Veiled Resentment

Fig. 24 Inheritence, Heir, Brand, Tribe, Religion. We’ve described these stages of societal history. We’re discussing brand: an agent exerts an ecological loss function that some consider “creative destruction”.

Veni, Vidi, Vici: The Evolution of Inheritance, Perception, and Agency

World and Inheritance (Veni) – 95/5

To be born is to inherit a world already in motion, a vast architecture of resources, institutions, and norms shaped by forces beyond the individual’s control. This inheritance is not merely genetic but structural—an amalgamation of biological, economic, and cultural systems refined over millennia. The world is an inheritance weighted 95/5, where the overwhelming bulk of circumstances are predetermined, and the individual’s agency, a sliver of possibility, emerges within a framework largely dictated by history. At birth, we receive a world sculpted by those who came before, their triumphs and their failures compressed into the scaffolding of laws, cities, traditions, and economic stratifications. Yet, the 5%—the margin of maneuverability—holds within it the seeds of transformation, the flicker of autonomy that defines human aspiration. To inherit is not to possess, but to be positioned within an intricate game, where rules precede the player, and the board is never of one’s own making. Nihilists fail to embrace this.

Fig. 25 If ever you wonder from whence the “V” sign comes. There is a PayPal mafia, with roots in South Africa. Their ancestors and themselves have been iteratively victorious.

Perception and the Heir (Vidi) – 80/20

Perception reshapes the weight of inheritance, reframing constraints as opportunities or vice versa. The heir, by virtue of awareness, can reallocate meaning to what is received. The 80/20 distribution of perception acknowledges that while the vast majority of inputs remain structurally determined, interpretation and selection allow for a recalibration of what truly matters. The heir is not merely the recipient of the world but the curator of their own reality. A dynastic fortune can be squandered in a generation, while a sparse inheritance, properly understood, can be leveraged into power. This is the transformative potential of vision: to reframe the given, to see the artifact of inheritance not as a limitation but as an asset that can be repurposed. The world is weighted toward the past, but the perceptive individual bends that past toward their own ends. Even within overwhelming structural forces, the seer recognizes asymmetries—gaps where value remains unclaimed, where constraints reveal hidden freedoms.

Agency and the Ecological Cost (Vici) – 51/49

Fig. 26 Ecological Cost vs. Optimized Efficiency. Nietzsche’s focus on “values” and the “transvaluation” of all values or of postmodern mankind, alienated (in Marxist sense), because they “killed god”. His prophetic soul!

To act is to stake a claim within an inherited world, but agency comes at a cost. Victory is never absolute; it emerges from a 51/49 balance, where progress is edged by consequence. Every assertion of will, every transformation of a system, extracts from an ecological balance—whether social, economic, or environmental. Industrial revolutions enrich but pollute, technological leaps liberate but alienate, and personal ambition carves paths but leaves trails of destruction. The triumph of agency is precarious, its cost hidden in the margins of excess and depletion. The one who acts must reckon with this delicate balance: to push too far is to erode the very landscape that made action possible, but to hesitate is to forfeit the margin of change. The agent’s path is neither conquest nor submission but a navigation of thresholds, knowing that each step forward destabilizes as much as it constructs.

New Brand (Veni) – 51/49

Fig. 27 Consider this record: 24 years, 16 managers, one trophy. Nobody really looks at Tottenham any more and thinks the problem is the manager (agent) or his team (legion). A chronic lack of ambition at the very top (owners) has laid waste to Tottenham. Even if players are added – and given Spurs’ wages-to-turnover ratio is a Premier League low 47%, there must be plenty of PSR wriggle room – it will be hard to avoid the conclusion that they should have been signed in the summer. Source: The Guardian

Reinvention, whether personal or collective, follows the same delicate equation. The launch of a new identity—whether a company, a philosophy, or a movement—begins in a world where existing structures resist change. The old weights heavily against the new, and yet the 51% is enough. A new brand does not emerge ex nihilo; it feeds on dissatisfaction, on the unnoticed inefficiencies and dissonances of the previous order. The slightest advantage—an unseen gap in the status quo—can tip the balance. Every successful transformation relies on this edge: the recognition that in a world seemingly predetermined, there are always 49% who are uncertain, disillusioned, or ready for something else. The new brand’s victory is fragile but sufficient.

Generativity and the Tribe (Vidi) – 20/80

True generativity requires scale, and scale is social. While the visionary may perceive, they do not build alone. The individual contribution is 20%, but the tribe—those who carry forth the vision, replicate it, reinforce it—is 80%. The lone innovator myth collapses under the weight of history, for every Renaissance requires a Florence, every movement a mass of believers. The weight of generativity shifts from the individual to the collective, as ideas ossify into institutions and knowledge becomes cultural memory. The paradox of innovation is that while it begins with a single insight, its true realization is a function of communal adoption. The genius who isolates their idea starves it; only through the tribe does it become a force.

Physical and Religion (Vici) – 5/95

At the extreme of transmission, beyond inheritance and perception, lies religion—the final compression of meaning into mythos, ritual, and structure. Here, the individual dwindles to 5%, submerged in a structure where the accumulated weight of tradition, doctrine, and metaphysical order dictate reality. Religion does not merely shape belief; it encodes the physical world itself, determining social behaviors, legal frameworks, and even physiological experiences through fasting, pilgrimage, and sacramental acts. At this scale, the 95% is law—binding, immutable, historical—while the 5% of individual interpretation must navigate within tight constraints. Unlike the earlier stages, where agency was a sliver that could tip the balance, here the weight of history is overwhelming. The legends, the scriptures, and the rites dominate, and the individual is not meant to alter them but to be absorbed by them.

Legend (Veni)… etc.

Fig. 28 To be born is to inherit. To perceive is to frame. To act is to shift the balance. But beyond action, at the limit of time, lies legend—the point where personal agency dissolves into collective myth. The world continues, reshaped but never truly conquered, and the cycle begins again.

At the outermost edge of inheritance and perception lies legend—the abstraction of identity into something beyond the personal. If inheritance is 95/5 and perception 80/20, legend flips the scale entirely: 5/95. The person disappears, leaving only the residual imprint of their choices, compressed into symbols, myths, and hagiographies. The legend no longer acts; they are acted upon. They become currency, a totem wielded by later generations to validate their own actions, their own visions of the past. At this level, the self is no longer a participant but an artifact, a node in the grand structure of memory, where meaning is retrofitted and rewritten by those who follow.

Show code cell source Hide code cell source

import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import networkx as nx

# Define the neural network  
def define_layers():
    return {
        'World': ['Cosmos-Entropy', 'World-Tempered', 'Ucubona-Needs', 'Ecosystem-Costs', 'Space-Trial & Error', 'Time-Cadence', ], # Theomarchy
        'Mode': ['Ucubona-Mode'], # Mortals
        'Agent': ['Oblivion-Unknown', 'Brand-Trusted'], # Fire
        'Space': ['Ratio-Weaponized', 'Competition-Tokenized', 'Odds-Monopolized'], # Gamification
        'Time': ['Volatile-Transvaluation', 'Unveiled-Resentment',  'Freedom-Dance in Chains', 'Exuberant-Jubilee', 'Stable-Victorian'] # Victory
    }

# Assign colors to nodes
def assign_colors():
    color_map = {
        'yellow': ['Ucubona-Mode'],  
        'paleturquoise': ['Time-Cadence', 'Brand-Trusted', 'Odds-Monopolized', 'Stable-Victorian'],  
        'lightgreen': ['Space-Trial & Error', 'Competition-Tokenized', 'Exuberant-Jubilee', 'Freedom-Dance in Chains', 'Unveiled-Resentment'],  
        'lightsalmon': [
            'Ucubona-Needs', 'Ecosystem-Costs', 'Oblivion-Unknown',  
            'Ratio-Weaponized', 'Volatile-Transvaluation'
        ],
    }
    return {node: color for color, nodes in color_map.items() for node in nodes}

# Calculate positions for nodes
def calculate_positions(layer, x_offset):
    y_positions = np.linspace(-len(layer) / 2, len(layer) / 2, len(layer))
    return [(x_offset, y) for y in y_positions]

# Create and visualize the neural network graph
def visualize_nn():
    layers = define_layers()
    colors = assign_colors()
    G = nx.DiGraph()
    pos = {}
    node_colors = []

    # Add nodes and assign positions
    for i, (layer_name, nodes) in enumerate(layers.items()):
        positions = calculate_positions(nodes, x_offset=i * 2)
        for node, position in zip(nodes, positions):
            G.add_node(node, layer=layer_name)
            pos[node] = position
            node_colors.append(colors.get(node, 'lightgray'))   

    # Add edges (automated for consecutive layers)
    layer_names = list(layers.keys())
    for i in range(len(layer_names) - 1):
        source_layer, target_layer = layer_names[i], layer_names[i + 1]
        for source in layers[source_layer]:
            for target in layers[target_layer]:
                G.add_edge(source, target)

    # Draw the graph
    plt.figure(figsize=(12, 8))
    nx.draw(
        G, pos, with_labels=True, node_color=node_colors, edge_color='gray',
        node_size=3000, font_size=9, connectionstyle="arc3,rad=0.2"
    )
    plt.title("Ecosystem Cost Function, 51/49 Odds", fontsize=15)
    plt.show()

# Run the visualization
visualize_nn()

Fig. 29 Vet Advised When to Sell Horse. Right after an outstanding performance. Because you want to control how its perceived, the narrative backstory, and how its future performance might be imputed. Otherwise, reality manifests with point and interval estimates. This is the subject matter of the opening dialogue in Miller’s Crossing.