The behavior of global oligarchic power structures makes a lot more sense when you see that it's not as much a lucid elite conspiracy as it is a few barely-conscious humans compulsively acting out psychological dynamics within themselves that they don't really understand. Elite conspiracies happen to be sure, but what's ultimately driving them is not a complete and coherent vision for the future which takes all things into account but rather the simple egoic impulses of barely-evolved primates blindly trying to shore up control like chimps asserting dominance.

The sociopaths who rule our world are no more conscious of their own inner processes than your average serial killer. They can act out their impulses in a way that looks very organized and efficient, but the driving forces beneath it are the least-evolved aspects of humanity. We are ruled by apes with PR firms.

That's why they often behave in ways that are nonsensical. Some ask why they'd continue killing the biosphere and flirt with nuclear war when it can kill them, for example. And the answer is not that nuclear brinkmanship is a phony performance or that climate destruction is a hoax, but that you're dealing with the same dumb stimulus-response impulses as any other basic organism.

It is true that the drivers of the US-centralized empire want to live as gods, able to cause famines or rain fire in any part of the world which disobeys them. It is not a coincidence that the few remaining parts of the world where they cannot do this are the parts you're most forcefully trained to hate.

But these are not gods enacting grand visions from on high; they are organisms acting out the same forces that have been unfolding since the Big Bang just like the rest of us. And they are less conscious of the way those forces are playing out within themselves than your average healthy human, not more.

Reading by Tim Foley.