From NEETS to Hikikomori to Cloud-Serfs...

from Google AI:

NEET is an acronym that stands for Not in Education, Employment, or Training. It is a socioeconomic classification that refers to young adults or teenagers who are unemployed and not enrolled in school or vocational training.

The Social and Economic Phenomenon

Originally coined in the United Kingdom in the late 1990s, the term has become a widely used metric for economists and sociologists globally to track the health of youth labor markets.

The Classification: It applies to individuals, typically between the ages of 16 and 24, who are either actively looking for work or have stopped participating in the labor force entirely.

Global Scope:

• The phenomenon exists globally, with higher percentages often exacerbated by complex factors such as mental health struggles, caregiving responsibilities, or difficulties transitioning from school to work.
• Cultural Slang: In internet culture and some countries like Japan, the term can sometimes be colloquially used to describe individuals who intentionally retreat from society, often spending their time at home.

Other Meanings

If you are not referring to the socioeconomic acronym, you might be thinking of the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET). This is a massive, highly competitive medical entrance examination in India required for students seeking admission to undergraduate medical and dental programs.

Avoiding Civilizational Collapse - 3 Strategies

If man wants to progress, he must create new forms of energy of greater and greater densities.

-Lazare Carnot (1784)

Why Complex Societies Collapse

Can Catastrophic Collapse (ie Bronze Age Collapse) be Mitigated thru Simplification?

Hands Up! Georges Bataille: The Threadless Minotaur Living Inside Goedel's Labyrinth

Heidegger's hand is tied to the terrestrial order. Thus, it does not grasp the human future. Human beings have long since stopped dwelling between 'earth' and 'sky'. On the way towards the un-thinged [Unbedingtheit], they will also leave the 'mortals' and the 'divinities' behind. The last things (τὰ ἔσχατα) will also have to be eliminated. Human beings soar up towards the un-thinged, the unconditioned. We are headed towards a trans-human and post-human age in which human life will be a pure exchange of information. Human beings shed their being be-thinged, their facticity, even though this is precisely what makes them what they are. 'Human' is derived from humus, that is, soil. Digitalization is a resolute step along the way towards the abolition Of the humanum. The future Of humans seems mapped out: humans will abolish themselves in order to posit themselves as the absolute .

Byung-Chul Han, "Heidegger's Hand"

Losing Ipseity in the Second-Order Observation Perspective of Profilicity.

from Google AI:

Ipseity is the quintessential element of identity, derived from the Latin word ipse (meaning "self"). It refers to selfhood, individuality, or the unique quality and nature of being yourself.

Where You'll Encounter the Word

• Philosophy: Used in phenomenology and existentialism to describe the first-person perspective, "mineness," or the foundation of human consciousness.
• Psychology: "Ipseity disturbance" (or self-disorder) is a term used to describe a foundational rupture in an individual's sense of existing as a distinct subject.
• Theology: Often contrasted with aseity (existing entirely of and from oneself)

Emile Durkheim: Sociology, Suicide, and the Nature of Religion

Social Ecosystem: environment, population, technology, and social organization

Marcel Mauss: A Century of Symbolic Gift Giving

The 'Gift' of 9/11

The twin towers were not destroyed by terrorists. The twin towers committed suicide. They collapsed under their own weight. When the two towers collapsed, you had the impression that they were responding to the suicide of the suicide planes with their own suicide. It has been said that even God cannot declare war on himself. Well he can. The West in the position of God, divine omnipotence and absolute moral legitimacy has become suicidal and declared war on itself.

-Jean Baudrillard, "The Spirit of Terrorism"

from Google AI:

Continental Philosophy (The Event as Rupture)

In Continental philosophy, an "event" is often viewed as a sudden, unpredictable rupture or breakthrough that changes everything—it alters how we perceive truth, language, or history. 

• Alain Badiou: A French philosopher who defines an event as an unpredictable, ground-breaking rupture that brings forth new truths. According to Badiou, an event shatters established norms and forces individuals to take a leap of faith to remain faithful to this new truth (e.g., a revolutionary political movement or falling in love).
• Gilles Deleuze: Drawing from the ancient Stoics, Deleuze viewed events as "incorporeal" entities. Rather than physical actions, events are the meaning or sense of what happens, which subsist at the surface of things and transform how we understand ourselves and our realities.
• Martin Heidegger: In his later work (Contributions to Philosophy), Heidegger conceptualizes the event (or Ereignis) as a moment of appropriation, where human beings and the meaning of "Being" come into a mutually revealing relationship.

The End of Pure Positivity

Adjusting the Markov Blanket

More on Plur1bus

More on Markov Blankets

Valentin Turchin: Meta-Systems Transition Theory - A Case for Anti-Fragility?

Chapters:

00:00 The night the bronze age went silent 

07:10 The world before the crash 

15:00 Egypt’s records and the sea peoples name 

23:36 The last letters from ugarit 

36:55 Hatti collapses and hattusa burns 

51:34 Mycenaean greece and the end of palace life 

1:08:45 Cities along the levantine coast fall 

1:24:18 Cyprus and the broken copper highway 

1:39:51 Anatolia in motion 

1:54:27 What the battles might have looked like 

2:08:15 Earthquakes, drought, and the climate question 

2:22:22 Piracy, refugees, and a sea full of desperation 

2:36:14 Why the great powers couldn’t bounce back 

2:50:30 Where did the mystery army go 

3:03:39 What the collapse left behind 

3:19:32 A mystery that still breathes

What?  No "Sea Peoples" from Atlantis? 

Peter Turchin (Valentin's son): Elite Surplus Theory -

Sovereignty...

Jean-Luc Godard, "A Bande Apart" (1964)

Hector Goes to War

Friedrich Schiller, "Hector and Andromache"

Andromache
Will you, my Hector, forever go away
to where with unmatched hands Achilles makes
Patroclus bloody off’rings?
____________________Who will teach
your little one with strength to throw the spear,
or how to honor the gods, if what I fear
occurs and Orcus devours you?

Hector
Dear wife, enough of tears, for go I must,
for love of you I burn with battle-lust
my arms sustain Pergamus.
____________________If now I fall,
I’ll fall in the Trojan gods’ and your defense
as a pious hero, then make my descent
to grim, to Stygian Dis.

Andromache
I’ll never hear the clash of your weapons again,
unused, your iron will rust in the halls of men,
and Priam’s line will die.
__________________You’ll go to where
no sun, no day e’er shines his golden face,
to where the Cocytus slithers through the waste,
your love will die in the Lethe.

Hector
Though all my hopes and all my thoughts will sink,
from the gentle flow of the Lethe, my love won’t drink,
no, my love won’t drink.
__________________Listen! The Greeks
are blustering at Ilium’s walls. Now gird my sword,
hold back your tears, and listen to my word;
My love won’t die in the Lethe.