Volume I

VOLUME I

Despair

Can't read on? Go straight to the way out. Volume VI, Saving People: A Race Against Time Before the Blood Runs.

A warning

This volume sounds an alarm. The alarm is loud.

A steady person, reading on, will find his palms sweating too. If you haven't been sleeping lately, if the pressure has you gasping, if tomorrow holds not one thread of hope for you, if even a flicker of a thought of hurting yourself has crossed your mind, close this volume right now and turn straight to Volume VI, Saving People: A Race Against Time Before the Blood Runs. The way out is there, opened a little at a time. Come back once your heart is steady. Only then can you take the alarm in, and only then can you walk the way out without stumbling.

Hold onto one line. No rice bowl is worth more than the person holding it. Losing your work is not losing yourself.

And if there is something weighing on you that you cannot get past, go to someone you trust and say it out loud. Said out loud, it is no longer yours to carry alone.

Can't read on, then go straight to the way out. Volume VI, Saving People: A Race Against Time Before the Blood Runs.

The house is already on fire

The fire of the AI Stampede has already burned to your eyebrows. Not in fifty years. Not in twenty. Not in ten. Now. Today. This very moment, as you read this line.

Right now, the driver behind the wheel is losing his job. Right now, the lawyer in the suit, the doctor in the white coat, the therapist sitting across from a client, the accountant over the ledger: whole professions are caving in. Right now, the support rep, the translator, the clerk, the reporter, the illustrator, the programmer, the designer are being swapped out, silently, line of code by line of code. Right now, the cook, the builder, the plumber, the guard, the cleaner, the caregiver are being taken over, one robot at a time. Down, and further down, the one bent over at the very bottom collecting cans is about to lose even that last thread of a living.

You think the ones standing high up are safe? The top Silicon Valley engineers training the AI are wiping out their own positions with their own hands. The blade they are sharpening is the one that will cut them down. Look higher, and even capital has walked into a dead end. The goods are made, but no one can afford them, because the people who would buy them are all out of work. The machines roar, the warehouses pile to the roof, and the numbers on the books start falling. Even the battlefield no longer needs people. The robots go in first, and the idle cannot even get a turn at dying for their country. Even the funeral trade will not hold up, because from here on there will be fewer and fewer people. Human reproduction itself is caving in too. Can't afford children, dare not have them, see no hope, and so simply have none. The world, inch by inch, goes quiet and freezes.

But

This alarm is not crying wolf. It is the wall the mechanism itself must run into, step by step, following its own pattern of position. Leave the system untouched, and the AI Stampede runs all the way to the end, the dead end of capital, the collapse of human reproduction, the freezing of the whole world. But. Look hard at that one word. But. This script is not fated. The mechanism itself can be adjusted. The wall is right ahead, but the car has not hit it yet. The wheel is still in human hands.

This is not the first time

The first three industrial revolutions ran the same script. Word for word. The machine roars, labor falls idle, the idle pile into a mountain. Capital fears that mountain will turn the sky over, and so it moves the government to gather them and ship them to the front. Tens of millions fall. The war ends, the deck is reshuffled, the world order reset. Once, and again, and again. Add it up, and tens of millions of the poor fell on this one script. Every time, only after the great war was fought and the blood run dry did anyone turn back to adjust the system. But this time, the fourth industrial revolution, the rule has changed. The robots have taken the battlefield. Even the battlefield no longer needs people. The road those millions walked back then, the road of dying for the flag, of spending the idle hands, this time even that road is gone. The old script of adjust only after the great war cannot run this time.

So

So the thing that cannot wait is one thing only. Before the great war, get the system adjusted. It cannot wait. It cannot wait until the fire truly rises and the blood truly runs to remember that adjustment was needed. Because by then, there is no position left to adjust from.

What Volume I is for

Volume I, Despair, does one thing only. Lay the position out, exactly as it is. Let the reader see four things clearly. The position vacuum. The pattern of history. The instinct of capital. The direction of the adjustment. Once the layout is set down, Volume VI, Saving People: A Race Against Time Before the Blood Runs, can open the way out a little at a time. The whole of Justice Way, seven volumes, follows a single thread. Volume I sounds the alarm and sets down the whole layout of the AI Stampede age. After it, in turn, the cultural order, the economic order, the political order, the legal order, and then in Volume VI, the whole way out opened point by point. The whole of Justice Way runs past a million words. Volume I, Despair, runs past a hundred thousand.

How to read Volume I

Volume I has four chapters. Read them in order, Chapter 1, 2, 3, 4, straight through. Chapter 1 stings the eyes and will frighten you. If your heart is unsteady, skip it and turn straight to Volume VI, Saving People: A Race Against Time Before the Blood Runs. Chapter 2 is heavy. See the history clearly, and you see the present clearly. Chapter 3 runs against your common sense and takes time to digest. Once it settles, the direction of the whole book comes out. Chapter 4 is plain, and it is the root of the whole book. If you want the most fundamental posture of the study of position, read Chapter 4 straight off.

Volume I, Contents

Chapter 1. The AI Stampede: The House Is Already on Fire

Chapter 2. This is not the first time. The script the first three industrial revolutions ran.

Chapter 3. Capital Is Not Evil. It Is an Instinct Doing Its Job.

Chapter 4. The Study of Position, and the Mission of the Soft Landing.

Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.

Turn to Chapter 1. The AI Stampede: The House Is Already on Fire.

Or go straight to the way out. Volume VI, Saving People: A Race Against Time Before the Blood Runs.