Hi, Steve, thanks for the comment! The great motto of the Italian Renaissance was "Ad Fontes", which means "back to the source". By that, they meant going back to pre-Christian, Greco-Roman art and philosophy.
But I think the "Ad Fontes" motto could and should be repurposed for the 21st century. I recommend Terence McKenna's book "Archaic Revival", the topic of which is exactly your suggestion here.
David Chapman writes about an interactive paradigm that will overcome our contemporary objective paradigm. He uses the example of the rainbow: it is not a subjective experience for it has a physical basis in optics; it is not objective, for every subject has a different experience of it. The rainbow is neither subjective nor objective, it is interactive. Quantum mechanics is like that too. Maybe the next economy will be interactive and cybernetic in the Stafford Beer sense.
As Seth said, spoken through Jane Roberts. "You create your own reality" You create it and live it. I'm so glad to see this in print finally .Thank you for a very good AND intuitive article.
I’m so happy you have, and are writing about, the idea that science has ‘run its course’ and has become dogma. Really nice arc comparing these eras to inform us about what might be happening today.
I... suggest a less euro-centric analysis of the human condition over time might be more predictive. "Western" society is collapsing, sure, and that can take everyone down, but why presume the reaction of that same society will dictate its future? Is there a hidden assumption that the power of western capitalism over the globe continues? Does it?
Hi Jack, thanks for the comment! When you're right, you're right. The major limitation of this analysis is that it's INTERNAL to Western Civilization, looks outward at Islamic society, and ignores Indian and Chinese civilization altogether.
However, it's complex constellation of ideas I'm trying to convey here. Practicality demands that I limit the scope and draw a line somewhere. Besides, I'm sure you'd agree that the fate of Western civilization is highly significant to the trajectory of the broader human story...
Congrats on a highly intelligent and well informed essay. However, I see our greatest problem now is the collapse of scientific authority, as clearly seen in the nightmare of Trumpistan's pseudo-"expert" devolution, and the elevation of any and all mostly uneducated trolls to "expert" status, fueled by the seemingly egalitarian (anti)social media. When our educational Capital disintegrates and institutions of higher learning collapse, as we are seeing now under an unschooled dictator, we have nowhere to go but down, devolving into chaos and anarchy. So, perhaps, the new paradigm is chaos and anarchy? Have a blessed day.
Thanks for the comment, Dr. Miklashek! I understand what you're saying; there something scary and possibly destructive about being set adrift, unanchored to any centralized authority.
But I also think that institutions decay over time. Christianity started out as a plucky rebellion against Imperial power, only to eventually become a corrupt institution during the Middle Ages after it became the authority.
I believe a similar trajectory has befallen the sciences. Where it was once a glorious revolt against corrupt authority, the institution has now become the very thing it once fought against. Chaos and anarchy certainly describe the late Middle Ages and the early industrial period, and there's no denying that that's the current trend in our own time. But I hope we'll be able to rescue to the doctrine of science from the corrupt institution that currently houses it!
Marx’s mistake is he never accounted for the possibility of cohesive violence just being another job vulnerable to automation. Check out Samuel Butler’s work sometime.
Marx's assumption that we'd be able to move past the capitalist system after it's collapse may indeed turn out to be a mistake. We may revert to techno-feudalism, policed by Boston Dynamics attack robots, as you suggested.
But Marx's prediction that the capitalist mode of production will collapse from internal contradictions is the focus of this essay (it seems uncontestable at this point). The question of where we go after is a separate matter. It may very well be that we're about to reverse course on thousands of years of human "progress" (those Boston Dynamics robots sure are terrifying).
Either way, we're living through a pivotal moment in history!
Here is a dark viewpoint about what might replace science as the arbiter of shared reality based on what appears to be replacing it today. The concentration of power and wealth allows the elites to create narratives through their ownership of the media that counter scientific reality. Simultaneously, they are dismantling the institutions that support science as a system of understanding the world and replacing them with institutions where science is only useful for its exploitative properties.
As a non-elite, I obviously do not support this way of “creating your own reality”, but we need to be able to overcome the power of propaganda through ownership of the media or the post-science paradigm for society will not be egalitarian.
Thanks for the comment, Muckledger! I guess it all comes do the questions, what do you consider science to be?
In my mind, the question is of Platonism vs Aristotelianism. Are we living in an illusion, or a shadow cast by another domain? Or is reality defined instead by what we can empirically measure?
I suspect the former, and that the ruling classes believe it too but fund studies to promote a materialist conception of reality because that's what keeps people going to work every morning. That what keeps, in other words, the ruling classes in control...
I don't appreciate your whitewash of oligarchy. No understanding of history can be correct without the central understanding that the same bloodline-obsessed family has retained their position as the "ruling class" from the beginning of our species to the current day.
Karl Marx was a member of that family and his disingenuous "ideology" is just another component of the same social engineering the few have always used to control the many.
What's the claim here, Seven? Is it really that a SINGLE family is animating all of human history? And that the entire ruling class belongs to this single family?
That's correct. And I'm at 20 consecutive years now of researching, studying, and collecting the evidence ("Archivist" isn't just a stylistic affectation) of that very fact. And I've been doing it with a mind that, by any objective measure, I have yet to meet an equal to. I say nothing without evidence in hand; you won't find me easy to argue with.
Leave your ego somewhere else when you speak to me; it will only infantilize the exchange.
I didn't, myself, do the years of genealogy work that PROVES all power brokers are far more closely related than the lame attempt to rationalize it away with "if you go back far enough...". That work has been done by someone else, whom I just discovered a year ago. (I've always found genealogy too boring to engage in.) He's done and written up over a thousand investigations of hoaxed events and the genealogies of the rich, famous, and powerful. I read them all earlier this year, in about two months. Would you like me to link you to that impressive body of work?
In the Renaissance part of the post you forgot to mention what the Elites forced the then-current-crop of system "revolutionaries" to sacrifice for their acceptance into the new status quo.
Jesus Method's got watered down.
So what got watered down inside proto-science itself during the transition to Capitalism?
"Although many of its founding members and future illustrious alumni will continue practicing alchemy, the newly born modern science will go on stripped of its original metaphysical half, disregarded for sounding too religious, when dogmatic religion had paradoxically done everything it could to eradicate it in the first place. Swiftly cutting away its universal immaterial roots, science became modern, and our world with it."
"A disillusioned Comenius later utters words of warning. ‘Foundations are being laid by these new investigations into nature, but is it being considered what is going to be built on these foundations? If ends beyond the cultivation of the natural sciences for themselves alone are not being envisaged, the work might turn out to be ‘a Babylon turned upside down, building not towards heaven, but towards earth’."
AI may prove to be another tool - another means of production - affordable to anyone with a smartphone or a laptop. The result maybe millions of “micro-producers” serving increasingly specific niches, enabled by AI tools that make small-scale customization economically viable. More producers, more variety, more specialized matching of specific supply to specific demand. Barriers to entry could be drastically reduced as AI and flexible manufacturing (e.g., 3-D printers) let anyone serve a micro-niche. Radical customization may become the norm.
Hi Richard, thanks for the comment. I love your optimism! I hope you're right. But waves of layoffs are already being announced by our biggest corporations as 2025 draws to a close. In the near term, it appears that its going to become harder for regular people to negotiate for the money we need to eat.
Broadly speaking, the advent of labor-saving technology should be an occasion for rejoicing. The problem is that our private ownership structures incentivize employers to fire redundant workers. Rather than roll back the length of the work week, as a more democratic decision-making structure might do.
I am optimistic. Back in the early 1970s, after the Clean Air Act was passed, coal-fired power plants had to install scrubbers to reduce sulfur dioxide emissions. The scrubbers left behind huge piles of waste - mostly gypsum. At first, no one knew what to do with the stuff, so it just piled up. But some entrepreneurs figured out that it could be used in drywall, cement, and even as a soil conditioner in farming. So, what started out as useless waste turned into a valuable resource.
As unused workers and college grads pile up, I’m pretty confident that some smart entrepreneur somewhere will see them as a valuable resource and find uses for them (though Harvard and Yale graduates may turn out to be too toxic).
What you call “capitalism” isn’t capitalism at all. It’s crony state corporatism - a mixed system dominated by government intervention, central banks, and artificially created credit. It's a system of state-directed credit, subsidies, and manipulation, which rewards short-term growth and resource plunder rather than genuine wealth creation.
True free-market capitalism, or laissez-faire capitalism, lets resources go where they are most valued without political interference. It relies on private property, honest money and 'voluntary' exchange. Prices form naturally based on supply and demand, guiding people to use resources efficiently and rewarding those who take risks and innovate; it ensures that scarce resources are allocated by real needs and real costs, not by political favors, debt, or artificial credit.
Hi Brett, thank you for the wonderful comment! What you call "crony state corporatism" is a reasonable description of certain economic and political dynamics taking place before our eyes. You did a good job articulating those!
I tend to agree with most of what you wrote here: markets (with a few obvious exceptions) truly are a fantastic way of distributing scarce resources. But I have two important points for you that I think you've overlooked.
(1) I actually do mean to implicate CAPITALISM itself here. That is to say, a system in which businesses themselves---not just goods and services---are traded on markets is likely to attract buyers looking to convert capital into more capital. That's the true source of the dysfunction you cite above.
Furthermore, I see no argument against Marx's observation that private ownership structures cannot survive the introduction of too much labor-saving technology. There will be no one to buy goods and services, once enough workers are fired and replaced by tech.
We need a different ownership structure for businesses, perhaps democratic co-ops, that will use tech to shorten the length of the work week instead of firing workers en masse to enhance profits. That will allow us to retain markets as distribution scheme.
(2) You write of political interference, but it seem obvious to me that states beget markets. You'll no doubt lament the violent and coercive nature of the state, and I'll be inclined to agree with that. But we must presuppose the state's standards of measurement (currency), and it's legal enforcement, in order to have markets!
The idea that markets exists naturally, and that the state is some kind of intruder into them, doesn't stand up to historical scrutiny. I believe that idea to be propaganda from business interest who seek to offload tax burdens and avoid regulation.
I'd sure be interested in your response if you're inclined to give it!
If we make it there as a species, I ‘hope’ the next shift is a more biocentrically-oriented one that places humans back within Nature.
Hi, Steve, thanks for the comment! The great motto of the Italian Renaissance was "Ad Fontes", which means "back to the source". By that, they meant going back to pre-Christian, Greco-Roman art and philosophy.
But I think the "Ad Fontes" motto could and should be repurposed for the 21st century. I recommend Terence McKenna's book "Archaic Revival", the topic of which is exactly your suggestion here.
David Chapman writes about an interactive paradigm that will overcome our contemporary objective paradigm. He uses the example of the rainbow: it is not a subjective experience for it has a physical basis in optics; it is not objective, for every subject has a different experience of it. The rainbow is neither subjective nor objective, it is interactive. Quantum mechanics is like that too. Maybe the next economy will be interactive and cybernetic in the Stafford Beer sense.
That's an absolutely brilliant analogy! Thanks for sharing it, Cristhian
As Seth said, spoken through Jane Roberts. "You create your own reality" You create it and live it. I'm so glad to see this in print finally .Thank you for a very good AND intuitive article.
Thank you for the kind comment, Flowgone!
I’m so happy you have, and are writing about, the idea that science has ‘run its course’ and has become dogma. Really nice arc comparing these eras to inform us about what might be happening today.
Howdy Chris, thank you sincerely for taking the time to write this nice comment. I really appreciate you!
I... suggest a less euro-centric analysis of the human condition over time might be more predictive. "Western" society is collapsing, sure, and that can take everyone down, but why presume the reaction of that same society will dictate its future? Is there a hidden assumption that the power of western capitalism over the globe continues? Does it?
Hi Jack, thanks for the comment! When you're right, you're right. The major limitation of this analysis is that it's INTERNAL to Western Civilization, looks outward at Islamic society, and ignores Indian and Chinese civilization altogether.
However, it's complex constellation of ideas I'm trying to convey here. Practicality demands that I limit the scope and draw a line somewhere. Besides, I'm sure you'd agree that the fate of Western civilization is highly significant to the trajectory of the broader human story...
Congrats on a highly intelligent and well informed essay. However, I see our greatest problem now is the collapse of scientific authority, as clearly seen in the nightmare of Trumpistan's pseudo-"expert" devolution, and the elevation of any and all mostly uneducated trolls to "expert" status, fueled by the seemingly egalitarian (anti)social media. When our educational Capital disintegrates and institutions of higher learning collapse, as we are seeing now under an unschooled dictator, we have nowhere to go but down, devolving into chaos and anarchy. So, perhaps, the new paradigm is chaos and anarchy? Have a blessed day.
Thanks for the comment, Dr. Miklashek! I understand what you're saying; there something scary and possibly destructive about being set adrift, unanchored to any centralized authority.
But I also think that institutions decay over time. Christianity started out as a plucky rebellion against Imperial power, only to eventually become a corrupt institution during the Middle Ages after it became the authority.
I believe a similar trajectory has befallen the sciences. Where it was once a glorious revolt against corrupt authority, the institution has now become the very thing it once fought against. Chaos and anarchy certainly describe the late Middle Ages and the early industrial period, and there's no denying that that's the current trend in our own time. But I hope we'll be able to rescue to the doctrine of science from the corrupt institution that currently houses it!
Marx’s mistake is he never accounted for the possibility of cohesive violence just being another job vulnerable to automation. Check out Samuel Butler’s work sometime.
Thanks for the comment, Bassoe!
Marx's assumption that we'd be able to move past the capitalist system after it's collapse may indeed turn out to be a mistake. We may revert to techno-feudalism, policed by Boston Dynamics attack robots, as you suggested.
But Marx's prediction that the capitalist mode of production will collapse from internal contradictions is the focus of this essay (it seems uncontestable at this point). The question of where we go after is a separate matter. It may very well be that we're about to reverse course on thousands of years of human "progress" (those Boston Dynamics robots sure are terrifying).
Either way, we're living through a pivotal moment in history!
Here is a dark viewpoint about what might replace science as the arbiter of shared reality based on what appears to be replacing it today. The concentration of power and wealth allows the elites to create narratives through their ownership of the media that counter scientific reality. Simultaneously, they are dismantling the institutions that support science as a system of understanding the world and replacing them with institutions where science is only useful for its exploitative properties.
As a non-elite, I obviously do not support this way of “creating your own reality”, but we need to be able to overcome the power of propaganda through ownership of the media or the post-science paradigm for society will not be egalitarian.
Thanks for the comment, Muckledger! I guess it all comes do the questions, what do you consider science to be?
In my mind, the question is of Platonism vs Aristotelianism. Are we living in an illusion, or a shadow cast by another domain? Or is reality defined instead by what we can empirically measure?
I suspect the former, and that the ruling classes believe it too but fund studies to promote a materialist conception of reality because that's what keeps people going to work every morning. That what keeps, in other words, the ruling classes in control...
I don't appreciate your whitewash of oligarchy. No understanding of history can be correct without the central understanding that the same bloodline-obsessed family has retained their position as the "ruling class" from the beginning of our species to the current day.
Karl Marx was a member of that family and his disingenuous "ideology" is just another component of the same social engineering the few have always used to control the many.
What's the claim here, Seven? Is it really that a SINGLE family is animating all of human history? And that the entire ruling class belongs to this single family?
That's correct. And I'm at 20 consecutive years now of researching, studying, and collecting the evidence ("Archivist" isn't just a stylistic affectation) of that very fact. And I've been doing it with a mind that, by any objective measure, I have yet to meet an equal to. I say nothing without evidence in hand; you won't find me easy to argue with.
Leave your ego somewhere else when you speak to me; it will only infantilize the exchange.
I didn't, myself, do the years of genealogy work that PROVES all power brokers are far more closely related than the lame attempt to rationalize it away with "if you go back far enough...". That work has been done by someone else, whom I just discovered a year ago. (I've always found genealogy too boring to engage in.) He's done and written up over a thousand investigations of hoaxed events and the genealogies of the rich, famous, and powerful. I read them all earlier this year, in about two months. Would you like me to link you to that impressive body of work?
If you go back far enough, we all are in the same family.
far more closely related than the lame attempt to rationalize it away with "if you go back far enough...".
far more closely related than the lame attempt to rationalize it away with "if you go back far enough...".
far more closely related than the lame attempt to rationalize it away with "if you go back far enough...".
far more closely related than the lame attempt to rationalize it away with "if you go back far enough...".
far more closely related than the lame attempt to rationalize it away with "if you go back far enough...".
far more closely related than the lame attempt to rationalize it away with "if you go back far enough...".
far more closely related than the lame attempt to rationalize it away with "if you go back far enough...".
Oh I get it. Seven
In the Renaissance part of the post you forgot to mention what the Elites forced the then-current-crop of system "revolutionaries" to sacrifice for their acceptance into the new status quo.
Jesus Method's got watered down.
So what got watered down inside proto-science itself during the transition to Capitalism?
I think I got an idea:
https://salomonsolis.substack.com/p/new-atlantis-on-the-horizon-pt-1
Part 1 of 3.
But this is the important from part 2:
"Although many of its founding members and future illustrious alumni will continue practicing alchemy, the newly born modern science will go on stripped of its original metaphysical half, disregarded for sounding too religious, when dogmatic religion had paradoxically done everything it could to eradicate it in the first place. Swiftly cutting away its universal immaterial roots, science became modern, and our world with it."
"A disillusioned Comenius later utters words of warning. ‘Foundations are being laid by these new investigations into nature, but is it being considered what is going to be built on these foundations? If ends beyond the cultivation of the natural sciences for themselves alone are not being envisaged, the work might turn out to be ‘a Babylon turned upside down, building not towards heaven, but towards earth’."
Tom, I really like your quotes! Though I haven't had a chance to digest your 3 essay series yet, I've subscribed to your stack...
Those are not mine. But Solomon's. He regularly post on the r/UFO andother Disclosure Discord channels.
Ah, I see, my mistake. I went back and subscribed to Solomon, too. Thank you for leaving that link to his fascinating work!
AI may prove to be another tool - another means of production - affordable to anyone with a smartphone or a laptop. The result maybe millions of “micro-producers” serving increasingly specific niches, enabled by AI tools that make small-scale customization economically viable. More producers, more variety, more specialized matching of specific supply to specific demand. Barriers to entry could be drastically reduced as AI and flexible manufacturing (e.g., 3-D printers) let anyone serve a micro-niche. Radical customization may become the norm.
Hi Richard, thanks for the comment. I love your optimism! I hope you're right. But waves of layoffs are already being announced by our biggest corporations as 2025 draws to a close. In the near term, it appears that its going to become harder for regular people to negotiate for the money we need to eat.
Broadly speaking, the advent of labor-saving technology should be an occasion for rejoicing. The problem is that our private ownership structures incentivize employers to fire redundant workers. Rather than roll back the length of the work week, as a more democratic decision-making structure might do.
I am optimistic. Back in the early 1970s, after the Clean Air Act was passed, coal-fired power plants had to install scrubbers to reduce sulfur dioxide emissions. The scrubbers left behind huge piles of waste - mostly gypsum. At first, no one knew what to do with the stuff, so it just piled up. But some entrepreneurs figured out that it could be used in drywall, cement, and even as a soil conditioner in farming. So, what started out as useless waste turned into a valuable resource.
As unused workers and college grads pile up, I’m pretty confident that some smart entrepreneur somewhere will see them as a valuable resource and find uses for them (though Harvard and Yale graduates may turn out to be too toxic).
What you call “capitalism” isn’t capitalism at all. It’s crony state corporatism - a mixed system dominated by government intervention, central banks, and artificially created credit. It's a system of state-directed credit, subsidies, and manipulation, which rewards short-term growth and resource plunder rather than genuine wealth creation.
True free-market capitalism, or laissez-faire capitalism, lets resources go where they are most valued without political interference. It relies on private property, honest money and 'voluntary' exchange. Prices form naturally based on supply and demand, guiding people to use resources efficiently and rewarding those who take risks and innovate; it ensures that scarce resources are allocated by real needs and real costs, not by political favors, debt, or artificial credit.
Hi Brett, thank you for the wonderful comment! What you call "crony state corporatism" is a reasonable description of certain economic and political dynamics taking place before our eyes. You did a good job articulating those!
I tend to agree with most of what you wrote here: markets (with a few obvious exceptions) truly are a fantastic way of distributing scarce resources. But I have two important points for you that I think you've overlooked.
(1) I actually do mean to implicate CAPITALISM itself here. That is to say, a system in which businesses themselves---not just goods and services---are traded on markets is likely to attract buyers looking to convert capital into more capital. That's the true source of the dysfunction you cite above.
Furthermore, I see no argument against Marx's observation that private ownership structures cannot survive the introduction of too much labor-saving technology. There will be no one to buy goods and services, once enough workers are fired and replaced by tech.
We need a different ownership structure for businesses, perhaps democratic co-ops, that will use tech to shorten the length of the work week instead of firing workers en masse to enhance profits. That will allow us to retain markets as distribution scheme.
(2) You write of political interference, but it seem obvious to me that states beget markets. You'll no doubt lament the violent and coercive nature of the state, and I'll be inclined to agree with that. But we must presuppose the state's standards of measurement (currency), and it's legal enforcement, in order to have markets!
The idea that markets exists naturally, and that the state is some kind of intruder into them, doesn't stand up to historical scrutiny. I believe that idea to be propaganda from business interest who seek to offload tax burdens and avoid regulation.
I'd sure be interested in your response if you're inclined to give it!