Evolutionary Opportunities & Fairy Tales During Social Collapse
The Upside of Tragedy
Despite everything I’ve written already, this entire 4D Galaxy-Brain strategy of getting resources to important people really isn’t that unique; establishing financial security for people outside of institutional control is the entire basis of the crypto movement. The main disconnect I feel with everyone else looking at this problem is just how little we need to move the needle in order to change everything. Yes, you are witnessing powerful villains unleash a cascade of horrors you never dreamed of- still, the path to winning seems more daunting than it actually is.
I explained it in terms of market dynamics in Part 1:
The demand for Courage and Dissent has never been higher, and the supply is intentionally restricted by artificially inflated costs. That means if we can loosen that valve by reducing the cost just a bit, it is liable to yield vastly asymmetric returns due to the pressure behind it as well as the scarcity in the environment. Courage is also a resource known for the rare trait of proliferating upon mere observation.
But it’s probably more valuable to look at it from an evolutionary perspective. As is usually the case, the evolutionary opportunities I’m referring to come as a result of a trade-off. The trade-off is that as conditions in the environment deteriorate, the lower the threshold for filling valuable niches gets. As a very straightforward example, imagine you are a particularly low-status male in a healthy, vigorous society. Simply as a result of being dealt a bad genetic hand, you do not fill the social niche of “Quality Husband”. Then a war breaks out and all fighting-age males get drafted, but you do not due to your various medical ailments. The war is a disaster and three years later, 40% of the men deployed have been killed. It has taken immense amounts of suffering for it to become so, but now you very much do fill that niche.
The longer social niches go unfilled, the easier it gets to do from simple desperation. Look at what launched the Jordan Peterson phenomenon. He told a bunch of spoiled kids to shut the fuck up. In a healthy society, it would have just been another Tuesday, but because people were so desperate for the niche of “An Adult With A Spine” to be filled, he fit the bill. Same thing with what launched Bret Weinstein into the public eye. An institution of higher learning told all white people to leave for the day. Bret said “Yeah no, that’s wrong” and now everyone knows his name because people were starved for the niche of “A Normal Person Not Swayed By Antisocial Racial Hysteria” to be filled.
I’m not minimizing what either of them did by any means; what they did was indeed heroic. They also would have disappeared if they didn’t have oceans of substance behind them which they do, but the point is all people needed was a normal display of prosocial behavior to immediately pledge allegiance to their cause, regardless if it was public or just in their hearts. It’s like “any port in a storm” but for courage. The West is in a dry spell of a lifetime; it’s 2 am and we’ve had a couple of drinks. Why do you think social media is basically a hive of watered-down personality cults anyway?
Emergent Heroism
Why do you think the eternal cross-cultural myth is that the hero emerges just when all seems lost? Why didn’t the hero emerge before then? He is a hero after all, why didn’t he use the virtues he had all along and stop the suffering earlier? Doesn’t sound that heroic. It’s because circumstances had to deteriorate enough for him to utilize his latent heroic capacity. It usually doesn’t make sense to pursue high-risk, high-reward endeavors like being a hero- in fact, it’s almost always a terrible decision- the environment had to make sense (i.e. be shitty enough) first for the subset of humans possessing dormant heroic programs to dust them off and actually start running them. You might think such programs are in shorter supply than ever, and you might even be right… but latent capacities don’t offer the convenience of announcing their existence, it’s our responsibility to discover them.
This is where a Civil Insurance Network aligns with evolutionary strategy. The majority of people that may not be genetically predisposed to heroism still find themselves in the same environment. They know the score. They know typical low-risk endeavors that worked for their parents and grandparents aren’t enough to cut it, but just don’t see themselves cut out for going for broke (whether this self-perception is accurate or not is their personal journey). Therefore, the optimal evolutionary strategy for this group (the majority of normal humans) is to not partake in the wild risks engaged by those with a taste for it but to freeride on the benefits those risks provide, which is why they would jump on the ability to safely subsidize those risks from afar if it were provided to them. “Free riding” is actually an uncharitable term- is assisting the heroic endeavors of others not itself a heroic act? Heroism by proxy seems like quite a favorable middle ground to occupy.
I’m no hero myself but I’ve determined the best thing I can do is help facilitate an environment conducive to the emergence of actual heroism- you don’t have to commit yourself as much as I have, but anyone can do this. And should, because we have an absurd amount of opportunities at our fingertips. Napoleon said he “found the crown of France just lying in the gutter”- we have crowns of various shapes and sizes lying around everywhere but people that would lose power if anyone wore them have made sure anyone that takes a step in their direction gets struck by lightning. As long as we succeed at building a grounding system to absorb the damage, they can finally continue their walk, bend down, and reach out…
Yes, the world is scary. I’m concerned about tech-driven totalitarianism as much as anyone, but the reality is this is an old story- the oldest story- the roles are just played by new actors with more expensive props. Why is the hero always portrayed as the underdog miraculously prevailing over a seemingly dominant villain? Because established orders become corrupted over time due to the nature of power providing social niches for villains who don’t just occupy niches that only benefit themselves, but actively attempt to close competing niches that would be beneficial to many- that’s what makes them villains. It’s their role. The role of heroes is adapting to deliberately unfavorable environments effectively enough to outmaneuver and ultimately depose the villains. Our role is to use the tools at our disposal to skew the environment in their favor. It’s time to show up and play our role.