Every so often, things fall apart.
In the words of those who lived it, here are the vibes and the semantic signatures of the twentieth century’s most devastating social collapses.
From the meaning in their words, wisdom for our future emerges.
Recent major media stories that feel to us like they’re part of a larger narrative campaign.
Recent major media stories that feel to us like they’re part of a larger narrative campaign.
This is an exclusive subscriber-only preview of the first six chapters of Rusty Guinn’s upcoming book Outsourcing Consciousness: How Social Networks are Making Us Lose Our Minds. The book explores how evolution, polarization, and technology are slowly transforming humanity into a hive mind - and what we can and can't do about it.
The Long Now is everything we pull into the present from our future selves and our children. We are told that the economic stimulus and the political fear of the Long Now are costless, when in fact they cost us … everything.
Tick-tock.
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.
Men of God in the City of Man
Amid the Widening Gyre of politics and the black hole of financial markets, the only anchor is us, together, walking with Clear Eyes and Full Hearts. Experience Ben's original 4-part series.
Outsourcing Consciousness
The Long Now
Men of God in a City of Man
Things Fall Apart
Recent Notes
The Four Horsemen of the Great Ravine, Part 1
Every so often, things fall apart.
In the words of those who lived it, here are the vibes and the semantic signatures of the twentieth century’s most devastating social collapses.
From the meaning in their words, wisdom for our future emerges.
Chapter 6: The Possibility Engine
Humans evolved to acquire symbols as quickly as possible.
Language and storytelling evolved to be acquirable as easily as possible.
That’s why our tales spin us.
Chapter 5: The Axe that Never Was
Our brains evolved to tell stories before they evolved to speak.
This has fundamental implications for our susceptibility to communication in the networked age.
Chapter 4: Out of Eden
If we care about the influence of social networks on our minds, why are we talking about bipedalism and the 8 million year cycle of co-evolution it kicked off?
Because it defined how our young were parented, how we taught them, and what they were exposed to. Because it changed how our symbolic brains evolved.
Chapter 3: Caliban’s Garden
Man’s road to becoming a storyteller began with a single step.
That step kicked off millions of years of co-evolution of the human brain, society, language – and our relationship with story.
Chapter 2: What is Story?
There are a lot of ways to define a “story.”
But to understand how story interacts with human consciousness requires us to be more specific.
Chapter 1: Overhearing Ourselves
Shakespeare invented the human by inventing a device which spoke the language of consciousness:
Story.
Introduction: David Bowie’s Alien
David Bowie was right.
Social networks aren’t a tool. They are an alien force that transforms human consciousness.
I Think Representative Democracy is a Good Idea and We Should Give It a Try
I am 60 years old.
I am a (very) patriotic American.
I have never felt represented by any elected official.
Never.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.