Populism may not need to be manufactured. An overwhelmed communication system already rewards simplification, antagonism and recurrence, while those best placed to change it profit from the resulting volatility.
Nobody needs to control the machinery. Repeated communication changes what people notice, expect and respond to, gradually reshaping the culture and politics that emerge from those interactions.
Climate change is not occurring inside a stable planetary system. It is altering the persistent structure of relations among climatic states, variables and phases, changing the conditions under which subsequent states become possible and probable.
Fascism does not begin with a dictator. It takes shape through recurrent patterns of threat, identity and authority, until a leader can occupy the position those patterns have made available.
The scale of the consequences has changed while the competitive selection tests for authority remain embarrassingly small.
Desire and fear appear to pull us in opposite directions, but both persist through the distance they seek to overcome.
We are not outside the world we are trying to understand. We are (all) implicated in its disorders, participants in its reproduction, and responsible for what happens next.
The AI business model converts new capabilities into dependencies, then turns the resulting risks, maintenance burdens and failures into reasons for further investment.
Political systems are historical constructions, not immutable necessities. Their persistence does not establish their continuing adequacy.
Why Deception Is Irreducible in Communication
Language, like all communication systems, holds together not despite displacement, delay and uncertainty, but because of them.
Crime and punishment are coupled systems that reproduce the epistemic distinction, differential diffusion and binding distance through which social order defines itself.
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