We’ve all sense the creeping feeling that the “molochian shit show” we inhabit isn’t just a series of unfortunate accidents, but the logical conclusion of a game we’ve been playing for centuries. In this 7th session with Jim, we strip back the skin of our modern world to look at the three pillars: Science, Democracy, and Finance and realize they aren’t just leaning; they are actively crushing the life they were meant to safeguard.
Think about the “progress” we celebrate. From the first steam engine pumping water out of coal mines to the algorithmic AI “therapy” apps of today, every step forward has been a step away from our own humanity. We’ve traded the real-time, rhythmic power of the sun for a frantic, one-time burn of “saved solar” energy aka fossil fuels. It gave us 10X the power, but it unanchored us from the cycles of life and put us on a collision course with the cold laws of thermodynamics.
The Rise of the Immortal Psychopath
Jim and I trace a history that is essentially a timeline of alienation.
We created interchangeable parts to fix rifles on a battlefield, but in doing so, we broke the craftsman. We traded the pride of a human soul for the “economic efficiency” of a screw-turner. Then, we birthed the Corporation, an immortal, legal person with all the rights of a human but the morality of a parasite. A psychopathic entity that never dies, never feels guilt, and lives only to optimize one single, narrow metric: money-on-money return.
This isn’t just an abstract legal tweak. It’s a foundational violence. We’ve empowered a species of artificial life that lives forever and views the biosphere and human potential as mere fuel to be extracted, converted, and sold.
The System Hacking the Player
The game truly ran off the tracks during what we call the Bernays Epoch.
Before Edward Bernays (Freud’s nephew), products existed to satisfy human needs. After him, the system learned how to manufacture those needs from scratch. We were programmed to want things we didn’t need to satisfy status-games we didn’t choose. We moved from satisfying hunger to chasing 300 types of shampoo and $300,000 cars.
Then came the credit cards, the “hedonic treadmill” powered by easy money and finally, the 1971 exit from the gold standard, which unanchored finance from reality entirely. The result? A global financial system that has effectively hacked our biology, making us heroin-addicted to a growth that is killing us.
The Broken Safeties
We are currently witnessing the total failure of our error-correction mechanisms.
Science has done its job when it told us about climate change 150 years ago but its voice has been muzzled by a propaganda machinery that treats truth as a cost to be minimized.
Democracy was supposed to be the regulator, the “wise enough” guardrail. Instead, it’s been bought and sold. As Jim notes, our tech titans are currently sucking up to power just to keep their licenses for further extraction.
Finance is the only pillar left standing, and it isn’t “broken” it’s doing exactly what it was designed to do: maximize returns even if the planet becomes a graveyard in the process.
The Loop Over Which We Wake Up
So, how do we stop the extraction? How do we find the “glitch in the matrix”?
We end this conversation on a provocative hook: the possibility of a “shortcut” to waking up. If Game A is a dead end leading to planetary suicide, we need to move toward a coherent pluralism. We need a worldview that doesn’t just “calculate” limits but feels them as sacred.
Is there a way to accelerate the journey through the developmental hierarchy? Can we reach a state where the integration of limits becomes natural, even obvious, without needing seven years of meditation to get there?
Jim brings the institutional rigor; I’m looking for the spiritual shift. We’re trying to find the place where the system meets the soul.
It’s raw, it’s honest, and it’s a necessary look at the claims we’ve made on lost life and how we might finally start reclaiming it.
PS: if you made it all the way here, i want to warmly invite you to join the INFINITIVE community - once you’ve passed the gate (38 days of 30 minute commitment), you’re in. https://infinitive.world
