Avoid the Language of Your Oppressor

My friends, I am here today in order to deliver unto you a key which will unlock the cage which surrounds your mind. The cage is invisible, you cannot feel it. In fact, you were born inside that cage and because it has been with you your whole life it is imperceptible to you. But, believe me the cage is real, and it constrains your ability to understand the world and what is happening in it.

A cage is a kind of filter, not a complete barrier. It will let some things pass, but only what can fit between the bars. The creator of your cage has control over what you can perceive by controlling the size of the gaps. What is this cage? What are the gaps? Language my friends. It is your language which entraps you.

The words that you know, the ideas and concepts those words allow are the bars of your cage. It is through language that we understand and make sense of the world. A man cannot see a thing until his mind has the word for what it is. Let me give you an example.

Have you ever seen an object in the distance, but were unable to tell what was? Your eyes may look upon it clearly but you cannot make it out. No matter how long you stare, it will never become clear until that moment when another person looks and says, “oh, that’s “whatever”. Suddenly, the scales fall away and you can see it plain as day. Nothing changed with your eyes, or the object. It was only the name of the thing that was lacking.

It’s a simple example but it illustrates the power of language over our connection to reality. This is why language is a tool of control. Your oppressors know this lesson all too well. If you are to free yourself from the cage that has been created around you, you must intentionally alter your language. 

“How” you might ask, “are you suggesting we literally start speaking a different language?” Of course not. English is the common tongue in America and the hour is much too late to start Duolingo. It is the words that you use that must change. You must use words that reflect reality, not the make believe of the authoritarian. You must reject the language of your oppressor and substitute your own.

How do you do that? By identifying the words that in practice reflect the opposite of what our shared understanding of those words are. Another example. When the government talks about the masked men roaming our cities, what does the government and media call them? “Police Officers”, “Federal Agents”, “Law Enforcement.” We all know the ideas those words imply. Things like authority, integrity, justice, upholding the law, public safety. We all recognize that the men terrorizing our communities bear no resemblance to those ideals.

What are they really then? What words should we use? They are goons, hired hitmen, criminal kidnappers and brown shirts. They aren’t upholding the constitution, they are defiling it. When we change the way we describe those who do violence on behalf of our oppressor, we change the way we see them. Why should you use a word of respect for someone paid to hurt you? Why would you give deference to a lawless thug sent to abduct your family? You wouldn’t, and when you use the correct word for these men you begin to see them in a totally different way. I know this war will not be won by hurling insults. But if we want to free our country we must first free our mind. 

So be. When you hear yourself repeating the same words your enemy uses, take notice. Think about whether the language you are using truly describes the situation at hand. And if it doesn’t, think of a new word. Then teach that word to your compatriots. Encourage them to do the same.

We are in the early days of this struggle my friends, and much harder times await. The intentional use of language is an early lesson we must learn, or we will forever be trapped in a world not of our making. 

Response to Nate Hagens and Luke Kemp Interview

I eagerly watched the latest episode of Nate Hagens’ The Great Simplification podcast with author Luke Kemp, and as usual, I had a lot of thoughts during and after. This time, I decided to try putting them into a coherent piece and publishing it.

For starters, I loved the new way of defining total societal collapse. Thinking of it as the breakdown of multiple power structures makes it easier to visualize what collapse might look and feel like. It also offers a yardstick we can use to measure #OurPredicament today. This framing connected several threads from my previous research. 

One clear example of a hierarchical power structure is the patriarchy, along with the gender roles and sexual mores that sustain it. Over the past few generations, this dominance hierarchy has been steadily eroded in most industrialized countries. Gender equality, voting rights, and sexual progressivism can all be viewed through the lens of a declining power structure. Is this erosion itself a seed of collapse? I don’t think the push for equality is a cause; rather, it is a symptom of a late-stage empire.

One historian I’m certain Luke has encountered, though he didn’t come up in the interview, is Sir John Glubb. Many Doomers will already know his work. Glubb was a British military officer stationed in the Middle East after WWI, and after retiring he devoted his life to studying and writing about the region’s civilizations. Over time, he began to notice recurring patterns in their trajectories, which he outlined in his short book The Fate of Empires. There he described what he called the six Imperial Stages.

The stages, in order, are Breakout, Conquest, Commerce, Wealth, Intellect, and Decadence. The pattern is easy to map onto American history. In the Breakout phase, a people come to govern themselves—American Independence. In the Conquest phase, they expand their territory, “conquering the West.” In the stage of Commerce, the empire exploits its territory for gain (railroads, telegraphs, trade), leading to immense societal wealth. That wealth fuels a massive expansion of public education, at least in the imperial core. Finally, as a wealthy and educated populace turns inward, seeking self-fulfillment, society enters Decadence. The parallels with America are obvious.

As empires pass through these stages, Glubb argues, changes within the population contribute to their dissolution. Returning to the theme of patriarchal hierarchy: in the empires Glubb studied, as wealth and education expanded, women’s rights began to evolve and grow. Women assumed new roles in domestic life and government. Sexual norms also shifted, and the newly educated increasingly pursued self-actualization. Expressions of what we now call queer identities became more visible and accepted.

Returning to the Kemp interview, it made me wonder: authoritarians often push society—or respond to its pressures—toward a return to more traditional gender roles and sexual norms. Strongmen frame this as essential to halting collapse. I’ve often remarked that conservatives may correctly identify societal problems but misdiagnose their causes, leading to failed solutions. If the erosion of hierarchical power structures is one way to measure collapse, then the weakening of the patriarchy is certainly a marker. To be clear, I’m not moralizing here; rather, I’m suggesting that viewing modern events through the rise-and-fall lens of civilizations can help us make sense of today’s dynamics.

Another aspect of the interview worth noting is how small a role the environment seems to play in Goliath’s Curse. Luke mentions resources several times, but he lumps together population, hoardable wealth, and the natural environment. It’s worth highlighting the direct role environmental destruction has played in the collapse of civilizations worldwide. A couple good books on the subject would be John Perlin’s A Forest Journey and The Burning Earth by Sunil Amrith.

Time and again, the exploitation of natural resources drives empires to expand, but ultimately constrains their growth and maintenance. The correlations are so stark and numerous that I was disappointed not to hear them mentioned explicitly as causes of Goliath’s demise. Once again, it’s a phenomenon we can witness in real time in our own lives.

Finally, I want to reflect on the discussion of moral responsibility for those with what I call “eyes to see.” Others say “climate aware” or “collapse aware.” This section struck me personally, touching on a struggle I face daily. My career is at one of the giant tech companies, and my work directly contributes to the growth of the internet, AI, and what I think of as The Machine.

This may come as a surprise, but most of the people I interact with in the tech world—both at my company and among peers—agree that AI is harmful to humans and the planet. Yet we rationalize and justify our ongoing contributions. Our defenses could be lifted straight from Hannah Arendt’s The Banality of Evil. We insist that we don’t want these harms, describe ourselves as helpless cogs in a machine, and soothe ourselves with the belief that even if we took a moral stand, nothing would change. I’ve repeated variations of these excuses myself many times.

I want to do something meaningful—something that doesn’t directly contribute to the ongoing enshitification of the planet—while still providing for my family. That’s partly why I’m writing this piece. If I can figure out how to sustain myself through work like this, maybe I can free both myself and my soul. In the end, I agree with Kemp: there is no moral way to contribute to companies intent on dominating and destroying the world. But I disagree that my support defines the totality of my moral standing. As he noted, it is luck—or perhaps fate—that placed each of us in our particular time and place. I know my life’s journey and how I came to be here. Now I know better, and so I’m trying to do better. Thanks for reading

Civilization is the root of Our Predicament

What does it mean to say “Civilization is the root of Our Predicament?” 

First let’s define the terms so we’re on the same page. When I use the words, “civilization”, “root”, and “Our Predicament” I’m using them as broadly as possible. I’m trying to encompass many eons and a multitude of dynamics into a single phrase. Civilization is simply people living in cities. People congregating in large numbers, setting up hierarchies and importing resources. By root I simply mean not further reducible. All other problems stem from this original sin. Our Predicament means the set of interlocking problems without a solution. #OurPredicament is the plight of humans and the planet in our present day.

What is it about civilization that causes all these interlocking and ultimately unsolvable problems? Like all technologies the flaws of civilization are inherent in its design. For instance, all animals sustain themselves on the resources that exist locally in their environment. If and when those resources are depleted the species must move to where new resources can be found, or die, That is a natural limit which keeps each species’ population in check. When people civilize, or Gather in cities, they rapidly and permanently degrade the carrying capacity of the immediate area. This immediately creates a dynamic where resources must be extracted from the hinterlands and transported inward to the city, while the impacts of the city are distributed throughout those same Hinterlands. This dynamic continues as the city grows until its ability to extract resources regress and the city begins to shrink. This inherent instability in the design of civilization is one aspect of how it creates our predicament.

Another is the hierarchy civilization demands. We evolved within groups of 100 to 150 and aren't equipped to know more people than that. Large numbers of people demand representative decision making and direction on how to distribute excess resources. The inherent inability of man to prevent the negative consequences of privilege means that eventually selfish rulers will take power. The dynamics of power themselves set off a whole other set of sociological and environmental feedback loops. So the domination inherent in civilization of the few over the many is a requirement to the working of civilization. All of the abuses that engenders are rooted in its form.

These are just a couple examples of the features of civilization that are also its bugs. These flaws demand that the system be in a constant cycle of progress and regress. The depth of the fall usually corresponding to the height of the civilization's rise. Us moderns have now irreparably harmed the planet's ability to provide for us without the things that civilization provides. Eight billion people cannot live of the land. Even if the countryside weren't already denuded emptying the cities would quickly do the job. 

So what to do? We're caught in an inescapable trap. Although we cannot free ourselves, we can reduce our suffering by ceasing to struggle. We can give in to our fate and accept our predicament humbly. We can make low energy choices where possible and work to reduce the suffering of all beings.

It is a gift to be alive now. It is both a blessing and a curse to be the people who will see.