Death and Dying. And Iteration.

In population genetics, there is the concept of “leveling drift”. The easiest and most direct example is intelligence in offspring: The children of two extraordinarily intelligent people is likely to be less intelligent, not more intelligent. New extremes tend to arise through the die-casting of sexual reproduction.

In social theories, as in many iterative contexts and complex systems, the Butterfly Effect can occur and produce wildly unexpected (at least analytically unpredictable) results. More commonly, small imbalances self-reinforce and race conditions ensue, greatly amplifying those imbalances.

When the sense of a greater whole, a bigger picture, a sense of membership dwindles, the fragmentation introduces a different kind of “leveling drift”: The new society is a bit less vibrant than the last sampling, and so on and so on and so on. The impressive and the spectacular suffer and go rare.

All that would be left are the cowering cowards and a handful of proactive hunters. Today's state of affairs has individuals put at risk, not choosing to be at risk. Decisions made for them by cowards who remain at a safe distance where risks that could personally befall will fall.

This is not new and never has been. An inevitability when a society's striations start to show, because when they start? Another inevitability. This is more than a rich-get-richer, poor-get-poorer, disappearance-of-the-middle-class kind of thing. More and different.

Natural selection (in this case, the context of “natural” means “social”) will leave us with nothing but cowards, and cowardice is the the most potent of all excuses to be selfish. And selfish cowards are but damaged goods.

Good people will live and die and their accomplishments gone unlauded not because those deeds were unworthy but rather because there will be no one left capable of appreciating them.

There's a reason that selflessness is considered a virtue: because the past teaches that a critical mass of selflessness results in an overall rise in mutual beneficence. So irony wins, that selflessness leads to better conditions for one's self.

But cowards won't see it and they'll suffer. Whatever society they can form, that is. Rare—if at all—will be the opportunity to benefit themselves by being selfless because they're too busy scrapping for not just enough, but for just a bit more than the other guys around them.

The bigger picture gets smaller, ever smaller, until it fits in a locket (that is guarded with one's life), the ceiling drops. The sky falls. Tomorrow never dies? In this world, tomorrow never gets a chance to live. It's all about today, this hour, this minute, this second, this moment. This Now.

Clicking and grunting, the cowards snatch away from each other, fighting over each carcass they fell—or, more likely, let others take down, then scaring the proactive hunter away by sheer numbers. A mob always begins with an unearned bounty and a group of undeserving individuals who nonetheless feel entitlement to the spoils of someone else's victory.

Crouched in dark places or hidden under trees in mottled light, the impuissant remnants of humanity wait for the next opportunity to take credit for—and fill their bellies/egos/self-images with—the work of those few left who refuse to crouch in dark places and blend into the mottled shade of trees.

Further, the cowards will complain that the hunter didn't bring down a large-enough meal that they've stolen. Because a full belly is never enough. Nothing is ever enough. It doesn't matter what the “more” is, it's just needs to be there. The more. More more more. Another death has occurred: the knack for moderation.

Allegory is an interesting device (and the absence of a segue can make a literary point). Declarative statements carry power.

Take from someone, then complain that they're not making it easy enough to steal. Take more from that someone, then complain that it's not enough more. Take more from someone and if the stolen-from starts to complain (how dare they!), manipulate the victim until they stop. Then when satisfied that the victim has been sufficiently cowed, start the taking anew. Lather, rinse, repeat.

If the victim should speak up, strike back, they emend the handbook to include instructions on vilifying the victim, a move of desperation that the victim is no longer a source of energy. This tactic can have one of two outcomes: a) a last few precious drops of energy can be squeezed from the victim; b) the victim can be made to look like the perpetrator, thus absolving the cowardly mob of its greedy need and needy greed.

The hunters are too busy with the hunt and the will to survive; they tend to be loners, territorial. But the proactive are also the smart; cowards have atrophied. And maybe the proactive can adapt and stand obviously apart from the cowards, can look out for each other and have each other's back.

But standing together and acting in the interest of self doesn't work if it limits itself only to self-selecting groups within a larger population. There's no critical mass there. With that kind of behavior you only end up with ghettoes and Republicans, abuses of welfare and the elevation of corporations above people.

The coward's ability to learn, as I said, is atrophic, anemic, collecting dust. Only massive disruptions to their own way of life (sedentary in shadows and mottled light), the patterns of their existence, can jumpstart such unused minds. What's a self-involved, self-obsessed coward who scrapes and scraps to do when faced with the possibility of not only abundance but prosperity if only they'd take a chance on a better way of life?

More importantly, who's to teach them?

Most importantly, who fashions an effective curriculum?

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