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Fermi Paradox

The Fermi Paradox as a Genesis Story

God is dead for more people than ever before. In many ways this is liberating, but much ink has been spilt over the anxiety of being pushed adrift out into the hyper-modern marketplace of ideas.

There were deep needs that most religions met.

  1. Sense of Purpose
  2. Comfort around death
  3. Sense of community
  4. Mode of moral conduct
  5. Sense or order to the universe
  6. An Origin story

The task of providing these has been broken down to the individual level, due to the postmodern skepticism of other meta-narratives preventing any new coherent frameworks from being mainstreamed.

To look just at the first point on that list, its been well established that a sense of purpose or meaning is essential to human well-being. And constructing one from whole cloth is no easy task (Nietzsche was right to worry). It could be argued that spiritual leaders were the first example of specialization of labor, but now each individual is tasked with this themselves, on top of their busy, modern lives. With answers to these from the divine absent, it’s natural to look to answers within national meta-narratives.

But for Americans, no national narrative is able to give meaning either. 92% percent of Republicans and 78% of Democrats say the country is headed in the wrong direction. We have no space race, or world war, or great depression, or any other unifying goal or threat to give a clear national direction. The reckoning America is having with it’s history at the center of the culture wars today has left us doubting goals the USA has claimed historically, like promoting democracy, and hesitant to respond to new national goals with anything but cynical dismissiveness.

For many, the deep human need for meaning is now left unsatisfied. So too with the rest of the needs from that list.

Did you have the experience of suddenly not believing in the afterlife, and then not being able to talk with those around you about all or the questions that cascade from that? A shared meta-narrative is what was missing.

Lets see if we can recapture what was lost with the death of religion, but without repeating the mistake of building on faith in the non-falsifiable assertions of authority that crumble under new observations.

All of this is downstream of an origin story. In order to develop modes of moral conduct, a sense of community, purpose, and a way to reconcile with death (if we must), and collective direction we need an understanding of where we’re starting from.

This isn’t the launchpad to talk about molecular biology (and how certain bubbles split into smaller bubbles when shaken and doesn’t that look just like mitosis). All that matters, for our purposes, is that life is able to arise. More relevant to us is the journey we had to go on after we arose to reach where we are today, and what that says about where we’re going and the nature of the universe. Are we alone? The first? The sole survivors of shared cataclysms? Naive latecomers?

The Fermi Paradox

The Fermi Paradox is the contradiction between the scale of the universe and the lack of visible alien life. We expect life to make some sort of changes, visible from a distance, at most stages of its development. (From filing the atmosphere with oxygen, to Dyson Spheres we should be able to see something).

Rather than summarize the whole thing here, here’s a link to an existing summary if you want more.

Here, go on a YouTube rabbit hole (Entire Kurzgesagt Fermi Paradox playlist) if you want more.

So, given that life can arise, and that we see none of the visible changes that successful life would likely make, we can draw some existentially relevant conclusions from its solutions.

What are the solutions for The Fermi Paradox, and what do they tell us? The exact number of solutions is debated, but I’ve been interested in this for a long time, and three main ones have stuck out to me. I see many other solutions falling under these.

Solution 1: Great Filters

Fermi Paradox Solution: Great Filters

TLDR: there are a number of “filters”, or hard steps with a low likelihood of success life needs to get through to get become an interstellar civilization (i.e. multicellular life, civilizations, interstellar travel). One of these filters being insurmountable would allow us to explain why it is that we’re here, but we see no one else. This would be a Great Filter. We’re advanced enough that we could conceive of perpetuating our civilization indefinitely in the near future. Why do we see no one else having done so? Either a Great Filter is preventing what life that arises from reaching the point we’re at developmentally, and we’re the first. Or many have been where we are now, and the Great Filter is after us. The important thing about this that explains why we’re the only ones we see because one of these filters is so difficult to overcome that it eliminates all civilizations who try.

So what would this mean as a Genesis story?

If we’re past the Great Filter then we carry the torch for all life in the universe. If its coming then we have an existentially threatening risk soon on the horizon.

Fortunately these grim scenarios fail to explain all of our observations, although great filters are an importation foundation to understand the later models which do. Unfortunately, the next one is a bit more grim.

Solution 2: The Dark Forest

Fermi Paradox Solution: The Dark Forest

TLDR: Interstellar Civs are common, but are either silent or dead because everyone is incentivized to be paranoid and take a “shoot first ask questions never” type approach. This breaks the part of the Fermi paradox where we assume that we would be able to see other life. Between the long distances, speed of attacks, evolutionary incentives for life to expand, and the explosive growth even primitive life could undergo and become a threat, its unlikely that a scenario in which life is common and but not visible to us that shakes out any other way.

This one won’t be that important going forward, though. Although the Dark Forest model addresses the part of the Fermi Paradox where we expect to see life, it doesn’t address the rate at which life arises, nor when it arises.

And when you look at those aspects, it turns out human life arose early. Like, really early, and the Dark Forest Theory can’t account for it. Even if filters are picking civs off left and right, we’re still one of the first. What can account for this is Grabby Aliens.

Solution 3: Grabby Aliens

Fermi Paradox Solution: Grabby Aliens

TLDR: the universe’s clock has been running for 13.8 billion years after the Big Bang. Habitable stars will last over five trillion years. Why did we develop in the first .28% of the amount of time we would be able to, while still seeing no one else doing the same? Life likes to expand. If life expands to fill a niche, no other life will evolve to fill the same niche. The best way we have to explain why we are so early is that we actually aren’t. We are actually representative of a typical space-faring civilization in terms of start date bemuse life expands quickly then prevents other civs from spawning on planets they occupy. So the only life that able to arise does so early, before another lineage of life expands into where their home planet would have been.

The implications of this model are that its very common for life, when it does develop, to expand quickly (30-90% of light speed) and then stabilize.

The future we can expect for humanity, given this scenario, is quite bright.

How would a meta-narrative using this as a Genesis story work? What sort of modes of moral conduct would this inform? How would this impact ones sense of purpose? Community? What would your sense of order to the universe be if you based it on this?

Conclusion
Yeah, I’m pulling out graphs as I pitch a new ideology.

Logistic growth is a fantastic model for the growth of life. If we’re just starting out and about to expand as the Grabby Aliens model predicts, then we’re on the early part of the curve right now. And until we start to bump into other space faring civilizations, this is going to feel more like exponential growth. This means a very small change in the present will have a massive impact on the lives of our decedents.

If the lives of future people have value and this is the prediction for our future, then modes of moral conduct, a sense of purpose, and a sense of order to the universe all flow naturally from this. With an origin story obviously fulfilled by this, all that is left to replace the void religion left is a sense of community and comfort around death. People are easily able to find community wherever there are shared goals, so all that left is comfort around death.

And that is a story for another time.

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Uncategorized

Statement of Intent

Where Toads Stack (not in love or rapport but total consummate reverence), October 13th, 2022–

As other serpents crawl upon their bellies, so can this; but he (manifested) has another method of moving peculiar to his own species, which he always adopts when he is in eager pursuit of his prey; he throws himself into a circle, running rapidly around, advancing like a hoop, with his tail arising and pointed forward in the circle, by which he is always in the ready position of striking1.

𓆕

‣ cites when compelled, never claims intellectual property, does not want to be heard

‣ collects,  interprets, distributes trash, politics, art, experience

‣ has access to hidden places and circulates amongst those who are hidden2

‣ exists, immaterial within the rattle and shriek of the North East

1] Excerpt “Tour in the U.S.A”, 1784, “Hoop Snake”, Wikipedia

2]  I CARRY INDUSTRIAL DUST AND LET IT SETTLE ON TREE LEAVES (Kurvitz, Hindpere)

Regional3, the wattle and daub of coastal enclaves, cordoned vacant lots sheltered by historical facade

𓆕

I have heard and echoed Boston’s cries for help. Up and down the Northeast Corridor4 manufactured transience and stagnation keeps the crowd fresh, the “selective internships” unpaid, the transit diurnal, and class invisible. 

I have seen the cultural foundation of this (precariously landfilled) megapolis gutted by “progress”. I have seen light bent and agendas cloaked in the surreal. 

I have seen the social contract broken, reinterpreted, stripped away. I have little faith in the American project, or the paranoia, masochism, and nationalism it promotes.

The Hoop Snake resides in the foul foam and algal bloom of (nonlinear, objective) history, and rejects the American concession to “prosperity” and “progress”. The Hoop Snake revels in the construction of metanarratives, hyperobjects, and

3]  Heard in the presence of violence, the potential energy of the Hell’s Kitchen yuppie, Kendall Square missile technician, (East) Williamsburg filmmaker, and Mid-Atlantic middle man

4] Ship of Theseus, local displacer, “future” delayer, promised bones stood too close to sick men

the humanist sublime. Postmodernism (irrevocably perverted for capital) and Neoliberalism are antithetical to this sublime. 

The Hoop Snake knows the sincerity of this world and that it is not too late to wreak havoc on the Middle Class5. 

𓆕

First Revolutionary Initiative:

Allston will be buried. The brave expatriates, defenders of this barren, rocky soil, tenants of the same multi-families they seek to entomb, will win. Allston 2, Allston 36, and Allston 4 will tower above the skyline of our Athenian city, brutalist monuments to revolutionary momentum and collective production . Its spire will stretch to the militia navies of New Haven or Lake Champlain, and to the guerillas of the Pioneer Valley and the ridges of The Great One. The Empire’s central nervous system will sever itself. 

5] Somewhere close, neighborhood kids slide down the husk of a Honda Pilot, keyed, stripped of parts, inscribed, in the midst of street vendors and old men playing dominoes– a glacial erratic, a Byzantine column, a knee high stone wall.

6] “Village of Allston 3” or “Allston 3”, serendipitously mirrors the locally dubbed “Allston 3” responsible for the siege of the Tennessee Gas Pipeline Company, forcing New England energy independence, and escalating tensions between federalists and expatriates.

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Summer 2023

A granite rock with a large front facing crystal

Hello non-existent readers.

It is my pleasure to announce a new season of fungal growth is upon us. This year brings in guest writers, (soon to be announced) travels to be recounted, and new experiences that will inform all that is.

This is the summer of intention.

Times are tough, what pathways in life are feasible? The sexually repressed — traditional way of living in the Northeast of America (New England) still stands strong with consumerism and capitalistic tendencies. The youth are still confused and (nearly) hopeless. Will they find alternative ways of living that press against pre-conceived values & morals.

Is it any good to think of different ways to live life?

How can we press against a system that depresses, overwhelms, and ultimately makes us depend upon its methods of dissociation?

We are out of touch with nature, perhaps always have been. It’s an interesting question. Are we in a fight against nature? are we spiritually awakened from the embrace of nature? are we separate from nature?

If you are a new reader. Welcome. You can find any of our emails at the bottom of the page. Please reach out with inquiries, questions, writing prompts, or any other form of input.

Take care out there.

Categories
Effemera

Hall of Postmodern Horrors

This post is to catalogue all of the worst examples postmodernism manifesting itself, in all of its empty, existentially terrifying, and ironic glory.

Nothing Forever

If you thought Seinfeld was about nothing, wait until you see this. Tasking an AI with generating endless Seinfeld seems like a punishment out of Greek mythology.

Here’s the live twitch stream.

“By Allah, I see the annihilation of postmodernism as clearly as I see you.”

-Jordan Peterson

David Lynch’s Weather Reports

Remember that guy who made twin peaks and the 1980s Dune? He makes daily weather reports.

I can’t tell if this is entirely ironic, and if so what he’s trying to say.

The Avatar Group from How To with John Wilson

I could only find it on twitter sorry.

This was what made me realize that something was lost with organized religion.

This is part 2 (the more important one).

Same energy. Tulpa 8Chan Groupchat

https://app.element.io/#/room/#tulpas:matrix.thisisjoes.site

The Q Kid

What’s a kid to do, caught in the currents of political paranoia with no institutions to anchor to.

Lasagna Cat

The pipe strip. The Pipe Strip. Is the hour long speech just a way to say Garfield isn’t funny? Why do they all end with a memorial to the still living creator of Garfield, Jim Davis?

The channel’s last post was a 5 hour long video of the responses to a sex survey, which managed to spawn another hour long video analyzing all of it.

This is a link to the analysis video not the sex survey.

Are You Hot?

Twin Peaks – Message to Allied Forces (Season 2 featurettes)

Categories
Fermi Paradox

Fermi Paradox Solution: Grabby Aliens

So: it turns out human life arose early. The universe’s clock has been running for 13.8 billion years after the Big Bang, and some stars will live over five trillion years. Unless these stars (red dwarfs) aren’t habitable due to some mechanism we don’t yet understand, some other force must be biasing life to arise as early as we did in order for us to be typical.

That’s where Grabby Aliens come in. Life is evolutionary selected to expand. If life expands to fill a niche, no other life will evolve to fill the same niche. That’s about it.

2D simulation (peep the time axis) from the original paper of civilizations beginning and expanding, preventing other civilizations form beginning where they expand to.

These are some of the predictions made by this model, which we should expect to apply to us as well.

  • Civilizations likely expand very quickly relative to the speed of light.
  • Grabby civilizations typically control 109 to 1015 stars before they bump into another.
  • We will meet another grabby civilizations in 50,000,000- 50,000,000,000 years.

This is quite the optimistic forecast for us. We’re looking at a few million to billion years of expansion at high speed. This even makes it look likely that we will overcome Climate Change and other Great Filter level threats.

I’m going to restrain myself from just retelling everything that the original paper and these videos do a better job of. (I did a draft of that and deleted it). I want this to just be a quick explanation that will equip you for other posts, with references if you want to dive in further.

On that note here are two really good videos that explain the Grabby Aliens Theory in more depth. Pick your poison: animated European dogs or PBS.

Rational Animations’ video.
PBS Space Time’s video.
Categories
Fermi Paradox

Fermi Paradox Solution: The Dark Forest

The Dark Forest is a solution to the Fermi Paradox in which the absence of observable life is explained by a pressure towards cautious silence and a “shoot first ask questions never” type approach to first contact.

So there’s this Chinese sci-fi book by the same name (this will be quick, and its relevant I swear) in which The Dark Forest Theory is crucial to the plot. In the book, the theory is introduced by 3 Axioms:

  1. “Suppose a vast number of civilizations distributed throughout the universe, on the order of the number of observable stars. Lots and lots of them. Those civilizations make up the body of a cosmic society. Cosmic sociology is the study of the nature of this super-society.” (based on the Drake equation)
  2. Suppose that survival is the primary need of a civilization.
  3. Suppose that civilizations continuously expand over time, but the total matter in the universe remains constant.

This basically sets up a Darwinian competition for survival, but on a galactic scale. In this scale communication takes years. In this state of nature, languages, biology, cognition, and values will all be alien.

Other civilizations are threats not only for their present capacity for violence, but for their potential to make technological leaps ahead of you, while the speed of light keeps this hidden from you and slows your communications down AND means any attack you made on them would take substantial time to reach them (cruelly giving the edge to preemptive strikes).

On earth we have a hotline between our nuclear powers’ heads of state. Real time communication with translators. In The Dark Forest, alien languages and cognition make it hard to understand them enough to trust them enough not to attack them, and even if you do, how sure are you that they trust you? Worse yet, how do you convince them you trust them enough that they believe you and don’t feel compelled to attack you out of self defense?

If this is true what does it mean?

First things first, as a civilization, we should probably shut up. This is pretty self explanatory. We should also probably hold off on things like Dyson spheres/swarms, or any other mega-engineering projects that would be apparent from a distance, lest we blow our cover.

The universe isn’t dead, but is instead teeming with life! It’s just all scared for its life waiting to kill you (just like nature intended).

To be fair, this somewhat lowers the stakes from some of the worldviews I described arising from The Great Filters interpretation. We don’t carry the torch for life all on our own.

In this case, we should do our best to expand quietly, if at all.

Categories
Fermi Paradox

Fermi Paradox Solution: Great Filters

The concept of Great Filters are one solution to the Fermi Paradox in which the absence of observable life is explained by the existence of a number of thresholds life must to cross in order to become an interstellar civilization. Essentially, Great Filters simultaneously allow us to explain why it is that we’re here, and why it is that we see no one else. As it stands, we are advanced enough that we could conceive of perpetuating our civilization indefinitely in the near future. Why do we see no one else doing so?

This paradox can be explained by the presence of a Great Filter either before or after our current epoch, and both cases have powerful implications for humanity as a whole.

Good illustrations of the concept from Tim Urban at Wait But Why that I found on google images and am now stealing. The article goes into other, more specific, explanations for the paradox that I don’t in this article. Also, there’s a good video Kurzgesagt did on the topic.
If this is true what does it mean?

As a species, it is clear we are past the “filters” of things like cooperation or tool-use (or industrialization, depending on how granular you’re trying to make your metaphorical filters here). We’re currently working our way through the filter of having the capacity to destroy ourselves with nuclear weapons. We’re approaching filters like actually deciding to expand to other worlds, not destabilizing our planets chemical cycles with our newfound industrial capacity, and having the capacity to destroy ourselves with antimatter weapons.

Any of these may be the big one.

Given this, there are two possible scenarios, depending on if the Great Filters preventing other civilizations from existing are behind us, and each hypothetical holds great significance for meaning making.

We may be the first to make it this far. In this case, the hardest filters are behind us and we carry the torch for all life the last few meters to safety. The impact that we would have on the fate of life in the universe by simply not making any unforced errors this close to becoming a stable interstellar species could imbue any daily task contributing towards this goal with cosmic purpose.

If its common for life to make it to the point we’re at, and yet we still see none, then that’s a grim forecast for us as a prospective interstellar species. More likely, the filter that has defeated every civilization before us is on our horizon. So time to gear up. We’re about to have a civilization ending threat sometime soon. We need to mobilize.

Categories
Effemera

What Happened to Trout Fishing in America?

I find myself at a roadblock. A Conversation begins between us two beings, one of us filled with Fearlessness and Compassion, the other filled with Vermont and trout fishing in America.

I find myself at a roadblock. Trout fishing in America is unabridged, and two beings wrestle for life between the two sides of a line. Two beginnings between us filled with feeling these shoulders. Two beings and two beings, one of compassion and one of whistling into the dark. 

I find myself at a roadblock. Vermont holds me. I and two beings go trout fishing in America. Fishing for whistling trout and even though these are my shoulders, a conversation begins, and I wrestle FOR LIFE. 

I find myself at a roadblock. I whistle, and my life feels unabridged. 

Even though I find myself at a roadblock, even though I whistle for compassion, even though a dark, dark road fills us with unabridged conversations, even though life between us separates, I find myself beginning to wrestle for the life of Trout fishing in America.

I find myself at a roadblock between a line of Vermonts. 

I find myself filled with shoulders of compassion and trout fishing in America.

                        AMEN.

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BREAKING NEWS: Mayor Thomas Menino (Cyber-Menino) spotted in the Rose Kennedy Greenway

If you don't know what this is get off our site
Sourced from DALLE 2

“Those of you living outside Allston who currently drive don’t need to panic—you WILL be forced to take mass transit to work, to or from shopping centers, or to pick up the kids. It is in your best interest to do so. Those who choose to drive can only drive to the nearest station. In other words, “The only highway that exists will be the Mass Pike.” – Cyber-Menino

November 1st, 2022

Boston, MA- Tourists along Boston’s renown Freedom Trail were treated to a once in a lifetime surprise today, when former mayor Thomas Menino materialized, as if birthed, in a eruption of sea water and sewage on Hanover St at around 1:13pm. Exiting his rat seasoned placental stew, Menino, (whose severed head floated in a jar attached to a swarthy and well toned young body), began screaming about monoliths and the annexation of New England by Allston “militants”.

After refusing to cooperate with Boston Police, Menino (dubbed by onlookers as Cyber-Menino) was escorted away from Hanover St in a squad car. Upon seeing Allston on Storrow Drive, Menino cried in agony.

“Look what you’ve done to Allston!” he wailed from the back seat of the cruiser. “The artwork! The revolutionary murals! It will never be the same!”

“I stand with the anemic!”

Cyber-Menino, November 1st 2022

Following a detour down Commonwealth Avenue, Mayor Menino’s demeanor shifted, with officers saying his prior sadness shifted toward a tangible rage.

“Oh… when is this? Fuck this city- the revolution will come in time! As long as [Bostonians] have to cross two lanes of traffic by going down two alleys and scaling a five foot tall brick wall, they can keep that shit!” Menino exclaimed.

Police confirmed that they are unsure how Menino came to be suspended in a liquid substance, as all known records point to his natural death by cancer. Menino is not the first former mayor to show up in this fashion. Former mayor Joseph Curtatone of Somerville showed up at Porter Square station in 2014, where he also reeked of sewage and sea water.

Though experts disagree on the meaning of Menino’s short lived cryptic ramblings, Menino repeatedly made reference to “Allston 3” and “Allston 4”, as if their absence in the city skyline was causing great distress.

Menino also went on to explain that he felt the Freedom Trail used to be far more pedestrian friendly, and voiced his support of pedestrians at large.

Whatever talk of revolution or urban renewal, one thing is for sure, if you see a skull floating in a jar in Boston, let it be!

This article was sourced from:

http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2016/07/29/freedomtrailcybervisitor

http://www.bostonherald.com/news/local/article123553239

https://twitter.com/bostonjunior/status/75279869117993577

http://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/2015/04/09

http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2016/07/07

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On Site Reporting

Marxist Ramblings on the Maine Island Intelligentsia

Half a billion years ago, a collision of continents and gradual volcanic activity formed islands of pink granite jutting above the North Atlantic. Slowly, lichen and moss grew and died atop the granite crystals structures, churning out a thin layer of topsoil. As everywhere, the slow accumulation of organic matter eventually created the right conditions for more complex plant life to take root. Now, spruce is supreme on the fog-drenched island coasts. A tough sub-alpine forest of stunted krummholz trees and hardy underbrush flourishes in the shallow acidic soil spread atop the granite, stringy moss fed from the Atlantic fog growing long from the spruce branches. 

Krummholz trees (German: krumm, “crooked, bent, twisted” and Holz, “wood”). is a type of stunted, deformed vegetation encountered in the subarctic and subalpine tree line landscapes, shaped by continual exposure to fierce, freezing winds.

The islands feel shrouded from the North American continent, protected by the frigid currents from highways, superstores, megachurches, strip malls, oil refineries, diesel-powered rail lines, flood lights, traffic, Memorial Day sales, high school football games, jets, 4th of July parades, parking fees, luxury apartment construction, mass shootings, advertisements, and psychopathic, scum-of-the-Earth cops . The small ferry to the island only runs a few times a day in the summer, and even less in the off season. Some on the island get by for weeks and months without visiting the mainland, relying on the kitchen gardens, fishing, and the small general store. It’s simply too expensive for private capital to see the island as a profitable consumer market, so it spares the region to remain a rare vestige of a pre-war New England community. 

This freedom from modern North American consumer culture is what draws many. They live in humble lean-tos, a-frames, old fisherman’s cottages, converted wood sheds, yurts, and barns. They hike through the sub-alpine forest, carrying in water from town in plastic jugs, to reach their humble wooden homes. Don’t let such ruggedness fool you- most of those islanders hold PhDs and work as engineers, doctors, lawyers, architects, and professors online or back on the mainland. They gather under the spruce trees for Turkish coffee and discuss political economy. They grow tomatoes and blackberries in the sandy soil, shared freely between them through an economy of abundance. During the workweek, the retired islanders babysit the kids of the younger islanders, taking them on hikes through the forest and adventures to the rocky beaches. The parents pay them back through shared dinners, shellfish, or nothing at all. Everything feels like a gift, with summer days on the islands blending into each other in a crunchy utopian blur.

At first glance, the islands are obviously an enclave of wealth, of the academic bourgeois escaping the American continent for a few months a year and living out their rustic communalist fantasy. Admittedly, this is true. But the islanders are not capitalists in the sense that they are not the landlords, managers, and CEOs of society; they don’t control the means of production, or much capital for that matter. Despite their wealth, they are a peak into what could be, of a post-capitalist future where automation has freed the worker to pursue education, pleasure, and community, not consumption, to the fullest.

Too many North American leftists subconsciously attribute Marxism to grandiose displays of industry. Communism in North America should not attempt to replicate the industrial ethos of post-war Eastern Europe for a simple reason: North America has already industrialized, and arguably industrialized too far. What little industrial propaganda we promote should be focused on building zero-carbon energy production and transportation infrastructure. The youth forgets that communism is more than just economics. Far beyond the technicalities of a centrally planned economy, the experience of North American communism to a single person will feel like the backyard concerts on the mossy granite islands of northern Maine. It will be block-parties, neighborhood potlucks, folk festivals in general stores, youth hikes in the Rocky Mountains, fall harvest celebrations, New Year’s parades, co-op coffee shops, breakfast, birthday parties, and camping. The promise of restructuring social dynamics, of creating non-hierarchical communities more aligned with the pre-industrial villages and tribes that we have evolved to be a part of, is perhaps the most convincing argument for communism we can make to our pleasure-driven culture.