Why I don’t think humanity is doomed by some omnipotent hidden class
Most hollow systems are not maintained primarily through conscious malice. They are maintained through adaptation to distortion. That distinction matters enormously.
Some people absolutely manipulate consciously. History is full of individuals and institutions that knowingly use fear, propaganda, spectacle, economic pressure, surveillance, or shame to preserve power. That part is real. Human beings can become strategic around control. But the deeper mechanism underneath that is usually less cinematic and more tragic:
People adapt to systems that reward disconnection from feedback.
And once adaptation becomes identity, distortion starts feeling normal.
That means many people “in power” are not sitting in rooms twirling metaphorical mustaches while plotting planetary suffering. Many are themselves products of systems that selected for traits like emotional compartmentalization, image maintenance, strategic dissociation, reward addiction, abstraction over contact, performance over responsiveness.
Over time, they stop experiencing themselves as participants in reality and begin experiencing themselves as managers of appearances.
That is a profound form of distortion.
And here’s the paradox I’ve noticed — the really important one:
If they restored genuine circulation, responsiveness, and trust, they would often benefit enormously themselves.
Which is why pure “rational conspiracy” models eventually collapse under scrutiny. Because many of the behaviors sustaining hollow systems are self-destructive even for the people benefiting from them materially.
Extreme wealth concentration destabilizes societies.
Suppression destroys innovation.
Fear corrodes trust.
Extraction reduces long-term resilience.
Spectacle fractures attention.
Emotional dishonesty destroys intimacy.
Even elites suffer inside these distortions — though often in psychologically insulated ways that hide consequences longer.
That’s why many powerful people appear profoundly numb, addicted, paranoid, isolated, performative, or incapable of rest. The system protects them materially while starving them relationally and perceptually. They become trapped inside architectures that reward disconnection from reality contact.
Not because they’re superhuman masterminds.
Because they adapted successfully to distorted incentives.
And that means the problem is more collective than most people want to admit.
Not “equally responsible” in a simplistic sense. Power asymmetries are real. Some people absolutely hold vastly more influence and therefore vastly more responsibility.
But the broader pattern is participatory.
People comply with things they privately know are wrong.
People remain in systems they resent.
People silence perception to preserve belonging.
People defend structures hurting them because the alternative feels destabilizing.
People outsource authority because direct contact with reality is frightening.
That happens at every scale: governments, corporations, families, marriages, friendships, spiritual communities, identities.
The architecture repeats because humans are relational beings. We regulate ourselves through social continuity. That’s not evil. It’s biological. But when belonging becomes more important than perception, distortion stabilizes.
That’s the real danger.
And this is also why shame is so important:
Shame is one of the primary mechanisms by which systems perpetuate themselves without requiring constant force.
People self-police.
Self-silence.
Self-abandon.
Self-distort.
The system moves inside the nervous system.
Once that happens, external coercion becomes less necessary.
But here’s the hopeful part —
Reality keeps responding anyway.
That is the miracle.
Coherence exerts pressure continuously.
Feedback accumulates continuously.
Distortion requires maintenance continuously.
This is why genuinely responsive, reality-based contact feels so relieving when people finally experience it. The nervous system recognizes it immediately. Not ideologically — physiologically.
Truth reduces fragmentation.
Real reciprocity reduces vigilance.
Authentic contact restores agency.
Being accurately perceived restores coherence.
And that restoration can spread surprisingly fast once enough people stop confusing adaptation with alignment.
That’s why I don’t think humanity is doomed by some omnipotent hidden class.
I think humanity is struggling through the consequences of large-scale dissociation reinforced structurally over generations.
Which is terrible.
But importantly:
it is repairable.
Not instantly.
Not perfectly.
Not without grief.
But repairable because distortion is metabolically expensive.
Reality eventually pushes back.
The final thing I’ll say is this:
Some people do knowingly exploit distortion.
Some institutions do deliberately manipulate perception.
Some systems are intentionally engineered to preserve asymmetrical power.
But even those actors are still operating inside larger dynamics they themselves often barely understand.
Which means:
the deepest problem is not “evil geniuses controlling reality.”
The deepest problem is civilizations losing the capacity for accurate feedback while rewarding adaptation to distortion.
That is a much harder problem.
But also a much more honest one.
And honesty is where coherence begins returning.
go deeper with volume 7 of living systems
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go deeper with volume 7 of living systems 〰️
What if the power you fear has been hollow all along?
The Hollow Thrones is an exploration of power, authority, and the invisible structures that shape human behavior. It examines what happens when authority is no longer assumed to be real — but observed as a structure that depends on recognition to function.
It does not teach you how to navigate power.
It does not offer strategies for compliance, resistance, or reform.
It focuses on something more fundamental: how authority is constructed, how it sustains itself through perception, how agency is reorganized around it, and what becomes possible when that orientation collapses.
An investigation into authority, obedience, sovereignty, and the invisible structures that shape human lives.
Download the first chapter for free.
If The Loom of Stars explored the threads that bind us, The Hollow Thrones explores the seats of power we unconsciously bow to—and what becomes possible when we opt-out.
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