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Chaos Unleashed: When "Irrational" Makes Perfect Sense

May 12, 2026

Once fairness and honesty have been stripped out of a social order, social trust collapses. Once trust collapses, society disintegrates.



It's important to understand the dynamics of chaos before the certainties in our lives are swept away.

Over the past few months, I've been exploring the dynamics of delusion and breakdown:


1. our reliance on models to make sense of the world and what happens when those models no longer track reality;
2. the difficulties in adapting when our old model breaks down;
3. our growing reliance on complex systems and AI;
4. our frustration with broken systems that are impervious to reform;
5. how the status quo makes a show of reforming broken systems, substituting theatrics for substance;
6. the destabilizing consequences of extremely asymmetric distributions of wealth, power and income;
7. the erosion of our standard of living and quality of life as "progress" is replaced by Anti-Progress and an Ultra-Processed Life of transactions and synthetic facsimiles of authenticity;
8. how these forces have shaped two "fork in the road" narratives:
A. boundless prosperity for all generated by AI and technology
B. the breakdown of an imbalanced, inherently destabilizing socio-economic-political system of the powerful and the powerless defined by moral decay, the collapse of trust in institutions, widening extremes of inequality and the substitution of artifice for authenticity, a.k.a. everything is fake, to maintain the illusion that all is well.

These ideas inform my recent work:

One of Us Is Delusional, But Which One?

When Predictability Collapses, What's Scarce and Valuable Is Adaptability

AI, Money, Human Nature and the Problem with Problems

Why We're Helpless When Things Break Down

The Fork in the Road Ahead

Recession and Revolution: Our Experience Isn't a Model or System

What Would Be Truly Bullish? Actually Fixing What's Broken

There are two underlying material-world dynamics that tie all these themes together:

1. Growth / Progress--defined as higher energy consumption per capita that results in increased purchasing power of wages--is no longer robust enough to raise all boats. This reality is reflected in the declining purchasing power of wages, which is typically labeled "a rise in the cost of living" / inflation.

2. At the same time, the top 10% ownership / professional / managerial elite is taking a larger share of the pie due to a number of factors, including regulatory capture, political changes in tax laws that favor asset-owners, etc., and the explicit but unstated policy decision to give the stagnating economy the appearance of "growth" by inflating credit-asset bubbles that enrich those who already own assets at the expense of those who don't own enough to matter.

These boil down to the distribution of "pain" and "gain": who gets the pain and who gets the gain, and whether the pain and the gain are distributed across all socio-economic classes or are they asymmetrically distributed.

The "pain" of declining purchasing power of wages, living standards and quality of life (for example, health, financial security. etc.) is being distributed to the bottom 80% while the "gains" are distributed to the top 10% owners of capital. (A tiny percentage of the gains trickles down to the cohort between 80% and 90% who own enough capital to maintain a "middle class" lifestyle.)

As I have noted many times, humans are hardwired to be innately attentive to the three dynamics that give humanity's social skills such immense adaptive power:
1. fairness / unfairness (justice, injustice)
2. truth / honesty / authenticity
3. trust (but verify)

Once fairness and honesty have been stripped out of a social order, social trust collapses. Once trust collapses, society disintegrates.

I consider it self-evident that extreme asymmetries of distributing pain and gain cannot be justified as "fair" nor are they perceived to be "fair" by those absorbing the pain.

I also consider it self-evident that truth / honesty / authenticity have been replaced by theater, staged performances and the self-serving artifices of making a show of reforming broken systems.

That social trust is in steep decline cannot be plausibly denied.

This raises the question: how does this disintegration manifest?

Tim Morgan of Surplus Energy Economics (highly recommended reading) has provided an insightful context for understanding how social-economic-political disintegration follows a profoundly human and inherently "irrational" emotional progression.

As he explains, in our technocratic system, causal chains are invariably presented as mechanistic: technology changes this, monetary policy changes that, and so on. We understand "how things work" as linear, reductionist, left-hemisphere mechanical processes of inputs, processes and outputs.

But humans are not machines, and society is not a mechanism comprised solely of institutions and technocratic / financial processes.

Morgan offers the missing half of disintegrative dynamics: the emotional progression of grief famously described by Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross in her 1969 book On Death and Dying, a process that in one way or another works through five emotional states: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance.

Morgan posits that we are collectively grieving the loss of growth without being fully aware that we're experiencing this dynamic because we're in the denial stage.

#323: They First Make Mad: Stress and Grief at the End of Growth (Tim Morgan of Surplus Energy Economics)

Kubler-Ross describes a system that is not linearly mechanical; it's a progression that often veers into emotional states that can be described as "irrational" even as they are completely rational to those experiencing them.

This is a system of emotional processes and truths that can't be understood with the conventional tools of systems dynamics or the social sciences, for the "irrationality" of each state is intrinsic to the progression.

Humans are not mechanisms, and neither is this emotional system. What appears "irrational" is not irrational; it's the way this system works to reconcile our inner life with existential life-changing events.

The status quo's survival strategy is to claim that the Anti-Progress of systemic decline in the standard of living / quality of life experienced by the bottom 80% is still "growth" and "Progress," but this model is veering so far from lived experience that it's increasingly delusional for those not being enriched by bubbles in stocks and housing.

Since we resist losing what we value and are accustomed to--a positive social identity, livelihood, security--the bottom 80% are experiencing the uneasy limbo that precedes a profound phase change that cannot be reversed.

In this temporary state of instability, they're clinging to denial that the era of "growth / Progress" that actually improved their living standards and quality of life has ended, even as the tightening vise of decline increasingly stresses their security, social mobility and belief in the model of permanent upward mobility and prosperity.

The pain generated by decline comes in forms that don't lend themselves to measurement: anxiety, precarity, etc., emotions that make denial a form of emotional solution. But this "solution" doesn't resolve the anxiety or precarity; it's only an emotional Band-Aid / coping mechanism.

Our hardwired awareness of unfairness, artifice and the collapse of trust can't be suppressed, and these chip away at denial. Eventually the denial breaks down, much like an avalanche: the scales fall from our eyes and we see everything we've denied as inescapably real.

On the other side of this phase change is anger.

Denial becomes increasingly delusional as declines that would have been shocking in previous eras of prosperity are now accepted with the passive shrug of the powerless. Selling one's blood for extra cash--once the sole domain of destitute junkies needing cash to feed their addiction--is now an accepted middle-class "gig" to earn extra cash to support a lifestyle that is slipping away:

The Middle-Class Suburbanites Who Sell Their Blood Plasma to Get By.

Another hallmark of middle-class security--the IRA/401K retirement fund--is being drained to pay for everyday expenses:

They Withdrew 401(k) Money Early, and They Have Some Regrets.

In an era of declining purchasing power of wages, the money being withdrawn is unlikely to be replaced.

This account by an anthropologist sheds light on the themes I'm describing:
"The America I move through today often feels alien to the one I thought I knew. Those who fall behind are seen not as constrained, but as having failed. The result is a pervasive, if often unspoken, alienation--one that erodes shared bonds and leaves people to navigate inequality on their own.

Most troubling is the way this environment feeds a politics of grievance. Anger and frustration are redirected toward scapegoats rather than toward the structures that concentrate wealth and power. Identity and culture become tools of division rather than sources of connection. In that context, authoritarianism finds its opening--not as a rupture, but as an extension of patterns already in place."


Since humans are social animals, private anger that is shared becomes public anger--a much more powerful, more volatile emergent property of the phase change from denial to anger.

In this context, we can understand the "wealth tax" in California and the tax on second homes worth in excess of $5 million in New York City as precursors of this phase change from denial to anger which fuels the desire to restore some balance by clawing back some of the gains of the super-wealthy.

This is an example of what I call redress in my book Investing In Revolution: the desire to rebalance extremes of inequality to restore some measure of trust in institutions and the system. Redress can also be fulfilled by restoring previously existing limits on concentrations of power that tilted the system to distribute the lion's share of gains to the few at the top.

Examples of the rules being changed to benefit the wealthy include stock buybacks (previously illegal), Citizens United and a long list of other regulatory changes designed to benefit those with the wealth to buy political influence.

If redress is thwarted or watered down to just another virtue-signaling performance of fake reform for show, the alternative manifestation of anger is retribution. When anger slides into rage as redress is thwarted, retribution has the potential to gain an emotional momentum few anticipate.

Absent systemic unfairness, deception and distrust, anger can proceed to bargaining without transitioning into rage: when bad things happen to us while others are unaffected, it feels unfair--but since it isn't intentional--no one sacrificed our interests to serve their own--we eventually find ways to accept that life is inherently unfair.

But when the system is built on unfairness, deception and distrust so the few can benefit at the expense of the many, anger heats up into rage when redress is denied. This rage seeks expression, and if it's shared by others, it quickly spreads into a volatile public movement.

Bargaining, depression, and acceptance are off the table until substantive redress is achieved or the rage burns itself out.

Chaos looks irrational due to its unpredictability and destructive potential. But when viewed as part of a hardwired emotional casual chain triggered by unfairness, deception and distrust, then not only are anger and demands for redress rational, so too is rage unleashing chaos when legitimate demands for redress are denied by those in power.

At this volatile juncture where the emergent properties of public rage take on a life of their own, the importance of shared beliefs and ideals becomes paramount: absent a narrative and model that inspires positive collective actions, the emergent properties of public rage manifest as uncontrollable chaos.

History offers several templates for what happens once the spark of public anger ignites a fast-spreading wildfire of rage and retribution. One is martial law, a military clampdown that erases public expression and replaces democratic institutions with authoritarian rule. This is the root of Napoleon's famous quip about quelling the mob with a "whiff of grapeshot," i.e. blasting the mob with cannons loaded with round bullets.

In other cases, an authoritarian or self-serving, corrupt neofeudal regime attempts to quell the disorder, but the force needed to suppress the public rage is beyond those being tasked to shoot down their family and friends to save the regime from the consequences of its exploitation and lies.

But the consequences of model collapse don't go away with force. All that force accomplishes is the suppression of public anger. What's needed to nurture a society that values, prioritizes and incentivizes fairness, authenticity and trust is a new model that inspires the disenfranchised with a coherent set of values and goals.

Ivan Illich described this in a way we can all understand:
"Neither revolution nor reformation can ultimately change a society, rather you must tell a new powerful tale, one so persuasive that it sweeps away the old myths and becomes the preferred story, one so inclusive that it gathers all the bits of our past and our present into a coherent whole, one that even shines some light into the future so that we can take the next step. If you want to change a society, then you have to tell an alternative story."

Developing this alternative story is the point of my work. The outlines are not complicated:

1. shift the goal from "growth" (The Waste Is Growth, Everything Is Disposable Landfill Economy) to a sustainably rewarding quality of life that isn't measured solely by material consumption but by the "prosperity" of positive social roles, upward mobility (chances to get ahead), agency (control of one's life) and a say in decisions affecting shared interests (for example, the quality of air / water and public institutions).

2. Limit centralization and the consolidation of financial, economic and political power in the hands of the few, who inevitably use this power to serve their interests at the expense of the many.

We can understand this alternative story as a secular Reformation, a necessary response to a incorrigibly corrupt status quo whose foundational story (infinite growth via what Tim Morgan succinctly describes as "infinite monetary stimulus and limitless technological possibility") is unsustainable and therefore delusional.

Absent a coherent, realistic, inspirational alternative story, once chaos is unleashed, there is no pathway to the restoration of fairness, authenticity and trust within a sustainable model that serves everyone's interests.

John Maynard Keynes famously stated that "markets can remain irrational longer than you can stay solvent." The same can be said of redress-denied, rage-fueled chaos: it too can remain irrational longer than we can imagine.



SHORT VIDEO: Unleashing Chaos: When "Irrational" Makes Perfect Sense (my narration, 1:48 min)

NEW PODCAST: Dennis Tubbergen and I discuss the growing risks facing the U.S. and global economy. (32:45 min)


My book Investing In Revolution is available at a 10% discount ($18 for the paperback, $24 for the hardcover and $8.95 for the ebook edition). Introduction (free)


Become a $3/month patron of my work via patreon.com

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My recent books:

Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases originated via links to Amazon products on this site.

THE REVOLUTION TRILOGY:
Investing In Revolution     Ultra-Processed Life     The Mythology of Progress

Systemic Problems/Solutions

Investing In Revolution (2025) Introduction (free)

The Mythology of Progress (2024) Introduction (free)

Global Crisis, National Renewal (2021) Introduction (free)

Money and Work Unchained (2017) Introduction (free)

A Radically Beneficial World (2015) Introduction (free)

What You Can Do Yourself

Ultra-Processed Life (2025) Introduction (free)

Self-Reliance in the 21st Century (2022) Introduction (free)

When You Can't Go On: Burnout, Reckoning and Renewal (2022) Introduction (free)

Get a Job, Build a Real Career and Defy a Bewildering Economy (2014) Intro (free)

Novels

The Adventures of the Consulting Philosopher Intro (free)

The Secret Life of an Asian Heroine First chapters (free)


Become a $3/month patron of my work via patreon.com.

Subscribe to my Substack for free




Investing In Revolution print $18, (Kindle $8.95, Hardcover $24 (145 pages, 2025)


Only now do we see that we've been investing in revolution for decades--not the revolutions we thought we were investing in, revolutions in technology and finance, but in the social revolution made inevitable by the extremes that we've reached in our single-minded pursuit of private gains.

The pendulum that we've pushed to an extreme will swing to the opposite extreme, and the artifices that have propped up a facade a stability for decades will accelerate the disorder rather than reverse it.

We now stand at the point of decision, and this book offers a path to a reformation and renewal that serves the shared interests of us all, not just the few.

Introduction (free)



Ultra-Processed Life print $16, (Kindle $7.95, audiobook, Hardcover $20 (129 pages, 2025)


Ultra-Processed Life: the substitution of a synthetic, commoditized, very profitable facsimile for what was once authentic.

Ultra-Processed Life is my term for everything that is analogous to ultra-processed snacks: attractively marketed, instantly alluring, easy to consume, addictive by design, tasty in the moment but harmful over time, its origins a black box of unknown processes, the brightly colored product bearing no resemblance to the real-world ingredients, an idealized form of what is inherently imperfect, untethered from the natural world.

As with many others, the catalyst for my exploration was a life-threatening medical crisis that did not have a specific cause.

This led me to wonder if our entire way of life is like an ultra-processed snack: tasty but not healthy, edible but stripped of the nutrients we need to be healthy, addictive by design. Introduction (free)



The Mythology of Progress, Anti-Progress and a Mythology for the 21st Century print $20, (Kindle $9.95, Hardcover $24 (215 pages, 2024) audiobook, Read the Introduction and first chapter for free (PDF)


What if the policies to accelerate growth are no longer working because our fix for every problem--growth at any cost--is failing? We're told Progress is inevitable as a result of technology, but everyday life is getting harder, not easier--the opposite of Progress, what I call Anti-Progress.

What if the real source of the unraveling is far deeper than economics or politics? What if the problem is what we see as the inevitable destiny of humanity--Progress--is actually a modern mythology, disconnected from the real-world consequences of growth for growth's sake?

We indignantly reject that Progress is a mythology, but our need for mythology hasn't gone away because we've mastered technology; we've created a modern mythology of technology that is heedless of its own consequences.

To truly progress, we need a new mythology aligned to 21st century realities. Read the Introduction and first chapter for free



Recent entries:

Chaos Unleashed: When "Irrational" Makes Perfect Sense May 12, 2026

When US Treasuries Play a Reverse Card May 11, 2026

What Would Be Truly Bullish? Actually Fixing What's Broken May 6, 2026

Recession and Revolution: Our Experience Isn't a Model or System May 4, 2026

Why We're Helpless When Things Break Down May 1, 2026

AI, Money, Human Nature and the Problem with Problems April 29, 2026

Sex, Money and Demographics April 27, 2026

Mercantilism: China and Beyond April 24, 2026

When the Cost of Truth Is High, We--and AI--Lie April 22, 2026

The Questions Nobody Asks as AI Replaces Human Workers April 20, 2026

Sell Now: Here's Why April 17, 2026

College Graduates Are Losing the Clone War April 15, 2026

I'll Turn Bullish When This Happens April 13, 2026


Aoril 2026 posts         March 2026 posts         February 2026 posts         January 2026 posts        

2025 archives         Archives 2005-2024







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Extra-Special Bonus Aphorisms:

"There is no security on this earth; there is only opportunity."
(Douglas MacArthur)

"We are what we repeatedly do." (Aristotle)

"Do the thing and you shall have the power." (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

"Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction." (E.F. Schumacher, via Tom R.)

"He who will not risk cannot win." (John Paul Jones)

"When we drink coffee, ideas march in like the army." (Honore de Balzac)

"Progress is not possible without deviation." (Frank Zappa, via Richard Metzger)

"Victory favors those who take pains." (amat victoria curam)

"The man who has a garden and a library has everything." (Cicero, via Lee Bentley)

"A healthy homecooked family meal and a home garden are revolutionary acts." (CHS)

"Do you know what amazes me more than anything else? The impotence of force to organize anything." (Napoleon Bonaparte)

"The way of the Tao is reversal" Or "Reversal is the movement of Tao." (Lao Tzu)

"Chance favours the prepared mind." (Louis Pasteur)

"Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm." (Winston Churchill)

"Where there is ruin, there is hope for treasures." (Rumi)

"The realm of gratitude is boundless." (CHS, 11/25/15)

"History doesn't have a reverse gear." (CHS, 12/22/15)

Smith's Law of Conservation of Risk: Every sustained action has more than one consequence. Some consequences will appear positive for a time before revealing their destructive nature. Some consequences will be intended, some will not. Some will be foreseeable, some will not. Some will be controllable, some will not. Those that are unforeseen and uncontrollable will trigger waves of other unforeseen and uncontrollable consequences. (July 8, 2014)(thanks to Lew G. for retitling the idea.)

Smith's Neofeudalism Principle #1: If the citizenry cannot replace a kleptocratic authoritarian government and/or limit the power of the financial Aristocracy at the ballot box, the nation is a democracy in name only.

The Smith Corollary to Metcalfe's Law (The Network Effect): the value of the network is created not just by the number of connected devices/users but by the value of the information and knowledge shared by users in sub-networks and in the entire network. (CHS, 4/6/16)

My Credo of Liberation: I no longer care if the power centers of our society--the distant, fortified castles of our financial feudal system--are changed by my actions, for I am liberated by the act of resistance. I am no longer complicit in perpetuating fraudulent feudalism and the pathology of concentrated power. I no longer covet signifiers of membership in the Upper Caste that serves the plutocracy. I am liberated from self-destructive consumerist-State financialization and the delusion that debt servitude and obedience to sociopathological Elites serve my self-interests. (Thank you, Klaus-Peter L., for reminding me)

"We've become a culture of excuses rather than solutions: solutions always require sustained effort and discipline." (CHS 4/9/16)

"Fraud as a way of life caters an extravagant banquet of consequences." (CHS 4/14/16)

"Creativity = problem solving = value creation." (CHS 6/4/16)

"Truth is powerful because it is the core dynamic of solving problems." (CHS 7/21/17)

"We live in a system of human emotions that masquerades as a science (economics)." (CHS 1/1/18)

"Always remember, your focus determines your reality." (George Lucas)

"Diversity is for poor people. Sameness is for the successful." (GFB)

"When power dissipates suddenly, it dissipates completely." (CHS 7/14/19)

"Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves." (Henry David Thoreau)

"Markets cannot price in the value of non-monetized natural assets such as diverse ecosystems." (CHS 7/14/19)

"Magical thinking isn't optimism, it is folly." CHS 1/3/22)

"Tune in (to self-reliance), drop out (of hyper-consumerism and debt-serfdom) and turn on (to relocalizing capital and agency)." (CHS 1/5/22)

"The path to everything you desire starts here: like yourself as you are right now." (CHS 11/20/22)

"There are only two signals: how many essentials you produce and share and if you're consuming less with better results. Everything else is noise." (CHS 12/17/22)

"Liberation is no longer needing any confirmation or feedback from others or the world for one's sense of self. Wealth, fame, recognition, admiration, praise, prestige, approval, sainthood, martyrdom, success: none are needed, none are desired." (CHS 12/26/22)

"When fame, wealth, prestige, status and glory are out of reach, you're free to pursue other more valuable things." (CHS 2/6/22)

"It is the sacred duty of every activist who seeks to better their community to grow and share as much life-giving food as is humanly possible." (CHS 6/15/23)

"Being anonymous, gray and unknown is the ideal state of freedom." (CHS 3/15/24)

"We seem to have entered a world of anti-leisure and anti-productivity in which the unpaid shadow work demanded to keep all the complicated digital bits in motion obliterate our leisure and productivity." CHS (5/22/24)

"It is axiomatic that failing systems work the best just before they fail catastrophically." Ray W.

"Looking younger is mere technique; thinking younger demands creativity." CHS (10/16/24)

"Tell me what's taboo and I'll tell you the truths that threaten the status quo." CHS (12/15/24)

"This is the core of the Attention Economy: the ultimate addiction is the addiction to ourselves." CHS (1/28/25)

"If You Seek the Truth, Look for What's Taboo." CHS (7/18/25)

"My definition of self-reliance: the less you need, the easier it is to get what you need." CHS (7/26/25)

"Mastery requires reading and doing." CHS (7/28/25)

"The replacement of authentic value, quality, agency, choice, trust, legitimacy and experience with self-serving facsimiles is the key dynamic of Ultra-Processed Life, my term for the present-day human condition." CHS (8/12/25)

"Ultra-Processed Life replaces an authentic experience with a synthetic, simulated, commoditized, highly profitable version that's superficially attractive but destructive over the long term." CHS (8/12/25)

"What we see everywhere is the replacement of authentic things--including democracy--with synthetic facsimiles designed to maintain the illusion of choice and value." CHS (8/12/25)

"Sometimes certainty is the enemy we don't even see and uncertainty is our most faithful ally." CHS (9/20/25)

"Sanitized, homogenized, synthesized Ultra-Processed Life isn't more fun; it's just more profitable." CHS (4/6/26)

"AI is ultra-processed cognition." CHS (4/6/26)

click here for more Extra-Special Bonus Aphorisms.





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