Welcome to the Read Multiplex podcast and a massive
welcome to all of you joining us for this deep
dive today. Yeah, it's great to be here for this
one. It really is. We are jumping right into
something that, well, I honestly think it's going
to fundamentally shift how you view. the next
few decades of your life. Absolutely. Because
today we are looking at a roadmap for the future.
And I want to set a very clear, incredibly optimistic
and visionary tone right from the jump here.
Right. We aren't here to doom scroll today. Exactly.
No doom scrolling. We're here to talk about a
future of absolute unbridled human triumph. Our
deep dive today centers entirely on Brian's extraordinary
read multiplex article. It's titled The Heroic
Ascent from the Abundant Sink. Yes. And it's
this crucial piece of the You Have 5 ,000 Days
series. It's specifically part 17. It tackles
what happens when we reach the end of work as
we know it. Which is a heavy topic. It is. But
to get to this breathtaking vision of the future
that Brian lays out, we have to start by confronting
a trap. A very famous trap. A heavily misunderstood
trap that you listening have almost certainly
encountered. Have you ever heard of the mouse
utopia? It's I mean, it's one of those psychological
and sociological concepts that has just completely
permeated the cultural groundwater. Oh, yeah,
totally. Even if you don't know it by name, you
know, it's shadow. It shapes how policymakers,
technologists and really just everyday people
view the whole concept of a post scarcity world.
Right. And that is exactly our hook for today.
We have to. knowledge a very realistic hurdle
here. John B. Calhoun's Universe 25 experiment,
The Mouse Utopia, is so deeply ingrained in our
cultural psyche. It's taught everywhere. Everywhere
is taught in countless college classes. If you
take a sociology 101 course or psychology or
urban planning, Universe 25 is almost guaranteed
to be on the syllabus. And it indirectly inspires
so many of those dystopian movies and science
fiction universes we consume. Yeah, it does.
So we need to spend some time unpacking what
this experiment actually was. Yeah. Because the
mainstream takeaway has convinced way too many
people that a societal collapse due to overabundance
is just our guarantee. doomed reality. To understand
the grip this has on our collective imagination,
we really have to look at how Calhoun set it
up. Walk us through it. So back in the late 1960s
and early 70s, Calhoun built what he believed
was a literal paradise for mice. A literal paradise.
Right. He created this massive enclosure, a 101
-inch square tank. and he sectioned it into different
neighborhoods with hundreds of nesting boxes
okay he provided an infinite supply of food an
infinite supply of water the temperature was
perfectly regulated so far he eliminated all
predators and he eliminated disease it was from
a purely biological standpoint Absolute perfection.
Wow. Yeah. And he introduced four pairs of healthy
mice into this environment and simply watched
what happened when the struggle for survival
was completely eradicated. And the result is
what has terrified people for half a century.
Terrified is the right word. The population exploded
at first, doubling every 55 days. Once they hit
a certain population density, even though there
was still plenty of physical space and still
infinite food and water society, just completely
broke down. It completely unraveled. You had
hyperviolence. You had mothers abandoning their
pups. You had mice that would just sleep all
day and attack anything that came near them.
Total behavioral sync. Exactly. And eventually
the population growth just stopped. It flatlined
and then they all died out. Every single one.
Because of this, leading voices have conditioned
us to believe that if humans get everything we
need, like if AI and robotics eventually end
the struggle for survival and provide total abundance,
we will just rot from the inside out. We're taught
that humans literally need the threat of starvation
to function. Which is incredibly bleak. It is.
But what's fascinating here is that this widespread,
culturally accepted doom loop narrative. entirely
misses the reality of Calhoun's underlying motivations.
Say more about that. Well, our mission for this
deep dive is to completely shatter that pessimistic
illusion. Because, as Brian points out in the
Red Multiplex article, Calhoun actually had a
hidden agenda. A hidden agenda. He intentionally
favored alarm over action. He wanted to shock
the public. Oh, wow. So he was playing to the
fears of the time. Exactly. Keep in mind the
era, this was the time of Paul Ehrlich's The
Population Bomb. There was massive cultural anxiety
about overpopulation and urban crowding. Right.
The 70s. Yeah. So Calhoun built a narrative to
fit that anxiety, but he stopped short of offering
true remedies. He wanted to ring the alarm bell,
but he deliberately chose not to build a fire
escape. Which is incredibly frustrating. It's
like a doctor handing you a terminal diagnosis
based on a lab test offering absolutely zero
treatment plan. And then just walking out of
the room. It leaves everyone paralyzed. It does.
It leaves everyone paralyzed. And that is why
today's deep dive is so vital. We want to make
it undeniably clear to you that Brian provides
a much more likely and ultimately much more empowering
insight into our future. He really does. He isn't
just pointing at the failing mice. He is handing
us the blueprints for an ascent out of that trap.
Precisely. We are going to examine how to navigate
the end of traditional labor, not with fear.
Right. and certainly not with the creeping dread
of becoming obsolete, but as a grand, epic adventure.
An adventure. I love that framing. We are talking
about humanity transitioning from a state of
artificial scarcity into an era where abundance
fuels human exaltation. But to earn that optimism,
we have to look reality straight in the eye first.
We do. We have to look at the warning signs flashing
in our own modern society. Yes, the reality check.
In the Read Multiplex article, Brian references
these 15 points of awareness. Right, the 15 points.
These are essentially parallels that map our
current societal trends directly to the early
stages of the Universe 25 collapse. But we need
to be honest with ourselves and with you listening.
Many of these 15 points are already playing out
on some level right now. They absolutely are.
We're seeing demographic winters with plummeting
birth rates in post -industrial nations. We're
seeing the fracturing of local communities. The
isolation is huge. Yeah. We see the rise of the
hikikomori phenomenon, hundreds of thousands
of young people completely withdrawing from society,
locking themselves in their rooms for years.
Just completely checking out. And we see strange
behavioral syncs forming in digital spaces, like
the hyper -aggression on social media that perfectly
mirrors the random violence of Calhoun's crowded
mice. The parallels are striking. It can feel
terrifying when you see it all laid out like
that. It can, but I want to push back on that
terror because this is a - crucial distinction
we need to make right now. Okay. Recognizing
these 15 points is not a reason to panic. Panicking
is exactly what the hidden agenda of the original
experiment wanted us to do. It wanted us to throw
our hands up in despair. Exactly. Rather, recognizing
these parallels is about crucial awareness. By
seeing the parallels clearly, we can actively
avoid the trap. So it's a diagnostic tool. Yes.
Think of it like a pilot reading a weather radar.
Seeing a massive thunderstorm on the screen isn't
a reason for the pilot to panic. It's a reason
to alter the flight path. Oh, that's a great
way to look at it. The trials we face manifest
in these parallels. And as Brian explains, each
one is a forge for our character. They are tests
of our adaptability, not a predetermined death
sentence. Let me push you on that, though. Because
it's one thing to say, oh, we just need to alter
the flight path. But when you look at who is
steering the ship in our society, it looks a
lot like they are flying us directly into the
eye of the storm. That is a very fair point.
OK, let's unpack this, because there's one specific,
highly visible parallel taking place right now
that you, the listener, really need to be ready
to see. It's happening in real time. The beautiful
ones. Yes. In Calhoun's experiment, as the Mouse
Society broke down, a very specific group emerged.
Calhoun dubbed them the Beautiful Ones. Ah, yes.
The Beautiful Ones are perhaps the most chilling
aspect of the entire Universe 25 experiment,
primarily because the parallel to our current
world is so uncomfortably stark. Exactly. These
mice completely withdrew from the challenges
of their society. Just opted right out. Right.
While the rest of the enclosure was descending
into chaos, violence, and infant mortality, the
Beautiful Ones just opted out. They didn't breed.
They didn't fight for territory. So social contribution
at all. None. They didn't contribute to the community
in any meaningful way. All they did literally
their entire existence was eat, sleep and meticulously
groom themselves. Grooming all day. Yeah. They
isolated themselves in these bubbles of pure
abundance, entirely disconnected from the societal
collapse happening mere inches away from them.
Just walled off. Their coats were perfect. They
had no scars, but they were completely hollow.
And if we look around today, specifically at
the uppermost echelons of our society, we are
seeing elites stepping perfectly into the roles
of the beautiful ones. Oh, absolutely. We are
witnessing an extreme withdrawal from the shared
human experience. It's undeniable. You look at
the ultra wealthy retreating to literal and figurative
bunkers. They are isolating themselves in gated
communities, buying up private islands and surrounding
themselves with echo chambers of pure, unfiltered
abundance. Creating their own little. frictionless
enclosures. Yes. They're actively avoiding meaningful
contribution to the messy, difficult, friction
-filled work of moving society forward. Instead
of engaging, they're grooming themselves. Right.
We see billionaires completely obsessed with
extreme longevity protocols, taking dozens of
supplements, hyper -curating their digital personas,
and building insular luxury ecosystems, while
completely withdrawing from the civic and social
challenges of the day. This is exactly why the
awareness of these parallels is so vital. If
we don't recognize that these elites are falling
headfirst into the trap of the beautiful ones,
we might be tempted to emulate them. Because
culture worships the wealthy. Exactly. Culture
tends to worship the wealthy. We might mistakenly
believe that withdrawing into a bubble of personal
frictionless abundance is the ultimate goal of
a post -work society. Like that's the dream.
Right. If AI does everything for us, the dream
shouldn't be to just sit in a pod and get a massage
while the world burns. No. Brian's analysis shows
us that this withdrawal is the very definition
of the abundance sink. It is a state of living
decay. Living decay. The beautiful ones in Universe
25 were physically flawless, but they were psychologically
and spiritually extinct long before their bodies
actually died. They had lost the essence of what
made them alive. They were just breathing statues.
Perfect description. And we see that same hollowness
today when the pursuit of wealth, safety, and
comfort completely eclipses the pursuit of purpose.
But here is the pivot. Right. Brian doesn't just
point fingers at the elites and say, look at
the beautiful ones. We're doomed. He doesn't
wallow in the problem. He flips the entire script.
He really does. If we connect this to the bigger
picture, this is where Brian's ultimate solution
begins to take shape. He introduces this profound
concept of the interregnum. Historically, an
interregnum is a period of discontinuity. It's
the gap in a government, organization, or social
order. It's the chaotic, unpredictable space
between the old world and the new world. The
messy middle. Yes. We are entering an economic
and societal interregnum right now, the space
between the old world of traditional labor and
the new world of absolute AI -driven abundance.
Instead of seeing this transition as a terrifying
collapse, Brian frames the interregnum as an
unprecedented opportunity for human greatness.
And this brings us to what I think is the absolute
core of the Reed Multiplex. article. Brian's
thesis is that we must transcend this abundant
sink by framing the interregnum as the grand
monomyth. The hero's journey. The hero's journey.
This isn't just a neat literary trick. He is
telling you right now that you are not a passive
victim of macroeconomic shift. You're not just
collateral damage. No. You are not a helpless
bystander watching algorithms take over the labor
market. You are the hero of an epic saga. The
application of the hero's journey here is a stroke
of absolute brilliance. It takes something terrifying
and imbues it with profound meaning. It changes
everything. The monomyth, as mapped out by Joseph
Campbell, is the underlying structure of almost
every great myth, religion, and story throughout
human history. From Star Wars to Lord of the
Rings. Exactly. The hero lives in an ordinary
world, receives a call to adventure, initially
refuses it, meets a mentor, crosses the threshold
into the unknown, faces trials, discovers allies,
achieves a great victory and returns to transform
their world. It's the classic arc. And Brian
maps this directly and flawlessly onto our current
economic transition. Let's walk through that
map step by step, because this is literally how
you navigate the coming years. It all starts
in the ordinary world. Which is what we know
now. Right. Which for us is the nine to five
grind, the commute, the mortgage, the defining
of our entire self -worth by our job. title the
enclosures yes the enclosures then comes the
call to adventure in a movie it's a wizard knocking
on your door or a distress message hidden in
a droid but in our era the call arrives as job
loss yeah the end of traditional work through
automation or systemic economic shifts now for
most of us that feels like a tragedy It feels
like the floor dropping out from under you. You
lose your income, your routine, your identity.
But how does Brian reframe this moment? He reframes
it entirely by stripping away the industrial
era programming we've all been subjected to.
Tell me more about that. This job loss, the obsolescence
of rote labor, is not a tragedy in Brian's framework.
It is, in his exact words, a summons to greatness.
A summons to greatness. Wow. Think about the
profundity of that shift in perspective. For
centuries, humanity has defined... its worth
by its capacity to toil. Yeah, to suffer through
the friction. We are valued by how much friction
we can endure for a paycheck. Now, as that requirement
falls away, we are being summoned to discover
what we are truly capable of when we are no longer
chained to pure survival tasks. It's liberate.
But as with every heroic myth, the initial reaction
to the call is almost always the same. The refusal
of the call. Oh, the refusal is so real. I see
it every day. People fighting tooth and nail
to keep inefficient systems alive just so they
can keep doing busy work. Just clinging to the
old way. And the Read Multiplex article warns
us exactly what happens if we refuse this call.
If we cling desperately to the old ways, if we
demand to be put back into the artificial enclosures
of busy work, or worse, if we just give up and
withdraw into our screens like the beautiful
ones, we plunge directly into what Brian calls
the sinks abyss. The sinks abyss. Refusal of
the call means succumbing to the decay of the
abundance trap. It means choosing the fate of
Universe 25. You have to step out the door. You
have to answer the summons. even when it terrifies
you. And the beauty of the monomyth is that when
you finally step out that door, you don't do
it alone. Never alone. The hero's journey always
involves finding mentors and forging allies.
In the old paradigm, your mentor was your middle
manager or a senior executive, and your allies
were just the co -workers who happened to be
forced to sit in the cubicles next to you. Right.
People you might not even like. Exactly. It was
an artificial community based on geographic and
economic necessity. But Brian envisions a radical
shift. In this new era, mentors will arise in
guilds and through timeless wisdom. I want to
pause on this idea of guilds because it feels
wonderfully historical but perfectly suited for
the future. It's a great concept. When we hear
guild... We might think of medieval blacksmiths
or stonemasons, but in a post -work abundance
economy, a guild isn't a corporate hierarchy.
It's a community of craft, of intellect, of shared
passion. Shared passion is the key. Yeah. It's
people coming together because they genuinely
want to advance a specific skill or idea, not
because they are being paid a salary to tolerate
each other. And the allies. Brian emphasizes
that these new alliances will be forged in purely
voluntary bonds. Voluntary bonds. This is such
a crucial distinction for you to internalize.
The community of the future isn't based on forced
proximity. You aren't friends just because you
share a break room or a Slack channel. You choose
your communities based on shared purpose. It
is a massively powerful upgrade to the human
social experience. It is the difference between
a prison yard and an expeditionary team. That's
a profound way to put it. In a prison yard, you
associate with people for survival and protection.
On an expeditionary team, you bond over a shared
difficult goal right when bonds are voluntary
and based on a shared vision the energy is entirely
different it becomes generative rather than defensive
generative and you will need that generative
energy because the journey through the interregnum
is not without hardship we mentioned the 15 points
of awareness earlier the parallels to the societal
breakdown the warning signs right These are the
road of trials in our hero's journey. The alienation,
the shifting economic sands, the temptation to
withdraw into virtual reality. These are the
dragons we must slay. But as Brian notes, each
of these trials acts as a forge. They temper
the steel. Yes. Every time you resist the urge
to just scroll mindlessly for six hours, every
time you choose to build something instead of
consume something, you are passing a trial. You're
leveling up. And what are we forging our character
for? What is the reward at the end of this epic
saga? In Campbell's hero's journey, it's called
the ultimate boon. The ultimate boon. It's the
elixir the hero brings back to save the world.
And the boon, Brian reveals, is nothing short
of breathtaking. It really is. It is a society
completely reborn. A society where abundance
does not fuel decay. like it did for those poor
mice in the universe to 25, but rather it fuels
human exaltation. Exaltation. That word exaltation.
It means a state of extreme happiness, of being
raised to a higher rank or state of power. That
is the promise of the interregnum. We aren't
just surviving. We are ascending. Exaltation
is the perfect word because it implies an elevation
of the human spirit, not just a satiation of
human appetite. Not just a full belly. Right.
But to reach that state of exaltation, personal
mindset shifts. Accepting the call to adventure
are only half the battle. We also have to completely
redesign the physical and legal architecture
of our society. Because the old systems won't
hold it. Exactly. We cannot pour the new wine
of ultimate abundance into the old brittle wineskins
of industrial era bureaucracy. Brian outlines
that solutions must ignite with redesigning structures
for liberty and purpose. Now let me challenge
this a bit. Okay. Here's where it gets really
interesting. When we talk about societal structures,
we usually mean government and law. And let's
be real. Government laws are historically designed
to restrict, to manage, to control and to tax.
Chances. Right. They are designed to put fences
around things. But Brian calls for governments
to craft laws that liberate. Yes. What does a
liberating law even look like? How do we actively
design systems that encourage freedom and exploration
rather than just keeping people safe, sedated
and stagnant in a giant, comfortable cage? The
contrast with the Universe 25 is vital here to
answer your question. Calhoun's mouse utopia
was the ultimate enclosed, safe, managed space.
Total management. It was a perfectly governed
enclosure that provided everything and demanded
absolutely nothing. There was no risk, no frontier,
no possibility of escaping the box. And that
drove them insane. That total lack of friction
led directly to madness. To avoid this, our liberating
laws must literally shatter those enclosures.
Shatter them. A liberating law doesn't tell you
what you can't do. It removes the barriers to
what you could do. It lowers the cost of innovation.
It deregulates experimentation. And Brian gives
us an incredibly vivid, almost sci -fi example
of what that looks like. in practice. He says
we need to incentivize stellar exploration through
bold grants. Space travel. Yes. Now, at first
glance, someone might think, why are we talking
about space travel when we're talking about the
end of work? But think about the psychology of
it. It's brilliant. The antidote to feeling trapped
on a comfortable, abundant planet is to look
up and reach out. Yeah. I love the analogy he
uses here. It's like. A hero bursting from the
cave. Bursting from the cave. The Earth, for
all its beauty and history, is ultimately an
enclosure if we never leave it. It is a finite
tank. By pushing for stellar exploration, by
making it a societal imperative funded by bold,
liberating initiatives, we shatter the ceiling
of our utopia. We give human ambition a canvas
that is truly infinite. Stellar exploration is
the ultimate physical manifestation of escaping
the abundance sink. It provides infinite friction
and infinite discovery. You can't be lazy in
space. No, you really can't. You cannot be a
beautiful one lounging in a luxury pod if you
were trying to figure out how to terraform Mars
or navigate an asteroid belt. Space demands resilience,
cooperation, and extreme intellect. But Brian
understands that not everyone is going to be
an astronaut. Right. There are terrestrial intellectual
structures we need to redesign as well. He goes
deep into the necessity of fostering what we
touched on earlier, guilds of rational creators.
Let's expand on that. Guilds of rational creators.
Tell me how they differ from what we have now.
In the traditional work environment. Innovation
is often chained to quarterly profits, proprietary
patents, NDAs, and corporate silos. All the red
tape. Exactly. If you have a brilliant idea,
your company owns it, and they might bury it
if it threatens their current product line. Which
happens all the time. A guild of rational creators
is a collaborative ecosystem where the goal is
the creation itself, the mastery of the skill,
and the sharing of that knowledge. So it's pure
creation. Think of the early open source software
movement, but expanded to physical engineering,
biology, art and philosophy. It is open source
human potential, completely free from the chains
of corporate monopolization. It's the exact opposite
of the beautiful ones hoarding their comfort.
It's active, communal, purposeful creation. But
let's be honest. Yeah. Not everyone is going
to be a stellar explorer and not everyone wants
to join a highly technical guild of rational
creators. That's true. Some people just need
space to run. They need to experiment, to be
weird, to be untamed, to make a mess without
a homeowners association or a city council breathing
down their neck. A place without all the rules.
And that brings us to what I think is the most
profound and necessary concept in the entire
Read Multiplex article, wild zones. I love this
concept. I agree completely. The concept of wild
zones requires deep analysis because it is the
pressure valve that saves society. from exploding.
A pressure valve. Brian defines these wild zones
as havens of unregulated genius. This is such
a critical concept. If we look at the entire
history of humanity, there has always been a
frontier. Always an edge. There has always been
an edge of the map where the rules didn't quite
apply yet, whether it was the literal Wild West
or international waters or the early dial -up
days of the internet. Oh, the early internet,
for sure. There was always a place where misfits,
pioneers, and divergent thinkers could go to
build something entirely new, free from legacy
systems. But over the last century, we've paved
over the wild zones. The globe has become entirely
mapped, heavily interconnected, and hyper -regulated.
You can't escape the grid. You really can't.
You can't even build a shed in your backyard
without three permits and a zoning board hearing.
The physical frontier has largely vanished. It's
all managed now. And if we enter a post -work
era of absolute abundance with AI handling all
the logistics and we have no frontier, we are
putting ourselves right back into Calhoun's mouse
box. We will go crazy. We will turn on each other.
Precisely. The human spirit requires friction.
It requires the unknown. It requires the right
to take a risk and fail spectacularly. We need
to be able to fail. Brian argues that these wild
zones echo the ancient human call for migration.
For millennia, when a society became too stagnant,
too rigid, or when resources shifted, humans
migrated. We moved. We walked across ice bridges
and sailed across uncharted oceans. That migratory,
exploratory impulse is hardwired into our DNA.
We are explorers. In a world of ubiquitous abundance,
where you don't have to migrate for food, we
must intentionally create and protect these havens
of unregulated genius to serve as a vital outlet
for human energy. So what does a wild zone look
like today? Is it a special economic zone? Is
it an experimental charter city in the desert?
Maybe. Is it seasteading out international waters?
Or is it entirely new? digital and virtual frontiers,
like immersive VR worlds where the standard laws
of physics and economics simply do not apply.
It will likely be a combination of all of those.
The key is that the standard regulations of the
utopia must be suspended in these zones. So no
safety nets. Or at least you opt out of the strict
management. If you want to build a highly experimental
nuclear reactor or test radical new architectural
structures or try a completely new form of community
governance, you go to the wild zone. You accept
the personal risk. in exchange for absolute creative
freedom. Picture this for a second. Imagine a
world where you have complete baseline security.
You will never starve. You will always have shelter
and health care. The baseline utopia. But you
also have the option at any moment to pack up
and step into a wild zone, a place where you
can build, create, fail, and experiment without
asking for permission from a labyrinth of bureaucracy.
It's freeing just to think about. It's intoxicating
just thinking about it. And this leads us directly
into Brian's highly unique take on the concept
of universal basic income or UBI. Basic income
is a topic fraught with intense debate and rightly
so. Very intense debate. Primarily because in
its simplest, most widely advocated form, just
giving people a check every month so they can
consume things. It risks creating the exact conditions
of Universe 25. It creates the mouse enclosure.
Giving people resources without any attached
purpose, without any call to adventure, is the
literal formula for the abundance sink. It breeds
the beautiful ones. It's sitting around grooming.
But Brian reframes basic income entirely. He
argues that it shouldn't just be idle money dropped
into an idle lap. It must be woven into tapestries
of voluntary service and epic adventures. Now,
I have to stop you there because my skeptical
alarm bells are ringing. Let's hear it. If we
weave basic income into service and adventure,
isn't it no longer basic? Doesn't that just mean
we are creating a new weird form of employment?
How do we prevent this from just becoming another
bureaucratic hoop people have to jump through?
That is the crucial needle to thread. Brian is
not suggesting a dystopian social credit system
where the government dictates what constitutes
good service. Right. He is talking about a cultural
and structural shift where the grant of abundance
is tied to active participation in the human
project. It's about creating pathways. Okay,
pathways. If UBI is the baseline, society must
overwhelmingly incentivize and celebrate stepping
off that baseline into a guild, a wild zone,
or a stellar exploration initiative. I see. It's
not an allowance for sitting on the couch and
playing video games until your eyes bleed. Exactly.
You are completely rewiring the psychology of
the recipient. Rewiring it away from the sink.
You are given the resources to survive so that
you can go out and truly live. You are funded
to take risks that you could never take if you
were worried about paying rent. Exactly. And
the brilliant, undeniable outcome of this reframing,
as Brian states, is that it banishes invented
torments directly to the void. Invented torments.
Oh, I love that phrase. This is a very sharp,
very necessary psychological insight. Human beings
are problem solving engines. We have to fix things.
When we are deprived of meaningful struggle,
we do not simply sit back and enjoy the peace.
We invent torment. Oh, we've all seen this. People
who have nothing real to worry about will invent
a crisis just to feel something. Absolutely.
They will start massive feuds over a perceived
slight in a neighborhood Facebook group. They
will generate conflict over infinitesimal things.
They will fall into neuroses. They will embrace
extreme political polarization because the brain
demands a problem to solve. It needs a target.
If there is no tiger to fight, we will fight
our neighbor over where they put their recycling
bin. That is the abundant sink playing out in
the human mind. It is the behavioral sink in
action. But if your basic needs are met, and
society actively encourages you to step into
a wild zone, or join a guild of rational creators,
or embark on an epic intellectual adventure,
Those invented torments vanish. They disappear.
They are banished to the void because your mind
is occupied with actual challenges chosen freely.
You're trying to solve real complex problems
instead of manifesting artificial drama. It is
a brilliant synthesis of economic policy and
human psychology. It really is. But a societal
redesign of this magnitude. Building wild zones,
funding stellar exploration, redefining UBI requires
a profound shift at the individual level. You
still have to do the work. We can build all the
wild zones we want. We can build the rockets.
But the individual must be prepared to step into
them. The door can be open, but you still have
to walk through it. Which brings us to the ultimate
responsibility. The macro solutions fail if the
micro foundation is weak. So true. Brian lays
out a highly specific personal roadmap for this
odyssey, and it demands quite a bit from the
individual. Let's bring this right down to the
ground. So what does this all mean for you navigating
your life right now? That's the question. How
do you prepare yourself for this monumental shift
away from traditional work? Brian's personal
roadmap starts with one foundational absolute
requirement, cultivating unyielding resilience.
Unyielding resilience is non -negotiable here.
Tell me why. The transition out of the world
of traditional work is going to be incredibly
disorienting. For generations, the first question
we ask someone when we meet them is, what do
you do? Right. We mean, what is your job? When
the old markers of status, identity, and daily
routine dissolve, it will trigger an identity
crisis on a global scale. A massive crisis. Resilience
is the armor required to survive the interregnum.
You have to be able to withstand the dissolution
of the world you move without losing your sense
of self. And Brian pairs this resilience with
the active need to contemplate your purpose with
rational clarity. Rational clarity. I love that
phrasing. It's not the cliche advice of just
follow your passion, which is, well, it's often
terrible advice. Usually very bad advice. It
means actively rationally dissecting yourself.
What are you actually good at? What does the
new world need? What brings you a sense of deep,
abiding fulfillment that doesn't rely on a boss
handing you a performance review? It requires
a brutal honesty with yourself. But this raises
a really important practical question. How do
we actually adapt when the old world vanishes
overnight? When the AI agent suddenly does the
job you went to school for eight years to learn?
This raises an important question because that
is the core trauma of the transition. Yes. Brian's
advice on how to adapt is twofold. First, as
we touched on, you must forge alliances of mutual
respect. The voluntary bonds. You cannot navigate
the interregnum alone. The rugged individualist
trope doesn't survive this transition. You need
a tribe, a guild, a community of individuals
who respect your agency and share your rational
approach to the future. People who build you
up. You need people who will hold you accountable
to your potential, not people who will join you
in complaining about the past. And the second
part. Second, you must embrace metamorphosis
as the ultimate adventure. Embracing metamorphosis.
Think of the caterpillar and the butterfly. We've
all heard the analogy, but think about the biology
of it. It's actually quite brutal. The caterpillar
doesn't just sprout wings. It builds a chrysalis,
and then it literally digests itself. It turns
into a biological soup to become something entirely
new. A total breakdown. We are going to have
to die. digest our old identities, our job titles,
our nine to five routines, our corporate ladder
climbing, our entire concept of weekends and
retirement and allow ourselves to transform.
You have to let it dissolve. If you fight the
metamorphosis, you just end up a very frustrated
caterpillar. in a cocoon that's getting way too
tight. That is a visceral but highly accurate
analogy. The digestion of the old identity is
painful but necessary. It is. And this brings
us to the ultimate contrast, the definitive antidote
to the shadow of Universe 25. The formulas. Brian
outlines three fundamental philosophical formulas
for success in this personal odyssey. These are
the guiding principles of the new era, and they
stand in direct intentional opposition to the
behavior of the mice in Calhoun's experiment.
Let's break those three formulas down because
they are your survival guide. The first formula,
flexibility triumphs over rigidity. Look at the
beautiful ones in Universe 25. So rigid. They
were incredibly rigid. They had one mode eat,
sleep, groom. When the social structure collapsed
around them, they had no capacity to adapt. They
couldn't change their behavior. They just kept
grooming while everything burned. To survive
and thrive in the interregnum, you have to be
radically flexible. If your industry gets automated
tomorrow, your response cannot be rigidity, anger,
and despair. It has to be, okay, the map just
changed. What is my next adventure? The second
formula is equally critical. Reason triumphs
over chaos. Reason over chaos. As the abundance
sink took hold in Universe 25, the enclosure
descended into utter, mindless chaos. You had
erratic behavior, random violence, hypersexuality,
and total social breakdown. It was pure instinct
taking over. It was an entirely emotion -driven,
instinctual collapse. Brian is telling us that
our primary defense against the chaos of the
interregnum is reason. We must be rational creators.
We must contemplate our purpose with rational
clarity. As the economic tectonic plates shift
beneath our feet, there will be a massive temptation
to give in to fear, anger and tribalism. We see
that happening already. We cannot let emotions
dictate our actions. We must use our intellect,
our logic and our reason to navigate the storm.
And the third formula. Which might be the most
profound of all. Virtue triumphs over vice. Virtue.
Let's really think about this. When there are
no external rules forcing you to work, there's
no boss tracking your hours, no fear of starvation
forcing you to behave, no economic necessity
forcing you to contribute, what stops you from
just succumbing to your base vices? What stops
you from becoming a beautiful one? What stops
you from becoming a glutton or a tyrant or a
beautiful one? It has to be... Internally generated
virtue. Internal compass. It is the active daily
choice to be good, to be productive, to be helpful,
and to be courageous. Not because a system demands
it of you under threat of poverty, but because
you demand it of yourself out of respect for
your own potential. These three principles, flexibility,
reason, and virtue, constitute what Brian calls
a sacred map. A sacred map. It is a philosophical
compass for an uncharted age, and the stakes
of following this map could not be higher. We
are not merely talking about maintaining the
status quo or finding a way to keep people busy.
No, the stakes are cosmic. By heating this map,
by building the wild zones, by leaning into the
hero's journey, humanity doesn't just evade extinction.
We actively ascend to cosmic heights. We actively
ascend. I want everyone listening to truly feel
the power of that framing. We aren't just dodging
a bullet here. We are launching a rocket. Yes.
By rejecting the abundance sink, by choosing
the grand monomyth over the mouse utopia, we
claim abundance as our eternal elixir. It stops
being a poison that rots us from the inside out,
and becomes the high -octane fuel that pertells
us to the stars, both literally and figuratively.
It is a magnificent, deeply optimistic end state
that Brian envisions in the Read Multiplex article.
It really is. But it is vital to remember that
he does not sugarcoat the process. The journey
demands valor. Real valor. Stepping into the
unknown of the interregnum, facing the loss of
traditional societal structures, looking into
the void of unlimited free time without losing
your mind, avoiding the trap of becoming the
isolated elites, all of this requires tremendous
sustained courage. But the return on that courage,
the return, unleashes what Brian beautifully
describes as A symphony of human triumph. A symphony
of triumph. Imagine the music of a society that
has finally, truly broken free from the daily
grinding anxiety of basic survival. Worlds conquered.
In the literal sense of stellar exploration,
but also in the figurative realms of science,
philosophy, and art. Spirits unbound from the
artificial scarcity that has defined our species
since the dawn of time. It is the promise of
a golden epoch, an era where every soul has the
opportunity to shine not as a replaceable cog
in an industrial machine, but as an architect
of their own destiny. If we navigate this correctly,
we become the guardians of our legacy. ensuring
that the fire of human ingenuity is never extinguished
by the damp, heavy blanket of unearned comfort.
We become the beacons of an unbreakable dawn.
In this epic saga, as Brian writes, we are the
heroes, and the future is our immortal realm.
It's breathtaking. It really is. It takes this
dark, terrifying, deeply cynical concept of the
mouse utopia that we've been beaten over the
head with for 50 years, and it flips it into
the greatest call to action humanity has ever
received. It provides the vital missing piece
that Calhoun intentionally left out. The fire
scheme. It provides the remedy. Awareness of
the parallels, redesigned structures that liberate,
the creation of wild zones, the intelligent reframing
of basic income, and a deep commitment to personal
metamorphosis. It is a complete, systemic, and
individual solution to the greatest challenge
of our time. Absolutely. And that brings us to
the end of our deep dive into this incredibly
profound Read Multiplex article. But I cannot
let you go without leaving you with a final...
Provocative thought. Something to take with them.
Something for you to deeply mull over as you
go about your day, as you look at your current
job, as you observe the rapidly changing world
around you. It's a big question. We've talked
a lot about the macro today, society, laws, the
monomyth. But let's make it deeply personal.
Since the future is our immortal realm and you
are the hero of this epic saga, what does your
personal wild zone look like? That is the question.
Think about it. If the call to adventure arrived
at your doorstep tomorrow morning in the form
of absolute abundance, let's say all your basic
needs are met forever, your mortgage is gone,
your health care is covered, and your traditional
daily grind completely evaporates, what specific,
unregulated genius would you unleash upon the
world? What would you build? What would you explore?
What art would you create? Or what science would
you pursue to ensure that you never, ever become
one of the isolated hollow, beautiful ones? It's
a massive question. But as we enter the interregnum,
it's the only question that matters. Thank you
so much for joining us on this extraordinary
journey today on The Deep Drive. Thank you. We
hope this exploration of the Read Multiplex podcast
themes has equipped you for the adventure ahead.
We'll be back soon to explore the next frontier.
Until then, stay curious, stay resilient, and
keep forging your path.