The Remnant: Bitcoin’s Game Of Thrones
Archetypical Relationship Dynamics
Part two of “The Remnant” series explored the psyche of the three primary human archetypes.
In this third and (at this point) final part of the series, I want to explore the relationship and dynamics between each of the primary archetypes so that we can better understand how to behave, relate, interact, cooperate or compete with each.
To begin with, let’s lay out some mental models.
The Red Ants And The Black Ants
If you put 100 red ants and 100 black ants into a jar… nothing will happen.
They will sit there observing each other. Weary, but generally peaceful. If you then shake the jar, the ants will start killing each other.
The red ants will believe that the black ants are the enemy and vice versa, when in reality, the enemy is the person who shook the jar.
If you’re looking for a simple mental model to help understand how easy it is to have groups of otherwise similar people at each other’s throats, this is it.
The “parasites” are the ultimate jar makers and shakers. Their ingenuity has led them to develop systems which confine entire groups of lemmings such that mass hysteria can take hold with a little chaos and uncertainty.
Most impressive of all is that they’ve accomplished this via the consent of the same damn lemmings!
Unfortunately for the Remnant, the environment we grow up and live in is often the same kind of jar. The “active” and “radical” Remnants often find a way to escape, while the “dormant” Remnant find themselves trapped inside with multiple groups of mindless ants all tearing each other apart.
The Elite
In their bid to weaponize the masses against the Remnant, the parasites have actually obfuscated the terminology of the world “elite.”
The natural elites used to be admired, but in vilifying them and convincing the mindless horde that they’re out to rob them, they’ve given permission to the lemmings to take aim at the producers as a way to apply vires in numeris to the detriment of all.
The natural elite versus the parasitic elite.
The image above is one of the simplest ways to understand this, and I suggest you share it far and wide.
We need to take back this term, because the designation of elite implies that one is exceptional at something. In my mind, being elite is something to strive for. It is to become the best version of yourself.
Protection
The parasite is the individual who:
Convinces the entrepreneur that the mindless mob is out to get them, and promises protection… for a feeConvinces the mob that the entrepreneur is out to rob them, and promises to get alms from them… for a fee
Oscar Ameringer was a socialist author and the kind of parasite who at least knew how to define his craft well.
This kind of racket has been going on for millennia, and those who practice it, have become quite adept at it. Democracy, i.e., modern socialism, is merely the most advanced incarnation because it gives the entrepreneurs enough room to innovate and produce, and then by “the will of the masses” it is all stolen via taxation, inflation and never-ending borrowing from the future.
Legal Gangs
The last heuristic is related to the above, but even more challenging for some people to accept.
The reality of nature is that we are always in a state of anarchy. The only difference is the scale at which the anarchy occurs.
Government is “created” to combat anarchy, but because no one ever governs the governors, we’ve not really escaped anarchy, we’ve just moved it up or down the scale. Edmund Burke called this the “grand Error upon which all artificial legislative Power is founded.”
We appoint governors to guard ourselves from violence, but a worse and more perplexing difficulty arises, how to be defended against the governors?
If you think about this long and hard enough, you’ll find that a “government” is merely a legally-appointed gang or cartel, which, when all of the window dressing is removed, has and holds power because it may use force to achieve its ends.
Governments are therefore the more sophisticated incarnation of a gang, created and run by parasites, with the explicit purposes of legalizing theft, racketeering and parasitic behavior by a select few.
This is why, if we’re to ever have a functional government, it must be one that is held economically accountable. One that cannot operate outside of the economic bounds we all operate within, and who cannot use a “model” to obfuscate reality. You cannot hold an institution accountable via a piece of paper which it has the power to change or ignore. The accountability must come in the form of a physical law, like gravity.
Therein lies the importance of Bitcoin… but we will get into this later.
For now, keep the above models of the world and harsh truths in mind as we explore the relationships between each of the archetypes.
The Battlefield
As with personality typing, analyzing the relationship between the archetypes helps you understand each of them better than just exploring them in isolation.
Source: “The Matrix”
When I think about the relationship, I view it as a sort of game or battlefield, like a blend of chess and poker being played by three different species, with some who are excellent players and play fair, others who just keep changing the rules to their own benefit (and the detriment of others), i.e., cheaters, and lastly with the lemmings who are not aware they’re even playing a game in the first place.
So, let’s explore…
The Remnant Vs. The Parasite
This is the main battle, and resembles playing a game of chess against your little shit of a brother who is a compulsive liar and cheater. The good-hearted big brother knows he’s better, so he lets the little one get away with it… unfortunately, this is where the Remnant’s moral superiority has failed them since time immemorial.
The Remnant exists to produce, to innovate, to progress and to compete in the meritocratic free market.
The parasite looks to embed themselves in such a way as to extract maximum value for minimum input. Their goal is to create an unfair advantage by transforming meritocratic into democratic. They are freeloaders, and the more they get away with, the more they want to take.
The Remnant’s greatest error is to not kill the monster while it’s little.
Hank Rearden is guilty of this in “Atlas Shrugged.” He continues to fight, to build, to toil and produce, while Wesley Mouch and crew bleed him dry and destroy everything around him through sheer greed, stupidity, ignorance and short-sightedness.
Unfortunately, the real world is much like the novel. The parasitic class have become better at developing models of theft and the steps to implement them are as follows:
Develop elaborate mechanism of theft (often by accidental iteration)Indoctrinate the masses and the lemmings into believing it’s normalWeaponize masses against the Remnant (1% narratives)Brainwash the Remnant and/or drug them into submission so that there is less resistance (hence why there’s such a large dormant Remnant)
The process repeats despite the fact that these mechanisms break down every generation and the “strong men” have to rise up and rebuild each time.
In a way, it reminds me of Zion in “The Matrix.” There were how many iterations?
The absolute worst-case scenario is that the parasite makes the environment so bad that it wipes out too much of the Remnant (the host) and the world goes completely to hell. But that doesn’t bode well for the parasite either, so it’s a Pyrrhic victory. Perhaps this is what happened to other sentient intelligent species who did not pass through “The Great Filter”?
While we cannot know the answer to that, we do know there is hope for humanity.
Unluckily (or perhaps luckily) for the parasite, the Remnant, by its very definition, remains. On a long enough timescale, you cannot defeat them. You cannot remove randomness from the universal equation.
All of the “models” truly are broken, because true reality cannot be modelled.
The discovery of energy money may well be how we unplug from the matrix, and once and for all transcend the realm of the parasite (explored below in “Bitcoin Fixes This”).
Training The Psychopath
A slight detour here, but something I recently learned from Nozomi Hayase is the idea that psychopaths may be an inherently different species than empathic humans.
Her work on this topic will provide far more coverage of this idea, but the part I wanted to point out here is the mistake made by otherwise well-intentioned humans to try and “fix” psychopaths by “teaching” them empathy.
It’s apparently akin to teaching a colorblind person the color blue, in that they will not get it. And the danger is that they will see this as a weakness on the part of the empath, which they can weaponize. Such conclusions have been drawn from some studies, which once again Hayase’s work will do it justice.
I find this an interesting anecdote or piece of the puzzle when analyzing the relationship between Remnants and parasites.
The Remnant Vs. The Masses
This is like playing chess with a bag of potatoes. The potatoes are not only ignorant of the rules of the game of chess, but they are unaware that they are even playing a game.
“The Remnant energy,” when it comes to their relationship to the masses, reminds me of the interaction between Elsworth Toohey and Howard Roark in “The Fountainhead.”
“Mr. Roark, we’re alone here. Why don’t you tell me what you think of me? In any words you wish. No one will hear us.”
“But I don’t think of you.”
And while Roark was speaking to a parasite in this case, the invocation is the same.
This is the only honest response by a Remnant toward the masses. They don’t want to use, or oppress or take advantage of them. The Remnant barely recognizes them.
The Remnant is focused on the mastery of their own craft and of their own character. Those who are of the same ilk respect that and are attracted to it.
They do their thing, you do yours. You trade, exchange, collaborate and cooperate. You deal with the masses insofar as what they need is something you can provide. It’s a purely commercial transaction that doesn’t require love nor hate nor any emotion nor call to moral action.
This is, in fact, another differentiator between the Remnant and the parasite. The Remnant will build on vision and instinct. They can almost sense the future and know that the buyers will come.
The parasite will coerce, blackmail and deceive the masses into believing they need what’s being sold to them.
It’s completely different energy, intention and obviously… outcome.
The Remnant, through strength of character, has no desire to use the masses as pawns, nor coerce them. In fact, they want little to do with these people because they’re usually a distraction and/or require babysitting. They much prefer to find the few Remnant.
The idea of “using the masses” is foreign to the Remnant. What use could one have for a mindless lemming that just gets in the way? The reality is that the Remnant barely notices them until they’ve been weaponized by the parasites like a hoard of mindless zombies.
Only then does the Remnant attack. In self defense.
Unfortunately, this is where we are now. I for one never cared for them, and just wanted to be left alone. Now, they’re on our properties, in our faces, all over our feeds,and like shit on a blanket, they have fouled up the air and are difficult to remove.
The Parasite Vs. The Masses
This is like stealing candy from a baby. It’s not even a game.
To the parasites, the masses are the ideal pawns. They exist merely as a tool to use against the productive members of society. They’re perfect because they don’t think deeply about what things actually mean nor what the second, let alone third or subsequent, order effects may be on society or their environment.
They are fooled into believing “nice-sounding” ideologies full of vague platitudes, then stirred up emotionally to perform heinous acts and crimes in the name of “we’re all in this together” or for some other miasmic “greater good.”
Worldcoin, recently released by Silicon Valley parasites, is a perfect example:
To a Remnant, or a person of greater-than-turd-level-intelligence, this is categorically the dumbest idea possible. It took bitcoiners less than a microsecond to identify it as a scam, and then another five minutes to point that out beyond a shadow of a doubt:
“Fairness and equality” as defined by the parasitic class. Source: Twitter.
But alas, the lemmings will follow their master’s directions right off the side of the cliff, into the lava, believing it’s the path to “paradise.”
The worst part is not that they end up in the lava, but that as they continue to leap to their death, they will actually blame it on those who don’t jump into the lava with them!
This is the extent of derangement possible when you take a member of the masses and place them on a diet of soy, envy, propaganda, platitudes and moral relativism.
There is no saving the lemmings through reason. There is no rallying them on our side through words. Their only hope is that the functional subset of humanity builds a new world, and it becomes the default.
This has, is and always will be the role of the Remnant.
Placating the lemmings, and paying them to adopt slavery. Source: Twitter.
Until then, the parasites will continue to coerce the blind masses into voluntary slavery, while weaponizing them against the Remnant, i.e., the true source of wealth in any society.
We’ve seen this movie before..This is just the 2021 remake. Source.
Bitcoin Fixes This
Can Bitcoin fix this?
On a long enough timescale, I believe so. Although a system can likely never remove parasites altogether, good hygiene (Bitcoin in the economic and social sense) makes it harder for them to proliferate, or even exist in the first place.
In fact, perhaps the role that the parasite must play is like the snake in the garden. They exist to keep the system strong and resilient. To keep the Remnant sharp, to awaken them and to test them.
Akin to the grand role of “evil” in society, at some level, it exists to challenge “good” and keep it not just honest, but robust. So, in that sense, perhaps the parasite is never fully removed.
Perhaps Bitcoin’s role is to make the environment hygienic enough for prosperity, by making it impossible for them to feed and grow to the extent they have today.
Let’s explore this further…
The Parasitic Environment
In the same way that particular environments are conducive to the growth of molds and fungi, parasites proliferate when the conditions are right.
The fiat world we’re living in provides the ideal conditions for parasitism to be rewarded. When the consequences of human actions are not evident and we can lie to ourselves through the development of “models” that do not reflect reality, where the map is taken as gospel and the territory ignored, the world quickly devolves into a mindless tyranny.
Environments with ideal conditions for parasitism include:
HollywoodPoliticsSoylickin ValleyAcademiaWall Street
In fact, it’s so bad that even some traditional Remnants have decayed into parasitic versions of themselves due to a blend of fear, greed and broken incentives.
Arnold Schwarzenegger devolving into an anti-freedom, castrated sheepChamath Palihapitiya turning into a full-blown statist soy boyNAssim Taleb suffering from major viral hysteria and bitcoin derangement syndrome
It’s quite sad actually, and a reminder of why what we’re doing is so important. If we fix the money, we can fix behavior, and downstream have a positive impact on the world.
Through this lens, Bitcoin goes a long way toward “fixing this.”
A New Dawn
Bitcoin, by virtue of tying the metaphysical “cost” of decisions to real-world economic consequences, makes fraudulent, abhorrent and parasitic behavior expensive.
Bitcoin’s number one impact to society will be the reintroduction of economic consequence. Could the discovery of Bitcoin move us from a Type 0 into a Type 1 civilization? Could this take us beyond the framework of the Remnant, the parasite and the masses? Could energy money root human action into reality, such that time, energy and resource wastage is drastically reduced through cost and consequence? Could the result be that everyone’s character is forged toward being exceptional and outstanding? Could homo-bitcoinicus as a species not have a blind masses but a literal civilization of Remnants?
Is this what lies beyond the great filter?
I don’t know. All I do know is that Bitcoin may well be the most important discovery since fire, and future generations will measure the timechain of humanity as Before Bitcoin (BB) and After Bitcoin (AB)
Before Bitcoin was a low-fidelity, low-resolution version of history in which homosapiens battle to establish themselves as the dominant, intelligent, sentient species on planet Earth.
After Bitcoin is a high-fidelity, near-perfect-resolution continuation of history in which homo-bitcoinicus emerges and harnesses the energy from the sun leading it to the next great leap: teleportation.
But…that’s for another article: “Fire, Bitcoin, Teleportation. Bitcoin Timed Ed 4.”
For now, suffice it to say, I have hope.
My guess is that there will always be a “masses” in some form, because 80/20 distributions are found at every layer of existence. But by making it harder for the parasites to exist and removing the incentive to profitably do so consistently and over a long enough period of time, at the very least the masses cannot be weaponized against the Remnant.
“Through incentivizing greed, Satoshi does not test miners beyond their capacity to endure, and, at the same time, by rewarding honest behavior, he ensures that even the lost souls among us who are devoid of conscience will not be led astray.”
–Nozomi Hayase
In the meantime, our role as Bitcoiners is to continue to unplug the dormant Remnant among us, to maintain the purity and integrity of the signal and to forge ahead, on a divergent system that is incompatible with the fraud of a world we’re living in.
We have the power, the capacity, the intellect and the will to define and build a world which we would not only like to live in, but be proud to hand down to our kin. A world in which human action feedback loops are tightened, consequences become real, rewards are naturally compounded and the incentives exist to become the best version of yourself.
And although it’s not a world guided by mass or parasitic ideals, it’s a world in which they both benefit. The parasites because they end up with a world that they can continue to live in, for if we leave it to them, they will not only devour us, they will devour themselves when we’ve run out. Their only chance for long term survival is to get out of the way. The masses will benefit because a rising tide lifts all boats, and perhaps the incentives transform them into something more like the Remnant by forcing their character to develop.
Time will tell.
Bitcoin will record it either way.
This is a guest post by Aleks Svetski of anchor.fm/WakeUpPod. Opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.
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