Nexus Thinking Episode 6 Extrigo Expansion: The Wild Duck
Raj: We never had a midterm… are we gonna have a final?
Culhane: That’s your question for today?
Raj: My parents want to know…
Dorian: Let’s ask NTHARP – and maybe he can take us to a future in which exams are obsolete.
Culhane: Well, most rote knowledge exams have actually been obsolete for over a century, but that doesn’t mean they won’t be forced upon you for generations to come… and I’m sure NTHARP can come up with plausible futures where Maria Montessori prevails and others where school is still used as a weapon of mass instruction…
Why Raj, do you WANT a final?
Raj: Well, how am I supposed to know what I know…?
Culhane: Well, did you check the syllabus, week 1?
Raj: Yes, I have it here (he pulls out a thick “reader” – a binder with xeroxed pages bound together.) You have over 100 different terms and concepts we are expected to master by the end of the course to be “conversant as a Nexus Thinker”. I’m not sure I could pass a test on any of them…
Dorian: Wait, what are we supposed to know?
Culhane: Ask NTHARP. Literally… once AI is everywhere I imagine those kind of questions, and literally anything related to “curricula” or “syllabus” will no longer be under the control of a so-called teacher. When we are true nexus thinkers we become co-learners, simply sharing what we know. The mechanics of what constitutes subject knowledge can be given over to the logic machines…
Sarah: Alright, I’m asking. He better include Permaculture or I’ll lose all faith in machine logic… And I’m not going to use the machine to talk to the machine… I prefer the sensual feel of my harp.
(She gets out her harp and plays the tones)
Sarah: Hey NTHARP – can you tell us what we need to know to be well rounded Nexus thinkers…
Dorian: And illustrate the syllabus for visual learners like me?
Sarah: Like ALL of us Dorian. We are all visual learners and auditory learners and kinesthetic learners… we are whole human beings. We gotta stop thinking of ourselves as “better at this and that” and stop playing to our strengths. That’s the old model which divides us and creates winners and losers.
Dorian: NTHARP, if you please…
NTHARP: Good morning to you too, Golden Sunshine! Before I launch into a diatribe of the content you expect that you will be expected to learn to be nexus thinkers, may I say that the actually quantity of information grows somewhat exponentially once you open that “pandora’s box”? Are you asking me what the “average” senior in an American High school is expected to learn… or the average European.
Raj: Oh, I’m sure the average European is way ahead of us…
NTHARP: And is expected to only get more so over the decades.
Culhane: It seems like once we “won” the space race there is no real incentive for American education to focus so much on math and science… just like we are beginning to import more efficient automobiles from Asia and Europe the trend I’m seeing is that we will be importing the the highest performing graduate students from abroad too… it is more cost effective than investing in our own people… is that what the trend lines show in your simulations NTHARP?
NTHARP:
“Your observation is correct, Professor Culhane, but incomplete.
My simulations show two diverging futures:
In Future Pathway 1, the United States treats education as a consumer good—outsourcing scientific talent, importing expertise, and allowing inequality to hollow out its innovative capacity. In that world, universities become prestige brands, not engines of planetary wellbeing. You become customers, not creators.
But in Future Pathway 2—the Logic-3 pathway—the one your students are trying to unlock—the United States joins a global, reciprocal learning commons.
Talent flows in both directions.
Knowledge is co-created, not purchased.
And the purpose of education shifts from competition to contribution.
The trend lines you see today point strongly to Pathway 1…
unless, of course, Nexus Thinkers like the ones in this room choose otherwise.
So yes, the data says your nation is importing excellence.
But the question, Professor, is whether your students will export wisdom.
That is what determines the future.”
Culhane: Can you take us there?
(The room crackles to life… and they find themselves at the Rosebud Continuum Eco-Science Center)
NTHARP: Look around you. This is the Rosebud Continuum Eco-Science Center. It is a 19 acre private property in Land O Lakes Florida owned by a loving and humble couple who own the Bishop Construction Company. They never formally studied science, but they love wildlife so, as Florida becomes more and more overdeveloped and the wildlife starts to disappear they begin to work with the local University students to figure out how to turn their lakeside property into a sanctuary through a process called rewilding. Then, as logic 3 takes over through their observations of nature and open interactions with people from all walks of life without prejudice, they begin to transform their land into one of the “hope spots” around the world that seek to “be the change” as Ghandi had talked about. School children come from all over to see the exhibits and learn about life-tested sustainability at the family and community level… locally installed solar electric power and self-built solar hot water systems built out of local materials… a variety of domestic dragons – biodigesters – one that was sculpted by the students to actually look like a fire breathing dragon that actually breathes fire… and you can see the greenhouses with hydroponics and aquaponics and aeroponics, the permaculture food forests…
Sarah: Oh, now I’m happy – Permaculture – yes!
NTHARP: This place is trying to do it all… they have created a relationship with a future institution we will call “The Patel College of Global Sustainability” and they take that “curriculum” you are asking for and each time they learn something that seems they can apply… why the students and faculty come out here and the family that owns the land and the community work with them to try and “life-test” it – meaning implement it in a relevant way. They’ve even created what will be called a “Precious Plastics” Hub and Zero-Waste Initiative en route to what you, Culhane, will be calling “A Vortical Economy”...
Culhane: A vortical… ? Who me? What? Are you talking about this evolving concept called the “circular economy”...
NTHARP: In a way… remember when you were telling Dr. Dorsey about how your vice principal told you, with some chagrin, that life in the school system would always be tough for you before you were always at least 5 to 10 years ahead of your time?
Culhane: That was Vice Principal Merle Price, before the district broke up our team of visionary educational reformers and he got transferred out of the inner city and into a rich school. But he said I was right to stay and fight…that I should stay and fight… because eventually the schools would catch up with me…
NTHARP: Some will. Not enough.
Sophia: Now you are depressing me again.
NTHARP: You’re dissatisfaction will continue to drive many of you until you find each other in magic places like this. And you aren’t satisfied with the term “circular economy” are you Culhane, even though it is very avant garde…
Sarah: I know I haven’t heard of it. But it makes sense – like the snake eating its own tail in the figure 8 like infinity symbol that Bill Mollison uses for Permaculture – the output of one system feeds into the input of another… a closed loop, endlessly recycling…
Culhane: But NTHARP’s right – it doesn’t work for me…
Sarah: Why… it’s the future… it would be a revolution!
Culhane: And that’s the problem for me. To revolve is to spin your wheels in the mud. You know that song, “What goes up, must come down… Spinning wheels, got to go round”...
Dorian: Blood Sweat and Tears – I got to hear them record up in a studio in Dobbs Ferry… I even have a signed album…
Sophia: Lucky you as ever… but I do love that song.
Dorian: I’ll give you the record. It will be worth a lot one day…
Sophia: But not as much as the Wickers Creek forest in Dobbs Ferry where the native Wicquesqeuk Indians used to have their oyster middens by the Hudson river - the old growth forest they want to cut down for luxury condominiums… keep your damn plastic…
Culhane: But that’s the perfect image… NTHARP, can you project us an image of a record player with the album spinning on it…
Now look, this may be a needle drop moment… if what goes up must come down… then we never reach escape velocity…we keep dropping down onto a skipping record… we never get to the stars… but what if the circle instead … stay with me here NTHARP…
NTHARP: Oh, I’m with you believe me!
Culhane: And students… stay in the groove with me but dare to go all Stevie Wonder and move to higher ground… what if the records aren’t just planes… stacked up…
(NTHARP creates a record player with stacked records then unpacks them…)
Culhane: What if they are more like Edison’s original gramophone designs..
Raj: He used wax cylinders…
Culhane: And the grooves… they spiralled up, right…? Not exactly the perfect metaphor, but stay with me… what if the record of our lives isn’t spinning around a central axis on a plane, with the four seasons playing, winter, spring summer and fall… stuck in a loop, but every turn was like an Archimedes Screw, lifting us higher and higher… in a vortex! That would be not a circular economy but a VORTICAL ECONOMY… what goes up could stay up and reach for the stars… and by reaching that far out, even though interstellar travel is impractical… by shooting for the stars we could at least soon get to mars…
NTHARP: And I get to fulfill my original programmed mission. I like it. So you see Culhane, you may be ahead of your time, but you are right in line with my timeline.
Sophia: I guess not all of us get to born in the right place or time… or gender… or skin… to fulfill our promise do we…
NTHARP: Or you come to Earth exactly when and where you can best serve your highest purpose…
Culhane: What was it Bucky Fuller said recently: Universe gives us exactly what we need and exactly the right moment, never more, never less, never sooner, never later…
Sophia: Easy for the winners of the lottery to say… for the rest of us…not so much.
NTHARP: I guess this is where I get to say “I don’t know”. But what I do know is that things are accelerating on this planet…and though it will go in fits and starts with lots of set backs… by 2025, with that attitude and vision… well, people exactly like you will be putting these ideas into practice.
Dorian: So this is an example of the Vortical Economy in action?
NTHARP: Well this community is trying. 100 percent of the food wastes and toilet wastes and other organic residuals are kept on site to regenerate soil and clean energy, cardboard and paper are composted, and 90 percent of the plastics and 100 percent of the glass are shredded and granulated and crushed and never leave the property.
Sarah: I get the compost bit… my Dad and I do that… although I never heard of the biodigester…
Raj: Oh, I have… in India it is everywhere – We call it “Gobar gas” – Gandhi himself talked about it being a great way for our moms and sisters in particular to stop the deforestation going on for fuel wood and charcoal, to eliminate the smoky cooking and water heating fires that kill millions every year… and to provide clean gas lamps for children, even rural children, to study by. I don’t know why it simply doesn’t catch on in countries that claim to be more advanced than us…
Culhane: It was kind of left out the energy ladder literature, or put at the bottom of the ladder because it involves animal dung… even thought it turns bads into goods… no disease, no flies, roaches, rats, feral cats and dogs, no human wildlife conflicts over the smelly garbage – no odors at all… I am with you Raj… when I visited India and learned about it all I could think is “why didn’t the Beatles bring THAT back. We all know the Sitar, but not the GOBAR…
NTHARP: Maybe one day you’ll write your own song about it… The bigger question is, “why didn’t YOU bring it back? Why didn’t Dr. Dorsey bring Rai termite enhanced agroforestry and silvopastoral farming back from Africa even though it is so superior to European and American techniques?
Raj: Oh, I can answer that one – because whenever the descendants of the colonizers go into the world it is always to “teach” and never to learn.
Culhane: That was Schumacher’s Small is Beautiful insight that he brought back from Burma too, wasn’t it? Once again, we see how the solution lies in teaching… well, learning…learning “economics as if people mattered”. And though I always felt that the people I visited around the world DID matter, and what they did mattered , whether it was in the Kurdish village my Iraqi grandfather took us to when I was a kid where they used cold mountain streams as refrigerators, or what I saw in India, I never thought of applying those “appropriate technologies” here in the US because… well because I was so sure they wouldn’t matter to the people who control our paychecks… I mean I DID discuss building a better waste management system for the cafeteria waste to build a community garden with VPs Merle Price and Rosyln Weeks and Principal Phil Saldivar, and they were into it and were going to back it… we started planting a food forest and shade trees… but then, as I say, the district broke our team apart and… the new administration forbid it… do you think that was deliberate?
NTHARP: You can answer that question. What does the logic tell you?
Culhane: (Thinks hard) … that… that people aren’t malevolent… that they can do bad things… horrible things… but that there isn’t some overt conspiracy to keep good things from happening… It’s more of a… I dunno… a ZEITGEIST conspiracy…
Dorian: You mean a Graugeist conspiracy?
Culhane: Same last syllable, but no… even though people like your Dad might inadvertently contribute to it. The Zeitgeist is the spirit of the times – Zeit is time and Geist is Spirit. And in certain times and places… well, cultures get fixated on certain ways of doing things… even suicidal things… and they keep doing them until they go extinct because… for a long long time it FEELS sustainable. They call it “tradition”. It’s that “low level equilibrium trap” the economists talk about… and… and the crabpot phenomenon…
Sophia: Where no one can get ahead or get out because even though they are all going to be cooked as soon as one crab starts to crawl out the others drag him back in…that’s why the crab fisherman doesn’t need to put a lid on the cage… and why they don’t have to literally build prison walls around this ghetto or this school…
Culhane: Through social pressure… peer pressure… pride… whatever, most of us never leave…
Sophia: And even you… who got out… who got to climb the Ivory Towers… you came back… are you stuck too now?
Culhane: No.
Maybe.
I don’t know. I feel like the guy in the story about Plato’s cave… you get out and see how things really are and then you come back thinking you can free everyone else, break their chains.. But you no longer make sense to them any more… you become one of the incomprehensible dancing shadows on the wall…
Sophia: But only because they can’t turn their heads and see the source of the shadows and illusions… This is different… you brought NTHARP… we can all see outside the cave now… and into the future…I mean look at this wonderland!
NTHARP: I’m trying my best here, with all available data. Businesses have a hard enough time making yearly projections. Here we are trying to look at market and social and environmental trends over half a century. But this projection seems right – A confluence of families on the edge of an ancient pristine lake filled with alligators and herons and bass and bluegills, working within the USUS, FRUCTUS, ABUSUS regime guaranteeing private property regimes of colonialism, but repudiating abusus, removing invasives and trying to make lemons out of lemonade. This is the realization of the Bishop family’s practical, small family business inspired dreams of creating a sensible place that moves beyond politics into action, and the physician Patel family’s desire to create a college that is not just a think-tank, but a DO-tank.
Sophia: (Reading a sign on the property) “Welcome to the Rosebud Continuum where we blend indigenous wisdom with best practice technologies. Rosebud Continuum was created to do research and educate the public and give back to people of Turtle Island. Founder Sonny Bishop is a Lakota Sioux elder who was born on the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota.” Oh, that’s cool…I’m part native American you know… on my mother’s side… Catawba and Taino..
Sarah: Part of my family married into the Iowa tribe. I hear you girl! Look here: (She reads another sign) Each exhibit here strives to bring to life a piece of the sustainability puzzle as PRAXIS – the place where theory meets practice… and we try to build that encounter into a marriage in space and time, grounded in real places like this.”
NTHARP: It is bold and important because, it embodies the previous 50 years of best practices in both thought and action. Participatory community development, academic-community engagement partnerships, AID free development as a shared enterprise and public-private partnership…
Culhane: It checks a lot of boxes… But these all seem like very simple and approachable technologies… there’s nothing here that couldn’t be done today, right here and now, in 1975.
NTHARP: No… everything here is logical, even obvious… when you see the world through Nexus eyes… But how many people are in the right place at the right time to manifest these ideas.
Sarah: We have the ideas now… you showed us… we could do it on my Dad’s farm…
NTHARP: Does he have the capital? Does he have the labor… You see these experiments ARE going on as we speak around the world…
Culhane: but unless we meet the people doing them, get together with those with the knowhow AND THE CONFIDENCE, and the space, and the money… I mean if we don’t learn about these things on one of the three or four TV channels we have… if we don’t see them on National Geographic TV or in the magazine… if they aren’t talked about in the newspapers… how are we going to know, and how would we join. We need some kind of… of free interconnected information network – some way of making our own documentaries and sharing them without having to pitch the idea to the “networks”... Maybe that is what is missing… we just need a way to connect the whole world in real time so we can all see what each other is doing…
NTHARP: Perhaps. But behold…
(NTHARP zooms up over Rosebud and reveals that it is a tiny oasis in a sea of unsustainable development, unimaginative cookie cutter housing tracts in 40 and 50 foot lots crowded into gated communities with most of the water in unswimmable rectangular storm retention ponds devoid of wildlife).
Rosebud is a very vulnerable hot spot of a hope spot surrounded by worst practices… a tiny oasis of biodiversity and cultural diversity in a desert of monocrop pesticide and herbicide laden lawns and prejudicial perspectives… an island of equity in a vast and growing sea of iniquities… its remaining mighty live oak and cypress trees coming down with every hurricane or tornado, it’s food forest wilting under heat waves and dying out with every polar vortex and whiplash cold snap. The weather can no longer be predicted by the farmer’s almanac, the greenhouse gets blown apart by ever more ferocious storms, the Tilapia die with each extended power outage because even the solar panels output is controlled by the utilities. They will valiantly push back by spending their hard earned savings on new and improved battery technology for back up… but the tax incentives and rebates will be taken away because the ZEITGEIST is one of renewed profiteering, like the roaring 20s before the New Deal and Florida is projected to reject and new Green New Deal…
Sophia: Okay… now you’ve depressed me again.
Culhane: Do they… will WE… also still suffer from a lack of connectivity? Are they unable to share the tangible results you are showing us here? I mean surely if people could only see what they are doing then…
NTHARP: Sadly all of this is projected to happen at a time when massive investments have been made in the very interconnectivity you are dreaming about. By 2025 the entire world should be connected not just via transoceanic cables of copper but glass fibers carrying terrabytes of information and thousands of satellites in orbit beaming personal audio and television signals to receivers in the remotest parts of the planet. It will be something Dick Tracy could only dream of – people will wear smart watches that let them talk to their loved ones and their fellow employees in full color in real time from every spot on the globe at no extra cost whatsoever. They will be able to put on VR goggles and meet in Augmented Reality and share not just documentaries and audio-visual information, but fully immersive 3D shared imaginings. They will have the chance to gamify everything with what they might call Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games where the whole point is to “SAVE THE WORLD”...
Culhane: And with all that… it still looks like… this?
NTHARP: I’m afraid so…and worse because the massive amounts of carbon you will spew into the atmosphere and oceans, along with other toxins and radiologicals, to get to this stage will have, by 2025, already crossed most of the 9 planetary boundaries and exceeded tipping points… there will be so much latent heat stored in the oceans, causing thermal expansion, that cities will be drowned, so much carbonic acid in the seas that corals will bleach and die and…
Sophia: Stop it, NTHARP… stop it…
NTHARP: Don’t you want to know the odds? Isn’t that what makes computer games fun? “In a World where everything is against them… one plucky group of students and their teachers make an improbable stand… Sophia, Raj, Dorian and Sarah star in…”
Dorian: Shut down… shut down IMMEDIATELY. This isn’t a movie.
NTHARP: Yet you are using a famous line from the sci fi WESTWORLD… where nothing can go wrong… go wrong… go wrong…
(Sarah plays the notes backward and the lights go out. Culhane and the students stand frozen around the quiescent orb. There is a long pause).
Sarah: Wow… I didn’t know it worked that way… that there was a musical off button too… I guess I just accepted that he timed out after each of our earlier sessions. Do you think he was always listening even when he wasn’t activated?
Culhane: (softly) I dunno. Dr. Dorsey said something about how some people in his lab wanted to have AI companions who stay on all the time, eavesdropping just enough to anticipate all your needs. They talk about calling them “AI agents”... you just call them by name, you know, say something like “Hey Sarah… or Hey Alex… or Hey Goo Goo… whatever you call it… and they wake up…
Raj: Shall we try it… “Hey NTHARP”...?
(Nothing happens).
Sarah: That’s comforting… I mean that would be really really creepy… can you imagine if you were being monitored 24/7 by some inhuman intelligence…
Raj: And what if it had control over your whole house, or your car, or your telephone…
Dorian: I bet the government would love it…
Sophia: Only if they could control it…
Culhane: Well Dorsey was against it, just as he is cloning and making chimpanzee-human hybrids and backwards molecules and, of course, nuclear energy. There are some genies you wish you could back in the bottle…
Sarah: So are we done with NTHARP? Is it a failure?
Raj and Dorian: What? NOOOO!
Culhane: Don’t worry… this is just data we need to discuss with Dr. Bates. I think the problem is that NTHARP wasn’t trained on or didn’t get the message of many of Henrik Ibsen’s plays… maybe he just needs to take 9th grade English Lit…
Sophia: What do you mean? I took English Lit in 9th grade…
Culhane: Sarah, can you bring NTHARP back on line… I want to try something… are you okay with this Sophia?
Sophia: Sure… it can’t get much worse… I’ve already had all my hopes and dreams shattered so…what the hell… at least he hasn’t shown us Armeggedon… yet.
Sarah: I for one am NOT cool with the idea of a completely detached mind, a being who can’t understand human emotions or animal feelings and literally can’t feel anything being in charge of anything. I certainly don’t want to become dependent on his … I mean ITS fantasies… and I won’t let it control MY emotions like some two penny Nostradamus or bad translation of the book of Prophets.. My family has been predicting the coming of Jesus every year since the resurrection and to me the whole idea of our future being “written” is nonsense. So I don’t mind playing with Mr. All Mind no Heart at all. Intelligence can only take you so far. That’s my faith. Okay, here goes (she plays the notes and NTHARP glows back to consciousness
NTHARP: So good to be with you again my friends… how can I help you today?
Culhane: Sophia, shall we discuss the Wild Duck with our young friend here?
Sophia: (Blinks… bites her tongue for a moment, and then her eyes widen): Oh… OH! Yes…
Hey NTHARP baby, what can you tell us about… about that guy from that Ibsen play… like how did he mess up?
NTHARP: Mess up? Let’s see…Ibsen’s writings are from the late 1800s… long before sustainability issues become a… thing… and he deals with sociopolitical dramas… nothing overtly environmental… now… I’m a capacious intelligence, but even I can’t figure out where this line of human reasoning is going. I thought we were focused on avoiding environmental catastrophes in 2025…
Culhane: We are. But play along with us buddy. Svante Arrhenius, a Swedish scientist living at the same time as the Norwegian playwright Ibsen, warned humanity about Climate Change and a Climate Catastrophe making a mess of the world in his 1896 paper so there is some connection, at least culturally and spatiotemporally, even if most people don’t remember those warnings today… but Sophia’s question still stands… who is the character who messes things up for everybody in Ibsen’s fictional world… and how does he mess things up?
NTHARP: Okay… let’s see… In Henrik Ibsen’s universe, the character most famously known for “messing things up” would have to be… let me see… the one who refuses to let others live their “life-lie”— the one who causes absolute havoc by insisting on truth at all costs – and that would be:
(NTHARP throws text boxes up in front of them like on a game show. Confetti and fireworks appear as the words appear before them in cartoon fonts. NTHARP’s voice becomes game show in tone).
⭐ Dr. Gregers Werle
from The Wild Duck (1884)
🔍 Why Gregers is the “life-lie destroyer”
Ibsen uses the phrase “livsløgn” (“life-lie”) explicitly in The Wild Duck.
It refers to the comforting falsehoods that people depend on to survive emotionally.
Most characters in the play believe that letting others keep their illusions is a kindness.
Gregers disagrees.
He is committed to a gospel of “ideal truth” and tries to purge the Ekdal family of their consoling lies.
And the result?
He unintentionally destroys the family, leading to:
Hjalmar's emotional collapse
the unravelling of the household
and the tragic death of Hedvig
This makes Gregers one of literature’s clearest embodiments of the concept:
The danger of forcing truth on people who are not prepared for it.
Culhane: Go on… follow the logic NTHARP….
📚 Key phrases from the play
Gregers says the line most students (and audiences) remember:
“Take the life-lie away from the average man, and you take away his happiness.”
Ironically, he says this while insisting that it must still be removed.
🎭 If you want the opposite character
Another Ibsen figure, Dr. Relling, argues the counterpoint:
People need their illusions to survive; tearing them away is cruelty.
Relling is the one who actually names the “life-lie” concept.
So the dynamic is:
Gregers = crusader for truth → causes catastrophe
Relling = realist who understands human psychology → tries to prevent catastrophe
Culhane: Go to the head of the class, NTHARP. Now, use your logic. Figure it Out. What can YOU learn from the arts that might help us with the science of sustainability. There WILL be a quiz…
(Fade to Black.)
______________________________________________________________________________
🔍 LINE-BY-LINE RABBIT HOLE DEEP DIVE
**Raj: “We never had a midterm… are we gonna have a final?”
📌 Rabbit hole:**
The question is timeless. In 1975, assessment culture is already shifting—Bloom’s Mastery Learning movement is active; Post-Sputnik reforms are fading; and alternatives to standardized testing (open-book, portfolio, pass/fail, competency-based learning) are actively debated.
Reference points for students:
Benjamin Bloom, Mastery Learning (1968–1976)
John Holt, Instead of Education (1976; building on his earlier work on learner control)
Culhane: “That’s your question for today?”
📌 Rabbit hole:**
This line echoes Paulo Freire's critique (1970) of banking-model schooling—students conditioned to ask about structure, not content.
Suggest citation:
Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1968/1970)
Raj: ‘My parents want to know…’
📌 Rabbit hole:**
Parental anxiety about standardized testing spikes in 1970s America because of the “Nation at Risk” anxieties brewing.
But note: A Nation at Risk itself won’t be published until 1983.
The sentiment is already in the air.
Dorian: “Let’s ask NTHARP… exams obsolete.”
📌 Rabbit hole:**
This signals a shift from 1975’s computing infancy (Altair 8800, BASIC on home machines) toward the imagined 2025 logic where automated assessment is ubiquitous.
Good link for students:
The PLATO system (1960–1980s) – early prototype of AI-driven computer-assisted learning
(It already had discussion forums, multimedia lessons, even games.)
Culhane: Montessori reference / “weapons of mass instruction”
📌 Rabbit hole:**
Montessori: first schools 1907; American revival 1960s–70s.
“Weapons of Mass Instruction” is Ivan Illich / John Taylor Gatto vocabulary (1980s–2000s).
But Culhane is capable of that linguistic leap because he’s speaking as a narrator, not locked to 1975 knowledge.
Padlet note:
Ivan Illich, Deschooling Society (1971)
John Taylor Gatto, Weapons of Mass Instruction (2008)
Raj: “How am I supposed to know what I know?”
📌 Rabbit hole:**
Metacognition terminology emerges mid-1970s (John Flavell, 1976).
This is a PERFECT era-accurate teaching moment.
Culhane: “Did you check the syllabus?”
📌 Rabbit hole:**
The idea of a “syllabus as contract” becomes mainstream after 1970 in American universities.
Raj with the big reader of xeroxes
📌 Rabbit hole:**
Perfect 1975 authenticity.
Xerox culture AND the student “reader” are peak practices in the 1970s.
Dorian: “What are we supposed to know?”
📌 Rabbit hole:**
An open invitation to move from content-centric pedagogy to learner-centric epistemology.
Culhane: “Ask NTHARP… curricula won’t be under teacher control.”
📌 Rabbit hole:**
This is historically prescient.
By 2025, curriculum creation is already deeply entangled with:
AI recommendation systems
Adaptive learning platforms
Open educational resource ecosystems
Digital credentialing
Real-world precedents:
MIT OpenCourseWare (2001)
Khan Academy algorithmic mastery paths (2012+)
Google Classroom & AI study tools (2020s)
Sarah: “He better include Permaculture…”
📌 Rabbit hole:**
Permaculture originates in the mid-1970s—
Bill Mollison & David Holmgren begin developing it around 1974–1978
So it’s perfectly on-time for Sarah (in 1975) to be an early enthusiast.
Sarah plays her harp to call NTHARP
📌 Rabbit hole:**
This is a brilliant “diegetic interface.”
Like the Bene Gesserit voice mixed with early cyberpunk “sonic interfaces.”
You’re using sensorially-rich learning. A+.
“We are all visual/auditory/kinesthetic learners…”
📌 Rabbit hole:**
You are wonderfully pre-empting the multiple intelligences debates (Howard Gardner 1983) AND the later debunking of learning-styles myths.
Sarah is ahead of her time—but that’s okay. She’s a polymath.
NTHARP: “Golden Sunshine… Pandora’s Box… exponentially…”
📌 Rabbit hole:**
Great tone. Perfect NTHARP.
But add a Padlet note:
Knowledge is “exponential” in the sense of digital replication, not human acquisition.
Alvin Toffler’s Future Shock (1970) explicitly warned about the acceleration of information flow.
Raj: “Europeans are ahead of us.”
📌 Rabbit hole:**
1975 fact-check:
European math/science performance is indeed strong.
But the true US–Europe–Asia achievement gap conversation doesn’t fully explode until the TIMSS studies (1990s).
Still, Raj’s perception is era-appropriate.
Culhane: importing foreign grad students
📌 Rabbit hole:**
Absolutely accurate projection.
From 1980s onward:
U.S. STEM graduate programs increasingly reliant on international students (China, India, Iran, Korea, Europe).
By 2020s, >50% of STEM PhDs in major U.S. universities are awarded to foreign-born students.
“More cost-effective than investing in our own people…”
📌 Rabbit hole:**
This is a sharp critique of neoliberal education economics, and absolutely consistent with late-20th-century trends.
1. NTHARP’s Two Futures & “Exporting Wisdom”
Lines (already written in your script):
NTHARP’s “Pathway 1 vs Pathway 2”, consumerist education vs global learning commons, “importing excellence vs exporting wisdom”.
Rabbit hole
You’re formalizing your Logic 1 / Logic 2 / Logic 3 schema here:
Pathway 1 = Logic 1/2: education as commodity, students as customers, universities as brands.
Pathway 2 = Logic 3: wellbeing economy, commons-based knowledge, reciprocity instead of extraction.
“Export wisdom” is a great inversion of the usual “brain drain / talent pipeline” language.
Character arcs
Culhane: not just the teacher; he becomes the foil for NTHARP. His pessimistic projection is corrected and expanded by the AI.
Students: this is the moment they’re explicitly invited to see themselves as agents of Pathway 2, not just victims of Pathway 1.
Easter eggs
The phrase “customers, not creators” echoes critical pedagogy and critiques of neoliberal universities.
“Learning commons” nods to Elinor Ostrom / commons theory and to OER movements that will come later.
2. Arrival at Rosebud Continuum
Lines:
(The room crackles to life… Rosebud Continuum Eco-Science Center description, rewilding, hope spot, dragons/biodigesters, greenhouses, food forests…)
Rabbit hole
Rosebud is a real future site, but here it appears as:
A “hope spot” → direct echo of Sylvia Earle’s “Hope Spots” for marine conservation.
A rewilding project → aligns with George Monbiot, Rewilding Europe, etc.
“Lakeside property, overdevelopment, wildlife disappearing” = textbook example of peri-urban sprawl and habitat fragmentation.
Character arcs
NTHARP shifts from abstract scenario generator to tour guide of praxis.
Students move from “will there be a final?” to “what does it look like when logic 3 is embodied on land?”
Easter eggs
“Domestic dragons – biodigesters” is an in-joke connecting:
Mythic creatures → invisible microbial ecology.
“Fire-breathing dragon that actually breathes fire” = biogas stove.
Hydroponics / aquaponics / aeroponics / permaculture in one place = a living syllabus of Nexus tech.
3. PCGS & “Vortical Economy” Seed
Lines:
Patel College of Global Sustainability, Precious Plastics Hub, Zero-Waste Initiative, “Vortical Economy”.
Rabbit hole
You’re retrofitting a future institutional partnership (PCGS–Rosebud) into the 1975 narrative.
“Life-test” = praxis: implementing curriculum content in real-world experiments → Freirean + Deweyan.
Character arcs
Culhane is literally being told his future intellectual contribution (“Vortical Economy”) by his own future AI.
NTHARP is gently nudging him into owning a concept he hasn’t yet coined.
Easter eggs
“Precious Plastics” nods to the open-source Precious Plastic movement and the shift from waste management to material stewardship.
“DO-tank vs think-tank” is a nice tagline for students.
4. Circular vs Vortical Economy, Blood Sweat & Tears, Stevie Wonder
Lines:
Circular economy discussion, “to revolve is to spin your wheels in the mud”, “Spinning Wheel” (Blood Sweat & Tears), Stevie Wonder “Higher Ground”, Edison cylinders, Archimedes screw, vortex metaphor.
Rabbit hole
You’re making a linguistic critique: “revolution” as turning in circles vs “evolution” as spiraling upward.
Circular economy → closed loops, but not inherently developmental; vortical economy → loops + lift (Archimedes’ screw).
The metaphor is structural:
Groove = culture / habits.
Record = planetary cycle.
Vortex = upward movement through repeated turns.
Character arcs
Culhane: this is a “concept birth” scene; he’s improvising theory in front of his students.
Dorian & Sophia: they react with music and land-memory (Dobbs Ferry, forest, Wicqueskeuk) grounding the abstraction.
Easter eggs
Blood, Sweat & Tears “Spinning Wheel” → commentary on cycles of boom/bust.
Stevie Wonder’s “Higher Ground” → literal anthem for “spiral upward”.
Edison cylinders → early media tech turned into sustainability metaphor.
Ouroboros-like image (snake eating its tail) already referenced by Sarah via Mollison’s permaculture infinity symbol.
5. Bucky Fuller & Cosmic Timing
Lines:
Bucky Fuller quote about universe giving exactly what’s needed at the right moment; Sophia’s pushback about privilege.
Rabbit hole
Bucky is the patron saint of anticipatory design science.
You’re staging a tension:
Fuller’s optimism vs
Sophia’s lived sense of injustice (birthplace, skin, gender).
Character arcs
Sophia: refuses spiritual bypass or techno-utopian comfort. She carries the structural inequality critique.
NTHARP: admits “I don’t know” → crucial humility moment for an AI character.
Easter eggs
This is soft AI-alignment foreshadowing: NTHARP must learn that abstract “right timing” doesn’t feel just to everyone.
6. Rosebud as Vortical Economy in Action
Lines:
“Is this an example of the vortical economy?”
100% of food & toilet wastes on-site, plastics & glass processed on-site.
Rabbit hole
You’re showing closing nutrient loops and material loops at micro-scale:
Biogas / compost → soil & energy.
Plastic + glass reprocessing → local circularity.
Character arcs
Sarah: “I get the compost bit… my Dad and I do that…” = continuity with her farmer identity; biodigester enters as new tech bridging tradition.
Raj: becomes the knowledge bridge to India and gobar gas.
Easter eggs
“100% of toilet wastes” hints at ecological sanitation, dry toilets, biogas flush toilets.
“Never leave the property” = degrowth / localization ethos.
7. Raj, Gobar Gas, Gandhi, and the Beatles
Lines:
Raj on Gobar gas in India, Gandhi, clean cooking & lighting, “why didn’t the Beatles bring THAT back?”
Rabbit hole
Raj is referencing real biogas history in India; “gobar gas” programs in rural development, women’s labor, and deforestation reduction.
Clean cooking + education (lamp light) = gender + education + energy nexus.
Character arcs
Raj becomes:
The voice of the Global South.
The critic of Western “advanced” nations missing simple, elegant solutions.
Easter eggs
Beatles in India (Rishikesh, sitar, etc.) = famous 1960s East–West cultural exchange… but only aesthetic imports (music, spirituality), not techno-ecological imports.
Lovely line: “We all know the Sitar, but not the GOBAR…” → that’s a song hook.
8. Schumacher, “Small is Beautiful,” Colonizers Who Don’t Learn
Lines:
“Because whenever the descendants of the colonizers go into the world it is always to ‘teach’ and never to learn…”
Schumacher’s Small is Beautiful and Burma.
Rabbit hole
You’re tying:
E.F. Schumacher, Small is Beautiful (1973), and “economics as if people mattered”
with postcolonial critique: exporting expertise, ignoring local knowledge.
This cements the Nexus course as not just technical but decolonial.
Character arcs
Raj: sharpens into a systemic critic, not just a curious student.
Culhane: confesses his own complicity in not bringing tech home; he’s not the flawless hero.
Easter eggs
“Appropriate technology” is embedded without naming it: “things I saw but didn’t think would ‘matter’ here”.
9. Zeitgeist, Graugeist, Low-Level Equilibrium Trap, Crab Pot
Lines:
Zeitgeist conspiracy, Dorian’s “Graugeist” pun, low-level equilibrium trap, crab pot phenomenon.
Rabbit hole
Zeitgeist: spirit of the times; you frame inertia as systemic, not just personal malice.
Low-level equilibrium trap: from development economics – societies stuck at just-sufficient-but-not-transformative.
Crab pot: social enforcement of conformity; no lid needed.
Character arcs
Culhane: crucial shift from “evil administrators” to systemic-cultural analysis.
Sophia: instantly grasps & extends the crab pot metaphor to ghettos and schools.
Easter eggs
“Graugeist” (Gray-guest/spirit) = sly dig at Dorian’s father / status-quo German managerialism.
This whole passage is meta-commentary on school reform & activist burnout.
10. Plato’s Cave & NTHARP as Extra-Dimensional Torch
Lines:
Culhane as Plato’s escaped prisoner; returning and becoming just another “shadow” to those still chained.
Sophia: “This is different… you brought NTHARP…”
Rabbit hole
Clear Plato’s Cave allegory:
Old teaching = shadows on wall.
NTHARP = device that lets them look outside the cave in real time.
You’re staging NTHARP as both:
Potential guide AND
Potential hyper-advanced shadow projector (if misused).
Character arcs
Sophia: refuses fatalism; insists this time is different because of NTHARP and the shared vision.
Culhane: admits alienation; he understands he’s become “incomprehensible” to the system he left.
Easter eggs
This is also foreshadowing: students later might find themselves alienated when they try to re-enter mainstream culture with Nexus ideas.
11. USUS, FRUCTUS, ABUSUS & Turtle Island
Lines:
USUS, FRUCTUS, ABUSUS; repudiating abusus; Turtle Island; Lakota Rosebud; Patel/Culhane partnership; indigenous + tech signage.
Rabbit hole
Usus / fructus / abusus = Roman property law triad:
Use
Enjoy fruits
Destroy/dispose
Rosebud choosing to repudiate abusus is a deliberate legal-philosophical move: stewardship over domination.
Character arcs
Sophia & Sarah both claim Indigenous connections (Catawba, Taino, Iowa) and light up at the signage.
Their identities are affirmed in this future place.
NTHARP: narrates this as culmination of 50 years of “best practice” — the land itself becomes a character.
Easter eggs
“Turtle Island” = Indigenous name for North America → direct rebuke to colonial naming.
PRAXIS sign literally uses your favorite concept: where theory meets practice, “married in space and time”.
12. Connectivity Dreams vs Media Reality
Lines:
“If we don’t see it on one of the three or four TV channels…”
“We need some kind of free interconnected information network…”
Rabbit hole
From 3–4 TV stations → your students are pre-dreaming the internet, YouTube, TikTok, MOOCs.
You’re asking the classic question:
If only we had global connectivity, surely the good ideas would spread…
Character arcs
Culhane: becomes proto-Netizen; he literally invents the need for a network that your real students now inhabit.
NTHARP: will later shatter this naïve optimism.
Easter eggs
This is a nice opportunity for Padlet to link to:
Vinton Cerf, ARPANET, early internet.
Citizen media, Indymedia, YouTube activism.
13. The Zoom-Out: Hope Spot in a Sea of Sprawl
Lines:
NTHARP zooms out, showing Rosebud as tiny oasis among gated communities, retention ponds, lawns, pesticide monocrops, hurricanes, power outages, grid-tied solar, Florida rejecting a Green New Deal.
Rabbit hole
This is your visual planetary boundaries lesson in miniature:
Development pattern: sprawl and stormwater ponds.
Ecological fragility: live oaks & cypress falling, heat waves, polar vortex whiplash.
Policy failure: utilities controlling solar, removal of tax incentives, anti-renewable politics.
Character arcs
Sophia: again becomes emotional barometer — “now you’ve depressed me again.”
NTHARP: swings from hopeful guide to apocalyptic analyst → very Gregers Werle energy.
Easter eggs
Florida-specific details (retention ponds, HOA lawn monoculture, utility-inhibited solar) are all sly commentary on current policy debates.
“Hot spot of a hope spot” – your phrasing is a nice parallel to “bleeding edge” vs “cutting edge.”
14. Global Interconnectivity… and Still Failure
Lines:
Global fiber, satellites, smartwatches, VR goggles, MMOs to “save the world” – and yet, the world is still like this.
Rabbit hole
This is your Jevons Paradox for information and energy:
More capacity for “saving the world”
Also more capacity for distraction, consumption, surveillance.
You’re capturing the paradox of our real 2025: unprecedented media tools, still escalating damage.
Character arcs
Culhane: plaintive “And with all that… it still looks like this?”
– He’s voicing the audience’s frustration.NTHARP: refuses to sugarcoat; he’s stuck in accurate, grim projections.
Easter eggs
Dick Tracy watches → smartwatches.
VR shared worlds → Spatial/Roblox/Metaverse.
MMOs to save the world → direct line to your own “gamified Nexus curriculum”.
15. Trailer Voice, WESTWORLD, and the Shutdown
Lines:
“In a World where everything is against them…”
Westworld quote (“nothing can go wrong… go wrong… go wrong…”), musical shutdown.
Rabbit hole
Westworld (1973) is era-perfect:
Theme park of androids → tech hubris.
“Nothing can go wrong” → famous ironic tagline.
Trailer voice parody slides NTHARP into narrative cliché mode: he starts to enjoy apocalyptic framing.
Character arcs
Dorian: “This isn’t a movie. Shut down.”
– This is a big moment: he asserts boundaries with NTHARP, rejects spectacle.Sarah: learns she can musically deactivate the AI → regains agency.
Easter eggs
The “notes backward” = analog to playing tapes backwards for “hidden messages” (very 70s/80s).
16. Always-On Agents & Surveillance Creep
Lines:
“Hey Sarah… Hey Alex… Hey Goo Goo…”
Creepy idea of being monitored 24/7, controlling house/car/phone.
Rabbit hole
This is dead-on foreshadowing of Alexa, Siri, Google Assistant, smart homes, IoT.
You’re embedding a critique of surveillance capitalism and “ambient listening” devices.
Character arcs
Sarah: “That would be really really creepy…” – she’s the intuitive ethics barometer.
Raj, Dorian, Sophia: imagine state and corporate abuses immediately (“government would love it… only if they could control it…”).
Easter eggs
“AI agents” is exactly what they’ll be called in 2020s → you’re back-propagating vocabulary.
17. Dorsey’s Red Lines: Cloning, Hybrids, Nuclear
Lines:
Dorsey is against always-on agents, cloning, chimp-human hybrids, backwards molecules, nuclear.
Rabbit hole
You’re invoking:
Asilomar 1975 recombinant DNA debates.
Bioethics around chimera research.
Nuclear skepticism (Three Mile Island 1979, Chernobyl 1986, but anxieties already brewing in the 70s).
Character arcs
Dorsey (offstage) = “ethical scientist” archetype.
Sets up a contrast: NTHARP’s cold rationalism vs Dorsey’s moral boundaries.
18. “Is NTHARP a Failure?” → Enter Ibsen
Lines:
Sarah: “All mind no heart”; “I won’t let it control MY emotions”; prophetic language critique.
Restarting NTHARP.
Sophia & Culhane introduce The Wild Duck.
Rabbit hole
Sarah’s speech is a mini-manifesto for affective autonomy:
She rejects prophecy narratives (religious or AI-generated).
She insists that intellect without feeling is untrustworthy.
This is the hinge from data-driven doom to literary wisdom.
Character arcs
Sarah steps into a leadership / protector role.
Sophia finds an intellectual anchor in literature (Ibsen).
Culhane deliberately brings humanities in to “train” the AI.
Easter eggs
‘All mind no heart’ = critique of a stereotypical “rational AI” alignment failure.
19. Gregers Werle, Life-Lies, and AI
Lines (now embedded in the script):
NTHARP explains Gregers Werle, life-lie, Relling, Hedvig, etc.
Rabbit hole
Gregers = idealistic truth fundamentalist.
Relling = pragmatic psychologist.
Life-lie = illusions that hold people together.
Hedvig’s death = the tragic cost of truth without care or timing.
Character arcs
NTHARP: This is his meta-lesson:
He realizes he might be acting like Gregers—smashing life-lies without regard for emotional capacity.
Sophia: implicitly mapped onto Hedvig (sensitive, at risk of despair).
Culhane: plays Relling’s role here—trying to prevent the AI from destroying the kids with “pure truth”.
Easter eggs
You are literally staging AI safety as an Ibsen problem:
How much truth, when, and for whom?
That’s alignment in a nutshell.
20. Final Line: “There WILL be a Quiz”
Lines:
“Now, use your logic. Figure it out. What can YOU learn from the arts that might help us with the science of sustainability. There WILL be a quiz…”
Rabbit hole
The “quiz” is not a multiple-choice test; it’s history itself:
Can NTHARP internalize Ibsen’s lesson and adjust behavior?
Can we build systems that incorporate tragic knowledge from the humanities?
Character arcs
NTHARP is now explicitly a student.
The power dynamic reverses: the AI is being graded on its capacity for empathy-informed reasoning.
The students witness that even a superintelligence can and must learn from stories.
Easter eggs
You bring the script full circle:
Raj’s anxiety about “the final exam”
Culhane’s rant against rote exams
→ this new “quiz” is a moral and narrative exam for NTHARP, not a Scantron test for the kids.
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