Trading Bunkers for Block Parties
The text discusses the limitations of predictive thinking and emphasizes the importance of participation in a rapidly changing world. It argues for building relationships and community as a way to navigate challenges instead of relying on forecasts and control. Ultimately, it advocates for embracing uncertainty and being present in the moment to foster creativity and connection.
Like the LLMs powering the AI systems turbocharging modernity, prediction is always an exercise in extrapolation from a narrow slice of past data. It carries the past into the future. It leaves no room for surprise or divine grace.
Anyone who has spent a few hours studying complex systems - a cell, a weather pattern, the human body - knows that although we can model these systems, we cannot fully predict them.
Relying on prediction is also an addicting maneuver to absolve ourselves from our responsibility to participate in the challenges of the world.
We live in a world scintillating with intelligence and animacy, where every thread of connection - between one self, other humans, and the more-than-human - creates emergent possibilities that cannot be predicted.
Like the colonial mindset that sought to master natural worlds and human societies, the predictive mindset stems from a desire to control rather than belong.
the paradigm of control drip feeds into our psyches, creating the illusion that we are separate individuals who must strategize and compete to secure our futures in an unfriendly reality.
One definition of privilege is not needing to build relationships with others because you can meet all your needs through paid services or coercion.
In each case, the remedy is not better prediction or tighter control; it is mending the torn fabric, recognizing and cultivating community and kinship with everything that we depend on.
Communities with strong relationships adapt creatively to whatever unfolds, without needing perfect foresight.
For those concerned about where to dedicate their time and life energy amidst collapse, I have an idea: follow the starlings, talk to your neighbors.
We have massive challenges as a species, but we shoot ourselves in the foot by denying they exist. What happens when we get honest about the trajectory we are currently on, ie what is likely to happen?
Practices like the I Ching and tarot present symbolic systems that invite non-linear association-making, allowing our body to access insights that might remain inaccessible through direct logical inquiry alone.
The agency that emerges isn’t the false security of control. It’s the freedom to choose the qualities we want to cultivate in relationship with existential uncertainty.
Our role as human beings today is not to control and solve problems. It is to be present with them, to wrestle with them, and to emerge unpredictably altered on the other side.