For 10,000 years, we’ve been running a “Dominator Operating System.” In 1700, we tried to patch it with Science, Democracy, and Finance. Now, the patches are failing.
For 190,000 years, humans lived under a “Forager Operating System.” It was egalitarian not because people were “nice,” but because they were vigilant. If someone tried to act like a “Big Man,” the tribe didn’t bow; they gossiped, they ridiculed, and if necessary, they executed. Leadership was role-based: the best hunter led the hunt; the best gatherer led the search.
Then came agriculture and with it the glitch.
Surplus grain allowed the genetically-inclined dominators (the 2% “Big Men”) to hire henchmen. We traded the freedom of the forager for the safety of the hut, entering a 10,000-year “Dominator Period.” It was a hierarchy of “Big Men” dominating “Little Men,” who in turn dominated women and children. It was a world of “Position-based” authority: I am the Chief because I have the most thugs.
The Grandmother’s House: Balancing the Action Ring
We discussed Alexander Bard’s nomadic model: a society organized as concentric rings, not a pyramid. At the center sits the Feminine Core (45%), weaving the cultural fabric. Around them, the Masculine Ring (45%) handles the “chilling and killing”, action and defense.
Modernity has broken this balance. We have legal equality (a mandatory upgrade), but we lack structural wisdom. Jim proposed a radical institutional fix: The Grandmother’s House. Imagine a third branch of government where only grandmothers vote or serve. Their sole power? The absolute authority to declare war or peace. Why? Because grandmothers possess the most mature feminine energy the only perspective incentivized by the long-term survival of the lineage rather than the chest-pounding short-termism of the masculine action ring.
The Red Button: Killing the “Idiot Lottery”
Human history is an “idiot lottery.” We’ve spent millennia ruled by the random eldest sons of kings, regardless of whether they were fools or sociopaths.
To bridge to Game B, we need Forrest Landry’s governance model:
Consensus: To delegate power.
Meritocracy: To execute tasks (giving a “Master of Waste” absolute authority to run the sewers).
The Red Button: A 51% democratic vote that can instantly revoke that authority.
This is the antidote to the “Shit Dictator.” You give someone total authority to get the job done, but you keep your finger on the kill-switch.
The Three Pillars: The 1700 Error-Correction Machine
Jim defines “Game A” as the specific synthesis that emerged around 1700. To escape 10,000 years of stagnant “Big Man” rule, we inserted three “error-correction machines” into our social OS. These were designed to destroy the “take it on authority” model of the Church and King.
1. Science (The Reality Machine)
The Modality: Falsification and peer review.
The Correction: Nullius in verba: take nobody’s word for it. If the experiment doesn’t support the theory, the theory is discarded. It replaced the “Metaphysical Authority” of the priest with a self-correcting loop of data.
The Failure: Capture. When Science is funded by Finance, the “falsification” machine is jammed. We now see “Science” used as an appeal to authority, the very thing it was designed to destroy.
2. Democracy (The Governance Machine)
The Modality: Collective sense-making and the franchise.
The Correction: Constitutional limits and the ballot box. It replaced the “Idiot Lottery” of primogeniture with the ability to fire the King (or Parliament) without a civil war. It was meant to ensure policies were tested against the needs of the many.
The Failure: Scalability and complexity. In a world of 8 billion people and hyper-specialization, the “metabolic energy” required for an average citizen to make sense of the world is depleted. Democracy has devolved into a battle of competing “identitarian caucuses” and regulatory capture.
3. Finance (The Resource Machine)
The Modality: The Market and price signals.
The Correction: Profit and loss. If a project is a bad use of social surplus, it fails. It was a way to optimize the economic cycle outside the control of the state.
The Failure: The Accumulation Glitch. When Finance is no longer about transaction but about accumulation, it skews the price signals. Money stops being a tool for resource allocation and becomes a tool for capturing the other two pillars.
The Triptych in Collapse
In 1700, there were 625 million people. Our footprint was invisible. These machines were a massive upgrade, but they are now cannibalizing each other.
Finance has eaten Science, turning inquiry into a marketing arm. Finance has captured Democracy, turning policy into a service for the highest bidder. The error-correction mechanisms are jammed because they have all been denominated in a single, corruptible currency.
We are at the limit of the Game A growth curve. The software that pulled us out of the mud is now the machine eating the ecosystem.
