The new world order scaffolded on the sunken bones of the old.
Once upon a time, in humanities’ distant past, there were great pharaohs, emperors, and kings. These rulers, used the force of their military might to collect from the peasants what little surplus those peasants could produce. This was, of course, shared with the nobility who held the specific leashes of the specific armies. And so it was that countries went forth, their people laboring from the many to the few, erecting temples, pyramids, and grand palaces. The nobility dined on roast meats and vegetables from far-flung realms while the peasants broke their backs to retain only the barest of subsistence that would allow them to carry on living, carry on reproducing. Nobles need peasants, the many for the few.
Then change occurred. Grand technologies accelerated humankind faster than the powers that be could hold onto them. The many accelerated through the fingers, out of the grasp of the few. In some places, the hands began to open, allowing magnificent structures to be built atop them, gaining succor from the vast excesses produced. In other places, the fists clenched down hard, harder than ever before. But humanity always found a way out, be it after one year or one hundred.
A new technological epoch brought with it great wonders and great strife. The digital age was one of near-infinite scalability. Anyone with an idea, an idea that breaks through, could provide it to the whole world, not just a few—oceans of drops wanting to be heard, with only a lucky few crashing upon the shore.
People lived in the digital world, rich and poor faces equally transfixed by omnipresent screens. Many sought to provide for this new world, most failed. Those that succeeded were lifted higher and higher, given wings by machines that began to think for man, rewarding success with success. A one in a million shot to become one who is patronized by millions—the few for the many.
It was an age in which the light of knowledge shined brightest, an inexhaustible web that covered the whole world.
But too much light can only blind.
Truth can only be seen when its impostors are eroded by the sands of time, while lies can sparkle like well-cut diamonds flashed before the eyes. Such a wide world made for few deep connections, and so the real languished in artificialities’ shadow.
Truth fractured into truths; reason gave way to robotic passions.
Then, with the first great uninvention, all the numbers on all the spreadsheets became moot. Only those with claims to physical resources had anything. Much of what was claimed was destroyed in the riots that burned throughout the world like spiderwebs. There was a great scrambling, and out of it, a great war.
To many, it was seen as a cleansing flood.
A great leveling, bringing with it the third age.
An age where great structures would not be permitted unplanned.
An age of great consolidation, great wonders, and great waste. An age that would stand as a monolith against the anomaly of history, carved in obsidian once again and forevermore. From the many to the few.
Homo Economicish 