This is extraordinary work. I love taking it in from this perspective.
The Ouroboros image carries the entire architecture. That framing is devastating because it’s accurate.
From my background in behavioral economics: I’ve been documenting this for decades. Did my thesis on disparity over 15 years ago…the U.S. was already the most disparate developed country in the world on par with Nigeria. It’s only worse now. That didn’t happen by accident. It happened because the system was designed for extraction. The U.S. was built to be the most capitalist large country in the world, which is why social mobility here is horrific compared to Northern Europe or even Canada.
But here’s the deeper cut you’re making, it all goes back to the founding error. Slavery. The original writing of the Constitution didn’t see slavery as bad, it saw it as perfectly fine. After the Civil War we never learned the lesson. Reconstruction ended, then Jim Crow, then finally the Civil Rights era when Black people and women got full voting rights. International institutions don’t classify the U.S. as a full democracy until the 1960s. Then we start losing that status again in the 1980s.
The U.S. has been a full-fledged democracy for maybe 10-15 years of its entire lifespan. The main goal has always been extraction. Your Ouroboros framework shows what happens when extraction becomes the organizing principle across centuries—-eventually the system eats itself.
The section on climate timing, that’s the cruelty laid bare. Exxon knew in 1977. Buried it. Funded doubt for forty years. “Crime against life itself” with no legal framework because the magnitude was previously impossible. You named something that needed naming.
The old-money establishment understood legitimacy as an asset…you don’t kill the host, you extract indefinitely. The new oligarchs didn’t get that memo. They want operational control, not sustainable extraction. The system produced its own termination logic.
The Mahabharata frame in section IV reorients everything. This isn’t about good defeating evil. It’s structural violations compounding until the field demands clearing. Dharma violated so comprehensively that no partial repair reaches the scale of what’s broken. That’s where we are.
And the final movement (Kashmir Shaivism, the Tao, the Gita) dissolving the human-centric frame entirely. We’re not the ground, we’re a temporary expression. The ownership illusion extends even to consciousness itself.
The people who navigate collapse cleanly are the ones who stopped pretending it wasn’t happening. Clarity as ground. That’s the teaching.
Acceptance is always the first step. I see everything as a Buddhist mandala…absolutely beautiful, everything flows, comes and goes. Non-attachment.
Thank you for this. It’s rare to see someone work at this scale without flinching.
This is an extremely powerful truth bomb. ⭐️ And the question comes… and now what? Because we are here, in this moment, what do we serve? What do we love? Where do we flow our precious energy? Not because we know the outcome or even hope for human survival, but because we we are in integrity with love, with life. It’s hard to put into words, but for me it is serving the process of humans coming into conscious connection, into alignment with living flows, living processes… in service to life.
One of the challenges of a non anthropocentric view is to still live in the human body and host both visions at once. Being God and being human. One of the most interesting paradox.
For Krishna also said: action and inaction, even the sages are confused, for I, myself, is never without action. When the Tao says "when nothing is done, nothing remained undone" it is not encouraging to inaction. Nothing would be further from the truth.
But to truly act in a surrendered way, surrendered to the intelligence of life, I had to let go of the small self, the small version of myself and use the human animal as the vehicle but not the source of my actions.
I will, like you continue to work at human awakening. Yet being free of the expectation linked to the outcome is indeed freedom.
What has happened to me recently is a deeper clarity into the part of me that was still attached to outcomes from a human perspective...
Also I’m not sure if you are following my partner Joe Brewer here on Substack yet, but if not check out his writings so far to get a sense of what we are up to. Let’s start to weave more intentionally.
I have read Joe's article here and there, I'll pay more attention.
Honestly, I am grateful for the link to Benjamin's article. There is a solace to read analysis when it is so clear and confirm my own vision is not so isolated after all.
if you get a chance, read the comment i made to his post, as I saw two points that might be important to consider within it...
Your comment on Benjamin’s article is… potent. There is something about the combination of your article and Benjamin’s article that is bringing me into a deeper inquiry. It’s meeting me exactly where I am in my own process. At one level there is the question of if human survival is the right “goal,” even if we were able to align ourselves with life. This is important to consider deeply… most do not even allow themselves to engage in that inquiry. But what you are pointing to here in this article is something even deeper than that inquiry. It’s beyond should or shouldn’t, beyond worthiness or lack of worthiness of the human species, beyond even the question of if some of us will “wake up” and align ourselves with the living processes of Gaia and the universe… it’s a more deeply existential inquiry than that. It’s an inquiry about what is actually happening, not what “should” be happening, and it’s about our place in a much larger dance of consciousness and the nature of that dance… and the inevitable coming and going of every form, including humans. It is not a moral inquiry.
And yet… our human hearts are drawn towards that which we love, and that is real too. And if we are lucky, our actions are motivated by our love. The beauty is real. The incredible, mysterious truth that there is a part of the universe (us) that can experience beauty and love in this way, can become aware of itself in this way, is beyond miraculous. And the grief is very real around what is being “lost,” both human and non-human. This is where I find myself sitting now, in the heart of this paradox, and what it means for where and how I choose to direct my energy.
Nothing could be a better feedback than someone going into deeper enquiry.
I hope Benjamin gets a chance to see it and let me know what is read is on my additions.
the human / non-human centric point of view is not a new duality with a side to choose from. It is a polarity to observe within the human being. We maybe the only species able to see form a non species oriented viewpoint, and if it is the case it gives us a particular place in the web of life, a place that we have forgotten apparently.
From that place I am both divine and human, one and multiple, all at once. The key word you use is "paradox". In my experience truth is paradoxical.
But you will notice, few human are able to hold the hon-human POV without shrinking.
I doubt we are able to save ourselves from ourselves, it seems we are so far down the drain. Even if people wake up, we have built structure than resist change. In the fear we gather from not understanding who we we era we have established system of control and it is like these systems have now a life of their own, themselves fighting for survival.
It doubt it will make for a happy end (for humans) but it will certainly be a great show.
Amazing article. In a less academic way, I have observed these facts for 30 years. It was not difficult to see when your live in the places at the receiving end of the system. Also why I feel that privilege is the easiest form of denial, and I don’t mean by that being rich, but just the privilege of leaving in the west and assuming that our lives are normal and that when other countries can’t provide these standards of privilege is because they are mismanaged and corrupt…
Thanks for writing this. I've been coming to similar findings and converging on the Ouroboros as the symbol now of the patriarchal hierarchical systems we've been living under for 10,000 years. I recently woke up to the 50 year assault. since the Powell Memo, on everything that protects love and life. It's baffling that it was allowed. How powerful the propaganda. How effective putting everyone into a trauma response was to their machinations.
Thank you for the reply, I personally do not use the word patriarchy (it is a longer story and not a popular one). And yes, it is baffling that someone could ignore such a warning just for the sake of profit... and not just ignore it, spend millions to bury it.
I have even come to see the "conspiracy theories as another way to discredit the possible opposition. Make it feel like anyone who challenge the situation is depicted as a lunatic. And of course the conspiracy world is full of lunatic...
what is the quote already: Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
I'm not sure I am using the correct definition of patriarchy. I mean the broad description of a way of organizing reality around domination - rigid hierarchy, otherism, and objectifying life into "things" for profit and hoarding over life and people. In contrast to matriarchy which is the centering of child, community, collective.
My search is for a word that encapsulated the base code, the organizing principle of the violent systems capitalism, imperialism, colonialism, fascism, etc.
I believe that before 10,000 ago, before the option of hoarding resources came about, the ability to stay in one place and build, and then abstract into pyramid schemes that made abstracting human life more possible, there was much greater balance.
It may not be this simple, but if there was a word to identify what it was, then we could work towards the solution?
While I agree we all have dark and light in us, that has to have been true for the beginning of time, but we have not always lived under a system of systematic genoicide and oppression of the man for the few. Someone created that system.
Thank you, I appreciate the honesty of the inquiry here.
What you describe is real (domination - rigid hierarchy, otherism, and objectifying life into "things" for profit and hoarding over life and people).
Why I do not use patriarchy or matriarchy is that it is too dualistic and easily confused with masculine / feminine, men / women etc. which is another otherism.
If you take the neutral definition of the words: a social system where fathers / mothers (or male/ female elders) hold primary authority—over family, property, lineage, and often governance. That would define matriarchy and patriarchy.
What we call patriarchy is now "negative" and by contrast matriarchy is "positive". I think this just try to swing the pendulum to the other side.
A society lead by unhealthy male or female would give bad results equally. The problem is not patriarchy, it is unhealthy men (and women), and using a wrong word tend to mislead the efforts to solve the issue.
Now, I am a man and you can say I am biased. That is what most people do....🤷♂️
but this is semantic and i think we agree on the important parts.
Yes for most of human life on earth we lived with a different view and we had a better relationship with it. And we chose out of it...
When I finished, I was like a child, asking "But what about the wolves?"
I honestly do not know if my acceptance of this is indicative of courage or cowardice, my conscience beats me daily over a thousand things I should be doing for the forests, the children, the wildlife, the animals that need homes.
But I thank you for it. I really appreciate the history. I always want to know the beginning of the story.
I thank you for giving me something to rest on as well.
By all mean keep working for the forests, the children, the wildlife, the animals that needs home ... and the wolves, They all need help and we have done so much that was not helpful that every bit we do for them is valuable.
Let's just stop pretending we are not responsible. We can still say, I see you. I am sorry. and that counts a lot.
Yes, and....here we are, seeing, sensing, staying present, holding space and each other. Thank you for this, Gabriel. ❤️
You are welcome. Your witnessing is powerful. Our witnessing is powerful.
Love
This is extraordinary work. I love taking it in from this perspective.
The Ouroboros image carries the entire architecture. That framing is devastating because it’s accurate.
From my background in behavioral economics: I’ve been documenting this for decades. Did my thesis on disparity over 15 years ago…the U.S. was already the most disparate developed country in the world on par with Nigeria. It’s only worse now. That didn’t happen by accident. It happened because the system was designed for extraction. The U.S. was built to be the most capitalist large country in the world, which is why social mobility here is horrific compared to Northern Europe or even Canada.
But here’s the deeper cut you’re making, it all goes back to the founding error. Slavery. The original writing of the Constitution didn’t see slavery as bad, it saw it as perfectly fine. After the Civil War we never learned the lesson. Reconstruction ended, then Jim Crow, then finally the Civil Rights era when Black people and women got full voting rights. International institutions don’t classify the U.S. as a full democracy until the 1960s. Then we start losing that status again in the 1980s.
The U.S. has been a full-fledged democracy for maybe 10-15 years of its entire lifespan. The main goal has always been extraction. Your Ouroboros framework shows what happens when extraction becomes the organizing principle across centuries—-eventually the system eats itself.
The section on climate timing, that’s the cruelty laid bare. Exxon knew in 1977. Buried it. Funded doubt for forty years. “Crime against life itself” with no legal framework because the magnitude was previously impossible. You named something that needed naming.
The old-money establishment understood legitimacy as an asset…you don’t kill the host, you extract indefinitely. The new oligarchs didn’t get that memo. They want operational control, not sustainable extraction. The system produced its own termination logic.
The Mahabharata frame in section IV reorients everything. This isn’t about good defeating evil. It’s structural violations compounding until the field demands clearing. Dharma violated so comprehensively that no partial repair reaches the scale of what’s broken. That’s where we are.
And the final movement (Kashmir Shaivism, the Tao, the Gita) dissolving the human-centric frame entirely. We’re not the ground, we’re a temporary expression. The ownership illusion extends even to consciousness itself.
The people who navigate collapse cleanly are the ones who stopped pretending it wasn’t happening. Clarity as ground. That’s the teaching.
Acceptance is always the first step. I see everything as a Buddhist mandala…absolutely beautiful, everything flows, comes and goes. Non-attachment.
Thank you for this. It’s rare to see someone work at this scale without flinching.
—Johan
This has to be the wisest and most heart-breaking assessment of the present moment I've seen so far. It rings true in a deep and difficult way.
I refrain from apologizing from breaking your heart.
Yes, it is a heart breaking assessment, and I know somewhere in it there is a deeper truth, a space for gratitude and awe. That is the path we are on.
Thank you for your support and presence. It means a lot.
This is an extremely powerful truth bomb. ⭐️ And the question comes… and now what? Because we are here, in this moment, what do we serve? What do we love? Where do we flow our precious energy? Not because we know the outcome or even hope for human survival, but because we we are in integrity with love, with life. It’s hard to put into words, but for me it is serving the process of humans coming into conscious connection, into alignment with living flows, living processes… in service to life.
One of the challenges of a non anthropocentric view is to still live in the human body and host both visions at once. Being God and being human. One of the most interesting paradox.
For Krishna also said: action and inaction, even the sages are confused, for I, myself, is never without action. When the Tao says "when nothing is done, nothing remained undone" it is not encouraging to inaction. Nothing would be further from the truth.
But to truly act in a surrendered way, surrendered to the intelligence of life, I had to let go of the small self, the small version of myself and use the human animal as the vehicle but not the source of my actions.
I will, like you continue to work at human awakening. Yet being free of the expectation linked to the outcome is indeed freedom.
What has happened to me recently is a deeper clarity into the part of me that was still attached to outcomes from a human perspective...
I think you might appreciate this article by Benjamin Life, Gabriel. https://substack.com/@omniharmonic/note/p-191794328?r=ql4cb&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action
Also I’m not sure if you are following my partner Joe Brewer here on Substack yet, but if not check out his writings so far to get a sense of what we are up to. Let’s start to weave more intentionally.
I have read Joe's article here and there, I'll pay more attention.
Honestly, I am grateful for the link to Benjamin's article. There is a solace to read analysis when it is so clear and confirm my own vision is not so isolated after all.
if you get a chance, read the comment i made to his post, as I saw two points that might be important to consider within it...
Yes please, let's weave more intentionally...
Your comment on Benjamin’s article is… potent. There is something about the combination of your article and Benjamin’s article that is bringing me into a deeper inquiry. It’s meeting me exactly where I am in my own process. At one level there is the question of if human survival is the right “goal,” even if we were able to align ourselves with life. This is important to consider deeply… most do not even allow themselves to engage in that inquiry. But what you are pointing to here in this article is something even deeper than that inquiry. It’s beyond should or shouldn’t, beyond worthiness or lack of worthiness of the human species, beyond even the question of if some of us will “wake up” and align ourselves with the living processes of Gaia and the universe… it’s a more deeply existential inquiry than that. It’s an inquiry about what is actually happening, not what “should” be happening, and it’s about our place in a much larger dance of consciousness and the nature of that dance… and the inevitable coming and going of every form, including humans. It is not a moral inquiry.
And yet… our human hearts are drawn towards that which we love, and that is real too. And if we are lucky, our actions are motivated by our love. The beauty is real. The incredible, mysterious truth that there is a part of the universe (us) that can experience beauty and love in this way, can become aware of itself in this way, is beyond miraculous. And the grief is very real around what is being “lost,” both human and non-human. This is where I find myself sitting now, in the heart of this paradox, and what it means for where and how I choose to direct my energy.
Nothing could be a better feedback than someone going into deeper enquiry.
I hope Benjamin gets a chance to see it and let me know what is read is on my additions.
the human / non-human centric point of view is not a new duality with a side to choose from. It is a polarity to observe within the human being. We maybe the only species able to see form a non species oriented viewpoint, and if it is the case it gives us a particular place in the web of life, a place that we have forgotten apparently.
From that place I am both divine and human, one and multiple, all at once. The key word you use is "paradox". In my experience truth is paradoxical.
But you will notice, few human are able to hold the hon-human POV without shrinking.
I doubt we are able to save ourselves from ourselves, it seems we are so far down the drain. Even if people wake up, we have built structure than resist change. In the fear we gather from not understanding who we we era we have established system of control and it is like these systems have now a life of their own, themselves fighting for survival.
It doubt it will make for a happy end (for humans) but it will certainly be a great show.
Amazing article. In a less academic way, I have observed these facts for 30 years. It was not difficult to see when your live in the places at the receiving end of the system. Also why I feel that privilege is the easiest form of denial, and I don’t mean by that being rich, but just the privilege of leaving in the west and assuming that our lives are normal and that when other countries can’t provide these standards of privilege is because they are mismanaged and corrupt…
Thank you for sharing…
The world is so dark!
My head is spinning.
The world is spinning without controls.
Is it possible to step off? To slow it down? What about everyone else?
Thank you for writing this.
It is the clearest expression of our moment in time that I have seen.
thank for you seeing the way i see it. Sometime it feels quite lonely to see things the way other chose no to.
Love
I know exactly how you feel.
Sending love and support back.
Thanks for writing this. I've been coming to similar findings and converging on the Ouroboros as the symbol now of the patriarchal hierarchical systems we've been living under for 10,000 years. I recently woke up to the 50 year assault. since the Powell Memo, on everything that protects love and life. It's baffling that it was allowed. How powerful the propaganda. How effective putting everyone into a trauma response was to their machinations.
Thank you for the reply, I personally do not use the word patriarchy (it is a longer story and not a popular one). And yes, it is baffling that someone could ignore such a warning just for the sake of profit... and not just ignore it, spend millions to bury it.
I have even come to see the "conspiracy theories as another way to discredit the possible opposition. Make it feel like anyone who challenge the situation is depicted as a lunatic. And of course the conspiracy world is full of lunatic...
what is the quote already: Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
I'm not sure I am using the correct definition of patriarchy. I mean the broad description of a way of organizing reality around domination - rigid hierarchy, otherism, and objectifying life into "things" for profit and hoarding over life and people. In contrast to matriarchy which is the centering of child, community, collective.
My search is for a word that encapsulated the base code, the organizing principle of the violent systems capitalism, imperialism, colonialism, fascism, etc.
I believe that before 10,000 ago, before the option of hoarding resources came about, the ability to stay in one place and build, and then abstract into pyramid schemes that made abstracting human life more possible, there was much greater balance.
It may not be this simple, but if there was a word to identify what it was, then we could work towards the solution?
While I agree we all have dark and light in us, that has to have been true for the beginning of time, but we have not always lived under a system of systematic genoicide and oppression of the man for the few. Someone created that system.
Thank you, I appreciate the honesty of the inquiry here.
What you describe is real (domination - rigid hierarchy, otherism, and objectifying life into "things" for profit and hoarding over life and people).
Why I do not use patriarchy or matriarchy is that it is too dualistic and easily confused with masculine / feminine, men / women etc. which is another otherism.
If you take the neutral definition of the words: a social system where fathers / mothers (or male/ female elders) hold primary authority—over family, property, lineage, and often governance. That would define matriarchy and patriarchy.
What we call patriarchy is now "negative" and by contrast matriarchy is "positive". I think this just try to swing the pendulum to the other side.
A society lead by unhealthy male or female would give bad results equally. The problem is not patriarchy, it is unhealthy men (and women), and using a wrong word tend to mislead the efforts to solve the issue.
Now, I am a man and you can say I am biased. That is what most people do....🤷♂️
but this is semantic and i think we agree on the important parts.
Yes for most of human life on earth we lived with a different view and we had a better relationship with it. And we chose out of it...
When I finished, I was like a child, asking "But what about the wolves?"
I honestly do not know if my acceptance of this is indicative of courage or cowardice, my conscience beats me daily over a thousand things I should be doing for the forests, the children, the wildlife, the animals that need homes.
But I thank you for it. I really appreciate the history. I always want to know the beginning of the story.
I thank you for giving me something to rest on as well.
By all mean keep working for the forests, the children, the wildlife, the animals that needs home ... and the wolves, They all need help and we have done so much that was not helpful that every bit we do for them is valuable.
Let's just stop pretending we are not responsible. We can still say, I see you. I am sorry. and that counts a lot.
Love