The Black Sheep and the Universal Loop
Way back in 2008, the promise of a new era felt palpable. The Obama win wasn’t just a political and social victory. For many, it signaled a moment where the system was finally, gently, correcting itself. Many of us though, the so-called “black sheep” who still felt politically and philosophically isolated, knew better. We knew the core battle wasn’t against a political party; it was against the most seductive enemy: active ignorance.
That was the founding idea of Liberatedblacksheep.com. A digital commons to confront the truth that we were learning in those post-2000’s college years. That everything is connected. Pull the string of knowledge on one topic, and it weaves its way through the nature of all things. Eventually revealing that politics can’t be removed from any topic anymore than you can stop breathing and continue living. The original choice was simple: Keep your head in the sand, or learn the true interconnectedness of our shared reality. To ignite your divine spark, and seek a meaningful purpose beyond a cycle of just paying the bills.
We failed to scale. Apathy, disillusionment with inevitable centrism, and the necessity of life pushed us aside. Citizens mistakenly thought the ultimate goal was achieved. This collective shrug proved to be too large a force for a few mid-20s idealists to breach. Competitive forces in the development of social media lead to an attention drain in internet society. Something our inherently longer format, deeper intellectual nature, couldn’t compete with.
The Omen We Missed: A Premature Warning
Then came the silent attack.
It wasn’t the silence of irrelevance or even domestic dissent, but something far more sinister. We watched as the cultural backlash of the Tea Party gained momentum. We didn’t notice the quiet coup that hit our own small platform. One morning, the database disappeared. It was replaced by an aggressive message from a hacker known as mc_Katliam. The message included Turkish script: “The powerful set the rules, others obey them…!”
At that time, we thought it was a random attack. We even considered it an early shot of the Russian geopolitical warfare we would later witness. In hindsight, we realize it was a chilling, personal omen. It revealed a truth far more profound. The fight was never just about one superpower. Our subpages were targeted—specifically articles on religious and political fundamentalism. We were found via keyword search, surgically attacked, and silenced.
This proved that the threat wasn’t political in the way we understood it; it was ideological. Forces launched a strike against an independent space. Their goal was the same as any domestic oligarch. They aimed to crush dissenting voices and enforce centralized control over thought. This attack was a premature warning. The fight concerned the infrastructure of digital information. It was about the right to intellectual freedom, regardless of the attacker’s flag.
The Meta-Crisis: A Systemic Failure
The subsequent decade of Trump, COVID, economic fallout, and the wealthys’ singular, all-consuming mission, to claw back every successful piece of progress of the last century, has amplified this interconnected truth.
This is no longer a simple collection of problems; it is a Meta-Crisis. Every issue you can name—from the looming threat posed by climate change, the global tinderbox of war, to rising rates of generational trauma and the political rise of global authoritarianism—is merely a symptom of a deeper, holistic structural failure.
The global systems of capitalism and monopolic control fail because the human response to systemic deprivation is so universal. The despair that leads a young person to join a gang for protection and economic hope is the exact same systemic deprivation that pushes someone into devastating, fatal opioid abuse in a former Rust Belt town. The enemy is the system of poverty and disconnection and those who uphold it, not the individual.
This is the deeper reality we found in the theories of mycelial networks and the Fuzzball model of the universe: our individual minds are not isolated “mushrooms.” They are linked into a vast, universal network. The chaos we see in the world is the political and social system actively trying to sever those links.
The Power and the Tools: An Unprecedented Convergence
The pieces of the puzzle have been in front of us the whole time. The world is held together by the rich profiteering, grift and duct tape. The difference between 2008 and today is the convergence of two critical, overwhelming forces: Generational Power and Digital Tools.
1. The Generational Voting Bloc:
We now stand at a point where Gen Z and Millennial’s make up a larger voting bloc than all other generations combined. This isn’t theoretical; it’s a demographic certainty. The activation of this bloc would not lead to incremental change—it would be a seismic event resulting in the immediate mandate for massive institutional and climate reform. For the first time, the sheer volume of the generations who will inherit the consequences possesses the ability to overwhelm the resistance of the past. For instance, if you ever wonder why they extensively roadblock our right to vote. Or limit our access to communicate openly with each other, this is why. They will use every dollar at their disposal to maintain their grip on power into their dying days attempting to take us with them.
2. The New Toolkit:
The other great convergence is the arrival of A.I. and other sophisticated digital tools. A.I. allows for massive information gathering and synthesis to shatter the siloing engineered by wealthy media conglomerates. Allowing the masses to distill the Himalayan amount of information at our disposal into palatable chunks for consumption.
We can apply these tools to authoritarian-proof our democracy:
- Anti-Gerrymandering: AI can easily, equally, and non-partisanly draw districts. Negating the logistical argument for districts so massive that they favor lobbyists—the “one voice taking Congress to lunch daily”—over the voices of constituents.
- Judicial Transparency: The concept of an AI Supreme Court non-voting judge. Designed for complete transparency and redundancy—is the ultimate tool for exposing systemic bias. Its job, to shine a light on rulings, quantifying their impact on the 95% and revealing political conflicts of interest.
The Crossroads: Reclaiming the System
If you’ve made it this far, please bookmark this page and spend some time reading all of our older content. The nature of interconnectivity means the threads of the past inform the urgency of the present.
Now, let’s address the most paralyzing lie you’ve been told: that the choice is only between anarchy or complacency.
That is fiction. Perpetuated by the rich who control the levers of power, to keep you frozen. I am here to tell you to take that energy of anarchy and redirect it. Take that chaotic energy; that destructive fire and focus it deep inside yourself to kindle that revolutionary spirit. Use it to bend the system to your will—don’t burn it to the ground. Don’t allow it to grind you up like it’s a fact of life.
This democratic system we live under is a creation of our making, co-opted by the rich and powerful. But we outnumber them ten to one. Thomas Jefferson is quoted as saying, “a little revolution every generation is a good thing”, and you know what, democracy is designed for it.
The dystopian fiction that raised us—Blade Runner, Minority Report, Fahrenheit 451—prepared us for the crisis. Though it was the counterbalancing narratives –Harry Potter, Hunger Games, Star Trek– that offer the vision. They show us that a post-scarcity, resource-managed society focused on collective advancement is possible. They emphasize the need for personal integrity. They highlight the importance of sacrifice. Additionally, they stress the belief that the seemingly ordinary must unite. They must step up and meet this extraordinary moment. We know the time is now.
What say you?
