Cards for Insight: Oligarch Hellscape
The ultimate wicked problem isn’t just oligarchy or
institutional decay — it’s the belief that nothing else is
possible. Break that illusion, and everything changes.
Card: Movement of Thought
This is an era of collapse and emergence.
The existing oligarchic system is running
on borrowed time, its legitimacy eroding,
its contradictions unsustainable.
However, transformation won’t come from within that system — it will arise from the cracks, the parallel structures, the networked movements, and the refusal of ordinary people to comply with their own subjugation.
Card: Another Path
There is another path. One that requires looking
away from the dying empire, stepping off the
poisoned highways, leaving behind the distractions
that lull us into non-committal submission.
It is the path of return.
Return to the sources.
Return to what is shared.
Return to what is real.
In the age of want, the wells
will matter more than ever.
Find yours. Dig deep.
The water is still there.
It is possible to frame the next four years as both a crisis and an opportunity — a moment where societal transformation is not just possible but necessary. If we are to think of this period as an inflection point rather than an irreversible descent into oligarchic dystopia, we need a framework for action.
Here are seven essential dimensions that could help ordinary US citizens navigate and influence this transformation:
1. Civic Resilience & Participation
Key problem: Widespread political disengagement, learned helplessness, and corporate capture of political processes.
Path forward:
Build a decentralized, participatory democracy model from the ground up (municipal and state-level power).
Support citizen-led initiatives, direct action movements, and digital democracy experiments.
Resurrect the idea of civics education, but networked, decentralized, and peer-driven.
Leverage point:
Shift from passive consumption of politics (cable news & doom-scrolling) to participatory action (local governance, direct democracy platforms, and alternative organizing structures).
2. Economic Mutualism & Post-Capitalist Infrastructure
Key problem: The stranglehold of financial oligarchy, the myth of meritocracy, and increasing wealth inequality.
Path forward:
Reclaim economic agency through cooperatives, mutual aid, worker ownership, and decentralized finance (not just crypto, but real-world economic networks).
Push for Universal Basic Income (UBI) experiments, job guarantee programs, and public banking initiatives.
Develop parallel structures outside the traditional corporate economy, like commons-based production, community land trusts, and alternative currencies.
Leverage point:
Localizing economic power disrupts corporate dominance — shrink dependency on exploitative institutions.
3. Digital Sovereignty & Information Autonomy
Key problem: Algorithmic manipulation, mass surveillance, and corporate capture of digital spaces.
Path forward:
Encourage decentralization of social media and digital infrastructure (Mastodon, federated networks, encrypted alternatives).
Fight for data ownership and privacy rights as fundamental human rights.
Create platforms for collective sense-making, civic discourse, and media literacy to counter mass disinformation.
Leverage point:
Techno-feudalism thrives on digital passivity. Decentralized, citizen-owned platforms create alternative narratives and new governance models.
4. Climate Adaptation & Ecological Regeneration
Key problem: The accelerating collapse of ecosystems, extractive capitalism, and political inaction.
Path forward:
Develop local and regional resilience hubs for climate adaptation (self-sustaining food, energy, and water systems).
Support indigenous-led land reclamation movements and regenerative agriculture projects.
Link climate action to economic and political transformation — redefine GDP and economic success in post-growth terms.
Leverage point: Climate crisis as an organizing principle — not just a “problem” but a paradigm shift toward regenerative systems.
5. Networked Education & Cognitive Liberation
Key problem: The monopolization of knowledge, student debt traps, and the deliberate dumbing down of public discourse.
Path forward:
Build alternative educational infrastructures outside the state-corporate model — peer-learning networks, open-access knowledge, and skill-sharing ecosystems.
Embed epistemic resistance into education: teach people how to think critically, deconstruct propaganda, and recognize manipulative narratives.
Develop new cultural narratives that reframe education as lifelong, decentralized, and participatory rather than a credentialing pipeline.
Leverage point:
Education shifts from an institutional gatekeeper to an open-source, commons-driven knowledge ecosystem.
6. Decentralized Governance & Political Innovation
Key problem: The false binary of the two-party system, corporate capture of institutions, and bureaucratic inertia.
Path forward:
Experiment with new governance models — liquid democracy, citizens’ assemblies, blockchain governance, and participatory budgeting.
Build parallel institutions that challenge the legitimacy of centralized power — mutual aid networks, digital cooperatives, and shadow governance structures.
Encourage mass civil disobedience and targeted non-compliance with unjust laws and corporate control mechanisms.
Leverage point:
Move beyond “reforming” broken institutions — replace them with decentralized, resilient governance models.
7. Cultural Metamorphosis & Narrative Power
Key problem: The ideological hegemony of late-stage capitalism, mass alienation, and the fragmentation of collective meaning.
Path forward:
Reclaim storytelling, art, and culture as tools for resistance and worldbuilding.
Shift cultural narratives away from dystopian despair toward radical imagination and collective agency.
Elevate voices and movements that prefigure new ways of living — where art and activism merge to create a living, breathing counterculture.
Leverage point: The future is imagined into existence — culture is upstream from politics and economy.
Card: Purposeful Action
Translate insights and moments
of clarity into purposeful action,
driving meaningful change in
your life and the lives of others.
Conclusion: The Death of the Old & the Birth of the New
This is an era of collapse and emergence. The existing oligarchic system is running on borrowed time, its legitimacy eroding, its contradictions unsustainable. However, transformation won’t come from within that system — it will arise from the cracks, the parallel structures, the networked movements, and the refusal of ordinary people to comply with their own subjugation.
The ultimate “wicked problem” isn’t just oligarchy or
institutional decay — it’s the belief that nothing else is
possible. Break that illusion, and everything changes.
The next four years? Either a slow-motion coup — or a distributed, leaderless revolution of imagination and action.
Cards for Insight: A Different Game
Gather in small groups around a complex dilemma
formulated as a generative center question.
Pick cards, jot down insights and collaborate
around a seed story as generative closure.
Card: Conscious Evolution
A purposeful shift in individual
and collective awareness leading
to intentional and responsible
co-creation of the future.
“Control of consciousness determines the quality of life.”
― Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi,
Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience
Card: Purposeful Action
Translate insights and moments
of clarity into purposeful action,
driving meaningful change in
your life and the lives of others.
“To overcome the anxieties and depressions of contemporary life,
individuals must become independent of the social environment
to the degree that they no longer respond exclusively in terms of
its rewards and punishments. To achieve such autonomy,
a person has to learn to provide rewards to herself.
She has to develop the ability to find enjoyment and
purpose regardless of external circumstances.”
― Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi,
Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience
Card: Understanding
What if understanding is our ability
to hold space for the possibility of
knowledge, as it emerges, unfolds,
directs and discloses its relevance to
unexplored aspects of things known?
Information Overwhelm
You are currently suffering from, yet also weirdly
remaining attached to, information overwhelm.
Right next to your feeling of information
overwhelm, hold the below card.
Card: Entelechy
The potential within something
that guides its development and
ultimate character and form.
…and, then … ?
Situate yourself and anchor
your next step, using this card:
Card: Contextual Intelligence
Narratives, plural; initial card-play
experiences; paths unfolding
through possibility spaces and
learning in light of entelechy.
… your move …
