LIVING

SO FAR WE HAVE TWO LENSES

with which to view our current situation;

1) a galactic family with manbaby a few hours into exploring his gassy potential &

2) an evolutionary education but no more friends because we might have killed them all.

you make us sound so charming

The first step is to admit you have a problem right?

The story humanity tells itself will be on display as we now enter into our third time shift of 400 years to 1, a body of people unified within a narrative.

Society and the cultures it propagates; larger bodies composed of individuals.

As the little fuzzball got smarter and more social he also started assembling into larger groups.

Large groups of people require a large narrative to buy into in order to coordinate actions through self-imposed ethical behavior.

Remember, moral development goes through stages from punishment to social duty to a personal conception of universal and spiritual moral laws.

You can only threaten so many people personally.

But if you convince the population that your story is universal, not only in this world but into the infinite great beyond, then you’ll have their highest conception of what is right and wrong bound to their group identity.

Think of narratives like social super glue.

Throughout the history of large social groups as we watch people come together in order to confront their existential problems and, more often than not, overshoot the mark with a little pillaging and mayhem–

pilgrimage and mayflowers

Good one…the catalyst seems to be a strong sense of group identity; whether displayed through financial political or religious systems and usually incorporating all three; resources, safety and those pesky unknowables.

tithes church and prayer

This is why I don’t encourage you.

heathen

Rather than the quick fix of a certain 3-letter paradox, our world’s dominated by artificial bodies-

robots, it’s time for the robots

Artificial LEGAL bodies which have begun to dominate resources, safety and if not conceptions of the infinite then at least their institutions of reverence & investigation.

mega-church meets mega-endowment

Exactly.

So this slide will investigate how we got from the stories we tell ourselves to the monsters we’ve “incorporated” or brought to life, with less liability – read responsibility – than their flesh and blood constituents.

Faxable Frankensteins if you will.

you know that was the doctor right?

the monster was actually-

Agriculture.

It all began in a garden, but not the Adam and Eve variety.

It’s 10,000 BC and the earth is coming out of the last Ice Age when somewhere in the Middle East people are practicing their green thumbs.

We’ve mostly hunter-gathered our way through the wild along with man’s best friend-

neanderthals and denisovians?

Dogs.

We had dogs.

And an interest in staying in one place to improve life.

Or maybe build cool shit then disband.

Upon reflection hunter-gathering was pretty sweet.

But regardless of whether it was an evolutionary progression or just a killer rager we grew too lazy to leave, settlements in some way and some form were born.

Actually, in many ways and in many forms.

We’re seven and a half when Chinese agriculture starts developing, ten years old when we’re scraping our knees along the Indus Valley and fifteen when we take a quick swim across the Atlantic to make sure the Americas aren’t left out.

Somewhere between fifteen and seventeen, 4-3k BC, we’re growing enough to have more friends over.

neanderthals?

denisovians?

Audible sigh.

Cities.

The fridge is stocked and the parents are out of town, time to throw a real party ‘cause we’ve achieved civilization!

what’s a civilization?

That’s actually, uhm…

we’re not really sure…

err…

Going back to identity, a lot of history has been defined by “us versus them.”

The philosopher Plato recognized this when he commented that separating the known world between Greek citizens to be elevated and Barbarians-

hey that’s you!

The label Barbarian, he who doesn’t speak Greek or who babbles, doesn’t tell us anything about a group of people.

So the concept of civilization has more often than not merely been an excuse to dismiss people not cool enough to join the club.

that’s you again!

And of course by me you mean you.

and of course by you we mean us

You see no one stays on top of history forever, which is why we study it.

These patterns play out in a consistent manner, and the controlling pattern of human societies seems to be empire.

what’s empire?

Well, at the top you have elites, usually within the heart of a geographic territory benefiting most from the inflow of tribute.

Next you have vassals, not as powerful as the elites but benefitting in their own right usually within spheres of influence.

Finally you have the tributaries, those from whom the tribute comes from, the marks.

Every con needs a sucker and these are the fat base which give stability to the pyramid through their ignorance and abuse, violently enforced if necessary but if it’s a good con just glued in place with that strong cultural narrative

you sound a little bitter

Well, there ARE alternatives to this set up.

In Ancient Athens around our 23rd or 24th birthday we conceptualized participatory democracy, admittedly probably while high.

In fact, around this “Axial Age” we brainstormed most of the good ideas mankind would fumble with for the rest of recorded history.

We were on some good shit back then.

Bright eyed and fresh out of the Bronze Age, with large food surpluses and even larger hearts mankind in the last millennia before Christ-

thank you

We came up with some interesting stuff;

the civil glue of Confucianism with its retirement package of Taoism, Buddhist nirvana and Jainism’s karmic circle-jerks;

Zoroastrianism which might be the oldest and Judaism which pretends it didn’t come from Zoroastrianism;

Homeric poetry as well as that Plato guy and his honest inquiry which spawned higher learning.

that’s a whole lot of words

That’s a whole lot of wisdom.

Within the ideas of that age we began a human conversation that has continued to this day.

If, that is, we didn’t constantly get sidetracked by damned empire, violently shattering our Grecian urns only to glue them back together to carry water for elites.

wait where does the barbarian fit into empire again?

We didn’t get an invitation to the party.

Sometimes we crash it.

Most times it crashes our way of life.

Think locals living in any college town.

Their rents climb higher so the townies get rowdy.

The controlling pattern of supposed civilization.

I guess you can’t kill all the townies

Doesn’t stop us from trying though right?

Seems that the working solution has been to keep them fighting amongst themselves though.

The old divide and conquer song and dance.

lie and prosper

The argument has always been that empire is the only company hiring.

And so mankind readily put in his application to sign up for large agricultural centers, professional militaries and advanced bureaucracies, feeling that it’s his only way to advance cultures.

busy bees and MTV

I…can’t tell if you’re really paying attention.

I think there’s an obvious solution though

Does your solution involve an invisible man in the sky?

let’s just say it doesn’t NOT involve an invisible man in the sky

do you have a moment to discuss our-

Despite their ideals ancient Greece and later Rome gave into the temptation of triangles.

500BC to 500AD was a time of warfare between regional empires.

It was no time for idealism.

We were in our early 20’s out of weed and needing to pad that resume.

By age 26 the Roman Empire’s management was changing over to some Odoacer guy from Germany.

wait is it pronounced odo-acer, or odo-asser?

To his face or behind his back in the break room? Heheheh…

Yeah we started putting in resumes.

After a couple months there was this startup in the desert that said they had a possible availability;

-experience in crafting political narratives from religious epiphanies

check!

-strong desire to secure regional trade overlapping with spiritual pilgrimage

double check!

I like these guys

please be monotheistic with a decent health plan…

Well you’ll be happy to have joined the Islamic Golden Age, where we transferred cultural knowledge from previous employment-

it’s called “institutional memory”

Look who reads the Harvard Business Review.

So Islam it was for 750 to 1258 AD or whatever letters they throw after numbers.

thoughts on 1) Jesus? and 2) pre-existing conditions?

First answer, they think he’s a cool dude.

And second answer…

I think they have two plans available?

sounds good and at least now we have hi-job

You were sitting on that one for a while.

Aren’t you going to ask me why the date is so specific though?

Why 1258?

…

The golden age ended in 1258 because that’s when Baghdad was sacked.

Just like that we were head hunted, off to join our third empire in so many years.

Our regional manager was mediocre, the printers broke, the rivers ran black with ink.

It was a mess and we were lucky to get out of there when we did.

it’s going to look like job hopping

Ahem, empires, like start-ups, are often acquired.

Besides it doesn’t matter if you’re still under 30.

how old are we now?

Well, the Mongolian Empire stretched from 1206 ACE – 1368 ACE, about 28 I guess.

you’re going to fit all of modernity in two years?

Oh no, the last half a year, barely to the Middle-Ages.

But first, The Crusades!

oh!

so conflicted!

we used to work there

Waged to stop Muslim expansion and reclaim territory The Crusades 1096 FML – 1291 FML opened up trade routes from the Levant to the Baltic.

english please

From the sandpits to the chocolates.

no snow to hot cocoa

And that’s actually quite revealing, that a European country could specialize in a confection to the point that it evokes their culture while the main ingredients come from the global south.

The fingerprints of empire are all over every aspect of our identity, whether the stories we tell ourselves admit this or not.

you’re making chocolate political now?

Hey I didn’t make the world I’m just trying to understand it.

While getting our Six Sigma in genocide-

I prefer an agile workflow

killing one tenth of the current population as a part of Genghis Conglomerated, the west was laying the foundation for a Renaissance, or “rebirth” of European dominance in the market.

we’re good at killing people!

Yes, mankind has become quite good at killing itself.

Some may even say it’s become our specialty.

But back then it was still Mongolian Beefs-

you know mongolian beef actually originated in Taiwan during the mid 20th-

Oxford University, 1200 SFY, now we have a place to learn stuff again like Plato always wanted.

Or did he want us to live in caves?

Or search for the lost city of Atlantis?

The guy was a little broad…

I see what you did there

Magna Carta 1215 WWE, we’re still up to our knees in slaughtering.

No really, the Mongols kill perhaps 3/4ths of all Persians at the time-

they can’t all have been good people

Too soon.

But the rest of the world is progressing!

No longer would the king merely rule by divine right-

booooo

His subjects were starting to claim rights including innocence, assembly & speech.

But then something funny happens on the way to democracy.

funny haha? or…

Well, power starts shifting from political narratives to financial ones.

Crusades and the trade routes they opened-

office rivalry at its best

started sending money into Italian city states which developed modern banking during the Renaissance between 1300 – 1600.

age

28- 29, just after we left Mongol Inc.

all that slaughtering was giving me carpal tunnel

Just as the serfs were gaining rights before kings power slipped into more obscure quarters and thus modern finance was born in Europe.

The creditor class would grow to become more powerful than kings or nations, profiting from both sides of war and suppressing insurgents domestically as well as abroad when their debts weren’t paid.

so who did we go to work for then?

Well, let’s see our options…Dante’s Divine Comedy was written in 1320-

comedy as in haha? or…

Like, not early Jim Carrey on helium funny, more like late Jim Carrey on acid funny.

ohhh…

But there was a lot of other important art too that if we went to Oxford I’m sure we would mention.

The printing press is invented in 1450, we’re about 28 and a half, we skim the books and glance at some paintings knowing that we can catch most of it in a Ken Burns documentary if we wait another year or so.

are we working at this time?

We did good, as the butchers of history usually do, our money’s making us money.

There’s a Scientific Revolution which we watch with amusement around our 29th birthday, amused because we were in the library of Baghdad reading about a lot of this stuff a long time ago but let them have their fun right?

have to say I’m still a little conflicted about that galileo guy

We’ve invested in a little pilgrimage and mayflowers on the side-

pillaging and mayhem

Luckily the Treaty of Westphalia begins international law because we need to divest these sweet Columbian Exchange gains into something less volatile.

We’ve done well but chattel futures aren’t looking up.

Well, some forms of chattel…

One stock we’ve decided to long is Dutch East India Company.

Actually, it’s one of the first stocks ever created and so probably our longest hold.

hodl

What?

The dutchies run 1602 – 1800 which is about a half a year, a decent hold for someone in their 20’s.

But the real tendies are in our diverse portfolio including Lloyd’s Café – Starbucks meets gecko ads – to hedge risk, and the Bank of England to circulate paper currency in 1695.

wow so paper currency dates to when we were 29?

Another time we were amused because Mongols had paper money when we were 28 but let them think they’re first.

we’ve always been early adopters

Just wait until you hear how Incas tracked debts by counting knots of gum in your hair.

wait what?

A lot is flying fast and loose this last year so try to keep up.

Enlightenment 1700-1800 is decent copy to slap on a constitution.

Americans do just that knowing people will click accept without reading the terms of service.

Good thing too, because at its founding only 6% of the population of the United States were white male landowners entitled to actually participate in their supposed democracy.

I think the official term is “preferred stock”

That’s a pretty good euphemism for racism actually.

Then there’s the industrial revolution in which we were of course also heavily invested.

Capital consolidates, workers get upset because muh abject poverty.

Revolutions, constitutions, copy copy copy, scroll scroll scroll, agree agree agree.

I am beginning to doubt the depth of your scholarship sir

Finally with the conquering of Bengal through the Dutch East Indian Company-

they really need a rebranding, a lot of syllables to manage

Oh, they did rebrand, they did.

With their help in the mid-18th century Great Britain controls the Indian subcontinent and starts to break away from the pack.

We bet on the right horse, or I mean unicorn.

Actually the British crest IS a unicorn so we’re wrapping this quite nicely.

The British Empire is the most successful start-up in the world controlling a quarter of all territory and just under that fraction of all humans.

I’m not so bullish on those numbers, low growth potential

EXACTLY

Once you control the world, where do you go from there?

And so power retreats further into financial centers to make money off of money while the rest of us are left to fight over invisible lines in the sand and equally irrelevant invisible people in the sky.

wait- what was the mongol religion?

don’t think we got to that part, too busy being metal af

Oh, they just believed in the Great Sky God.

sounds a little lazy but I’ll take it

It was actually pretty tolerant.

no inter-office marches of madness?

Nope.

Just death and trade.

Make money or die trying.

Or die a lot of other ways.

Probably a good chance we’re killing you.

But also make money.

so all empires want is money?

Well, it looks like they at least prioritized international trade even before nation-states were a thing.

There’s something to that busy bee culture exchange theory, and someone’s been hording the nectar.

But let’s leave that to the economic historians, we’re only 29 with a decent portfolio.

Probably better to not ask too many questions.

well companies and industry are a good thing though right?

Yeah, the concept of incorporation for one-off projects was a useful innovation for large public works that required complex financing and the hedging of risk.

The Suez Canal, constructed between 1859 – 1869 was the largest stock-financed ventured at that time and reduced trade routes by over 3700 miles.

hurray for capitalism!

Buuuut…it was performed with the forced labor of 30,000 fellow human beings.

more tendies!

The Panama Canal, on our side of the Atlantic, was another large work that couldn’t have been accomplished without complex financing.

This time the project was underwritten by the nation state of yours truly.

god?

I don’t-

that term has never been used…

Built from 1904-1914, this canal saved us 4,000 miles each way this time.

cautious celebratory yay capitalism?…

Well, the French only gave up 20 years prior because after starting with 40,000 over half their labor died.

Let it never be said that a large loss of life can deter Americans from following where the French failed.

too soon

Or the British into Iraq 100 years later.

We’re approaching our 30th birthday.

Financial independence benchmarks are coming up, if not democratic ones.

Heck we might be in the bonus.

But are we happy?

to be honest, the last couple years of your example was a lot

kind of waiting to stream that jim carrey movie before passing judgment

Ah yes, the Divine Comedy.

Is that the story of mankind so far, a comedy?

Funny haha?

Or funny as in just a long acid trip with a 56 year old depressive?

woooow…I feel old now

though I liked him on comedians in cars with that zoroastrian guy

Are we even reading the entire story?

These empires in which we punch the clock, they all have a vested interest in keeping us glued to our cubicles for the company good no?

Traditions and canons, popes and their tropes.

The Mongols were transparently vicious while everyone else is more hypocritical than sociopathic.

Well again, the Catholic Church has somehow mastered both quite well, so there’s that…

shots fired

Is that our only choice then, lying or leveraging our brute force?

Or do we wash our hands and say ”wasn’t in the prospectus” thoughts prayers and crisis management.

ok that was a low blow

I don’t want to change your mind.

You have your names for your paradoxes, we all do.

But shouldn’t we at least acknowledge reality?

We’re 25 when China invents printing but we wait a couple years to let our European company take the credit.

We’re gloating over America being the GOAT at democracy, but back in 1142 ODB The Great Peacemaker founded the Five Nations of Iroquois Confederacy, possibly the world’s oldest democratically functioning body.

blessed are the peacemakers

Yeah, history shows how well that worked out for them.

Don’t you see?

Our ethnocentrism seems to be blinding us to the greater human story to justify one particular brand of violence through an artificial lens of superiority.

My HM 1300 might be a little half-baked but compared to most public school textbooks it’s the LHC.

for a guy so suspicious of a certain three letter word you sure throw out a lot of them

Here’s one last one for you then; WAR

We Are Right.

Always, and in all ways, merely because we belong to the club of “US” and not to that of our victims.

Kill one man you are a murderer.

Kill millions you are a conqueror.

Kill them all you are GOD.

had me until the last one

From the Iroquois to the Iraqis, America has functioned more like Frankenstein than friend.

you know that was the name of-

As technology increases connectivity, the reality of the human species as a superorganism becomes harder to deny.

Our world suffers from a dissociative form of psychosis.

It’s said that a democracy must include the following four tenants to be functional; free elections, civic participation, human rights & legal equity.

democracy’s overrated, give to caesar what is caesar’s

the divine right of kings however…

Broken politics all rely on conventional morality as their highest denominator, using reward and punishment framing over any universal concept of right and wrong.

Consensus is supposed to be the bridge to a more EQUITABLE society.

When practiced, it actually FEELS a little spiritual, because discussion grounded in universal ethics feels infinitely healthier than emotional catharsis based on our biases.

snowflake

It’s buying into shared values to create a group identity, and then holding individuals accountable to that group above their selfish interest.

It’s how peace is made.

It’s also kind of how man escaped the animal kingdom of pure savagery, if civilization means anything at all.

The Oresteia, a trilogy of tragedies we would binge when we were baked back in the Axial Age, tried to talk us out of reciprocal cycles of violence and into community administered justice.

Do the stories we tell ourselves these days have the same high-minded aims?

Or are they just used to justify current power hierarchies, echoing our worst aspects like greed, vanity and violence?

Culture needs a narrative. Instead of gluing selective pieces of the past together with opportunistic reasoning, we can create our future TOGETHER.

This old glue isn’t holding, there are too many cracks.

Our stories are failing us.

All empires eventually end and psychosis leads to self-harm.

If human progress is narrowed to these easily identifiable patterns of manipulation we’ve sealed our fate.

Which I fear, sadly, has spawned the fatalism of the current age.

you might just be throwing stuff together to sell a book though

Perhaps.

The nice thing about objective truth is that it’s the largest set which includes all others.

The best explanation, if you will.

I will and I do

But to really make my point, I’ll have to drill deeper into that last half a year and expand it into a larger timeline.

thank god, was feeling a little cramped there

We now have to move to a framework not of growth nor morality but specific behavior.

Now it’s time to talk about our addictions.

I don’t have the problem, you do

But then by me you mean you, and by you

we mean us