What Happened

The end of Clown World illuminates the beginning & the fall of the NUC

This one has had a few false starts. The vague impression is Clown era ending opens new perspectives on how it got going. My generation came of age in its afterbirth, but were children when the course was charted. Aware that things took a bad turn, but not clear on what exactly was going on as it was happening. Even obvious things at the time like [deciding “production” didn’t matter to national prosperity] didn’t capture the whole socio-cultural decline arc. So some mix of future proving past, oral history, and organic social patterns - pre, under, and now post Clown.

Unfortunately, the set-up sprawled off into narrative control and unselfaware NPC behavior. Interesting, but too long for here, so it got kicked to the Band. That’s where bigger, more fundamental topics can be explored. This post will look at how Clown World crushed the NUC [non-urban continuum - see the glossary] from a more personal perspective. Readers know the basic financialization, centralization, inversion path on the large scale. But watching status hierarchies flip as organic youth social patterns → collapsing beast ones had to be experienced. And since technocratic regimes are more reality facing, logic holds that reality-based socialization becomes more practical.

So some thoughts on what happened to the NUC in light of the end of the Clown era. Change always throws things into new relief by enabling comparison. The degenerating House of Lies was all-encompassing. It was obviously fake, but also all we knew. Impossible to see exactly how the fakeness worked. Change means one of two options or not all-encompassing anymore. An outside perspective opens up. And things that were murky get clear. This is a big theme, so this post will frame it up.

Why the NUC? Familiarity mainly. Opining in ignorance has no place here, and I experienced the rise of Clown in this environment first hand. And population and resource density always make city life different. It’s worth mentioning that Clown World is basically an urban vision. Insofar as it has a coherent vision. Sanitized transnational enclaves for the elite. High-rise pods and cricket paste for the rest. The NUC has never had a place in the future of Progress!. So basic assumptions that sustained mass culture for generations could be shattered without second thoughts. Or even first thoughts.

It’s a two-step dance.

1962 Philadelphia Electric Co. Vintage Print Ad

The boomers got the pre-Clown House of Lies. A fake media world laid over a still functional, propperous society. The values were inverted, but the presentation felt normal and the outcomes were reassuring. Most importantly, real society conformed more or less on a material wealth level. The TV middle class was recognizable as how everyone lived. Burning seed corn throws real heat. As young children, there was no way to see this wasn’t just the norm.

The basics got mapped in the Band’s Dazed and Confused posts. A faux socio-culture where the consequences hadn’t bit yet. The world that carried into our childhood. Where the system was fake, but youth socialization was organic. Feral, in the sense of no supervision and high levels of freedom. In contrast, prosperous adult life was completely inorganic and contrived. Unearned largesse for busywork and buy-in. Values built around irrational compensation patterns, not substantive achievements or personal qualities.

Creating a fundamental opposition between organic youth and inverted adult value and prestige pyramids. Status.

Obviously, the easy trappings for personal substance option no longer exists. Our stage of the process was watching the imprinted future prosperity norm disappear. The situation wasn’t as bleak as it is today. Earlier on the decline curve means not as far gone. But it’s a difference of degree. Different in kind is [looking up & not on the downslope at all]. More personally, future potentialies are implicit in present visions for me. [Not yet] isn’t reassuring when [inevitably] is screaming in technicolor.

So two experiences…

1. Organic socialization → fake socialization

2. Prosperous future → collapsing future

They’re cumulative so the overlap covers a lot of change. Stick to economics since globalism and financialization were base socio-material causes of what brought down the NUC. Thinking of the [fake socialization/collapsing future] overlap like a matrix gives a frame for Clown World.

Economically, this is replaced a production base with a financial one. Staying general - production covers the whole range of industrial-resource material wealth creation. Financialization turns wealth from Material to Abstract - limitless power with no tether to physical reality. And without reality checks, moral entropy does the rest. Any doubt about that should be put to rest by what the US government is proving to be.

Socially, the move to Clown transformed the nature of material success. Which is a main status marker in a materialist society. Production based market systems are intrinsically meritocratic. Not always on the individual level, but overall, cream rises. Producing is a measurable, empirical activity, tying value to objective capability. The more collusion is suppressed, the more essentially fair. That’s not completely possible given human nature, but it is as a general direction.

This means more continuity between organic social status in youth and adulthood. Visualizing it hierarchically makes it easier to see. A reality tree.

It unfolded is phases making it invisible to CLI types. Early financialization was meritocratic in that it rewarded being good and creative at the abstract game. But nothing real was produced. Like tying material status to Sudoku mastery. It’s great as long as everyone plays along until something concrete is needed. And the pathway was so narrow. Success got linked to the college chit track in a way it never had been. Systeming as the gateway to material comforts. This got started pre-full Clown social inversion. It had to. Socio-economic status requiring system was what broke organic patterns. Because it’s not rooted in material reality or human nature.

Ben Garrison, Fighting Fire With DEI, Arkhaven Comics, 2025

[Centralized and untethered from reality] was the precondition for Full Clown. Here, there is no meritocracy - nonsense games or productive. The direction is sorathic - atavistic destruction of any recognition of reality. Success in the system at this stage is ideological identity. Organic social status patterns aren’t just broken here. They’re inverted. Note how sociopathic freaks – who would be shunned or snuffed in an organic society – attain systemic power. Despite no conventionally compelling charisma or strengths. Extrapolate to the Clown Elite.

And a lot of guys who were natural winners never were what they would have been.