Being clear-eyed and full-hearted doesn’t mean being passive, weak, or silent.
It means resisting every effort to supplant our autonomy of mind with symbols of identity, no matter the source.
Extreme language during election season isn’t anything new.
But this time it really is different. Our response must be different, too.
The question is not whether Trump will accept the election result if he loses. He won’t.
The question is whether a Missionary with actual power will join him.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m thoroughly despondent about the calcification, mendacity, and venal corruption that I think four years of Clinton™ will impose. Trump, on the other hand … I think he breaks us. Maybe he already has. He breaks us because he transforms every game we play as a country — from our domestic social games to our international security games — from a Coordination Game to a Competition Game.
The outcomes of NFL games are inordinately influenced by officials relative to other sports. This is not new. The Narrative environment faced by the NFL in 2021, however, IS new.
I’m not sure they’re ready for it.
When a famous person shakes his or her finger at you, they’re not telling you a fact.
They’re telling you how to think about a fact.
Called It - Election Edition
Men of God in the City of Man is a nine part series about a narrative virus that infected the charismatic and Pentecostal churches in the United States. It isn't a story about Christian Nationalism. It isn't a story about January 6th. It isn't a story about why people voted for Trump. It is a story about a story. It is a story about the language that created a self-sustaining movement defined by its unwavering belief in a fundamentally corrupt electoral system.
Recent Notes
I, Nazgûl
Being clear-eyed and full-hearted doesn’t mean being passive, weak, or silent.
It means resisting every effort to supplant our autonomy of mind with symbols of identity, no matter the source.
Apocalypse Always
Extreme language during election season isn’t anything new.
But this time it really is different. Our response must be different, too.
The Open Window
Creating two tightly bounded political extremes is NOT opening the Overton Window.
It just adds a second, equally closed window behind which all of our worst ideas can and will fester.
Remembering the Face of Your Father
For the past 28 years, since the death of my father, I’ve been hearing a steady tick-tock in my head.
How do we tell our stories to our children and our children’s children before it’s too late? Before we pass as all humans must pass?
Generative AI is a communion machine.
Manufactured Consensus
The more we believe the lie that social networks democratize narrative formation, the more systematically we make ourselves part of their manufactured consensus.
No, the world doesn’t hate America
The global mass love for the US and its culture is genuine, and isn’t being forced on people from above, but because US culture – despite all the showy glitz – is about how everyone’s story matters.
Generative AI is a Resurrection Machine
Each of us has a unique story. A story that makes you you. A story that is the engine of your consciousness. A story that is your thread of life.
A story that today can be inferred from your words by generative AI and restored computationally, so that the thread of life remains uncut.
Everything is about to change.
Well, I’m Not AI (As A Strategy): WInAaaS!
We think it’s a human art vs. AI art problem, just like when my music friends and I thought it was an alternative vs. mainstream problem. The simple truth is, it’s a relationship-with-itself versus a relationship-with-yourself problem.
The Contentapocalypse is Coming
AI is flooding our timelines with so much content that we won’t even find content very interesting anymore. It’s too much. Or, at least it will feel that way.
That’s when it will hit us; we don’t want this stuff at all. We don’t want content. We want art.
The Mr. Beast Memo is a Guide to the Gen Z Workforce
“Lots of people are like nooo it’s not the phones. It’s the phones. Come on.”
No one gets the Algorithm and the way Gen Z is trapped by it better than Kyla Scanlon.
Donald Trump and the Common Knowledge Game
The question is not whether Trump will accept the election result if he loses. He won’t.
The question is whether a missionary with actual power will join him.
The ETF Market: A Zine
ET contributor Dave Nadig is not only singlehandedly bringing back the zine, he’s using it to explain ETFs better than anyone!
Metametastasis
We are all concerned about how Gen AI may untether us from reality.
We are not nearly concerned enough about how media will have the ability to do the same through mature social networks.
Make, Protect, Teach with Scott Bradlee: Part 1
In our Saturday conclusion, Scott Bradlee of Post Modern Jukebox @postmodernjukebox joins Epsilon Connect 2024 to lead the conversation about what Make, Protect, Teach means to him. And show off his incredible musical talent!
The Weird Thing
The weirdest thing about this “weird” campaign is how convinced some are that it represents a thoroughly directed, planned, systematic propaganda effort.
That’s not how this works. That’s not how any of this works. Not any more, anyway.
We Are Losing Our Minds
Your brain evolved to perceive symbols.
Symbols evolved to be perceived by your brain.
Human society is evolving around a technology which exposes our brains to a barrage of seductive symbols.
And it’s making us lose our minds.
Being Human At An AI Conference: Epsilon Connect 2024 Notes
Matt Zeigler went to Epsilon Connect 2024: Being Human in the Age of AI.
It took him a while, but he figured out what it’s all about.
Human Being in the Age of AI
The human animal is a social animal, in the truest sense of the words, more similar in our essence to ants, bees and termites than to any other creature. And like any social animal, we are pushed by our very nature towards The Hive, a meaning for our species where consciousness is outsourced, autonomy is abdicated, and discovery is denatured. In his keynote presentation at Epsilon Connect 2024, Ben Hunt shows how the technological push towards The Hive has never been stronger than here at the dawn of the Age of AI, but also how we can use those same tools of language, memory and story to reclaim our human society, our human dominion, and our human being.
This is the Great Ravine
Our mediated cultural transition from sadness to generalized anger to focused anger at specific people and institutions of the Other Party is an entirely intentional effort by Big Politics, Big Tech and Big Media.
This is the Great Ravine, and it’s all going to get much worse before it gets any better.
Joe Biden and the Common Knowledge Game
Common knowledge is what everyone knows that everyone knows.
Common knowledge is why the 2024 Biden/Harris campaign has collapsed.
All that remains is the cope.