The Death/Rebirth of Society

Most people treat societal dysfunction like an external force, like a group of rogue elites pulling levers in a top-down conspiracy. In reality, society is an emergent property: a bottom-up reflection of collective behavior, belief, trauma, and neglect. The more we avoid our own wounds, the more our institutions calcify, crack, and cannibalize themselves. While I refuse to blame us as individuals for the clusterf$%k we’re in, our collective morals dictate the incentives that drive the psychopaths amongst us to lie, cheat, and steal their way to the top. 

This section is a study of sociological entropy at scale. You’ll find that societal collapse rarely looks like fire and brimstone. More often, it looks like polarization, apathy, distraction, and learned helplessness. 

The solution isn’t to rage against “the system” or glorify individual rebellion. In fact, fighting and rallying against a common enemy actually makes us more vulnerable to manipulation. It’s to recognize how systems are made of people, and how broken systems are often composed of unhealed individuals rewarded for avoiding complexity. To fix the future, we need to start upstream: by changing the quality of the inputs: our behavior, our relationships, and our inner architecture. 

Real change begins in the places no one sees. Where fear hides in our habits, where leadership reflects unresolved trauma, and where acceleration masquerades as growth. This is because society is formed from the bottom-up: a mirror of the collective psyche, rather than the will of the powerful. As with all deaths, we’re allowed to grieve at the destruction of the world that once was. However, we need to remember that collapse is feedback. The myth of linear progress keeps us chasing optimization instead of sustainability. Enduring change happens when we rewire the individual unit instead of sacrificing our freedom for convenience. Rebirth, if it’s to be real, must pass through the crucible of grief.  Grief, followed by responsibility.