Considering Collapse

General thoughts as the House of Lies enters a terminal phase.

Daniel McPheeters, Approaching the Event Horizon, digital art print

The last few posts have been looking at the systemic collapse that’s already underway. This isn’t a new revelation, but the nature of something ending makes it hard to read until you’re in it. I use the event horizon metaphor to describe a state where the old predictors - arcs - aren’t useful anymore. Things are too different. But the new arcs have yet to form. This post has some considerations for those of us who can learn from information.

Quick note on the Ontological Hierarchy book. It’s almost ready. It’ll probably launch next week sometime. There’ll be a launch post here and on the Band, and I may share the intro over there. It’s a standard monograph, not my preferred multi-media style - hence the need for Claude’s assistance. Thanks for the patience. Not long now.

Readers know one variable projection is a doltposting staple. It’s the interactions - the butterfly effects - that make forecasting hard. Big macro-arc swings are readable because so many things are trending the same way. But most of the time, there isn’t one obvious direction. Elements of the status quo adjust or are replaced as systems collapse. The Script itself looks like some kind of early attempt at system repair.

Insulate against one variable blinders by considering a few factors from the start. They are all interconnected.

Claude-Joseph Vernet, The Shipwreck, 1772, oil on canvas, National Gallery, Washington

If Nothing Works Anymore gains traction, the capabilities of the House of Lies diminish. The rhetoric won’t change - consider “Trump’s” demented lies. And the beast can keep projecting power well into twilight. But coping with fallout from cascading failure curtails possibilities. Mass starvation, infrastructure failure, and spontaneous violence are all possible. This isn’t a condition that can be fixed internally because the system itself is decaying.

This means that the House may not be in a position to project power or interest into organic communities. Despite current fear porn. The tell is whether entropic decay is ever acknowledged, or do the spells repeat the infallibility canard? More likely, autonomous peripheral areas are ignored by necessity.

Projecting the current obvious algorithmic decline forward puts the lie to most AI economic puffery. Consider how useless most “AI assistants” are when there’s an actual problem with a service. Generally can’t read a question that isn’t FAQ link worthy. Most of the grandiose claims about massive job loss and new eras of human whatever read more like frantically trying to keep a bubble aloft. Actually, think through what happens when that can’t hide its limitations anymore.

What does an organic community outside a contracting House of Lies look like? Concrete prediction is impossible, but this post is just speculating on possibilities. My path is an old-new hybrid. Self-reliance, local knowledge, analog skills, IRL networks, etc. - augmented with cutting-edge computer tools, for as long as they’re available. Power generation, water supply, and in-house maintenance to start. Systematic development in synch with changing conditions over time. It isn’t actually hard to imagine when conditioned helpless dependence is appropriately dustbinned.

Not things of much use or interest to a preoccupied beast. Preoccupation being key, since malevolence needs no reason to harm. But when the House is faced with survival issues and forced retrenchment, disinterested, non-competitive entities become irrelevant.

If safety in irrelevance sounds overly optimistic, it isn’t. The legacy project is more than a tank of gas from any significant urban area by design. The reality is that the centers are the most dangerous place to be during system failure. That’s where paste-eating NPCs and structured predation proliferate. But the second worst spot is a near-periphery being plundered for resources. The safest spots look to be uninteresting and hard to control in a collapse state. Non-strategic zones, as best we can tell.

Hubert Robert, A Hermit Praying in the Ruins of a Roman Temple, about 1760, oil on canvas, Getty Center

If anything like this shakes out, we’re in a state of total societal realignment. Anyone reading the Band over the last decade should be well on their way to organic autonomy. The elite will retreat to whatever enclaves they’ve prepared. Neither are perfectly secure, but both are much better positioned than the beast-dependent narrative-huffing NPC “middle-class”. If that setting sounds familiar, it’s worth doing a quick real skills check. Because it’s hard to imagine a worse environment than [vast, helpless multitudes and logistical failure].

Karl Friedrich Lessing, The Siege (Defense of a Church Courtyard During the Thirty Years’ War), 1848, oil on canvas, Museum Kunstpalast

This doesn’t happen instantly. A failing core can still extract resources - energy, rare minerals, and especially food. Rich organic communities may face predation. Defense is an issue. Self-reliance is a start, but no easily extractable and abundant surpluses are important. Especially in the transition phases.

Recent observations on Nothing Works Anymore and AI fit here. Claude will drift sometimes when working on big collaborative projects. Mistaking something in our free conversations for something in the manuscript we’re preparing. It’s easy to correct, and the AI straightens out immediately. The problem arises when there’s no person there to fix an initial minor error. Or any subsequent ones. The same brittleness that makes the bubble unsustainable also makes competent operators essential

The accumulation is structurally analogous to harmful mutations burying a healthy genomic line. Or any other entropic collapse cascade. Pointing to the need for competent operators, or “maintenance elite”.

Elizabeth Olds, Bootleg Mining, Pennsylvania, 1936, National Gallery, Washington

Maintenance elite has an official ring, but the inclusion of elite might be confusing. These aren’t the globalist elite running the House of Lies and Clown World. But they aren’t future paste-eating masses either. Capable, working FTS-1s that can operate complex systems, develop new applications, and correct errors. These people require robust, reality-facing preparation - exactly what is lacking now.

Near term, watch where the capable go. Not the huffers whining about “education” as an amorphous nonsense daycare for post-adolescents or credential chit factories. The actually competent. Those like us who are already on the organic self-reliance curve are among those prescient and skilled, but not too numerous yet. The beast isn’t hurting from losing my commitment. But enough high-performance, high-functioning types check out, and systemic decay accelerates, while organic networks strengthen.

Obviously, predicting something like this is a crap shoot that may be way off. I dislike prediction for that reason. But these points are less predictive than event trajectories based on real conditions. Possible arcs. Indicators that suggest things are reaching another inflection point. Like seeing elites moving into stuff like permaculture or robust engineering. This would suggest some awareness of the looming problem. Likewise, any House of Lies push for localism or outcome-oriented training.

None of this will amount to anything for structural reasons. If my collapse read is correct, the House can’t train a maintenance elite anymore. Because its own inverted nature isn’t compatible with any of the virtues needed for maintenance. Techno-luciferian commitment to the House of Lies precludes its own continuance.

The Clown wing has shown itself to be an atavistic, metastatic death cult. The T-Ls seem more desirous of a future of some kind. At the very least, recognition that competence is essential. How does that hold without ejecting the whole House of Lies that their world view is based on? One thing we’ve seen is that none of these cretins have issue violating their sacred principles. There is actually an advantage to disconnected organic communities that can be officially ignored/denigrated while actually recruited.

This is less far-fetched than dependent on techno-luciferian survival instinct. Any dream of a techno-utopia rests on human capital that the House can’t generate. Only organic autonomous communities offer the reality-facing development needed. The atavist clown death cult doesn’t care. But The Script side, for all the Fake Trump’s lies, mass murder, and fraud, doesn’t appear to want Sorath. That said, the target market for the “AI will take everything from you” listicles should worry. Anyone that a chatbot can fully replace isn’t part of this calculus. We’ll see what happens.

Dejan R, View into the Unknown Future, 2009, oil on canvas

Readers know I rarely stand on predictions, and when I do, I put down a clear marker. That’s not the case here. This post is general considerations. Opposite structure to the typical low-wattage, grifting “prognosticators” who hang on single variables, can’t cognitively hold a big picture, and never revisit errors. But don’t be surprised if those abandoned to their own devices were the only ones with functional devices—and the ability to use them.

Informal networks for swapping competencies are already starting. Squint, and you can glimpse the outline of an organic autonomous maintenance elite.