Can't wait to read more! This is thought provoking and I hope it can inspire more discussion. It feels like a new framing of how to address our current problems.
Several lines really landed for me especially the framing of “the ones who feel the poison before others can name it,” the distinction between healthy power and toxic domination, and the way you name how conquest becomes internalized as inner voices.
I’ve spent the last few years learning how to give language to and navigate these dynamics especially inside myself, in intimate relationships, and while navigating the school system with my children, where all of this becomes painfully visible. I also work with embodiment as a physio in mental and sexual health, and that work feels inseparable from what you’re describing here, it truly lives in the body.
This post puts clear words to something that’s deeply ingrained and often treated as “just normal.” I really appreciate the clarity you bring to a subject that’s notoriously difficult to articulate especially in ways that can’t be easily dismissed by the very mindset you’re pointing to.
I am truly touched by your comments and likes. I feel seen and like we are in the same, perhaps small tribe. And you are holding Kafka’s The Trial to boot! Your willingness to stand in Who You Are despite the discomfort of seeing what you see is indeed refreshing. I have a whole stack of posts that I imagine you will like. This material seems to be visible to so few, and I am glad you are one of them!
Love that you own your chaos! I imagine that it has led you out of the dominant mindset traps that have tried to hold you down and oppressed! And now shouting about it to the world.
Great work. I look forward to reading more from you. One of the questions I struggle with is to what degree is empire intentionally designed vs. emergent, a form of life (the ultimate superorganism) that arose through evolutionary drives to predate, parasitize, and consume. There's something about empire that makes it feel different from other predators, it feels more intentionally designed by rational minds. But at the same time, maybe it's not as different as we imagine.
It can be extremely distressing when you realize just how well we've been programmed to forget and fracture to allow empire to continue ravaging the planet. It makes it feel like there must be a master at the helm with intelligence and an ability to persist across large stretches of time that dwarf what an individual human mind can truly fathom.
In my own writing, I've wondered whether systems are properly thought of as beings or superorganisms, so that we don't need to locate a master, at least not beyond the system itself, which is less a master and more an emergent process with an inherent drive for power and control. But something about that feels incomplete, too. Probably due to edges and blockages within my own nervous system I'm still working through.
In any case, it feels clear to me that whatever this system is, or whoever designed it, it and/or they are sick and, like us, need to heal. It's a self-terminating process that will eventually kill its host, and that doesn't sound like a whole lot of fun.
Brian — I'm late but I didn't want to leave this unacknowledged. The intentional vs. emergent question is one I keep returning to. My working frame: the system doesn't need a master because it recruits masters. The genius of empire is that it offers people the experience of agency and choice while operating them. The superorganism model feels closer to true — but I'd add that it has a nervous system, and we are neurons in it. The distress you describe when you see how well we've been programmed? That's the nervous system beginning to recognize itself.
Can't wait to read more! This is thought provoking and I hope it can inspire more discussion. It feels like a new framing of how to address our current problems.
Several lines really landed for me especially the framing of “the ones who feel the poison before others can name it,” the distinction between healthy power and toxic domination, and the way you name how conquest becomes internalized as inner voices.
I’ve spent the last few years learning how to give language to and navigate these dynamics especially inside myself, in intimate relationships, and while navigating the school system with my children, where all of this becomes painfully visible. I also work with embodiment as a physio in mental and sexual health, and that work feels inseparable from what you’re describing here, it truly lives in the body.
This post puts clear words to something that’s deeply ingrained and often treated as “just normal.” I really appreciate the clarity you bring to a subject that’s notoriously difficult to articulate especially in ways that can’t be easily dismissed by the very mindset you’re pointing to.
I am truly touched by your comments and likes. I feel seen and like we are in the same, perhaps small tribe. And you are holding Kafka’s The Trial to boot! Your willingness to stand in Who You Are despite the discomfort of seeing what you see is indeed refreshing. I have a whole stack of posts that I imagine you will like. This material seems to be visible to so few, and I am glad you are one of them!
Love that you own your chaos! I imagine that it has led you out of the dominant mindset traps that have tried to hold you down and oppressed! And now shouting about it to the world.
Great work. I look forward to reading more from you. One of the questions I struggle with is to what degree is empire intentionally designed vs. emergent, a form of life (the ultimate superorganism) that arose through evolutionary drives to predate, parasitize, and consume. There's something about empire that makes it feel different from other predators, it feels more intentionally designed by rational minds. But at the same time, maybe it's not as different as we imagine.
It can be extremely distressing when you realize just how well we've been programmed to forget and fracture to allow empire to continue ravaging the planet. It makes it feel like there must be a master at the helm with intelligence and an ability to persist across large stretches of time that dwarf what an individual human mind can truly fathom.
In my own writing, I've wondered whether systems are properly thought of as beings or superorganisms, so that we don't need to locate a master, at least not beyond the system itself, which is less a master and more an emergent process with an inherent drive for power and control. But something about that feels incomplete, too. Probably due to edges and blockages within my own nervous system I'm still working through.
In any case, it feels clear to me that whatever this system is, or whoever designed it, it and/or they are sick and, like us, need to heal. It's a self-terminating process that will eventually kill its host, and that doesn't sound like a whole lot of fun.
Brian — I'm late but I didn't want to leave this unacknowledged. The intentional vs. emergent question is one I keep returning to. My working frame: the system doesn't need a master because it recruits masters. The genius of empire is that it offers people the experience of agency and choice while operating them. The superorganism model feels closer to true — but I'd add that it has a nervous system, and we are neurons in it. The distress you describe when you see how well we've been programmed? That's the nervous system beginning to recognize itself.