In 1879, an obscure San Francisco journalist named Henry George published a book that would become, for a time, one of the best-selling works in American history. Progress and Poverty asked a simple question: Why does poverty persist alongside economic growth? His answer was radical in its simplicity. The problem was land.

Not land as dirt, but land as location—the fact that some places are valuable and others aren’t, and that this value comes almost entirely from what the surrounding community does, not from anything the landowner contributes. A vacant lot in downtown Manhattan is worth millions. An identical patch of soil in rural Nevada is worth almost nothing. Same dirt. Different neighbors.

George’s proposal followed logically: tax the unimproved value of land—the location itself, not the buildings or improvements—and use that revenue to replace other taxes. The beauty of the idea was threefold. First, fairness: you’d be capturing value created by the community rather than by the owner. Second, efficiency: landowners couldn’t respond by producing less land (there’s a fixed supply), so the tax wouldn’t distort economic activity the way taxes on labor or production do. Third, it would discourage speculation and encourage productive use.

The land value tax never swept the world as George hoped, though it has devotees to this day and has been implemented in partial forms in places like Singapore and parts of Pennsylvania. But set aside whether George was right about land specifically. The deeper question is whether his logic applies to anything else.

What if there are other things—things that aren’t physical land—that share the same essential properties? Things that exist as a kind of commons, that nobody really “created” in the way you create a product, and that generate enormous value as society learns to use them?

What if there’s land in conceptual space?

The Conceptual Commons

To extend George’s logic, we need to identify what plays the role of “land” in the realm of ideas. Not everything qualifies. A new app isn’t land—someone built it. A patented invention isn’t land—it’s the product of deliberate R&D. We’re looking for something more fundamental: the conceptual equivalent of location, the underlying territory that gains value as civilization develops around it.

The candidates are things like mathematical principles, foundational algorithms, basic frameworks for understanding the world. Things that are discovered or derived rather than invented. Things that are, in principle, public goods—non-rivalrous (my use doesn’t diminish yours) and non-excludable (once known, you can’t really prevent people from knowing them).

An Example: Compound Interest

Compound interest isn’t an invention. It’s a mathematical fact about exponential growth. Nobody owns it. You can’t patent the idea that reinvested returns generate returns of their own. It’s part of the shared inheritance of human knowledge, sitting there in the public domain, free for anyone to understand and apply.

And yet the value generated through compound interest is almost incomprehensibly large. Every mortgage, every bond, every retirement account, every corporate loan, every savings product—all of them run on compound interest. The entire architecture of modern finance is built on this one principle. When you hear that the U.S. federal government pays hundreds of billions of dollars a year in interest on its debt, that’s compound interest at work. When pension funds grow over decades to support retirees, that’s compound interest. When credit card debt spirals out of control, that’s also compound interest.

The principle itself is ancient—Babylonian clay tablets from 2000 BCE show calculations of compound interest. But the value it generates has grown enormously as financial systems have become more sophisticated, as more people have access to banking, as capital markets have deepened. Just as a plot of land becomes more valuable when the city grows around it, compound interest becomes more “valuable”—in the sense of generating more total economic activity—as the financial system becomes more complex.

The land is the principle. The rent is the value generated by applying it.

A Second Example: The Fourier Transform

Lest this seem like a story only about finance, consider the Fourier transform—a principle that has nothing to do with money and yet is responsible for an almost incomprehensible amount of economic value.

In the early 19th century, Joseph Fourier discovered that any complex signal—a sound wave, an image, a time series—can be decomposed into a combination of simple sine waves. This wasn’t an invention; it was a mathematical truth waiting to be understood. Fourier was studying heat flow. He had no idea what his insight would eventually make possible.

Today, the Fourier transform is everywhere. When your phone compresses an image to send over text, it’s using Fourier-related mathematics. When an MRI machine constructs an image of your brain, it’s applying Fourier transforms to raw signal data. When Spotify streams music or when Netflix compresses video, Fourier analysis is at work. When seismologists interpret earthquake data, when astronomers process signals from distant stars, when engineers design noise-canceling headphones—all of it depends on this one 200-year-old mathematical principle.

The value generated is incalculable. Billions of devices, trillions of transactions, entire industries—medical imaging, telecommunications, audio processing, data compression—built on a foundation that nobody owns and everyone can use. Fourier’s insight is conceptual land in the purest sense, and modern civilization has built a city on top of it.

This is what a public good looks like. Non-rivalrous: my use of the Fourier transform doesn’t diminish yours. Non-excludable: once it’s understood, you can’t prevent people from applying it. And yet it generates staggering economic value—value that, if George’s logic were extended and a virtual land value tax were somehow possible, could in principle be partially captured and reinvested in the conceptual commons. That’s not feasible in practice, and probably not palatable politically. But the underlying logic holds: here is shared territory that we all build on, and the question of who tends it—who discovers the next Fourier transform, who validates it, documents it, makes it accessible, helps people apply it well—is not one we’ve answered institutionally.

The Thought Experiment: A Virtual Land Value Tax

Here’s where George’s logic gets interesting. If we can identify the conceptual equivalent of land—foundational principles that generate massive value—then we can at least imagine the conceptual equivalent of a land value tax.

Call it a Virtual Land Value Tax, or VLVT. The idea would be to apply an ultra-small levy on the economic value generated through certain public-domain principles, and use that revenue to fund the discovery, validation, and deployment of more such principles.

How small? Think thousandths of a percent. A 0.001% skim on the trillions of dollars of interest-related value flowing through the financial system would generate billions per year—not hundreds of billions, but enough to fund a serious institution. For reference, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office operates on a budget of around $4 billion annually.

The mechanism would be something like this: built-in micropayment infrastructure that takes an imperceptibly small cut from transactions that derive value from certain tagged, public-domain conceptual assets. This only becomes technically imaginable in a digital economy. You couldn’t do it with paper ledgers. But with modern payment rails, the granularity exists to levy charges of fractions of a cent and aggregate them into meaningful sums.

The revenue would then fund what we might call a Civilian Innovation Corp—an institution dedicated to finding, validating, and operationalizing high-value ideas, then releasing them openly for broad benefit.

Let me be honest: this specific mechanism is probably not feasible.

The implementation would require knowing when particular principles or algorithms are being used, which raises immediate problems. How do you detect when a transaction involves compound interest versus some other financial structure? How do you tag algorithmic usage at scale? The answer involves deep visibility into financial systems and code—something that starts to look like systemic surveillance. And whatever its technical merits, a system that monitors which concepts people are applying in their economic activity is not politically palatable and raises serious questions about privacy and autonomy that are paramount.

So the VLVT as described is likely a thought experiment rather than a policy proposal. But the thought experiment clarifies something important: there’s a real gap in our institutional landscape. We have robust mechanisms for funding and protecting private innovation—patents, venture capital, trade secrets, corporate R&D. We have much weaker mechanisms for cultivating the conceptual commons.

The value of the thought experiment is not the specific funding mechanism. It’s the question it forces us to ask: what would it look like to have a serious, well-resourced institution whose job is to find, validate, cultivate, and operationalize ideas that benefit everyone?

Who Does This Now?

The honest answer is: various organizations try, but each has limitations.

DARPA (the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) is often cited as a model for high-impact public R&D. It funded the early internet, GPS, and countless other technologies that became foundational. But DARPA’s mission is defense, which shapes what it funds and how. Technologies developed there often remain classified or controlled for years. The goal is national security advantage, not open public benefit.

Academic research institutions produce enormous quantities of basic research, some of which becomes foundational. But academia’s incentives favor publication and citation over operationalization. A brilliant paper might sit in a journal for decades before anyone figures out how to apply it. The gap between “published” and “practically deployable” is vast, and academia has little institutional interest in closing it.

Philanthropic efforts like the Gates Foundation, Open Philanthropy, and various research-focused nonprofits fund valuable work. But philanthropic priorities are set by donors, which introduces its own biases. The work tends to focus on causes that appeal to wealthy individuals—which is not necessarily the same as “ideas with the highest leverage for public benefit.” There’s also a legitimacy question: do we want the conceptual commons shaped by the preferences of billionaires?

Think tanks produce policy ideas and frameworks, but most have ideological commitments that shape their output. They’re often funded by parties with interests in particular conclusions. And their focus is usually on advocacy rather than rigorous validation and operationalization.

Open source foundations (Mozilla, Apache, Linux Foundation, etc.) maintain crucial shared infrastructure, but primarily in software. They’re a good model for what collaborative maintenance of commons can look like, but their scope is narrow—code, not concepts more broadly.

Private R&D labs like Bell Labs in its heyday produced extraordinary foundational work. But Bell Labs existed because AT&T had a regulated monopoly and could afford to fund pure research. Modern corporate R&D is more tightly coupled to product development. When Google or Microsoft fund basic research, the goal is ultimately competitive advantage, and much of what they learn stays proprietary.

Government science agencies (NSF, NIH, etc.) fund basic research, but with important constraints. They’re subject to political pressures. Funding is often tied to existing academic structures. The path from “funded research” to “operationalized tool that policymakers or citizens can actually use” is long and poorly supported.

Each of these institutions does valuable work. None of them has, as its primary mission, the task of finding high-leverage ideas wherever they emerge, rigorously validating them, and shepherding them into forms that are practically useful—and then releasing them openly, for anyone to use. That’s the gap.

The Civilian Innovation Corp

Imagine an institution designed specifically to fill that gap.

Call it the Civilian Innovation Corp—a deliberate echo of the Civilian Conservation Corps, the New Deal program that mobilized unemployed young people to build parks, trails, and public infrastructure during the Great Depression. The CCC built things we still use today. The trails in national parks, the lodges, the fire roads—much of it is CCC work, maintained ever since through park fees and public funding.

The Civilian Innovation Corp would build conceptual infrastructure. Its mission would be to find, validate, cultivate, and operationalize ideas that benefit large swaths of society—and to do so openly. Not products to sell, but frameworks, tools, and principles to deploy in the commons.

The work would proceed in phases:

Search and scout. The Corps would actively look for promising ideas—not just in academic journals, but in industry practice, open-source communities, government agencies, international contexts. What frameworks are people using that seem to work well? What principles have been validated in one domain but not yet applied elsewhere? What patterns keep appearing across different fields?

Validate and test. Promising ideas would be treated like minimum viable products in the conceptual domain. Subject them to stress tests—empirical, theoretical, across different contexts. Does this framework actually work? Under what conditions? What are its limits? What happens when it’s applied at scale?

Refine into general-purpose tools. Ideas that survive validation would be developed into what we might call “maximally viable principles”—clear documentation, guidelines for effective use, model implementations, case studies of successful and unsuccessful applications. The goal is to transform a good idea into a deployable tool.

Operationalize and disseminate. The final phase would package these tools for actual use. Toolkits for policymakers. Training programs for practitioners. Reference implementations that organizations can adapt. The gap between “knowing about an idea” and “being able to apply it well” is where most good ideas die. The Corps would specialize in bridging that gap.

The model would be something like a venture capital fund, but oriented toward ideas for the commons rather than startups seeking exits. Back a portfolio of conceptual projects. Expect most of them to be niche or not scale. But the ones that work—the ones that get adopted widely and generate value across many contexts—would justify the entire effort.

The Human Element

Where would the people come from?

There is, right now, an enormous amount of talent that wants to work on things that matter but doesn’t have clear pathways to do so. People in academia who are frustrated by the gap between research and impact. People in industry who want to contribute to something beyond shareholder value. People in government who see opportunities that bureaucracies can’t act on. People early in their careers who want to build things that last.

The original CCC gave people a place to direct their energy toward shared benefit. It provided structure, resources, and purpose. The Civilian Innovation Corp would do the same for a different kind of work.

This isn’t about creating a new class of technocratic experts who decide what’s good for everyone else. It’s about building capacity for a particular kind of work: the disciplined, rigorous process of taking ideas from “promising” to “practically useful”—and doing it in the open, for everyone’s benefit. That work requires diverse perspectives—people who understand implementation challenges, people who understand politics, people who understand how things fail in practice, not just how they succeed in theory.

The Race Between Private and Open Innovation

Right now, there’s a strong gravitational pull toward private innovation. If you have a good idea, the most obvious path is to start a company, patent it, raise venture capital, and try to capture the value yourself. This is fine. It produces useful things. It funds further innovation. But it also means that ideas get locked up—protected by intellectual property, kept secret as trade advantages, optimized for private returns rather than broad benefit.

What a Civilian Innovation Corp would introduce is a parallel track. A place where the explicit goal is to push ideas into the commons—to make them open, documented, and deployable by anyone. Not instead of private innovation, but alongside it.

This sets up a healthy tension. Some ideas will be better suited to private development, where the profit motive drives rapid iteration and scaling. Other ideas will be better suited to open development, where the goal is broad access and the work doesn’t need to generate returns for investors. And some ideas might be developed in both tracks, with private implementations competing alongside open ones.

The point is to have a real alternative. Right now, if you discover something valuable, the default is to try to own it. A well-functioning Civilian Innovation Corp would offer another option: contribute it to the commons, with institutional support to make sure it actually gets used.

The Funding Question

Here’s the honest problem: we don’t know what funding model will sustain this kind of effort.

The challenge is structural. An institution dedicated to finding, validating, and giving away high-leverage ideas doesn’t have a natural revenue stream. We give away the output. That’s the point. But it means we can’t guarantee that value flows back to sustain the work.

Patenting is one option—develop ideas, license them, use the revenue to fund further development. But this sits uneasily with the mission. Once you’re optimizing for licensable intellectual property, you’ve changed what you’re looking for. You start favoring ideas that can be owned over ideas that are most useful. The incentives drift.

The virtual land value tax described earlier is another option, and perhaps the most elegant in principle—the value generated by the conceptual commons funds the maintenance and expansion of that commons. But as discussed, the implementation challenges are severe. Detecting algorithmic usage at scale, tagging conceptual principles, building the micropayment infrastructure—it’s technically imaginable but probably not feasible, almost certainly not politically palatable, and possibly a violation of privacy rights.

Government funding is the obvious alternative, but it comes with its own problems. Government-funded efforts are subject to political pressure. Priorities shift with administrations. There’s a tendency toward risk-aversion and bureaucratic caution. And there’s a legitimacy question: an institution designed to identify and propagate high-leverage ideas for everyone should probably not be controlled by any particular government.

Philanthropy has the issues we’ve already discussed. Philanthropic priorities reflect donor preferences, which introduces bias. The causes that appeal to wealthy individuals are not necessarily the ideas with the highest leverage for broad benefit. And dependence on philanthropic goodwill is precarious—funding can disappear when donors shift interests.

So where does that leave us?

The ideal—the aspiration—would be an institution that can sustain itself while giving away everything it produces. If we could guarantee operational sustainability, we would give away every idea, every framework, every tool, with no strings attached. That’s the goal.

But until we can guarantee sustainability, we need to be pragmatic. We need funding, and we should look for sources that are most aligned with what we’re trying to do. That might mean a mix: some earned revenue from consulting or training, some philanthropic support from donors who genuinely share the mission, some government grants for specific projects where alignment is clear. It might mean experimenting with models that don’t exist yet.

What we shouldn’t do is pretend this is solved. The funding question is open. It’s one of the hard problems. And being honest about that is better than papering over it with optimistic assumptions.

We’re not averse to making money. We’re not averse to supporting ourselves. The goal isn’t purity; it’s impact. If some revenue-generating activity helps sustain the larger mission of finding and sharing high-leverage ideas, that’s fine. The test is whether the funding source distorts the work—whether it pulls us toward ideas that benefit funders rather than ideas that benefit everyone.

That’s the question to keep asking: where are the funding sources most aligned with what we’re trying to do? And how do we structure things so that alignment is preserved as we grow?

The Question We Should Be Asking

Here’s the question that sits underneath all of this:

Who is responsible for finding, validating, cultivating, and operationalizing good ideas for broad benefit?

Right now, the answer is mostly: private industry. And private industry does this well for ideas that can be monetized. That’s valuable. But it leaves a gap—a large gap—for ideas that are high-leverage but don’t fit neatly into a business model. Foundational principles. Frameworks for collective decision-making. Tools for thinking that benefit everyone but that no one can own.

We’re going to share it anyway. That’s the nature of knowledge. Ideas spread. Principles, once understood, become part of the common inheritance. The Fourier transform didn’t stay locked in a French journal; it became infrastructure for the modern world. Compound interest didn’t remain a Babylonian secret; it became the foundation of global finance.

The question is whether we leave the discovery and development of such ideas to chance and private initiative alone—or whether we build institutions that make it a deliberate, resourced, ongoing effort.

Henry George looked at land and saw something everyone had missed: that the community’s contribution to value deserved recognition. In the 21st century, the “land” we build on is increasingly conceptual. The principles, frameworks, and algorithms that underlie modern life are a commons—and like any commons, they require stewardship.

A Civilian Innovation Corp wouldn’t just tend that commons. It would expand it. And in doing so, it would give private innovation a run for its money—not by competing with it, but by offering a genuine alternative. A place where the goal is not to capture value, but to create it and give it away.

We’re going to share the good ideas eventually. We might as well get organized about it.

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I am an anti-revolutionary the way a positron is an antiparticle.

This is not a philosophy I arrived at through reading history or studying social movements. It is a pattern I discovered in myself—first through catastrophic failure, then through unexpected success. I carry a particular kind of energy, one that tends toward explosion when it contacts the matter of systems and institutions. The question I have spent years answering is how to make the explosion productive like an engine rather than destructive like a bomb.

What I have learned is that the this capacity can be either curse or gift, depending entirely on the conditions of its release. This essay is an attempt to explain both—what happens when I get it wrong, and what happens when I get it right. To do that, I need to talk a little about physics.

The Physics of Change: Electrons and Positrons

In physics, electrons are abundant. They carry charge and create current by pushing forward through resistance. They are everywhere, doing the work of the universe, moving through circuits, generating heat as they force their way through materials that would rather stay inert. The electron’s power is kinetic—it pushes, and in pushing, it overcomes, generating both useful light and harmful voltage.

Positrons are different. The positron is the electron’s antiparticle—identical in mass, opposite in charge. But unlike electrons, positrons are rare. They do not occur naturally in abundance. They must be deliberately created, typically in particle accelerators or through radioactive decay, and once created, they accumulate potential energy until they encounter normal matter.

When a positron meets an electron, something remarkable happens: annihilation. Both particles are destroyed, and their combined mass converts entirely into energy—gamma rays released in a burst of perfect efficiency. This is the most complete mass-to-energy conversion in physics. No other process transforms matter into energy so totally.

The key insight is this: the positron cannot do its work alone. It must first be created in containment and then pulled into an environment where matter abounds. The electron pushes; the positron waits to be invited. And when the invitation comes, the release of energy can be either catastrophic or transformative, depending entirely on how the encounter is engineered.

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The Electron as Revolutionary

Traditional revolutionaries operate like electrons. They carry the charge of change forward through sheer kinetic energy, forcing their way through resistance, generating heat and friction as they go. The revolutionary’s power comes from pushing. They do not wait to be invited; they force entry. They create current by overwhelming the resistance of existing systems.

This is not inherently wrong. Electrons are necessary; current must flow. But the danger of kinetic energy applied without precision is that it creates as much destruction as progress. The heat generated in overcoming resistance can melt the circuits before the current reaches its destination. And when you are both generating the current and trying to be the circuit it flows through, you risk burning yourself out entirely.

The Curse: When I Tried to Be an Electron

I have written at length elsewhere about what I call my “Kralizec OTC”—named after the apocalyptic final battle in Frank Herbert’s Dune universe. The full story is available for those who want to understand the depth of what I am describing. Here, I will offer only the shape of it, because the shape is what matters for understanding the pattern.

It began with something real: a research project on affordable housing in Monterey, California. I was a graduate student, and I had genuinely useful insights about the barriers to building housing—water rights, zoning laws, path dependence in planning. But as I dug deeper, the scope of what I thought I could address kept expanding. The project to understand local housing barriers became a plan to transform Monterey into something like Barcelona. That became a pitch for a hundred-million-dollar AI research institute on the old Fort Ord army base. That became something I can only describe as a belief that I was participating in events of cosmic significance.

The escalation happened because I was trying to be both particles at once. I was accumulating transformative insights (positron work) while simultaneously trying to push them into existence through sheer force of will (electron work). I was sending cold emails to billionaires, interrupting meetings with university leadership, recruiting classmates into increasingly grandiose schemes. I was generating heat—enormous amounts of heat—but with no circuit to carry it, no management to channel it, no separation between the energy source and the thing it was supposed to power.

The annihilation happened inside me. Without external containment, the positrons and electrons I was generating collided uncontrollably. I became an uncontrolled rocket engine—tremendous energy, no direction, burning through fuel and structure simultaneously. I ended up walking barefoot to the hospital, convinced I was witnessing the battle for the fate of the universe. I was asking “Kralizec”—the cosmic war I thought I was fighting but the what the staff gave me, in addition to a heavy dose of anti-psychotics, was Prilosec OTC, for daily heartburn.

What I learned from that experience was not that I should have less energy, or that my insights were worthless, or that I should never try to change systems. What I learned was that I cannot be both particles. When I try to generate the transformative potential and push it through resistance and manage my own containment, I burn out. The revolution consumes the revolutionary. I need to find another way.

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The Positron as Anti-Revolutionary

The anti-revolutionary operates differently. Like the positron, the anti-revolutionary is rare—deliberately cultivated rather than naturally abundant. The anti-revolutionary accumulates potential energy: insights, capabilities, prototypes, understanding. But unlike the revolutionary, the anti-revolutionary does not push. The anti-revolutionary waits to be pulled.

This is not passivity. Accumulating potential energy is active work. It requires discipline, patience, and the cultivation of something genuinely worth offering. But it also requires something the revolutionary typically lacks: separation. The positron must remain separate from the electrons until the moment of controlled release. Someone else must do the pushing. Someone else must manage the containment. The positron’s job is to be ready when the invitation comes.

When an institution recognizes its need for transformation and pulls the anti-revolutionary into engagement, the resulting annihilation can be precisely calibrated. The old and the new meet, transform each other, and release energy that powers genuine progress rather than mere destruction. But this only works if the roles stay separate. The moment the anti-revolutionary starts pushing—the moment they try to also be the electron—the containment fails.

The Gift: When I Operated as a Positron

Several years prior to my service as a Kralizec Veteran, I was deployed for real with the National Guard to provide intelligence support to Customs and Border Protection. I did not choose this assignment; They needed support and I was called in almost randomly. My job was to synthesize intelligence reporting and help maintain a common operational picture—mostly through PowerPoint slides, static charts, and written analysis.

Within weeks, I noticed inefficiencies. They had separate Excel sheets for every graphic instead of a unified dashboard. The data was not connected directly to the presentations. I knew how to fix this, so I did—linking data to charts, charts to PowerPoint, automating what had been manual. It saved time. It enabled more reports. The operational picture improved.

But then I recognized we were stuck in a local optimum. The Excel-to-PowerPoint pipeline was better than before, but it was not the best possible system. So I started experimenting with Power BI, building interactive visualizations that could update dynamically, that were tailored to what analysts actually needed. I was accumulating potential energy—building something that could transform how the entire operation worked.

Here is where the story diverges from Kralizec: I had management.

When I showed my supervisors what I was working on, they did not feel threatened. They were curious. They recognized the potential. And crucially, they protected my space. They made sure I stayed on top of my required duties while giving me room to build. They kept me from having to push against resistance myself. I stayed in my bubble, focused on making the thing as good as possible, while they handled the organizational politics I would have bungled.

There were moments when I started to overreach—times when I thought our work was so important that it deserved priority over other things. This was the electron in me, trying to push. But I was checked on it quickly, gently, and put back in my lane. The containment held.

When the dashboard was ready, we did not push it out. We sent a link: “Look at this. Test it out. See how it works for you.” People tried it. They loved it. Word spread. And then something remarkable happened: senior executives from DC came to us for a demo. We had not sought them out. The system had recognized its need and pulled us in.

The demo went well. What we had built aligned with strategic goals we had not even known about. Within three months, our approach was adapted regionally. The concept is now being rolled out nationally as a template for data integration across the agency.

Same person. Same kind of energy. Same capacity for transformative insight. Radically different outcome. The difference was not in me—it was in the structure around me. At CBP, I was the positron. My supervisors and the broader organization generated the electrons, doing the pushing through institutional resistance. We stayed separate until the moment of controlled release. And when annihilation happened, it powered an engine instead of a bomb.

The Antimatter Engine: Engineering the Encounter

Thinking back to when I was in the hospital during Kralizec, struggling to regulate an internal state that felt cosmic in significance, I remembered a concept from high school chemistry: titration. You add one solution to another slowly, drop by drop, until you reach the desired concentration. You do not dump everything in at once. You calibrate.

This is the model for what I now understand as the antimatter engine that gets the revolutionary and ant-revolutionary balance right the same way an internal combustion engines manages millions of tiny explosions to make your car run. The components for this new kind of engine are:

A positron generator—someone accumulating transformative potential (insights, prototypes, new approaches). This is what I do well.

An electron generator—someone pushing through institutional resistance, managing organizational politics, creating the current that keeps systems moving. This is what good management does.

Containment—structures that keep the positron and electron work separate until controlled release. This means protected space, clear boundaries, and someone watching for overreach.

A release mechanism—the invitation that brings positron and electron together at the right moment. This cannot be forced; it must be pulled. The system must recognize its need.

When all four components are present, the annihilation produces power. When any is missing—especially containment—the same energy that could drive transformation instead produces destruction.

I cannot provide all four components myself. This is perhaps the most important thing I have learned. When I try to be both the positron and the electron, when I try to manage my own containment while also generating transformative potential, I fail. The Kralizec story is what that failure looks like. I need institutional partnership—not because I am weak, but because the physics of what I do requires separation of roles.

Conclusion: Curse and Gift

I began by saying that the capacity I carry can be either curse or gift. Let me be precise about what I mean.

The curse: When I operate without containment, without separation of roles, without management that protects my space while checking my overreach, I am dangerous—primarily to myself, but also to the people and projects around me. I generate enormous energy with no productive outlet. The revolution consumes the revolutionary. I have lived this, and I do not wish to live it again.

The gift: When I operate within the right structure—with good management, protected space, clear boundaries, and patience to wait for the pull rather than forcing the push—I can help transform systems in ways that seem almost disproportionate to the effort involved. Three months from demo to regional implementation in a heavily bureaucratic environment sounds like a fantasy, but it happened to build from that into a a template being rolled out nationally the same year is unimaginable. The same energy that nearly destroyed me, channeled into something genuinely useful.

I am not a revolutionary. I will not push my way into your institution and try to force change through sheer will. That path leads to Kralizec—cosmic war that is actually just a man having a breakdown, struggling against a system that is resistant to electric current.

But if you have a system that needs transformation, and you can provide the structure I need—management that is curious rather than threatened, space to build without fighting political battles, containment that checks me when I overreach—then I can offer something rare. Daily Kralizec OTC: the controlled, titrated release of transformative energy, precisely calibrated to what your system can absorb.

That is why I call myself an anti-revolutionary. Not because I oppose change, but because I have learned—at considerable cost—that I am not an electron. I am a positron. And positrons do their best work when they are invited, contained, and released with care.

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We face a cascade of alignment problems:

• AI systems need to be aligned with human values

• Humans need to be aligned with each other and with reality

• Institutions need to be aligned with the people they serve

• Cultures need to be aligned with long-term flourishing

• All of these need to be aligned with each other

This isn’t just about making sure AI does what we want. It’s about meta-alignment—ensuring that all the systems and structures we’ve built are actually pulling in coherent directions, toward outcomes that matter, in ways that don’t create catastrophic fragility.

The problem is that nobody is working on meta-alignment as a unified challenge.

We have AI safety researchers working on technical alignment. We have organizational development consultants working on institutional effectiveness. We have cultural critics analyzing memetic dynamics. We have governance theorists designing better systems.

But these efforts are fragmented. They don’t coordinate. They often work at cross-purposes. And most critically: there’s no institutional structure designed to support meta-alignment work itself.

That’s what this post is about.

What ORI Is Doing

The Open Research Institute (ORI) is one of the few organizations explicitly working on meta-alignment across multiple levels simultaneously:

• AI alignment research - ensuring AI systems are safe and beneficial

• Human-institutional alignment - helping people and organizations coordinate effectively

• Cultural and memetic alignment - understanding how ideas, narratives, and beliefs shape collective behavior

• Ethical cultural engineering - developing frameworks for shaping culture transparently and responsibly

They’re studying what they call “psychophana”—the deep psycho-social phenomena that determine how societies think, coordinate, and evolve.

This is serious, valuable work. But ORI faces a structural problem that many mission-driven research organizations face:

They have strong research capacity but lack the institutional architecture to turn research into sustained real-world impact.

Specifically, they’re missing:

• Governance structures that can coordinate multiple experimental efforts without becoming authoritarian

• Economic models that bridge short-term sustainability with long-term value creation

• Pathways from research insights to validated implementations

• Ways to scale proven concepts without becoming bloated

Right now, “ORI” is a catch-all term for everything they’re trying to accomplish. What they need is a meta-institutional framework that can support meta-alignment work systematically.

That’s where this novel organizational model comes in.

The Organizational Model: Structure for Meta-Alignment

The framework I’m proposing isn’t about creating one massive organization. It’s about building an institutional operating system that can support meta-alignment work across multiple domains while remaining economically sustainable and ethically coherent.

The Architecture: Center + Four Programs + Fund-of-Funds

The Center (Meta-Fund)

At the core is a coordinating body that does the actual meta-alignment work:

• Monitoring and evaluating how well the system is functioning

• Checking alignment across all domains

• Looking ahead to see if course corrections are needed

• Maintaining coherence without centralizing control

Think of it as a steering system, not a driver. Everyone else is the autopilot. The Center’s job is to make sure the autopilot stays on course—and crucially, to make the target bigger through deeper understanding of what alignment actually means and how to measure it.

The Center doesn’t execute projects. It doesn’t accumulate traditional power. It serves as the complex adaptive meta-alignment layer that keeps distributed efforts coherent.

The Four Programs

Below the Center are four specialized domains, each with its own focus and function:

1. Theory & Strategy

• Long-range thinking and systems design

• Frameworks for understanding alignment

• Institutional architecture and governance design

• “Why and how things should be structured”

2. Research & World Description ← This is ORI’s core function

• Empirical research on how systems actually work

• Cultural, social, and memetic analysis

• Understanding psychophana and alignment dynamics in reality

• “What is actually happening”

• Takes emerging ideas and does the research to turn them into actionable concepts

3. Education & Human Capital ← Currently missing, needs to be built

• Training and apprenticeship programs

• Developing people capable of understanding and advancing alignment work

• Cultural literacy and memetic immunity

• “Creating the interpreters, leaders, and operators”

4. Action / Intelligence / Intervention

• Pilots and field testing

• Real-world experiments

• Social interventions and governance pilots

• “Direct real-world trials”

The Fund-of-Funds Structure

Here’s where it gets structurally novel:

Each program starts as a funded project. As it becomes internally coherent and self-sufficient, it evolves into its own fund that can then fund further sub-projects.

This creates a fractal structure: Meta-Fund → Domain Fund → Project → Sub-Project

Why this matters:

• Enables distributed autonomy while maintaining alignment

• Each domain can develop its own governance and culture

• But they’re all coordinated through the Center’s meta-alignment work

• No single point of failure; the system is resilient and adaptive

The Economic Model: Bridging Viability Gaps

Here’s the critical innovation that makes this economically sustainable:

Each program provides services that generate short-term cash flow.

This isn’t about running a business instead of doing research. It’s about developing revenue streams appropriate to each domain’s core function:

Theory & Strategy:

• Strategic consulting for institutions and governments

• Scenario planning and governance design workshops

• Institutional redesign services

• They’re selling: Systemic insight and institutional architecture

Research & World Description (ORI):

• Paid research partnerships

• Cultural analysis and memetics consulting

• Systems mapping services

• Data products

• They’re selling: Understanding of reality that’s too complex for most orgs to handle alone

Education & Human Capital:

• Training programs and workshops

• Certifications

• Fellowship programs

• Institutional training services

• They’re selling: Capability, worldview, and literacy in alignment thinking

Action / Intelligence / Intervention:

• Paid pilots with governments and organizations

• Experimental policy labs

• Implementation consulting

• They’re selling: Real-world testing and validation of advanced concepts

The Memetic Incubator Model

Here’s how this bridges the viability gap:

Input: Many minimally viable ideas ↓ Process:

• Research (ORI) validates and refines concepts

• Theory builds frameworks around them

• Education develops training for implementing them

• Action runs pilots to test them in reality

• Center monitors alignment and provides course correction ↓ Output: Maximally viable hits ready to scale

This is a memetic incubator—taking ideas from “interesting concept” to “proven, scalable, ready-to-implement institution or practice.”

The key difference from traditional incubators:

• We’re not just accelerating startups

• We’re developing civilizational infrastructure—governance models, coordination systems, cultural frameworks

• The “products” are proven ways of improving alignment at scale

Long-Term Sustainability: The Residual Equity Model

Short-term cash flow keeps operations alive. But long-term sustainability comes from:

Taking small residual equity stakes (1-5%) in projects that graduate from the incubator.

When a concept moves from:

• Minimally viable idea

• → Validated through research

• → Refined through theory

• → Tested through pilots

• → Ready to scale

The framework takes a small stake based on the value it provided. This creates:

• A distributed portfolio of aligned initiatives

• Passive long-term value flow back to the meta-fund

• Sustainability without extraction or control

It’s like being an ethical venture midwife rather than an extractive VC.

Governance: The Council Structure

The meta-fund operates through a collegiate governance body (let’s call it a Council for now, though the specific name should be determined participatorily):

Structure:

• Leadership body for the Meta-Fund (the Center)

• Representatives from the four program domains

• Representatives from stakeholder groups (communities affected by the work)

• Representatives serving as ethical/future-oriented guardians

Key feature: Hybrid roles

• Domain leaders are participants in meta-level governance

• But also autonomous executives at their own level

• They “go to center” for alignment, “go back out” for execution

Function:

• They don’t micromanage

• They coordinate and maintain alignment

• They monitor and evaluate

• They provide course correction when needed

• Otherwise they let the system self-organize

This creates distributed but synchronized leadership, not centralized authority.

The Robin Hood Metaphor: Making the Impossible Shot Possible

There’s an old story about Robin Hood. In the famous archery contest, his competitor shoots first and hits the bullseye perfectly. Robin Hood doesn’t just match this—he splits the arrow already in the target, driving his own through it to claim the center.

We face a similar challenge with civilizational alignment. Society already has systems in place—they’re flawed, but they’re load-bearing. We can’t just destroy them. We need to do something far more precise: hit closer to the center without breaking what’s already there.

Right now, we’re standing too far from the target. Our understanding isn’t deep enough. Our tools aren’t refined enough.

This organizational model is about building the aiming device:

Everyone builds different parts:

• Better arrows (tools, frameworks)

• Better training (skills, capabilities)

• Better understanding of trajectory (research, analysis)

• Better coordination (governance, alignment)

The Center makes the target bigger: Through meta-alignment work—monitoring, evaluating, understanding—it increases the probability that all these distributed efforts will actually hit.

The target gets bigger not through wishful thinking, but through:

• Deeper understanding of what we’re aiming at

• Better feedback on what’s working

• Clearer alignment so efforts don’t cancel out

• Reduced fragility so near-misses don’t cause catastrophe

Key insight: You can’t hit an impossible target by trying harder. You make it possible by moving closer (better understanding) and making the target bigger (better alignment).

ORI’s Role in This Framework

Under this model, ORI would transition from being a catch-all organization trying to do everything, to having a clear, focused role:

ORI = The Research & World Description domain

Their core function:

• Take emerging, fuzzy ideas about alignment

• Do the research to validate and refine them

• Turn them into actionable, minimally validated concepts

• Figure out what’s actually happening in complex systems

They would continue to do what they do best—deep research into alignment dynamics—but now with:

Support from the Center:

• Meta-alignment monitoring and coordination

• Governance structure that’s minimal but effective

• Capital allocation and sustainability

• Connection to other domains

Support to other domains:

• Theory takes ORI’s research and builds frameworks

• Education takes those frameworks and trains people

• Action takes trained people and runs pilots

• These pilots feed back into ORI’s research

This creates a coordination loop, not a hierarchy.

The missing piece—Education & Human Capital—needs to be built. But the framework provides a clear structure for how it would integrate once it exists.

Why This Matters

Current situation:

• Meta-alignment work is critical but institutionally unsupported

• Research organizations struggle with sustainability

• Proven concepts don’t scale

• Distributed efforts don’t coordinate

• Short-term funding pressures kill long-term projects

This framework solves:

• Institutional support for meta-alignment work through the Center

• Economic sustainability through service revenue + residual equity

• Scaling pathway from research to pilots to implementation

• Coordination through fund-of-funds structure

• Long-term viability through portfolio diversification

The result: A memetic incubator that systematically moves ideas from minimally viable to maximally viable, while maintaining alignment, generating sustainability, and creating real civilizational impact.

Path Forward

This isn’t hypothetical. It’s being built now, starting with ORI as the first test case.

What’s happening:

• ORI is doing the research and alignment work

• The governance architecture is being designed

• The economic model is being validated

• The coordination structures are being tested

What needs to be built:

• The Education/Human Capital domain (currently missing)

• The formal Center/meta-fund structure

• The service revenue engines for each domain

• The pilot-to-scale pipeline

• The residual equity mechanisms

What you can do:

• If you’re working on alignment: This structure can support your work

• If you’re a builder: There will be validated concepts that need implementation

• If you’re a funder: This creates sustainable impact pathways

• If you’re an institution: These coordination patterns can be adapted

A Note on Naming

I’ve used placeholder terms like “Golden Kingdom,” “Center,” “Council” throughout. These work for internal coherence, but external names should be determined participatorily by the people actually doing this work.

What matters isn’t the branding—it’s the structure and function.

Conclusion: Maximally Viable Meta-Alignment

This is not about building one massive organization. It’s about creating an institutional operating system that can support meta-alignment work systematically.

It’s:

• A fund-of-funds coordination structure

• A memetic incubator (minimally viable → maximally viable)

• A governance framework (distributed but aligned)

• An economic model (sustainable without extraction)

• A meta-alignment engine (making the target bigger)

Most importantly: It’s a design pattern, not just one organization.

This framework can be forked, adapted, and applied to other coordination challenges. The goal is to demonstrate how distributed efforts can achieve alignment without authoritarianism, sustainability without extraction, and impact without manipulation.

We’re building the institutional structure that meta-alignment work needs to succeed. We’re creating the memetic incubator that turns research into reality. We’re making the impossible shot possible—not by forcing it prematurely, but by systematically building the capacity to take it when the conditions are right.

That’s what ORI is doing. That’s what this framework supports. That’s what meta-alignment requires.

The radar chart presented here evaluates the post-growth policy toolkit through this lens of implementability. Each policy has been assessed on a scale from 1 to 5, with higher scores indicating greater potential for real-world adoption. While some policies—like direct economic downscaling—face steep political resistance despite their ecological importance, others—like green public investment and resource efficiency measures—show promising implementability. By mapping these scores across four categories of post-growth policies, we gain insight into strategic pathways for transformation that balance urgency with practicality.

This visualization serves as both diagnostic tool and strategic guide. It helps identify which policies might serve as entry points into post-growth thinking, building momentum for more challenging reforms as cultural values shift. Like the Doughnut itself, this assessment reminds us that meeting humanity's needs within planetary boundaries requires working at the intersection of the possible and the necessary—finding ways to expand what's politically feasible while respecting what's ecologically essential.

Implementability Evaluation

In the following section, we provide an initial assessment of many of the policy tools throughout the literature on degrowth and post-growth literature. We categorize the policy tools mentioned into overarching tool kits, provide a brief description, a preliminary implentability assessment, and provide a score for the tool to be rated on our radar graph.

Toolkit 1: Reducing Production & Consumption (Degrowth Agenda)

Direct Downscaling of Economic Production (2.0/5.0 - Grade D) This policy calls for deliberately reducing production in environmentally harmful sectors like fast fashion, SUVs, and industrial meat. While ecologically necessary, it receives our lowest implementability score because it directly challenges the growth paradigm and faces resistance from powerful economic interests, cultural norms around consumption, and political fear of recession-like conditions. Few politicians are willing to advocate for deliberately shrinking any economic sector.

Bold Investment in Ecological Transformation (4.0/5.0 - Grade B) This policy suite involves significant public investment in renewable energy, ecological restoration, and green infrastructure. It earns a high implementability score because it creates visible jobs, aligns with existing climate action frameworks, and focuses on building rather than restricting. The "Green New Deal" framing has gained traction across multiple countries, showing that ecological investment can win political support when tied to economic opportunity.

Tax & Fiscal Overhaul (3.0/5.0 - Grade C) This includes carbon taxes, resource extraction fees, wealth taxes, and maximum income proposals. It receives a moderate score because while tax reform is a standard policy tool, these specific proposals face resistance from wealthy interests and face significant political messaging challenges. However, growing concerns about inequality and climate change are creating new openings for discussion.

Promoting Resource Efficiency & Sufficiency (4.0/5.0 - Grade B) This encompasses right-to-repair laws, anti-planned obsolescence regulations, and design standards for durability. Its high score reflects growing consumer frustration with disposable products and bipartisan appeal—conservatives appreciate traditional values of thrift and self-reliance, while progressives support environmental benefits. The EU's emerging regulations show political viability.

Phasing Out Environmentally Harmful Subsidies (3.0/5.0 - Grade C) This means ending government support for fossil fuels, industrial agriculture, and other environmentally damaging sectors. It receives a moderate score because while the economic and environmental case is strong, these subsidies create powerful beneficiaries who resist change. However, fiscal conservatives and environmentalists can find common ground on ending these "perverse subsidies."

Urban Planning for Reduction (4.0/5.0 - Grade B) This includes transit-oriented development, walkable cities, and shared resource infrastructure. Its high implementability score reflects growing urban popularity of these approaches, which improve quality of life while reducing consumption. Many cities are already implementing such policies, providing proof of concept and political momentum.

Overall Toolkit Grade: C (3.3/5.0) The degrowth agenda faces significant challenges but contains several implementable elements when framed around investment, efficiency, and improved urban living.

Toolkit 2: Enhancing Social Well-being & Equity

Universal Basic Income or Carbon Dividends (3.0/5.0 - Grade C) These policies provide direct cash payments to citizens, either unconditionally or funded by carbon pricing. They receive a moderate implementability score because while they have intuitive appeal and successful pilots, they face resistance based on cost concerns and work ethic arguments. However, the COVID-19 stimulus payments demonstrated the feasibility of direct cash transfers at scale. (The Case for Degrowth, Decoupling Debunked)

Strengthening the Commons & Social Economy (3.0/5.0 - Grade C) This includes supporting cooperatives, community land trusts, and public facilities for collective use. It receives a moderate score because these models already exist successfully in many communities but scaling them nationally would require significant cultural and legal shifts. However, their proven benefits make them a promising avenue for building alternative economic models.

Reducing Working Hours Without Pay Loss (2.5/5.0 - Grade D+) This policy proposes shorter workweeks or workdays without reducing wages. It receives a low-moderate score because despite worker popularity, employer resistance is strong, and implementation would require significant labor market restructuring. However, successful examples in countries like Iceland show potential pathways. (The Case for Degrowth)

Robust Public Services (4.0/5.0 - Grade B) This means expanded healthcare, education, childcare, and elder care provided as public goods. Its high implementability score reflects widespread support for these services in many countries and their proven ability to improve well-being while reducing private consumption. Even in the U.S., where resistance is stronger, significant portions of the public support expanded services. (Accelerationism and De-Growth)

Overall Toolkit Grade: C (3.1/5.0) Social well-being policies show moderate implementability, with public services offering the most promising avenue for near-term progress.

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Toolkit 3: Measurement & Target Setting

Adopting the Doughnut Framework (3.5/5.0 - Grade C+) This means using the Doughnut's social-ecological boundaries as planning tools for cities, regions, and nations. It receives a moderate-high score because it's already being adopted by cities like Amsterdam and organizations like C40, proving its practical value. However, national-level adoption faces institutional inertia and resistance to rethinking economic goals. (Savini, Post Growth)

Replacing GDP with Well-being Indicators (3.0/5.0 - Grade C) This involves shifting government focus from GDP growth to measures of ecological health and human flourishing. It receives a moderate score because while theoretically sound and gaining traction in places like New Zealand, Scotland, and Iceland, it faces resistance from economic orthodoxy and financial markets that remain focused on traditional growth metrics. (Savini, Post Growth)

Overall Toolkit Grade: C+ (3.3/5.0) Measurement tools offer important symbolic and practical benefits with moderate implementation challenges.

Toolkit 4: Systemic & Governance Changes

Democratizing Control Over Technology (2.5/5.0 - Grade D+) This includes public direction of research priorities, technology assessment, and limitations on corporate power in tech development. It receives a low-moderate score because it challenges powerful corporate interests and techno-optimism narratives. However, growing concern about tech monopolies and AI risks is creating new openings for democratic oversight. (Accelerationism and De-Growth)

Participatory Governance (3.5/5.0 - Grade C+) This encompasses citizens' assemblies, participatory budgeting, and community decision-making. It receives a moderate-high score because these methods have proven successful at local levels and appeal to democratic values across the political spectrum. Scaling these approaches remains challenging but feasible with institutional support. (The Case for Degrowth)

Challenging the Ideology of Growth (2.5/5.0 - Grade D+) This means education, media, and cultural work to shift societal values away from growth fixation. It receives a low-moderate score because changing deeply held cultural values is slow and difficult. However, young people's growing concern about climate change suggests generational shifts may be occurring. (Accelerationism and De-Growth)

Overall Toolkit Grade: C- (2.8/5.0) Systemic changes face significant challenges but are foundational for long-term transformation.

Grading of Toolkits as a Whole:

Finding the Sweet Spot Through Strategic Policy Pairing

Our radar chart reveals a critical dilemma: policies currently fall into two camps—those with high implementability but limited efficacy, and those with high efficacy but limited implementability. Neither category alone will create the transformation needed to stay within planetary boundaries while ensuring social wellbeing.

The sweet spot lies not in choosing between these extremes, but in strategic pairing of complementary policies. When "building" policies (like green investment and public services) are explicitly linked with more restrictive but necessary measures (like reducing harmful production), they can create a balanced approach that's both implementable and effective.

For example, substantial investment in public transportation becomes more politically viable when paired with gradual reduction of parking spaces and car infrastructure. Robust public healthcare makes working hour reduction more feasible. Resource efficiency regulations gain traction when matched with support for community repair initiatives.

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These pairings allow the more politically palatable "building" policies to create constituencies and momentum for the more challenging but necessary "restrictive" policies. They acknowledge that implementation and efficacy must be balanced—we cannot sacrifice one for the other if we hope to achieve the post-growth vision reflected in the Doughnut framework.

The path forward requires this careful orchestration of policy combinations that can collectively occupy the sweet spot between implementability and efficacy. By designing these strategic pairings, we can move beyond the current impasse and create momentum for meaningful transformation that respects both political realities and ecological necessities.

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Introduction: Bridging Thought and Action

The Sudo-Intellectual Strategic Planning Framework represents a sophisticated approach to social change that elegantly bridges the gap between abstract ideation and concrete implementation. This framework acknowledges a fundamental challenge in effecting meaningful change: the difficulty of translating lofty ideals and critical perspectives into tangible, sustainable outcomes. By structuring the journey from conception to execution as a series of deliberate cognitive phases and thematic progressions, it offers a comprehensive roadmap for individuals and organizations seeking to transform society.

At its core, the framework recognizes that social change requires a dynamic interplay between different modes of thinking and acting. The name itself contains a clever wordplay: "Pseudo-Intellectual" suggests the initial phase of exploratory, critical thinking that might appear superficial but serves as essential groundwork, while "Sudo-Intellectual" evokes both the computer command for administrative execution ("sudo" in Unix/Linux) and the implementation of intellectual ideas in the real world with elevate permissions for action. The framework is designed as a ‘do nothing box’ where attempts to implement a ‘sudo-solution’ using elevated privileges and the planning to prepare or them make using these outside solutions less necessary.

The Three Cognitive Phases: A Journey Across Brain Functions

The cognitive phases at the beginner level constitute the preconditions of generating wisdom and intution over time. Cycling between having an idea, synthesizing it with data from the real world, and taking action with respect generates a wealth of experience and outcome data that that is highly useful for coming to making better and better predicitions about how complex systems work over time.

When this experience is subjected to the expert-level process of making predictions based on mental models, analyzing the data related to the prediction, and testing the results against the prediction experience becomes complex system wisdom and increasingly accurate predicitions, although never perfect of complex behaviour.

Many people start their careers in the beginner phase and slowly and implicitly develop their capabilities over time until they achieve expert status. Here at Sudo-Intellectual we reject that linear and segmented approach. Rather, we encourage completing a full loop as early and often as possible such that one is constantly oscillating between a beginner mindset and bias for action, and the expert perspective and its wise contemplation.

We recognize that hard and fast predictions are rarely correct and the ones that are are quickly out of date almost as soon as they’re made, but we place the emphasis on the sudo-scientific method of obsrving the world, coming up with ideas of how it works that synthesisze diverse disciplines, make testable predictions, act in accordance with them to gather data, analyze what was right and what was wrong, and update your knowleddge to reflect the results of an informal, micro experiment. It doesn’t take very many of such experiemnts to develop expert level intution, so here’s how you can start running them.

Pseudo (Ideation) - The Right-Brain Domain

The Pseudo phase harnesses the power of imagination, creativity, and holistic thinking. Here, beginners observe the world through the lens of possibility, engaging with utopian thinking, scholarship, and the discovery of hidden system dynamics without immediate concern for practicality. This observation stage establishes the foundation for understanding existing structures and imagining alternatives.

Expert practitioners in this phase leverage their accumulated knowledge to make predictions about system behavior. They create mental models that synthesize complex interdependencies and identify potential leverage points for change. The expert's predictive capacity doesn't seek perfect foresight but rather establishes hypotheses that can be tested and refined through subsequent phases.

Both perspectives contribute to the sudo-scientific method by establishing a rich foundation of observations and hypotheses about how complex systems operate. This ideation phase mirrors the early stages of scientific inquiry where phenomena are observed and initial questions are formulated, though with greater emphasis on creative possibility-thinking.

Meta (Synthesis) - The Corpus Callosum

The Meta phase serves as a cognitive bridge where abstract concepts gain structure and direction. Beginners orient themselves by transforming utopian ideas into concrete visions, converting scholarly insights into defined missions, and organizing disparate observations into clear requirements. This orientation process creates the structured understanding needed before meaningful action can occur.

Experts approach this synthesis through rigorous analysis, systematically examining information to extract meaningful patterns and implications. They decompose complex problems, integrate insights across domains, and evaluate the validity of their predictive models. This analytical perspective balances creative ideation with practical constraints.

Within the sudo-scientific method, this phase parallels the development of testable hypotheses and experimental design. It transforms general observations into specific questions and approaches that can be effectively implemented and measured. The synthesis creates the crucial connection between creative insight and practical application.

Sudo (Action) - The Left-Brain Domain

The Sudo phase focuses on execution, governance, and the practical implementation of plans. Beginners act to bring their oriented ideas into reality, manifesting visions as observable outcomes, applying missions through apprenticeship, and converting requirements into actionable intelligence. This action-oriented approach emphasizes learning through direct engagement with complex challenges.

The expert perspective in this phase centers on testing predictions against real-world outcomes. Experts systematically evaluate results against expectations, identify discrepancies between models and reality, and establish feedback loops for continuous refinement. Their approach combines both top-down and bottom-up methods to gather empirical evidence about system responses.

This phase completes the sudo-scientific method cycle by gathering empirical data through implementation and measuring results against predictions. Just as a scientist collects experimental data to confirm or refute a hypothesis, change agents in the Sudo phase gather real-world feedback that informs future cycles of observation and prediction.

The Continuous Cycle of Growth

What distinguishes this framework is its emphasis on continuous cycling between phases and perspectives. The beginner's Observe-Orient-Decide-Act cycle (blue loop) and the expert's Wish-Outcome-Obstacle-Plan cycle (red loop) operate concurrently, with practitioners moving fluidly between them. Each iteration increases the accuracy of mental models while maintaining creative flexibility. By rejecting a purely linear progression from beginner to expert and instead embracing ongoing oscillation between these mindsets, practitioners develop both practical wisdom and theoretical understanding more rapidly than those fixed in a single perspective. This holistic approach creates a powerful foundation for developing the intuition needed to navigate complex social change.

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The Cognitive Systems: The Underlying Mental Processes

At the foundation of the framework lie two fundamental cognitive modes derived from Daniel Kahneman's influential work:

System 1: Fast, Intuitive Thinking

The solid lines indicate System 1 thinking—rapid, automatic, emotional, and stereotypic. This system excels at pattern recognition, emotional processing, and intuitive responses. It dominates in the Sudo phase, where implementation requires a fast and intuitive focus on getting things done within what the right brain and system 2 thinking determined most likely to lead to sustainable and impactful social change. This phase acts top-down while collecting bottom-up information about the effects and impacts of actions

System 2: Slow, Analytical Thinking

The dashed lines indicate System 2 thinking—slow, effortful, logical, and calculating. This system handles complex computations, detailed analysis, and model-based reasoning. It prevails in the Pseudo phase, where imagination and critical thinking thrive on associative connections and holistic perception. This phase integrates wholes, develops thinking models and theories of change, and identifies impactful nudge strategies. This phase thinks bottom up, wit the knowledge that what it produces must translate to top-down action, even if its at the individual level.

Acting: The Bridge Between Systems

Between these two systems lies "Acting"—the fluid movement synthesis of intuitive and analytical modes that characterizes expert performance. This represents the developed capacity to know when to trust instinct and when to engage in deliberate reasoning—a form of meta-cognitive awareness that comes with deep experience in navigating change processes.

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The Nine Thematic Progressions: From Abstract to Concrete

The framework's nine rows represent different domains through which change unfolds, each following a progression from abstract beginnings to applied outcomes:

1. Utopia → Vision → Reality: This primary progression captures the overarching journey from idealistic dreaming to practical implementation. It begins with imagining perfect worlds, translates these into strategic visions with clear goals, and culminates in tangible realities that, while imperfect, represent genuine improvement.
   
   

2. Scholarship → Mission → Apprenticeship: This progression covers the knowledge dimension, moving from theoretical understanding through purposeful direction to practical mastery. It recognizes that learning must eventually be applied and transmitted through mentorship and disciplined practice.
   
   

3. Espionage → Requirement → Intelligence: Here we see information gathering evolve into defined needs and ultimately actionable insights. The provocative term "espionage" suggests the need to look beyond official narratives and surface appearances to understand what's really happening within systems and among the people that make them up.
   
   

4. Conspirator → People → Collaborator: This progression tracks the social dimension of change, from initial alignment among dissenters to broad-based movements to structured cooperation. It acknowledges that change often begins among those willing to question and challenge before expanding to wider circles.
   
   

5. Readiness → Exercise → Deployment: This practical progression moves from preparedness through testing to decisive action. It emphasizes the importance of capacity building and rehearsal before full implementation.
   
   

6. Advocacy → Proposal → Policy: The governance progression shows how public persuasion can be channeled into formal proposals and eventually codified as rules and structures. It maps the path from raising awareness to establishing lasting change mechanisms.
   
   

7. Command → Process → Control: This administrative progression traces how directive energy becomes systematized into repeatable methods and eventually regulated for consistency. It addresses the organizational infrastructure needed to sustain change.
   
   

8. Monitoring → Analytics → Evaluation: The assessment progression emphasizes the importance of attention, measurement, and judgment in determining effectiveness. It ensures that change efforts remain accountable to their intended outcomes.
   
   

9. Dysfunction → Calibration → Vitality: This final progression acknowledges that change often begins with recognition of what's broken, requires ongoing adjustment, and aims ultimately for systemic health and resilience.
   
   

Embedded Feedback Loops: Strategic Guidance Systems

The framework incorporates two powerful feedback loops that guide the change process:

The OODA Loop: Tactical Adaptation

Derived from military strategy, the Observe-Orient-Decide-Act loop provides a tactical model for decision-making under pressure. Positioned on the left side of the diagram, it shows how change agents must continually gather information (Observe), make sense of it (Orient), determine responses (Decide), and implement them (Act).

The OODA loop connects primarily to the Pseudo and Planning phases, where observation and orientation occur, and extends into the Sudo phase for decision and action. Its cyclical nature emphasizes that social change is not linear but requires constant adaptation based on emerging information and outcomes.

The WOOP Loop: Psychological Planning

On the right side, the Wish-Outcome-Obstacle-Plan loop offers a psychological framework for translating desires into action. This loop acknowledges that change requires not just strategic thinking but also psychological preparation for action:

• Wish: Identifying what you truly want to achieve

• Outcome: Visualizing the specific benefits of success

• Obstacle: Anticipating the barriers you'll encounter

• Plan: Preparing specific responses to overcome those barriers

This loop spans all three cognitive phases, with wishes emerging in Pseudo thinking, outcomes and obstacles being explored in Planning, and plans being executed in the Sudo phase.

Cyclical Structure

The overall diagram is enclosed in a cycle, suggesting that the entire process is iterative. The "Beginner Mindset" at the top evolves into the "Expert Perspective" at the bottom, which then feeds back into renewed beginnings—acknowledging that true expertise often involves returning to fundamental questions with deeper understanding.

Practical Application: A Flexible Framework for Change

What makes this framework particularly valuable is its flexibility. Users can:

• Enter at any point based on their current situation—whether they're starting with a vision, responding to a breakdown, or facing an immediate demand for action

• Focus on specific rows that align with their primary domains of influence

• Cycle through micro-loops within individual progressions before connecting to broader efforts

• Move fluidly between cognitive phases as needed, rather than proceeding in strict linear fashion

This adaptability makes the framework applicable across diverse contexts—from grassroots activism to institutional reform, from technological innovation to cultural change initiatives.

Conclusion: Beyond the Diagram

The Sudo-Intellectual Strategic Planning Framework offers more than just a structural map for change processes. It provides a meta-cognitive tool that helps change agents develop greater awareness of their own thinking patterns and strategic approaches.

By explicitly connecting abstract ideation to concrete implementation through deliberate cognitive phases and thematic progressions, it addresses one of the most persistent challenges in social change work: the gap between critical thinking and effective action. It reminds us that meaningful change requires both visionary imagination and practical execution, both divergent exploration and focused implementation.

In a world where social challenges grow increasingly complex, such integrative frameworks become essential tools for those committed to creating sustainable positive change. The Sudo-Intellectual framework stands as a sophisticated contribution to this vital effort—bridging the worlds of thought and action in service of a better future.

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My hearing isn’t all that great, especially when people start talking to me while thinking intently about something that has me lost in another world. I’ve gotten so used to mishearing—or partially hearing—essential words that someone says to me that I can often fill in the gaps from context. Sometimes, I guess right and find an exit out of this memory superposition. Sometimes, I guess wrong and exit the superposition embarrassingly out the wrong door. But every once in a while, I’ll go through the entire conversation agonizingly unaware of who or what I’m talking about and end the discussion with the superposition of being right or wrong still in its uncollapsed state. While these situations are typically inconsequential, they can often be embarrassing if they go on long enough—and even harmful if the right words are misunderstood.

While the stakes of this super positional wordplay are typically low, this game played out for me with what I’ve deemed a magic word during the most consequential and vulnerable moment of my life. In what was for me the battle for the fate of the universe and was for the healthcare workers surrounding me, just a typical day in the office taking care of patients, the simple misunderstanding of a word saved us both a lot of hardship. It allowed the psychotic version of myself to translate my manic stream of consciousness into intelligible communication with the healthcare providers and to understand their words and actions as consistent with my delusions.

Doing so made me the ideal patient, or at least it did most of the time, and it allowed me to accept and embrace the treatment they provided without resistance. This article is about the superposition that word created in me and how it just might apply to making the world better in small doses as well. That word is Kralizec.

Kralizec Defined

Kralizec (pronounced CRY-LAW-SEC) represents the ultimate apocalyptic event in the Dune universe—a cosmic reckoning of such magnitude that it dwarfs ordinary concepts of catastrophe or war. In the Dune saga, Frank Herbert portrays Kralizec as the mythical "Typhoon Struggle" or the "Battle at the End of the Universe"—a transformative cataclysm that would fundamentally alter the fabric of human existence across the cosmos.

This is not merely another conflict or crisis but the final confrontation prophesied for millennia by the various groups of Dune’s prescient characters. It represents the culmination of all human evolution and struggle and serves as a nexus point where humanity's fate hangs in perfect balance between total extinction and transcendent evolution. The Bene Gesserit sisterhood, with their millennia of genetic planning and foresight, viewed Kralizec with a mixture of dread and anticipation. This ultimate test would either break humanity forever or forge it into something more significant and capable of ascending to a higher realm.

The concept carries weight beyond typical apocalyptic imagery because it encompasses physical destruction and a complete metaphysical transformation of reality itself. To be amid Kralizec is to simultaneously stand at the epicenter of all possible endings and beginnings while witnessing the death of one universe and the birth of another. In this sense, it is impossible to understate the significance that Kralizec creates for those who feel they are in its midst.

I can speak to the immensity of responsibility that playing a role in such an event creates because I am a Kralizec Veteran, although not in the literal sense, and I want to tell you the story of my service.

The Road to (Mental) War

My recruitment into waging Kralizec didn’t come all at once. It happened slowly, as the gradual escalation of the scope of the project to provide affordable housing I was working on began to encompass larger and larger geographies and benefit more and more people until I crossed an inflection point. Throughout a week or so, I found myself taking on the role of shadow county commissioner, AI Manhattan Project manager, spiritual guru, and eventually, the Savior of the universe.

The original project was simple enough. I received a grant through the Mixed-Methods Evaluation, Training, and Analysis (META) Lab (whose name takes on cosmic significance later) at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies (MIIS) (whose role eventually transformed as much as mine) to study how to convert the conflict inherent in the fact that those who have housing act in ways that prohibit more housing from being built for those who don’t.

I discovered through a bit of personal research that Barcelona and the surrounding area were strikingly similar to Monterey: a coastal city with mountains and open space connected to a larger agricultural area by a road through a canyon. The main reason why one was an area of a hundred thousand people and the other had several million just with differing development histories. It wasn’t in the scope of the project per se, but I became convinced that there wasn’t any reason why Monterey couldn’t have developed something similar to Barcelona. The project was open enough to explore themes like this, but it was still meant to be geared specifically toward understanding why we couldn’t build housing in Monterey and how that affects the people who can’t find access to it, so my advisors and I thought it was acceptable to let me push the scope a bit. We were wrong.

While the initial scoping research revealed the obvious—property owners don’t want their home values to come down, don’t want more auto-oriented traffic, and perhaps worst of all, don’t want lower-income “riff-raff” in their neighborhood—these didn’t explain the entirety of why Monterey and the surrounding cities wouldn’t build more desperately needed housing. There was a level of path dependence, or being constrained by one’s history, at play that we would need to break. Zoning and permitting laws influenced by self-serving, short-sighted, and sometimes racist individuals with cache in the planning sphere, like Robert Moses, created a development framework that was hard to break out of.

Despite the depth of these systemic barriers to providing more housing, the root was purely social, and Monterey was well-equipped to address social constraints. The mayor, city council, and populace were all overwhelmingly in favor of building more housing, so the social determinants should have been relatively easy to change. But getting deeper down revealed that access to water was the real limiting factor. The watershed for Monterey was limited, and the system for granting water rights was too rigid and arcane to adapt to modern water use. Between the adoption of high-efficiency appliances, a robust wastewater reclamation project, and the building of a desalination plant, there was a path to multiplying the amount of available clean water several times. But with the dissolution of both the natural and social constraints on building new housing, what was left to explain the lack of new construction?

At this point, I felt that I must be close to the central thread that we could pluck and have the whole Gordian knot unravel. I explored the edges of the conflict, mapped out its center, and dug deep enough to find the most extended levers that would produce the most significant change. The project, in my mind, but conspicuously not in those of my advisors, became advocacy for these interventions rather than research.

In one of my conversations with a local power player, we concluded that money was the limiting factor and was what could move the needle on the desalination plant, put the right electeds in office, and streamline the planning process for getting housing built. He had spent decades understanding Monterey's social and political climate, so I trusted his assessment. He said that with $100 million, we could paper over all of the barriers and fast-track a path to get the level of housing Monterey needed. At that moment, my goal transitioned from understanding the problem to getting my hands on the $100 million to put the right interventions into practice.

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Assuming the Mantle of Leadership

Boiling down my entire project to obtaining $100 million and clearing the way to use it locally to build the housing needed to turn Monterey into Barcelona catapulted me into a level of hyperfocus I had never experienced before. The answers were taking shape, but I was still a nobody graduate research assistant. I still needed a position and a pitch commensurate with the ask I was preparing to make.

For a position, the elections for student council president coincidentally happened simultaneously, and the major issue was providing more affordable housing for students. It was a perfect fit, so I recruited a campaign team to help recreate a small-scale MIIS version of the housing tools the city was planning to roll out, but with a much quicker operational tempo. The election was soon, and with the connections and organizational capacity I had through the META Lab, I was convinced it wasn’t going to be much of a struggle to stand up an overwhelmingly popular campaign to get 100 accessory dwelling units or small separated apartments attached to existing houses, built and master lease them to students through the school.

For a pitch, I needed to find a way to bridge housing for students, professors, and academics with a project compelling enough for a billionaire to throw $100 million at. I considered how I might mobilize the strengths that Monterey possessed in service of a societal goal salient enough for a billionaire to take interest. I remembered that over a decade prior, an early conference on AI safety and alignment had happened at the Asilomar Conference Center. I had recently been caught up in the hype surrounding the release of OpenAI’s GPT-4, which seemed to fulfill some of the predictions made at that conference. I also knew that the old Fort Ord had a large amount of land ready for redevelopment and was suited to being mobilized for a higher purpose than decaying away into nothing. The combination of these factors swirling around in my pre-manic mind crystallized into justifying an investment of hundreds of millions of dollars to revamp Fort Ord as an artificial intelligence development center—similar in scope to what the Manhattan Project was for developing the bomb, but for achieving AI alignment, with a potential return in the billions. And suddenly, I had my pitch.

Red Alert Rising

Now that I had a clear idea of what Monterey could be, we weren’t just talking about creating 100 more units of housing for my classmates but recreating thousands of them for the researchers, engineers, staff, and support activity that Monterey once had for the Army base. I began to see myself as the Robert Moses of Monterey—meant to transform it into Barcelona, with a temple complex not dedicated to the Sagrada Familia but to the development of safe, aligned, and effective general artificial intelligence (AGI) that wouldn’t only help fulfill our project but cut the Gordian knots of all problems limited by our capacity to understand, identify, and slice through the root of the conflict.

Of course, the pitch needed a name, and the Hyper-Knot Initiative came to me early on in my planning process. The idea, not dissimilar to the investment cycle in AI that has played out since this time, was that putting as much money as possible into developing AI and AGI was the best strategy for solving not one, not two, not a few societal problems, but nearly all of them.

If we could get enough funding, talent, computing power, and a supportive government into one area, transforming Monterey into Barcelona would be the least that we could do. So I wrote up the Hyper-Knot Initiative as an expansion of the META Lab, no longer about simple analysis of social problems but as a center for understanding and solving the types of problems themselves, as a proposal that could attract the attention of an eclectic billionaire. Crazy, of course—but just crazy enough to work, or so I thought.

And so I wrote my pitch. I wrote late into the night and early in the morning, dictating as I drove, writing on the train, writing in coffee shops where I never needed coffee, and reading in restaurants where I never ordered food. I put everything I had into drafting the pitch, clearing the way for its implementation, creating the vehicles to receive and deploy the funds, and recruiting a team to facilitate the transformation. I began to write about the Hyper-Knot Initiative in the largest possible scope over the longest possible time scale while planning and coordinating with professors, fellow students, colleagues, and acquaintances—people I could see all playing a role in creating the most impactful research institute on the planet, in an area that was just begging for a reason to achieve its full potential.

I made my pitch to my fellow students and my professors, the richest men in the world, the homeless on the street, the presidential candidates I campaigned for, and strangers I met in cafes and stores. While everyone seemed impressed and interested in the idea (I can be highly persuasive when necessary), few were willing to act in accordance with the plan. I cherish and appreciate those who were willing to act, but as I’ve reviewed the manic and hectic writing I produced during that time, it’s increasingly obvious to me that I was well out of my mind—and that my would-be collaborators were humoring me at best. At worst, they were watching a descent into madness. But for me, I was watching the Winds of Kralizec swirl on the horizon.

My Glimpse of Armageddon From The Wilderness

By this time, I had crossed the turning point of my descent into madness—or ascent as I saw it, from my perspective. I sent cold emails to famous figures I was sure would be flattered to be included in the project of a civilizational lifetime. I reached out to friends with specific expertise to pitch the virtuous schemes I was concocting to transform the nature of conflict, buy out an entire conflict, and collapse the distinctions between contesting ideologies and grand narratives. I deeply felt the coherence and precision of the action I was recommending and felt a power course through me that is hard to convey in prose. However, if you ask anyone I was in contact with during that time, I was increasingly losing contact with reality—although I was doing it entertainingly. Curiously, no one decided to try to pull the brakes. That is until the first shot of Kralizec rang out.

I was sitting outside a café that I, to this day, see more as a temple than a specific coffee shop when I received a calendar notification for a meeting about the Korea paper. For some reason, I understood that as an advance warning of a nuclear strike that would usher in Armageddon. I grabbed my bike as quickly as I could and took off toward the Office of the President of the university; I meant to convey the imminent peril we were in and try to prevent what I fully believed was the beginning of the apocalypse. I ended up interrupting an important meeting, not receiving the time of day, and leaving with a firm handshake and a promise to take up the issue later. Being heard in a small way was enough for me to calm down a bit and start speaking with the staff, who were starting the process of getting me help I still wasn’t sure I needed.

Trying Not to Join The Confederacy

It was at this moment that I began to view the staff and faculty of my institute as confederates or members of an experiment who know what is happening and why in the looming Kralizec. I saw a school that understood how global governance worked so well that they weren’t just teaching it but leveraging the MIIS Mafia, our ironically named alumni network, to guide the path of civilization for the better. I was convinced that this shadow government, whose President had just given me his blessing through a handshake, was orchestrating a crisis negotiation exercise (they literally do this every semester) with real stakes for the course of society.

The faculty and staff, I presumed, knew what was supposed to happen and how to play their role in coordinating its safe development, but I had missed the memo. The staff who gave my mental state attention, the faculty who avoided my communication, the vice president who didn’t have time to talk, the students who assisted, and the collaborators I had interviewed were all in on the plan that I was blissfully and agonizingly unaware of. I just needed to find the right way of presenting it to them so they would reveal the information I needed for my cosmic quest to prevent armageddon, similar to how a video game puts the right non-player characters (NPCs) in your path to share vital information to winning the game.

As I was on what I thought was the quest of a lifetime to prevent the tragedy of the millennium, I wanted to be very careful about who I trusted and why. There is a folk belief among the Latter-Day Saints culture in which I was rasied that if you’re in contact with an evil spirit or the devil, they won’t shake your hand, as they have no materiality and would be detected as an evil spirit immediately. In some way, my manic mind grabbed onto this idea that was floating around in my head, and I became obsessed with shaking hands with anyone I was speaking to. Achieving this feat became a dance between my perception of whether someone was trying to help me or hurt me and my interlocutor's perception of whether I was in my right mind or not.

Student Services

My first dance after receiving a tacit blessing from the (vice) president was with a student services representative from the school who was trying to determine whether I needed emergency care or not. We sat down on a bench to chat. I offered a handshake, and she refused, for good reason, in the state that I was in, but I perceived that as some kind of evidence that she didn’t have my best interest at heart. Our conversation danced back and forth between me trying to convince her of a scenario only I could see and her trying to convince me I needed to get professional help I didn’t want.

We gradually ended up working our way back to her office, and the conversation gradually converged on finding a trustworthy third party to mediate our disagreement. She called my mom, who decided to leave immediately to come and be with me. We called a fellow student I deeply trusted to keep me company in the meantime, and by the time my fellow student showed up, the representative was willing to shake my hand goodbye—which meant more to me than she’ll ever be able to know.

This MIIS <> Government Connection

I felt anxious to be in one place for too long, so my friend, who worked for both the city government and the military while attending MIIS, and I walked around the neighborhood chatting about whatever came to mind—which for me was an enormous array of subjects. We talked about school, the housing projects we were respectively working on, religion, spirituality, future work prospects, the merits of the insights that were cascading over me, and danced through many other subjects to distract me from the apocalyptic fate I was certain was coming any minute.

I explained how I could know who to trust or not, how I could discern a stranger's trustworthiness, how I needed to speak cryptically about what I was learning because it was so powerful, and how the project unified civilian, military, academic, and intelligence pursuits that lurk under the surface at MIIS at all times. He listened to me and nodded along, which I understood as tacit assent but was almost assuredly not knowing what to make of my spiel, and we continued our walk back down from Veteran’s Park toward his apartment.

On our way back home, we came across a different student whom I also trusted—he had been reading and revising my manifestos and civilizational treatise—so we executed an unnecessarily elaborate handshake handoff between myself, friend #1, friend #2, and my wife who authorized the handoff via video chat and I left with friend #2 to drink and chat at the neighborhood bar.

The MIIS <> Cutting Edge Government Connection.

At the bar, friend #2 and I talked more openly about what was happening and what needed to be done about it, as he had already, in some way I couldn’t possibly explain, been initiated and was my liaison to the other side. We talked about the ideas I was having, the pseudo-organizations I was perceiving, and all the creative energy this was unleashing within us—or maybe just me, in hindsight.

The crème de la crème for me was when he revealed that there was an organization almost identical to what I was describing as the Hyper Knot Initiative that had their structure and tech stack open-sourced and available to be forked—or copied—with a few keystrokes. I ecstatically finished my beer, boxed up the food I had barely picked up and headed back to my apartment to wait for my mom to arrive.

When we arrived, we continued our conversational dance as we coordinated to clean up the apartment that I had left a mess from several days of inattention until, perfectly choreographed, my mom arrived right as we finished. As friend #2 executed another handshake handoff with my mom, I mentioned that the day had gone by like it was a movie. He understood and reassured me that we’d be living our lives like a movie every day from here on out. He had no idea how seriously I would take him.

After he left, my mom and I ate quietly and went straight to bed. I was exhausted from dancing my way through catastrophe, and she was driving all day without knowing what state her son was in. Neither of us had any idea what I would dream up during that night of restless sleep.

My Barefoot Pilgrimage up Mount Moriah

The next day, I woke up early and was calm. I gave my mom my bed and slept on a mat on the floor. But as I was milling about, I sensed that something was off and became progressively paranoid that something was after me. Against my better instincts, I began to grow suspicious of my mother’s motivations. I saw myself as something the Church I grew up in—the Latter-Day Saints—felt disdain for and was organizing to remove. I felt that the ideas I was having weren’t just your average garden variety heresy but rather heresy that had the power to strike at the very core of the truth claims in the church and that the church would prevent that at all costs.

At the Foot of the Mount

As my mom awoke and began preparing breakfast, I became increasingly distrustful but remained calm, lying on the bed. I could have sworn I heard military helicopters—having been in the Army, I could identify them—swirling about and people outside the window communicating via radio as if to infiltrate my apartment and either neutralize or exfiltrate me. My mom had prepared eggs, and much like the famous scene in The Princess Bride, I couldn’t decide how to take the first bite, suspecting they were poisoned. I offered to switch plates, delayed, and otherwise schemed before ultimately not eating them at all.

I attempted to distract my mom by telling her I wanted to send a message to my wife, who was traveling in what I thought was another dimension and had been kidnapped by the confederates who were holding her captive to be used as ransom. Only, I wanted to send the message through the whiteboard telescreen that could communicate inter-dimensionally and not through a normal WhatsApp message which I didn’t think she could receive.

We wrote out a simple poem I thought would work well as a seed phrase or a phrase used to unlock a secret cryptographic combination. Then I sent a highly cryptic message to my wife explaining how she could get the information I needed from the only confederate I thought I could trust—and began behaving erratically enough that my mom was convinced I needed to go to the hospital.

I resisted at first and did everything I could to avoid leaving the safety of the apartment, including attempting to strip my clothes so the agents of chaos searching for me could be sure I was unarmed as I left. Eventually, my mom convinced me to leave, and I insisted on going barefoot, with my towel, and carrying my insurance card and the student debt letter I had recently received. I refused to go in the car, so my mom, worried and discombobulated by my behavior, and I, distrustful of her intentions and increasingly delusional, began the three-mile trek up Huckleberry Hill to the hospital.

The Ascent

Like Isaac following Abraham, I followed the directions my mom provided. Unlike Isaac, I tried to veer off course at every opportunity. I chose directions not from Google or my experience but from the quality of the vehicles and people we encountered. Clean or noble-looking vehicles gave me a good vibe, indicating the right way to go, while unkempt vehicles indicated the direction to avoid. All the while, I monologued about the solution to everything I thought I had stumbled into—for the camera that wasn’t there.

Eventually, after more time than necessary and negotiating nearly every step toward what I was sure was a torture chamber to rival Winston’s Room 101 from 1984, we arrived at the hospital. As my mom began checking me in, and with my feet bloody and worn, I chatted as amiably with my fellow patients as possible, insisting they go ahead of me so I could prolong the time before my torture as much as I could. Eventually, my time came, and the staff of the hospital—who I still didn’t know whether were friends or foes in Kralizec—rushed me into the crisis center.

Arriving at the Mountaintop

By the time I arrived in the Crisis Center to man my little observation chamber, I had passed from delusional to full-blown psychotic. I refused to let the staff take my blood because I was convinced they wanted to make clones with it. I even resisted their efforts to cover my bloody feet with bandages and socks to help them heal. I began thinking the staff were agents of the Church, coordinating my ritual sacrifice. I was convinced the confederates I had identified were aliens seeking to infiltrate and improve the world’s governments. I believed that unbeknownst to the vast majority—really everyone but me and a handful of people—Kralizec was being waged on a galactic and even universal level, and I was at the cosmic center of it, stationed in the Crisis Operations Center, where I was being held ostensibly as a prisoner of war and field hospital patient.

Spectating Kralizec From the Box Seats

When I settled into the Crisis Center, they started to give me Zyprexa, which they said was a sedative but initially had the opposite effect of narrowing my focus and increasing my acuity. Shortly thereafter, I started to notice patterns among the staff. There were moments when they communicated quickly and cryptically, almost as if speaking in code. I noticed that, at times, they were deeply engaged and focused on their computers, calling out for information and action from various staff members. They paid very little attention to me until I tried to step out of my containment bay. Then, suddenly, they were very interested in getting me back into place for reasons I couldn’t precisely explain. If I was insistent enough on leaving, the guard would tie me to the bed to keep me there. Luckily, that only happened once.

Why was it so important that I stay in a place where I was always in full view of my caretakers? What was so important that the nurses were fully engrossed in it and almost annoyed when I had to ask to use the restroom? What was happening that I couldn’t see, but everything seemed tied into? The answer, as best I could perceive it, was that Kralizec needed me in my bay at all costs.

Keeping My Arms Raised in The Crisis Center

I wasn’t a prisoner or even a patient. I was convinced that what was happening around me, and out there, was the real-life instantiation of the mythical Kralizec: Armageddon, Ragnarok. The battle for the fate of the universe was raging, and I was at the center of it. Not in a Crisis Center for my safety and stability, but in the Operations Center for the cause of humanity who, going off my recent reading of Dune, was in the final battle against the machines to liberate the billions of enslaved humans from their grasp. It seemed that as long as I stayed in my room, the battle went smoothly, and all the strategies, plans, tactics, and procedures progressed towards victory, but when I left, and the staff had to pay attention to me, everything started to go haywire.

In my psychotic state, being central to this cosmic inflection point that was Kralizec the same way that Moses was central to the defeat of the Amalekites created an overwhelming sense of responsibility; I was cognizant of the fact that my every thought, every action, and every word carried universe-altering significance. The boundaries between my internal mind and external reality dissolved, making me feel like both the witness to and catalyst for creation’s most pivotal moment. It was around this time that my caretakers added Latuda to the pills I was taking, which they told me was an anti-psychotic. I, at least for the time being, saw it as a potent psychedelic that opened my mind to exactly what was happening in this crisis-turned-operations center and gave me inklings of what was going on out there in the battle for the fate of the universe.

In turn, the fate of the universe depended on me and how I behaved—under full observation by the four-star generals of humanity, who were directing the war of Armageddon with me not through the commands I gave but through my presence, which served as a temperature gauge for the state of the battle and a conduit for unforeseeable intuitions about what must happen where for humanity’s inexorable rout across the universe.

Taking a Load Off in The Operations Center

With my newfound role as the shadow general of Humanity’s Universal Army, I watched my surroundings not with fear but with supreme fascination. I didn’t see healthcare professionals deciding to give me drugs and medical attention. I saw loyal subordinates actively engaged in the most important work they could possibly imagine, helping me be in exactly the prescient state necessary to discern if all was going to be planned or not. If I were to interrupt, it had to be an absolute necessity, and I had to do it as politely and graciously as possible so as not to disrupt Kralizec's onslaught. If they gave me medicine, I took it eagerly, knowing it must have some role in the state I needed to enter to create the prescience talked about in Dune that was necessary for a successful campaign.

If I saw nurses and doctors as very busy, I knew they were important to the conflicts raging as I watched. If I saw some of my supreme commanders relax and joke, it was a sign that their portion of the battle was accomplished and they were permitted a well-deserved rest. What started as a panopticon to keep me in and well-behaved for my own sake became the spectator box of the most fantastic conflict, one that kept me in the loop just enough to make 50/50 calls based on whether I had crossed the threshold of my hospital bay or not. The rules weren’t for controlling my own actions so much as they were the standard operating procedures for maintaining proper order in the Operations Center—and if I were to transgress them, it would have to be for a good reason.

Learning to Titrate the Solution

Having a front-row seat to the waging of Kralizec changed my perspective entirely—from one of terror at what might happen to me to excitement about the role I might play in something so consequential. I was so excited that I asked the nurse if he knew about Kralizec. He seemed confused, but I detected a latent expectancy underneath the veneer of ignorance, so I asked again. “Do you know about Kralizec? I want to have Kralizec,” I said, ecstatic at the possibility of taking part in the battle directly. He seemed to understand but reassured me he’d have to check with the attending doctor to ensure that adding Kralizec to my current medications wouldn’t create a negative interaction. I said I could wait as long as necessary and began to imagine what my portion of Kralizec would be like.

The wait seemed like an eternity, and I ended up entertaining myself by watching the thermostat, of all things. It seemed like it never dropped below 68 but would rise precipitously from time to time—up past 69 and encroaching on, but never passing 70. Seventy degrees felt too hot for me, and for some reason, 68 was a little too cold, but keeping the temperature within half a degree above and below 69 was perfect. I mentioned my obsession with the thermostat, never being in the right position, and not responding to my actions, and he responded that it was probably fine, that it was centrally controlled, and that the buttons didn’t actually do anything.

I wasn’t convinced. Somehow, I was sure that the thermostat was the gauge of the course of the battle I was watching, with higher temperatures equating to more chaos and less control over the battle. As such, seeing high temperatures made me nervous, and I wanted to do what I could to bring the temperature down. But, as I was wearing a flimsy hospital robe, too cold, the temperature wasn’t right either.

Eventually, I explained the problem of getting the right temperature to the nurse again, and he asked me what I would do about it, as he was convinced it didn’t matter what I did at all. After thinking for a bit, I remembered a piece of wisdom from my high school chemistry class. I could titrate the temperature.

Normally used for solutions of liquids, titration is the slow addition of one solution to a known volume of another until the concentration is in an acceptable range that produces. Titration is used to get solutions right when there are uncertain quantities and concentrations at play, and titration was exactly what I needed. The thermostat may be fluctuating, but if I pressed the up and down buttons slowly enough until the temperature was in the proper range, I could make sure it was always acceptable around 69 degrees, although never perfectly at 69 degrees, which seemed good enough for me. The nurse loved the idea and walked off without even saying goodbye.

Shortly thereafter, as I began fiddling with the thermostat, the attending doctor, whose long, flowing golden hair and a full beard created a supreme air of authority, arrived at my room at the nurse’s behest to discuss Kralizec.

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Prilosec OTC: Everyday Acid Relief

The doctor began explaining what Prilosec OTC (pronounced PRY-LAW-SEC) was, but I could have sworn I saw a wink as he mispronounced the name. He told me how Prilosec is an over-the-counter medication that works by reducing the amount of acid produced in the stomach. People typically take Prilosec OTC to treat heartburn in those suffering from frequent acid reflux, where stomach acid flows back into the esophagus, causing irritation, burning sensations, and discomfort. But what I understood was that it was for people who were burning up from being too hot.

He asked me what my symptoms were, and I explained that I was too hot and thought that I needed to cool down. He looked at me quizzically as I glanced at the thermostat before I clarified what I meant. I mentioned that it—or I—should be cooler inside and that it, I mean, I, was too hot inside. He seemed to understand and approved the medication but warned me to be on the lookout for any new symptoms or side effects from the completion of my three-drug cocktail.

He informed me that when taken as directed, Prilosec OTC begins working immediately, but it may take 2–4 days for the full effect. He emphasized that unlike antacids, which provide temporary relief by neutralizing acid that’s already been made, Prilosec works at the source by blocking acid production before it starts.

Reducing stomach acid production over a 24-hour period helps heal damage to the esophagus caused by acid reflux and prevents further irritation. This systematic approach allows users to manage what would otherwise be an overwhelming and chronic condition through a simple daily routine of taking a singular pill that turns an uncomfortable, potentially debilitating condition into a manageable part of everyday life.

I took his advice to heart and soon thereafter took my first Kralizec pill on the evening of my third day in the Crisis/Operations Center. I had slept poorly the first night because I was on edge about who I thought were the dark priests of human sacrifice and worse on the second night from the anticipation of watching the most consequential battle in the history of humanity unfold in front of me. But with the combined doses of Zyprexa (a sedative), Latuda (an antipsychotic), and Prilosec for heartburn, I slipped away into a deep and peaceful slumber, awaking only briefly to hear a loyal lieutenant calling at my door to report on the progress of the battle. My caretakers informed him that I was tired from the Kralizec I had taken, that I was too drowsy to accept visitors, and that I needed to rest, but I heard his message loud and clear. The war was won.

My Garden Pavilion Entrance Interview

The next day, after a restful night’s sleep and the effects of my medication settling in, I felt much better. They informed me that the doctor would determine whether I was ready to be transferred from the Crisis Center to the Garden Pavilion, where longer-term mental health patients were kept in a semi-permissive environment that would be more comfortable for me. Hearing this, I was excited to learn the doctor’s assessment—now that I had received my personal dose of Kralizec. Eventually, after passing by several times, my turn with the attending doctor came.

He asked me about the effects of the medicine one by one.
“How’s the Zyprexa? Do you still have more energy than you can handle?”

“No,” I responded. “I feel like I’m back in control of myself.”

“How’s the Latuda? Are you still seeing things that aren’t there?” he asked.

“Of course not,” I replied. “I’m finally seeing things for what they are.”

“And lastly, how was the Prilosec? Did it help in the way you expected?” he asked with a wry smile.

“The Kralizec was great,” I said. “It cooled things down a little bit and let me sleep well. I did have strange dreams, though—I wasn’t expecting that.”

“That’s a normal side effect,” the attending retorted. “Nothing to be worried about. Just enjoy them when they’re good and get through them when they’re bad. In any case, I can see you’re ready to be transferred to the Garden Pavilion.”

“Are you sure?” I asked, “You don’t need me in the crisis center anymore? I don’t want to move on until I know that everything has been prepared.”

He reassured me that everything had been accounted for and that everything would work out according to plan as long as I took my medicine and followed the doctor’s orders. That was all I needed to hear.

And with that, he put everything in motion for me to transfer from my cramped and stark observation bay in the crisis center to a nice and comfy room in the Garden Pavillion with plenty of room for activities.

Entering the Garden Pavilion A New Man

In short order, my caretakers had me gather the few belongings I had in my observation bay and walked me over to the Garden Pavilion– a large, airy wing of the hospital bathed in natural light. Each patient had their own small room, and the layout centered around a bright, open living area filled with everything one could need to pass the time: books, board games, TV, puzzles, and even a small exercise machine for staying active. There was also a cozy dining space and a shared office area, giving the place much more of a community feel than a clinical one.

Compared to the sterile intensity of the Crisis Center, the Garden Pavilion felt like paradise. One of my fellow patients even described it as “the country club of all country clubs,” and honestly, I agreed with him. We had everything we needed provided for us and then some. Our meals were brought to us, and they were always both delicious and satisfying. We had milkshakes, fresh fruit, hearty meat dishes, decaf coffee on demand, and tea in the evenings. They even took care of our laundry, folding everything neatly and returning it to us as if we were staying at a quiet retreat rather than a psychiatric wing.

The change from the Crisis Center was immediate and tangible. I could finally swap out my hospital robe for street clothes and trade those grippy hospital socks for my sandals, which my mom had brought from home. It might not sound like much, but wearing my own clothes helped me feel more like myself, more like I was stepping out of survival mode and into recovery.

Beyond the comfort, what made the Garden truly healing was the rhythm of community life. There were opportunities to walk around the enclosed grounds and scheduled visits from volunteers who brought music into the space to play live guitar, piano, and even heartfelt vocal performances. These weren’t just background sounds; the musicians played from the heart, and their presence reminded us that beauty still existed beyond our struggles. We also had visitors from Alcoholics Anonymous and the chaplain corps, each offering words of wisdom, comfort, or just a listening ear. Family members were allowed to visit, too, and it meant a lot to sit down with loved ones face-to-face, even if just for a short while, and show them that we were on the mend.

Of course, there were limits. We weren’t allowed to leave the Garden without supervision, which I did struggle with once or twice. I remember approaching the door, overwhelmed and unsure, but the staff gently guided me back. They were firm but compassionate, always working to maintain safety without force, always treating us like people, not problems.

I do still wonder why there were so many switches and dials near the beds that reminded me of something out of the Cold War. The hospital must have been built then, but it didn’t seem to be doing anything. I couldn’t help but flip them occasionally just to see what might happen. Nothing ever did, as far as I know.

Taking my Prilosec OTC

As the days passed in the Garden Pavilion, I began to notice something—not just in myself, but in the people around me. We were all struggling in our own ways, sure, but there was something undeniably good happening in that place. People cared for each other. They made space for one another’s pain. We shared food, stories, and silence. When someone was spiraling, others stepped in—not with judgment, but with a calm, grounded presence. The staff, the volunteers, the visitors, even the patients ourselves—we created a kind of temporary village, a haven stitched together from music, kindness, and mutual recognition.

And somehow, in the middle of it all, my medication started to work. The Zyprexa brought my energy down to normal levels, the Latuda helped stabilize my thoughts and, the Prilosec OTC started to ease the raging fire in my chest. But more than that, I began to realize that the medicine alone wasn’t doing the work. It was what the medicine allowed me to see: a community, however short-lived or artificial, where people looked after one another. They fed each other, clothed each other, and helped each other stay safe. The smallest acts—like offering a decaf coffee or folding someone’s laundry—took on sacred weight.

And as my body calmed, so did my mind. The more I experienced the goodness of this place, the less I felt I needed to wage a grand war. After I was discharged, the need for Prilosec waned, and my medicines have changed entirely, and I’m not taking any of the ones I started with anymore. I even started to miss my time in the garden as I struggled through the lone and dreary wilderness of my post-manic depression. Eventually, I realized I still had the over-the-counter version of Kralizec to pay. I wouldn’t wage it by fighting some apocalyptic external battle but by taking my metaphorical Prilosec OTC. by choosing small, quiet, intentional acts to care for people and build a community to prevent the buildup of desperate and explosive fanfiction of the real deal. That insight and continual struggle for good to triumph over evil within me was my true medicine.

Waging my Kralizec OTC

These days, I wage my Kralizec OTC in quieter ways. I offer help where I can—carrying boxes for coworkers, proofreading assignments for classmates, checking in on friends who seem down. I stay late to clean up after meetings for which no one else wants to stick around. I try to be a steady, kind presence—someone people can count on, even in small ways. When someone needs something and they ask, I try to say yes. And when they don’t ask, I still try to notice and offer if it’s appropriate.

I’ve dedicated myself to causes that aim to relieve suffering in the long term—charity work, service projects, mutual aid, research, and policy. But I also study the best books I can find, from all traditions, in search of truth. I’ve come to believe that knowledge is not enough without framing—and so I try to frame my experience and the experiences of others in ways that uplift, empower, and enlighten. Not to put people in boxes or to label them but to draw lines of meaning through chaos. The more I understand, the more compassion I feel—and the more responsibility I carry to act on that understanding.

I fall short, of course, but recommit myself as often as necessary and do my best to follow the promptings of the same spirit that moved those who helped me when I was at my lowest. Where others once visited and provided comfort, I now seek to return the favor. The highest calling I know is to mourn with those who mourn and comfort those who stand in need of comfort. I want to give food to the hungry, drink to the thirsty, take in the strangers, clothe the naked, visit the sick, and go to those in distress. These quiet, ancient imperatives, filtered through verses I half-remembered, have taken on renewed significance since my personal brush with the ultimate. At best, I’m working to be connected to something much greater than myself.At the very least, I’m just happy to be here to tell my story.

When I left the Operations Center, out-processed through the Garden Pavilion, and returned to my normal life, I understood that my services were no longer needed in the cosmic theater. Though I felt a twinge of disappointment—an old part of me hoping I’d be called back to the front lines—I knew that particular battle had been won. The battlefield had shifted. My services were now needed elsewhere.

As the great poet Walt Whitman put it, “I am large; I contain multitudes.” I carry with me the memory of Kralizec, and although some part of me still longs for the storm, I have a different war to wage now: the daily battle between good and evil, order and chaos, self-interest and service, and noise and quiet. Between the impulse to do something grand and the commitment to do many small, faithful things that make catastrophe less likely, I’m erring on the side of the small and simple things that make great things come to pass.

And so, I take my Prilosec as needed, not to stave off heartburn but to keep the fire within me properly tempered. My mission is not to hold the line not in some far-off battlefield, but, to fight the good fight here and now in every action I take. As Alexandr Solzhenitsyn put it so poignantly, “the battle line of good and evil is drawn such that it runs through every human heart. I am now a Kalizec Veteran who waged the war ‘out there’, but now, I wage a much smaller and more important war: the one between me and my Kralizec OTC.

In medieval times, mathematicians struggled with the holy grail of a problem to "square the circle" which means constructing a square with the same area as a given circle using only a compass and straightedge. For centuries, this challenge represented the seemingly impossible in a similar fashion that finding the holy grail was elusive, until mathematicians finally proved it could not be done with those limited tools. Yet paradoxically, by expanding their toolset and reimagining the problem, later thinkers found ways to create approximations that are minimally different from the impossible ideal solution.

Today we face our own version of this ancient puzzle. Our institutions have become square frames as rigid, structured systems designed for efficiency and scale. Meanwhile, our deeper purposes remain circular as flowing, continuous, and connected to transcendent meanings. The disconnect between these shapes manifests as institutional dysfunction, where our organizations may efficiently perform tasks yet lose sight of their founding purpose.

This essay argues that the Knights of the Squared Circle, through the Code of Absurdity presented herein, provide not only an individual path toward meaning in improving institutional functioning but also a transformative methodology that produces both the people capable of institutional reform and the institutional environments receptive to renewal. By embodying and moving through the different knightly archetypes and acting with the sudo-intellectual methodology, individuals develop the capacity to reconnect members of dysfunctional systems with their founding values while simultaneously creating conditions where institutions can sustainably and effectively act in more and more accordance with those values.

A Check-up with Dr. Kierkegaard

In the midst of 19th-century Denmark's comfortable prosperity, Søren Kierkegaard emerged as a penetrating diagnostician of society's hidden spiritual ailments. While his contemporaries celebrated progress, reason, and social advancement, Kierkegaard detected a profound malaise beneath the surface—a crisis of meaning that technical achievements and material comforts could not address. Like a physician who discerns a life-threatening condition in a seemingly healthy patient, he identified symptoms of cultural decay that others dismissed or failed to recognize. His philosophical works, often written under pseudonyms and employing indirect communication, served as both diagnostic tools and potential remedies for what he saw as the spiritual sickness of his age.

Kierkegaard wrote against the backdrop of Danish society's nominal Christianity—a cultural Christianity that demanded little and offered even less in terms of authentic spiritual engagement. This context allowed him to develop a critical perspective that extends far beyond religious institutions to all human organizations that lose sight of their founding purposes. His insights into how individuals relate to collectives, how reflection can displace action, and how qualitative distinctions become flattened by quantitative measures offer us a framework for understanding our own institutional dysfunctions. By examining Kierkegaard's diagnosis in detail, we can better understand not just the symptoms but the underlying conditions of our modern institutional maladies.

Kierkegaard's Prophetic Diagnosis

Kierkegaard identified three interconnected dysfunctions that plague modern, both his and ours, institutional life, with each revealing a different dimension of how our organizations lose their connection to meaning and purpose.

First, "the sickness unto death" describes a form of existential despair that emerges when individuals surrender their personal responsibility and authentic selfhood to abstract systems and collective identities. Within institutions, this manifests as a pervasive alienation where participants follow procedures and protocols without understanding their deeper purpose. Workers become functionaries rather than agents, going through motions established by distant authorities rather than engaging meaningfully with the work itself. This creates organizations full of people who are present physically but absent spiritually.

Second, "the present age" refers to a cultural condition characterized by endless reflection without decisive action, where everything becomes flattened into spectacle or entertainment. In institutional settings, this appears as an obsession with analysis, reporting, and deliberation that never culminates in meaningful change. Organizations become trapped in cycles of meetings about meetings, studies about studies, and reforms about reforms—consuming enormous resources while postponing indefinitely the substantive work they were created to perform. The institutional capacity for decisive commitment atrophies while the capacity for documentation expands.

Third, "the leveling process" describes how bureaucratic systems reduce qualitative human experiences to quantitative measurements, eliminating the distinctions that give life meaning. Institutionally, this manifests as the tyranny of metrics, where only what can be measured is valued, and only what is valued gets measured. The richness of human experience and the complexity of real-world problems become flattened into dashboards, scorecards, and performance indicators that capture the countable while missing what counts. Quality becomes subordinated to quantity, wisdom to information, and purpose to process.

Our Bleak Prognosis

The prognosis for institutions afflicted by these conditions, without intervention, is grim: increasing disconnect between daily activities and founding missions, spiritual emptiness despite material and technological abundance, and the triumph of what Kierkegaard called "the numerical" where worth is determined by abstractions rather than authentic engagement. These dysfunctions operate cyclically and reinforce each other: despair leads to passivity, passivity enables leveling, and leveling deepens despair.

At their core, these dysfunctions represent a fundamental misalignment between institutional structures (rigid, bounded systems designed for efficiency and scale) and their animating purposes (flowing, continuous connections to deeper meaning and values). Modern institutions have become highly effective at self-perpetuation while forgetting why they exist in the first place.

This creates a paradoxical situation where organizations simultaneously function efficiently and fail completely, not unlike a train that runs perfectly on time while traveling in the wrong direction. This disconnect between means and ends represents a contemporary version of the ancient mathematical puzzle of "squaring the circle"—attempting to unite fundamentally different geometric realities within a single coherent framework.

The Course of Treatment

Kierkegaard's Circle

Kierkegaard's solution centers on personal transformation through his concept of the "knights of faith." These knights make a double movement: first resigning all hope in finite solutions, then paradoxically reclaiming the finite world through an "absurd" faith that acts despite impossibility. This circular journey begins with the Knight Who Says Ni, who recognizes absurdity and rebels against it; progresses to the Knight of Infinite Resignation, who withdraws from immediate action to develop deeper understanding; and culminates in the Knight of Faith, who returns to the world with transformed purpose.

These knightly archetypes represent a spiritual path that allows individuals to maintain meaning and purpose even within dysfunctional systems. They develop the courage to question established frameworks, the resilience to persist through apparent failure, and the wisdom to reconnect action with deeper purpose. Like a circle, this journey has no end point—it continues through cycles of recognition, resignation, and faithful return, each time deepening one's capacity to live authentically amidst absurdity.

Sudo-Intellectual's Square

The Sudo-Intellectual Framework offers a complementary square—a structured methodology for systemic change with clear boundaries and defined processes. This framework moves through three phases: creative disruption (Pseudo), where divergent thinking breaks open closed systems of thought; strategic planning (Meta), where critique evolves into comprehensive design; and faithful implementation (Sudo), where vision becomes concrete reality through disciplined action.

Unlike Kierkegaard's primarily personal and spiritual approach, the Sudo-Intellectual Framework directly addresses institutional structures and processes. It provides practical tools for imagining alternative futures, developing systematic understanding of how systems function and fail, and implementing transformative initiatives with continuous evaluation. This square framework creates boundaries that enable focused action while ensuring that personal transformation translates into tangible institutional impact.

Squaring the Circle of Institutional Dysfunction

When Kierkegaard's circular personal journey integrates with the Sudo-Intellectual's square framework, we discover a profound complementarity that addresses both personal and institutional dimensions of our crisis. The Knight Who Says Ni aligns with the Pseudo phase of creative disruption; the Knight of Infinite Resignation corresponds to the Meta phase of strategic planning; and the Knight of Faith parallels the Sudo phase of purposeful implementation.

This integration creates regenerative cycles—"holy loops"—where personal transformation fuels institutional renewal, which in turn creates environments more conducive to authentic existence. Each iteration doesn't just solve problems but builds capacity for addressing future challenges while strengthening connections to founding purposes. Like the ancient mathematical problem of squaring the circle, this synthesis approximates what is impossible in theory: uniting the flowing, continuous nature of personal meaning with the structured, bounded nature of institutional systems.

The Kierkegaardian-Sudo synthesis offers neither revolutionary destruction nor reactionary retrenchment, but rather a path of radical incremental transformation that honors both the depths of personal faith and the breadths of systemic complexity. It suggests that by embodying the movements between these knightly archetypes, individuals can develop precisely the qualities needed for meaningful reform while simultaneously creating institutional environments receptive to renewal.

The Code of Absurdity for Modern Knighthood

Our modern condition requires a new code - a Code of Absurdity for the Knights of this Squared Circle who engage in the quixotic quest of uniting the secular square and spiritual circle. These knights understand that in a world where institutional purpose has been forgotten, only seemingly absurd actions can break the frame enough to reconnect systems to their founding values. Like Don Quixote charging at windmills, they may appear ridiculous to conventional observers. Yet their apparent madness contains a method that conventional approaches lack - the ability to see beyond established frameworks.

The Knights of the Squared Circle take their name from this paradoxical mission. They seek to unite what appears impossible to unite: the square frame of systematic methodology with the circular lens of existential meaning. They recognize that personal transformation without institutional impact remains incomplete, while institutional reform without spiritual depth becomes another soulless process.

These knights wield both compass and straightedge - both the tools of spiritual orientation and systematic construction. They understand that addressing institutional challenges requires both the absurd courage to see deeper purposes where others see only bureaucratic procedures and the disciplined planning to engage them effectively.

In the sections that follow, we will explore the three archetypes that comprise the Knights of the Squared Circle and discover how their progression offers not just a path for individual meaning-making but a methodology for institutional renewal.

The Personal Movements of a Knight of the Squared Circle

The Knight Who Says Ni: Beginning in the Pseudo Mode

"NI! NI! NI! Bring us... a shrubbery!"

Remember the Knights Who Say Ni from Monty Python? They demanded nonsensical things from travelers passing through their forest. This absurd humor captures the first stance toward broken systems: creative resistance through absurdity.

The Knight Who Says Ni understands that when a system has become so serious that it can no longer solve the problems it was designed to address, only humor can break its spell. This knight operates in "Pseudo Mode"—performing knowledge they don't necessarily possess and authority they don't necessarily claim, making strange demands that expose the arbitrariness of all demands.

Consider James, a public servant in a government agency tasked with innovating service delivery. When he proposes ideas that could genuinely help citizens, he faces endless bureaucratic roadblocks: "That's not how we do things," or "We need seven more committees to approve this."

Rather than rage against the machine or surrender to it, James becomes a Knight Who Says Ni. He begins employing creative absurdity, He creates elaborate, nonsensical acronyms for his proposals that mirror the agency's love of meaningless abbreviations. He organizes meetings about meetings about meetings, highlighting the recursive bureaucracy. He performs governance theater with exaggerated seriousness, making visible the absurdity of empty rituals

James isn't being childish or unprofessional. He's using absurdity strategically—exposing the system's contradictions by taking its logic to extremes. His colleagues might laugh, roll their eyes, or even get annoyed, but some begin to see their work differently. The absurdity creates tiny cracks in the façade of normalcy.

The Knight Who Says Ni doesn't believe in the system but remains somewhat provocatively loud within it. This stage is characterized by the malicious compliance of going through the motions of the work to observe and exemplify the absurdity of its rituals, engaging in meme warfare that communicates deep truths through seemingly shallow jokes, and speaking in tongues by using language, behavior, or jargon that is correct but can’t possibly be understood.

The First Movement: From Ni to Resignation

Eventually, the Knight Who Says Ni realizes that pointing out absurdity isn't enough. The system's dysfunction runs too deep for mere exposure to fix it. This realization leads to the first movement in Kierkegaard's dialectic: the movement of infinite resignation.

For James, this happens when his creative resistance reaches its limits. His absurdist tactics have helped colleagues see problems and think of absurd solutions, but like the bureaucracy in Catch-22, the system remains unchanged. After a particularly frustrating project cancellation, James makes a profound decision: he surrenders his identity as a reformer from within.

This isn't giving up, but rather a strategic withdrawal. James applies to graduate school in public policy, stepping back from daily battles to gain perspective and develop deeper understanding. He resigns himself to the impossibility of changing the system as it currently exists, which paradoxically frees him to understand it more completely in imagine what it could be.

The Knight of Infinite Resignation: The Meta Mode

"I give up," says the Knight of Infinite Resignation. "But I'll keep notes on what could have been."

The Knight of Infinite Resignation withdraws to the mountain—literal or metaphorical—to plan impossible realities. Having given up on immediate transformation, this knight gains the freedom to design better systems without the constraints of "practicality" or "political feasibility." This is the "Meta Mode"—reflection, planning, and design from a position of deliberate exile.

James becomes this knight in graduate school. While his classmates debate minor policy adjustments, he drafts radical reimaginings of the governance from which he came and proposals for where he’d like to be. He studies complex systems theory, organizational psychology, and historical precedents for institutional transformation. He writes papers that his professors find "interesting but impractical" about governance models that don't yet exist snd include concepts from foreign fields.

To outside observers, the Knight of Infinite Resignation appears to have given up and walked away from his sacred mission in favory of fantasy. James works diligently on theoretical frameworks that seem disconnected from real-world application. He attends required networking events but speaks less about immediate policy fixes and more about fundamental system redesign. Some classmates find him overly pessimistic, others naively idealistic.

But internally, this knight is mapping unexplored territories of thought. He engages in prayerful planning, treating theory as theology to develop developing secularly sacred blueprints for a better world. He falls in love with the silence of the mountain, stepping back from daily noise to hear the deeper patterns. He writes constitutions for nations that don't exist and designs systems from first principles, unconstrained by the course of history and current reality.

The Knight of Infinite Resignation accepts the world as it is while refusing to accept that it must remain so. This tension between resignation to current reality and hope for transformation creates a dynamic tension between pseudo-reality, or an idealistic world that could in theory exist, and sudo-reallity, the similarly idealistic world that can be implemented in practice. This tension creates a productive space for imagination and design that enables the innovation and creativity that was stifled as a knight who says ni.

The Second Movement: From Resignation to Faith

While resignation is necessary, it isn't sufficient. After developing a vision for what could be, the knight must make a second movement: the return to the world with a transformed perspective. This is what Kierkegaard calls the "leap of faith"—not a blind jump into irrationality, but a commitment to act in the present world oriented toward a different future.

For James, this happens when he completes his studies and must decide his next step. He could pursue prestigious policy positions or academic roles that would keep him in the realm of theory. Instead, he makes a surprising choice: he returns to public service, but at the local level, in a small community office where he can directly engage with citizens and has more autonomy over what projects and programs do or not reach implementation.

This isn't a regression, a compromise, or a ‘settling’ it's the second movement of faith. James returns to the world he had resigned, but now he carries within him both the creative resistance of the Knight Who Says Ni and the visionary planning of the Knight of Infinite Resignation. Together, they make the leap into faith that by their integration pseudo-utopia and sudo-reality, or in Kierkegaard’s terms the infinite and the finite, might meet within the knight of faith.

The Knight of Faith: The Sudo Mode

"sudo apt-get install utopia"

The Knight of Faith walks back into the world they had abandoned, but with a crucial difference—they have prepared themselves to be worthy of what Kierkegaard calls the "teleological suspension of the ethical." This is the capacity to act beyond conventional morality in service of a higher purpose, just as Abraham was willing to sacrifice Isaac in obedience to God while paradoxically trusting God would fulfill his future promise of abundant progeny through Isaac.

In computing terms, the knight of faith is prepared to operate with "sudo" privileges, which is a command that executes actions with higher authority than normally available. The knight of faith’s transformation is so complete, however, that they rarely, if ever, need to invoke these privileges explicitly. Like Abraham who raised the knife but never had to use it, they work within existing systems with such authenticity and purpose that the systems begin to reform around them. James prepares for radical interventions he may never need to execute because his daily actions which are now infused with transcendent meaning gradually transform the system from within.

In his new role, James becomes this knight. He processes permit applications, organizes community meetings, and manages local services—mundane tasks similar to his previous work. But he approaches them with a transformed consciousness that comes from having completed both movements. He treats each citizen interaction as if it were already happening within the governance model he designed in theory, seeing the seed of his vision in every exchange. He stands ready to implement radical ideas, but discovers that small adjustments made with absolute conviction often accomplish more than dramatic overhauls. And he builds relationships not as strategic alliances for future change, but as expressions of the community and collaboration he knows is already possible.

To outside observers, James seems like a dedicated civil servant with unusual patience and purpose. He doesn't rant about systemic problems or grand theories. He simply serves his community with extraordinary attention and care. But those who work closely with him notice something different—a peculiar quality Kierkegaard called "inwardness," where outward conformity to social norms coexists with an inward commitment to something beyond those norms. They sense his preparedness to transcend conventional boundaries if necessary, while paradoxically observing his perfect comfort within them.

The Knight of Faith lives what Kierkegaard called the "double movement"—having given up all hope in finite solutions (first movement), and immersed themselves in infinite possibility, they paradoxically reclaim the finite world with new significance (second movement). This paradox manifests as "Sudo Mode"—a state of being where one prepares for exceptional action while finding that mere preparation often renders the action unnecessary:

These movements are not of the mass mobilization variety but are rather profound internal changes, or movements, in perspective, orientation, and loyalty. At Sudo-intellectual, we refer to the fruits of this second movement as:

1. Liturgy in motion, or treating mundane tasks as rituals by recognizing them as sacred in a way hidden to others

2. Absurd readiness, or maintaining the capacity for radical action while finding that the very preparation transforms ordinary actions into extraordinary ones

3. The paradox of non-action: Like Abraham who raised the knife but never had to bring it down, discovering that being prepared to transcend the system often allows one to fulfill its true purpose from within

The Unifying Journey From Pseudo-Absurdity to Sudo-Faith

When we integrate Kierkegaard's existential theology with the Sudo-Intellectual Framework, we discover more than a coincidental alignment—we uncover a profound complementarity between sacred personal development and institutional systems thinking. This section explores how these two approaches intertwine like a double helix, each strengthening the other to create a comprehensive approach to both individual and systemic transformation.

The Sacred-Secular Synthesis

Kierkegaard wrote in a 19th-century context of religious decline and institutional Christianity's failure to embody authentic faith. His emphasis on the individual's relationship with the Absolute (God) seems, at first glance, to have little connection to modern systems thinking or institutional reform. Yet his diagnosis of modernity's spiritual crisis parallels contemporary diagnoses of institutional dysfunction.

The Sudo-Intellectual Framework, with its structured approach to imagining, planning, and implementing systemic change, appears similarly distant from Kierkegaard's concerns with faith, absurdity, and transcendence. Yet both address the same fundamental human challenge: how to maintain meaning and purpose in the face of systems that have lost their connection to their founding values.

This synthesis isn't just academic—it addresses a crucial gap in both approaches. Kierkegaard's knights risk becoming isolated spiritual virtuosos without concrete impact on social systems, while system reformers risk becoming efficient technicians of meaningless processes without the spiritual depth to sustain their work. When combined, they create a model that is both deeply personal and broadly systemic, both spiritually grounded and practically effective.

The Cognitive-Spiritual Circuit: Mapping Internal States to External Systems

Kierkegaard's knights embody specific cognitive and spiritual states that align with phases in the Sudo-Intellectual Framework. This alignment creates a circuit where internal transformation drives external reform, which in turn deepens internal transformation.

1. The Absurd Imagination: Knight Who Says Ni <> Pseudo Mode

The Knight Who Says Ni operates primarily in what psychologists call System 1 cognition—intuitive, pattern-breaking, and emotionally charged. This knight's rebellion against absurdity is fueled by immediate recognition of disconnect between what is and what should be. In Kierkegaardian terms, this is the moment of realizing that conventional ethics and social norms have failed to connect humans to the Absolute.

This maps perfectly to the "Pseudo" phase of the Sudo-Intellectual Framework, where divergent thinking breaks open closed systems of thought. Here we find:

• Utopia: Imagining alternative futures that conventional thinking dismisses as impossible

• Advocacy: Articulating demands that establish new horizons of possibility

• Conspirator: Identifying communities of creative dissent wherever they may be that challenge institutional inertia

Both the Knight Who Says Ni and the Pseudo phase serve the same function: they perform a necessary desecration of dysfunctional orthodoxies. Just as Kierkegaard challenged the complacent Christianity of his day, the Pseudo-Intellectual challenges the unquestioned assumptions underlying institutional failure.

This phase is spiritually analogous to the "via negativa" in mystical theology—the path of negation that begins by clearing away false images of God. Both the Knight Who Says Ni and the Pseudo-Intellectual clear away false images of what institutions are and could be.

2. The Sacred Withdrawal: Knight of Infinite Resignation <> Meta Mode

The Knight of Infinite Resignation transitions into a balanced integration of System 1 and System 2 cognition—combining intuitive understanding with analytical reflection. This balance enables the knight to plan comprehensively while maintaining spiritual depth. In Kierkegaard's framework, this represents the movement of resignation where one surrenders attachment to finite outcomes while preserving the infinite passion that drove those attachments.

This corresponds to the "Meta" or Planning phase in the Sudo-Intellectual Framework, where critique evolves into design:

• Frameworks Development: Developing systematic understanding of how systems function and fail

• Strategic Planning: Creating roadmaps for transformation based on comprehensive analysis

• Project Management: Breaking down transcendent purposes into manageable actions

Both the Knight of Infinite Resignation and the Meta phase planners achieve a paradoxical freedom through constraint. The knight gains spiritual freedom by accepting limitation; the planner gains creative freedom by accepting structural requirements. Both withdraw from immediate action to establish the conditions for more meaningful action later.

This phase parallels what contemplative traditions call "recollection" or "gathering"—the practice of stepping back from the world to see it more clearly. The Meta planner, like the monastic scholar, works in temporary isolation to develop frameworks that will eventually reconnect with the world.

3. The Absurd Implementation: Knight of Faith <> Sudo Mode

The Knight of Faith primarily engages System 2 cognition—deliberate, practical, and operational—but with a crucial difference: this analytical thinking is animated by absurd faith that transcends analysis. The knight acts precisely and methodically in the world while maintaining an inner orientation toward the impossible. In Kierkegaard's terms, this is the second movement of faith, where one returns to the finite world after having resigned it, now seeing it transformed through relationship with the Absolute.

This aligns with the "Sudo" phase of implementation in the Framework:

• Controlled Implementation: Testing and implementing transformative initiatives

• Continous Evaluation and Imprvement: Fine-tuning interventions based on feedback

• Participatory Engagement: Building structures that include input from all types and level of stakeholder

Both the Knight of Faith and the Sudo practitioner achieve impact not by revolutionary disruption but by faithful presence within existing systems. They operate from a position of paradoxical authority—commanding reality not through force but through authentic alignment with deeper purposes that the systems themselves have forgotten.

This phase resembles what mystical traditions call "incarnational spirituality"—the practice of manifesting transcendent reality through concrete, embodied action. The Sudo implementer, like the parish priest or the engaged contemplative, brings abstract ideals into practical reality through daily, disciplined service.

The Twin Movements: Leaps of Faith and System Iterations

Kierkegaard described faith as requiring two movements that appear contradictory: infinite resignation (giving up the world) and faith (reclaiming it). These movements find their systemic parallel in the Sudo-Intellectual Framework's iterative cycles:

The First Movement: Breaking and Rebuilding Mental Models

The movement from Ni to Infinite Resignation parallels the movement from Pseudo to Meta phases. Both involve, recognizing the limitations of current frameworks, withdrawing from immediate action to develop deeper understanding, building comprehensive alternatives to failed systems, and accepting the paradox of planning for what seems impossible.

This first iteration establishes what systems thinkers call a "mental model"—a comprehensive understanding of how components interact within a whole. For Kierkegaard, this mental model is profoundly personal and spiritual; for the Sudo-Intellectual, it may be organizational or institutional. But both recognize that transformation begins with reimagining relationships between parts and wholes.

The Second Movement: From Contemplation to Action

The movement from Infinite Resignation to Faith parallels the movement from Meta to Sudo phases. Both involve returning to the world with transformed purpose, translating comprehensive understanding into specific actions, maintaining paradoxical relationship to outcomes (working for results while detached from results), and creating islands of meaning within systems of meaninglessness.

This second iteration creates what systems thinkers call "feedback loops"—cycles of action and response that allow continuous learning and adaptation. For Kierkegaard, this feedback comes through the ongoing relationship with the Absolute; for the Sudo-Intellectual, it comes through measurement and calibration. But both recognize that transformation requires not just implementation but continuous responsiveness to reality.

Transcending the Theory-Practice Divide

Perhaps the most profound alignment between Kierkegaard and the Sudo-Intellectual Framework is their shared rejection of the false dichotomy between theory and practice, between contemplation and action. Both integrate these supposedly opposed elements into a unified approach:

1. Practical Theory: Both Kierkegaard and the Framework insist that theory must be lived to be meaningful. Kierkegaard dismissed abstract philosophical systems that didn't transform the philosopher's life; the Framework rejects planning that doesn't lead to concrete deployment.

2. Theoretical Practice: Both also maintain that practice must be theoretically informed to be transformative. Kierkegaard criticized mindless religious observance; the Framework criticizes reactive interventions without strategic depth.

3. Ongoing Dialectic: Most importantly, both see the relationship between theory and practice as dialectical rather than linear. The Knight of Faith doesn't move beyond theory into practice; they live the unity of both. Similarly, the Sudo-Intellectual doesn't complete planning and then implement; they maintain a continuous cycle where implementation generates new insights that inform ongoing planning.

Institutional Embodiment: From Individual Knights to Organizational Culture

While Kierkegaard focused primarily on individual transformation, his knights offer models for institutional culture as well. When an organization embodies these knightly qualities across its structure, it creates what organizational theorists call a "learning organization"—one capable of continuous adaptation and renewal:

1. Pseudo / Ni Culture: Departments or teams dedicated to questioning assumptions, imagining alternatives, and pushing boundaries. These might be R&D units, skunkworks projects, or dedicated innovation teams.

2. Meta / Resignation Culture: Strategic planning functions that transform critique into comprehensive frameworks. These include not just formal planning departments but any processes that facilitate reflection on purpose and direction.

3. Sudo / Faith Culture: Operational teams that implement with both precision and purpose, maintaining connection to founding values while adapting to changing conditions. These are the frontline workers and managers who translate vision into reality.

The movement between these cultural modes creates what systems theorists call "adaptive capacity"—the ability to respond effectively to changing circumstances while maintaining core identity and purpose. This is the organizational equivalent of the Knight of Faith's capacity to remain true to the Absolute while fully engaged with the relative.

Regenerative Cycles: The Holy Loop

The integration of Kierkegaard's sacred philosophy with the secular Sudo-Intellectual methodology creates not a linear progression but a regenerative cycle—what we might call a "holy loop":

1. The Knight Who Says Ni breaks open dysfunctional patterns through absurd resistance, creating space for new possibilities (Pseudo phase).

2. This space enables the Knight of Infinite Resignation to develop comprehensive alternatives through strategic withdrawal, establishing blueprints for transformation (Meta phase).

3. These blueprints guide the Knight of Faith in implementing targeted interventions that maintain paradoxical relationship to both means and ends (Sudo phase).

4. As these interventions interact with existing systems, they generate new insights that fuel the next cycle of creative disruption, strategic planning, and faithful implementation.

This loop isn't just personally sustaining—it's institutionally regenerative. Each cycle doesn't just solve problems but builds capacity for solving future problems. Each intervention doesn't just fix dysfunction but strengthens the system's connection to its founding purpose.

The Kierkegaardian-Sudo synthesis offers a path that is neither revolutionary nor reactionary, neither purely individual nor blindly collective. It is instead a middle way—a path of radical incremental transformation that honors both the depths of personal faith and the breadths of systemic complexity.

In a world where institutions increasingly lose connection to their founding purposes—where healthcare systems forget healing, educational systems forget learning, governance systems forget justice—this synthesis offers a pathway to institutional renewal rooted in personal transformation. It suggests that the knight and the system, the soul and the structure, the sacred and the secular are not opposed but complementary elements in the ongoing work of aligning finite actions with infinite purposes.

The Quixotic Conclusions to the Quest of the Knights of the Squared Circle

Consider literature's most famous knight, Don Quixote, who saw giants where others saw windmills. Cervantes gave us not just a madman but a profound archetype of the Knight Who Says Ni—someone who refuses to accept the diminished reality others take for granted. His absurd quest creates moments of true nobility in a world that has forgotten what nobility means. He tilts at windmills, fighting myths, shaping meaning through apparent absurdity.

Consider too his faithful companion, Sancho Panza—the reluctant Knight of Infinite Resignation. He carries the bags, documents the delusions, plans for contingencies. He knows his master is mad and the quest impossible—but he resigns himself to it anyway, packing provisions, tending wounds, and keeping track of the story as it unfolds. He is the planner who accepts impossibility while still preparing for it.

Together, they embody not a completed transformation but a quest in progress—one that inspires those who witness it. The innkeepers, priests, barbers, and nobles who encounter Don Quixote and Sancho find themselves changed, often despite themselves. Some begin as mockers and end as believers—not in giants, perhaps, but in the possibility that the world might be more than it appears. These witnesses represent the potential Knights of Faith, those who integrate both the madness of Quixote and the pragmatism of Sancho into a new way of engaging reality.

The synthesis of Kierkegaard's Knights and the Sudo-Intellectual Framework offers a similar path for individuals seeking meaning and effectiveness in dysfunctional times to become Knights of the Squared Circle, wherever they are in their journey. It acknowledges both the absurdity of our current condition and the possibility of transformation through a disciplined progression: from the creative resistance of Quixote, through the strategic resignation of Sancho, to the faithful return of those they inspire.

This path doesn't promise quick fixes or revolutionary change. It offers something more subtle but perhaps more sustainable: a way to maintain human dignity and purpose within broken systems while patiently working toward their transformation. Like Quixote and Sancho, the Knights of the Squared Circle navigate the absurd with both a trembling heart and a steady hand, aligning themselves and their small corner of the world with something larger, one finite step at a time.

In a world where institutions increasingly fail their purposes, perhaps we need fewer revolutionaries promising total transformation and more Knights of Faith enacting partial transformation—creating spaces where broken systems begin to heal from the inside out. Like those who encountered Don Quixote, we might find ourselves wondering: what if those windmills were giants all along? What if our madmen and planners see more clearly than those who mock them?

The question isn't whether the windmills are actually giants—the question is whether treating them as giants, with loyal assistants by our side who see them for the windmills they are, might restore a form of enchantment that our disenchanted institutions desperately need. The Knights of the Squared Circle suggest that meaning emerges precisely where it should not be possible, and that the infinite purpose of human institutions becomes visible again through finite, faithful action—even if that action begins with a seemingly absurd charge at an ordinary windmill.

This leap into faith the Knights of the Squared Circle make is not just a jump into the void, but a leap to the place where the void touches the eternal and reflects it back into reality. It is there, perilously suspended between the finite and infinite, that we discover our capacity to transform both ourselves and the world around us. I am a Knight of Faith who believes in our potential to transform institutional dysfunction into vitality. Whichever stage of knighthood you’re at, I hope you’ll join me in the leap.

Edited and enhanced by GPT4.5, Claude, and Grok; Artificial General Intelligence Candidates

For: You, the sudo-stakeholders of this pseudo-society.

With support provided by: The pseudo-shareholders of this sudo-society in the making.

Preface: Explaining the Pseudo-Sudo Joke

This manifesto relies heavily on the wordplay between "pseudo" and "sudo," which serves as both a conceptual framework and a guiding methodology. While the distinction may seem technical at first glance, it encapsulates the essential balance between theoretical exploration and practical implementation that defines Sudo-Intellectual.

"Pseudo" is derived from the Greek word for "false" or "pretend" and is commonly used in academic and technical contexts to indicate something that mimics the appearance of legitimacy without fully meeting its criteria. For example, pseudo-science may adopt the language and presentation of science while failing to adhere to the rigorous standards of the scientific method. More broadly, "pseudo" often describes ideas that are speculative, unconventional, or in early stages of development—thought experiments that may or may not withstand critical scrutiny.

"Sudo" is a command in Unix/Linux operating systems (short for "superuser do"), which grants temporary administrative privileges to execute specific tasks that would otherwise require higher authority. It enables authorized users to make targeted, controlled changes to a system in a secure and accountable manner. In essence, "sudo" is about authorized intervention, allowing users to override default settings for the purpose of maintenance, improvement, or troubleshooting—ensuring that necessary changes can be made without compromising overall system stability.

Together, these two terms create a meaningful juxtaposition:

1. "Pseudo" represents exploration, speculation, and theoretical ideation—ideas that may be novel but untested.

2. "Sudo" represents precision, implementation, and controlled execution—the process of turning a refined idea into an actionable and impactful change.

This contrast reflects the core methodology of Sudo-Intellectual: using speculative, pseudo-intellectual approaches to generate innovative ideas, then applying sudo-intellectual rigor to refine, test, and implement the ones that demonstrate real-world viability.

The interplay between these two elements mirrors a broader intellectual superposition, where ideas exist simultaneously as bold but impractical speculation and targeted, feasible intervention—only collapsing into one or the other when tested against reality. This is akin to Schrödinger’s Cat: until we examine an idea closely, it remains in a state of both potential success and failure.

The goal of Sudo-Intellectual is not just to generate ideas but to differentiate between pseudo-solutions (compelling but impractical first-principles solutions as thought experiments) and sudo-solutions (actionable, practical, and popular solutions as strategic plans). The process of iteration, refinement, and stakeholder engagement ensures that we are not merely engaging in theoretical exercises but creating solutions with real potential for meaningful impact. The fact that “pseudo” and “sudo” sound identical when spoken serves as an important check for clarifying whether the solution they mention is meant for thinking purposes or doing purposes.

An Introduction to the Pseudo-Intellectual in Charge

Just Who Do I Think I Am?

I am a pseudo-intellectual— a pejorative title that I embrace with sincere irony and informed naivety I am a jack of all trades, and a master of some, knowing a little about everything, and a lot about a precious few topics of deep significance. I am a modern-day shaman developing magic potions in my hut at the edge of society hoping a visitor passes by for a sample. I am a devout heretic, leaving orthodoxy on a quest through the dark forest of forbidden ideas. I am a technocratic populist, ever in search of what people want and need and how to provide it the most elegantly. My pseudo-intellectual wanderings have led me out of the garden of police society, but I now return bearing seeds of the fruit I found outside, but I’ll need you, dear reader, to discern whether the fruit I bring back is good.

I am a one-man think-tank, a strategist without a battlefield, a theologian without a congregation, and an architect without a building site. I collect ideas like artifacts, not to hoard them in a dusty museum of thought but to fashion them into working models, both ones that exist already and models yet to be invented. My interests range from sacred scripture to speculative fiction, from political theory to urban planning, and from system dynamics to folk wisdom. My passion project is blending them all into a strange alchemy of interdisciplinary mischief, that, if I am so lucky, may turn into a magic potion to ease societal dysfunction in some way. I see no hard borders between disciplines, only different languages describing the same underlying patterns that make them up.

Just What Do I Think I’m Doing?

I need your help because I also stand atop Mt. Stupid forever at risk of proclaiming my own lack of intellect to the world and enacting it in the decisions I contribute to. As such, I need you to help chart the path toward leveraging the new and different ideas I’ve stumbled upon for the greater good without making foolish mistakes with real consequences. I embrace the opportunity to dive into the depths of complexity and marvel at its beauty but need help understanding what makes it beautiful and bringing a version of it back to the surface.

I am a one-man do-tank, finding the most local application of the strategies, sermons, and blueprints I come up with while searching for more capable collaborators along the way. I play at the edges of institutions, neither fully inside nor entirely outside, acting as a bridge between the orthodox and the heretical, the mainstream and the fringe, the informational silos, and that data lakes. I speak fluent bureaucrat, but also understand the dialect of the dreamers. I stand with one foot in order, one in chaos, one eye on the system as it now, the other on the emergent properties it has yet to express. More than anything, I play whimsically in the sandbox of society, exploring, building, and refining, and new types of societal sandcastles with anyone who will take break and play a little with me.

Just What Do I Aspire to Accomplish?

I strive to become a sudo-intellectual, not content to merely theorize but committed to seeing ideas tested, iterated, and applied. I do not seek to overthrow but to upgrade. I work to transform pseudo-solutions—half-baked idealism, radical speculation, and forgotten wisdom—into sudo-solutions: practical, actionable, and elegantly disruptive innovations that can pass the test of real-world implementation. I build bridges to enact these sudo-solutions where others see walls, I find allies where others see enemies, and I forge consensus where others see intractable divisions. Of course, people are complicated, and I’m not always successful, however many often appreciate the effort it takes and the understanding it brings to engage as a sudo-intellectual. In that sense, my work is not rebellion, but adaptive evolution, guiding systems through the valleys of stagnation and into the next peak of possibility in the societal landscape.

My Personal Journey from Pseudo to Sudo-Intellectual

My Traditional Education

I’ve tried my hardest to make traditional educational structurses work for me, but it’s been a difficult ride. In high school I was always smart enough to do well in class by paying a minimum amount of attention and put minimal effort into school work to get passing grades. I was warned that that wouldn’t fly in college either, but a similar dynamic played itself out in my first year or so. I must have changed my major five or six times in the first two years of college with how avey new class presented compelling topics and interesting projects.

Despite that interest, I never found a niche I felt comfortable in and ended up dropping out several times: once to serve a volunteer mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints for two years, once to join the Utah Army National Guard for six years, and once more due to a series of mental health crises I experienced trying to fit together too many disparate ideas while in a Masters of Public Administration program. Writing the Pseudo Manifesto of a Sudo-Intellectual will hopefully be my capstone achievement to complete finally becoming a master of something after coming up jacks my whole life.

My Wealth of Pseudo-Scholarship

While my traditional education and certifications are lacking, I can’t help but toot my horn about the level of Pseudo-Scholarship I’ve engaged in since I started formal higher education. In my case, I’ve read hundreds of books, consumed dozens of Great Courses, listened to dozens of well-produced academic podcasts, and watched Youtube videos of lectures from and conversations with hundreds of top academics. I’ve exposed myself to divergent thinking on Twitter, in-depth compilation Reddit, and a multitude of other ways of absorbing information from the societal zeitgeist. But simply absorbing is not nearly enough. One cannot simply absorb information from the internet in a way that makes sense, let alone in a way that produces useful scholarship.

So, as much as I’d like to toot my own horn about my intelligence, as a pseudo-intellectual, I am what the internet refers to as a midwit, or someone with just enough intelligence to be simultaneously overconfident in their understanding of the complexities of an issue, yet not confident enough to do anything about it. I fall perfectly into the trap of knowing enough to think myself into a box and not find my way out. This combines with a severe case of the Dunning-Krueger effect, where I have relatively little knowledge of a topic and feel overconfidence in being able to apply it effectively. As I make bold claims, ask big questions, and propose grand projects, I inevitably receive critical feedback and quickly fall down into the valley of despair. I often want to scramble back up to the comforting ignorance of Mt. Stupid rather than pursuing the path of mastery by ascending the slope of enlightenment.

Sudo-Intellectual, then is my plan to get out of the midwit trap and make it out of the valley of despair by systematically applying, refining, adapting, and integrating my broad knowledge into plans for pseudo-solutions to the most pressing societal problems I’ve come across. I sincerely hope that this new intellectual journey up the slope of enlightenment will be helpful for my own intellectual progress, interesting and enlightening for others to follow along with, and beneficial to the society that I aspire to serve in some small way.

The Obstacle is the Way

However, the climb up the slope of enlightenment isn't free of obstacles. It takes sustained focus, effort, and accountability to oneself or another, which are not qualities I have in spades. I struggle very much with attention, especially if it's not something I'm deeply interested in. I am certainly capable of putting extraordinary effort into things, but usually only if it's interesting or someone is making me do it. I also tend to exploit accountability mechanisms that aren't sufficiently rigid or inquisitive about how I'm actually spending my time, These are all barriers to my success that I must overcome. I have struggled in the past, but that's not to say I haven't done anything with the skills and obstacles I've been dealt.

When organizational structures align with my strengths, I've produced meaningful and often transformative work. At the MIIS META Lab, I applied my analytical abilities to consolidate homelessness data for logistic regression analysis, uncovering key factors behind successful transitions from homelessness that shaped the Coalition of Homeless Service Providers' strategic planning. During my time with the Utah National Guard supporting CBP Intelligence, I transformed scattered data into coherent narratives through custom data pipelines and interactive dashboards—cutting report production time by over 200% and enabling colleagues to extract actionable insights that would have otherwise remained buried in spreadsheets and powerpoint presentations.

My multilingual capabilities unlocked unique opportunities to bridge cultural divides. I developed remote language curriculum during COVID-19 that prevented training cancellations for over 100 students. As lead of the Utah Coronavirus Task Force translation initiative, I orchestrated 20 military linguists to rapidly produce 390 translations of critical COVID-19 documents into 10 languages—making vital information accessible to diverse communities during a crisis. While serving on the MIIS Fall Forum panel, I contributed to meaningful discussions on gender issues that were both acceptable to all parties and highly pragmatic.

Where traditional organizational structures like the military might have constrained me, I found ways to channel my diverse talents into community impact. I designed a systematic process for analyzing intelligence data using Microsoft Power BI that was adopted as a national program. During my time as a Volunteer Executive Secretary in Queretaro, Mexico, I managed financial operations for 170 volunteers across 80 houses, handling everything from rent payments to expense accounts to preparing for financial audits, to coordinating logistics of getting everyone in one place for a senior executive visit. Beyond the administrative duties, I provided bilingual training and individualized mentoring in both English and Spanish, helping volunteers navigate complex cultural environments they were unfamiliar with, and managed expectations between the volunteer and the leadership. I even dipped a toe into politics as the Utah Regional Organizer for the Yang campaign, where I mobilized 50+ volunteers across the state, turning my passion for policy innovation into tangible grassroots action that amplified previously unheard voices.

Modestly Claiming the Title of Sudo-Intellectual

Many people have more impressive resumes than this, but I am proud of having made an impact in the places I’ve been assigned to serve such that my coworkers remember me and what I did. I’m certainly not an expert, but the spark that made those achievements possible wasn't being an expert in any one field but by cultivating general intelligence, maintaining broad awareness of the many ways to solve problems, and developing sound reasoning faculties to employ in any situation. Through that process, I developed an intuition for problem-solving that employs a sudo-intellectual toolkit to understand, analyze, and integrate seemingly disparate concepts, data, and perspectives into new and innovative approaches. That combination of broad thinking and deep collaboration creates what I would like to call, Sudo-intelligence. And what makes me a sudo-intellectual.

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Thought of and written by Logan Jensen, Sudo-Intellectual Candidate

Edited and Enhanced by Claude, Artificial General Intelligence Candidate

Protecting our Public, Private, and Secret Lives

Gabriel García Márquez, who is one of my favorite authors and who had significant influence developing my magical-realist approach to policy, once wrote, "Every man has three lives: a public life, a private life, and a secret life." Regarding the privacy of our data and our control over how private and public actors use it, we seem to have mixed all three lives and come away with nothing at all. Frameworks like GDPR stifle the use of private data in Europe, ostensibly to protect our private and secret lives, while in reality creating road blocks to making productive use of it. On the Other Hand, the Data Wild West permits data exploitation by private and public actors in the US and across the globe with relatively little scrutiny. With the level of privacy we already cede to use essential digital services, there are very few secrets that aren’t already known or at least predicted by someone somewhere as soon as someone thinks them up.

What if the next evolution in privacy didn't come from building higher and thicker walls around our data but from flipping the script on privacy entirely and focusing how to design the channels our data flows through and which lakes store it? In an age where the Patriot Act enables distinctly unpatriotic invasions of our digital lives, I propose the intentionally ironic Pseudo-Dissident Act as a framework for privacy protection and data utilization. The pseudo-governmental agency this act creates wouldn't merely resist invasive surveillance with privacy protection backstopped by the Fourth Amendment protection against searches and seizures, but transform our privacy paradigm by basing it on the consent-backed protection against quartering soldiers found in the nearly defunct Third Amendment.

Rather than biasing toward complete protection like GDPR or maximum personal data exploitation like the US, this framework would provide a third way of protecting privacy by flipping the script on what privacy and data protection are. This new script would, allow more overt and approved personal and private data access while ensuring transparency and control over personal data sharing preferences in a way that citizens benefit from its consensual utilization through mutually beneficial, consensual, and transparent process.

A Cautionary Tale About Privacy in George Orwell's 1984

In Orwell's 1984, privacy invasion is the backbone of totalitarian control. Winston Smith's world is defined by constant surveillance through telescreens, facial monitoring for "facecrime," and the weaponization of intimate personal information. His attempt to create privacy by writing in a diary is considered thoughtcrime. At the same time, his false sanctuary with Julia is revealed as a trap when a hidden telescreen exposes their rebellion. Perhaps most chilling is how the Party uses data against their citizens. Winston's neighbor is reported by his seven-year-old daughter for sleep-talking against Big Brother while Winston receives personalized torture based on surveillance data, using Winston's specific fear of rats against him in Room 101.

These fictional horrors parallel today's digital privacy debates with unsettling clarity. Just as the Party collected intimate knowledge to control Winston, modern data harvesters often gather our preferences, habits, and fears without receiving meaningful consent. This "false sanctuary" mirrors our illusion of private digital spaces that are constantly monitored. While we don't have children reporting parents to authorities, we have devices in our homes listening for keywords and algorithms analyzing our communications. The key difference is that in our world, this surveillance is primarily conducted by corporations rather than governments, although the line increasingly blurs as data is shared across sectors. Unlike Winston, we still have the opportunity to shape how our data is used, but only if we recognize the parallels before our digital panopticon becomes complete.

The Pseudo-Dissident Act: Constitutional Foundations for Digital Privacy

The "Pseudo-Dissident Act" is deliberately provocative in its naming, transforming the irony of the Patriot Act's unpatriotic surveillance into a framework that genuinely empowers citizens to own and control their data. This Act affirms a fundamental principle: individuals own the data they generate and should control its use on their terms. Unlike current regulations that either restrict data use (GDPR) or permit unchecked exploitation (US practices), the Dissident Act creates a legal basis for data "invaluation" – converting personal data from an exploited resource into a valuable asset under its owner’s control.

America's current privacy paradigm relies primarily on Fourth Amendment protections against "unreasonable searches and seizures," but this framework has proven inadequate in the digital age. Courts struggle to apply concepts like "reasonable expectation of privacy" to information shared with third parties, creating a constitutional blind spot that enables mass surveillance without meaningful consent. The stewards of our data have it, but promise not to use it without either a secret warrant from a secret court or a secret client willing to pay a secret price.

The Third Amendment—prohibiting the quartering of soldiers in private homes without owner consent—offers a surprisingly relevant alternative. Though rarely invoked, its core principle is powerful: The government cannot occupy private space without explicit permission. Applied to digital contexts, The Third Amendment’s "consent-first" approach recognizes personal data as an extension of the private domain and can only be be bought and sold according to the owner’s express consent. While no individual piece of data seems valuable enough, the total market for data is estimated at around $500 Billion, with very little of that ever making it back to the rightful owner of the brokered data.

The Pseudo-National Sensorship Agency (pNSA) would serve as the mechanism for implementing this vision, functioning as a the people’s data broker that connects the people's data with opportunities that benefit them. "Sensorship" plays on "censorship" but in this context means quite the opposite. Censorship is sensing, by whatever means, when your data has value and helping you capitalize on it. Through a single comprehensive preference interface, citizens could set their data-sharing parameters once instead of navigating endless website permissions and make a few tenths or hundreths of a percent every time their data is accessed. When a valuable opportunity arises outside of their allowed preferences– perhaps a medical researcher needs genetic information from people with specific characteristics – the pNSA would either automatically facilitate the exchange based on pre-established permissions or notify the user with options like: "Researcher offers $75 plus study results for your anonymized genetic markers. Accept/Decline/Negotiate?" to present a an opportunity to allow an exception with the details of who wants the data and why presented clearly and openly.

This isn't a radical departure from constitutional principles but their logical extension into the digital realm. By framing data access as a form of "digital quartering" requiring explicit permission and fair compensation, the Act creates a coherent legal basis for protecting personal information while enabling its valuable use. While it may be weird to imagine 18th century soldiers entering your quarters and eating all your data, the principal of stopping modern data brokers from doing so is at least holds prima facie. The framework creates a transparent, balanced ecosystem where data flows based on mutual value creation rather than extraction and recognizes that our founding document's protections must evolve to preserve liberty in contexts the Framers could never have imagined but would undoubtedly have sought to protect.

Proof of Concept in Estonia’s E-Government Framework

Estonia's journey toward digital governance emerged from necessity rather than luxury. Following a massive 2007 Russian cyberattack that crippled banks, media outlets, and government services, Estonia transformed crisis into opportunity by building a digital infrastructure designed for resilience, transparency, and citizen control. Today, this Baltic nation of just 1.3 million people offers a working proof-of-concept for robust digital citizenship that balances security with usability and privacy with functionality.

The lynchpin of Estonia's system is X-Road, a decentralized data exchange layer that enables secure communication between different information systems. Unlike traditional approaches that consolidate information in vulnerable central repositories, X-Road connects disparate databases while keeping data at its source. When a doctor needs medical records or a tax official requires income verification, they access this information directly through authenticated channels rather than duplicate databases. Every instance of data access is logged and visible to citizens in a way that creates accountability through transparency. This architecture demonstrates that efficient government services don't require either surrendering privacy or or centralizing control.

Estonia's digital identity system starkly contrasts America's fragmented approach. While U.S. citizens navigate a patchwork of state IDs and repurposed Social Security numbers (with Real ID adding complex e-epicycles rather than coherence), Estonians possess a unified digital identity with robust security features. Their ID cards contain encrypted certificates enabling legally binding digital signatures, secure authentication, and transparent access logs. This foundation of trust allows Estonians to vote online, bank securely, sign contracts digitally, and access medical services seamlessly—all while maintaining visibility into who accesses their information and why.

Perhaps Estonia's most transformative innovation is its "once-only" principle, which fundamentally reimagines the citizen-government relationship. Rather than requiring individuals to repeatedly provide the same information across agencies (with all the attendant inefficiency and error potential), Estonian citizens provide information once, which is then shared across systems with explicit consent. When registering a business, for example, an entrepreneur's information automatically populates forms across tax authorities, business registries, and social security systems—dramatically reducing bureaucratic friction while maintaining consent and transparency.

Estonia didn’t build its system by ignoring privacy concerns but by addressing them directly through architectural choices. By designing for transparency, consent, and citizen control, Estonia achieved what many consider impossible: a digital government infrastructure that citizens trust. Their success challenges the false dichotomy between efficient governance and privacy protection, proving that adequately designed systems can enhance both simultaneously. This working model provides the foundation for extending these principles beyond government services into a broader framework for consensual data sharing. This framework could inform the development of a citizen-centric data agency that serves rather than surveils.

The pNSA: A Citizen-Owned Data Sovereignty Framework

The Pseudo-National Sensorship Agency would represent a fundamental shift in managing personal data founded on the Third Amendment principle of consent. Just as the Third Amendment prevents the government from quartering soldiers in private homes without owner consent, the pNSA would avoid exploitation of personal data without explicit permission and compensation. Unlike government agencies (which lack public trust currently) and private companies (which have inherent profit conflicts), the pNSA would use a public benefit corporation structure with the citizens that have opted in using the data governance framwork as its owners. This ownership structure ensures that profits generated from data exchanges flow back to the data creators after covering operational costs.

Adapting Estonia's successful X-Road architecture, the pNSA would function as a consent-based data exchange platform rather than a centralized data repository. Personal information would remain stored at its sources, with the pNSA providing secure, authenticated access channels only when authorized by the data owner. Every query would be logged, visible to the citizen, and governed by their pre-established consent parameters. Citizens could set default sharing preferences, minimum compensation requirements, and purpose limitations through a single comprehensive dashboard – eliminating the need to manage hundreds of different privacy policies across services. Or even, if they want to be less involved in the decision making sequence, set a privacy slider on the continuum from locked in a privacy vault to producing value openly.

Operationally, the pNSA would function as both guardian and broker. When an organization seeks specific data, whether it’s a researcher seeking health information, a company wanting consumer insights, or a government agency needing verification – they submit a request specifying the data sought, intended use, compensation offered, and usage limitations. The pNSA would match these requests against citizen preferences, facilitating automatic exchanges when pre-authorized or sending notification requests when manual approval is needed. For example: "City Planning Department requests anonymized location data to optimize bus routes. Compensation: $15 + early access to improved schedules. Accept/Decline/Negotiate?" This system transforms data from an exploited resource into a fairly valued asset, creating a sustainable ecosystem that benefits all participants while maintaining individual sovereignty over personal information.

Implementation Road Map: A Phased Approach to Data Sovereignty

The Pseudo-National Sensorship Agency wouldn't emerge overnight as a fully-formed entity—its development would follow a careful, iterative process designed to build trust while demonstrating value. Initially, a state-level pilot program in a privacy-forward jurisdiction like California would establish proof-of-concept. Leveraging California's existing Data Privacy Rights Act as a foundation, this limited trial would recruit diverse volunteers to test core functionality with real-world data while carefully measuring outcomes and identifying operational challenges.

Trust-building would be central to implementation, with safeguards baked into the system architecture rather than added as afterthoughts. An independent oversight board with binding authority, mandatory third-party audits, absolute data deletion rights, and state-of-the-art encryption would provide foundational protections. Equally important would be transparent incentive structures—clearly showing how value flows back to data creators through multiple compensation options, establishing minimum value guidelines for different data types, and implementing independent dispute resolution processes.

As the pilot results demonstrate both privacy protection and tangible benefits, the model could expand through an opt-in approach that allows growth proportional to proven value. This bootstrapped scaling strategy lets the system evolve organically based on actual user experiences rather than theoretical promises. Throughout this process, robust public education would showcase concrete success stories, provide transparent performance metrics, and explain the comparative advantages over exploitative models. This educational interaction would help citizens understand how the system works and why it represents a fundamental improvement in valuing and protecting personal information.

Legally, there are virtually no barriers to setting up a data brokerage owned by its members and operated for the public benefit. I could start one tomorrow if I wanted to. The problem is reaching scale and while traditional data brokers provide the data they have at the lowest price, we would be unlikely to match the price, maintain data-owner control, and return profits to the owners.

To make a new data brokerage that cuts the data owners in on the value produced by their data, we would likely need to bring legal challenges to data brokers that cannot, under the Third Ammendment, demonstrate that the data they have was collected under informed consent. If these challenges are successful and turn our wacky idea into precedent, the Pseudo-National Sensorship Agency would be best positioned to thrive in the new legal environment. If it fails, the publicity will allow for increased gradual adoption as publish which services sign up for our mutually beneficial and consent based data access with us.

Stepping into a Sudo-Intellectual's 1985

Let us imagine 1985, the mirror image of 1984, where the Ministry of Sensorship surveils Winston, stewards his data footprint, follows him (on social media), and interacts with him about his data-sharing preferences. All while Winston profits from the data those activities generate. In this world, Winston has opted for maximum transparency and maximum benefit (both efficiency and monetary) from his data.

This access to data enables "Little Brother" (a distributed network of peers rather than Big Brother's centralized eye) to identify Winston's unique skillset as a nuclear non-proliferation expert, compensate him through the Ministry of Sensorship for valuable data and reporting he produces, and connect him with like-minded supporters of a denuclearized world. Eventually, during a period of escalating nuclear tensions where the President's cabinet is at a loss for what to do, they reach out to the Ministry of Sensorship to request a query for a leading nuclear non-proliferation expert to weigh in on the situation.

The query returns Winston's name, and the cabinet official put in a bid for $100,000 for his immediate attention and continued assistance with the crisis. Winston then gets an emergency notification on his phone with a button to immediately call an aide who patches him into the cabinet meeting. He gives an initial unclassified assessment of the situation on the way to the chopper landing zone that will take him to room 010, where he'll work under extreme conditions to make the contribution of a lifetime to society as the expert in avoiding nuclear war and for which he receives a handsome reward. Rather than being broken by torture Room 101, Winston finds the culmination of his life purpose in Room 010, where sensorship experts rapidly plugged him into something bigger than himself enabled by being open with information rather than keeping it locked down in a steel safe.

Is this utopian thinking? 100%. But it's no more dystopian than our current reality where data brokerages and corporations harvest our most intimate data without meaningful consent or compensation. We live in a world where surveillance is just as complete and all encompassing as Winston’s Oceania, but it’s conducted by corporations who face even less accountability than governments. Is this more appropriate as a movie script than a real-life interaction? Absolutely, but the principle of needing to find a better model, whether the one we propose or not, for handling data privacy in the digital age. If the government can make a privacy expectation to stop a bad guy, under what conditions should we allow it to make an exception for good.

Just What Exactly Am I Dreaming up Here?

The technology to implement this vision already exists. Estonia's digital governance system demonstrates that government-led data stewardship can be effective when built on trust and citizen control. However, given the low trust in government and technology companies in the US in the United States, we are likely not in a place to implement a national system of a similar scale as Estonia. However, building out a small pilot program and scaling over time is absolutely possible.

The powers and structures currently deployed to combat "evil" through the Patriot Act could easily be leveraged to produce good if the government wanted to and the people trusted them. Big ifs, I know. Something like the pNSA could repurpose national surveillance architecture to enable coincidental connections that create value for everyone if we build a system that creates and maintains high trust between its users, itself, and its clients. The systems that now track us could become systems that match us with people with similar interests, projects, and aspirations if only we can flip the lever of power from stopping bad to doing good.

The Privacy-Niks aren't wrong to be cautious since history gives them plenty of reasons. However, focusing solely on building higher and thicker walls may lead to missing the opportunity to build better bridges that connect and employ our data for good. The Pseudo-Dissident offers a third path: neither naive trust nor paranoid isolation, but rather a framework for negotiated, compensated, and purposeful data sharing that respects individual autonomy while enabling collective benefits.

While this whole-of-society approach to complex problem solving is ambitious and likely cannot be carried out logistically by any private entity or trusted by any government entity, its usefulness is so massive that creating it as a quasi-institution of a pseudo-state is worth dreaming about, at the very least. The only thing standing in the way is a little pure imagination and a lot of learning to trust and verify.

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Point of Contact

I hope you'll send me your criticism, feedback, and suggestions to either refine this idea or point me to a more fruitful area for addressing the root causes of our data privacy conundrum. As a sudo-intellectual, I certainly don't have the expertise to make the best and most comprehensive plan for something like this, but I can come up with radically new ideas that have at least some basis in reality. As Brené Brown says, "Vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation, creativity, and change." It's up to you whether or not to build on the vulnerabilities inherent to our system. Let me know if you decide to build on it, and I’ll gladly incorporate your feedback.

Logan Jensen
sudo.intellectual.01@gmail.com
‪(909) 913-4589‬

A Sudo-Intellectual Production

As I’ve been presenting Sudo-intellectual to some colleagues and potential collaborators, a common constructive criticism I’ve received is that I’m describing it overly cryptically. I thought about it for a little and realized they are absolutely correct, so today I wanted to provide a selection of explanation of what the sudo-intellectual process is and how you might relate to it, starting with the pseudo-sudo wordplay.

Explaining the Pseudo-Sudo Joke

This blog relies heavily on the word play between "pseudo" and "sudo" throughout the framework we creates. This provides multiple layers of meaning on which we base the conceptual framework. Let me give you the definitions and then I’ll explain what the pseudo-sudo divide means for us here at Sudo-intellectual.

"Pseudo" comes from Greek, meaning "false" or "pretend," and is commonly used in academic contexts to indicate something that approximates or simulates the genuine article without fully being it. For example, pseudo-science resembles science, but fails to follow proper scientific methodology.

"Sudo" is a command in Unix/Linux operating systems (short for "superuser do") that temporarily grants administrative privileges to execute commands that would otherwise be restricted. It provides authorized, limited, targeted access to system functions.

The joke of pairing these terms is how they capture the essence of this problem-solving approach: "pseudo" elements fuel the outside-the-box, unrestrained thinking and exploration of ideas that may or may not work in the real world while "sudo" elements the process heavy steps for making new ideas into practical and authorized interventions that are highly like to create actual, beneficial change within existing systems.

The pairing creates a deliberate contrast:

1. "Pseudo" elements (scholarship, espionage, activism, command) represent the theoretical, aspirational side that exists somewhat outside conventional frameworks—the idealistic vision.

2. "Sudo" elements (apprenticeship, intelligence, collaborators, control) represent the practical implementation—the concrete actions that create actual change within existing systems.
   

This wordplay communicates the framework's essence: utilizing temporary, authorized access to existing systems (sudo) to implement changes inspired by unconventional thinking (pseudo) that wouldn't be possible through traditional channels alone. It also creates what the physicists call a superposition, or two contradictory aspects of an unobserved phenomena being true at the same time, like Schrodinger’s Cat being both dead and alive at the same time until you open the box.

For sudo-Intellectual, whether what we produce is idealistic and, frankly dumb, fantasy thinking or highly thought out and actionable societal emergency planning won’t be clear until you read through what we write as an observer. We hope you like what you find enough to join us as being one of the cats.

One Short Sentence

Sudo-intellectual collaborates across fields to solve complex problems by combining playful ideation with serious implementation, using nudges or root cause solutions.

One Tweet

Sudo-intellectual is a process of making idealistic societal systems a reality by playfully generating and practically refining fantastical solutions to societal dysfunction that either nudge toward improvement through their development or prime society to implement them securely if radical action is ever necessary.

One Pararagaph

Sudo-intellectuals playfully generate and refine solutions to societal dysfunction, either nudging improvement through their development or preparing society to implement them when necessary. They create a sandbox for open-ended ideation, exploring what societal systems could become without artificial constraints. They imagine the ideal mix of people, technology, organizations, and institutions needed for an optimal solution and then work backward to identify what must change today to make it feasible. They network with professionals in relevant fields, share ideas for feedback, and build relationships with potential implementers. Sudo-intellectuals succeed when they either inspire professionals to adopt their ideas and create improvements or gain enough trust from stakeholders to implement the solution themselves in collaboration with stakeholders.

In One Page

Sudo-intellectual is a balanced approach to problem-solving that combines abstract theoretical thinking with concrete pragmatic action. This methodology oscillates between intuitive and analytical thinking, allowing practitioners to effectively navigate between different cognitive modes as needed. By metaphorically "catching falling stars," sudo-intellectuals attempt to harness idealistic energy for practical good, despite the challenges involved.

The process begins with imagining a "pseudo-utopia" - an idealized vision that addresses societal dysfunction. This vision is then grounded through expert connections to design a "sudo-reality" that makes tangible progress toward the idealized state. This forms the "sudo-solution cycle" of imagining, developing, testing, sustaining, and executing potential solutions.

Pseudo-scholarship - Sudo-apprenticeship: The journey starts with learning outside traditional institutions through various media that define the contours of the pseudo-utopia. This learning connects to a sudo-apprenticeship - a work role or side project outside traditional scope but valuable for creating sudo-reality when stakeholders are prepared. This traditional role anchors the sudo-intellectual to reality and provides a testing ground for ideas at small scale.

Pseudo-espionage - Sudo-intelligence: While pseudo-scholarship is general, pseudo-espionage involves targeted information gathering directly relevant to a specific solution. This overt, consensual process resembles networking and consultation. Sudo-intelligence generation occurs when this information is organized under relevant questions to determine solution design and implementation, creating insights that are both inspired by pseudo-utopia and grounded in expert opinion.

Pseudo-conspirators - Sudo-collaborators: The intelligence-gathering process naturally identifies pseudo-conspirators (aligned but unofficial allies) and recruits sudo-collaborators (highly aligned individuals strategically positioned to shepherd solutions into reality). Effective sudo-intelligence makes potential collaborators eager to join because the vision aligns with their own mission and the nudges and solutions we propose are often the very ideas they’ve though of periodically in their own work.

Pseudo-activism - Sudo-sustainment: In this phase, solutions are presented to diverse stakeholders across organizational boundaries to gauge interest, acceptance, support, and willingness to sustain action. This approach relies on the merits of the idea rather than forceful advocacy, presenting implementable concepts with broad benefits for a win-win-win-win situation. This process conveys the solution clearly and openly enough that stakeholders may well feel nudged to just apply it themselves. This is a preferred outcome for Sudo-Intellectual

Pseudo-command - Sudo-control: If direct implementation ever becomes necessary, pseudo-command identifies responsible parties for implementing it from Sudo-intellectual and through stakeholder analysis and common consent. Sudo-control represents authorized, temporary, targeted, and transparent intervention to implement changes that wouldn't otherwise be possible, analogous to the sudo process in Linux.

The culmination of this methodology is transforming idealistic visions into practical reality. While the approach may sometimes seem quixotic, the potential to create meaningful change through collaborative effort remains powerful. The sudo-intellectual project exists in a superposition between "chasing windmills" and "slaying giants," with the outcome determined by trust and collaboration among stakeholders. We hope you’ll join us and imagine what we can do together bringing those stars back to life.

In An Essay

The Sudo-Intellectual Approach: Building the Bridge Between Pseudo-Utopia Sudo-Reality

Catching Fallen Stars

In the night sky of human innovation, ideas streak across the darkness like brilliant, fleeting, and often unreachable meteors. Most observers simply wish upon these stars from afar, content to marvel at their beauty before they fade from view. The sudo-intellectual, however, takes a different approach. They attempt to catch these falling stars, to harness their energy despite the risk of being burned in the process. This encapsulates the essence of the sudo-intellectual mode of exploration as a methodology that is simultaneously highly abstract and theoretical yet fiercely concrete and pragmatic in catching and harnessing the falling stars and unlocking the societal wishes contained within.

A sudo-intellectual maintains this delicate balance by oscillating between cognitive modes: right-brain intuitive and holistic thinking, left-brain logical and analytical reasoning, System 2 slow and effortful deliberation, and System 1 fast and automatic processing. This cognitive flexibility enables us to pivot between modes as circumstances require, creating a dynamic intellectual framework that can adapt to complex challenges that defy conventional approaches.

The Sudo-Solution Cycle

The sudo-solution cycle represents a structured approach to transformative change that bridges theoretical concepts and practical implementation. This framework enables sudo-intellectuals to move from abstract ideals to concrete improvements through five distinct phases:

The imagination phase begins by identifying societal dysfunctions and envisioning alternative futures. In this phase, the sudo-intellectual conceptualizes a pseudo-utopia—an idealized vision of a world free from specific dysfunctions—that serves as an aspirational target rather than an immediately achievable goal.

The development phase translates these visionary concepts into concrete proposals through pseudo-scholarship and sudo-intelligence gathering. This involves learning outside traditional academic frameworks and synthesizing this knowledge into actionable insights that can guide implementation efforts.

The testing phase evaluates proposed solutions in limited contexts through sudo-apprenticeship roles. These controlled experiments provide empirical evidence about the effectiveness of proposed approaches and identify necessary refinements before broader implementation.

The sustainment phase builds essential support among stakeholders through pseudo-activism and the recruitment of sudo-collaborators. This network-building activity creates the coalition necessary for successful implementation across organizational boundaries.

The execution phase implements changes either through stakeholder adoption or through direct intervention via pseudo-command and sudo-control mechanisms. This implementation includes continuous feedback loops that allow for adaptation and refinement of the approach over time.

The Traditional OODA Loop Framework

The OODA loop, developed by military strategist John Boyd, provides a comprehensive model of effective decision-making that applies across diverse organizational contexts. This cyclical framework consists of four interconnected elements:

Observe: This initial phase involves collecting data and intelligence from various sources to develop situational awareness. Organizations gather information by monitoring their environment, collecting feedback, and identifying relevant facts about current conditions and emerging trends.

Orient: In this analytical phase, decision-makers process and interpret collected information through the lens of their cultural traditions, previous experiences, and existing knowledge. This cognitive process shapes how information is understood and determines which potential actions are considered viable options.

Decide: Based on the oriented understanding of the situation, this phase involves selecting the most appropriate response from available options. This requires evaluating alternatives against objectives, constraints, and potential consequences to determine the optimal course of action.

Act: The final phase involves executing the chosen course of action in the real world. This implementation tests the validity of the preceding observations, orientations, and decisions while potentially generating new information that restarts the cycle, creating a continuous learning loop.

Integration of the Sudo-Solution Cycle and the OODA Loop

The sudo-solution cycle and OODA loop interact synergistically, creating powerful opportunities for organizational transformation when properly aligned. Understanding these intersection points enables sudo-intellectuals to introduce innovative concepts at optimal moments in organizational decision processes:

During the Observe phase, the sudo-intellectual's imagination phase enriches organizational awareness by introducing alternative perspectives on what information is valuable. By sharing insights from pseudo-scholarship, sudo-intellectuals help organizations expand their information-gathering beyond established channels, identifying emerging trends and weak signals that traditional monitoring might miss. This improves input data quality and diversity, enabling more robust decision-making.

In the Orient phase, the development work of sudo-intellectuals provides organizations with new analytical frameworks derived from sudo-intelligence. By introducing these frameworks as optional tools rather than mandates, sudo-intellectuals help decision-makers voluntarily expand their interpretive capabilities, developing more nuanced understandings of complex situations while respecting existing knowledge structures.

During the Decide phase, the testing activities conducted by sudo-intellectuals generate concrete evidence from small-scale experiments that organizations can incorporate into their evaluation processes. This empirical data reduces perceived risk and uncertainty, enabling organizations to confidently select more innovative solutions through their established decision mechanisms.

In the Act phase, the sustainment work of sudo-intellectuals builds networks of sudo-collaborators across organizational boundaries who can support implementation through their own authority and influence. This distributed approach to change management reduces dependence on external coordination and builds internal capacity for executing complex, multi-stakeholder initiatives.

Through this systematic integration, sudo-intellectuals create conditions where transformative change can emerge organically from within existing organizational structures rather than being imposed from outside. This approach respects organizational autonomy while introducing novel perspectives that expand the range of possibilities considered viable, ultimately building organizational capacity for self-directed innovation and adaptation.

Pseudo-Scholarship and Sudo-Apprenticeship

Once a sudo-reality candidate for implementation is defined, the process of creating it begins with pseudo-scholarship,or learning that occurs outside traditional academic and institutional frameworks. This may take various forms: books, music, podcasts, tutorials, lectures, films, fiction, poetry, or any other medium that helps define the contours of the pseudo-utopia being pursued. This broad-based learning provides the foundational knowledge required to envision alternatives to existing systems.

Pseudo-scholarship is typically paired with sudo-apprenticeship, an internship, work role, or side project that exists outside traditional professional boundaries while being connected enough to it to stay grounded. This practical engagement anchors the sudo-intellectual to existing reality, providing a context for testing ideas at manageable scales before wider implementation. The traditional role serves as both grounding and laboratory, preventing purely theoretical constructs from becoming disconnected from practical realities and providing a space with traditional organizations for introducing new ideas where they are isolated from critical processes and systems.

Pseudo-Espionage and Sudo-Intelligence

As the sudo-intellectual develops a clearer picture of the sudo-reality they wish to create, they engage in pseudo-espionage. Unlike pseudo-scholarship, which is general and broadly focused, pseudo-espionage involves targeted information gathering directly relevant to specific solutions. This might include attending lectures, reading specialized books, taking courses, or engaging in conversations (both formal and informal) that directly inform the development and implementation of particular approaches.

It's important to note that this pseudo-espionage is overt and consensual, more akin to networking and "brain picking" than to clandestine activities. It transitions into sudo-intelligence generation as the collected information is organized under salient questions that determine the design and potential implementation of sudo-solutions. This intelligence emerges as sudo-intellectuals form insights, ideas, and plans inspired by pseudo-utopian thinking but sufficiently grounded in evidence and expert opinion to constitute feasible roadmaps toward sudo-reality in their domain—plans that can withstand scrutiny from subject matter experts.

Pseudo-Conspirators and Sudo-Collaborators

The processes of pseudo-espionage and sudo-intelligence naturally lead to the identification of pseudo-conspirators—individuals aligned with the goals and aims of a project but not yet formal collaborators. Some of these individuals may eventually be recruited as sudo-collaborators: highly aligned and motivated partners strategically positioned to shepherd a sudo-solution, or the incremental changes it generates, into reality.

The ideal scenario is to develop such compelling sudo-intelligence about a solution that when presented to a pseudo-conspirator, they immediately wish to become a sudo-collaborator because the vision resonates powerfully with their own mission and values. This phase depends on thoroughly understanding, through pseudo-espionage and conventional networking, the OODA loop (Observe, Orient, Decide, Act) of potential collaborators or organizations to begin aligning the sudo-solution cycle with their operational paradigms.

Pseudo-Activism and Sudo-Sustainment

The next phase involves engaging in pseudo-activism: presenting the sudo-solution to diverse stakeholders across organizational boundaries, including competitors, to gauge traditional interest, acceptance, support, and willingness to act in accordance with the proposal (what we term "sustainment") among those it would affect. This constitutes pseudo-activism because it does not involve forcibly imposing reforms, but rather presenting potentially transformative ideas that are practically implementable and generate multilateral benefits when collectively adopted.

What persuades in this approach are the intrinsic merits of the idea and the benefits it produces, not the volume or intensity with which it is expressed. Success in this phase depends on articulating clear value propositions that resonate with stakeholders' own interests and concerns.

Pseudo-Command and Sudo-Control

Ideally, the sudo-solution cycle intersecting with traditional OODA loops enables sudo-collaborators to implement elements of the sudo-solutions with minimal direct involvement from the original sudo-intellectual beyond information sharing and consultation. However, if called upon to implement a solution directly, the sudo-intellectual requires guidelines for command and control when using a "sudo-override" to interact with traditional systems.

Pseudo-command involves identifying responsible parties and subordinate actors necessary for implementing a sudo-solution simultaneously across organizations, similar to nuclear command and control protocols, but with much less at stake. This command structure develops through stakeholder analysis and assignment through common consent, transferring to sudo-command if and only if, sustainment reaches sufficient levels among stakeholders to authorize the transfer.

Sudo-control resembles the sudo process in Linux: authorized (by sustainment), temporary (pre-defined duration), targeted (with minimal necessary access at the lowest possible level), and transparent (with logged and public actions) intervention to enable changes that would otherwise be impossible—analogous to coordinated action like OPEC adjusting oil production targets simultaneously across the globe. After implementation, control returns to traditional systems with appropriate safeguards. Ideally, these changes would also be reversible if outcomes prove unfavorable.

Bringing Them Back To Life

The culmination of this process transcends merely catching falling stars. It involves gathering their fragments, breathing new life into them, and sending them back up from whence they came. We must admit that the sudo-intellectual may occasionally mistake some airplanes for shooting stars and get down a rabbit hole they shouldn’t have started, but the process is designed such that a stakeholder will let them know. Sudo-intellectuals are also intellectual humble enough to take that guidance in stride. Despite the risk of wishing on airplanes, if we do all we can to succeed in revitalizing even one falling star and fulfilling the wishes of those who wished on it, our efforts will prove worthwhile.

For those Knights of La Mancha, the sudo-intellectual project exists in a superposition between chasing windmills and slaying giants, with the outcome determined by how well we build trust and foment collaboration among the stakeholders of any one issue. In this, our own reimagining of Do

n Quixote for the information age, the sudo-intellectual tilts at the windmills of entrenched systems and learns which are giants of dysfunction that can be slayed through methodical, collaborative action and which are just windmills to be left alone

In this dance between idealism and pragmatism, between the stars above and the earth below, lies the true power of the sudo-intellectual approach—not merely to wish on stars as they’re falling, but to leverage 1001 Open Hands to Bring them Back to Life.

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The Parable of the Prodigal Son is one of the most moving stories that Jesus told during his ministry. In this story, a young son demands his inheritance early from his father and journeys to a distant land where he squanders everything on wild and hedonistic living. After a severe famine leaves him destitute and feeding pigs for a living he "comes to himself" and decides to return home, hoping to be hired merely as a servant. But while he is still far off, his father spots him, runs to embrace him, and restores his status as a son by giving him a robe, ring, and celebratory feast in his honor. Its central message is that no one is ever too far gone to return home and fully share in the Father's bountiful inheritance.

While I can see how moving a story this is and how cathartic it must have been for both the father and his prodigal son, I could never truly identify with it in my own journey within and away from the restored Gospel of Jesus Christ. After thinking it through, I’ve come to realize that I can’t identify with it because my intent in leaving home to explore abroad was not to squander my inheritance hedonistically but to find the exotic fruits, spices, and treasure that can further enrich the Father’s inheritance, not squander it.

While the phases in this approach look similar from the outside, and often get confused with each other, they differ significantly in their ability to provide meaning, fulfillment, and ultimately, transcendence of the Gospel we have today. Historians and theologians have written plenty has about the prodigal son, so not much more needs to be said. However, I would instead like to add the Parable of The Parsimonious Son and his return to his father’s house to the apocryphal canon.

What’s the Difference Between the Prodigal and Parsimonious Son?

In the biblical context, "prodigal" refers to someone who spends resources wastefully and extravagantly. The term comes directly from the Latin "prodigus," meaning lavish or wasteful. In Jesus's parable, the younger son exemplifies this by quickly depleting his inheritance through "riotous living," suggesting indulgence in pleasures without restraint or consideration for the future. I believe Jesus portrays this behaviour negatively not merely because it leads to material poverty but because it represents spiritual poverty by choosing temporary gratification over a lasting relationship with the father.

However, parsimony in belief is about intellectual honesty and careful discernment. The parsimonious son examines his father's estate with a critical eye – not out of disrespect, but out of reverence for truth itself. He recognizes that some inherited beliefs are superfluous or cannot withstand scrutiny, while other valuable truths may be missing entirely. His journey from home becomes a deliberate process of stripping away unsupported assumptions while gathering robust insights that stand up to careful examination. Unlike the prodigal's wasteful abandonment, the parsimonious approach is selective retention and thoughtful acquisition.

This distinction fundamentally changes how we understand exploration beyond the confines of established doctrine. The prodigal son's departure represents hedonistic escapism, fleeing responsibility for pleasure's sake. By contrast, the parsimonious son's journey embodies rigorous truth-seeking through a sincere effort to distill essential wisdom from both within and outside traditional boundaries. Both may appear to leave the father's house but each have profoundly different intentions and outcomes. One returns humbled by failure, while the other returns bearing refined understanding – truths that withstood testing and new insights that complement the father's wisdom. This parsimonious approach doesn't seek to diminish the inheritance but purify and add to it.

Trying on the Armor of God

I was raised with a straightforward faith, handed down and received without question from goodly parents, and nourished incessantly within carefully drawn lines. The gospel I knew was a sapling tree within a pot in the garden. This garden had clear black-and-white boundaries to delineate between what was vibrant and beautiful. Still, with invisible fences, I was subtly trained never to challenge or cross behind which plants of unknown quality grew. I was taught as a young man that is putting on the armor of god, made entirely from the fruits wwithinthe garden, would always be sufficient for my spiritual needs.

I embraced the metaphor with exuberant naivety, convinced I was assembling an impenetrable spiritual defense. How prepared I thought I was! With my loins girt with truth (though it was merely familiar doctrine), the breastplate of righteousness firmly tightened (though it was simply outward compliance), my feet shod with the gospel of peace (though I'd never truly tested its resilience). I positioned the cardboard helmet of salvation on my head with ceremonial confidence, raised my paper-plate shield of faith, clutched what I imagined was the mighty sword of the spirit and thought myself ready to take on the powers and principalities of the rulers of darkness. I don’t feel too bad about this naivete since, as Paul mentions, when one is a child, one can’t help but think as one as well.

However, once I became a man, I maintained the belief that believing this spiritual disguise would suffice against any doubts or challenges that might come. It served it’s purpose well in in environments where I was insulated from the world, like at Brigham Young Univiersity and on a mission my belief thrived, but both my mission leadership and the people I taight could tell that there was a fire under the surface that just couldn’t find its way to the surface. Finding this spiritual fire I could only describe as the real, “terrible swift sword” of the spirit became a core desire of mine in my spiritual sword, but the more I paid attention to obeying the rules and the orthodox interpretation of doctrine the further that sword felt.

Little did I understand then that Alma's metaphor of planting and nourishing a seed of faith wasn't meant for cultivation in a decorative pot, kept safely indoors away from the elements, but rather for planting in wild, but fertile soil that was in, but not of the world. I realized my tree of faith grew in artificially controlled conditions, thriving only when fed with carefully measured nutrients, sheltered from intellectual storms, and trimmed whenever a branch grew in an unauthorized direction. I had mistaken memorization for understanding, cultural conformity for spiritual depth, and obedience for genuine conviction. The armor I'd so proudly assembled was more ceremonial than battle-tested, adequate for the spiritual parades of my youth but woefully insufficient for the genuine warfare of an examining mind.

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Leaving Home to Find Truth through Parsimony

In the months after my mission, cracks appeared gradually in the carefully tended pot of my faith. They weren’t dramatic fissures, but rather hairline fractures where rigid doctrine met contrary lived experience and didn’t resolve. The superficial answers that had once satisfied me began to feel rehearsed, circular, and insufficient for the complexity of the real questions. I noticed how church lessons recycled the same stories with the same interpretations, year after year, without ever diving deeper into their thornier implications. This intellectual monotony created small but growing spaces where doubt could take root.

Leaving space for good faith doubt and criticism was gradual at first. Doubting that spiritual promptings that ended up being wrong could have come from God, noticing the good the church does for some and not others, and seeing excommunications for people that, as far as I could tell were trying to make the Church better opened the door to alternative voices. Then, a simple philosophy podcast challenging listeners to subject their beliefs to reasonable, good-faith criticism resonated with me more than any General Conference talk I’d ever heard had.

The call to criticize beliefs not with the intent to destroy them but to test if they would grow stronger or reveal themselves as incomplete was powerful for me. This seemingly small idea expanded Alma's seed experiment beyond Church truth to truth in general. After all, if truth is truth, shouldn't it flourish under scrutiny rather than wither? The seed metaphor Alma used to grow belief invited a broader application to testing its opposite. If a the seed of faith when planted grows into a tree of fruth, could planting the seed of doubt through reasonable criticism prune the tree of truth of unnecessary branches? Or even build a tree of truth rooted in doubt, not faith? And most importantly, why confine my experiment to the carefully controlled garden of institutional religion?

And so I set out, my spiritual inheritance in hand, not to waste it in "riotous living" like the prodigal son of old, but to invest it in a search for deeper understanding. The same principled experiment that had strengthened my faith within the Church now led me to test it against what I could find outside. I became not the prodigal but the parsimonious son, carefully examining each belief, retaining what proved valuable, and discarding what could not withstand honest scrutiny. This process wasn't about rebellion against truth but reverence for the truth in all its forms that could stand up to scrutiny. Thinking and speaking as a man now, I made a sincere commitment to seek the truth wherever I could find it. I wouldn't settle for comfortable half-answers or convenient simplifications anymore, so I ventured beyond my father's estate not to escape his wisdom but to discover which parts of it could withstand the winds outside the greenhouse and what other wisdom might be waiting to be gathered and brought home.

Finding Myself in Foreign Fields

The journey beyond my inherited faith didn't follow a single path but unfolded through distinct phases of discovery. I ventured first into epistemology and philosophy of religion to question not just what I knew, but also how I could know what was true at all. The shield of faith I'd once carried transformed into the lens of reason, something to see through rather than hide behind. Critical thinking became my companion, teaching me that the strength of a belief isn't measured by its comfort but by its resilience to scrutiny.

This search led naturally into empirical realms, physics, history, and psychology where I found truth that was testable, verifiable, and often more consistent in its application than what I'd inherited through religious sources. I discovered that religious experiences are psychologically universal rather than exclusive to tradition. The cosmos revealed its elegance through grand cosmology and minute quantum mechanics that made ‘small p’ prophecies by making predictions accurate enough to create technology that heals the sick, blind, and deaf. These insights didn't merely replace my faith; they transformed how I understood truth. Where I once sought certainty, I found beauty in patterns, complexity, and emergent order.

The problem, of course, was isolation. Truth-seeking was intellectually productive but spiritually lonely. Systems thinking and comparative mythology helped me recognize that the Church's narratives weren't necessarily factual but were encoding deeper truths—much like how other wisdom traditions clothe universal principles in culturally specific garments. I discovered what monastics have known for centuries: faith is not just individual revelation but also shared mythos and ritual—the power of community, structure, and purpose that gives meaning to insight.

The parsimony I sought wasn't about reducing everything to its simplest explanation but about finding the essential truths that transcend any single religious or secular framework. These truths didn't contradict my spiritual heritage but illuminated it from angles I'd never considered. The seed of secular exploration I planted when I left the church to seek on my own had blossomed into a fruit-bearing tree, but there was still something missing deep within me that my secular frameworks couldn’t fill.

Kicking Against the Spiritual Pricks

Like Saul, before his experience on the road to Damascus, I had made a name for myself, kicking against the spiritual pricks when interpreting and interacting with society. Yet I wasn't entirely set against spiritual truths either. Unlike Korihor, who likely sparked Alma's sermon on faith a few chapters later, I could embrace the "foolish traditions of my fathers" and accept revelation as the "effect of a frenzied mind" for what I thought they were—manifestations of shared mythology and spiritual experience among humans. I added their branches to my secular fruit tree and tasted them from time to time while remaining on high alert for anything genuinely supernatural.

I was wise to the tactic of "Jesus smuggling," where secular arguments have spiritual implications that make accepting Jesus a logical necessity. I resisted falling into what I saw as a spiritual trap. I observed many fellow wanderers in pursuit of truth find what I thought was a "hole-shaped God"—a version of spirituality tailored to fit within a broader secular paradigm. This approach felt dishonest to me, like paring back the fruit-bearing branches of a tree for the sake of having a parsimonious trunk.

I didn't anticipate how my professional work would create a church-shaped hole in my thinking. As I worked on complex systems and policy questions, I kept encountering situations where the ideal organizational structure mirrored the church: a central coordinating unit with grassroots organization locally, qualitative and quantitative research nestled within personal wise judgment, and networks of people united by a shared vision who contribute beyond expectations. I saw how perfectly positioned the church was to function as an aid and development organization while maintaining its spiritual focus.

Deciding to Stop Kicking

Somewhat related to the most significant and broadest professional thinking I was doing at the time, I experienced three manic episodes of varying intensity that are the closest I’ve been able to come to genuine spiritual experience. I’d hesitate to call them Pauline, but they were highly influential in opening my mind and softening my heart to return to a religious way of life.

Through these manias, I experienced different dimensions of spiritual understanding. First came a wild episode where I felt compelled to save the world from literal destruction, taking on the eschatological role of the savior with neither the patience nor power to fulfill the task. The second one placed me in a passive teaching role, developing my new rituals and speaking cryptically as ifreceiving revelation. However, there was no signal in the noise I spoke in my short time as a rabbi. The third, less delusional than the others but equally invigorating, centered not just on doing what Jesus said throughout his earthly ministry but on being even as he was,or embodying His approach to understanding the will of God, orienting Himself toward it, acting in such a way that His will is manifest, whether that’s the will of a divine being or the top of value hierarchy of secular meaning.

My "aha moment" came while contemplating this perspective of being like Jesus and what it meant to build Zion both secularly and spiritually. I was struck by how I might contribute to spreading the good news and doing the good work even without a traditional belief structure. The overlap between secular and religious approaches to creating a virtuous society became undeniable. I began focusing on what I could do rather than what I couldn't. I went from worrying about whether it was true. Maybe it's not true, to think that it only matters if it's true to me. The longer I’ve thought about it, the more I’m beginning to feel that, at the end of the day, it might not matter very muc,h which it is.

In the end, no one smuggled Jesus to me through clever argumentation or personal exhortation. Still, I realized He had been smuggling me back to his fold the whole time through my continual experiment of planting seeds of faith, cultivating them into trees of truth, and taking stock of the fruit they provide and how it might in some way contribute to building the kingdom of God on Earth. As I begin my return to my Father’s estate and the trees of truth that thrive in his garden, I hope to bring not only a renewed appreciation for the trees that gave me shade as I grew up but also anticipation of the opportunity to plant the new seeds of truth I found on my journey alongside them.

Contributing to the Welcome Feast

Unlike the prodigal who returns empty-handed and humbled by failure, ready to work the lowliest of jobs to repay his debt. The parsimonious son brings carefully curated treasures that complement rather than contradict his heritage and is willing to serve at the pleasure of his Father. As I arrive at my Father's estate, I come both bearing gifts and being willing to serve. It is my hope that the fruits gathered from distant lands might enrich our shared table and that my service planting and pruning in the garden might make thethe fruit, both new and old, born by the trees more delicious and desirable.

When I first read Alma 32, I understood it as instruction for growing faith in church doctrine. Now, I recognize it as a universal method for discerning truth in all its forms. Just as Alma borrowed from agriculture to create a religious metaphor, and now I'm borrowing from science and philosophy to enhance my spiritual understanding. The seed of faith experiment extends beyond church walls to all domains of knowledge such that a good seed produces good fruit if it’s tended and cultivated correctly regardless of where someone plants it.

Understanding the reality of who Jesus was and where His power lay transformed the paper armor of my youth and replaced it with a battle-tested set. The "terrible swift sword" from the Battle Hymn now represents not just some final judgment we’ll face eventually, but the ability to discern truth from error regardless of its source. The power to embody Christ's powerful approach and of understanding truth so intensely and expressing it so simply is in me now more than ever. And I hope to build on it by asking questions that expand limited perspectives, and speaking in ways that convey layers of meaning to different audiences as I continue to interact with people both within and outside the Church.

Standing at the threshold between rigid orthodoxy and heretical exploration, I see my role not as a gatekeeper but as a bridge-builder. This position isn't about compromising one set of values for another, but integrating them into a more complete whole. When I examine complex systems and long-horizon problems professionally, I see patterns that increasingly resemble what the church aspires to be: a community united by a shared vision, contributing toward building something greater than themselves. When I see the body of christ unite toward building something greater themselves, I see the tools of my secular profession ready and able to be used to build up Zion together, not matter whether the truth we hold to is literal or metaphorical.

I’m not expecting the Father to run toward me "while he was yet a great way off," but I am hoping to be met halfway by Him. In return, I’ll commit to meeting anyone halfway that’s making their own trip home. If there is a feast to celebrate my return I hope it will mark the beginning of a new journey to venture out and find my fellow wanderers and offer them a guide back home where their own feast is waiting that’s only missing their own secret ingredients they’ve found a long the way.

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Recently, I encountered a mini social media debate about the merits of redeveloping an urban golf course into housing. One side championed the creation of thousands of desperately needed homes, while critics warned this represented a slippery slope toward communism and the destruction of well-maintained land.

I don’t think this tension between redevelopment and preservation requires us to choose sides. Instead, I propose a balanced approach that accomplishes both aims without coercion or waste. We should 1. Update tax the true "par value" of land by eliminating special tax code carve-outs for different land uses and 2. Maintaining property rights by ensuring any transfer of ownership happens in full accordance with the law. This would allow the market to naturally determine the highest and best use of land and eliminate both wasteful land uses and coercive land reform, all while generating tax revenue that can be reinvested in improving local communities and services.

By aligning economic incentives with optimal land use, we can create a system where property transitions naturally to its most productive purpose—whether that's housing, commercial space, or even recreation—based on genuine market value rather than artificial subsidies.

When Land Use Gets in the Rough

Venezuela offers a striking case study of what happens when a golf course is overtaken not by planned redevelopment but by collapse. Once a pristine and exclusive space, a Caracas golf course became an informal settlement as economic instability drove people to build makeshift homes on its fairways. The course, unable to sustain itself amid political and economic turmoil, withered away, leaving behind a chaotic and unsustainable landscape.

This failure, however, was not due to the concept of redevelopment itself but rather to poor policy, misaligned incentives, and a lack of structured transition. When people argue that redeveloping golf courses into housing could follow a similar trajectory, they are reacting to the worst-case scenario. But there is another way—one that allows land to transition naturally to its best and most productive use without forcing the extremes of abandonment or decay.

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The Hidden Handicap for Golf Courses

Take Los Angeles, where golf courses enjoy an artificially low property tax rate due to carve-outs in the law. The LA Country Club, for instance, sits on 300 acres of land valued at roughly $8 billion, which should generate around $80 million annually in taxes. Instead, thanks to special exemptions, it’s assessed well under it's par value at $22 million, leading to a tax bill of a mere $220,000. That's quite the handicap. This is a wildly distorted incentive structure: it’s not that a golf course is the best and highest use for this land—it’s that the tax code makes keeping it a golf course far cheaper than it should be.

This raises a key point about how the way we tax land and property affects how it’s used. Right now, it takes just one of its $250,000 memberships to cover the $220,000 tax bill, but if the LA Country Club were taxed at its true land value it would take 320. The club could likely still afford it, but we wouldn't be subsidizing a playground for a handful of wealthy golfers at the expense of tens of thousands of potential housing units.

If that land were redeveloped with densities similar to major California downtowns, it could house 20,000 to 30,000 people across the 300 acres (0.5 square miles). Under a properly structured land tax, this would generate at a minimum $2,000 to $4,000 in annual land taxes per resident—a reasonable and sustainable amount. The key here isn’t forcing this redevelopment to happen, but removing the distortions that artificially prop up one use over another.Land Value Tax: The Fair Way to Land Use Reform

This is where a land value tax (LVT) comes in. Instead of taxing buildings and improvements, which discourages development, an LVT taxes the land itself based on its market value, regardless of what’s built on it. Under our current system, a landowner can buy a parking lot, leave it empty, pay minimal taxes, and profit when the land appreciates. Meanwhile, a developer who builds a mixed-use project gets hit with a higher tax bill simply for making better use of the land. That's neither fair to the developer nor beneficial to the local economy. LVT flips this: the owner of an underutilized property pays relatively more, while those who develop land productively pay relatively less. This ensures that land is put to its best use—whether that’s housing, commercial space, or even a golf course if the numbers truly justify it.

A system like this wouldn’t just lead to voluntary redevelopment of golf courses wherever it makes sense; it is also a fair way to encourage the development of vacant lots, underused surface parking, and other unproductive land. Instead of pushing a hasty and coercive one-time intervention to develop subsidized and underused land, we create a framework where the incentives for each are balanced naturally through the market.

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Henry George's Hole-In-One

This idea isn’t new. It was championed over a century ago by Henry George, an economist whose ideas on land and taxation were considered radically progressive in his time. His concept of a single land value tax was like a hole-in-one—a simple, elegant solution that eliminated unnecessary complexity while driving the right incentives. Just as par value in finance refers to the true worth of a security, a Land Value Tax ensures that land is taxed based on its par value, without artificial subsidies or distortions.

Today, George's ideas represent a pragmatic blend of free-market efficiency and fair social outcomes. He argued that land value taxation creates the right incentives for growth while avoiding the excesses of speculation and monopoly. In essence, his approach prevents both extremes—the failure of over-subsidized golf courses and the failure of poorly planned shantytowns—by letting market forces and low regulation incentivize and enable productive development.

A New Approach that Putts People in the Driver’s Seat

If we implement a land value tax, we won’t have to debate whether to forcibly redevelop golf courses for housing or fear the economic collapse that comes from distorted land policies. Instead, we’ll create a system where land transitions naturally to its most productive use, while those who contribute to its value benefit along the way.

Whether that means a golf course remains in operation or a thriving neighborhood takes its place, the outcome won’t be dictated by coercion or artificial subsidies. It will be shaped by which use creates the most value for both its owners and the community. Aligning these incentives ensures development happens organically, without the need for crisis-driven interventions or heavy-handed mandates trap or destroy value.

In golf, playing a good hole requires a strong drive, a well-placed approach, and a precise putt. A powerful, well-aimed first shot sets up the stage for success. A smart approach brings the ball onto the green while avoiding potential hazards. Finally, a good putt that carefully follows the contours of the green before sinking in the hole culminates golfer’s skill and hard work.

Likewise, smart land policy starts with the drive for bold reform—implementing a land value tax that aligns incentives and clears the way for productive use. The next step is a well-planned approach: intelligent urban planning that allows flexibility while reinvesting land value tax revenue into infrastructure and services that benefit the community. With those elements in place, the final putt—construction and development—becomes a smooth and predictable process, bringing the right buildings to the right places at the right time. By getting each stage right, we create a system that fosters both economic productivity and fair, sustainable land use. With a land value tax, prosperous, pleasant, and productive cities will soon become par for the course.

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Edited and enhanced by GPT4.5, Claude, Grok et al; Artificial General Intelligence Candidates

Taken under advisement by you, the sudo-stakeholders of this pseudo-society.

Funding provided by you, the pseudo-shareholders of a sudo-society in the making.

What Exactly is Sudo-Intellectual?

Sudo-Intellectual will be a strange blog: its goal is equal parts to unlock your mind and unleash your spirit. We’ll talk broadly about the State, broadly defined, and the Church, loosely interpreted. We’ll delve into seeing the world through the lenses of technocratic populism and heretical orthodoxy from the perspective of both the Church and State. The intended result, if I am successful in my endeavor, will be to softly break you out of the matrix just long enough to gently come back in with a renewed perspective and a rejuvenated motivation to nudge the society we live in in better ways.

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Red Pill, Blue Pill, Black Pill, White Pill

We’ve all seen The Matrix and the options available when we encounter something that breaks our reality. We know about red pills and blue pills. Many may have even taken one. Fewer know about black pills and white pills. Fewer still have taken those. Fewest of all have dared take them all at once. This four-drug cocktail is what we here at Sudo-Intellectual call the clear-pill.

This clear pill is made from equal parts radical liberalism, reactionary conservativism, naive optimism, and fatal nihilism. It’s not your grandpa’s milquetoast centrism, but rather a mix of both the enlightened and radical varieties. These varieties of pragmatic centrism reach a dynamic balance from the oscillation of a pendulum between the various extremities of creative thought and ideological belief around a pragmatic and realistic core.

Going Clear

Here at Sudo-Intellectual we act as a safe and secure color pill recycling plant, engaging with anyone based on the pill color they come in with. We hear them out and understand where they’re coming. Still, we respectfully push back and point out flaws in their thinking while finding a deeper level of discussion where disagreements can be understood productively. This process of gradually helping them see and engage with opposing viewpoints in good faith channels the angst and energy that led them to their color pill in the first place to taking the clear pill and making positive contributions that build up rather than tearing down.

At the end of the day, the clear pill is seeing our mish-mash of interconnected societal systems for what they are– people, myself included, using their values, knowledge, and experience to make the best of their situations for themselves and the people they love, be them family, friends, or distant strangers.

Sudo-Intellectual and Me

My personal dose of the clear pill led me to a way of thinking about these systems and the people who make them in a way that’s both radically ambitious and minutely practical. Sudo-Intellectual is half imagining what could be if we could build society from scratch with the same people, technology, tools, and relationships and half thinking through what we can do today in practice to make that pseudo-society just a little more possible through whether through reframing thought, engaging in conversation, or taking actions that nudge us a little more up the adaptive peak of society.

Right Brain Temple <> System 1 Dojo

Renowned psychiatrist Iain McGilchrist makes a pseudo-diagnosis of society in his book Master and His Emissary as being overly left-brain dominant, resulting in unknowingly doing a lot of things that don’t serve a clear or higher purpose. Iain labels this brain state the emissary, as its purpose is to implement what the deliberate and conscious right-brain, or master as Iain calls it, determines to be the most valuable and worthy thing to do or think at any one time. The master being the servant of the emissary in this way has negative effects for an individual, a group, and a society if there is no space to step back and take in this big picture.

Daniel Kahneman echoes this sentiment by noting the fast, automatic, intuitive system 1 thinking the left brain does well is not useful or effective for complex problem-solving. The slow, deliberate, creative system 2 thinking the right brain excels at, on the other hand, does a much better job at thinking holistically and in systems for solving the types of problems we face in society today. The only downside is that it’s a difficult, intentional, and slow process, at least at first.

Sudo-Intellectual and You

While writing Sudo-Intellectual is, at its core, a solitary endeavor, I sincerely hope you’ll take a break from your labors to join me for a portion of the journey. Sudo-intellectual acts as a sort of hybrid between a mountaintop temple for training the right brain-master in holistic system-2 thinking and a remote dojo for training the left-brain emissary in the system-1 thinking to effectively execute the insights from the master.

This hybrid training regimen with instructions from the best guest sages and senseis I can find or you can recommend will engage the right brain in slow and deliberate observation and imagination of how society's complex systems work together both for good and for ill. This perspective-taking and sense-making done in isolation from day-to-day concerns will not only help me write up my pie-in-the-sky ideas for pseudo-reform, but also make it possible for some crumbs, a slice, or even a whole pie at some point to come falling down to earth for you to catch. And worst case scenatio, you’ll have a chance to lob a tomato at yours truly, the court jester and motley fool.

Tying it All Together

The journey from thinking of these silly pseudo-reforms that would get you laughed out of the boardroom to distilling them into highly practical and implementable solutions that will get you put in charge of the program is, by nature, collaborative and participatory.

Sudo-Intellectual is losing the loop on this process for just one good idea for a sudo-solution has become a life narrative of sorts for me, and I sincerely hope that breaking silos, combining concepts, thinking globally, acting locally, and planning over both the longest and shortest time horizons will inform your life narrative as well.

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Just as Sudo-Intellectual embraces those dualites by being both a pseudo and aspiring sudo-intellectual, the clear pills we dispense contain a duality all their own. Depending on your individual life circumstances when you encounter us, your pill may simply open your mind to new ways of seeing the world or spark your own long and fulfilling journey to embracing the title of Sudo-Intellectual. Which it will be I leave as an exercise for the reader.

Please leave your comments, both good and bad, so I can feed off the dialogue. I can only see within my limited perspective, so getting a peak at yours is extremely valuable. Don’t forget to tune in next Friday for a look into Just Who I Think I Am and Just What I Think I’m Doing here.

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