Only through the combination of continual self-improvement and contribution to The Infinite Game, that together lead to incredibly hard-earned self-confidence, can ridicule, shame and scorn be defeated as a weapon.
The Eternal War | Doctrine | Society | Responsibles’ Principle
Since the drive across the Golden Gate, Harrison secured and under positive control once more, the immediate threat sorted. Since the conversation on the flight up the coast. Early had felt a deep sense of disconnect, beneath which was an abiding sense of dread. To be quite honest, it had all been growing in him for many months. Really, increasingly across several years. Even fully committing himself to the training, preparation and securing of Annabelle along with his other many duties for The Order, he could not rid himself of this omnipresent sense.
Something wicked this way comes! The title and base concept of the old Ray Bradbury book kept coming to mind. Over and over again. This shape of a thought, of a whispered knowing, infusing his entire being until emerging in some unguarded moment as an internal utterance. It had become and remained the central focus of that ninety percent of his mind, that is the subconscious. Something wicked this way comes. Now not only in his mind, but he could feel the fullness of it shaping up within his body. Woven round with a nostalgic sadness also bled through to full awareness in unguarded and most unexpected moments.
What exactly is coming though? In these times just before malevolent violence is unleashed, all the decades of the pent-up rage of a people releasing into chaos and ultimately war. A sense of dread and foreboding is to be expected among any and all with the capacity to be actually aware. Even though the fullness, the certainty of what is to be, cannot yet be seen directly. Harrison, and most likely Robert at Harrison’s direction. Most certainly, Bertrand, at Harrison’s direction. Had been for months shaping and forming Early into an internal state, forcing him from the known and projected to look for an entirely different understanding.
As he goes over the continuity posture plans and reports for the San Francisco facility and operation, and those few things The Order requires of him that the others of his team cannot or will not address. The beginning of a concept starts to gossamer thread weave into being, the mere fragile scaffolding of a thing. The shadowy outline of the wicked ever so lightly starting to show.
Deep down beneath and within all things human, is yet life. This is a point he can hold to. Something which does not and cannot be changed nor removed regardless how strenuously the anti-humanists press. That ancient anchor with which to tether himself to base reality. His mother, after med school, had taught him this when he was yet a wee lad in the cold and harsh high country of northern Washington, in more than one of their discussions while snowed in during the long months of winter.
Parasitism had begun sometime shortly after life itself began, four and a half billion years ago. Parasitic lifeforms tuned not to seek out and adapt themselves to metabolize energy sources but to seek out those who had and to live off of them. All of which began rather early, perhaps as early as three point eight billion years ago. The ever-increasing degree and sophistication of parasitism had gone on to force life to seek out ever more extreme and unique energy source niches, to continually adapt. At some point, perhaps two and a half billion years ago, this conflict of parasite and prey had attained such a degree that different single celled lifeforms combined with other single celled lifeforms to create an entirely new form of highly complex cell. This in time would not prove enough and so multicellular life would emerge into ever higher orders of complexity, all seeking to delay and counter the spread of runaway parasitism. Parasitism, the need to resist and survive, yet driving all things.
Yes. But why is this coming to mind now? Now as Early stares blankly at the reports in his left hand resting on the polished old wood desk in the windowless room he’d taken as his office here. This is the Infinite Game, this constant evolution, sometimes dramatic evolution, of life. Constant forced evolution such the vast array of parasites might be survived. Such the Eternal War did not, does not and will not end all life.
LEVIATHAN! The word leaps into his mind, shoving aside all other internal and external input and processing. Sudden infusing his nervous system with energy. Ensuring he recognizes the import of the word and its meaning.
Parasitism in all its many forms at every level from the chemical up through single cells, communities of cells, multicellular bodies, communities of multicellular bodies, ecosystems, economies, civilizations. This is the most ancient Leviathan, buried deep and inescapably in all life and all things life goes about doing. Leviathan! That great monster of the deep which rises at times to brush aside all which stands before it, all in its path. Excepting those few with the wit and capacity to suddenly and rapidly evolve, to improve, to fight back and live.
Leviathan has adapted, evolved beyond the biologic to the synthetic, is rapidly rising once more and cannot be stopped. Cannot be stopped as the destruction about to be wrought is necessary. Necessary to force the Infinite Game to once more evolve and expand, dramatically. Forcing Responsibles to stand and fight for self and all. Leviathan must be survived. Humanity must be restored. A new balance in the Eternal War must be obtained.
“Why don’t the wealthy, the powerful and elite not build their own systems as counter?” Annabelle, in her sit down and talk with the Earl. She’d asked this in response to his sharing with her the rough idea of Leviathan. Of course, she was in fight mode, mind and nervous system still flushed from the thrill of another morning with Carl and his team of shootists out on the range and in the shoot house. She’d shown herself quite well, behind the gun and as a hostage being rescued. Both essential skills taught by The Order to those wards the matriarchs would have the knights prepared for the very real world of power.
The Earl had shared the concept of Leviathan with her as the day’s topic of discussion, though he’d yet to work through it in all fullness. The very idea fired her mind, setting her energetics ablaze for a second time that day. The thought of Leviathan and of a dramatic evolution in the Eternal War sparked something deep within her, something primordial and organic to those bearing the genetics of nobility. The very sense of a great enemy to be fought, if never outright defeatable, thrilled every bit of her!
“Do they not? And if not, why not?” The Earl, always asking questions, never directly giving answers. For, the giving of the answer imparts no real knowing. This being an old wisdom. For, the ability to know is not found in the answer but in the question. This had frustrated her to no end upon their first meeting. Her beauty and presence had ensured most of her life that questions were answered without a moment’s hesitation by those seeking to please her. Now she loved the challenge of questions!
“They’re mostly blind and so they don’t act until it’s too late.” His young ward, princess and quite possibly future queen, glowing as she picks up the threads and begins to weave the tapestry of the enemy will be the struggle of her life.
“Indeed. Why and how are they blind?” The Earl, the slightest appearance of stern approval upon his face. Demonstrating approval is necessary in the development of all beings. But one does no service to a woman of immense future responsibility by coddling her, speaking too nicely, using soothing and comforting words, by being overly approving, kind and generous. She will one day have to possess, hold and exercise the respect of highly capable and experienced men, knights. Best to teach her how men speak with, lead and shape self and other men.
“Most petty and lesser elites, and a good number of actual elites benefit off of it. Many others are just arrogant, not recognizing their reality is dramatically limited by their ignorance, by their selfishness, by their passions. Many, far too many, are kept from the base reality by gatekeepers who are well-intentioned but not sufficient, blinded in their own ways, or who’re genuinely malevolent to varying degrees. Some don’t know what to do. So, they go along with the worst believing they’ll endure as their old families always have or as the wealthy often do.”
“Good. What’s different this time? How is Leviathan a genuine end of species threat?” Further prodding from this man had in the few short years they’d been put together, become more of a father figure than she’d ever known.
“Leviathan is in absolutely everything, everywhere now. There are no sanctuaries, given most wealth is now artificial, utterly devoid of any connection with fundamental productivity. The financialization of everything and the digitization of capital markets has created the situation where Leviathan can pay for itself through algorithm trading and market manipulation.” Annabelle was reaching with this projection. Though her studies of finance and economics, past, present and future, as directed by the academics of The Order, gave her a basis to make just such a projection.
“Manipulation of what nature?” She’s sharp, only getting sharper every day now. To such degree it is becoming a challenge to keep up with her, despite all the resources of The Order. She’ll have to experience the Ordeal, soon.
“Creating the news.” Looking to the Earl too see if he wishes her to continue. At a slight nod, she does.
“Massive manipulation of the information space so as to drive humans against humans everywhere, at all times. But in such fashion as to move given security and asset prices in predictable ways.”
“Good. Very good. Now run along, Bronson will be displeased you’re late for his daily cudgel session.” The Earl, smiling with genuine praise at Annabelle’s understanding. She’d leapt to the very place his mind had been going since the awareness first sparked in him earlier in the day.
Later that evening, during meditations before sleep, having moved about considerably, carefully checking the inner and outer rings of human and technical observation and preparedness in painstaking detail, through much of the day. It all began to take shape in his mind, Leviathan. The nature and threat of the enemy, the great modern monster of the Resentfuls. This great, near total and absolute evolution in the Eternal War. It all started to come together into his recognizable consciousness.
The alchemist’s dream, the creation of immense wealth from very little, even nothing at all, had been realized. Not metal to gold, but computation to dollars. What dangerous foolishness! Yet, the law of equivalent exchange is insurmountable. For two decades wealth had been created out of thin air in the banks and capital markets, wealth which had pooled heavily in a smaller and smaller number of organizations and hands. Now the exchange of equivalents must be made, the tally due for trillions and trillions of dollars in unearned wealth. A tally only truly payable in the form of billions of human lives.
Leviathan is inexorably rising to conduct the tally!
Leviathan, the machine, machine intelligence. Oh, not some great centralized AI out of the old sci-fi visions of the future. No, that’s yet perhaps a hundred years or more off. That at least would be an enemy defined, knowable, a thing that is direct and targetable. As dystopian and dangerous as a centralized, coordinated and intentioned great mind may be one day. It doesn’t even remotely represent the already extant danger posed by the Leviathan of the now. A vast and ever-expanding all of human existence saturating ocean of disparate, isolated, independent and interdependent algorithms. A vast expanse of algorithms, large and small, sophisticated and not, man’s new inhuman, inhumane, master. Man, once more falling, relegating self, into outright bondage and slavery.
It strikes the Earl he’d unknowingly participated in the creation of Leviathan. That is in the early development of computational capital, algorithm trading, technologies and strategies. Not even remotely in the fullness of Leviathan of the now. But aspects of it, in the early days of algorithm warfare in financial markets. Later, in the special operations intelligence community, unknowingly both feeding and in Markovian fashion shaping algorithm warfare. He’d even done doctoral studies, after recruitment into The Order, on multivariate sentiment analysis and data brokerage specifically so he could see the framework, the backbone, the information and operational flows through the nexus of AlgoWar. That nexus being the world’s many capital markets, public and private, visible and invisible, onshore and off.
AlgoWar now ninety percent of all transactions in all of the world’s largest capital markets. AlgoWar operating in milliseconds every hour of the day, every day of the year, in one or more markets, trading securities and instruments. Billion-dollar software and computational platforms engaged in all-out war with one another. All driven by reports, news and online social movements. Reports, news and social movements manufactured out of the slightest thing or nothing at all, through online ad spend, offline non-profits and campaign donations, the funding of think tanks and thought centers. All to drive spending so as to move the prices of securities, all forms of securities, in markets all around the world.
How else had offshore wealth gone from just under twenty trillion in the early two thousands to more than one hundred and forty trillion in just twenty years? A great rapacious theft of the modern commons!
The ever more pervasive and intrusive, ever more enslaving surveillance state did not begin with governments. It began with algorithmic trading. With the need to gain an informational advantage over other traders and their rapidly expanding machines of algorithms, supporting algorithms, computational resources and communications technologies and behavioral sensors.
The Earl, his mind now flowing with awareness of the thing, remembers back to the late two thousands and where all of this was even then. There were conversations he was involved in regarding investing in and making social media all pervasive as a means by which to gain information advantages. Initially through access to the social information flows of key thinkers and leaders, in their unguarded online moments, using behavioural model algorithms. An innocent enough approach rapidly devolved into using clever ad word buy to influence the flows of information, sentiment and decision-making. To influence and shape thought leaders and decision-makers in predictable and useful ways.
This coupled with massive non-profit funding in support of artificial reality narratives – climate change being one just such. Perhaps the biggest, most costly and destructive lie ever concocted and perpetrated by man. All of it requiring ever-more, ever-closer and real time surveillance and behavioral shaping as competing AlgoWar engines rapidly adapted to overcome asymmetries in information, computational speed and market access, liquidity and a vast slew of other traditional constraints. Massive investment firms pouring hundreds of billions into their computational warfighting engines.
Leviathan began in algorithm trading as attempts to gain advantage through speed, then proximity to information, to digital surveillance and to total surveillance all to early detect and influence information and then outright control and fabricate information. Only once the tools of total surveillance and total control were in place, did the governments realize the assets available to them. Assets for enslavement which pay for themselves out of the success of the alchemist’s dream of turning something of little substance and value into something of little substance but immense value. Something substantive is actually necessary, even if substantive destructively. That being the input of destructive noise. The wealth creation, alchemic conversion, of AlgoWar, is utterly dependent on noise – chaos – in the world, on the implication of and actual violence.
Harrison had been driving him to see something, something, given his unusual background, only he could see. Early sees it now and it’s truly a terrifying thing! Leviathan’s already unleashed and cannot be stopped. An all-devouring beast which feeds itself, which devours all things human, converting chaos and noise into wealth and power. Hollow wealth and power and yet wealth and power nonetheless.
Throughout all the long history of humanity there’d always remained an upward bound on tyranny, on slavery. At some point the tyrant could take no more and the system of enslavement collapsed. In every tyrannical slave system had ever been. There was always a direct feedback mechanism, an insurmountable requirement for external real, tangible asset inputs which required a balance between natural resources, production, capitalization and manpower. Not anymore. Not as long as the electricity remains on, information continues to change and flow, and the markets continue to operate.
Now tyranny knows only one limit and that is the threat humanity poses to the machine. The threat of humanity turning the electricity off being the greatest threat to the all-consuming tyranny, the total slavery, now so deeply embedded as to be impossible to be thrown off. The Earl recognizes the fullness of the threat now. This thing Harrison could not tell him as he most likely only loosely sees it, understands it – more a thing felt than known. Couple that with the fact it’s a thing can’t be communicated digitally or spoken of in any way that could be picked up by the all-pervasive surveillance state that’s not government, but a burgeoning civilization of rapacious algos looking always and everywhere for an informational advantage to wage AlgoWar with.
As Early, having found the shape of the thing, starts to slip into sleep. His subconscious puts forward the thread of what it will continue to process while his attention networks are turned off for the night. Now and into the future, Leviathan will ensure total war everywhere, all the time and at every scale, in order to make vast sums of money every millisecond. All of this without providing a single thing in the way of actual productivity. This lack of real productivity, the fruits of physical labor upon which all economies, societies, cultures and civilizations have been built since the beginning of the species. Will collectively drive machine intelligence, algorithms, to ever greater degrees of anti-humanism. Humans being the flaw in the system, the constant threat to the machine, and the ultimate resource to be fully consumed.
Damn but Harrison, the old nobleman, knew exactly what he was asking when he asked what would happen should the machine be turned off! The implied question was, what would it take for humanity to rise up and turn the machine off, the invisible Leviathan? The massive skewing of economies and financial systems, coupled with the ever-present threat of humanity waking to its real masters and turning on those masters, turning off those masters. These combined would mean those benefiting most from the machine, from Leviathan, have turned on humanity, are even now seeking to radically reduce its numbers to the minimal human slaves required to provide the illusion of reality. To numbers manageable. Before enough of humanity wakes to the real threat and seeks to find the solution that is turning the machine off.
Billions, many billions, will have to be wiped from the earth. A thing openly stated and pursued by many. Why does humanity fail over and over again to recognize that when petty elites state they wish to kill you, that they are already heavily engaged in actively seeking to do just that. It’s all a thing carefully educated into the young and the great hordes of elite university idiots educated in schools funded directly and indirectly by Leviathan itself in the form of non-profit grants, scholarships, academic centers, research projects. Through the vast and growing funds available in university endowments. This many must die and we must be the ones to do this great dead, or to die ourselves as the necessary sacrifices.
There’s a flaw in the machine, in the thinking of Leviathan and its keepers and beneficiaries, however. A thing perhaps only The Order and the old matriarchies can fully grasp, being the paired keepers of history. It’s the assumption automated warfare unleashed upon the world to feed AlgoWar, while dramatically wiping out entire populations through famine, pestilence, violence and war, won’t in the end turn on all, even itself. Even a perfunctory survey of history shows that at the root of all things is great house competition - Resentfuls and their Eternal War – so deeply woven into the fabric of life none of it can ever be removed, overcome, ended.
Leviathan may well rise and accomplish its designed in, self-reinforcing biased aims of generating quadrillions of new wealth in the violent destruction of humanity, such only great houses remain. To what end however, as it will inevitably be used by these same great houses to destroy one another on the other side of perhaps a century of bloodshed and war.
As his mind goes through final attention network shutdown, Early recognizes all of this is already in motion and cannot be stopped. Where it goes from here is up to those few princes and princesses who can recognize the real threat, who create and sustain sanctuaries through hard years of total war everywhere and always, and the few knights who must secure and defend all. The Infinite Game must be several eigenvalues updated, the old structures and dependencies brushed aside in the conflagration of Leviathan unleashed, such something new yet ancient emerges.
In the final flutters of consciousness, the Earl understands what the Lord Commander and his own sensing has been pointing to. Either the machine gets turned off and mankind reverts to the dark ages or worse – or humanity, the Infinite Game, dramatically updates and continues to rapidly evolve towards a Type I civilization faster than the machine can corrupt the Game and eradicate – slaughter – the human species.
Not only does something wicked this way come. But the old world, the world of a thousand years, is now once and truly gone, dissipating away into a faded memory, only to be found in the pores, the little folds and hidden spaces of humanity. Wistful memories of a time, of an age, already long far gone. Nothing more than a mere relic of a time and a humanity never to be revisited again. Irreversibility being that most powerful of all forces in the known universe.
If The Order is to survive this latest flare in the Eternal War, this near total skewing to the Resentfuls, it’ll have to update itself at scale, in depth and breadth, never before accomplished or even imagined! This is what Harrison requires he see. A choice yet pending in probability space, not yet definable and knowable. A choice carefully, so as to not unduly influence through the observer effect, directed to him to make. A choice perhaps he alone can make, a wavefunction to collapse that his entire life has been shaped to realize. If and when it is time to do so. If he survives that long. Leviathan is already oh so diligently seeking out its greatest enemies.
The last thought goes through his conscious mind before sleep. Is that the machine, Leviathan, can’t be turned off. Resentfuls and their forcing function are still necessary. Humanity must continue to advance, reach forward to attain more than it had ever attained before, to accomplish what the past century of hard science and experimentation had made possible.
The machine, Leviathan, must be survived! This being the great purpose of The Order and the matriarchal dynasties it had for so many centuries been bound to.
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