If you like the topics discussed in this newsletter, you can buy a copy of my Patchwork Manifesto here.
My investigation draws on ancient teachings to explain why we stand at the edge of radical change.
It’s a challenging read. Consider this tiny manual if you are just starting your journey.
When we look out at our cultural wasteland, who do we hold accountable?
Ourselves, as individuals—or the system?
On social media, many people have invested in the metaphor of The Matrix, a structure which exists beyond individuals and yet siphons their energy in order to thrive.
In the course of this series, I’ve attempted to describe how an old matrix has fallen—which I call The Big Tent—and how tribal cults are trying to re-create it, believing they are offering freedom.
I’ve also attempted to describe how we can use tatters of the old matrix in order to stitch together a new WORLD.
This world would not be a matrix based on ideology. Instead, it would lead to a patchwork society, where each individual is able to express his personal journey towards meaning by stitching together a mass of contrasting influences, therefore transcending ideological prisons and giving birth to unique creative breakthroughs.
I’ll continue to flesh out such themes in this final installment of People™.
But since this is the last part, we have some other fearsome dragons to face as we wrap up.
Late March into early April promises to be a fast and furious time in the collective zeitgeist.
Two tricky trends will arise from these circumstances.
TREND ONE:
Many cults will likely elect a sole individual to unleash a “primal scream.” This call for war will severely distract people from emerging concepts of creative autonomy or patchwork innovation. It will be a full force attack from the backers of the old world, very likely taking the attitude of “we must stick together to defeat the enemy.” For example, there is rhetoric from the Silicon Valley Bank tribe saying that “Main Street is next if you don’t help us.” I’ll explain more in a moment.
TREND TWO:
As the first event continues to unfurl with rapid chaos, everyday reality will become increasingly unstable. It’s not the battles per se that will create global instability, as most will be highly localized. Instead, when it is revealed that the territories being fought over no longer exist—namely, traditional forms of security—many social circles will spiral into a SYMBIOTIC PSYCHOSIS.
Instead of admitting that the old world and old resources are clearly no longer intact, freeing us to pursue a new world, there will be widespread denial and doubling down.
This will take shape outwardly in delusions of grandeur, as various clubs or cults defiantly announce that they can offer you “the answer” or a “return to glory.” Symbiotically, there will be many people in a manic-depressive state who buy this promise. And now you’ve just added another army to the imaginary battlefields. Rinse, repeat.
This is why it is imperative that each of us as individuals be prepared to flesh out our personal realities and mission statements—and have the patience and trust to see this through. You will need a grounding anchor at this time, and I’d highly avoid choosing the latest “cause” that’ll be floating in the air. Your problems will not be solved through buying “right wing toothpaste” or through reading Twitter threads on how to “manifest” psychic superpowers.
Let’s dive in.
Black Holes
Do you know what a black hole is? Do you know what an event horizon is?
A stellar black hole occurs when the center of a massive star collapses upon itself.
Think of 2020. We had a massive star—again, what I’ve called our Big Tent society—which gave us an illusory order of Democrat versus Republican, work versus home, etc.
When that collapsed upon itself, it produced the black hole cultural wasteland we’ve inhabited for three years.
Even if you do not jive with the idea that everything came crashing down all at once in 2020, you’ll probably agree that significant portions of our society are “black holing” every day.
All it takes is a poke from one cult—for example, the TikTok beauty app cult—and our shared definitions of youthful appearance go POP.
Any discourse in the vicinity of this event begins to warp dramatically. I’m sure you’ve witnessed this.
As a collective, we no longer share the same definition of youthful beauty. It’s fragmenting every time a new tribe comes out and distorts the conversation, and the current spectacle of online culture accelerates this process.
We are in a very different culture from when everyone on the block wanted Marilyn Monroe’s beauty mark or Jennifer Anniston’s haircut.
Now, an event horizon is defined as a boundary around the black hole. At this edge, it becomes practically impossible for the observer to accurately gauge events taking place inside the black hole.
This creates a kind of information firewall—a world divided, yet not exactly two halves of the same whole.
Some may watch in terror as swaths of society fall into a cultish spell, feeling completely incapable of communicating with them. Call it a Tower of Babel moment, if you will.
For example, you may attempt to reach out to a teen on TikTok, hoping to persuade them that the beauty app is distorting their sense of self.
But what we’ll see is that the ability to communicate across these boundaries will become severely strained. As with all cult dynamics, the person in the new matrix may feel threatened by such communication. They are sitting in the imploded rubble of the old, trying to replicate it with simulated structures that remind them of a former security.
A person like this would NOT see you offering an invitation to rational dialogue. Instead, they might even lash out and accuse you of incorrectly seeing the issue. “No, it’s just an app filter” or “No, you’re a different generation, you don’t get it.” Etc. etc.
Such an experience could erode your trust in what you’re observing at the edge of a black hole. Feeling cast out and alone, you may prefer to leap into the black hole with “the rest of them” rather than endure the feeling that you are separated from society, at the edge of this dystopian event horizon.
But that’s the whole gamble, isn’t it? You can find all sorts of belonging now…inside a black hole. That’s where everyone “gets” each other. That’s where all the raw milk passwords and grass-fed cheat codes keep everyone feeling “understood.”
Is that really what you came here for, though? Will that really help you flesh out the world of your dreams? You only get one chance this time around—are you going to waste it because you don’t want to risk being a new world pioneer?
The new world with be highly asymmetrical. Many will not heed the call. They’ll believe that their “holy war” is the new world. But to be perfectly blunt, they don’t have much creative freedom here.
They’re just kicking around in the black hole of an old world that’s collapsed on itself. And they’d love to have you join.
That’s the essence of People™.
You get groups believing that they are engineering the ubermensch, when really they’re copy-pasting expired concepts. It’s only a matter of time before events reveal how bankrupt this is, leading to a doubling down and a call to arms.
We’ve had a financial recession. Get ready for a psycho-spiritual recession.
Let’s keep going.
Delusions of Grandeur
What is a collective?
Well, that definition is suddenly up for grabs, and that is why we’re entering such a radical new world.
But until more people get up to speed on these changes, they’ll probably take old definitions as their reference point—and cling tightly to them, as change appears.
One old definition of a collective is: “All for one, and one for all!”
According to this definition, the collective is a sum of individual parts.
Now, depending on your geo-political orientation, this can seem like a democratic battle cry—or the haunting primal scream of a communist hive.
I believe that’s why the globe is being ushered into a new splintered and fragmented reality where the word “collective” will undergo several different competing definitions.
Collectivism of all stripes will be more elusive, perma-fluid and hyper-local.
But the old world won’t go down without a fight. Not everyone will like the opportunity.
Many will take the “all for one, one for all” version of collective organization and accelerate it towards an inflection point.
The cult of personality which we have witnessed over the past 15 years—from Obama to Pew Die Pie to random TikTokers—will elevate a single savior to become their spokesperson against this new risky world.
“It’s just TOO risky,” the cult will say as they race to find a savior. “We need a bailout. We need protection. The new world is too unstable.”
Of course, they won’t think they’re fighting against a positive opportunity and new freedom.
They’ll say they’re fighting against The Matrix or Big Pharma or Big Ag or seed oils or low birth rates. “We need to do something about making sure people marry and mate as early as possible! Get on my Christian singles app NOW!”
This is what I mean by symbiotic psychosis.
It will pass itself off as the “new normal,” a kind of wartime necessity to take up arms against some fearsome invader. And it will hook into your deepest concerns about uncertainty and change.
When you hear people screaming against threats this spring, ask yourself: “What territory is this person fighting to reinstate?”
They will act as if large pieces of traditional reality—love, work, money, food, etc.—can be “fixed” by their club. Maybe they’re part of the Supplements Cult. “You can’t get all your nutrients from food! Come fight Big Ag with us! If you don’t agree you’re an impotent loser! Not gonna make it!”
Just as much as they pass themselves off as saviors, they will appear as martyrs against some apex predator who is gobbling up the old traditional territories.
But it was no single predator who is gobbling up the old security. What we are seeing is a breakdown in the old supply chains of meaning falling.
It’s not one roving demon taking things out—the whole system was already interconnected, built on that famous philosophy of “one for all, all for one” and so as soon as one domino goes down, everyone is affected sooner or later.
All it takes is a CHANCE EVENT.
It doesn’t even require intentional malice from an outside enemy. The Achilles heel of the Big Tent has always been its interconnected quality. In previous installments, I’ve talked about how pre-modern society had insurance against this vulnerability and how postmodernity re-exposed this vulnerability.
All it takes is one domino to fall—financial, linguistic, biological—and very quickly the whole system gets corrupted unless you begin shutting off access points or production points, causing the flow of goods and meaning to seize up.
But, of course, when people are desperate for goods and meaning, they will demonize some other group rather than ask how to reform themselves and step into a new world.
Let’s keep exploring.
Chokepoints
What’s funny—and tragic—is that no one will escape the coming fragmentation. So while on one hand you might see 1,000 guys rallying behind a single Supplement Savior, it’s just as likely that a niche will have 1,000 self-crowned individuals who proclaim themselves Supplement King and all loosely ally with each other like a school of fish.
The BowTied community on Twitter is somewhat like this. They’re all still operating in this gatekeeper/spokesman mentality from the mainstream media years, which supposedly they despise. In reality, not all of them can be the one sole authority. But they still pass themselves off like that, conveniently ignoring that their “comrades” are all vying for the same cultural capital.
Eventually, this will lead to schisms and purity spirals.
We’ve already seen evidence of this, when Grimhood and Raw Egg Nationalist had a spat over the dietary value of fish. To an onlooker, they might’ve seemed to be on the same team beforehand—offering alternative health advice in the face of mainstream phonies and woke busybodies.
But what’s happened is that these communities have created chokepoints, because they’re sensing how all the old supply chains of meaning are falling apart.
The audience is invested in that overarching lens as the one thing that can restore security in this cultural wasteland, whether it’s fish or breastfeeding or NFTs, etc. Which is why reply guys have that bloodthirsty quality and why they shut down access to rational dialogue around an issue, in order to hold onto the last few drops of old meaning.
Many of our current platforms for communication cultivate our audiences as armies ready to go into war with us. This puts substantial pressure on creators, and eventually that pressure explodes through the chokepoints—a Twitter fight ensues between two top health accounts, for example.
Again, this warps dialogue around issues, and I hope new platforms for creators can come in to keep pace with our evolving definitions of collectivism.
No outside observer could stand at the edge of that black hole and try to encourage rational Big Tent dialogue from yesteryear. They would get sucked in by the mob. “Don’t bring the nuance in here! This is our holy war! The stakes are too high!”
This is why the world cannot be “fixed” in the conventional sense. It can only be built out in patches by each of us individually.
You see, what the coming events will reveal to us is that we’ve over-invested in certain lifestyles to the point that we will fight for them as some kind of ultimate territory that will restore the old world. Yet, as we know, these territories are imaginary—they are simulations of meaning, rather than investigations of truth.
Of course, in third world countries especially, but possibly in North America, these trends could manifest in more dire ways, with coups, assassination attempts and flash mobs who rally for their deceased leader/savior/martyr, leading to socio-political instability.
Many of us reading this will likely experience some kind of detachment as we feel averse to joining in the chaos.
Yet we may still tiptoe to the edge of a black hole, watch the screen, and observe people possessed by the idea of a holy war.
These people might even nominate themselves, for example, as King of Mount Magnesium or Queen of the Trad Breastfeeding Republic—urging others to fight for the supremacy of this lifestyle.
Time in the game doesn’t matter here—where there’s a delusional will, there’s a way to self-proclaimed grandeur. Charismatic demagogues may come out of nowhere with new stairways to heaven.
So what does it mean when you’re surrounded by madness on all sides?
Let’s carve a path.
Shattered Patterns
Hertz Law states: The consequences of the images will be the images of the consequences.
This is a warning of the consequences of postmodernism—how image will become reality and reality will become image.
As we progress through the 2020s, we can transcend this and see what is truly possible.
We will come to know what’s possible through attempting the impossible.
Why? Because what is “possible” will be shoved down our throats 24/7 by demagogues and we will get so fed up with these unsatisfying “possibilities” that we will make the leap away from a cultural black hole and into a new green field.
As we watch the patterns of the old world get shattered in the stupidity of wars over territory that no longer exists, we will realize that we can still organize our collectives around organic food or cotton clothing or ribeye steaks, but these collectives will appear to us in a completely different, non-standardized form.
What I mean is, in a new social structure these lifestyles and items will once again become individual pieces in a collective quilt that coheres the pieces together. One item will not stand out to the exclusion of the rest, incessantly beating us over the head with its importance.
Ironically, this seems to be exactly what the Trads and ancient world fetishists would want!
Raw milk isn’t rAw MiLk in the new world. It’s just fucking milk.
How could that be? Because there’s consensus in the group that raw is the baseline. You get it from your neighbor because that’s just what’s esteemed or valued in this locality. Then you get on with the business of your day, which is building out your community or personal vision.
This is how you go beyond the totemic primitivism of neo-tribes. No single item takes on a talismanic power. Every small piece serves a purpose, but the bigger patchwork picture is more important.
For several years straight we have not experienced this level of wholeness in our base reality. It has been entirely absent—deemed “impossible.” People look out into the broken wasteland and say, “I can be a good propagandist, like a covid lockdown authoritarian but with good intentions. I will show them Twitter threads on psychic superpowers, I will have them micro-managing their diet…”
But in all seriousness, we are nostalgic at some level—pining for a time when everything was in its right place.
Food was food, clothing was clothing, work was work…it was a world, all things had a place, and so the primary function here was to EXPLORE your identity and the identity of your loved ones, not ENGINEER your identity into some Ministry of Lifestyle Vibes that people copycat so that they can eat a crumb of meaning.
As the patterns get shattered, we will realize a new wholeness can take shape in our hands, under our vision. A great responsibility, and a thrilling chance.
But what if we lose our way, as we carve our path? Will we find others to build with, who can inhabit the world we create? Suddenly, for a moment, you may feel like leaping into the black hole with the others, because that’s where the action is.
You are tired of observing from afar, and you don’t have faith in your world-building opportunities…fuck it, you’ll go to war with the rest of ’em. That’s what everybody else is doing…right? That’s where one can be guaranteed a result, even though it will be crude and brutish…right?
Well, let’s talk about results.
First Man In, Odd Man Out
We’ve all heard phrases like “the first into battle.”
It speaks to striking while the iron is hot, in the heat of the moment. Usually the inventors and pioneers and innovators who stand to reap the most benefits are the ones who get to the bleeding edge of a new industry.
But there’s something about being the odd man out in this chaotic mix—and how, paradoxically, that puts you in first place to win.
You may think you’re coming in last as the collective scrambles after what they perceive as the one lifestyle code that will restore order to the entire world.
If you’ve made it this far in the series, though, you’ve realized that these people aren’t fighting against The Matrix. They’re fighting against any outside dialogue that disturbs their position at the top of the pyramid. They just church up their fears with high stakes language, making themselves more epic and heroic than they really are.
Some of you may feel distant from friends or relatives when they ask, “Why, comrade, do you not join us? The time is now! It is the End Times! There is the Antichrist…the enemy! Breed and multiply! Get your 10,000 steps in!”
It’s surely time for some important change, but it won’t be time for re-instating the Big Tent culture where we just do the Democrat vs Republican pay-per-view showdown every four years.
Standing where you are, you may be accused of being detached, sidelined, a cerebral observer. When in fact, it’s the others in the rugby pile who are simulating a life.
It’s a shame, really. Here’s fresh ground at their feet—and tools to scrape the soil with. Those tools may be a small business or a knack for making strangers open up at a bar. Whatever it is, hopefully many of us over recent years have found a new beauty in our resourcefulness. It doesn’t always have to be a backyard chicken farm—although I like local eggs as much as the next raw egg nationalist.
What we’re looking at is an opportunity for you to lead, to show up for yourself, to prove to your heart that you have what it takes.
You have the courage. You have the endurance to be labeled “different.”
That’s a pile of results right at your feet. And you don’t even have to do 30 days of cold showers to prove it.
Now, will others see the value in that, too? Depends. Like I said, it may take time for a lot of people to shed old notions of collectivism and open up to your vision, instead of seeing it as a threat. A patchwork society doesn’t happen overnight. It’s an arc, a storyline taking shape through the 2020s.
Be the underdog. You may feel that you’re the odd man out as you build new supply chains of meaning for yourself.
But when you zoom away and look at the bigger picture, you’ll realize that you’re a pioneer in a vibrant new world.
If you like the topics discussed in this newsletter, you can buy a copy of my Patchwork Manifesto here.
My investigation draws on ancient teachings to explain why we stand at the edge of radical change.
It’s a challenging read. Consider this tiny manual if you are just starting your journey.
*Sighs*
Gotta have some magnesium to handle it all.
Thanks for the beautiful synthesis Paul.
It feels like I'm edging the same burnout I was edging on 2021 - although now I have the tools to make it look good on my life portfolio.