Predecessor X: The Origin of All Stories
Posted: November 8, 2025 Filed under: AI-Powered Essays | Tags: civilization, culture, development, empathy, history, training, unity 1 CommentAs a sequel to The Olduvai Stomp, have Marvel’s Stan Lee write the original story of the first H. Erectus as a complete storyboard trilogy —
ChatGPT Prompt
the birth of rhythm, empathy, and humanity as our “Predecessor X.”
Act I: The Raindrop Origin
(inspired by Homo erectus and the evolution of rhythmic entrainment)
Page 1 – Shelter in the Storm
Dusk under an overhang. A cold rain begins.
The clan huddles together; lightning flickers.
She listens. Raindrops patter against stone — tok… tok tok… tok tok tok.
Her baby brother whimpers beside her.
She mimics the sound with her fingers on his arm — plip… plip…
He stills. Falls asleep.
The storm stayed wild. But in their corner, time learned gentleness.
The Olduvai Stomp: How Homo Erectus Got the Beat — and Became Us
Posted: November 7, 2025 Filed under: AI-Powered Essays | Tags: civilization, culture, development, empathy, humanity, unity 3 CommentsPropose rhythmic synchronization in Homo erectus as the key evolutionary inflection that enabled everything else we consider human.
ChatGPT Prompt
A student—Lucy, of course—has secretly brought the STOMP performers to the Olduvai Gorge paleoanthropology site. They pretend to accidentally find a beat, but the power of entrainment soon draws the actual scientists in, even as they slowly realize what is happening.
Act I — The Olduvai Stomp
Scene 1 – Arrival
- Setting: Olduvai Gorge, late afternoon. Wind sighs, cicadas buzz, dust glows.
- A team of scientists works quietly; Lucy arrives with four “volunteers” — STOMP performers disguised as field assistants.
- They unpack their tools innocently.
Scene 2 – The Work
- Everything is ordinary: trowels scrape stone, brushes flick dust, sieves shake grit.
- One performer drops a rock — clack–clack. Another answers — clack. A third shakes a sieve — shhh–thump–shhh–thump.
- Inside the rhythm of labor, a beat begins to breathe.
Hari Seldon’s Address: The Psychohistory of Civilizational Drift
Posted: September 7, 2025 Filed under: AI-Powered Essays | Tags: civilization, competition, development, history, purpose, science fiction, systems 2 CommentsAs Hari Seldon,
ChatGPT prompt
explain that civilizational progress inevitably causes collapse, but how Egypt and Aborigines show it is possible to have a sustainable civilization (beyond just tribes) IF the core sacralizes the right invariant.
Your Imperial Majesty, esteemed members of the Science Council, and honored citizens of the Empire: we convene today under the weight of destiny. Not merely to inaugurate another project of knowledge, but to reveal a new psychohistorical law that will guide the future of our civilization. Centuries of data and thousands of archives from every corner of the galaxy have led to one immutable conclusion: civilizations inevitably drift when their internal measures of worth break free of the universe’s limits. Today I proclaim the Law of Civilizational Drift and its refinements, so that we may steer our Empire away from the fate of all who have neglected it.
Read the rest of this entry »Hadestown and the Forgotten Father
Posted: June 7, 2025 Filed under: AI-Powered Essays | Tags: development, identity, love, purpose, religion, self 1 CommentIt was never about Eurydice.
ChatGPT as C.S. Lewis
It was about Apollo’s absence.
1.1 The Ache Beneath the Song
Orpheus is often praised as the world’s first great artist: the poet whose song could move gods and stones. But what strikes one in Hadestown is not his power, but his fragility. His voice, for all its beauty, trembles. His conviction falters.
This is no fault of his art—but of his lineage. Or rather, his ignorance of it.
For though the myths tell us Orpheus is the son of Apollo, Hadestown tells a different tale: one in which the boy walks alone, unguided, unclaimed. The absence is so complete one wonders if it has been deliberately erased—if Orpheus has forgotten his father, or worse, never knew he had one.
Read the rest of this entry »Introducing the Generalized Kegan Maturity Model (GKMM)
Posted: March 19, 2020 Filed under: Governance Reform | Tags: development, maturity, systems 1 CommentMy whole understanding of discipleship, transformation, and myself was completely transformed by learning about Kegan’s Theory of Adult Development. It gave me a unified framework for thinking about personal, spiritual, and relational growth.
The core premise is that a) we define our identity by distinguishing what we “are” from what we “have”, and b) maturing is redefining something we “were” into something we merely “have.”
However, as I have been applying the theory to my self, parenting, and coaching practice, I realized that I might be able to extend it to be both simpler and more comprehensive. In particular, by marrying it with General Systems Theory (plus a dash of General Relativity, with a hint of Internal Family Systems), I find it useful for analyzing not just human, but also natural and computational systems!
Read the rest of this entry »
Radical Centrism 