Line Goes Up

Native American groups call it Wetiko, or Wendigo, the rapacious insatiable ghoul that long ago buried itself in the human heart, and appeared in the New World as as conquistadors, colonels, cowboys, and priests, intent on stealing everything they could find.

There's certainly evidence

that psychopathy is an advantageous adaptation

trading long life for many offspring.

And anyway they'll kill you if they don't agree.

So you might see how such a virus could spread.

Even if not everyone carries it, most of us go along with it.

King Meidas will slit your throat for gold.

And we just keep giving it more fucking cake.

Work. Prison. Munitions recipient. Organ donor. The cult of Apollo will find a way to skin maximum value. You'll kick up to them one way or another. They get a cut of every kilojoule you burn. Who is they? They own the industrial system... mining, agriculture, manufacturing, and the markets, ships, trains, planes, and trucks.

And they own the media, which they use to push the ideology of LINE GOES UP.

Everything must perform better than it did before.

Squuuuuueeeeeze.

The next jackpot will be bigger than the last.

Squeeeeeeeeeeeezeee.

If I yell loud enough I can't hear the screaming.

Squeeeeeeeeeeeezzzee.

There's a bright side to LINE GOES UP. We can and should increase efficiency in our habits and processes.

We should be thinking and tinkering with how we do things, using our intelligence to build more sustainable systems and do more with less inputs, because resources are always limited, especially time.

But when we try to do more with more, it inevitably collapses into a sinkhole of suffering. King Meidas cannot stop. The wetiko cannot stop. Dracula cannot stop. They must drink.

Efficiency gives way to exploitation.

Now it's quotas and sticks and carrots and whips and prison cells and torture. It's inhumanity in the name of profit, because the system is rigged to deprive most so they must work to feed the few.

But the wetiko's insatiable hunger distorts reality. They lose sight of the metabolic nature of reality. One must create more calories than one burns.

And if you drink

and drink

and drink

what will happen?

When there is no one left to make the wine there is no more wine.

But the wetiko can never not squeeze.

Why wouldn't the top priority of our species be to feed, clothe, house, educate, foster, and support every human being that comes into the world?

Only a ghoul

could disagree.

Unless they are brainwashed by the Apollonian cult of LINE GOES UP.

Please watch this video in which Dan Olson of Folding Ideas elegantly dives deeper into the psychology of Line Goes Up. Please note that my own take above is not endorsed by Olson, nor are my thoughts and this video aligned by ideology or definition.

Two subway stops. Same neighborhood.