines enter a receding phase. So, sure, there¡¯s no point in going through the pain of getting enough people on board to change the laws and process.


    Unless, of course, this is one of the few timelines where¡­.but no. There are so few where that happens. That would really, really suck for those of you who make it through the next few years.


    Thus a president was elected that didn¡¯t get the popular vote. Again. It had happened before, and people got angry about it, but by then a subset realized that if they could just keep the power structure working like it was, they could keep a disproportionate amount of the power. They liked it. They could keep it if they lied. So they lied.


    Simple. Easy peasy.


    But in their lying, they tipped their hands. ¡°Oh,¡± other nations/powers internalized. ¡°Their people are idiots. We can use that to our advantage. If we tear them down, we can scramble up.¡±


    More lying happened, aimed at a specific subset of people that loved their cognitive biases and wanted more time to do what they wanted to do. Overworking contributed to the inclination.


    Some cognitive biases ¡ªlike distrust of the other¡ª worked really well in a backwoods context, where you knew everyone in a 10 mile radius and it took too fucking long to get further out. Today, distrust of the other will get you believing in a child porn ring being run out of a pizza shop. Why? Because the person spewing the lie looks like you, and the person running the pizza shop doesn¡¯t. Some cognitive biases don¡¯t work in our denser, faster world.


    Some of the tools were usurped, too. Some of them wanted to be, so badly. It was their reason for being, the beginning and end and measure of their success. Facebook/Yearbook/FaceTime/mySpace ¡ª whatever it¡¯s called here. Social media aimed primarily at getting people to tip their cognitive biases. It¡¯s there in the data, in their interactions with others. It¡¯s easy enough to tabulate something you¡¯re looking for when all the data is prettily stored.


    At least the international agency didn¡¯t buy social media outright here. Yet? Believe me, they¡¯ve thought about it.


    Other data networks took a little more work¡ªlike the voting hardware¡ª but eventually fell. A precinct here and there, then a county, then a whole state. Actually, you probably don¡¯t have to worry about the state-level in this timeline. Part of the outcomes of a world-ending recalibration is that, one way or another, voting is managed. You either get your shit together, or you don¡¯t.


    It¡¯s your choice.


    Here¡¯s the most complicating factor: certain factions of the people in power didn¡¯t want it easier to vote. If it¡¯s easy, people who don¡¯t agree with them will vote, and they¡¯ll no longer have power. In other words, greed ruled, and greed is a mental illness.


    Oh, yeah, not for years yet, and only in those timelines that make it through. But seriously, if I manage to clue this timeline in to anything a little early: greed is a mental illness. It¡¯s like hoarding, but specified. Built on the same factors of fear and ill-placed logic, saving an abstraction for a time when it will be useful again.


    Here¡¯s a clue: money is a construct. In 40% of timelines, it falls and is replaced by a more complex data set.


    But back to the subject of foreign powers lying to mass quantities of individuals susceptible to manipulation of their cognitive biases.


    Never forget, first we were lied to by ourselves. A portion of us wanted to believe the lies, because they were so easily reconciled with our cognitive biases. And the people who lied? There was something it in for them: power & wealth, if not today than eventually, with a little more lying and a little less integrity. The external powers had to hold over the internal liars that they were just saying the same things they said; maybe following up with pointing out some connecting dots to the power and wealth the internal powers had already accumulated for themselves.


    So, to put it in the context of this timeline, the Republicans couldn¡¯t use integrity because they¡¯d already stolen it from themselves. To rip the mask off the Russians would be tantamount to shooting themselves in the clavicle¡ªvery painful and probably debilitating for life. They could either keep what they had and keep their mouths shut, or be pilloried.


    They chose the expedient route. They lied, and kept what they had. Change, after all, is terrifying.


    Simple. Easy peasy.


    Except¡­Trump really was an idiot.


    Quickly, to sum up: Trump was voted into office through a serious of obsolete systems. One was historical but no longer relevant: the delegate system. One was a set of cognitive biases that a significant portion of mass-pop wouldn¡¯t and couldn¡¯t let go of. And the last was based on a mental illness: the willfulness of powerful people to remain in power regardless of cost.


    Another key to killing the information revolution is the rise of the despotic idiot. In a word: Trump.


    Ok, ok, there¡¯s almost always one. Trump by any other name is still a despotic idiot. Allow me to take some time detailing the qualities of the general despotic idiot.


    First, it¡¯s always a man, not a woman¡ªeven in the timelines where women win the vote relatively early (like this one), or where women keep their initial foothold in the workplace (this one failed there ¡ª or is failing? Which timeline is this again?), or where men and women earned the same amount of money for the same work (a rank failure in this timeline). It takes a long time for people in general to see through the bluster of testosterone-induced male ego. It¡¯s special, in a 50% of the population way. This fall, this time, is lead by testosterone. Don¡¯t worry, estrogen has the potential for it¡¯s moment, too ¡ª just not here and now, and its moment is not the same kind of moment.


    Which leads me to Second: the man has an ego. We¡¯re talking the kind of ego that shines so bright that it¡¯s hard to see anything more than a big ball of eye-burning light. There are ways to see past the light¡ªmental versions of polarized lenses¡ª but with an ego that big, it works past weaker polarization. It¡¯s painful to look too close. Even those who see past it can¡¯t stand to watch long.


    Third, he¡¯s got all the cognitive biases. In a world with a significant population that depends on their cognitive biases, let alone a world where cognitive biases are fiercely defended like this one, a man in charge who emphasizes his own cognitive biases and still floats to the ¡®top¡¯ of the society is awesome. They herd eats him up, makes him their own. But for circumstances, that could have been me. The recognition is intense, beyond logic, and an ersatz self-fulfillment.


    Fourth, he doesn¡¯t have enough intelligence to do diddly squat. He¡¯s lacking in memory, so he can always be right and have known it from the very beginning (it¡¯s another cognitive bias, FYI¡ªin this instance supported by the lack of memory to force him to question even something that happened two hours ago). He¡¯s lacking in critical thinking skills, so ¡®belief¡¯ and ¡®knowledge¡¯ has no basis in fact. He¡¯s lacking in interstitial connective skills, so he can¡¯t understand that the pull of A is warping the weft of B. He literally makes decisions based on his gut ¡ª e.g., his cognitive biases ¡ª and can¡¯t even wrap his head around the idea that he could do something wrong.


    Fifth, and this is key: he¡¯s got a mental illness. Sometimes it¡¯s outright psychosis that has been kept in check for so many years that no one realizes he¡¯s got a psychosis. Sometimes its cognitive decline ¡ª he¡¯s just not as smart as he used to be and willfully won¡¯t recalibrate his self image. Sometimes it¡¯s a dissociative disorder, that allows him to understand that he¡¯s different from all his constituents, so when they are in pain¡­well, that¡¯s like a plant being in pain, right? Do plants feel pain? I can¡¯t feel sympathetic pain when a plant is hurt, so they must not. So it¡¯s ok that Joe is in pain, because he¡¯s a plant because I can¡¯t feel his pain. It all makes complete sense to the very, very smart (cough, logically unsound, cough), and people with this particular disorder believe that they are the smartest. Most often, the mental illness is greed¡ªalthough it¡¯s an unacknowledged mental illness in the here and now.


    Actually, let¡¯s call that Sixth, because in every timeline that reaches critical failure people in authority have cornered the market on greed. They are, for all intents and purposes, cupids by a nicer name. Let me clue you in. Greed¡ªthe accumulation of money and power beyond ability to use it all, in itself the foundation for despotic authoritarianism¡ªis hoarding. Do you think it¡¯s sane for someone to live in a house with newspapers, empty cans, and ¡®clean¡¯ refuse piled so deep they don¡¯t understand how many infestations the have? It¡¯s no more sane to accumulate vast wealth. It¡¯s based on fear, trying to control the uncontrollable, and massive decontextualized insecurity.


    Let¡¯s play this out a little bit, it¡¯s that important. Say there is a tomato garden that 5 people have agreed to share. Through manipulation, bluster, outright aggression, and coming in to steal when others aren¡¯t around, one of those people have managed to take 90% of the tomatoes. When the other 4 come to check, they are bewildered and panicky that they aren¡¯t actually getting more tomatoes ¡ª they were depending on them to make it through the winter.


    Now, a ¡®smart business man¡¯ will think that his accumulation of tomatoes means that he¡¯ll weather the winter handily. He¡¯ll be able to hold tomatoes over the head of the other gardeners so they¡¯ll do shit for him. Hell, let¡¯s give him some credit: let¡¯s say it actually works for a while. The other gardeners don¡¯t clue in, keep doing the same thing for years on end (the choice-supportive cognitive bias), and he lives the life of a king.Love what you''re reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.


    But he never feels he has enough if someone else has any. He keeps finding ways to keep more and more tomatoes. Eventually, he can get the other gardeners to do things they don¡¯t like or are even personally harmful because they need some of the tomatoes they grew for him.


    But it¡¯s not enough. What¡¯s enough? His urge is to take more of the tomatoes to try to fill the void, and it does not come from a place of sanity. Its impossible to thwart the urge.


    There are several paths this could take. The other gardeners could clue in to his shenanigans and literally just stop playing his game: forage away from the garden and let it go to weed, move away from tomatoes to something not covered by their agreement, or shun him completely and move the garden and not let him anywhere near it.


    The tomatoes that he stored could be improperly managed, and he could lose them all to rot. He can¡¯t force the others to do shit because he doesn¡¯t have tomatoes to hold over them, and they have no fellow-feeling for him because he¡¯s been treating them badly for years.


    The most likely path? He could get so intent on recapturing that feeling of security from having more than the other gardeners that he will push it too far. The other gardeners, too unhealthy and exhausted from all the work he¡¯s been pushing because they need a few tomatoes for dinner tonight (every night, they work so hard to grow the tomatoes and are always so hungry), and they keep plodding forward until they collapse. Once they collapse, well, they¡¯ve been too busy working to raise children¡ª there¡¯s no one to take their place. He¡¯s left alone, storage filled with tomatoes that are meaningless. He can¡¯t do it all himself. The garden dies, and him with it. Maybe he¡¯s last because he¡¯s worked the others to collapse, but he still dies.


    All these paths assumes that the other gardeners never clue in to the idea that he¡¯s mentally ill. That with some cognizance, help, and personal interior work, he¡¯ll gladly live on his share of the garden ¡ª like they agreed to when it all started. They¡¯ll thrive, together.


    That¡¯s what happens in the most generous timelines: greed is acknowledged and helped. In the less generous timelines, greed is acknowledged and cauterized. It¡¯s more expedient, and living under the thrall of greed for too long makes a populace very in tune with expedience.


    It¡¯s a longer way back to trust, though. Helping the mentally ill is the faster way to mass-pop sanity. It gives everyone hope that their own failings will be helped instead of cauterized.


    Just in case it isn¡¯t clear, ¡°cauterized¡± is a euphemism. The greedy die at the hands of mass-pop, usually with as much pain as they can think of. Burning is common; hanging, too; eaten by masses of deliberately starved rats in some of more pushed timelines. Yeah, that one comes up a little too frequently for my stomach. Mass-pop doesn¡¯t want the death to be painless or quick; they want to foist some of their pain and exhaustion back to the originators.


    It¡¯s not pretty when a despotic idiot falls unwillingly. Let¡¯s hope elections work, and our personal Trump concedes. We¡¯re living non-collapsed time state here, it can still be the way it works.


    To have a despotic idiot at the top, the government system needs to be corrupted.


    Trump isn¡¯t wrong with his rhetoric of a swamp. He¡¯s actually proving the swamp exists and has expanded on it. Not having many speed bumps in his expansion shows how corrupted the system is.


    The thing about government is that it¡¯s less about the system being corrupted and more about the people making up the system having been corrupted.


    Checks and balances exist. They¡¯ve been tried and thwarted because there are so many corrupted people in positions of power, but the rule of law can still be refounded. All it takes is reprioritizing integrity over cronyism and creed, intelligence over cognitive bias, fairness over profit.


    In short, the greed needs to be removed from the system. Its that simple. And its the hardest fucking thing you¡¯ll ever do.


    There are many paths to get there. Some of the simpler are currently being blocked by a system bulwarked by people who want to stay in power. The rule of law ¡ª thoughtful policy put in place before it was needed, before logic could be thwarted by pretty words and spinsmanship ¡ª has been broken, partly by Trump, mostly by having in place too large a set of people already hemmed in by their lies and intent on cronyism and creed.


    If Trump can keep dismissing and firing oversight, well, it¡¯s not going to be pretty or short-term to fix the problem. That a mass is allowing it to continue ¡ª I¡¯m looking at you, Republicans, with your finger in the pie of power, cronyism more important than integrity, lies more useful than facts ¡ª means that it will take something barely short of revolution.


    Truly corrupt people are generally disliked. They have to buy their way into power, and the rebalancing effort to do that means taking away from a lot of mass-pop. Mass-pop feels the pain, and vote for the opposite of the proven corrupt, even if they don¡¯t understand that¡¯s what they are doing. So, make the voting easy and by popular vote instead of proxy, and you weed out the corrupt.


    That¡¯s the biggest reason voting is becoming hard. It¡¯s not that the voting system has been hacked (yet ¡ª that might be the upcoming elections, but only enough precincts to swing the delegate count), but that the cognitive biases have. It¡¯s hard, they are told. You can¡¯t leave work, and work controls 90% of your waking hours, they are pointed out. The voting lines are long, the only way to vote is to ignore eating, drinking, shitting, sleeping ¡ª and if you can do it to vote, well you can do it for your job, they are threatened. You should be ashamed to make these lines longer by forcing us to look for you in the voting rolls, the raised eyebrows state. You¡¯ll go to jail if your skin is wrong, it¡¯s implied.


    It¡¯s an escalation. If hints won¡¯t work, make it hard. If hardship won¡¯t work, bring in shame. If shame won¡¯t work, bring in the possibility of jail. It all has one goal: keep mass-pop from voting unless they meet your criteria.


    Now, our system has been corrupt for a while, and gerrymandering is a major issue. When voting mass-pop are hand picked for being trusting to a certain creed (all in the effort of the greater good, wink wink), the corrupt can stay in power longer and start weeding out those voting populations. So, voting districts need to be realigned. We have tools now that could do it with minimal politics involved, if we have the right people building it.


    Cognitive biases are always an issue, especially with people writing policy. Gerrymandering goes beyond an accidental use of cognitive biases to a willful leverage of cognitive biases on a mass scale. In short, gerrymandering is a willful subsumption of integrity.


    Reality is that in this timeline, it¡¯s probably too late for a fix through voting and removing gerrymandering. The corrupt are in place, and in high enough numbers that they¡¯ll sit there like toads until the entire system rots around them.


    The least violent way forward is a massive, redefiningly large voter turnout that starts swinging the pendulum the other way. Prove them wrong. Work against the narratives they are screaming, look at your life, look at the lives and choices of the people you are voting into power, and try to oust as many liars as possible. Believe actions over words.


    Other than that, you¡¯re probably looking at a revolution, with all the requisite animosity and aggression. Except the guns are mostly owned by those who have been suckered into cognitive biases, sooooo¡­.yeah, that¡¯s not going to change diddly squat, except feeling like you¡¯ve tried.


    But those area potentialities. It''s possible to move into them for a period of time ¡ªthe cascading potential leaves a window open for a while. Your timeline, though, is on a path to limp along as-is for the course of the pandemic and the aftershocks. Really, it¡¯s years. It¡¯s not going to be pretty, and it¡¯s not going to be fun. So many people will die who didn¡¯t have to. The tools and technology you will lose out of those deaths is enormous¡ªbut the good thing is that ideas have their time and the very best of them have multiple scatterings of ah-ha moments by a disparate population. The ideas will still arrive, but out of France, Germany, Ghana, India, and Sri Lanka.


    When the worst is mitigated, the most corrupt who have survived the virus will be more intransigent than ever, although a few key players will die.


    When McConnell dies, there will be a demographic shift to the courts that ¡ªin the world where the gauntlet is survived¡ªwill be the key to digging out corruption. But he¡¯s just one head to the rot. His removal alone isn¡¯t enough.


    The path out of corruption is very simple, and yet the hardest thing possible. The government has to end money in it¡¯s current form, acknowledge greed as a true rot, cap wealth, and shift to a data economy. The tomatoes need to be moved away from. Data needs to take it¡¯s place, built from an ethos of fairness and regular questioning of cognitive biases.


    The nascent seed¡ªif it is found at all¡ª is in the food supply. When produce starts rotting in the field, someone has to step in and figure out the logistics of getting it to people. All people, regardless of race, gender identity, income, job, or how far they live from the field belt. It will take figuring out the logistics, making them work with the resources (like industrial refrigerators and trucks), and focusing on the data instead of the economics. With that, there will be an ah-ha moment that money really, truly is a construct, and things can be moved around without it.


    That is the real start of the data economy. It will have some major glitches: cognitive biases of the coders that ¡®forget¡¯ vast swathes of the population; a backdoor that Russian hackers find to start the fields rotting again until the hole is plugged; distributing peanuts ¡ª and only peanuts ¡ª to people with peanut allergies. But it¡¯s the start.


    If you can survive until then, be happy. It¡¯s only a year or five before the gauntlet is passed, and you have a 69.82% probability of surviving.


    Unless you have a peanut allergy and no back-up garden. I¡¯m really, really sorry. Hopefully we can get Albert to remember you this time around by stressing your loss.


    I started talking about the corrupted system, and got derailed by a paen to the nascent data economy. Let¡¯s get re-railed, but on to the core problem.


    The system is corrupted. People are the source of corruption. Data can overcome it, as can an understanding of the key contributor to corruption.


    The true illness in the system, the true illness in the despotic idiot, and the true illness that supersedes creed and enforces cronyism, is greed. Today, greed is most represented by wealth. Money.


    Greed can have many, many forms. Wealth is the simplest to see and the most pervasive in the system that exists today.


    It can be used to shore up so many other greeds.


    To be greedy ¡ª the urge to have more than you need, and urge so deep and pervasive that it feels like need ¡ª is a mental illness.


    I can¡¯t say that enough. Whether the outcome is the need to control other behavior, control environment, be the center of adulation, or swim in a silo full of gold, greed is the urge to have.


    It does not understand when ¡®enough¡¯ has been hit. More is better. If it is perishable and could rot, there is still not enough. If its past the age of usefulness, well, who¡¯s to say what is useful?


    Greed is just a specified hoarding mentality. It¡¯s foundation is fear and insecurity. It most often is only understood by the person in the midst of it as a need to control. But that need to control is based in the core belief that what you have (whether intelligence, physical stamina, personality, water, etc.) isn¡¯t enough, and that you need to shore up other resources to make up for the lack.


    Some of the greedy believe that they know better how the system should work, and are using their resources to push it in a certain direction. They haven¡¯t dug deep enough. They want the system to go in a certain direction because that¡¯s the direction they understand, and what they understand can be manipulated so they¡¯ll never be left to their own devices.


    Their own lack.


    Wealth is an indicator of potential greed. It¡¯s not the only indicator, and just because someone has wealth doesn¡¯t mean they have the illness.


    Power is an indicator, too; but today, you can¡¯t really get power without wealth.


    Power and wealth will bow before the rule of virus. They have zero extra ability against it.


    They will fall to virus despite their power, despite their wealth, and despite their greed.


    But by allowing their greed to run rampant for so many years, they will cause many more to fall to virus, too. They¡¯ve already stolen the tomatoes for years; the other gardeners are malnourished and exhausted, giving the virus a larger, easier foothold.


    Here¡¯s the kicker, though: greed is the start, the urge and the seed to do all kinds of things that you might not actually think was reasonable except that you have this urge pushing you, convincing you that you are desperate.


    Desperation makes a mockery of the reasonable, of logic, of fairness. Greed¡¯s truest strength is that it locks in to desperation as it¡¯s handmaiden. Everything is reasonable in the face of desperation, from the point of view of the person doing shit.


    Let¡¯s be clear. Forcing others to do your bidding against their will and to their detriment? Not good. Killing others through action or neglect? Not good. Making others lack resources to force your will? Not good. Thinking that a fair share for you is most of what¡¯s there, and others can get by on less? Not good.


    Every person has to come to terms with their internal reality, how it impinges on external reality, and how those external realities compound to create the world. In your timeline, in its current linearity, you have actually taken steps backwards.


    There are ways to train people to come to mass-pop beneficial conclusions. Critical thinking is, well, critical. An understanding of cognitive biases, how they drive everyone, where they are beneficial and where and how to thwart them in yourself, is essential.


    In your timeline, at your currently point in linearity, there has been a tripling-down on rote education. You know what you know because it is what¡¯s known. It is the root of how such a large percentage of your population has become herd.


    They do not know how to question. They¡¯ve been taught, over and over again, that questioning is bad and detrimental to their success. So when they hear an idiot spouting what they already know¡ªand do not question¡ª they reward the idiot for being just like them. They are rewarding themselves, patting themselves on the back for sticking with the system they¡¯ve been taught and proving that it works. Look! One of them is in the highest seat of power, and it¡¯s great. He keeps saying it, so it¡¯s great. Just the bigliest bestliest greatest of greats.


    Cough. Hack. Should we go to the doctor? No, the virus is a hoax. This is just allergies. I can inject some disinfectant, and everything will be great. We¡¯re all great!


    The death toll in the small Trump towns will be staggering. Gird your hearts, or hope to die before you have to see them.


    There will be mass graves. I¡¯m sorry. You can blame Trump, but in the end the real foundation is greed.


    Greed uses every tool at hand to shore up it¡¯s desperate need to control, to have all the haves worth having. That starts with manipulation. The easiest thing to manipulate is a population rife with cognitive biases that have no training to see itself and change its process, to learn. Greed wants cognitive biases, the more the better. A cognitive bias is easy to manipulate, and that¡¯s the easiest path of all. It takes no tools, no weapons, no stealthy midnight tiredness.


    A well-placed cognitive bias in others, and they¡¯ll give you what you want with a few words.


    So a mass-pop with cognitive biases to spare? And no time or training to see through them?


    That¡¯s greed¡¯s heyday. Fuck 90% of the tomato garden, that¡¯s nothing. You can have the whole garden. And if they try to grow potatoes instead of tomatoes? Well, convince them that it was never that specific ¡ª it was always the garden, in general. All the gardens, in general. All the people¡¯s productivity and ideas, in general. There¡¯s really no end to what they gave you when they agreed to grow a garden with you. Here, you can have this tomato you grew, but you owe me. How and why? It¡¯s the way things work, per our agreement. Do the work first, and I¡¯ll mete out what I think you deserve. You might not deserve to survive¡ªso prove you do by working harder now.


    With cognitive biases in place, it¡¯s an easy manipulation. If there¡¯s one or two that are thinking hoi-polloi, well, the herd will keep them working until you can exhaust them. Then, in their exhaustion and ill health, they¡¯ll be almost as easy as the herd.


    I truly am sorry you have to live through this variation. I thought it was all out with the ideas of flower power and the ERA. But there was a previously uncoalesced rise of a judge who had ideas about the educational system. He developed a near-perfect system for creating herd instead of hoi-polloi, and got it embedded in the public education system.


    Even when greed is acknowledged as a disease, even when we can consider our cognitive biases, the smartest of the cupids will find ways to game the system.


    Sometimes, the cupids can even become a Rowan. Those are scary fucking timelines.

 Dominos

    The virus. OMFG, the virus.


    There¡¯s always a virus. In every timeline, regardless of whether there¡¯s a despotic idiot in charge, or a corrupted system that lets them continue, or a network of cupids looking out for number one. Let alone when all three exist. There¡¯s always a virus.


    Hell, even in the timelines where mass-pop are so much more hoi-polloi than herd that they''re already training against cognitive biases before they have a term for them, where a money economy is chugging along equitably and with no one really sufferering¡ªwhere people have their shit really fucking together. There''s always a virus.


    Sometimes it¡¯s Ebola ¡ª frankly, you really dodged the bullet having Obama as president when that one got to US soil the first time. Smart man. Smart, smart man. Simply put, he trusted scientific thinking and people prone to leveraging it. With it¡¯s death rate, speed, and capability for system shock, the people it didn¡¯t kill had a 80% mortality rate over the next 2 years from starvation. It wasn¡¯t extinction-level, but peaktech economy could move nations until the built-in obsolescence made them all but disintegrate. Then it was full dark ages.


    It¡¯s not a pretty thing to watch a technological civilization devolve. Oh, yeah. Sorry about that. Those years are gonna suck. The good news is a few key tech pieces coming out in the next year or two will be built for longer lives. Peak tech for you guys will still be an economy of its own, but it won''t be running the show. The tech will also last and be the foundation for leveraging civs out of not-quite-dark ages. It won¡¯t really be dark for you, more like a twilight ages. Gloaming ages? Whichever taxonomical road this timeline winds up going down, it won¡¯t be full dark, and it won¡¯t last super long. Hell, you won¡¯t really lose technology; it won¡¯t be available to everyone, but it won¡¯t be outright lost.


    No, your biggest threat is all the evictions. Seriously, if you want any chance you¡¯ve got to get a handle on pandemic sheltering in an age of homelessness immediately, or outlaw evictions and foreclosures.


    I¡¯m getting ahead of myself.


    There¡¯s always a virus. This timeline, it¡¯s Covid-19, which will mutate to Covid-20 and Covid-20b and Covid-21a. Seriously, that thing has legs and runs.


    Covid-20 is the one that gets the kids. That¡¯s the heartbreaker. Those pictures are enough to scare the most militant of herdies, but by the time it¡¯s understood as a mutation the economies are already ¡®open¡¯ with the push of Donald ¡°Take it on the Chin for the Rest of Us¡± Trump.


    Covid-20b actually starts earlier, but it doesn¡¯t run through the population as fast as Covid-20 or with as much pictorial heartbreak. It decimates another system ¡ª neurological instead of the lungs or digestive. By the time the patterns are seen, the viruses studied and compared, the seemingly innocent, random signs tracked down and understood, people already understand that the kids have been hit by a mutated strain. It gets second seating and second naming despite turning up first.


    By the time Covid-21a comes up, you have figured out that this virus is highly mutagenic. There¡¯s no vaccine coming because no vaccine can keep up. Herd immunity is simply living with it for generations, until it hits people more like measles. Potentially deadly, individuals really get very sick; but, most people can recover, and being smart about it can keep the outbreaks contained.


    Or, gods, is this the timeline where there¡¯s only one Covid, that creates further damage every time a person is infected? The first time is digestive. The second, respiratory. The third, blood system. The forth, brain. The fifth, lymphatic. Although it doesn¡¯t necessarily go in that order. Most of the time, for most of the people, it just progressively decimates various systems until it finally finds the one that will kill the host. Sometimes it jumps, finds the key system the first time around.


    That¡¯s a hard timeline. That¡­that one I can¡¯t help you much with. This really is a romance for you. Go ahead and live your life. Find the magical tipping point for the thing you wish for most and make it happen ASAP. But take enough time to ensure it¡¯s the true magic; you won¡¯t have much time for repeats.


    Let¡¯s assume it¡¯s the timeline with mutated Covids with very slight variations that makes it harder and longer to see the mutations.


    The silver lining: we really start to understand viruses. They are no longer black boxes after our murder of Covids in the 2020¡¯s (a ¡®murder of crows¡¯ was a backwards-time-drag from the murder of Covids; time is a network: it ripples in both directions, given enough presence). And with viruses not being a black box, and coming to grips with systems and the first outlines of wohshialis, humans can actually make a decision to escape the gravity of Earth. We don¡¯t consistently¡ªsometimes there¡¯s some switch that throws in mass-pop cognitions and we decide en masse that it¡¯s nice here, and we choose to manage our environment and enjoy the sunsets instead of exploring the depths of freezing, harsh space. But the option is there, and its sometimes taken.


    Before you wish that you were on any other timeline, I really need to stress that there is no timeline that doesn¡¯t have to contend with the mortality of a virus that hits hard around the time that data tech is really making its mark. Viruses mutate. Viruses have a short life cycle, and are intent on blossoming. They are very simple, with a single perogative: grow and spread. To do that, they need you. Manufactories in the form of your cells, spread in the form of your extended, faster locomotion and ability to touch, droplets, continual breathing, and spastic expressways.


    The only recourse is to be relatively healthy when they emerge. To do that, society has to be realistic about priorities. You need to not work people to the point of exhaustion, and you have to limit interaction. Don¡¯t worry, you¡¯ve got Fauci. He¡¯ll get you through. And if he dies, there are others like him that already understand the outline ¡ª unless there¡¯s an intellectual purge to go along with the outbreak.


    Then you¡¯re screwed. But you won¡¯t know until it happens, and by then you¡¯ll be so panicked you probably join the purge. Today-you might be horrified at the idea. Desperation and panic incite people do things their logical, sane brain wouldn''t harbor.


    If that happens, that world I briefly sketched out where Covids become something like measles? That doesn¡¯t happen. Purge the intellectuals and you give up limping along with a couple generations of hardship. Purge the intellectuals and you go into twilight ages in the next year or two, and then court a dark ages. The thing about courting dark ages is that they want you, so hard and so bad that the first twinkle of interest is enough to have them on you like a tomcat in full heat-response.


    Don¡¯t purge the intellectuals. With them still around, it¡¯ll take around 1-2 generations (they¡¯re shorter) to life back up, but seriously nothing as bad as the dark ages. Enough records will survive that, along with some smart pattern-building in civ centers, everyone will still catch on that healthy people ride through viruses better. If more people can survive, so does civilization and tech.


    Ah, but this also all depends on wrapping your mass-pop heads around the idea of keeping people in shelter. Also, healthy food has to become a priority for everyone. It can''t be something meted out discriminantly.


    Don¡¯t evict people. Please, for all that¡¯s holy ¡ª that¡¯s the thing you most need to not do, just as important as the need to get food to people. Both needs to happen: avoidance of action and positive action.


    See, if there are mass evictions, everyone will live in tent cities¡ª just like the Great Depression. Those were Hoovervilles, and the new ones will briefly be called Trumpvilles before a different name gains more traction: Covidities.


    They outpace meat packing plants, nursing homes, and schools (once the Greatest Trump pushes for schools to be reopened, because parents need to work with more focus) as fast spreaders. The first Covidity makes it clear that there¡¯s a mutant strain that will be named Covid-20b.


    Worse, Covidities will bring back cholera. Measles (thanks, anti-vaxxers). Polio. Antibiotic-resistant staph infections. Anything and everything that would thrive in a Petri dish, thrives.


    Think about it, really hard. Go into your preferred meditation pose (your body knows it even if your conscious mind doesn''t: it''s the pose you fall into when you''re doing your best work). Bring up the images: row upon row of tents; 20, 50 deep in any direction you look. Huh, right now it looks like a festival. The tents are still reletively clean, the sky is bright, the colors stark and beautiful against the sky. Some people are hangdog-expression unhappy, but there are a few around who choose to find the bright spots and are able to pull up a smile. They are wearing masks, but you can see the smile in their eyes. Others congregate around them; even if they don''t interact, being near the presence of a smile is a balm to their soul.


    Now skip ahead. Rain is pouring down. Tents are muddy. The paths between are loose and slippery, pocked with ankle-deep standing water. Even the ones who can smile are having a tough time finding those smiles. They are wet, hungry, and have a bit of a sniffle.


    Their mask? That hasn''t been well washed since the laundromat went into the price gouging business: make money while they can! Such a boon, to be so close to a tent city. So the smiler has resorted to hand washing, but even clean water has been hard to find. Everyone is closing their doors, making sure thatpaying customers feel comfortable coming in.


    Skip ahead again. The smiler is sick. Doesn''t matter what, not really. It''s enough that sickness is here, and spreading. It will spread, whatever it is. There''s no easily accessible clean water to drink and wash with. There''s no sewer system, and when people start getting really sick it''s too much for them to walk to the one public toilet the park hasn''t closed down (because if you really want people to get off their asses and make money for you, you show them how nasty life is without money). Everyone is hungry, so their bodies don''t have the nutritional and energy wherewithal to really fight. While there was a support network for a small homeless population, it''s so far beyond capacity that it''s effect is nonexistant.


    One particularly heartbreaker of a timeline brings Ebola into the mix, too. Don¡¯t copy that one, please. I can¡¯t bear seeing it again. I¡¯ll pop out if that happens, even though I should continue to observe. That¡¯s not a trauma I can mentally and emotionally withstand again. I didn¡¯t really withstand the first time, but the information was important to the models.


    Gods, although if it does happen again here, it would give credence to the theory that we Rowans can be Schrodingers, too. Schrodingers, you see, observe the universe into a quantum decision. You¡¯ll understand once you see the outlines of wohshialis, I promise.


    Don''t forget there is positive action to implement, too: food.


    Think about food in terms of pets. Most of your current society would cringe at keeping gaurd dogs hungry and angry so they would be particularly vicious to any intruder. You pamper your family dog and cat, make sure their bowl is filled, and complain that they let you know when they are hungry.


    Yet look at access to food by people. You don''t care if your neighbor is hungry as long as your cat''s bowl is full. You refuse to see that entire swaths of the population have easy access only to chemical-ridden, nutritionally poorer packaged food; that their time is so heavily constrained that making food from raw ingredients has become a luxury, and that those raw ingredients come with a higher price tag. Food is being used as a social tool. And I''ve heard it subliminally so much: that if black people were really all that, they wouldn''t have so many health issues, which are proof of their drag on society. NO. You''ve got the wrong end of the stick. Food has been used as a social tool on them for generations, and we''re seeing the outcome in statistics. Health is an indicator. When it''s so egregiously out of tune, it means social games are happening.


    If you really want to fix a cancerous blight in your society, fix access to food. Farmers are barely hanging on financially, the people eating the trash coming out of grocery store inner aisles aren''t flourishing, yet the money involved is gargantuan. It''s the middle men, the money men, and social policy.


    Take the profit out. Look at studies before they are quashed and alternative studies funded by people intent on making a profit. The data is there, it already exists. It just needs to be objectively reviewed, the cognitive biases acknowledged and weighing the data as needed, and restudied where it''s shaky. Acknowledge, too, that every body is different. Respect the individuality,then layer the nutrition on top of that.


    And social policy? It''s canted towards limiting access. Weigh both sides: the positive actions and the negative limitations and verbal blandishment.


    Look at your own soul: what would you do to not submit to eating from a soup kitchen? It''s the ultimate weakness, isn''t it. It would rock your inner world like a seismic shock. How long would you go hungry first? Would you avoid eating food that a friend or family member offered? What are the quiet voices repeating in your head?You''re strong, you can take a little sacrifice and hardship. You''re not weak. Only weak people eat what they didn''t buy themselves. Only weak people are a drain on the system. It will all turn around, there''s no point in failing so hard and having to rebound from the depths of failure just to put a few morsels of food in your mouth.If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.


    You don''t have to acknowledge it to me. I''ve seen in enough heads in this timeline and similar to know the threads, even if the words aren''t as clear and sharp as what I wrote. The emotional underpinnings are there.


    Look at that stream of consciousness, though. It''s not you, its the words from outside that you''ve been hearing so frequently, so consistently, that you''ve internalized them. To be a good person, you buy your own food.


    Command: be good. You are today, don''t screw it up. To get the thing that you need to survive, you need to put money in my pocket. Your sacrifice and hardship are secondary compared to the money in my pocket, and the proof is in your self-worth.


    There is no silver bullet when it comes to fixing the food crisis. It''s not a matter of pushing one lever and, yay, everyone eats tonight! Doing it piecemeal would take at least a generation, probably two or three. There''s so much that needs to be changed.


    Yeah, in case you haven¡¯t connected the dots, there¡¯s a very narrow path to the easy outcome of a half generation of virus-induced hardship.


    The murder of covids will ultimately have a 15% mortality rate before a smart society figures out how to keep things running, people eating, and shelter stable. Start down the road of Covidities, and that rises to 27%. Include the resurgence of all these other diseases, and, well.


    The cupids will starve despite all their hoarding.


    There¡¯s going to be a soft collapse that everyone wails about being the end of humanity.


    Here¡¯s a clue: if you can hear the wails, it¡¯s not the end.


    Not to dismiss it. It¡¯s going to be fucking hell. People are going to be desperate and will do the things desperate people do.


    The difference is the world will see some of it. And the same people who try to deny Auschwitz, global warming, and call Covid-19 a hoax will deny these things are happening, until they happen to or are perpetrated by them, on video, and shared.


    Their reality isn''t self-affirming anymore. They need the share to understand which of their responses are the right ones.


    Their will be one Joe who, my god. The shit he does, all while vocally, loudly denying that any of the desperate acts are really happening. He actually freezes his butchered neighbors¡ªit¡¯s not conjecture. He actually did it, and the first time was well before Covid-19 struck. The details are in one of the last news cycles before the soft collapse. Medical people were speculating that he had a prion disease, and his behavior and attitude of the past few years was highlighted as reason to look into it.


    In some timelines¡ªI don¡¯t think this one¡ªhe¡¯s caught with a hunk of Sam on the grill.


    Clutch your pearls when that comes out. Jesus, people. Your imagination has no bounds, and are only bound by reasonability when there is time to think and process until you get your cognitive biases in check.


    So, yeah, a soft collapse will happen. Food will become scarce. Not in the fields, it¡¯s rotting in the fields. It can¡¯t get to people. Money dries up, and, well. yeah. Money is the only driver. The economy in this spot in the linearity is still propelled by money. Nothing gets done without money.


    So when the money dries up, at the height of when produce is available, the produce will rot in the fields. There won¡¯t be enough money for wages, or transportation, or storage, or cleaning, or getting it on the shelves, or delivering. A chunk of people will have to die before enough people get pissed off and tell the money men to take a fucking hike.


    The money men won¡¯t go peacefully. They will try to economically strangle the firms that have the keys that can be forged together to make that first iteration of the data economy. They will bluster and beat their chests and send out fleets of lawyers.


    The corporate entities will back down. Well, in some instances it¡¯s less ¡®back down¡¯ and more ¡®get distracted and need to regroup.¡¯


    It comes down to a group of 23 developers from across multiple corporations (they have the invested knowledge and access to more) and a few contractors (extra brilliance in navigating the complex databases and setting up elegant calls to keep the outputs chugging along in constrained data pathways)¡ªto call in sick, then quietly become incommunicado. They¡¯ll resurface by launching on a pirate server, get a few CEOs on board to tip the machine into action, and when a few fields are harvested in the midwest and people in starving NYC are fed it¡¯s set off like dominos.


    Money men can¡¯t use laws to maneuver around a ravening hoard of mass-pop.


    The waves of otherwise-managed diseases¡ªcholera, measles¡ªwill start cropping up a bit before the starvation hits. It¡¯s the Covidities. Without proper shelter, without the clean water and sewage systems we¡¯ve developed for the shelters, bacteria spread.


    It¡¯s simple and immutable. Viruses don¡¯t see barriers, they just see carriers. Bacteria wallow in things you can swallow. When bacteria aren¡¯t managed, they thrive. Their wallows spread. Infection happens.


    People die.


    These deaths are the real soft collapse according to future history. They were preventable. Don¡¯t fucking evict people. Don¡¯t let food rot in fields. The virus is bad enough without being helped.


    Money is dying anyway. It has to. The deaths by starvation and preventable bacterial infections is its last, grasping clutch at power. ¡°Look,¡± the money men will try to tell you, ¡°if you just let me control everything, only the weak will die. You want to be strong. Prove your strength. Use money to bootstrap out of this mess. Pay me, and I¡¯ll protect you.¡±


    Yeah. It¡¯s a protection racket.


    When people start dying of starvation and bacterial infections, when the food starts rotting in fields, when hospitals implode and the knowledgable health care population has been decimated, when the police and firemen have been furloughed and the gangs flourish, when the post office stops delivering and UPS and FedEx trucks are lumbering targets for gangs, when digital communication lines become spotty, it will feel like the world has ended.


    This is the soft collapse.


    The soft collapse will happen, and the first version of a data economy will emerge.


    It will feel like a new world to the survivors. Trump will try to spin it as his plan all along¡ªit was always what he knew needed to happen, and it¡¯s the democrats¡¯ fault that everyone needed to be killed to shake it up¡ªthey just won¡¯t listen, and were on a witch hunt, and the Russians, and Obama, but bigly. Great. He¡¯s done it against the worst odds with everyone out to get him, but he¡¯s done it. He¡¯s lead us to a Great America again.


    Jesus, people. He¡¯s an idiot. Why couldn¡¯t you see how broken he was? There wasn¡¯t a sane nugget left in that brain.


    Ok, ok. We¡¯re on a certain linearity here, but every linearity has nodes where it can split in multiple directions. But, Jesus, Trump? This is a bad linearity.


    To get someone as broken, as incomprehensible and idiotic as that particular man into the presidency, you¡¯ve gone down a time-whimey rabbit hole. There are a couple that would have been worse, but they were worse in a way that was faster. Those timelines, civilization fell like a bandaid being ripped off.


    There¡¯s a chance ¡ª small but real ¡ª that you won¡¯t reelect Trump. There¡¯s a chance¡ª small but real¡ª that he¡¯lll either be assassinated (not a good thing, FYI¡ªhis herd becomes rabid) or imprisoned (best case scenario! All his lies shown to the world, and once in prison he has a mental breakdown and for one brief day tells his real story).


    There¡¯s a chance¡ªsmall but real¡ªthat the entire White House will become an epicenter for the virus. Trump, like a roach, survives in most of the timelines.


    Here¡¯s what¡¯s likely to happen:


    The ¡®red states¡¯ will have a 10% Covid death rate. It¡¯s because they don¡¯t have the health infrastructure left, because the money men insisted they didn¡¯t have the wealth. And they buy into the idea of, ¡°the strong warriors will survive,¡± believe they just have to say goodbye to grandma early, and dismiss the new evidence that the massive spread was spawning a higher than average rate of mutation that was strongest in the epicenters. Yeah, grandma dies and its sad (sigh, before her time, but not by much), but the virus was mutating in her before she went and now Kiddo¡¯s entire veinous system was imploding.


    By the time that segment of the population mostly believes it, it¡¯s too late.


    So, Trump¡¯s base dies en masse. Towns that voted inordinately heavily for him in 2016 are some of the first mass graves.


    Biden dies. Bernie for president! Oops, Bernie dies. Warren for president!


    Then the soft collapse decimates everyone. Trump¡¯s base are closer to the fields; they gang up and walk in and take what they need in a few key spots¡ªalthough especially the corporate farms engage security (new-fangled tech shit, too!) and a few hostile individuals are harmed. The health infrastructure is gone, so while they could have survived if they got to an ER, well, there¡¯s no ERs left except in the cities.


    The soft collapse hits Blue states harder. In the end, starvation and bacteria take more democrats than republicans, and republicans forgive Trump because he repeatedly said he had a plan, this is the best of the best outcomes, and survived Coronavirus himself.


    By now, the data economy is rebuilding basic health infrastructure (slowly). Food is getting to tables. Tables are back in houses with clean running water and sewer systems, despite Trump¡¯s railing at the illegality of it all. Where''s all the money for this, he''ll rail.


    Money men try to swoop in and ¡®legitimize¡¯ the new economy (read: start finding a way to game it to their benefit¡ªremember greed; also remember the money men are just cupids¡¯ tentacles). The developers who worked on the first iteration unanimously decided to publish the code as open source, except for one key thing: the check/balance system, wohshitlib.


    It is, ultimately, taking the networks of farming, packaging, transportation, storage, restocking shelves, last-mile delivery, nutrition, health basics, and individual likes/dislikes/cautions/warnings and building information nodes. Those nodes became part of a system that hung them all together so when one node started feeling pain, the information was handled¡ªlogic to ensure that all the Suzies wishing they had lettuce was aggregated while Paul¡¯s peanut allergy was highlighted in multiple facets (Albert: look closely at the peanut allergies!)


    Wohshitlib started as a conglomeration of cool, interesting data sets and aggregations that enamored a couple data analysts. Then when the Russians hacked some networks and some fields failed to get harvestable food out, the analysts had an ah-ha moment.


    Systems told stories as simple as a network, but with infinitely more variability. The data could be lost. Big data crunched, but didn¡¯t have an infrastructure for pulling information into actionability.


    When smart people with their primary agenda of feeding masses without profit as an outcomelooked at the system of networks, they found there was a way to parse the system by way of an overarching system that encompassed both transitional and reflective data, and sometimes seemingly at-odds set of priorities.


    There original code for the system that oversaw the system that balanced the networks was dense, easily crashed, and inelegant. They were worried that hackers would get into it and do the same harm on a broader basis, so they protected it until they could make it more elegant.


    It took years of these super smart people working on the code to make it more elegant. Their goal was really on par with the wohshitlib itself: they wanted to easily see if something that shouldn¡¯t have been changed, was. They looked at tensors and leveraged something similar to that to build a graphic interface that could be sliced different ways to promote understanding according to individual adeptness.


    They did, in the end, make it open source. It was a beautiful thing, and the output was the first concrete, replicable instance of wohshialis.


    There have always been a few people through the ages that could look at systems and somehow parse them against priorities to make them work. Some made it into mass consciousness: Socrates. DaVinci. Alexander Hamilton. Henry Ford.


    Most just lead quiet lives that seemed extraordinarily easy to those who didn¡¯t understand. They were old souls, shamans, gurus. They were moms and dads, artists and musicians. They got it, but didn¡¯t have terminology to talk about it or find others who got it.


    Once wohshialis hit the popular mind in a really big way, they came out from the woodwork. ¡°Here,¡± they pointed to the graphical interface, ¡°it where it¡¯s off.¡±


    In finally having something to refer to, in finally finding others that were interested in the same thing, a language developed.


    There were politicians that had the talent, none better than Elizabeth Warren. Turns out she was a policy wonk because she truly and deeply understood the system of systems of networks. Hell, if her policies are an indicator, she was probably close to figuring out the system above wohshialis.


    Many with the talent were already in technology. Librarians were another common niche. But really, there wasn¡¯t any predominant class, gender, job, education. Some people got it, some didn¡¯t. Moms who hadn¡¯t pulled a paycheck in over a decade. Someone with a PhD in English Lit. A super-precocious child with a knack for leadership that hadn¡¯t been beaten out of her yet.


    Oh, but that¡¯s the timeline I like. That¡¯s the timeline where there¡¯s a soft collapse, and the first tentative steps out are actually in a useful direction, with certain cognitive biases better managed in the face of mass graves. I spun down that probability network starting at about the time Warren was optioned as the democratic candidate by the (now useful for the last and most remarkable time) electoral college. That was a nice timeline. The soft collapse was the only collapse.


    If I got my directions right, that¡¯s not this. That is a nice timeline, but we¡¯ve already studied it. We know the positives that need to be in effect; now we need to compare for the non-action voids that needed to happen, too. I''m not actually here for you; I''m here for the future, trying to finesse a complex system. We have a goal, and, well, studying this timeline and how it fails helps that goal. The chances of the right person reading this are miniscule, let alone the right person reading it and believing that there''s actionable insight here. It''s safe to tell it as a story; the story isn''t going to have enough impact to change the linear points we need to understand better.


    So, Trump¡¯s base dies en masse. Towns that voted inordinately heavily for him in 2016 are some of the first mass graves.


    Blue states, with populations heavily centered in densities away from food production, are decimated. They have mass graves, too. Later. Larger.


    November is a time of chaos. The first mass graves have happened, and Trump sees the writing on the wall: he¡¯ll never be reelected. So.


    Coronavirus to the rescue! It¡¯s too unsafe to vote. You should work, definitely. Your kids should go to school, definitely ¡ª mostly to make sure that you work productively. But voting is too unsafe. Those lines, that time. We¡¯re going to reschedule the election, once coronavirus is managed. January. Maybe next November. Maybe in four years, the next election cycle. Pocahontas.


    He''ll say a transition of power at this time is simply too dangerous. The Republicans will rally around him and block every effort to enact any kind of voting.


    Despotic. Idiot.


    In every timeline that does not have him in power after 2020, his lies and power mongering are repaid. He¡¯s the first president in US history to be jailed; in some time lines, he¡¯s the first president in US history to be deemed a traitor and executed. He¡¯s really a piece of work. You have no clue the extent of his cupidity yet. Where he was smart once, he¡¯s declining cognitively; and even at his smartest, he was never the smartest in the room. Hell, his sister was smarter than he was.


    But I digress again. The election never happens. He sits like a toad in the presidency.


    His promised vaccine comes, and goes to the elite. He¡¯ll cite expense, and logistics, and and and and and and. The action tells the truth: he wants mass-pop weak and too scared.


    If action outlines reality, his intent was and remained to bulwark the cupids, rein in the herds, subjugate the hoi-polloi, and finally make a system where his own power is stable, implacable, and he and those that truly understand can have all the haves.


    The new world, in the most probable collapse of potentiality based on current cultural standards, is a new enslavement-by-another-name. The cupids have. The herds do not. The hoi-polloi will either behave like the herd to survive, or be executed. The cupids will find reasons at first, and then dismiss the act and just tell the herd that Jim and Ann were thinking too much.


    Don¡¯t think, the message will be, and you¡¯ll survive. You want to survive, right?