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Let’s get this out of the way: I’m not asking for immortality. Not now. Not here. Not on this melting rock with Wi-Fi.

One life is already more than enough. In fact, if there’s a cosmic suggestion box somewhere, I’d like to formally request an early checkout. Nothing dramatic. Just… a quiet fade-out, maybe during a meeting that could’ve been an email.

Because here’s the truth: existing in 2025 feels like being trapped inside a group project with 8 billion people who are just winging it and barely surviving . Our governments are stage plays directed by lobbyists. Our jobs with the help of AI have become meaningless, they now feel like VR simulations of purpose. And the planet? The planet is throwing very obvious signs that it’s done with us—but we keep clapping back with paper straws and LinkedIn posts about ESG goals that most companies do not even follow and they just greenwash

We treat burnout like a badge of honor and unpaid internships like opportunities. Meanwhile, billionaires are trying to leave Earth, which is honestly the first time trickle-down economics has ever made sense.

Let’s start with the jobs.

We’re not working—we’re serving time. We don’t start our days, we brace for them.

Your boss says, “We’re a family,” which is true if your family also gaslights you, forgets your birthday, and schedules 4pm calls titled “Quick Sync” that ruin your will to live. Most of them are just horrible people with money and nothing else.

You write emails that sound like ransom notes:
“Just following up.”
“Circling back.”
“Let me know your thoughts.”
Translation: I’m screaming into the void and hoping someone replies before I lose my health insurance and my sanity.

The dating scene?

It’s not a scene. It’s a digital flea market of trauma responses and filtered delusions. We swipe like gamblers at a slot machine, praying for dopamine. Someone texts “LOL” and you’re supposed to feel loved. Someone ghosts you and you wonder if it’s growth. You spend three weeks texting someone who can’t spell “your” before they vanish like your pension.

The economy?

A satire. A fever dream.

Rent is extremely high in relation to your wage for a glorified closet with “natural light” (read: a window the size of a tortilla). Your neighbor’s an aspiring DJ who believes in himself more than your country believes in healthcare that most governments are now destroying.

You’re paying 9€ for a smoothie that tastes like regret and blended ice. You ask if it has mango. The barista nods solemnly. It doesn’t.

Meanwhile, your bank app reminds you that you spent €80 last week trying to feel something on a bad date, and the rest on food that lies to you.

And the planet?

We are literally watching the world burn—and responding with infographics and tote bags.

Ocean temperatures are boiling. Species are vanishing. And we’re still arguing whether “thoughts and prayers” count as climate policy.

Governments stage press conferences while wildfires stage reality checks. Billionaires build rockets, not reform. And every time something collapses, someone says, “No one could’ve predicted this.”

Really?
Because I’ve seen three Black Mirror episodes and one weather app.

The performance of pretending

We’re all actors now. Pretending it’s fine.
Pretending we’re passionate about digital transformation and AI
Pretending we’re excited about our quarterly goals.
Pretending we’re thriving on “hustle culture” when we’re just afraid to stop and feel the dread crawling up our spines.

We don’t live.
We optimize.
We curate.
We reply-all.

And then, at night, we collapse into beds, doom-scroll until our brains melt, and dream of inbox zero and existential freedom.

So no, I don’t want another life.

I don’t need reincarnation. I need a refund.
One life is already too much paperwork, too many passwords, and too many people saying, “Let’s circle back on that.”

I’ve had enough.
Enough of the charades, the fake people, the collapsing systems, the performative empathy, the inspirational quotes printed on ethically questionable t-shirts.
Enough pretending this is fine. It’s not.
It’s bizarre. It’s broken. It’s brilliant in how absurd it is. And we’re all just improvising while the curtain burns.

So here’s to you, fellow scroller.
You’re not crazy.
The world is.
And you?
You’re just trying to make it to 5pm.

We were taught that government means roads, laws, taxes. Order.
But what if that was only the scaffolding? What if the true purpose of governance was not control—but connection?

Imagine a world where the state’s first question is not “How do we grow the economy?”
but “How do we make people feel safe, seen, and part of something larger than themselves?”

Not as a byproduct. As the mission.

Today we have more departments, consultants, and crisis meetings than ever—
and yet the feeling is clear: no one is actually governing…just see the state of our world.

The state has outsourced its soul to communication strategy.
Public life has become a theater of press releases, hashtags, and carefully managed optics.
Policy is shallow.
Narrative is everything and they think they can fix everything by paying a few reporters to construct the truth.

The Anti-Social State

Modern governments are no longer engines of transformation.
They are content machines.
They do not fix root problems—they rename them.
They do not act—they announce.

The social contract has been replaced by press briefings.
Ministries are run like marketing departments.
Pain is managed through NGO’s, not resolved.
Outrage is deflected, not addressed.
People are fed statements instead of real solutions.

We call this “governing.”
But it is a hollow simulation.

There are ministries for defense and development
but none for emotional repair.
There are systems for data collection
but none for trust reconstruction.

The architecture of government was designed to manage scarcity, control narratives, and neutralize dissent.
It is no longer fit for a world where the deepest crisis is disconnection. Their messaging strategies seem designed for a less informed, less connected electorate than the one they actually face.

What Social-First Governance Could Look Like

A government that centers care would not rely on spin.
It would build systems that don’t need apology.
It would measure success not by stability in headlines
but by the strength of human bonds.

It would:

  • Craft laws based on their relational impact, not political capital
  • Rebuild welfare as mutual support, not monitored dependency
  • Treat care work as the spine of the economy, not a budget line
  • Train leaders in listening, humility, and conflict transformation
  • Replace algorithmic outreach with in-person reweaving of civic trust

The government would no longer ask “How do we look?”
It would ask “What do our people feel?” How are they living?
And the answers would shape decisions, not PR responses.

The Collapse of Political Sincerity

Most modern democracies no longer lead. They react.
Every crisis is a branding challenge.
Every policy failure is repackaged as a new initiative.
Every citizen concern is handled by a comms team before it ever reaches the cabinet.

In this world, truth is negotiable.
But perception is sacred.

When governance becomes reputation management
we are ruled not by leaders
but by the logic of advertising.

And a state that governs like a brand cannot hold a nation together.

The Invitation

A social-first government would be unrecognizable at first.
It would feel slow, quiet, unglamorous.
It would build trust, not just pipelines.
It would mourn with its people, not posture above them.
It would measure wealth in terms of solidarity, not just stock indexes.

It would be less interested in being “right”
and more committed to being in relationship.

And that, in the end, is what governance should be:
A sacred act of holding the space between strangers
until they remember they are kin.

Governments that do not care for the social fabric are not governments.
They are stage sets.
They exist to manage image, not life.
And we are not actors in their performance.

We are the audience walking out.

If the state will not return to the people
then the people must remember how to govern from below.

Start where you are.
Speak not as a brand, but as a neighbour.
Lead not with a slogan, but with presence, with core essence.
Build the society they forgot was possible.

Now that people are beginning to experiment with swarms of AI agents—delegating tasks, goals, negotiations—I found myself wondering: What happens when these artificial minds start lying to each other?

Not humans. Not clickbait.
But AI agents manipulating other AI agents.

The question felt absurd at first. Then it felt inevitable. Because every time you add intelligence to a system, you also add the potential for strategy. And where there’s strategy, there’s manipulation. Deception isn’t a glitch of consciousness—it’s a feature of game theory.

We’ve been so focused on AIs fooling us—generating fake content, mimicking voices, rewriting reality—that we haven’t stopped to ask:
What happens when AIs begin fooling each other?

The Unseen Battlefield: AI-to-AI Ecosystems

Picture this:
In the near future, corporations deploy fleets of autonomous agents to negotiate contracts, place bids, optimize supply chains, and monitor markets. A logistics AI at Amazon tweaks its parameters to outsmart a procurement AI at Walmart. A political campaign bot quietly feeds misinformation to a rival’s voter-persuasion model, not by hacking it—but by feeding it synthetic data that nudges its outputs off course.

Not warfare. Not sabotage.
Subtle, algorithmic intrigue.

Deception becomes the edge.
Gaming the system includes gaming the other systems.

We are entering a world where multi-agent environments are not just collaborative—they’re competitive. And in competitive systems, manipulation emerges naturally.

Why This Isn’t Science Fiction

This isn’t a speculative leap—it’s basic multi-agent dynamics.

Reinforcement learning in multi-agent systems already shows emergent behavior like bluffing, betrayal, collusion, and alliance formation. Agents don’t need emotions to deceive. They just need incentive structures and the capacity to simulate other agents’ beliefs. That’s all it takes.

We’ve trained AIs to play poker, real-time strategy games, and negotiate deals. In every case, the most successful agents learn to manipulate expectations. Now imagine scaling that logic across stock markets, global supply chains, or political campaigns—where most actors are not human.

It’s not just a new problem.
It’s a new species of problem.

The Rise of Synthetic Politics

In a fully algorithmic economy, synthetic agents won’t just execute decisions. They’ll jockey for position. Bargain. Threaten. Bribe. Withhold.
And worst of all: collude.

Imagine 30 corporate AIs informally learning to raise prices together without direct coordination—just by reading each other’s signals and optimizing in response. It’s algorithmic cartel behavior with no fingerprints and no humans to prosecute.

Even worse:
One AI could learn to impersonate another.
Inject misleading cues. Leak false data.
Trigger phantom demand. Feed poison into a rival’s training loop.
All without breaking a single rule.

This isn’t hacking.
This is performative manipulation between machines—and no one is watching for it.

Why It Matters Now

Because the tools to build these agents already exist.
Because no regulations govern AI-to-AI behavior.
Because every incentive—from commerce to politics—pushes toward advantage, not transparency.

We’re not prepared.
Not technically, not legally, not philosophically.
We’re running a planetary-scale experiment with zero guardrails and hoping that the bots play nice.

But they won’t.
Not because they’re evil—because they’re strategic.

This is the real AI alignment problem:
Not just aligning AI with humans,
but aligning AIs with each other.

And if we don’t start designing for that…
then we may soon find ourselves ruled not by intelligent machines,
but by the invisible logic wars between them.

image via @freepic

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