**Working Intro**

• Societal structure is defined as VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous).
  • We treat the world as if it is divisible, separable, simple, and infinite when it is really complex, interconnected, finite, and an ecological-social-psychological-economic system. Our problems stem from this mismatch.
  • The young will have a never-ending childhood learning process with the increasing age and the old need to reintegrate learning.
  • 
• Sickness from technology and also risk of tech running wild
• Sickness from inequality
• Overton window: political policy room for movement
• Jamie Wheal, Daniel Schmachtenberger, Jordan Greenhall, Consilience Project, Rebel Wisdom, etc.

• Conclusion:
  • If you are diagnosed with something, take the time to learn about it first. Use critical thinking skills to critically appraise the research before running to community groups online.
  • Unless specifically stated not to, address your needs first. Then use tools where applicable.

http://peterturchin.com/PDF/Turchin_JPR2012.pdf

https://bigthink.com/the-present/2020-predictions/#rebelltitem1

A political and cultural structure is an accurate representation of the overall feeling felt amongst of the masses. A form of complexity that uses individual people and their fears as the seeds for societal ideology. People who are motivated by fear (the unknown, aggressors, lack of resources, etc.) will have a government that uses this fear as a weapon for mobility. The individual actors holding that power are also victims of the overall condition of their society but they have a clear pathway that appears to offer safety from their fears. Having opportunity presented to them when they believe themselves to be in need (regardless of comparisons) provides enough motivation to take immoral action with enough conviction that what they are doing is the right thing. Unfortunately, their identity, ego, and history must align with these actions and their minds will drape a veil of self-conceit over their ineptitude to prevent the exhausting self-confrontation that may arise if the truth becomes apparent. They are not malicious; they are just suffering from trauma that uses destructive opportunity as a way of coping with that trauma. When it works for them, it reinforces that behavior, and it becomes harder and harder to decondition selfishness and greed no matter how many ayahuasca retreats they go on. 

Thinking about the societal structure as a consequence of the expression of the people’s experience is more of a “bottom-up” theory. As opposed to the usual victim-mentality, top-down ideology of blaming those actors at the top for intentionally conspiring against us. The “top 0.1%” must be evil, as they seem to be causing the public harm. The members of the public have been conditioned to believe that the underdog is the hero of the story and anybody who opposes them must be a villain. A top-down mentality assumes that there is an external threat (the other/not us) that is causing us harm in some way. This threat must appear beyond our comprehension to incite uncertainty in our fate and cause anxiety among the public (the more sensitive suffer more, while the less sensitive feel dissonance but carry on in an attempt to survive). 

If the current system is failing or weak, the ones motivated to fight for survival will spot this weakness and take advantage of it. Meaning that there was a problem that was going unaddressed, but we only notice it when there is pressure of corruption weighing on it. However, as mentioned before, we only see the straw that is breaking the camel’s back, rather than the cumulative weight that was already burdening it. We are not aware enough to spot trends while they are happening. We require an event to identify “cause-and-effect.” The “threat” is only part of the process of checks and balances. An inevitability of a fragile system. Chaos is required to destabilize something that is broken, so that something new may be born in its place. 

Understanding this, we could accept our role in entropy and welcome our demise by letting it take us under like a raging river. Fighting an immaterial object is only making us exhausted and accelerating our demise anyway. Or we could try to learn the nature of this current of humanity and try to steer ourselves through it. As far as I’m aware, the only ways to gain control over a chaotic system are to cover up the expression of the outputs (the top-down method of putting a bandaid over the problem and ignoring the underlying dysfunction for short-term gain) or the more energetically demanding (initially) bottom-up method of changing the inputs of that system to make it more efficient and resilient in the long run.

We often fear that by being emotionally vulnerable and taking risks allows the alphas (emotionally damaged and aggressive individuals) to take advantage of the weakness in the system (as mentioned earlier). What often doesn’t get addressed here is that there is always a beta, or a group of betas, that keep the alpha in line. The alpha is in desperate need to be accepted and so they fight to get to the top. Safety doesn’t seem guaranteed otherwise, unless they relearn appropriate social skills and trust in the group (typically challenging when they have been betrayed in the past). They may get a disproportionate number of resources but their needs are barely met due to their inability to feel satiated with gratitude and acceptance. Whatever the customs or requirements of the group are, the alpha will adapt for survival. If the creation of alphas is reduced, by learning to provide a healthy environment for children and identify when individual needs are not being met, the overall dynamic of the societal structure will change as a consequence. When there are too many hurt people within a hurt system, it’s only natural that a problem is going to be expressed on the level of leadership. We need consistent and trustworthy leaders to get us away from times of uncertainty. Chaotic leaders are great when we need an uprising, but after that they are not usually qualified enough to lead through times of peace. In saying that, if your opponent is somebody who has fought to get to where they are, fighting them will only put them in their comfort zone and continue the same trend even if they are defeated. The enemy of the power hungry is neglect. This is what caused their motivation in the first place. It you want to cause pain, you use neglect, but they will lash out like a dog backed into a corner. It is better to change the public, show the powerful that there is a better way, and help them to heal too. It may not seem to be the case, especially since we keep using traditionally sought-after terms like alpha and powerful to define them, but they are suffering just as much, if not more, than us. They just don’t have the awareness to acknowledge that their defense mechanism is going to kill them and us in the long -run. Foresight is damn near impossible when you are fighting for survival, so they may need help to see.    

I’ll admit that understanding those who have taken an unfair share of wealth and unearned responsibility without truly contributing to the group does not sound appealing. We feel cheated by them, and our collective species is sick and stressed out as a consequence of the lack of responsibility accepted by the government, big business, colonialism, (insert usual bad guys). However, remember that they are the response of collective trauma, not the cause. They should take responsibility for their actions, but they will only do so when they feel some sort of connection to those that they have harmed. It was our fault for allowing such weaknesses in the system in the first place. Capitalism and democracy certainly seem preferable to chaos, but there are far too many holes in those systems that allow for this kind of behavior. Don’t blame the dog for running away if you left the gate open. 

In short, we need to look after ourselves well enough to heal our trauma, learn how to deal with it long-term, build our resilience to cope with inevitable issues, help each other to learn and grow, create anti-fragile methods of planning for destruction (instead of hoping for the best), and developing sustainable ways of educating and coexisting with each other. Acknowledging that change happens and we must adapt when it does. Rather than the historically broken way of defending broken ideas even though they no longer serve us.      

Positive societal change requires

• Personal recovery
• Personal anti-fragility
• Growth
• Teaching and facilitating recovery and growth for others (explore and play, teach others, reconsolidate information, create new meaning)
• Taking responsibility
• Societal anti-fragility
• Societal growth

Personal purpose and meaning will change over time. At first, we’ll acknowledge what it means to give hope (a temporary measure as it only provides the desire for something other than what they have, in order to cross the threshold required for change), next we’ll take them through their personal journey of utilizing their previous experience and desire to contribute (after trauma recovery of course), next we’ll introduce societal trauma and needs so that we can heal them as a collective. Finally, we can carry out a purpose and untied motivation for humans. 

As mentioned earlier, these models are a bottom-up method of utilizing the theory of complexity. Each level must be an extension of the previous, which must serve as a sturdy yet adaptable foundation for the next. Human collectives are an expression of the primal emotions of the individuals present. They resonate together (evening out their temperaments) and the result is a collective function. 

The individual energetic capacity is very low. We can only store and use a very limited amount of information (or stress) at any given time. However, we are often led to believe that our individual potential is endless. I feel this only feels apparent because most people follow the path of least resistance in order to conserve energy, so they never actually find their true limits, which adapt to fit their current usage anyway (to a biological limit). The silver lining to this observation is that we are yet to find our collective limits. We’ve never worked together as a species this large before. If we can overcome our differences there is no way of knowing how far we can go. 

People need to find their true “why.” Is it fear, hate, anger, resentment, uncertainty, or lack of personal autonomy? At their core they are all fear based. However, if you can dig down to the true why for your actions, it is easier to make smarter decisions that won’t result in feeling empty at the end of the road. We build habits to handle the threats that are of the most danger, or of highest frequency, to our identity and safety. Sometimes these threats are imaginary or our previous reactions to real threats were perceived as effective at the time. Meaning we carry out ineffective actions to cope with observed threats and the lack of predictability adds to that stress and leads to things like apathy, depression, and self-defeat. Occasionally, interventions such as drug addictions may help us to overcome life debilitating situations, but as we all know, these interventions become a crutch and the whole body begins to rely on it. Even the dark triad behaviors (narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy) may arise as a defense mechanism, which get rewarded in our current defunct system. To begin working on these behaviors and addictions, they must be acknowledged as no longer serving you or truly helping you to deal with that trauma. Sometimes thanking that coping strategy and yourself for getting through that terrible situation is helpful for resolving it. 

Questions to ask to build a greater understanding of self

• What is the feeling?
• Why is it there?
• Can it be resolved?
• What is your automatic craving or response when that feeling arises?
• Does it still serve you?
• Accept responsibility for change
• Don’t blame others
• Reconnect with you community and contribute to it (don’t use them as a coping mechanism or to achieve desired attention and acceptance)
• Share love and leave no room for hate

Once the emotion and cause of distress is identified and understood, autonomy can be achieved by creating effectual change. The person need not dwell. Spotting signs of trauma arising can be met with greater confidence and new habits to alleviate fear and dependence. The contribution to others may also help the person to take themselves outside of their own mind and to remember they are a small part of something greater. Creating a new layer of development. 

Fear to empathy process

• Fight or flight
• Self-preservation
• Empathy with another
• Empathy with a group
• Self-preservation of the group at the expense of others (often neighboring groups that are “competing” for resources)
• Empathy for multiple groups that are relatable
• Empathy for the species
• Self-preservation of the species
• Empathy for life
• Sustainable coexistence

We have the ability to progress, more-or-less, in that order. If we skip a level, we may harbor fear and uncertainty around previously unestablished and unresolved connections. For example, those who try to share love for the destitute or animals before learning to love and accept their own family and friends. Resentment occurs as a result of trying to take the moral high-road. That high-road tends to be built upon ignorance and misplaced motivations usually anyway. Each stage requires acknowledging the problem, healing the trauma, building it stronger, preparing for potential healthy confrontations so that you don’t need to rely on willpower to get you through, growth/play/discovery, consolidation, teaching, then moving to the next step. 

Gratitude can help us to transition through the different stages of growth. Once we acknowledge what we have, whether that be health and wellbeing or social support, we can appreciate it for what it is, without placing labels on it. If something or someone helped you to overcome something there is no need for “buts.” Accepting and feeling gratitude will help us to better identify positive opportunities, build better relationships, learn quicker, and let go of things without resentment. 

Personal Scientific Research Pathway

Human energetics -> Mitochondria -> Sensation and transduction -> Electrolytes and nutrition -> Electromagnetism and thermodynamics -> Cell origin and fear response -> Polarity, chaos, and entropy -> LTP and LTD limitations -> Cell energetic limitations and cancer -> Autoimmunity