~ about present humanity.
I wanted to write something about humanity. By that I mean not only the human being, as an animal, but the human condition, as a notion. I wish to be conscientious about how I do this; I think we all have a lot collectively riding on the persistent evolution of humanity.
Rare tiny black sprite found on corpses.
Use to gain 1 humanity and restore a
large amount of HP.
This black sprite is called humanity, but
little is known about its true nature.
If the soul is the source of all life,
then what distinguishes the humanity
we hold within ourselves?
In Dark Souls lore, humanity is an obtainable item. In the gloaming afterscapes of Lordran, it is something that you have to search for. Humanity is something that you can lose. And you will lose it, frequently, each time you die and are reborn, or exchange pieces of it for various mystic rewards.
Humanity being consumed heals you and buffs your stats and alters your avatar’s appearance; no longer a gaunt and sourceless husk swinging a sword, a humanity-infused Chosen Undead almost looks like a proper hero, a true knight-errant on the hunt for justice and glory in an estranging land of rogue daemons.
Maintaining humanity is vital to handling the challenges of the Dark Souls action-RPG experience. More specifically, mechanics-wise, the itemized Humanity count in your inventory provides defensive boons, increased elemental resistances, scales the damage of humane-weaponry, and enhances magic item drop rates. Humanity also summons the bonfire, the ultimate source of respite for any world-weary traveler. Humanity can also be offered within the cultic covenants of daemonic patrons, such as Kaathe and Quelaag. Utilizing Humanity is necessary to permanently remove curses. {Let me tell ya, a real bitch to deal with in the Souls games; whatever you do, do not get cursed!}
As valuable as it is, as inherent as it seems, Humanity is not something you can take for granted in this world. The march through the heart of other-worldly resistance, running through the dragons and daemonic spirits and fellow fallen humans, is the necessary path to discover the most Humanity. Such a thing can only be gained by the providence of adventuring into the unknown, facing great dangers, and defeating them by way of humane resilience.
Americans need to summon their resilience today.
With the major release of the Epstein Files here in February 2026, the human beings of Earth are getting a one-eyed micro-view, through the looking glass, into the depraved nature of our true reality. Political power in the Western world is wielded by pedophile billionaire supremacists; power is wielded with backroom corruption and impunity to all suffering, totally without humanity. {For many in the second and third world, or those of us paying attention, this is not news at all.}
As an American, it means coming to terms with the fact that our world is built on blood and exploitation, orchestrated by predators who see their ilk as absolutely superior and free from laws. Women and children are the targets of the powerful for their own demonic hungers and because they represent the future. Women and children are pure LIFE energy made manifest; the Epstein class trafficks in them for the purpose of harvesting that energy, cruelly destroying life and corrupting themselves to the utmost degree. {elite OCCULT connections reveal that human sacrifice is the ultimate method of enhancing earthly power / the engaging of taboo action together creates dark bonds & perfected blackmail.}
Bottom line: We are ruled by monsters. We are ruled not just by those missing humanity, but by those who completely sacrifice / seal / separate themselves from humanity in every fundamental way.
OUTRAGE is the necessary and healthy feeling every human being should be experiencing right now, in the wake of seeing the Epstein files.
Sorrow at the horrors, Anger at the perpetrators, and impassioned OUTRAGE that nothing is happening.
There can be no second chances or forgotten punishments; something like restorative or redemptive justice is not possible here. No wealth or connections should protect these predators. Not even billionaires can be above the law. This is about rooting out evil and making a stand. Future generations will receive a clear message based on how we respond to these charges. For the sake of the victims, and for the sake of the future of our world, the honor of our political institutions, and the ethos of our collective humanity — justice should be swift and merciless upon all wrongdoers implicated by the Epstein files. These people cannot be a part of human society anymore. No matter what, further investigations must be made; the international community is starting to do so. {Note: No arrests have yet been made @ 2/6/26.}
The way I see it, the human beings of Planet Earth have three paths before us.
1) PANOPTICON 🔴
2) POST-APOC 🟡
3) The Humane Path 🟢
Path 1: PANOPTICON
🔴This is the path we are currently on. The Epstein class (still active btw) and the ruling elites use the spoils of the military-industrial complex and the sterling security apparatus to create a perfectly panoptic surveillance state. Total control, 1984-style, maybe even without bread & circuses {too expensive; instead, bugs & knife-fights}. “You will own nothing and be happy.” As inequality soars and life becomes unaffordable, people are forced to live inside the panoptic pods as debt slaves, eating bugs, running on hamster wheel generators, etc. We are currently being steadily enshrouded inside this reality via totalizing A.I. makeovers to major infrastructure and infinite corpo-funding to surveilling entities like Palantir. The collapse of jobs and salaries and the Real People Economy is ongoing; complete immiseration & mass poverty is the evident strategy. The Internet has for long laid the groundwork for a most perfect form of surveillance. And now, in the U.S. especially, here we are at the end of it — A.I. sucking away our money & energy, robo-agents starting to displace jobs, and the economy becoming more automated and financialized and less ‘real’ {more unstable} than ever before. Fiat currencies are collapsing and trackable digital dollars are coming. ICE’s atrocities and the violent extraordinary measures being devised for use against immigrants will soon be used against American dissidents classified in the NSPM-7. We are being cocooned in this auto-panopticon, where the ruling class feels they no longer need the working class, leaving only fascism, immiseration, and likely more wars and crises and mass human sacrifices on the back-end. Meanwhile the billies retreat to bunkers? (and Hyperborea)? Pick your own dystopian vision. Overall: Not good stuff! {Prospective Climate Collapse is accelerated and arrives soonest of all in this future of total environmental harvest for corpo profits.}
Path 2: POST-APOC
🟡This path means one of the crises knocks us out. The elites lose control (or simply relinquish it willfully) and human civilization at-large collapses. We hit the big iceberg. Water shortages, widespread famine, global plague, climate horrors, world war. Or it is the big one, the final war: Nuclear War. We preside over the ashes of civilization here. We are in a Mad Max state of infinite combat for scant resources. Even though we face annihilation, we band back together in tribes and small organized groups, returning to the roots of how our ancestors lived (and lived well). Though there may be raiders or super mutants around the corner, the human being can survive and even thrive in this tribal, hunter-gatherer environment! {As we have seen in countless Post-Apocalyptic Fictions, books and movies and TV, this kind of world may be coming and it is possible to persist. / Some may call this predictive programming, to depict the indomitable spirit of life and inspire the human being to persist in the face of annihilation!} Though tyrants return and pockets of resource-hoarding perpetuates, the post-apoc society is something that can be more easily managed given everything has downsized and every remaining human (like our ancestors) is environmentally-forced to become a more spiritually complete & radically creative creature. {Note: this future is still really bad because we are talking about 80+% population reduction and mass death. / Translation: most of us are not surviving this transition or afterscape. Not to mention no more scrumptious corpo-burger meal…}
Path 3: The Humane Path
🟢What if humanity…like…banded together? What if we all decided we are sick of leaving our harsh fates up to billionaire pedo oligarch demons? What if we worked together to make a world more equitable and just and humane for all people? Basically, the same modern world of amenities but rent is free, wages are livable, and we have laws to prevent oligarchs from controlling the economy (or existing at all). We actually root out corruption and jail politicians and executives who do massive harm. People Power activates. Consciousnesses awaken across the board. People realize that all men are brothers and all women are sisters; we have more in common with our fellow working classers than we do with the ruling classers, who we outnumber 99:1 and who are sucking our minds, bodies, and resources dry with their insatiable greed. I am talking General Strikes x New Constitutions x PEOPLE POWER x100. Not just increased wealth redistribution, a whole new societal ethos is forged from the ground up. Don’t we all want a world where people feel good about going to work each day, because they are valued as people and their minds can be applied full force into the field of their passion? We can create a world where we use our minds and our technologies and our laws to create a respectable environment where every man, woman, and child, of all creeds and nationalities, could live in relative democratic harmony, healthcare, education, and housing a vital part of the social contract.
This sounds utopian, of course, because the modern American citizen and imperial subject has been propagandized for lifetimes to believe that something like ^this^ is simply Communism, therefore evil & impossible. / Star Trek is cool, but it’s also Communism — and that’s bad! / “Without capitalism, humans don’t innovate.” / “Poor people deserve that.” / “The billionaires earned that!”/ “Bro, markets solve everything eventually, including real estate, healthcare, and even world peace! Haven’t you heard of the law of economic equilibrium?” / “Don’t you know those other people are enemies!!” / “War…war never changes.” etc.
Sure, it’s all a long shot. History is cyclical; tyrants always arise. Slavery has never ended on Earth. War indeed never changes. {The aliens hate us!} All of Man’s institutions & philosophies could be fated for corruption in the end.
But I truly believe we are vastly underestimating the human being. We can overcome everything. We can make our own future. Anything that we can imagine is possible.
And guess what? Revolution, violent or not, possible or plausible, is something that is coming no matter what. That’s history. It just comes down to who, what, when, where, and how. Who is doing the revolving? Us or the robots? The peons or the demons?
Which class or faction or wannabe revolutionary has learned most from history?
Many must be reckoning the naked truth:
We have to start taking control of our present fates and nearing futures.
{Read history and you can see what’s coming: chaos.}
For me, this novel future does not just mean curbing fascism and ending capitalism, the infinite exploitation of people and earth, it means coming together to consider the power of the human being, the nature of our consciousness, and the reality about the future we are creating with every step we take as a species.
What new way of life do we need to invent in order to survive our sins and our technologies?
Do I mean we have to lose freedoms and become super-citizen automatons? No. Do I mean we have to become 5D Archangelick Beings or Cyber-Druids wielding Christ Consciousness in order to build a worthy future together? Maybe? But I definitely mean that whatever this novel future is, it will require a new type of person. New ideas, new consciousness. New humans.
If we are to go beyond the tyranny of surveillance fascism and post-apocalyptic fascism or other types of return-to-monkey barbarities that would come about in a poorly planned post-capitalist world — we must get radically creative about how we relate to one another and what we can do to reform our systemic incentives, our technologies, and our social experiences too.
Our present world is crumbling. But we still have our wits about us. We can still move, and read, and think, and create. We can communicate; we may cooperate.
I know no matter what:
Humanity must band together, in whatever we can, in order to get through this next era.
It is past time to restore our humanity, as a people on this planet.
Something else I am confident I know:
Something like Full Disclosure {i.e. deceptions & corruptions are unveiled for all to see} is necessary for a nonviolent revolution to commence. And the Epstein Files being released seem to be an important part of that potential process. So that is a silver lining. {Knowledge is power; now we just have to communicate & use it.}
At any rate, I think yea we are in the endgame now.
Stay frosty, fellow human.
Godspeed,
Dylan
~ The Prayer in the Garden, Baltasar de Echaveca. (1610)
P.S. During February 2026, I am going to be celebrating the release of CYBER-SERIAL, my hopepunk sci-fi novel about inspiring a fresh future, by doing SOULS MONTH. My new novel is, in part, an ode to the Souls experience and features my own fictional riff on the genre. This means I shall be reposting some of my old essays on my favorite FromSoftware Soulsian experiences, including: Dark Souls, Bloodborne, Sekiro, Elden Ring, and Armored Core. So look forward to that, Februarians! ✌️💞
Thresholds of Transformation 