Hello shxdows. Welcome to episode three of the Shxdow Cast, and today I have a very simple question for you. Why the fuck does everything suck ? It's like. In general, everywhere. Why does it fucking suck ? And this is a serious question. Like I, I know on its face it may seem childish , the idea that all the suffering in the world has a single simple answer, but let's just entertain the idea for now. Right. If you had to choose really a single idea or concept that could be traced to be the source of human suffering, what would you come up with? Well, for someone of the shxdow mindset. The answer is universal and it's not a secret . It's the title of the comm actually. We touched on it a bit in our first episode and we're gonna expand on it now.

The difference between humanity 1.0 and 2.0 is the belief and the hierarchy. What form that power should exist in if structured at all. On one side, we have egalitarianism, the idea that everyone should wield that power and be equal, regardless of circumstance. And on the other we have the idea of a hierarchy. The idea that some should have more power than others, for whatever reason the group that sit the top the hierarchy wants to make up to use a justified its existence. And truly, if we look at real life, it's a lopsided application. For logical reasons at first, right? The hierarchy can be instinctually justified modeled in nature, for example. You know, survival of the fittest, the animal kingdom. The idea that there's always going to be people who have more than others or things that have more than others, just because of how evolution and natural selection plays out. Having said that, we all as humanity have seen that the other structure of power, equality, actually leads to demonstrably better outcomes , less suffering and more inherent, what I'd argue, happiness for a great deal more people. So we have a great contradiction here between the idea of something we see in nature and is biologically instinctual, and something that if we actually stop to think logically makes more sense to apply. And it's not a surprise either if you think about logically. The hierarchy power structures always concentrate power exponentially over time, and that disparity will always compound suffering. Okay. Hierarchies always sacrifice the overall fulfillment of the whole for the benefit of a smaller group and beyond that, left to their natural cycle, always result in a net suffering in most people. And that's directly antithetical to a humanist, really a common sense point of view. Certainly the shxdow perspective.

Yet, and this is your humanity 1.0, biological programming,  hierarchies in all forms are embedded in human history and in modern life. And their suffering is more prevalent and harmful than ever. We have some examples, of course. We have the patriarchy, and that's the result of sexual dimorphism. Really a biological relic that's still poisons civilization, right? We have capitalism, right? That's a near universal economic hierarchy where money is quite literally power over reality itself. And we have imperialism, right? Domination, like cultural supremacy. Forcefully implementing a societal hierarchy through technological or military superiority usually. And we have religion. Ugh, we're gonna have all nother episode over that one. But religion really, that's the closest thing to a mind control ritual, hijacks the human need for spirituality, specifically for domination. And of course there's good old fashioned authoritarianism, which really just boils down to any political justification for a hierarchy with specific targets for benefit and specific targets for oppression.


Logically, empathetically and critically, these  hierarchies make no sense, and lead to the detriment of the majority for the benefit of an ever more insulated minority. And what's even worse, that minority, the ones on top of several, if not all of these  hierarchies , yeah, those guys often overlap. I mean, hello? Have you been paying attention? Which is why a lot of power structures do too, right? All of them Funnel, one thing to a select few people, that thing being power in all its forms, social, political, economical, spiritual, cultural. They want power only for those being worthy and specifically at the expense in some way or another of everyone else.

And I just feel like for the sake of context and semantics, I want to emphasize there's absolutely hierarchies that are fine that exist today that are perfectly harmless. But there's absolutely a difference between a harmless hierarchy, like a org chart at work versus a harmful one. Okay. And the questions I would ask is how does that hierarchy preserve power? At what expense, and for how long? And more importantly do the people at all points of the hierarchy have both the freedom, to move within it and the freedom to exit it? If not , is that for the benefit of all involved or is it just for the benefit of those at top?

And I'm gonna take this back to humanity 1.0 versus 2.0, um, because there is a very simple litmus test for shxdows. And I wanna emphasize, is it in gatekeeping or no true scottsmanning or, me manufacturing a reason to punch down or discriminate. This is just a, a simple test that you can, you know, really use on anybody to see if they're actually on Humanity 2.0, if they're shxdow minded like us, or if they're still on 1.0. And that test is a very simple question: do they defend a harmful  hierarchy? i found that this question is like almost a flawless benchmark, really for calibrating your radar for who's actually using their logic for empathy and who's just taking shortcuts with feelings. Cause that person taking shortcuts, they're really not on, humanity 2.0. They're more likely to defend or cling to a hierarchy. Like literally ignore the obvious cognitive dissonance, even if pointed out to them just because it makes them feel safer. It's not their fault. You know, it's just biological programming. It's not to say they're incapable of kindness, intelligence or open-mindedness, and just means they just literally haven't quite overcome their innate biological instincts yet. Um, at least as much as they think. To the unfortunate detriment of pretty much everyone else on the planet. And that's not a reason to punch down, but that is always important context to have in considering whether or not you want them as an ally or a friend. And for me personally, and this is a personal hot take, spicy flavor. You know what I'm saying? Like your mileage may vary, but, I don't waste time on people who blindly follow a hierarchy. For real. Life's too short to help oppression along. Like sometimes you can break through to some noises and maybe upgrade 'em a little bit, you know? Eh, hey, I can't argue that 1.6 is worse than a 1.5 , an improvement is better, but given a scale of things that we talked about like last time, that's not enough of a difference compared to the effort needed, you know. It's just the proportion is out of whack. But this is a very rare area where I would actually be happy to be wrong in. And if the opposite rings true for you, then live your life as you wish.


To keep it short and simple and probably a little repetitive. Do no harm. Take no shit. And for shxdows, that means fighting against harmful hierarchies, and those who are trying to preserve them strictly because they stand to benefit from them.

And next time, we're gonna take a microscope into one of those hierarchies as both an example and, yeah. Uh, just as a gloves off, take down of why it is the worst. And hey, listener beware, it's gonna be a spicy one indeed. This one's a little bit shorter, but thank you for joining me. I'm your host, shxdowenby. As always, stay observant, Shxdows, shxdowenby out.