My brother gave me this prompt: Write about one person who has above average intelligence but no superpower who effectively completely disrupts the timeline towards a far far better one. What do they do?
This is a story about Rob, who wants a vital timeline.
Rob’s first instinct to achieve this goal is to amass money. He looks towards Elon Musk as an example of an individual who has directly affected the course of humanity and has significant ability to continue doing so as a multi-billionaire. Yet: something odd happens when the richest man in America tries to buy Twitter. Elon isn’t in charge of his own money, he has to go through financial intermediaries to leverage his TSLA into TWTR. Nor are such ambitions taken lightly by the media elite, who dutifully split upon partisan lines to spin two tales about { how awful this is | how Elon is sticking it to the libs }. Elon’s true motivations (reading Grimes’ DMs) are left obscured.
There is a power beyond and prior to money: the power to form it. The wealthy–far from being the single source of our problems–are subservient to the elite that control the money supply. One cannot also help but notice that there exists an elite political power behind the office of the President…
To have to ask the question “Am I elite?” is to answer it in the negative. Rob’s ability to influence the populace directly is extremely limited when compared to 33rd degree Freemasons.
Examining the historical record leaves Rob with an impression that our societies have always naturally stratified into containing an elite class that holds significant decision-making power and the commonalty. The composition of the elites is not static: elites are replaced with counter-elites, intra-elite alliances are made and fall.
Rob further sees that attempting to completely destroy the elite class altogether only results in bloodthirsty Leninist elites. What is needed is the installation of a vitalist counter-elite.
Much ink has been spilt trying to identify the problems with our political system, and some of it has even been useful. There is in fact a simple mono-causal explanation for the worst offenses of the present: our elite are Godless. That they are also rentier hedonists merely follows.
The present quest for humanist equality and the denial of the existence of elites is revealed to be a sham: man is only equal under the gaze of God. Under the light of the sun man sets himself apart from other man. He must do to consider himself alive. Men distinguish themselves in leadership, courage, mental ability–and these abilities passes down through families. (Why does the media call for us to forget this fact?)
As far as Rob is concerned an elite only has a claim to political power if they do so for the worship of God. These elite are capable of leaving the common God-worshiping man alone. Man does not need to be taught how to be generative once the bonds of extraction are removed from him: as long as he has the right tools he can teach himself. (So much the better if he has a capable teacher, of course.)
A natural consequence of a generative commonalty is excess. It is the elite’s job to burn it in potlatch or build cathedrals with it. Super-yachts are for Mammon.
Rob believes in an elite-in-waiting. The smog of the coastal ideology factories may obscure them but there are Plumber Company Princes across America. They are waiting for us to show ourselves as warriors for God.
Here is what Rob does: he founds a fraternal order named Ditat Deus. The order works in the worship of God, eschewing the exchange-value of their work for the glory of doing what is right.
Rob specifically recruits for a wide range of capable talent. There is the boomer machinist, the hypebeast trainer, the ethereal gardener, etc. etc. If a project should require a specific talent, the man who has it steps up as a leader and the rest follow and learn.
There is no shortage of work to be done when asking around. In performing this work for others the order is brought closer together. They better themselves and the people around them simply because that is the good and correct thing to do.
At the beginning of the order the guild is supported by member dues relative to their ability to contribute. Two remote software engineers are able to support operations involving twenty men.
It’s only once the order has clearly shown its effectiveness that Rob seeks a patron. The candidate families are the local elites, the Jim Clicks of the world. They can afford to burn 20x the software engineers.
With these extra funds the order grows to 100 members and stops. The tightest bonds may only be formed locally, and a tribe must know all of its own.
The scale and speed of the order’s output continues to improve while the global situation continues to deteriorate. Ditat Deus knits together local production with local problems, increasing resiliency at home. The beautification of the world does not go unnoticed–demand for productive men of God goes through the roof. Rob advises others on building similar fraternal orders, and his presence on the timeline becomes fractal and self-expanding.
Amid the fractured contours of America these vitalist orders spread their roots, readying the soil for a God-worshiping elite. From Rob’s standpoint the process is glacially slow, filled with fits and setbacks, strife and joy–but he fulfills the inevitable will of God.