Obligate Adaptation + Peak Paranoia

First off, a few IRL Taykentots for those who lack the stamina to make it to the end:

• XP 1: lu.ma/cypherpunks (See you in Denver, Aug 20)

• XP 2: transformative.global (See you in NYC, Sept 27-29)

• XP 3: ETHDen '25 (See you in Denver Feb 23 - Mar 2)

Well shit! Just when I thought we'd reached peak lunacy (or Idiocracy as it were)... Crooks had to drop a DJT assassination attempt into the mix, and Hulk Hogan had to go full-on President Camacho. And just as expected in the aftermath, everyone continues to insist on devising some overarching, deeply diabolical explanation of what’s “really going on.” The "Q Map" says it best—study it well (lose your damn mind) and you too might be among the chosen ones.

From FrankenBiden, to NATOs secret plans to take over Europe via instigating a war against Russia (with help from master strategist Hunter Biden), to Fauci being in bed with Pfizer and Gates to pharmacologically chip and hypnotize the world, to the Jews controlling Hollywood AND the NYSE, to the CCP hollowing out democracy with Fentanyl and TikTok (more plausible to be fair), to more sinister ideas involving underground child trafficking tunnels or a faked eco-crisis that’s simply a ruse to send us all on our way to the wonderful, WEF-controlled dystopia of owning nothing and being happy.

We’ve never had a more expansive buffet of crazy-ass conspiracies to choose from. 

The MAGA/Brexit era plus Covid lockdowns, combined with the latest Fight! photo heard round the world, has sent us over the edge without an obvious escape plan or parachute to turn to.

But rather than descend into the labyrinth of lies and lunacy, I’d like to take the time to explore why we dig those Q map house of mirror unreality tunnels in the first place. What is it that our intuition is hinting at, and how might we regain some degree of sanity and control?

First though, some requisite mental-hygiene:

If you're persuaded/seduced by any one of these grand explanations, wherein a tiny group of people secretly pull all the strings with supremely effective yet tantalizingly invisible coordination... please ask yourself:  Does that include all the incredibly rich, armed to the teeth narcos in Mexico and Central America? Are they in cahoots too?

How ‘bout the Chinese Tongs?
The Japanese Yakuza?
The Russian/Sicilian/Kazakh Mafias?

Or just good ol’ fashioned nation states with their entrenched self-interests and historical grudges?

Or the multinational companies who rely on peace and stability to profit?
Or the military industrial complex who tragically doesn’t?

Singular solutions to complex problems are always wrong, no matter how soothing or satisfying on the surface— or as the insightful H.L. Mencken once proclaimed, "for every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong."

The all-knowing-powers-that-be are, at a minimum, fractured, competing, conflicting, and confounding factions engaged in a multi-polar tug of war where no one is certain of any outcome. The best laid plans as they say...

Case in point: Just recently in the New Yorker there was a fascinating bit about how the all knowing CIA is actually, quite often, totally clueless! So clueless in fact, that Saddam Hussein assumed that his U.S. allies knew exactly what he was planning for his invasion of Kuwait. When George H.W. sent a friendly communique three days before the invasion, Saddam took it as a tacit thumbs up on the whole venture!

After all, the CIA is/was the tip of the spear for the greatest empire in history. They had to be in on it! ... whoops (and that’s long before we got to yellowcake urania and weapons of mass destruction).

And yet, and yet...!!

There is an unshakeable sense, held by an increasing majority, that something is off—that we’re getting herded into a cattle chute for others' gains and our own undoing, which understandably leaves us a little freaked out and looking to jump the fence and run like hell towards the hills (or open range).

For sure, there are the classic "us vs. them" narratives that have always tempted us.

From the Anti-Masonic freakouts of the 18th and 19th century, to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion rants of the early 20th century, to the so-old-its-new-again ravings against the New World Order of the John Birchers in the 1950s…it’s always satisfying and cathartic to engage in a bit of good ol’ fashioned memetic Gerardian scapegoating!

It’s not us....it's never us. IT’S THEM!!!

But underneath all of it is something more primal still. A sense that, no matter what we think feel or do, that the outcome is somehow determined, and that we’re slip-sliding towards our own predestined demise. And it’s precisely that sense of relentless ratcheting against our own interest that sows the seed of our grandest conspiratorial storytelling. After all, if we can see enough to know that we’re heading off a cliff, but we keep getting forced closer and closer to that edge, then whoever is goading us has to be so powerful (and sinister) that we’ve got to find them and root them out if we’re to survive.

But what if it’s less a question of who, and more a question of what?

And that what might simply be described as Obligate Adaptations— don't overthink it—an adaptation that you’re obligated to make (or else). You don’t have to make an obligated adaptation, but if you don’t, you will inevitably get swept into history's grand recycle bin.

A few examples:

When our homo erectus ancestors decided to clamber down from their jungle paradise two million years ago, they might have asked their bonobo cousins, “hey! we’re thinking about trying this whole bipedalism thing, and checking out that yonder savannah. Wanna come?”

“Nah,” said a lazy ass bonobo. “we’re good… reckon we’re gonna stay here and eat mangos. Besides, why would you risk everything on those hot dusty plains? Nothing but lions and crocs out that way from my assessment!”

Mind you, we put our cousins in zoos now.

Or how about those hunter gatherers at the end of the last ice age 10k+ years ago?

When one group pitched up and said, “you know, the weather seems to be stabilizing, how ‘bout, instead of all of this incessant roaming around, we post up here for a bit, sow some seeds of the things we like to eat, and try a little more farming and a little less hunting and gathering?”

“What?” asked one of their mobile tribe-mates (who’d just read an early draft of Harari’s Sapiens). “Why on earth would we give up our mobility, exquisite nutrition, and more egalitarian and gender-balanced society in favor of crowding, disease, bureaucracy, patriarchy and war? We’re gonna stay footloose and fancy free!”

And they weren’t wrong… about any of it. It’s just that their farming friends were able to support a hundred times the number of people on a given patch of land. And their ability to store food increased their ability to grow their population, and raise and assemble armies. 

So even if the hunter-gatherers had it right, they ended up on the wrong side of history. Overrun by literal armies of farmers.

And being on the wrong side of things, even if you’re certain of the rightness and goodness of your position, is going to feel like there’s sinister forces stacked against you!

Yup, obligate adaptation.

Adapt or die.

Same thing with a bunch of more current examples, from tragically overfishing and overlogging the commons (i.e. strip-mining oceans and forests—if we don’t, someone else will), to the Green Revolution’s rush to industrial farming (which we can’t turn away from without risking a population crash), to the race for nuclear weapons (good for politics, really bad for humanity), to the move to globally integrated supply chains (the better, faster, cheaper hollowing out local industry), to our current fatal attraction with Elon, AI and all the rest—we can’t seem to stop, even though we kinda know we should.

To unpack just one of those examples from this list, consider the obligate adaptation of industrial farming vs. traditional subsistence farming. Traditional farming (including organic fertilizers and crop rotation) allows ongoing sustainability, but delivers lower yields. Industrial farming with synthetic fertilizer, pesticides and full production boosts yields but comes with costs.

Sri Lanka serves as a good (though sad) case study. See this recent op-ed in the NYT, "Sri Lanka Collapsed First, but It Won’t Be the Last," for a decent intro to some of the factors.

After WWII, Sri Lanka, like many former colonies, got increasingly pulled into the World Bank/IMF global trade network. For a time, it worked swimmingly for most involved. If they had resisted, they would’ve stayed mired in poverty and missed the great upswell of growth and prosperity sweeping the western world.

"Stop farming for foods you need to eat, and start farming more high value exports like tea," the World Bank encouraged. "We'll cover the transition with predatory debt service, and you can pay us back on the other side once you make it big!"

"What about food to eat?" the Sri Lankan farmers reasonably asked.

"Ahh, yes, well, with all that money you're earning from such lucrative tea exports, you can buy that food from other farmers in other countries even cheaper than you can grow it yourself!" #GlobalismFTW

And sure enough, the population shot up accordingly. Tripling from 8M in 1950 to almost 22M today.

It's not talked about much in polite circles, but being a junkie is underrated.  

If you can cop a lifetime stash of medical morphine and clean needles, you can be a high functioning poppyhead for the rest of your days—more “Comfortably Numb” than Trainspotting. Quitting, as any addict will know, is a bitch tho. As is weaning off petro-ag (or the petro-dollar). 

In 1950, the lands of Sri Lanka and the traditional techniques of subsistence farming supported about 8 million citizens.

In the 2020s when the country briefly tried to wean itself off chemical-intensive farming, it didn’t go well. Many energy analysts reckon that 8m is probably closer to a sustainable steady-state for that landmass and climate than 22 (given current farming methods, water, labor, etc).  

Which means that in order to do the "right thing" for their people, their ecosystem and their future and wean off extractive, polluting industrial agriculture and exploitive markets, Sri Lankans are going to be faced with the profoundly "wrong thing" of prompting the possible starvation of millions of their own people.

Obligate Adaptation in a nutshell. You don’t have to do it, but unwinding it (or avoiding it in the first place) is a bitch. And it’s that sense of a seemingly orchestrated, relentless ratcheting towards preordained conclusions that underpins much of our modern, conspiratorial plight. 

There’s simply no way, (so we conclude) that all of this could be happening, with such clearly coordinated, inevitable outcomes if there weren’t an all powerful cabal at the wheel.

Monsanto... kinda makes sense... kinda nothing new.

We’ve been giving this phenomenon all sorts of names—from the Tibetan notion of Hungry Ghosts (all mouths and no stomachs, forever consuming everything without ever being satisfied), to the Native American spirit of Wetiko or Wendigo (a similarly greedy, all consuming dark force), to the higher concept notions of Egregores (entities that we conjure into being that take on a life of their own), to one I'm more familiar with, Moloch (the sacrificial dark and devouring force behind capitalism and failed coordination) to more actualized personifications like QAnon, the New World Order, or the Illuminati.

Once you step back and survey the meme-scape, you realize we’ve got all sorts of labels trying to put a finger on this deeper structural trend of Obligate Adaptation.

And it’s super weird.

Because at this point, a whole bunch of folks are screaming STOP! at the top of their lungs (or on the inside), and nothing seems to be stopping. And since it’s increasingly clear that this relentless forward motion seems to be against our own interests, we conclude that it has to be in favor of somebody else’s!

So what’s to be done?

Can we wisely and benevolently stop the mad rush to AGI (which many, even its prime architects, think may well lead to our demise)?

Can we tap the breaks on mindless consumerism, jet-setting, fossil fuel burning, digital narcissism, screens for teens, medical misery, processed foods, microplastics, forever chemicals and a heap of other dumbass ideas that work against our own self-interest?

Or are we doomed to lurch over the cliff right in front of us, because no one thought to install an emergency brake on the train (or Cybertruck as it were) of progress?

I’ll admit, if you survey the historical record, it looks pretty bleak. Time and again, from indigenous tribes trying to resist colonialism, to traditional cultures trying to resist globalism, to families trying to resist digital distractions, to silicon and nuclear arms races, it feels like if we can imagine it, we are somehow also powerless to stop it.

Except for one thing… perhaps the ultimate obligate adaptation of all.

If we can’t figure out how to stop it; how to unite around a higher cause. We will all go down with the ship together. 

Benjamin Franklin framed this nicely at the signing of the Declaration of Independence. “Gentleman, one thing I know, we must all hang together, or most assuredly we shall hang separately.” That sentiment—of collective destruction or salvation, is just as true today as it was in 1776.

If we fracture now, when we should be urgently uniting, if we dig in our heels and refuse to cooperate or acknowledge the shared humanity of “the other” until I get mine, then we increase the likelihood that we all suffer. 

If we conclude that the regression into violent and paranoid win-lose tribalism as the planet strains to support 8 billion humans is a catastrophically bad idea, then we must also conclude that, as Muhammad advised, “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

At least for now, but maybe forever.

We will need to bury our respective hatchets and grudgingly agree to work together against the pressing threats to civilization, and even the survival of our species.

This does not and should not require universal consensus, nor can it wait for it. We only need to find the broadest expanse of our shared concerns, meet there in mutuality and plurality, and get tf to work.

At this point, we're well beyond optional.

It’s our obligation.

Ok, on to the good stuff...

• IRL XP 1: lu.ma/cypherpunks (See you in Denver, Aug 20)

• IRL XP 2: transformative.global (See you in NYC, Sept 27-29)

• IRL XP 3: ETHDen '25 (See you in Denver Feb 23 - Mar 2)

• LLMs: Venice.ai (dAI FTW!)

• Listen: South of Here (NRNS, like a fine wine)

I love hearing back and always reply, so don't hesitate.