Quick Update: Series Delayed, But the Conversation Continues
By Johan
Professor of Behavioral Economics & Applied Cognitive Theory
Former Foreign Service Officer
I got sick this week, which means the multi-part geopolitical series I promised isn’t quite ready. It’ll drop this Sunday instead.
But the conversation hasn’t stopped. Over the past few days, I’ve been writing commentary across Substack that has sparked serious engagement. If you missed it, here’s what people are responding to:
On Historical Ruptures and the Choices We’re Making Now
History doesn’t move in neat boxes of decades. It moves in ruptures, in shocks, in the behavioral choices of people and institutions. The 20th century wasn’t just a calendar flip, it was Roosevelt’s midnight ride, the leap from horses to airplanes, the sprint from powered flight to the moon in a single lifetime. It was also the century of industrialized cruelty: Holocaust, gulags, Khmer Rouge. Proof that human ingenuity can be turned toward annihilation as easily as toward progress.
What matters is the behavioral pattern: every epoch is seeded by decisions made decades before. The “New Frontier” of Kennedy was built on the gravity of the 1950s. The protests of the late 60s spilled into the 70s.
The seeds are planted.
That’s why the comparison today is so damning. Roosevelt’s sons gave their lives in service. Today’s dynasties give us corruption and spectacle. The hinge of history is always behavioral: courage versus cowardice, service versus self-dealing, clarity versus lies.
The lesson is brutal but simple: epochs don’t begin with dates, they begin with choices. And the choices we’re making now: cruelty normalized, spectacle worshipped, corruption excused; are the seeds of disgrace we’ll harvest in the 21st century.
On Human-Centric Bias
This one resonated deeply with readers:
Human-centric bias blinds us to the truth of existence. Step back far enough and you see that 99.999999% of the universe is flawless. Galaxies spin, stars burn, rivers flow, plants grow, animals live. All of it remarkable, all of it beyond reproach. Physics, chemistry, biology: they do not lie, they do not cheat, they do not provoke anxiety. They simply are, and in their being they are perfect.
The only things that generate distress are human-made. Wars, corruption, cruelty, exploitation, the endless theater of power. Every headline that makes us anxious, every injustice that gnaws at us, every collapse of dignity, all of it comes from us. When we say “the world is terrible today,” what we really mean is “humans are terrible today.” The universe itself remains immaculate.
Indigenous traditions and thinkers like David Graeber remind us that inequality and cruelty are not inevitable. They are choices societies make. Reciprocity, balance, and dignity have existed, and still exist, as alternatives. But modern humanity has chosen spectacle and domination, mistaking money and power for meaning.
That’s the real bias: we project our failures onto “the world,” when in fact the world beyond us is perfect. The problem is not existence, it’s us. And until we name that clearly, we will keep mistaking our own cruelty for the nature of reality.
The universe is flawless. The universe just Is.
On Courtroom Spectacle and Behavioral Manipulation
What strikes me about recent trials and political theater is how much depends on behavioral manipulation.
The system thrives on delay, ritual, and framing, not because justice requires it, but because power feeds on it. Every procedural twist is designed to provoke anxiety, to keep citizens watching the theater instead of naming the cruelty.
This is what I’ve called free-will cruelty: the way institutions exploit human psychology, turning uncertainty into punishment. The defendant’s fate becomes less about law and more about how long the system can stretch the timeline, how much stress it can impose, how much spectacle it can extract.
Behaviorally, it’s the same pattern we see everywhere:
Delay as domination: dragging things out until exhaustion feels like inevitability
Spectacle as distraction: turning trials into rituals that obscure the real stakes
Cruelty as normalization: making suffering feel like the natural rhythm of governance
The courtroom isn’t just about guilt or innocence. It’s about how power manufactures anxiety, how institutions weaponize time, and how cruelty becomes the default operating system.
That’s why my last piece was a reminder: no one deserves this. Ritualized punishment is systemic cruelty.
Until we name the behavioral mechanics of cruelty (America is doing some quite cruel things these days) we’ll keep mistaking theater for justice.
If You Haven’t Read Last Week’s Piece Yet
Everything I’m writing about connects back to the framework I laid out in Sunday Reflection: De-Risk, Control, and the Authoritarian Trap.
It’s about how false security leads to loss of control, how people become prisoners of their own making, and how authoritarian systems exploit that vulnerability. If you missed it, start there. It sets up everything coming in the multi-part series.
This Sunday: The Series Begins
The full geopolitical analysis drops Sunday.
We’ll examine:
How we got here (behavioral economics of democratic decay)
Where major powers are positioned (US, China, Russia, Europe)
Economic reorganization (de-dollarization, supply chain nationalism)
Technology as wild card (AI, surveillance, information control)
What individuals can do (positioning, adaptation, resistance)
Until then, keep engaging.
The conversation matters.
Why the Snail
It carries its home.
It moves with intention.
It leaves a trail.
So do I.
Johan is a behavioral scientist and former Foreign Service Officer. He writes about power, belief systems, and how humans make sense of collapse.
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This was my restack: “This writing is stellar, as is everything from https://substack.com/profile/257007243-johan. He is a shining star and every one of us would benefit from being bathed in his light.”
I’m here for provoking thoughts :)