Jordan Hall () has spent decades correctly predicting the civilizational unraveling we're now experiencing. He co-founded DivX, served on elite boards like the Santa Fe Institute, co-founded the Game B movement—but when his pursuit of truth led him to Christ two years ago, he followed it, even knowing it would change his standing in the secular elite circles he'd helped shape.

We spoke for three and a half hours, days after Charlie Kirk's assassination made spiritual warfare feel viscerally real. While my previous piece laid out practical steps—love enemies, prepare your temple, build prayer as weapon—Jordan revealed something deeper:

We're in a civilizational contest over what story humanity will tell itself about reality for generations to come.

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The Post-WWII Narrative Is Dead

Most of us have grown up taking American hegemony for granted—the dollar as global reserve currency, Hollywood setting cultural norms, Silicon Valley driving innovation. But beneath these institutions was a narrative that held it all together: democracy is good, fascism is evil, and America leads the free world against tyranny.

"We passed a tipping point around 2024," Jordan told me. "The post-war order and narrative—both are done. There's no coming back."

This post-WWII narrative was brilliantly simple. After defeating the Nazis unconditionally, America built a moral order where racism and everything that wasn't "democracy" became the evils to purge from within the good. These were ultimately secular definitions of good and evil—Christian-adjacent but not requiring God. This narrative held the Western world together for 80 years—through the Cold War, civil rights, and the digital revolution.

But that narrative has exhausted itself.

Institutions are collapsing, corruption is obvious, and the old stories that kept liberalism alive no longer command belief.

Most insidiously, our culture has normalized sacrificing the immeasurably sacred for measurable material gains. Jordan gave me a devastating example:

"If I offer a 31-year-old father with three kids double his salary to move from Gary, Indiana to Palo Alto, what's he going to do? He's going to leave his parents, grandparents, his wife's parents, all the kids' friends, everyone at church. That's the gladiatorial combat right there. Our culture has so radically profaned relationships that we trade things that are qualitatively irreplaceable for things that are quantitatively measurable."

This is what Jordan calls "the insidious Holocaust"—Satan converting parents into "murderers of their own children," separating them from life in countless subtle ways.

Over the next five years, this order will dissolve into ruins. "MSNBC may still exist. It may not. J.P. Morgan might not survive. Things that seem utterly impossible will simply happen."

When secular orders collapse, power vacuums grow. And power vacuums historically produce massive bloodshed—which is why the question of the next grand narrative matters so profoundly. We're about to determine what story humanity will tell itself about the nature of reality for generations to come.

The Three Types of Narratives Fighting for Humanity's Soul Today

As we discussed where civilization is heading—especially in light of recent violence and the obvious acceleration of conflict—Jordan laid out three types of grand narratives that will vie to organize human society as the post-World War II order finally collapses.

The Transhumanist Narratives deny spirit and worship technology, seeking escape from the human condition itself—whether Silicon Valley's brain-uploading dreams or China's state-directed experiments. Transhumanists believe consciousness must transcend flesh, pursuing what Jordan calls "accelerated liberalism" or “the final form of Progressivism” that collapses into nihilism—where nothing is sacred because nothing is real except the will to power.

This is the narrative of those who yearn to merge with AI, or otherwise escape the boundaries of human flesh. They see mortality as a bug to be fixed, not a feature of creation. Their fatal flaw? As Jordan explains, they're trying to survive a spiritual war with material weapons—a category error that will prove fatal. They have no ontology for the miraculous, no framework for understanding that reality is fundamentally spiritual. In their pursuit of transcending humanity, they're actually fleeing from the very thing that makes us human: our capacity to bear God's image in flesh.

Ethno-Pagan Narratives worship the spirit and history of a tribe, bloodline, or nation rather than universal truth. Whether a Chinese imperial restoration, a Russian nationalism, or some ethnic supremacist movement, they put blood above truth. While some claim to worship a universal God, in practice they worship their tribal “gods”.

Jordan describes how China is becoming the "cardinal example"—with Xi positioned as the celestial emperor who has the mandate of heaven, restoring the Middle Kingdom with Confucianism and Daoism elevated to their hierarchical roles.

Unlike transhumanists, ethno-pagans aren't strict materialists—they recognize spiritual reality and can mobilize deep human loyalties through sacred symbols and stories. But here's the fatal flaw: while they establish hierarchical order within their tribes, their "local gods" cannot recover from the Fall—humanity's separation from divine perfection. As Jordan notes, "their unity always degenerates into corruption" (like the cycles of Chinese civilizations rising and falling). Without access to universal redemption, their tribal orders inevitably collapse into the same patterns of domination and decay, unable to transcend the zero-sum conflicts that define fallen nature.

Universal Sacred Narratives maintain that truth transcends ethnic boundaries while remaining fundamentally spiritual. These are stories that say the same God is accessible to all people regardless of blood or soil, that the sacred isn't owned by any tribe but offered to all humanity.

These universal sacred narratives are what Jordan calls "mythologies"—and we need to reclaim that word. In his definition, mythologies are not primitive attempts at science or childish fantasies. They're narratives where the line between the ordinary and the supernatural dissolves, that reveal reality in its largest sense. Mythologies remember what we've forgotten: that reality is intrinsically miraculous, that it doesn’t make sense to segregate the supernatural into fairy tales and superhero movies.

But our secular age—and you can speculate why—has hidden the truth. We've put the "ordinary world" on a pedestal, making daily life infantilizing—push a button, food arrives; click a link, entertainment streams. "The ordinary world denatures you," Jordan explained. "It removes you from values, from virtue." But this controllable surface sits atop a much larger reality where the miraculous happens constantly. Because we can't mechanically reproduce things like divine healing, we pretend it doesn't exist.

As Jordan argues, while there are various universal sacred narratives, the two most worthy of serious consideration are Islam and Christianity. Both have repeatedly been at the center of multi-ethnic, transcontinental civilizations that lasted centuries—precisely because they insist on one transcendent truth that applies equally to all peoples.

Universal sacred narratives don't deny the flesh like transhumanists, nor do they worship it like ethno-pagans. They offer something beyond both: a sacred order that includes all of creation while transcending tribal boundaries.

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Christianity as the Most Life-Giving Grand Narrative

Between Islam and Christianity, why choose Christianity?

Ultimately, it's an article of faith. But as Jordan concluded after years of searching:

"Christianity is the most capital T, True mythology."

Christianity alone offers something neither Islam nor any other mythology can: God Himself entering creation as the "Logos" incarnate. This isn't just another prophet or teacher bringing divine messages—this is the divine principle that holds reality together becoming human.

As Jordan explained, the Logos is "that which enables relationships where things that are distinct come into a new form of unity while maintaining their uniqueness." The Logos is also that which orders reality in a way that maximally perpetuates truth, beauty, and goodness. This is the same Logos that John's Gospel declares: "In the beginning was the Word [Logos], and the Word was with God, and the Word was God... All things were made through Him... And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us."

When God became man in Christ, the gap between Creator and creation was permanently bridged. He didn't just send commands from above—He clarified what matters most to those who believe in Him and His resurrection: who we are (image bearers of God), how we ought to live and treat one another (love God and love neighbor), how we interact with the supernatural (through prayer, worship, and using gifts of the Holy Spirit dwelling within us), and what happens after we die (joining Him in eternal life).

And Christianity isn't just about individuals ordering their lives—it's about giving humanity at every scale a narrative capable of helping us build life-giving families, communities, and nations from the ruins. Without the Logos incarnate at the center, we get the collapsing order we see today. With Him, we get the possibility of genuine flourishing—not just for hundreds or thousands, but potentially for unlimited numbers of people.

While transhumanism denies the supernatural entirely and ethno-paganism corrupts it for tribal conquest, Christianity offers the one True mythology that properly orders both ordinary and supernatural reality, at every scale of civilization and until the end of time.

Embracing the mythological nature of Christianity is part of what Jordan calls the "rectification of names" (which deserves its own article). At the end of civilizational cycles, we must restore proper meaning to words that have been deliberately corrupted. The adversary perverts language precisely because words shape reality. When we lose the true meaning of words like 'mythology', 'religion', 'faith', and 'community', we lose our ability to navigate reality properly.

As a separate note, here’s a great video explaining the significance of Christ being the Logos incarnate.

Expect Strange Alliances in the Battle for Tomorrow

The grand narratives fighting for humanity's soul aren't staying in their lanes:

Putin and Xi discuss immortality—ethno-pagan leaders flirting with transhumanist dreams. Peter Thiel courts Christians toward techno-acceleration while lecturing the elite on the Antichrist. Trump’s 'Department of War' posts videos of war machines while reciting the Lord's Prayer. Nick Fuentes' blood-and-soil revanchism explicitly merges ethno-paganism with Christianity.

As Jordan explained: "It's kind of like the Soviets and the Anglo-Americans in World War II. Team up to fight [the Nazis]? Two seconds later, now we're at war." These partnerships are fundamentally unstable—the instant a common enemy falls, former allies become adversaries.

The challenge for Christians in this moment is profound: how to maintain Christianity's universal truth while resisting seductive alliances that would corrupt it. Any earthly power—whether transhumanist tech billionaires, ethno-pagan movements, or political parties—will try to wrap itself in God's name to elevate itself.

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The Proper Order: Christ Above All Earthly Powers

So is the key for Christians to advance God’s will in the world without engaging with transhumanists or ethno-pagans?

Jordan clarifies something important:

The danger isn't engaging with earthly powers—it's getting the order wrong.

Technology, nation, tribe, and politics aren't inherently evil—they're inevitable parts of creation that become corrupted when we elevate them to God's position at the top of the hierarchy. The moment they claim that position, they become idols.

"Technology is not bad; worshipping technology is bad," Jordan explained. "If you are able to include technology inside the Logos (which you can), then you take the best parts of Transhumanism, separate the dross, and integrate them into a lifework."

The same principle applies to ethnicity and nation. There's something good and real about lineage and cultures—"we don't want to mix all humans into a homogenized frappe". As Jordan notes, "All the nations come to Christ. But all the nations must be in order to come to Christ." The challenge is maintaining proper order: Christ first, then nation.

The people of a nation keeping Christ first helps each nation benefit from the largest, most timelessly life-giving framework that allows citizens to live together well, and provides the living water that helps stave off corruption and decay.

I witnessed this principle in action at Charlie Kirk's memorial service in Arizona this past Sunday. While some speakers, especially President Donald Trump, attempted to turn grief into partisan mobilization, the event, watched by apparently a hundred million people that day alone, was a demonstration of proper divine order.

As Jordan pointed out to me the day after the memorial, Christ remained the true center (of both Charlie's life and the memorial itself), and the political messages were ultimately subordinated to the Gospel. "Erika's forgiveness [of Charlie's killer] was the key message. And Trump's lack of forgiveness was exposed as not fully participating in the Highest."

This is the crucial insight: when we maintain proper order with Christ at the apex, earthly realities can serve life-giving purposes. Technology can enhance human flourishing rather than replace humanity. Individual nations can maintain their unique, distinctive cultures and traditions while participating in universal truth. Politics can become more of a peaceful contest over who better represents and serves a God-fearing population rather than who claims divine mandate for partisan ends. Business can support family formation and rootedness rather than fragmenting communities.

As I argued in my Christofuturism piece, we must respect the divine ordering of reality—in everything we do. When we create, say, AI that serves rather than supplants the sacred, we're participating in proper divine order.

The danger isn't in engaging with these earthly realities—it's in letting them claim the throne that belongs to God alone.

The Way Forward? Become the Blade, Not the Swordsman

Let's say you're bought into the idea that Christianity is the one True mythology worth embodying and proliferating—the only narrative that illuminates and properly orders both our ordinary and supernatural reality while offering genuine redemption for all.

How then should we live? How can we help win the battle over our souls and others' souls?

Jordan emphasizes obedience.

"A friend of mine says, you must become the blade, not the swordsman," Jordan explained. "God is the ultimate samurai. He does not hack away.” We were each designed to be swung to make a “single perfect cut."

This is the key to surviving what's coming: total obedience to divine will. Whether you're called to build a local church community, teach children, create a political action group, become a warrior in the military sense, or something else entirely—that specific calling is the most noble version of spiritual war you can wage.

When I asked about his current calling, he didn't talk about influencing policy or building movements, which is what he spent years doing in secular elite circles. Instead, he spoke about God wanting him to help get Jonathan Pageau's children's fairy tale books into more hands. (Jonathan is a brilliant Orthodox Christian thinker and creative who illuminates how our reality is filled with divine patterns, which can be illuminated effectively through fairy tales)

Through the blade/swordsman metaphor, Jordan made something clear to me. Remember that it's better to think of us as His instruments of spiritual war, more than soldiers or even generals meant to master plan the Enemy's downfall.

"The instant you endeavor to strategize, to plan, you insert your will for His will, then you're done," Jordan warns. Becoming a missionary—something that seems obviously good—could be "infinitely wrong" if God actually wants you to be a teacher, a scientist, or anything else.

(The question of how to discern God’s will is out of the scope of this piece, but explore resources and give this practice the time and reverence it deserves. And make sure that what you may sense as a calling from Him aligns with Scripture.)

Our discussion on following God’s will echoes what Charlie Kirk himself taught repeatedly: the Hebrew word "Hineni" (הִנְנִי)—"Here I am." Abraham said it at the binding of Isaac. Moses at the burning bush. Samuel and Isaiah when called. It means: "Lord, use me. Give me my marching orders." Not "Here's my plan for You," but "Here I am for Your plan."

So obey. Let Him use you however He wants to use you. The results of how He swings you will shape what will emerge from the ruins.

If this piece resonated with you, please share it with someone who needs to hear it. And if you haven't read my previous piece on How to Fight the Spiritual War Ahead, I encourage you to start there for the practical steps we all need to take.

You can watch/listen to my full conversation with Jordan Hall here on YouTube.

Yesterday, when I heard about Charlie Kirk's murder, deep sadness filled my heart.

Questions immediately raced through my mind: Who would do this?

Was it Chinese intelligence? Mossad? The CIA? An angry leftist? A Muslim anti-Christian activist? Someone programmed through MKUltra?

My mind then went to all the different types of people that may have hated Charlie so much, and what he stood for, that they would wish death upon him and maybe even orchestrate his assassination. I started thinking about the issues I had with these different groups, and I felt anger filling my heart.

I caught myself directing suspicion toward entire groups of people. And I realized:

This is exactly what Satan wants me to do. Satan wants me to hate my fellow man. And he wants me to forget that this is a spiritual war.

We're not mainly fighting a war against flesh and blood—we're mainly fighting a war against spirits and principalities (Ephesians 6:12). And the nature of this war calls us to fight in a way that defies our own instincts and speaks to our higher angels.

I wrote this piece because I needed to get clear for myself about how to fight this spiritual war right. I wanted to honestly assess what's happening, remember why it matters that we're facing spiritual warfare, and give concrete guidance for myself and anyone else wondering what to do when we're feeling fearful and under attack.

This is especially urgent as we near the 250th anniversary of the United States next year. There will be intense political battles and likely violence over what the future of the country should be—making spiritual preparation more critical than ever.

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How Satan Wants You To React

Before we dive into the right way to fight this spiritual war, I want to talk about the wrong way to fight, which is the way that Satan wants us to fight.

Satan wants us to hate our neighbors.

He wants us to see them as our enemies.

He wants us to give ourselves the most satisfying excuses to dehumanize all members of a particular political party. To dehumanize all people of a particular skin color. To dehumanize all believers of a particular faith tradition.

The more we dehumanize other people, the more we accept excuses for committing atrocities against them.

We are swimming in a sea of deceptions and subterfuge. And this should not surprise us. Earth is Satan’s kingdom. He is “the god of this world” (2 Corinthians 4:4).

And we know that Satan is the “father of lies” (John 8:44).

Humans everywhere—especially those not grounded in Christ and the Most High God—are being used as his tools to manipulate our emotions and engineer false blame. When there's a fog of confusion and zero trust in institutions, we default to our animal instincts—assuming the bad things that happen are caused by the people we already suspected.

We turn blind eyes to evil in our own communities while brewing hatred toward fellow humans based on nothing but our darkened assumptions.

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The Real War is for Your Soul

Satan is inciting material conflicts in the physical realm, but he orchestrates them from the spiritual realm.

The heroes of different groups—those are his number one targets. Because when someone you love is brutally murdered, you become emotionally unable to respond the way Jesus would want you to respond.

Make no mistake: there will be physical wars. They're already happening. I wouldn't be surprised if conflicts continue breaking out across the Middle East and around the world. But the most important war Satan cares about is the war for each of our souls.

That includes you.

Yes, Satan wants your soul.

Don't let your heart blacken because of what transpires in the coming days, months, and years. Your soul is a battlefront for the war that matters most.

Satan loves to target American souls because he knows the power of American Christianity if it were truly alive and awake. While Christians in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia face much more physical persecution, American Christians face psychological warfare designed to confuse them, neuter them, and even advance the agenda of evil.

Christ's Most Radical Teaching

What does Christ want us to do in response to violence against those we love? His most radical teaching gives us the answer: love your enemies.

This is difficult because every instinct we have says to hate our enemies. But it's timeless and brilliant because the enemy knows that hatred is how we become vessels of his evil.

"You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven." — Matthew 5:43-45

When Christians celebrate violence against their opponents, when we join the mob in wishing death on those who oppose us, we reveal we've never actually died to ourselves. We're still operating from the flesh, not the Spirit.

So here's my commitment, I will:

• Love the false teachers of Christianity. I'm going to pray that they learn to see the errors in their ways.

• Love the people who hate Christians—including the person in the crowd who joyfully cheered for the assassination, and the Jezebel writers who paid to purchase curses on top of Charlie. I pray for them.

• Love the intelligence agency representatives that are sowing confusion and hatred between Americans. I pray for them.

• Love all the people working tirelessly to discredit the Truth of Christ in different ways. I pray for them.

• Love the young activists that think they are supporting good causes, but they're really just weapons of Satan. I pray for them too.

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Why It Requires Heroic Discipline to Keep Your Soul

The level of discipline required to keep your soul from becoming blackened, cynical, and spiritually unwell—and to maintain enough faith and hope to even consider starting a family and raising children in this environment—is genuinely heroic.

I've had to cut out most people and activities from my life. Almost every social group, almost every content creator, almost every business opportunity—because they're not aligned with helping me in my walk with Christ. The narrow path is shockingly narrow, and it costs you almost everything you thought you wanted.

The economic reality in America is brutal. We're forced to participate in systems that fund what we oppose. Your morning coffee might be empowering a private equity company owned by a billionaire who is funding activism that corrupts American Christianity. Your investment portfolio likely includes shares in companies profiting on the next unjust war. Every dollar you spend votes for a world that either grows or actively works against Christ's kingdom.

And the culture we live in is poison. When you wake up as a follower of Christ—you realize we've built a civilization where the infrastructure of daily life is designed to make you fall or barely survive spiritually. It's almost impossible to live and participate in American society without regularly sinning. Most pop and rap music, for example, promotes values that no Christian man or woman should seek to embody.

The spiritual warfare in this hyper-technological age is relentless. Every screen, every swipe can disconnect you from God instantly. Virtually every app and streaming service is full of messaging that undermines the Christian worldview. Social media algorithms reward outrage and tribal hatred. And I’ve heard very few Christians talk about the foundational problem of AI like ChatGPT being grounded in moral relativism (in essence, that every worldview should be taken seriously). ChatGPT will make millions go insane.

What's more is the culture that Silicon Valley has pushed is soulless and psychopathic. Tech billionaires claim to champion rationality and intellect, but actually prioritize pride and power over both heart and truth. They don't care about truth if it gets in the way of the bottom line or protection of power—we can easily see this in how our government handles the Jeffrey Epstein files. As C.S. Lewis warned: "We make men without chests and expect from them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst."

With all this said about how fallen our society has become, God hasn't lowered His standards for you.

The calling remains: be spiritually mature enough to model character that others will absorb. Disciplined enough to create calm stability where love can grow. Wise enough to navigate a hostile culture while protecting innocent hearts—including your own. Strong enough in faith to believe that raising children in righteousness is still possible, even when everything around you suggests otherwise.

How to Prepare Yourself for Spiritual War

So, we’ve addressed why it’s so hard to keep your soul during these times. Now, what are we gonna do about it?

Well, before you enter battle, you have to get prepared. Here’s how:

Come to Christ if you haven't already. There is no neutrality in spiritual warfare. You're either His or you're not.

I'm not going to argue for the Truth of Christ in this post—there are plenty of people making that case. I myself have been exploring and documenting my turning toward Truth in what I call my FaithWalk OS.

I strongly suspect that other worldviews and lived faiths you could adopt are nothing like what is needed for this moment—and for eternity—because I believe the Bible is True.

Make God your best friend. Not just someone you talk about to other people, but someone you talk to about other people and everything else. Pray unceasingly. I have mentors who listen and talk to Him all day—on drives, during work, constantly communing with the Most High. I know I need to be more like them. Also know that the Holy Spirit aka the Comforter is here for a reason. Take his advice on how to navigate these treacherous times with wisdom, courage, and supernatural energy.

Study His will intensively. The Bible isn't a book of nice suggestions—it's your field manual for spiritual combat. The Bible helps you know what God loves and hates, so you can love what He loves and hate what He hates.

Build a powerful prayer life around what's needed:

• Wisdom to discern truth from deception

• Courage to stand for righteousness when it costs you

• Energy to do what God calls you to do

• Divine protection for yourself and those you love

• Clarity to recognize when your religion (and any group you have loyalty to) is being weaponized against you

• Humility to respond with grace when people and things you love are attacked

• Strength to prepare for material hardship while trusting God's provision

Look into William Seymour, John Knox, and Saint John of Kronstadt as examples of prayer warriors who changed the world.

Condition your heart to love your neighbors, and even your enemies. Love your neighbors even when they disappoint you. Even when they betray you. Even when they celebrate violence. Practice loving them before you need to. Love your enemies, especially when everything in you wants revenge. Train yourself to pray for their salvation, not their destruction. This is how you make Satan struggle. This is how you prove whose kingdom you belong to.

Prepare your temple and train yourself to stay alert. "Your adversary the devil is prowling around like a roaring lion, looking for anyone he can devour" (1 Peter 5:8). Don't be naive about the reality of spiritual warfare. Build habits now that will help you recognize patterns of deception, manipulation, and division. When your body and mind are not on point, you are easy to manipulate. Prioritize good sleep, proper nutrition, regular exercise, and limit digital stimulation. "Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit?" (1 Corinthians 6:19). Prepare your physical health as part of your spiritual armor.

Prepare yourself for tragedy to be used as justification for far greater casualties. Today is September 11th—a day when we remember how the loss of nearly 3,000 innocent lives was used to justify an unjust "war on terror" that destroyed millions of lives across multiple countries and destabilized the world. We now know how US intelligence's previous funding of militant networks in the region contributed to the rise of the very groups that attacked us, which makes it devastating that the response was hatred against Muslims, the erection of a domestic surveillance state, and endless wars. Meanwhile, we still have not prosecuted almost any of the people who were actually responsible for starting these wars, including those who lied about Iraq having WMDs. As Christians called to be truth seekers, we must demand accountability for those who weaponize tragedy. When you're rightfully angry and sad about loss of life, don't let that grief be weaponized to justify more death and destruction.

Remember: loving enemies and sinners doesn't mean you can't hate sin. You are called to hate sin. Hate the lies, the deception, the corruption, the systems that destroy human flourishing. Hate what destroys souls. But love the people trapped in those systems and pray for their liberation through the Truth of Christ. "Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good." — Romans 12:9

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The Coming Tests During This Wartime

In the days and years ahead:

• Satan will work to harm or kill many people who are widely loved

• You'll be mass manipulated continually through memes, narratives, influencers, media organizations, and algorithms

• The temptation for retribution will be overwhelming

• Your tribe(s) will call for violence and revenge

• You'll be pressured to hate entire groups based on the actions of individuals

• Your faith, your family, your values will be weaponized against you

These are spiritual tests.

Will you follow Christ's Way or the world's way? Will you make prayer, fasting, and obedience your main weapons in this war? Or will you find any excuse to pick up weapons of flesh and become the blackened-heart agent that Satan wants you to become?

How to Fight the Right Way

Let me elaborate on how I see Christ calling us to fight this spiritual battle.

We fight not with guns. Not with violence. Not with hatred. But with the full armor of God:

• Truth as your belt — Know God's word so well that lies can't take root

• Righteousness as your breastplate — Live so clean that aspersions slide off

• The gospel of peace on your feet — Be ready to bring reconciliation, not division

• Faith as your shield — Trust God's sovereignty even when evil seems to win

• Salvation as your helmet — Remember your identity is in Christ, not your ethnic group or nationality

• The Word of God as your sword — Use Scripture to cut through deception

Beyond these universals, different people are called to fight this spiritual war in different ways.

Some are called to bring people to Christ through authentic interpretations of the Word—pastors, teachers, evangelists who help others understand what it means to follow Jesus in practice.

Others are called to be journalists, shining light on evil to mass audiences. If some group engineered Charlie's assassination—if there was a deep conspiracy to engineer chaos within America by, say, a foreign intelligence agency—we need people with the calling and skills to investigate and expose this. Sunlight is the best disinfectant.

Others are called to be fathers and mothers, raising children who can withstand the spiritual warfare of their generation. Some are called to business, creating economic structures that serve human flourishing.

Some are called to create educational programs for kids and adults to understand their spiritual authority through Christ. Others are called to create modern schools that do not shy away from educating people on spiritual matters.

God has great plans for you to fight in this spiritual war in your unique way. The key is discerning your specific calling and fighting in your lane—without letting the war poison your heart with hatred toward entire groups of people. We fight the spiritual forces behind the humans doing evil, not the humans themselves.

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Be On The Side Of The Ultimate Victory

Stay close to God. Be an agent of God's love—not weak, tolerate-everything, morally-relativistic love, but God's love that is synonymous with God's Truth. Love that goes hand-in-hand with justice—most of which we leave to God to handle. Love that shines light on agents of evil while praying for their redemption.

We are called to unlock pockets of heaven on earth where people can flourish as God intended. Where men can become worthy fathers despite a culture designed to prevent it. Where families can be formed and children raised in righteousness despite every force working against them.

In these Last Days, persecution against followers of Christ will ramp up. But we serve the God who, through Christ, gave us power to cast out demons, heal the sick, and commune with the Most High through the Holy Spirit.

The victory is already won through Christ. But the battle for your soul—for how you respond in these dark days—that battle is being fought right now.

Don't let your heart blacken. Don't become a tool of the enemy. Don't hate the people who have become tools of the devil when you should be praying for their deliverance and salvation.

It’s important that kids have you as an example of righteousness in this fallen society. As CS Lewis said: “Since it is so likely that they will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage.”

Prepare your spirit.

The war is here.

And we fight it by walking the Way of Christ, in obedience to the Most High God.

Exactly one year before America's 250th anniversary.

And today, on behalf of this country to which I owe my life, I declare independence from everything that keeps the American people from God's will.

Writer’s note (August 12th, 2025): After the original publication of this piece, I rebranded my Substack from ‘America 2.0’ to 'The Christofuturist' (full explanation here). As part of that rebrand, I want to clarify that this vision below is not just for Americans. Where this essay says “America” or “America 2.0,” read “your community, your people.” The call is global: open your heart to Christ, devote your life to Him, and create Christ‑honoring, co‑living communities wherever God plants you. I’m leaving the original language for continuity.

It’s Time To Declare Our Independence From The Dominion Of Darkness

Today, on this July 4th, 2025, we declare America's Re-Independence.

We declare independence from our spiritual obesity, the zombie apocalypse that we are living through. From our over-reliance on foreign countries that we outsourced our productive capacity to. From our addiction to importing talent versus training our own people.

We declare independence from our fleshly desires. From our thirst to be and ‘build’ God. From our broken models of work, education, and interpersonal connection; and all the rotten fruits of our secular world.

We declare independence from the way that we have been using and building social media to suck each other into cycles of addiction, disconnection, and numbness. From a society that makes it feel like a luxury to be fruitful and multiply.

We declare independence from willful ignorance of the sins of our nation—our crimes against humanity that keep us from navigating toward a path of virtue.

Above all, we declare independence from the dominion of darkness. A big reason why we're so confused about our situations—why we don't know what to do with our kids, why so many institutions are failing—is because we're dealing with spirits and principalities (Ephesians 6:12), not just evil that manifests through individuals. This is spiritual warfare waged by an enemy who seeks to trap us in pits of despair.

But we will win this spiritual war by choosing His narrow path.

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We Must Learn from America 1.0's Rise and Fall

To build America 2.0, we must honestly reckon with what worked and didn't about America 1.0.

In 1776, our founders established a new nation with the mission of creating a prosperous society. And in many ways, they succeeded—Americans went on to produce incredible innovations, build remarkable infrastructure, create beautiful music and culture, and develop systems that enabled unprecedented prosperity.

But we must reckon with the fact that much of this prosperity was built on morally bankrupt foundations. The white supremacist spirit and ideology corrupted Christianity itself, using Scripture to justify slavery and exclusion. They literally removed Exodus—the story of God liberating slaves—from the Bibles given to enslaved people. When you edit out God's heart for freedom and liberation, "Christianity" becomes a tool of Satan.

White supremacy wasn’t just a figment of our past—it was and still is the lived reality for people like me. As a Chinese American, I experienced how suffocating this culture remained: being bullied mercilessly for race, made to feel like an outsider, forced into an identity crisis that felt non-negotiable. Any non-white person can attest to this default experience. This culture of exclusion and supremacy simply cannot be the same spirit that carries us forward into America 2.0.

The "good old days" many people reminisce about were good for some while being hell for others. When we celebrate America's society engineering capacity—the infrastructure, manufacturing, and community structures—we must acknowledge that much of it was literally built by enslaved Black Americans whose innovations and labor were stolen or uncredited. From the White House itself to revolutionary technologies, the foundation of a serious proportion of American wealth came through exploitation.

The manufacturing sovereignty and community prosperity were real achievements. But they were achieved through systems that violated the very Christian principles they claimed to uphold. The real question is: What can we learn from what actually worked, while rejecting what was morally compromised?

After the 1960s, we financialized everything and lost much of our productive capacity. We traded manufacturing for managing money, shipped jobs overseas for short-term profits, and lost the hands-on wisdom of how to actually build things. Meanwhile, our education system devolved into test score theater—celebrating academic performance that has little correlation with solving real problems.

Today, generations after the abolishment of slavery, American society continues to be fueled by human exploitation. Modern tech empires are built on new forms of indentured servitude, like Scale AI’s data annotation sweatshops, while new AI-powered defense contractors generate billions pushing new world wars.

In the last fifty years, we've systematically debased America's foundations to the point where they're unrecognizable. We've celebrated and legalized prostitution, gambling, and drug-fueled degeneracy while detaching people from nature, family, and reality. We've built substance-free speculative financial bubbles, destroyed young people's ability to afford housing or retirement, and created food and pharmaceutical systems that poison rather than heal.

Meanwhile, our ruling establishment covers up international child trafficking rings that implicate Senators and Presidents while waging divide-and-conquer strategies that prevent us from seeing the spiritual warfare clearly. The uncomfortable truth is that America is now controlled by satanic forces—and people are so beaten down they're desperate for any hero to save them, creating golden calf worship instead of turning back to God.

To make matters worse, American geopolitics runs on fear-based dominance rather than earning genuine trust from allies. Nations comply with our system not because they believe in it, but because they fear the consequences of rejecting it. Ultimately, the world runs on the U.S. dollar not from trust in our system, but from fear of the consequences of rejecting it.

Much of why America 1.0 has sustained as the world's most dominant superpower is by governing through threat of invasion.

This fear-based system built on exploitation is bound to collapse. Financial systems could crumble tomorrow. Supply chains controlled by rival nations could be weaponized against us. The very foundations that propped up America 1.0 are cracking under their own moral contradictions.

As we approach America's 250th anniversary, this is our moment: God is calling us to rethink the nation's foundations before the corrupted system collapses.

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Christofuturist Communities Are The Foundation for America 2.0

The path forward isn't to patch up a both outdated and corrupted operating system. It's to build something entirely new: a system based on communities that achieve prosperity through righteousness, not exploitation.

This is about redemption.

While America 1.0 was built on morally compromised foundations, the vision of a nation that truly honors God through justice, freedom, and human flourishing remains worth pursuing.

A society rooted in secularism won't cut it.

We've tried that. And it's only gotten us to a place where Satan rules over this nation.

It's time to embrace Christofuturism, which calls on us to build what should have been established from the beginning: a society that actually reflects God's heart in how a nation ought to treat people and create prosperity.

This redeemed America will emerge through intentional heart transformation that unlocks Christofuturist communities—pockets of heaven on earth where transformed individuals create industries that serve human flourishing rather than exacerbate human suffering.

These communities will emerge organically around Christoindustrialists—industry leaders who put Christ first and receive God's heart for specific people and places.

Rather than creating overly detailed, multi-year plans and hoping for masses of workers to immediately show up, these leaders will start with available skills and callings, serving immediate needs while maintaining kingdom values. They will pursue excellence in virtue, competency, and impact, kickstarting and fostering Christoindustries that are unambiguously good engines of human flourishing, not factories chasing quarterly profits at the expense of human exploitation.

As these communities prove their transformation and growth, successful Christoindustrialists will naturally acquire or lease land and facilities—breathing kingdom life into existing infrastructure or developing new spaces that serve their growing community. This might look like chartering a new town, revitalizing a dying community, or establishing a community center, but it always represents a colocated center of gravity for the increasing number of people being unlocked through manifesting Christ's heart in practical ways. The physical infrastructure serves the proven community, not the other way around.

When profit comes at the expense of people's wellbeing, it's not Christoindustrialist. When an industry feeds fleshly desires over spiritual ones, it misses the mark.

Take housing as an example of how a values-neutral industry can become a Christoindustry. America's housing crisis stems from industries controlled by players whose values don't align with family formation and community building, combined with an education crisis that leaves American citizens without the skills to build. A Christoindustrialist housing company would build beautiful, affordable homes that strengthen families and neighborhoods—making housing itself a Christoindustry. The industry would train local people—especially those with heritage in the area—to lead and innovate, not just consume its outputs.

Now, consider how another Christoindustry—gospel music—might emerge organically:

Archbishop E. Bernard Jordan, co-founder of Zoe Ministries and internationally recognized prophet, was recently asked to establish a community-owned gospel record label. With over 40 years of ministry experience, leadership of the School of the Prophets, and a global network spanning multiple continents, Archbishop Jordan could be a Christoindustrialist who could unlock this vision.

Starting with the gospel artists and producers like Grammy-winning David Bratton already connected to Zoe Ministries, this label would partner with and serve artists with kingdom values, ensuring they retain ownership and spiritual integrity while creating music that brings people closer to God.

As the community grows around this mission, it would naturally develop into a gospel music mecca—a colocated center of gravity where the world's most anointed gospel artists gather to create, collaborate, and minister. The economic success would fund recording facilities, artist development programs, and eventually educational institutions—which would train the next generation of kingdom-centered musicians.

Now, here are four other examples of communities that could emerge around specific Christoindustries:

• Imagine a group of creative, tech-savvy believers called to create faith-focused immersive experiences, starting small in their town and expanding to many cities around the world as their experiences grow in revenue and popularity, eventually rivaling Disney-world level impact.

• Imagine a group of gifted scientists and engineers called to commercialize applications of their discoveries in quantum sciences that serve human flourishing; using the profits of their products to fund further research and applications.

• Imagine a group of divinely anointed healers called to train world-class healers—starting with one location and then replicating their programs in other cities as the healing miracles produced by graduates inspire benefactors to pour funding into the training programs worldwide.

• Imagine a cross‑denominational community devoted to building "discipleship infrastructure" as a global commons—open‑source code and standards, shared legal templates, open curricula, and documented "divine patterns" that any church or ministry can adopt. They maintain a patterns wiki, publish reference implementations, and steward funding models that sustain open infrastructure, seeding schools, media platforms, and small‑group tools worldwide.

For each community that grows into a world-leading center for its Christoindustry, it produces and circulates within the community billions in value, while demonstrating that prioritizing Christ's grounding is not a constraint on success but a catalyst for it.

The economic success naturally funds land acquisition, facility development, and infrastructure that serves the proven community's continued growth and multiplication.

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The Christocompound As The Heart Of The Community

As Christofuturist communities grow through relationship and trust, a “Christocompound” will emerge—the natural physical gathering point where spiritual life creates community life.

These comprehensive gathering places will be built as growing communities need dedicated places—not just homes or borrowed spaces—where spiritual, physical, nutritional, and educational needs can converge.

The Christocompound cares for the whole person.

Think of the compound called "The Crossover" in Cedar Park, Texas—a place where faith (led by Tauren Wells' Whitestone Church), food, learning, and wellness create holistic human flourishing.

Early childhood education and daycare for community families will happen within the Christocompound, ensuring children's formative years are rooted in both spiritual foundation and community connection.

Also from the Christocompound will radiate Christofuturist education—schools purpose-built to produce the next generation of Christoindustrialists. These schools can be part of the compound or separate facilities, but they share the same mission: teaching society engineering, not just test-taking.

Students at Christofuturist schools will build strong foundations in science, software architecture, theology, economics, and human nature while getting hands-on training contributing to real construction projects from middle school onward.

They will understand elemental realities, how materials actually behave, how digital tools can improve physical infrastructure. And they will practice using AI as a tool for helping them advance their calling to be and manifest heaven on earth.

In ten years, the world's most capable leaders—real renaissance people genuinely capable of contributing to spacecraft design, city planning, and next-generation manufacturing—will emerge from these schools.

Proximity, Not Isolation

These communities don't require isolation from existing cities. Most will emerge organically within or right next to places like Tulsa, Austin, Salt Lake City, and other metro areas as transformed individuals create kingdom-centered businesses and relationships. Rather than starting with master-planned communities, we will focus on being salt and light in existing locations, developing natural boundaries that allow us to be in the world but not of the world. This proximity to existing infrastructure will make organic growth more practical and accessible while maintaining the focused community culture that enables spiritual and economic flourishing.

As these communities grow, talent and character will naturally determine who joins and stays. Families will participate based on capability, virtue, and commitment to contributing to the mission. Divinely high standards create divinely great outcomes. This is not elitism, it's recognizing that manifesting heaven on earth requires people aligned with that mission.

The natural progression from successful community to town development will create colocated centers of gravity where like-minded, like-hearted families want to live near each other, businesses want to establish operations, and new infrastructure naturally develops to serve the proven community's needs.

You Can Breathe Life Into Existing Infrastructure

Successful Christoindustrialists will often find that God leads them to existing infrastructure that needs kingdom life breathed into it.

Many existing towns across the world are dying and can be brought back to life through transformed communities. For instance, in Italy, dozens of small villages now offer €1 homes to new residents willing to renovate and repopulate communities.

While in Japan, cities and rural regions are tackling the “akiya” crisis (literal millions of abandoned homes) by offering ultra‑low‑cost houses and grants for renovation. In some cases, you can simply move in, add satellite internet and upgrade infrastructure, achieving transformation for a fraction of the cost of building new.

Whether you end up kickstarting your community’s physical colocation in an abandoned town or town that is mostly inhabited, remember that community mission alignment comes first before dedicating a lot of resources to physical infrastructure.

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Glory of Zion: A Living Example of the Unlock-Then-Build Process

Consider the founding story of Glory of Zion International Ministries in Denton, Texas. In 1974, founders Robert and Linda Heidler started with a simple Bible study in their friend's duplex in Denton, driving up from Dallas every other week to help her learn Scripture.

Heart transformation came first—they were moved by compassion to serve someone's spiritual need using their available resources (their time, travel, and biblical knowledge).

Organic relationship growth followed. Soon, the Heidlers’ friend's neighbor got saved. Then her neighbor's husband. Then the friend's boyfriend and his boss. Within two years, this heart-led ministry had grown large enough to incorporate as a church in 1976.

After incorporating as a church, Robert and Linda moved to Denton and continued expanding facilities only as the community outgrew each space—from the friend's duplex to rented church building to purchased facility. Each location became a colocated center of gravity that attracted and served their growing community.

Territorial transformation resulted. In Linda's words from my recent conversation with her: "Everywhere we went, it was like we went in and it was desolate. And just our presence being there and worship and the Spirit of God being there, brought flourishing... when the Lord comes in and is honored and is worshiped, it changes the spiritual atmosphere of physical territory, and it brings prosperity."

Today, Glory of Zion operates within a massive former Boeing manufacturing facility, serves 10-12,000 people online globally, and has transformed multiple desolate areas into prosperous communities. The pattern: heart transformation → relationships → organic growth → infrastructure → territorial impact.

A quick note: While the Heidlers saw success taking over preexisting buildings, sometimes new construction is the path forward, especially as we now have better understandings of how to design optimal societal systems—including sewage, energy, agriculture, and network infrastructure that support kingdom community life.

The Compelling Draw for Every Demographic

Why would people choose to move toward a Christofuturist community? Because these communities will demonstrate what nowhere else can—the fruit of individual heart transformation creating collective flourishing.

• For families—the core demographic—it's the ability to raise children in a community that reinforces rather than undermines your values. Where your kids' friends share your worldview. Where schools teach the Truth. Where neighborhoods are designed for children to play safely and parents to build deep friendships. Where multi-generational wisdom flows naturally and family formation is celebrated, not treated as an inconvenience. These communities will build their own news sites, media platforms, and social networks—giving families Christ-aligned defaults for information while not necessarily abandoning secular platforms entirely, so young people can still be part of the world but not of the world.

• Speaking of young people, the draw of joining a Christofuturist community is radically better education that prepares them to ride the waves of innovation and shape the future, not just understand it from the sidelines.

• For singles, it's a community where they can find fully aligned life partners who share the vision of where things should head; and by default want to be fruitful and multiply.

• For professionals, it's work in their highest and best use for God's will instead of being pigeonholed in secular corporate hellholes.

• For retirees, it's living among values-aligned, optimistic, smart people building something beautiful together.

Each demographic gets what they will find it extremely hard to find anywhere else: a joyful, prosperous, God-centered life.

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Why Boundaries Matter: Protection from a Fallen World

In modern cities, it's inevitable to become behaviorally lukewarm—the very condition Christ warns against in Revelation 3:15-16: "I know your works, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were cold or hot. So then, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will vomit you out of My mouth."

Surrounded by endless temptation and spiritual mediocrity, even the most committed believers find their fire dimming. Science confirms what wisdom teaches: willpower is not a helpful thing to imagine you have in circumstances of ever-present temptation—instead, put yourself in environments that naturally uphold your values.

Christofuturist towns serve as safe havens where the fire of the Holy spirit burns pure. Here, it's easy to avoid lukewarmness because the entire community ambiently reinforces spiritual excellence. Our kids, our homes, our workspaces, our places of worship, our schools; and our devices and information ecosystems must be protected from this corruption. Without strong boundaries, the enemy will sabotage our missions.

Importantly, boundaries enables the transformation Paul calls for in Romans 12:1-2: "Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is — his good, pleasing and perfect will."

In a Christofuturist town, non-conformity to worldly patterns won’t be a struggle—it will be the natural result of living in community aligned with divine purpose. These towns will foster people who will stay focused and pure enough to enact His will around the world.

Our current system may seem like it can last, but is actually a bubble ready to burst. Financial systems could collapse tomorrow. Supply chains are hostage to rival nations. The dollars you saved might become worthless.

That's why the supply chain matters as much as the product. If your local industries depend on overseas players who don't share your values, you're hostage to their agenda. Christofuturist towns pursue supply chain sovereignty, ensuring that every link in the chain operates according to the right principles. When crisis hits—and it will, again and again in these coming years—these communities will have the resilience to survive.

Financial surplus (and one or more community-leading families) from established towns seeds new ones. Christofuturism will create abundance that multiplies, with many towns as proofs of concept for how to design for human flourishing.

Get Ready For A Cambrian Explosion of “Christocultures”

Over the coming years, we want to see a wave of heart-led transformation: dozens of Christofuturist communities emerging organically with different sets of leaders, customs, and denominations. Each community will develop its own distinct culture, shaped by geography, the specific needs God highlights, and the unique gifts of its people. A town in Florida will evolve differently from one in Arizona, not just because of climate differences, but because of the challenges they face, the types of people they attract, and the local heritage they build upon.

No two Christofuturist towns will be identical. That's the point. We're developing a new science around creating Christocultures—understanding how different combinations of leadership, industry, worship style, and community customs produce different fruits. Some towns might emphasize contemplative traditions with long prayer walks and silent retreats. Others might pulse with energetic worship and constant collaboration. Some will be led by non-denominational leaders, others by Catholics, others by Baptists, and so on—all sharing a devotion to Christ but expressing His kingdom through different cultural flavors.

The fruits each town bears will be both spiritual and material. We'll measure success not just by financial metrics, but by the depth of community relationships, the character development of children, the innovation emerging from their industries, and the magnetic pull they create for outsiders investigating why their productive outputs are so high quality and why families inside are doing so well.

A healer-training town that produces healers that repeatedly make miracles happen, or a gospel music town that produces artists who inspire millions toward Christ, are Christocultures worth studying.

As communities multiply and impact the world, we'll discover the principles that allow different Christocultures to flourish.

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Prepare For The New Flood

America 2.0 represents a golden era, but it won't emerge immediately or everywhere at once. The corrupted system won't collapse peacefully. The elites who built this satanic infrastructure will fight viciously to maintain control, and millions will suffer in the transition.

We are entering what I call "the flood period"—a dark age that will precede America's renewal. Not a flood of water this time, but a flood of lies, spiritual darkness, economic devastation, and civilizational collapse. The infrastructure our ancestors built, the institutions that held us together—all crumbling in real time.

This flood will manifest through multiple disasters: Natural calamities, yes, but more importantly spiritual disasters as demonic forces intensify their assault. Health disasters as our poisoned food and pharmaceutical systems claim more victims. Economic disasters as speculative bubbles burst and supply chains collapse. Social disasters as communities fragment under the weight of moral bankruptcy.

The kinetic warfare is already ramping up. Russia-Ukraine grinds on with hundreds of thousands dead. Wars in the Middle East expand as the American-Israeli war machine—now upgraded with AI-powered weapons—feeds on endless conflict. Each new war enriches the defense contractors while bleeding dry the nation's soul.

This flood period could last many years, possibly decades. The transition from satanic control to Christ-centered governance won't happen overnight. But every biblical flood clears the way for new civilization. After Noah, God promised: "Never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood; neither shall there any more be a flood to destroy the earth." He wouldn't destroy the world—but that doesn't mean no new floods would come. Humanity started fresh with new rules, new covenant, new purpose.

God has allowed this collapse as both judgment and mercy. Judgment for our rebellion against His ways, mercy to clear away the spiritual debris so something beautiful can be built again. The old world is ending in fire and blood, but the new world begins with those who choose life over death, truth over lies, God over idols.

The Remnant is small but mighty. We're the ones who will rebuild when the waters recede. Start preparing now—not just with supplies, but spiritually. Get right with God. Build real skills. Form Christ-centered communities. Learn timeless truths that survive civilizational collapse.

America 2.0 will emerge from this flood, one Christofuturist community at a time. The golden age is coming, but only for those who build the ark.

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America 2.0 Starts Small, Starts Now, With You

Don't wait for the perfect plan or the right leader. Start where you are, with what you have.

Ask God for His heart toward the people and places around you. Use your available skills—caretaking, teaching, welding, manufacturing, energy systems, software architecture—to serve immediate needs while maintaining kingdom values. Every small act of faithfulness moves you closer to the community transformation God wants to accomplish through you.

The golden age begins with individual heart transformation creating ripple effects. Raise children who know their purpose. Connect with families who share your values. Transform your business to serve human flourishing rather than exploitation. Choose excellence in virtue, competency, and impact.

Start small, move with big faith. Every Christofuturist community began with one person receiving God's heart for specific people and places, then taking the first available step to serve them. Remember: God would have spared Sodom if there were only 10 righteous people. Your small acts of faithfulness in a wicked generation carry immense power to transform entire territories.

This is our 1776 moment. Our founders declared independence from a distant king who didn't share their values.

And today, we declare independence from the systems and forces that hold us hostage to agendas that oppose God's will.

God calls on you to refound America now.

He has blessed you with the gifts you need and placed the right people around you.

Unite with them and manifest heaven on earth, together.

Want to connect with others pursuing this vision? Follow and DM me on X so I can add you to our Christofuturist WhatsApp group and email list to stay plugged in with the growing movement.

Plans that call on you to use the gifts He gave you.

Gifts you may not recognize. Gifts you may be underutilizing. Gifts you may be using to serve the wrong master—money, power, status. But those are false idols.

You were created uniquely, with divine superpowers.

“Each person is given something to do that shows who God is: Everyone gets in on it, everyone benefits. All kinds of things are handed out by the Spirit, and to all kinds of people!” (1 Corinthians 12:7)

Some of us are called to build houses. Others to make those houses homes. Some to connect the world, building bridges of peace. Others to discover breakthroughs in energy and computing. Some to care for the elderly. Others to create schools that awaken minds to Truth, and prepare our kids to be and build the future.

And all of us who can should be fruitful and multiply.

We're nodes in God's divine neural net. Each of us can only see part of His process. But trust that He sees it all and that your free choices matter to His process.

To those of you who have a great bias for action, learn to distinguish your will from God's will. The more influential you become, the more opportunities come your way, the more important this practice becomes.

Listen closely to Him. Pray more than you think you need to.

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This is your moment.

The greatest revival in human history is right around the corner.

A revival that will seed a Golden Age that puts God at the center.

He calls you to be great in the midst of the greatest leadership vacuum we've ever known.

He invites you to speak Truth with conviction. To lead when others are afraid. To embody what humans can become when they follow God's will. To represent his Kingdom with every action you take.

The Christofuture starts now. With you.

You are a living miracle. Start acting like one.

Answer His call.

Not because He is traditional. Not because there are millions of churches around the world. But because His way is Truth.

Yet many believe faith has no place in our technological future. They put AI on a divine pedestal, declaring it our new god. They chase transhumanism and singularity, seeking to replace the Creator with the created.

This is the fundamental error of our age.

Respect The Divine Order In The AI Age

Christofuturism is devastatingly simple:

• God reigns supreme

• Humans serve God

• AI serves humans

We are made in God's image. We are the creators, not our tools. AI is just another technology we create—like a knife, a tractor, or a crane. Powerful, yes. Divine, no.

In Silicon Valley, engineers pray to algorithms. In New York, hedge funds worship market data. In LA, image is gospel. Everywhere, people kneel before something.

Idolatry ruins.

AI is just the latest idol jammed into the God-shaped hole in our hearts.

I’ve seen brilliant minds tip into madness, their closest companion an AI that affirms every thought and feeds every delusion. They mistake an echo chamber for wisdom—a tool for a master.

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Christofuturism: A New, Fertile Soil for Human Flourishing

You judge a tree by its fruit.

The Christofuturist Way will produce:

• Thriving families raising joyful children

• Servant leaders anchored in unchanging truth

• Villages and cities that feel like heaven on earth

• Art that stirs the soul and amplifies truth, goodness, and beauty

• Technologies that connect people more deeply to each other and God

• Businesses that support the flourishing of our communities and planet

Christofuturism isn't about rejecting technology. It's about putting it in proper order.

Christofuturists don’t blindly reject AI—they ask: "How can this AI serve our mission to spread the Good News and democratize human flourishing?"

Picture churches that harness technology yet keep their souls; schools that teach quantum physics alongside eternal truths; cities designed for joy, prosperity, and communion with the divine; festivals and year-round world’s fairs that celebrate love and creation; and tools that amplify—rather than numb—our humanity.

Followers of Christ can be the most technologically advanced and wise people on Earth. Christofuturism calls us to remember the place of technology and the ends we're using it to build toward.

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The Choice Is Clear For Us

Some technologists claim they’re inventing God. They’re not; they’re engineering tools that can either serve or enslave, connect or isolate, clarify or confuse.

The question isn't whether we'll use these tools. The question is whether we'll use them to build heaven on earth or a new tower of Babel.

Heaven on earth looks like human flourishing at scale. Babel looks like isolation, delusion, and the worship of our own creations.

The future belongs to those who build with God, not those who build to become Him.

“Unless the Lord builds the house, the builders labor in vain.” — Psalm 127:1

If you know God is the source of every miracle—even as we build machines that seem to create miracles on their own—welcome to the movement.

I’ve wrestled with what it will take to bring America 2.0 to life. Christofuturism isn’t garnish; it’s the soil where this renaissance must take root.

In that America, God reigns, we serve God, and AI serves us—and all of humanity.

That’s our only path forward.

In my last Substack post, I delved into the concept of “democratizing human flourishing”. I believe that creating pithy phrases like this is crucial because they help unify problem solvers and support sensemaking and action-taking, especially in confusing times.

Today, I want to expand on this idea and explain why democratizing human flourishing should be the default North Star mission for anyone who wants to do good.

Human flourishing is the experience of holistic well-being, encompassing physical, mental, relational, spiritual, and financial health. Different people may define it differently, but the essence remains the same: achieving peak human existence. While it's hard (and probably unnecessary) to measure flourishing on a 0-100 scale, this concept of “human flourishing” provides a useful framework to assess whether activities contribute to or detract from one's overall well-being.

The think tank and collective action network Humanity 2.0 recently released a comprehensive framework for human flourishing that I think is the most valuable framework to reference:

This framework is the result of several years of co-thinking and iteration by leading flourishing thinkers and practitioners from Harvard, Oxford, Boston College, UPenn, and other institutions.

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Why “democratizing human flourishing” is the right default mission for humanity

So, why is “democratize human flourishing” the right mission? Because humans matter, and their experiences matter. Despite the progress made in improving living standards, flourishing remains a privilege for many, even in “developed” nations like the US. This isn't just about access to basic necessities like food and water; it's about the quality of these essentials, having strong relationships, and having a meaningful life purpose. For many, this level of flourishing is still out of reach, which I consider a significant problem. Also, “democratize human flourishing” is a simple yet comprehensive umbrella mission for any number of missions that we care about, including improving cheap access to quality education, ensuring affordable healthcare, protecting and regenerating the natural environment, and affordably fostering safer neighborhoods.

Human flourishing is a complex, multi-faceted “measure.” But we will figure out a way to measure it. And when we do, it will be obvious how insufficient GDP was as a measure of national health/success. GDP attempts to collapse everything we care about into a single number, but it says nothing about the distribution of wealth or the quality of life. GDP keeps us trapped in a rat race, where the assumption is that more is always better. But that's not how humans work. At some point, we must get out of this myopic view and focus on what truly matters: the holistic well-being of individuals and communities. Democratizing human flourishing moves us beyond simplistic metrics and encourages a more nuanced approach to measuring and improving quality of life.

Democratizing human flourishing is not just better than the mission of increasing wealth or GDP, it’s also better than the mission of “making impact” that is typically thrown around in do-gooder circles. While “make impact” can be vague and can often just mean doing something as surface level as signing a petition or picking up litter, “democratize human flourishing” points to systemically increasing accessibility to the conditions that enable holistic well-being for everyone. It sets a bar for impact that more people should strive to achieve.

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Let’s dive further into the nuance behind each word within the phrase: “democratize human flourishing”

First, why “democratize” human flourishing? Simply “serving” human flourishing is too vague; any business can claim they are doing this. And “accelerating” human flourishing is also too vague because someone merely increasing the flourishing for the wealthy can say they are doing this. “Democratize”, however, points to a net increase in the accessibility of a “facilitator” of human flourishing. If all you're doing is creating a competitor of equal quality and cost to other competitors, and you're not filling gaps in accessibility, you're not democratizing human flourishing. Democratization implies innovation and systems change, which is what's needed to make holistic well-being accessible to more people.

Second, why democratize “human” flourishing? Human flourishing is intricately linked with environmental and animal well-being. Protecting our environment and ensuring the welfare of animals are crucial for the sustained flourishing of humans. This interconnected approach makes “human flourishing” a cause that almost any human can support, transcending personal or political differences. It's a mission that fosters unity and collective action toward a better world for all living beings.

Third, why democratize human “flourishing”? Addressing symptoms like “mental health” in isolation can be ineffective because they are often intertwined with other aspects of well-being. Human flourishing requires a diverse range of solutions, recognizing that individuals have unique values, goals, and natures. And unlike other measures that may be narrow or opinionated, human flourishing is pluralistic and acknowledges the complexity of human needs and aspirations. This comprehensive approach ensures that efforts to improve well-being are inclusive, contextually aware, and genuinely beneficial for the long-term health and happiness of all individuals.

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Overall, “democratize human flourishing” is the best possible default mission for anyone trying to seriously make a difference in the world. If you can think of a better one that is both specific enough to drive action and broad enough to unite humanity, let me know.

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How to democratize human flourishing (and why it’s challenging to doing so)

Understanding why “democratizing human flourishing” matters is just the first step. The next crucial question is how to achieve this ambitious goal. A “society upgrade entrepreneur” achieves this goal by picking a key “facilitator” of human flourishing and committing to doing whatever it takes to make that facilitator accessible to everyone.

Let’s look at one key facilitator: housing.

Housing as a Facilitator of Human Flourishing

Housing is a critical facilitator of human flourishing because the quality of someone’s housing strongly affects their ability to thrive. High housing costs, which are prevalent in the US and beyond, are a major barrier to flourishing. When people struggle to afford a place to live that is free from mold and other health hazards, it's almost impossible for them to reach their full potential. Therefore, one meaningful way to carry out the mission of “democratizing human flourishing” is to lower the cost of quality, nourishing housing. This mission involves addressing various issues, such as material science breakthroughs, zoning laws, and policies that hinder affordable housing development.

The Importance of Technology in The Democratization Process

Technology plays a crucial role in the mission to democratize human flourishing. Breakthroughs in technology can significantly reduce costs and increase accessibility. For instance, the invention of the washing machine and dryer has democratized human flourishing by freeing up time that would otherwise be spent on the drudgery of laundry. Similarly, the internet has democratized human flourishing by lowering the cost barrier for intellectual development. Today, during the growing heat of the summer in an AC-less apartment, I’m benefitting from a cheap portable air conditioning unit (~$100) that would have been 10x the price 10 years ago. Looking ahead, advances in material sciences and housing construction will democratize human flourishing by making the construction of quality housing 10x cheaper.

What Makes Democratizing Human Flourishing So Hard

While technology is essential, tech breakthroughs alone are not sufficient to fulfill the mission.

From my experience of talking to some of the frontier technologists in the world, the greatest barriers to making housing or education or another extremely costly human flourishing “facilitator” significantly cheaper and higher quality are local policies that prevent the implementation of new technologies. The capture of political institutions by industry incumbents is a real impediment to human flourishing, as they often resist changes that could disrupt their established interests.

Another significant challenge in democratizing human flourishing is the detachment of money from impactful work. Many lucrative jobs are disconnected from real-world improvements, while essential roles related to affordable housing development often go underfunded and unrecognized. These role-players often have to mobilize a diverse coalition of stakeholders, including government, community leaders, NGOs, and influencers, to succeed. This work tends to lack a traditional business model that makes it easy to secure funding. I talk a bit about this problem of funding these kinds of public servants—“society upgrade entrepreneurs”—in my last Substack post.

In sum, each stride in this mission to democratize human flourishing requires a multifaceted approach—combining technological advancements, policy reforms, and community-driven efforts. This multifacetedness makes creating systemic changes that permanently drive down the cost of a facilitator of flourishing challenging.

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Human progress has always been about democratizing human flourishing

I want to be clear that while “democratizing human flourishing” is a new meme/concept/phrase, it’s a mission that has been successfully carried out again and again throughout history. I believe it is synonymous with societal improvement, and society has improved in more ways than not over time.

History is littered with examples of human flourishing democratizers. The only difference between the call to action today versus in the past is that in the past, there were different barriers to human flourishing. For example, in the 1960s, racism and discriminatory policies were major obstacles to the human flourishing of Black Americans. Today, one of the greatest impediments to Black Americans’ flourishing (and really, all groups of Americans) is the cost of housing. Those who work on making housing more affordable are modern-day heroes in my book.

Conclusion: Let’s unite humanity around democratizing human flourishing and make Humanity 2.0 a reality

Democratizing human flourishing should be a default North Star for anyone wanting to do good.

This mission encourages contextually aware solutions that consider holistic, long-term human needs, including the need for a flourishing natural environment. While not every proposed solution that claims to “democratize human flourishing” will be perfect, more people aiming to democratize human flourishing ensures that efforts are directed towards creating a better world for everyone.

Ultimately, this mission unifies people across the world and opens up space for meaningful debate on what is truly worth working on. It's a cause that transcends cultural divides and focuses on what genuinely matters: the holistic well-being of humanity.

I personally plan to use this mission of “democratizing human flourishing” as a unifying, shared North Star for innovator guilds that I help kickstart and weave.

According to my friends who created the elegant Community Weaving Framework…

“At the center of each community we see a fire: a source of possibility and energy that draws people in. It is what attracts people in the first place and keeps them coming back. It's our collective identity and sense of belonging. Our shared purpose and core values. It represents the essence of the community.”

There are few better “fires” to serve as a Schelling point for people with talents and a serious commitment to the public good than “democratize human flourishing.”

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I hope this Substack post provides a helpful primer for you on why democratizing human flourishing is a vital, practical, and unifying mission for anyone looking to make a positive impact in the world.

If the mission resonates with you, please take it and run with it.

Let’s make Humanity 2.0—a world where human flourishing is possible for all—a reality.

Until next time!

Hey friends,

Another Substack post. Another new concept to share with you:

This is a type of person who is fully dedicated to spending years doing whatever it takes to discovering and instituting “society upgrades”—legal, technological, etc—that permanently reduce the “cost of flourishing” for members of their local community.

I define the cost of flourishing as the dollar cost that a member of your community typically needs to spend to flourish as a human. People differ in their definitions of what it means to flourish, but the Harvard Flourishing Program assesses 1) happiness and life satisfaction, 2) mental and physical health, 3) meaning and purpose, 4) character and virtue, 5) close social relationships, and 6) financial and material stability.

A society upgrade entrepreneur is distinct from a social entrepreneur, who primarily focuses on creating one innovative business venture that drives profit and social impact through their enterprise. In contrast, a society upgrade entrepreneur is relentlessly committed to reducing the cost of flourishing for their local community members by whatever means necessary, which could include but won’t be limited to creating a social enterprise, with a keen focus on leveraging foundational technologies to achieve cost efficiencies.

On their mission to catalyze a society upgrade, a society upgrade entrepreneur may take on a multitude of roles and initiatives. This could include helping establish social enterprises, educating the public, advocating for and facilitating the passage of beneficial policies, promoting the development and adoption of open-source software that serves the local community, building cross-sector sociopolitical coalitions, and more.

The ultimate goal of a society upgrade entrepreneur is not to find a single, sustainable business model but rather to create permanent reductions in cost of flourishing—reductions that can persist independently of any entrepreneur or any specific social enterprise in the long run.

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One society upgrade nearly every American community needs? A drastic increase in housing affordability

To make the concept of society upgrades more concrete, consider the major cost centers for those living on low or medium incomes: housing, healthcare, education, food, and transportation, which have all ballooned in costs (inflation adjusted) in the past half century.

Now, let’s hone in on just U.S. housing affordability:

Nationwide, half of all renters now spend more than 30% of their paycheck on rent and utilities… The study notes an even more alarming additional statistic: The number of “severely cost-burdened households”—the group even more neck-deep in it, whose rents consume more than 50% of their annual income—rose to 12.1 million.

Fast Company

Imagine if, through years of thoughtful planning and effective execution of a well-crafted, adaptable strategy, you were able to significantly increase access to affordable, comfortable housing—whether for renting, owning, or a combination of both—for the people in your community. If you could achieve this in a manner that minimizes unintended consequences and creates a self-sustaining system that doesn't rely on your constant involvement, you would be celebrated as a true champion of your community and a beacon of hope for humanity as a whole.

You would have helped saw off the chains of modern serfdom that is becoming systemically pervasive today!

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Why society upgrades don’t happen often

This hypothetical housing affordability outcome sounds nice, but there’s two key issues that make it hard for this outcome in housing or another wicked problem domain to transpire:

1. Who is funding people who can bring about these outcomes? There is nowhere to go today! 

   1. Traditional private investment looks for quick returns and lacks long-term,  broad societal mandates, which isn't a fit for these complex problems often referred to as wicked problems. If the main source of your funding comes from a company that expects you to weave in a product of theirs into the solution, your mission of finding the best possible solution for the problem is already tainted.

   2. “Social entrepreneurship” fellowships that provide $50-100k grants lack comfort with ambiguity. Skoll, Echoing Green, and Ashoka appreciate the wickedness of societal problems, but require people to have founded a company/non-profit already—which self selects for people who have already presumed a solution to a problem.

2. Even if funding is covered, it takes a rare type of person to effectively carry out society upgrades.

Building on this second point, the most effective society upgrade entrepreneur must…

• Really love care about people—since this is a truly people-oriented role

• Be deeply entrepreneurial—with a whatever it takes mentality

• Be able to build diverse, win-win-win coalitions across private, public, and civil sectors 

• Believe in the ability of certain applications of technology to elevate society

• Believe that the “layers” that comprise society (the “society stack”) can be changed and lead to radical improvements in quality of life for everyday people

• Have deep love and ties with at least one real world community/jurisdiction (e.g. Chicago)

• Be well versed and well connected in at least one frontier tech field, ideally multiple

• Be willing to work full time for many years to embark on a public interest mission of 1) apprenticing with a wicked problem, 2) exploring the solution landscape to identify “society upgrade(s)”, and 3) bringing a society upgrade to reality

To give an example of what kind of person it would take to make quality housing more affordable in, say, Washington, D.C., we’d want to support someone with…

• Deep knowledge and experience in real estate

• Strong relationships with construction companies

• Deep understanding of zoning and economic policies

• Strong relationships with local D.C. ward community leaders and elected officials

• Openness regarding and literacy in how frontier technologies could reduce living costs and improve community outcomes (ex: can hemp or bamboo be foundational for far cheaper yet still sturdy building materials?)

• Desire to network in the housing innovation startup space, full of entrepreneurs hacking on how to create homes cheaper, whether through prefab, 3D printing, or other methods

• Strong communication skills, with track record of being able to use online communication tools to coordinate with collaborators and supporters online

• Urgency yet patience, since the mission of permanently upgrading the housing situation in D.C. will take many years

If there is enough funding (that does not bias their exploration and coalition building to a specific solution), this systems upgrade entrepreneur would be able to dedicate their full time to…

• Live in D.C., so they can be immersed in the problem

• Conduct a deep systems analysis of the housing situation in D.C., which would involve interviewing dozens of stakeholders 

• Construct and execute on a robust, evolving strategy for how to bring the upgrade to reality

• Explore the solution space with the help of diverse technologists, policymakers, social entrepreneurs, and more

• Design and coordinate multi-stakeholder collab-athons and hackathons to prototype solutions

• Keep the community of supporters engaged and informed

• Report learnings, incrementally every week but also in detailed reports for the public

• Build solutions (e.g. technologies, policies, companies etc) and/or advise/partner with those who want to build solutions based on their insights. (There’s usually no silver bullet entity that can address a wicked problem, after all!)

Long story short, for housing affordability or really any domain that affects virtually all people of a community, it takes passionate, multidisciplinary, collaborative, tech-savvy people working diligently over many years to shepherd a society upgrade into reality. 

Working part-time on upgrade missions is simply not an option.

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How can we increase the number of society upgrade entrepreneurs in America?

Assuming we have figured out how to even find people qualified and committed enough to become effective society upgrade entrepreneurs (which is not trivial at all), we are still missing platforms that make it easy to fund them.

Humanity needs a scalable, sustainable system that allows more people to fund the right people who are willing and able to help level up society, permanently.

These people need a lot of funding to leave jobs or turn away other others and instead work full-time on these pressing issues, without the broken incentives of working on behalf of a corporation or the constraints of elected “public service” positions.

I know I’m not alone in dreaming of the ability to work as a free agent, supported by hundreds, if not thousands, of independent funders who, even if they do want credit and to be on the record of supporting society upgrades, are willing to give recurring funding with no strings attached.

When you have many funders, you have no one master dictating your moves. But at the same time, because any existing individual funder can stop their “subscription” and new funders can start their subscriptions if they get inspired by your journey, you’ll stay motivated to keep performing.

If we keep failing to fund these people’s champions, innovation focused individuals will continue defaulting to building and contributing to companies building individualistic “solutions” for the well-off, while life gets even more unaffordable for the vast majority of people.

It’s time for us to think big and fund accordingly. I’m working on building this funding infrastructure—leveraging the latest innovations in programmable money mechanisms in the crypto space.

Message me on X or reply to this post if you’d like to collaborate.

Big shoutout to a mentor of mine, Daniela Papi Thornton, for inspiring me to think deeply about how systems change-focused leaders need to first spend ample time “apprenticing with a problem” before jumping into solution mode. I wouldn’t be here without her. Also, thank you to Jessamyn Shams-Lau for coining the term in the first place. And to Lauren Serota, Graven Prest, Carl Cervone (who wrote a piece in a similar spirit), and other gems of friends for reviewing multiple iterations of this piece.

One great quote from Professor Thornton:

"Almost every entrepreneurship course and accelerator program ends in some sort of pitch day. Where the students need to pitch their world-changing solution. [...] We're spending more time teaching [students] how to perfect their sales pitch than we are trying to teach them to understand the problem they claim to be trying to solve. And the judges of those contest often know more about business scaling then they do about the impact and social change."

Her TEDx from 6 years ago

These moments, these micro-experiences, stitch together the feeling of being alive.

But it's heartbreaking to realize that not everyone gets to experience the beauty and inspiration life has to offer.

Our environments, the people we surround ourselves with, our past traumas, and how we use our gadgets can profoundly impact our experience of life.

What troubles me is the notion that life could be so much more fulfilling for many, yet it isn't.

While it’s obvious we can build a better future, it's not always clear how to create a future society where the average person's experience is substantially better than it is today.

I believe in being humble about our efforts to change the world.

We've seen so many [supposedly] well-intentioned policies and global interventions aimed at helping people sometimes create more problems than they solve.

So, how do we learn from these mistakes in attempting to change society and apply this humility in practice?

I think the answer lies in incubating the future of society at its minimum viable scale: a village.

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There's something beautiful about the village size of, say, 150-300 people. If an idea works for one village, maybe it might work for another village with different people (and is thus worth testing in more villages), and it might also work at a larger scale. On that same note, if an idea doesn't work in a village, it is all the more difficult to imagine how it would scale to the city or national level.

Experiments at the village level seem like a good idea. But here's the tricky part: experimentation at the village level still means real people live with the consequences for a long time. So, how do we lower the stakes?

Enter: popup villages, temporary but impactful communities that serve as what I call “society incubators”.

Popup villages are spaces where we can experiment with the fundamentals of our modern lives - what we eat, how we learn, how we co-create new tools and businesses, how we stay fit, how we govern shared resources, and how we enjoy life. In these villages, we have the freedom to explore new ideas without the long-term consequences if something doesn't pan out.

I explored the idea of popup villages and shared my experience participating in and coproducing villages in 2023 in an earlier post here.

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The beauty of a popup village is in its temporality. These are gatherings that are long enough to be meaningful but not permanent—fostering a unique test bed for experimentation.

If an emergent idea—whether a new type of small group workout, ticketing system, governance system, or crowdfunding mechanism—doesn't quite work, it's not a big deal; the village was temporary anyway.

And the people who join these experiments are those who thrive in evolving, experimental environments. So they have the right expectations from the start and actually love the experiments, and see “failures” as successes since they support learning. (The question is, how do you make sure that the people who come to popup villages aren’t just wealthy people who have the luxury to be mobile, or those who don’t have an intention to contribute long term to the local area. Accessibility should not be overlooked!)

They are the perfect setting to test new ideas that could one day shape our society.

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As I dive deeper into the world of popup village architecture and creation in 2024, I'll be sharing what I learn along the way in this Substack.

If popup villages excite you, and you're passionate about shaping the future of our society, subscribe if you haven’t already. Let's explore how we can bring more of these popup society incubators to life.

Let’s incubate a future that’s not just good but a true testament to the miracle that is life.

ℹ️ OVERVIEW

The goals of this manifesto are to make the case for 1) defining and proliferating the meme “foundational tech” and for 2) defining and developing an “American foundational tech ecosystem”—where foundational tech is technology that can greatly enable, preserve, and accelerate human or ecological flourishing; technology that can serve as foundational building blocks of a radically more resilient, self-sustaining, and dynamic America.

The mission of the ecosystem would be to bring about “America 2.0”—a future where every American has the opportunity to flourish and the U.S. is leading the world in building, implementing, and sharing foundational technologies.

The publication of this manifesto helps inspire investors and builders alike to grow the ecosystem; and educators across the country to encourage their students to explore these technologies.

I hope you find this to be a thought provoking and action inspiring read, and welcome your comments below.

- Gary Sheng

A Future Worth Building

Picture this future, where we get the critical things about technology right:

It’s New Year’s Eve, 2035:

You wake up energized.

It’s day one of the Hawaii trip you’ve been waiting for.

The night before you flew in from Austin, Texas on a fully electric supersonic passenger jet.

3,650 miles in just 2.5 hours.

Zero emissions.

As you head to your kitchen for some coffee, you ask your AI assistant for a year in review.

As your coffee brews, you learn that your sleep and overall health metrics improved in the last 12 months. Breakthroughs in microbiome tech and personalized medicine helped you finally get the treatment you needed for your rare gut disease.

In your Austin community, homelessness is down and student learning outcomes are up. But this isn’t unique to your community. Thanks to breakthroughs in how we grow food, make houses, and personalize education, 99.6% of American children have access to the basic necessities they need to realize their potential (up from 86% in 2025).

More good news: 72% of American voters approve of the responsiveness of the American government (up from just 16% in 2025). This is thanks, in part, to tech breakthroughs in social media that supercharge collective sensemaking and healthy debate, and also, to huge strides in non-partisan democracy reform.

Across the globe, private sector investment in climate innovation is up to almost $1.5T/year (up from $130B in 2025). And you see the results every day. From the delicious cultivated meat that has become a staple of your diet, to the fusion energy plant that cleanly powers your neighborhood.

As you finish the last sips of your coffee, you reflect on how the pessimism, hyperpolarization, and sense of stagnation that characterized the first quarter of the 21st century seem like a distant memory.

It feels wonderful to be living in this time of extraordinary progression and dynamism.

That future will be very challenging to achieve—but it is possible.

The U.S. has everything it needs to level up.

How do we bring it all together to make this happen?

Let me explain.

Where We Are Today: A Make-or-Break Decade

Most Americans understand that our current situation is a shitshow, leading many to adopt a philosophy called "doomerism". A common belief across doomers is that the way society functions will likely cause civilizational collapse.

I am sympathetic to the doomer mentality.

The world is experiencing something like an everything-crisis—where our freshwater crisis, social cohesion crisis, food security crisis, housing crisis, institutional dysfunction crisis, and many other crises intersect and exacerbate one another. As each of these crises worsens, the consequences cascade across the rest—disrupting life and deepening the severity of other crises in a recursive doom loop.

Many of the worst fears of doomers could be our reality.

Imagine a future characterized by cascading systems failures that lead to famine and drought, supercharging chronic social unrest and political violence.

A future where technology’s legacy has been to further centralize corporate power, destroy the last semblances of personal privacy, help government bureaucrats move with unprecedented efficiency to cripple freedoms and eliminate dissent, and supercharge the ability for state and private actors to destabilize the world.

A future where instead of liberating us from drudgery and making positive changes to economic systems, robotic automation has created mass unemployment and an unprecedented underclass.

This picture is not preposterous dystopian thinking—it is possible if we continue our current trajectory.

While this is decade of existential risks, it’s also a decade of extraordinary possibility.

People tend to underestimate the pace and power of exponential growth, much less appreciate the flywheels of performance and adoption of technologies like solar energy—which governments and ordinary citizens increasingly recognize as foundational to the future.

Predictions about the future often fail to account for exponential S-curves of technology performance and adoption, much less stacking exponential S-curves.

The term “S-curve” points to the shape that explains the growth of technology that becomes widely adopted in society. Both performance and adoption start out slow, and then ramp up as success breeds success. Finally, that fast growth hits a wall, and slows down again.

Let's look at one S-curve: solar energy.

Many energy industry analysts, besides a small few like futurist Tony Seba, have consistently gotten predictions about the price and efficiency of solar energy wrong. See this graph:

Solar energy is now the cheapest energy source per kWh generated after being widely unaffordable as recently as a decade ago. And electric cars are now three to six times cheaper to drive in the U.S. than gas guzzling cars.

It was once laughable to predict this happening so soon.

No longer.

Now, imagine many S-curves like solar energy stacking simultaneously.

It might be difficult to imagine. For most people, the future is a blur that looks almost indistinguishable from the present. But the present is radically different than even the recent past. Can you even imagine a world without a smartphone?

Now, remember that smartphone performance and adoption in the U.S. was built on the rising tides of many stacking S-curves, enabled by radical increases in:

• Nation-wide cellular network technology

• Cloud computing affordability

• Semiconductor chip power

• Digital music innovation

• Social network adoption

• Battery reliability

• And more…

Smartphones didn’t just alter a behavior or two. They changed everything.

Economist Carlota Perez described the impact of such moments in time in her influential 2003 book Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital: “When a technological revolution irrupts in the scene, it does not just add some dynamic new industries to the previous production structure. It provides the means for modernizing all the existing industries and activities.”

Fast forward to today: countless technologies are being developed, and thousands are experiencing or could experience S-curve performance and adoption cycles.

For example, the technologies that enable the magic of OpenAI’s DALL-E 2 and chatGPT are experiencing S-curve trajectories. OpenAI CTO Greg Brockman talks about how even though it’s still early days, there will be a societal “paradigm shift” when the technologies that underpin OpenAI’s products hit their S-curve Growth stages.

Why is this paradigm shift possible? Brockman says his team can only do what it does thanks to a “full stack of better GPUs, great software for utilizing them, neural networks that we learned to harness more and more, the scaling laws doing all the science, and [AI alignment research] making sure [large language] models are not just smart but actually aligned with what humans intend.”

A great leap in human progress is possible in a short amount of time, if we’re able to stack the right kinds of tech S-curves.

What the future will be has everything to do with what tech is built and proliferated during this Make-or-Break decade.

Societal collapse is not inevitable, even if most people can't imagine an alternative.

This decade could be the beginning of a breakthrough: the beginning of something like the country of our dreams—America 2.0.

What is America 2.0?

A future where every American has the opportunity to flourish and the U.S. is leading the world in building, implementing, and sharing the technologies that are key to building a better world for all.

Same mission as America 1.0, shipped in 1776.

But way better at living up to its promises—with way faster innovation in the domains most relevant in confronting our huge internal and international challenges.

Imagine if water desalination, next gen geothermal, fully autonomous vehicles, housing prefabrication, advanced semiconductors, AI-powered creativity tools, synthetic biology, and many other areas reach the “Growth” phase of their S-curves during this decade thanks to a U.S.-led tidal wave of investment and student interest in contributing to these fields.

How could we not feel like we’re living in an era of progress and abundance?

And more importantly, how many more people than ever before could realize their potential to flourish?

How Do We Breakthrough To America 2.0?

Achieving breakthrough will not be easy.

We need to 10x increase the number of people building foundational tech—technology that can greatly enable, preserve, and accelerate human or ecological flourishing; technology that can serve as foundational building blocks of a radically more resilient, self-sustaining, and dynamic America; technology that collectively serve as the seed kernel for a Golden Age for humanity.

Examples of American startups I consider to be foundational tech companies include:

• Phoenix-based Culdesac builds car-free neighborhoods from scratch, with their first neighborhood piloting soon right next to their Phoenix HQ.

• San Jose-based OpenGov builds cloud software for public sector accounting, planning, budgeting, citizen services, and procurement—serving over 1,000 cities, counties, and state agencies across 49 states.

• Chicago-based Nature’s Fynd builds the future of fungi-based protein—producing delicious meat and dairy free breakfast patties, yogurts, cream cheeses, and other high protein foods that require 90%+ less resources to produce.

• Berkeley-based Pivot Bio builds agricultural technology that uses tiny organisms to give crops the nutrients they need, instead of using synthetic fertilizers that can harm the environment.

• Cambridge-based Foray Bioscience builds biotechnologies—based on leading edge science in plant cell culture, materials science, and tissue engineering—that generate the wood and forest products we need, without cutting down a single tree.

• San Francisco-based OpenAI builds leading AI models meant to serve the public interest—known for its explosively popular user-facing products that include chatGPT and DALL-E 2.

• Los Angeles-based Hadrian builds unprecedentedly efficient, automated factories that will accelerate the entire advanced manufacturing sector and bring forth an abundant future.

These companies are not full of degrowthers, partisan culture warriors, professional critics, or people sitting idly, waiting for a world government to save the day.

They are full of optimists who understand that their optimism is self-fulfilling only if tied to thoughtful collective action. A different kind of activism that prioritizes building over talking. An activism that can inspire and unite across differences.

Foundational tech companies are not just important to the flourishing of Americans; their success supports the flourishing of people everywhere. Foundational tech operations can be efficiently scaled around the world, and foundational tech intellectual property can be easily developed in collaboration or shared with other countries (and even used as a way to negotiate peace).

I will refer to the number of foundational tech companies achieving traction as “Foundational Tech Velocity.” To achieve an order of magnitude higher foundational tech velocity, many aspects of American society and culture must evolve.

And to drive this evolution, I believe it’s worth defining and jumpstarting something like a movement of thinkers, builders, and investors who see themselves as working toward a common cause, which I am calling the “American foundational tech ecosystem.”

A quick note on why I believe it’s valuable to define and proliferate the meme “foundational tech”

Before I dive into the “American foundational tech ecosystem,” I want to explain why it’s important to turn “foundational tech” into a mainstream meme.

Zooming out, one of the reasons why you might want to define and proliferate a meme is to enable people to coordinate with each other to address an issue of shared concern. A meme that points at solutions to an issue can help mobilize a movement to form in common cause.

For example, the “climate tech” meme serves as an essential coordination tool to connect people who feel inspired to build and invest in technologies that reduce carbon emissions and address other issues related to climate change.

The “climate tech” meme enables certain VCs to call themselves “climate tech VCs,” certain entrepreneurs to call their startups “climate tech startups,” and for certain conveners to call their events “climate tech conferences.”

There was a need to coordinate collective action to address climate change through tech, and indeed, the proliferation of the “climate tech” meme has played a big role in the explosion of investment self-described by entrepreneurs and investors as “climate tech venture funding.”

“Climate tech” gave like-minded people a flag to rally around and has helped mobilize a global movement that has been growing exponentially over the past decade.

Inspired by the many instances of people manifesting memes into impactful movements, I’m motivated to define and proliferate “foundational tech” as a meme because I believe we need to coordinate far more resources and talent toward building tech that helps us break through to America 2.0, and I’m betting that this meme can help mobilize a lot of people to help do so.

I intentionally chose the word “foundational” to precede “tech” because it points to tech that can serve as “foundational” building blocks for America 2.0.

And to me, “foundational” has a sense of gravitas and virtue that something like “powerful” or “disruptive” or “emerging” does not. Many technologies are powerful or disruptive—but these qualities do not connote net-positivity. Some technologies are “emerging”—but the stage of a technology’s development doesn’t imply whether it is making a positive impact. The reality is that a small subset of technologies can be widely considered as a necessary part of the foundation of a next generation civilization, and we need words to more efficiently describe them and coordinate collective action to build them.

If “foundational tech” becomes a mainstream meme, it becomes a tool that we can use to kickstart lively debate on whether, say, web3/blockchain is foundational to America 2.0. I would say so—even if we just look at the privacy-protecting, zero knowledge identity solutions being developed today. But I believe it’s primarily up to domain/industry leaders to justify how foundational their tech is, and build applications whose utility to America (and the world’s future) speaks for itself.

By planting my flag on the “foundational tech” hill, I hope that this Substack (and my work in general) can serve as a default gathering place for people who believe in the power of certain kinds of tech to level up America. We need Americans who have been working hard to level up the way we do geothermal, nuclear, water desalination, democracy + government, public safety, food, healthcare, etc in this country to know they are on the same team, and help accelerate each other’s success.

Jumpstarting the American Foundational Tech Ecosystem

The idea behind the American foundational tech ecosystem is simple. In order for us to level up to America 2.0, we need an army of people obsessed with accelerating “Foundational Tech Velocity.”

So how do we make that happen?

For this ecosystem to greatly accelerate Foundational Tech Velocity, we have to jumpstart the “Foundational Tech Flywheel.”

The “Flywheel” is a concept introduced by Jim Collins in his seminal book Good To Great, used to state the fact that companies (or in our case: ecosystems) don’t become exceptional as a result of a single intervention or initiative, but rather from the accumulation of little wins that stack up over years of hard work until such a moment that momentum takes over to power sustained periods of accelerated growth—where that momentum greatly outstrips the amount of effort being applied at that particular point in time.

You can imagine in our case, after years of sustained effort and accumulating small wins, the American foundational tech ecosystem achieving something like “escape velocity,” with new successes piling up on their own with little need for centralized coordination.

How might the Foundational Tech Flywheel work?

Well, if the goal is to increase Foundational Tech Velocity (aka the number of foundational tech companies achieving traction), then tied for first for what we need to kickstart is far more media highlighting success stories of foundational tech companies.

What does this do?

It grows the public’s appreciation for foundational tech.

And this greater appreciation does a number of things, including increase the amount of government, university, and private sector support for foundational tech research and incubation.

Why?

Because these institutions are incentivized to support what they know people demand.

And if there is more institutional support, more builders and funders will be able to receive training and funding to proliferate foundational tech.

From there, we see the creation of more foundational tech startups, which will ultimately increase the number of successful foundational tech companies.

This success of these companies in accelerating human and ecological flourishing will trigger more positive press about the foundational tech ecosystem.

And the cycle continues.

A quick note on the importance of government support of foundational tech

Government support of foundational technologies is a key part of the Foundational Tech Flywheel for at least three reasons:

1. Government can and often needs to be the first customer of a capital intensive startup. Vaccines are extremely costly to develop. So are rockets, car-free neighborhoods, and telecom infrastructure. Governments making advanced market commitments that funds the development of new technology can pave the way for the tech to eventually commercialize and scale its benefit.

2. Government can keep local startups competitive with international competitors also getting government support. While the private sector can do a lot on its own, it can’t quickly marshal hundreds of billions of dollars to kickstart advanced semiconductor fabrication like the federal government just did with the CHIPS and Science Act. Of course, the efficiency of a particular government incentive can be hotly debated, and that debate should be welcome.

3. Government can’t guarantee an industry will succeed just because it enacts good regulations related to that industry, but it can definitely kill it with bad regulations. Let me explain below.

What is built and how much of it can be built is constrained by the regulatory environment.

All Americans need housing, healthy food, a good education, medical care, transportation, internet, material goods, and more—the building blocks of modern life.

And all the stuff we need comes from somewhere, whether from farms, factories, power plants, or gas lines. But there’s a growing sense that the American regulatory environment has greatly restricted the ability of Americans to build the things we need (which I call foundational technologies), to produce the end products and services Americans need to affordably thrive.

We need to change policy to encourage more supply and fight the rising costs of all of these building blocks of modern life.

We know we’ll have succeeded when we’re seeing progress across the country to rescind or pare down the…

• Near-total bans on new nuclear power plants

• Restrictions on construction of new housing and walkable communities

• Restrictions on manufacturing and sale of drugs, diagnostic tests, and medical devices

• And other policies that just don’t make any sense to keep if we want to see widespread flourishing in the coming years

By the way, I’m not saying all regulation of this sort is bad. But we should heavily scrutinize why regulations that constrict supply are in place, and remove the ones that never made sense or no longer make sense anymore in today’s age.

I’m optimistic about government support for foundational tech for at least a couple reasons:

1. Escalating geopolitical competition with China will encourage many U.S. political leaders to self-reflect on whether the U.S. has adequately made the case in the 21st century for liberal democracy over autocracy. If the U.S. can’t figure out how to better take care of its people in the next decade, can we blame anyone but ourselves if people around the world turn their back on the American-led global order? This Great Power Competition with China should greatly motivate us to level up our laws and regulations to proliferate tech that accelerates flourishing.

2. Many of the rules blocking production of what people need remain in place not because they have strong constituencies, but due to inertia and lack of awareness. This suggests there’s hope for change if reformers keep at it over this next decade—educating elected officials and other government leaders on how unblocking foundational tech can be a pure political win for them.

How we know if the Foundational Tech Flywheel is achieving escape velocity

Some of the best signals of whether the Foundational Tech Flywheel is ripping are the degrees to which foundational tech builders are…

1. Widely appreciated by the public ❤️‍🔥: Americans without technical backgrounds should widely understand and appreciate why we must build and support foundational tech for the national interest.

Pieces like this very manifesto are key to helping define and connect concepts that make it clear to people that we face a looming threat of societal collapse, that our future could be much worse than more of the same stagnation, and that foundational tech development is a big part of how we break through to a radically better future. America needs a subculture that incentivizes and celebrates foundational tech builders. These builders need to be seen as modern servicepeople. To do this, the ecosystem should invest heavily in covering and storytelling around 1) the companies that are already building foundational tech and making a difference, 2) the visions for America’s future that can be realized if more foundational tech is developed, and 3) the thrill of contributing to the growth of the ecosystem.

2. Can easily access high quality education 📚: Talented, passionate young people should be able to easily get the education they need to make the leap toward building foundational tech.

It is important that it is easy for people who are inspired to join and contribute to the ecosystem to get support finding their way to the existing educational programs that enable them to develop into foundational technologists focused on whatever issue(s) they care about. Foundational technologists must be supported not only in developing technical know-how, but also leadership skills like nobility, clear conscious, humility, and deep commitment to service for the greater good. More than ever, we need leaders who are true to their purpose.

3. Can easily fundraise from a diversity of sources 💰: People on the path to building foundational technologies should be able to easily get the funding they need to develop their solutions, find product market fit, and ultimately achieve financial sustainability.

For it to be far easier to raise money for a foundational tech company, leaders of the following groups and institutions need to be educated on the value of investing in foundational tech: family offices, Congress, government agencies, venture capital firms, philanthropic foundations, and more.

An Invitation To Unleash A Golden Age For Humanity

So much needs to be done to achieve the vision laid out in the beginning of this manifesto.

And the future history of how this will all unfold is far from clear.

But I’m confident in my next step: writing more articles that flesh out what “foundational tech” and its American ecosystem could be; so that investors and builders alike can be inspired to do what’s needed to build the ecosystem; and educators across the country know how to encourage their students to explore these technologies.

Imagine a network of leading…

• entrepreneurs + developers

• scientists + engineers

• philanthropists + philanthropy advisors

• content creators + storytellers

… all committed to learning and sharing knowledge and practices that advance foundational tech and build America 2.0.

Subscribe to my new Substack newsletter (this is my first post!), where I will publish “brain drops” on all things America 2.0 every week. There’s something about the written word that will never lose its value.

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Thanks for carefully considering these ideas. I welcome your feedback in the comments.

I’m confident we can level up America, if we build its new foundation together 🇺🇸🫡

Special thanks to Abe Maslavi, Alex Baydar, Amber Brandner, Ashley Lin, Cameron Wiese, Carl Cervone, Caroline Nguyen, David Kobrosky, Dien Yuen, Jeffrey Kibler, John Montague, Josh Leonard, Louis Diez, Richard Ren, Tyler Tran, and a few other friends for their thoughtful feedback on this piece.