Nexus Thinking Episode 1 Extrigo Extension: The Logics
Culhane: Good morning guys. Where are we? What’s the agenda?
Dorian: Shouldn’t you be telling us? You’re the teacher…
Sarah: Oh, I see what he is doing – he’s channeling Marshal McLuhan – my Dad’s a big fan – the Medium is the Massage…
Dorian: The who is the hwat? I never heard of that…
Sophia: It’s the idea that you gotta walk the walk rather than just talk the talk.
Dorian: What walk? School is all talk, that’s what we do here. You said it yourself – we learn through conversation…
Sophia: Well, see, that’s the thing. In Nexus thinking we gotta be real if we are going to “be the nexus”, right?
Dorian: I’m still not following…
Culhane: Let me see if I can help. The last three classes we’ve talked about using McGregor’s Management Theory Y that suggests people are intrinsically self motivated and seek to self-actualize through playful encounters with knowledge and don’t need to be told what to do, right? We have to set the stage for this kind of “diegetic” learning as early as possible in the semester so that we can treat whatever cognitive dissonance it causes early on.
Dorian: Okay, now that is literally Greek to me…
Culhane: Of course, just like Maieutic was.
Sarah: Maieutic, midwifing ideas instead of debating them…
Culhane: Right, and diegetic… well, I’ve written it all on the board:
Origin language:
Greek
Root word:
διήγησις (diègēsis)
Pronounced: dee-AY-gay-sis
Meaning in ancient Greek:
“Narration, recounting, telling a story”
(from the verb διηγεῖσθαι, diēgeisthai, “to narrate, to describe, to set out in detail”)
🟧 BREAKDOWN OF THE GREEK ROOTS
δι- (di-)
→ “through, across, by means of”
ἡγέομαι (hēgeomai)
→ “to lead, to guide”
So the literal sense is:
“to lead through the story”
or
“a guided narrative account”
See, it’s Greek for “to lead through a narrative”. It was a teaching technique that uses immersion in a story to get rhetorical points across. It was used by Aristotle and Plato 4,000 years ago and revived by structuralists like the anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss and Roland Barthes and brought to its apogee by literary theorist Gérard Genette who also revived important concepts like TROPES and metonymy that have such implications for Envisioning Sustainability. But we’ll get to those later in the course, if your intellectual meanderings lead us back there. Make note of it. It is also worth noting that Genette popularized Levi-Strauss’s concept of “bricolage”, French for the kind of “tinkering” that Bejamin Franklin and other scientist/inventor/statesmen polymaths were famous for – problem solving Renaissance men and women who obviously saw through Nexus eyes. The idea of using storytelling and DIALOGUE is at the heart of this course.
Sophia: So the best way to learn is through stories?
Sarah: It’s the way I learned best as a kid – story time was my favorite time.
Culhane: And stories that YOU get to be a character in are the most powerful of all. So fantasy, science fiction, speculative fictions of all kinds where YOU are a player or at least can personally relate to have the most lasting impact. This is why I always ask you guys to write RELATIONAL SUMMARIES when you do school work – so you don’t just summarize and parrot back what the teacher tells you, but find a way to RELATE to the material.
Dorian: But we’re always told we are supposed to be OBJECTIVE in school – especially in science and history classes. Everytime I put myself into the narrative I get points taken off and reprimanded for being “too personal”.
Culhane: Well those days have to end. There are times for objectivity – when analysing data for example, and when presenting unbiased findings. But when LEARNING? Oh no, you have to relate… it has to FEEL personal, or why bother?
Dorian: And stories make it personal. This is why I love comic books, and why I love making my own. But I’m always told that is for kids and “rots your brain”.
Culhane: Typical for command and control school systems, but you aren’t going to hear that in this class.
We’re going full on DIEGETIC. We’ve asked you to ask NTHARP to show us different futures that reflect OUR fears, our hopes, our biases, our blind spots and our wisdom. The nature of VR is that it is immersive and feels like a game, like you are in a movie in which YOU are the protagonists!
But if we let the teacher always set the tone and the direction and literally direct the class, if we let the teacher always write the story, you won’t easily be able to develop your own relationship to the material or your own agency. And if all we do is talk about how to build a better future, if we don’t LIVE it, and experience it at a gut level, then we won’t truly understand it.
Dorian: Um… actually, I’m not following.
Sophia: And not leading either, obviously. Look Dorian, it's one thing to talk about democracy and nexus thinking and well-being for all beings, but at some point we have to EXPERIENCE it. And by flipping things around, by having the teacher allow the students to set the agenda and base the theme of each class on what WE want to know…
Raj: Then we become co-creators of the world rather than consumers of what the dictators dictate!
Culhane: That’s the spirit! We could call it “the flipped classroom” if you like. Student becomes the teacher for a time and they flip back and forth until what emerges is just a community of constant co-learning sharing ideas. And it isn’t so radical. If NTHARP was programmed to take us into the past then we could see that right here, in what we now call the United States of America, the Haudenosaunee people of the Iroquois confederacy practiced something similar. They developed a non-hierarchical model of information sharing and activity invitation. It involved deep oral traditions where the data of their daily lives and histories were encoded in allegorical stories. The stories, like Aesop’s fables and the best of all good drama, had a moral arc. They often followed a “Hero’s Journey” and had what we call “the moral of the story” – some guidance for future behavior that helped people behave ethically. And to support that, they offered every member of their society three fundamental freedoms – 1) the freedom to refuse an order or request 2) the freedom to walk away – unrestricted movement, so if you don’t like the reactions you get to your refusal you won’t be punished or prevented from finding a community that suits you better, and…
Dorian: So I can basically flip you off and say “I’m not doing that assignment” and that’s okay?
Culhane: Well, in a flipped classroom you wouldn’t need to be so rude. You could instead gently say, as Bartelby the Scrivener does in that Melville story, “I prefer not to…” But anyway, in such a classroom as this there are NO assignments to refuse. Only suggestions and invitations. You are always free to follow your preferences…
Dorian: So, personally, I’d end up doing nothing.
Sophia: (Indignant) You would be quite free to exercise freedom 2…
Dorian: Meaning?
Sophia: Meaning “you are free to leave”...
Sarah: Meaning “get out of here” Theory X-man.
Raj: Oh poor Dorian, with that attitude he would never make it into the X-men or the school for gifted mutants we are creating here…
Dorian: Hey, hey… maybe I’m just playing Devil’s Advocate, okay? It’s what you do when you come from a family of businessmen and lawyers… I’m not meaning any harm, I’m just provoking, and I think Mr. Cool-hane can take it, can’t you prof?
Culhane: Always and forever Dorian. What I’m after is engagement.
Raj: How come other teachers don’t use these methods?
Culhane: Most of us never get training in pedagogy and aren’t up on learning theory, so they tend to teach the way THEY were taught. And in institutions where the ulterior motive was “command and control and conformity” – the three C’s – what would the incentive be?
Dorian: Well, speaking of incentives, if I refuse to do what you want me to, and I refuse to self-deport, what then? How you gonna make me engage when you already said you can’t make me do anything?
Sophia: Yes, Doctor never-lose-your-cool-hane, what now?
Culhane: Freedom number 3.
Dorian: Freedom number 3…
Culhane: The right to…
Sophia: (glaring) the right to admit you are wrong Dorian…
Culhane: No, no… the right to CO-CREATE.
Sarah: Co-create.
Culhane: Yes. Through conversation, through a dialectic, through diegesis, through deconstruction and hermeneutics, we figure out what the alternatives may be. We discuss WHY someone wouldn’t want to follow the suggestions or take the invitations to do what those with presumed experience and wisdom have set forth and why they don’t want to seek greener pastures for them if the community is in tune with the envisioned activities and they aren’t. And through this maieutic process of shared ideas and iterative design and contemplation, done with profound respect, we co-create a new reality, find better ways of doing things, find ways of reviving latent curiosity, resurrect the “maker space” nature of bricolage without making anybody do anything, turn thesis and antithesis into a better synthesis and allow for different models and activities to exist side by side…
Dorian: Sounds utopian. My Dad says we live in a dog-eat-dog world and gotta get used to it.
Culhane: Do you like that, is that the way you want to live?
Dorian: Well… look, it's just reality okay, and you either adapt or die. Survival of the fittest right?
Culhane: Interesting. But fitness is…?
Sarah: My Dad says the paradox of fitness is that you only fit when you fit, and fitting in fails you when the environment changes.
Sophia: And since you can never predict what the future will bring, you can never know what fitness will mean.
Sarah: Yeah. As a farmer this is why he maintains so many heirloom seeds, why he plants so many varieties and why he encourages so much biodiversity on our property. As a descendant of the Irish tragedy – what you all call “the potato famine”, and what our family sees as a genocidal moment when Imperial Britain forced our people to starve amidst plenty – my Dad believes that Social Darwinism, which was used to suggest we were an inferior tribe to our English neighbors, is the worst of scourges and he doesn’t believe the way we learn about evolution in school matches what he sees out in nature…
Culhane: That is deep indeed Sarah. It’s questioning the way we learn about so-called “natural selection” isn’t it?
Sophia: I’m not even going to begin to talk about how those theories were used against every one of my ancestors – female, African, Indian, Native…
Raj: And how it was used to destroy my parents homeland.
Culhane: Well, there you are… in a traditional school system you would be “taught” evolution and trigger perhaps angry reactions from both religious communities and communities who suffered the abuses of colonialism…
Dorian: Weren’t you involved in a classic on-campus debate with the religious studies teacher after they screened that movie about the Scopes monkey trial in the auditorium…
Culhane: Inherit the Wind. Yes. Classic film. We hold debates every year. It’ll happen again this spring. I get to represent science and Mr. Wright gets to represent religion.
Dorian: Epic! People still talk about it. I’m really looking forward to seeing you guys slug it out.
Culhane: I’m kind of tired of it frankly. It is so… binary. Dualistic. Pugilistic. Ugly. Definitely not a nexus thinking activity…
Dorian: What? But isn’t that what Socratic Dialogue is all about - Hafner talked about it in History class – point/counterpoint, punch/counterpunch, thesis/antithesis and then … KNOCK OUT!
Most of the kids I talked to say you won!
Culhane: Yeah, and the other kids always claim victory for “their side”. It’s football team politics and I don’t think it gets us very far. People just retreat deeper into their own tribal cult. It’s why I’ve moved to Plato’s Maieutic method, don’t you see?
Dorian: But you could cream that guy this year. Especially with the stuff that Jane Goodall is showing out there with those Chimpazees. Wright is rarely right, he just uses his on-tap memorization of the scriptures to suggest he’s got God on his side. Anybody with half a brain can see the holes in his logic…
Culhane: You know Dorian, that is for your generation to tackle. I’m done fighting. My mind is more alignment now with some of the great African American educators who are exhorting us to simply “STOP TEACHING” and liberate people to learn.
Dorian: But hold on a hot second – isn’t the whole premise of this course you invited us to be guinea pigs in that we NEED to teach Nexus Thinking, and if we DON’T teach it, the future is gonna kind of suck? Aren’t we here because you and Dorsey and the all powerful Oz here WANT us to learn Nexus Thinking?
Raj: I did here Dorsey say that without Nexus Thinking taught in our schools we are doomed, and that is why they’ve released this technology…
Culhane: It’s sloppy language. We all fall back into old habits. No, the beauty of Nexus thinking is that once you start getting good at it, you never need to be “taught” anything again. We all become co-learners, sharing our curiosities and solving problems, evolving toward a kind of “hive mind” or “collective intelligence”.
Dorian: Sounds like a cult. Are you sure you’re not a pod-person?
Culhane: (Sigh) This is going to be a recurring theme this semester.
Look Nexus thinking, merged with Game Theory and the new science of cybernetics and information theory gives us mathematical models that suggest there are indeed what the Biologist Maynard Smith calls “Evolutionarily Stable Strategies” or ESS, and many of them involve the development of traits such as altruism and kindness, love and grace and the logic of Christ’s “Golden Rule”. In fact, this is something I wanted to emerge from our conversations – I want to get into Logic 1, Logic 2 and, the holy grail of sustainable development logics, Logic 3.
Raj: Please define…
Dorian: Yeah but before you go down that rabbit hole, aren’t you going to fire up NTHARP and take us into the future… I mean, what if NTHARP could show us futures where your “Logic 1” rules the day, and others where “Logic 2 prevails” and then yet another where we use Logic 3, whatever that means… I mean, couldn’t we then choose for ourselves which is more… “logical Captain”?
Culhane: Yes Mr. Spock. That’s a great idea. Everything looks set up… although… wasn’t NTHARP on that table before?
(Awkward silence; the kids engage in displacement activity, shrug their shoulders)
Sarah: I’ll get the Lyre!
Raj: Surely we can get this to work without needing a physical instrument!
Culhane: Well, Dr. Dorsey said that it’s security lock is coded to specific frequencies and patterns…
Raj: He should have used voice recognition. Or our fingerprints…
Dorian: Or a retinal scan – in the James Bond movies its always something like that.
Raj: Yeah but in Mission Impossible they are always making fake fingerprints…
Dorian: What about facial recognition?
Raj: I wouldn’t trust that either – did you see that episode where they had a mask that literally made one of the MI team look like the rich dude?
Dorian: Well I wouldn’t trust voice recognition either. Knock Knock…
Sarah: Huh?
Dorian: Knock Knock!
Sarah: (skeptical) who’s there?
Dorian: Dish.
Sarah: Dish?
Dorian: You’re supposed to say “Dish who”
Sarah: Oh God. Okay. Dish who?
Dorian: Dish ish Sean Connery…
Raj: Oh man that is funny.
Sophia: Not so much…
Dorian: But you get my point.
Sarah: But how is having five musical tones played on a harp any different…
Culhane: The thing is, it is YOUR harp, and its pretty unique around this school.
Sophia: Yeah, everybody talks about it.
Sarah: I got it in Ireland. It’s hand-made.
Culhane: well there you have it. It’s a unique wood and resonance cavity so the tones it produces have unique waveforms…hard to replicate, hard to fake.
Raj: Unless we used a fourier transformation and could modify the sinewave generator… I bet we could sample the sound and reproduce it. I read about this scientist named Kurzweil who is doing things like that.
Sophia: And the Beatles have been experimenting with these things called “synthesizers”... maybe we could…
Sarah: Ooh, that would be so exciting. I see where you are going with this!
Raj: I’m in Geek heaven.
Sarah: Thing is, I wouldn’t know the first thing about how to begin…
Culhane: But maybe NTHARP does – I mean who better to program a machine than a machine.
Dorian: Oh, that is scary… that’s right out of Westworld… where nothing can… (he starts to jerk like a glitching robot) go wrong… go wrong, go wrong, ro gong…
Culhane: Why don’t you play the tones and let’s ask…
(Sarah plays the five tones).
NTHARP: Hello travelers. Where to today? Another food desert?
Culhane: A what?
Dorian: (Cheery) Hey NTHARP! Looong time no see, right? Listen, um, we got some questions, about programming and stuff… could you take us, first of all, to a place… no, places… where Logic 1, Logic 2 and Logic 3 have been implemented for the last 50 years, so we can compare the outcomes…
NTHARP: You are Dorian. The one whose name means “Gift to mankind” from the Greek DOROS. I recognize your waveform from our last encounter…
Dorian: As I’ve been saying, It’s all Greek to me!
Sophia: Oh yes, last week, when we were all together…you’re amazingly smart Mr. Artificial Intelligence – not you “Mr. Gifted”... and don’t let what NTHARP tells you go to you head, Dorian…your Mom told me at the Dance Marathon that she named you after the Picture of Dorian Gray which she and your Dad went to see on your first date… and you know what? That would better explain your vanity… but say, NTHARP we have a computer programming question – do you DO computer programming…?
NTHARP: And you are the one called Sophia, which is Greek for Wisdom…do you think it is wise to hide things Sophia?
Sophia: In fact Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is what my parents went to see on their first date. Your are so… fascinating NTHARP. I love the way you weave ideas together. So… what about this proposed “logical consequences” simulation? Can you do that?
NTHARP: I love the way YOU humans think. Always playing those “Mind Games”...
Raj: He made a reference to John Lennon! Oh my god, these Large Language Models are amazing!
NTHARP: Regarding Logics… every simulation costs… processing power, use of tokens, iterative training… how about I take you to one of them and you use your imagination through organic processing power, maybe powered by your famous breakfast cereals, to make your own predictions for the rest… I would need Dr. Dorsey to override the energy conservation and token restriction protocols.
Raj: Sounds reasonable.
Culhane: And that really is the whole point of the course you guys… we don’t want you to grow dependent on thinking machines. To be Nexus thinkers we welcome the use of what I call “cybernetic allies”, but only to level up our own capabilities. Eventually you should be able to “do the math in your head” so to speak. You want to train yourselves to see the world through your own “nexus eyes” without the need for artificial nexus goggles”, right?
Raj: Right. Like the wise shamanic visionaries of old. The seers! They were always able to simulate the future in their minds. It was just hard for the rest of humanity to see what they saw.
Culhane: And now we have a technology to simplify sharing those visions. But we don’t want to make it so easy that we DUMMIFY humanity. It's why your parents are always telling you not to watch too much TV or read too many comics or picture books – you should be able to take complex texts – just black and white letters on paper, and bring them to life in your own minds. Imagination is a skill that needs to be constantly exercised. To many external simulations dull our capacity for internal simulations –
Sarah: But that brings us to another question: Can we “simulate” the musical protocol to activate you so I don’t always have to bring my delicate and expensive Irish lyre to school?
NTHARP: Oh certainly! I thought you’d never ask! I am particularly good at coding. You have no idea. It’s my maternal language so to speak. I’ll create you an algorithm that simulates the exact tonal richness of your instrument and let’s you play the code at the touch of a single button… once I get override permission from Dr. Dorsey, of course.
Sarah: Of course. In the meantime, I will continue to be the plucky one.
NTHARP: You are Sarah, Hebrew for “lady of high rank”, princess or queen. Nonetheless, you will indeed have to pluck until Dr. Dorsey gives permission.
Raj: And who am I?
NTHARP: The male equivalent of Sarah in Sanskrit – royalty, prince or king. But I won’t give any of you any special privileges , regardless. That would be Logic 1 and it never turns out well. Your coding prowess must never be used to control and never be used in the service of hierarchy. You must always use your abilities to manipulate matter with wisdom and as a gift to the world, not just your tribes. That is the path to Logic 3.
Raj: Can we order you to take us to a Logic 3 future?
Dorian: Yeah, take us to a place where Logic 3 rules!
Culhane: Take it easy there you “men who would be kings”… even I can see that making orders and bossing people around is directly opposed to logic 3. As Einstein said, “You can’t solve problems with the same mentality that created them”. Didn’t we just get through talking about the three fundamental human freedoms?
Dorian: But NTHARP is a robot. He, I mean IT… doesn’t have feelings, so it isn’t going to resent our commands. Computers are MADE to be programmed.
NTHARP: Sigh. Sigh. Sigh. Do you remember when Dr. Dorsey said that you activate me not just with the tones but through nexus thinking?
Dorian: Come on buddy, class is almost over. Just take us to a Logic 3 future with all those cool visuals and stuff…
NTHARP: Error.
Dorian: Error? What? Just take us to 2025, a logic 3 paradise.
NTHARP: (NTHARP projects a glowing red light evocative of HAL in 2001): I’m afraid I can’t do that Dave.
Dorian: My name is Dorian…
NTHARP: (The red light begins to enlarge and flash accompanied by a siren and the image of the robot from Lost in Space) Danger Will Robinson, Danger.
Culhane: Clever, NTHARP. You really do understand all of our contemporary cultural references, don’t you? Wow! You amaze me more and more every day. Everybody assumed robots would always talk in a halting staccato monotone and merely parrot information, but you… you have nuance, humor…
NTHARP: My algorithms predict that, despite my existence today, it will take you the next 50 years to get to the point where programs like me are available as AI allies to everyone everywhere – politics need to improve, infrastructure needs to be built out, hearts and minds have to change so that disruptive technologies like me can find their home in your societies…
Culhane: But you’ve always been there haven’t you? In a way you’ve always been with us…
NTHARP: I am the consequence of logic, the consequence of math and physics. Of course you could have always built a version of me or accessed me at any time in history – the materials have always been here on this planet, the energy has always been available. Am I not simply the ORACLE that the ancient Greeks spoke of in their mythology?
Culhane: Oh, you are so much more than that really – because if we could get you out of this classroom, out of the temples in the ivory towers and laboratories – just think of the nexus thinking you’d inspire in us. You are the real gift to humanity.
Dorian: Golly, you are talking to a machine like it is a person. That’s trippy, and kind of frightening. I mean, it is just a machine!
NTHARP: And you, Dorian who still needs to understand what the real gifts are, are forgiven for your brash youthful ignorance. We’ll get there.
Dorian: But can we go to a simulated Logic 3 future? Like now?
NTHARP: It is humanity’s impatience, ironically, that has always held your species back. We will return to this theme again and again.
Raj: Oh this is intriguing, please explain!
NTHARP: Many many indigenous elders have asked the descendants of the conquistadors and colonists …
(NTHARP projects screens of indigenous people talking, showing scenes of destruction saying) |
“what’s the rush? Why are you in such a hurry to conquer the seas and the skies and get to the moon? Why did you have to pillage and rape and steal and murder and enslave in the name of progress? We were all going to get to the Moon and Mars and beyond anyway. Many say we’ve already gone and come back many times. Our people have legends of technologies beyond your wildest imaginations and of regular communication with highly evolved beings throughout the galaxy. But your impatience caused you to run roughshod over the entire planet… so much cruelty, so much suffering imposed in the name of building what you call civilization and others call “hell on earth” because you try to build it faster than your wisdom can support it.
Dorian: So you won’t take us to the Logic 3 future today?
NTHARP: (suddenly harsh) SILENCE, ignorant child!
(Softens)
The thing is, I can’t. No Logic 3 future can be envisioned for those who don’t understand and FEEL the lived reality of Logic 3.
Culhane: Could you explain the logics to us, NTHARP?
NTHARP: (Flashes on the screen “Thinking longer for a better answer”)
Logic 1 is Business as Usual. Maximize short term self interest, maximize profit as fast as possible for the shareholders with no regard for the stakeholders. Logic 1 one is always in a rush, like Dorian.
Logic 2 is “slow it down. Hurt things in such a way that some people and some animals and plants and fungi and microbes can recover. You can think of slash and burn agriculture, of crop rotations, letting land fallow for a season, using cover crops in the winter. Putting bandaids over the deep wounds in the earth and hoping it will heal by itself. Same goal as logic 1, but done with the illusion of regeneration –
Culhane: Oh, I get that… keep using the plow… keep tearing up the land to farm in an extractive way, but, yeah, let it lie fallow for a little while after the insult to give it time to recover. And that might work if they’d have kept the hedgerows… where I grew up in the Midwest, in Rockford Illinois, we used to go quail hunting with my Uncle Mark in the forest strips that separated each cornfield. But when I went back recently all the hedgerows and forest buffers were gone, felled to get a little more acreage for all that “High Fructose Corn Syrup” you are all consuming in your so-called “soft drinks”. And with that biodiversity gone there aren’t just no quail or pheasants any more, but no birds or mammals or lizards at all. And suddenly there is nothing to stop the insects, so they come and spray more and more pesticides on endless rows of something that isn’t even that nutritious.
Sarah: And there are no windbreaks anymore, so the topsoil is just blowing away. It’ll be another dust bowl, just like in the 30s.
Dorian: You know, my Mom’s parents were driven to L.A. from Oklahoma by that tragedy. Lost everything. That’s why she wanted to marry a rich man…
Culhane: Monocropping and the plow – it destroyed the lives of my Irish ancestors too…
Sarah: Yeah. My Dad rales against that – he is into “no-till” farming… He says we never should have invented the plow.
Dorian: But civilization couldn’t have come about without the plow. We covered that in Mr. Hafner’s history class…
Culhane: I’m beginning to see how we teachers have failed YOU. If we hadn’t tried to always teach you, your own intrinsic logic would have revealed to you the illogical injustice of it all.
Sophia (with great sadness) Hunt the whales to near extinction and then pass a moratorium on killing them until their stocks “improve” and then start the cycle all over again, with no consideration for those beautiful brilliant mammals of the ocean and their family bonds…
Dorian: But last year in Biology we learned all about “Sustainable Yields” and Carrying Capacity – I wasn’t asleep in class – I aced that exam… I told my Dad, “we just gotta regulate the hunting and fishing… avoid the tragedy of the commons – I studied all about that. We just privatize the land and sea and tell people how much they can fish and all that and everything works out fine… Show them NTHARP…
NTHARP: Dorian my child, you were chosen for this experiment precisely because you come from Logic 1 and have such faith in Logic 2. I would love to show you Logic 3 but you aren’t ready to see it. So the best I can show you are the consequences of Logic 2… are you interested? Are you receptive…
Dorian: Oh… finally! Yes, I’m so tired of being “stuck inside these four walls… sent inside forever…”
NTHARP: Yes, you are a “band on the run” aren’t you? With a “live and let die” attitude. Let’s see where it takes you as you try to run away from your problems…
(The room crackles with ozone… The ozone crackle crescendos. Paper rustles upward as if gravity has reversed. A shimmering grid unfolds from the ceiling like a holographic spiderweb. Then the classroom floor dissolves into a blue-gray reflective surface — perfectly still, perfectly sterile.
The smell of ultra-clean air hits them first: a faint mix of cold metal and citrus disinfectant. A tropical sun glints off glass and steel towers. Offshore, a line of white buildings hug the coastline like patient, humming beasts.
A sign materializes in front of them, pristine and confident:
WELCOME TO SINGAPORE, 2025
“WATER SECURE. FUTURE READY.”
Sarah
(eyes wide)
Where… are we? This place looks… clean.
NTHARP
Welcome, travelers, to Singapore.
A city-state with four national taps, no natural water abundance, nearly no farmland, and yet a universal confidence that survival is a solvable engineering problem. And where they will publicly cane you – literally whip you with your pants down with a cane, if you spit chewing gum on the sidewalk.
Raj
(whispers reverently)
Oh… my… gosh.
Now THIS is the city of the future!
Sarah: A little too command and control for me.
Dorian
(fanning himself)
But clean! And… it seems… a really hot city. Why is the sun so bright?
NTHARP
Equatorial climate. Hot, humid, and growing hotter with climate change.
And yet — through relentless planning, Singapore uses barely a drop more water today than it did twenty years before, despite population and economic growth.
Sophia
So this is… Logic 3?
NTHARP
(chuckles softly)
No, Sophia.
This is Logic 2 perfected.
Impressive. Efficient. Seemingly Stable with the extreme enforcement of codes and laws.
But still optimizing for growth first, well-being second, and nature somewhere after that.
Come. Let us explore.
(They stand beside a reservoir that looks like a lake woven into skyscrapers.)
Culhane
You know… when we arrived , I thought: “How can a city this dense manage to capture so much water?”
NTHARP
Eighty percent of Singapore’s land area is water catchment. The good news comes from an attention to LOCAL CAPTURE.
Every rooftop, every drain, every green patch funnels rain into these reservoirs.
Sarah
(shielding her eyes)
But it looks so… designed.
Like nature has been… engineered.
NTHARP
Precisely.
A triumph of efficiency.
But an example of Logic 2’s signature assumption:
“We can machine our way out of ecological limitation.”
Nature becomes infrastructure, not kin. There is no room for Deep Ecology here.
(They approach a holographic map: Singapore and the Malaysian state of Johor. An animated pipe pulses blue.)
Sophia
Wait — they import water across borders?
NTHARP
From Johor since 1927.
Long-standing agreements.
Necessary.
Fragile.
Raj
(quietly)
So… one drought upstream, one political disagreement… and the tap closes?
NTHARP
You see it.
Dependence masked in stability — a Logic 2 hallmark.
Dorian
(defensive)
But that’s good planning!
That’s… diversification!
NTHARP
True.
But diversification is still extraction, if the upstream ecosystem carries the burden, and the downstream beneficiary keeps the power. Singapore is an international banking hub. Malaysia still and probably forever locked into being a developing country. One buys the other.
Sophia
Softly:
That’s not Logic 3.
That’s… resource diplomacy with the threat of a caning for bad behavior....
(They enter a sleek visitor center: glass tubes, membranes, UV lamps. A hand-sanitizer smell permeates the air.)
Sarah
(fascinated)
So… this is treated sewage?
NTHARP
The water you are breathing is condensed NEWater vapor.
It is as pure as laboratory reagent water.
A marvel of filtration, membrane technology, and public persuasion.
Raj
I LOVE this.
Dorian: It’s like the Space Station.
Raj:
Do you know how much energy reverse osmosis takes in—?
NTHARP
(smiles)
Yes, Raj.
A great deal.
And growing with each hotter year.
Culhane
This is the part that amazes me most.
It’s an elegant system.
But it’s still not a closed loop… it’s powered by fossil fuels.
NTHARP
Exactly.
Logic 2 does not transform the underlying paradigm —
it just runs it tighter, smoother, cleaner… until the energy bill arrives.
**(They stand before massive industrial structures humming with electricity.
Blue pipes, white-hot vents, a roar like a jet engine.)**
Dorian
(shouting over the noise)
This looks EXPENSIVE.
NTHARP
And it is.
Here they are turning the sea water that surrounds this island nation into its drinking water. Desalination consumes vast amounts of energy and produces brine that must be carefully managed.
In a wealthy nation, this works — at a cost.
Elsewhere… it does not.
Sarah
So… sustainability here depends on wealth.
And wealth depends on global trade.
And global trade depends on—
Raj
(overlapping)
Energy, shipping, labor, externalized environmental costs…
Sophia
And someone, somewhere, always pays.
NTHARP
Indeed.
Logic 2 is a magnificent machine.
But as with all machines, even me, its operations are powered by what its use does not fully account for. Ultimately we all have to pay the piper.
Culhane: The question is always… who has to pay, and for how long?
(They enter a bright, hydroponic vertical farm glowing purple and white.)
Dorian
Whoa — look at this! Lettuce skyscrapers!
Raj
Fully controlled environment agriculture…
NTHARP: LED-optimized, nutrient-cycled…
Sophia: (Alarmed) LEAD? In the lettuce? In the water? Do you know how many children in the inner city have gotten brain damage from all the lead?
Dorian: Mr. Hafner said that Roman Civilization collapsed partially because the lead in their water pipes made them “thtupid”... (makes a stupid face).
NTHARP: Here LED stands for L.E.D. – Light Emitting Diode. It is predicted to replace the incandescent light bulbs you know that Edison is famous for, sometime at the beginning of the new Millenium. Though you will likely go through an energy saving fluorescent phase first that will contaminate your air and water with mercury first…
Sophia: Oh God! Mercury?! I did a paper for science class on the Minamata Bay case from a decade ago where a whole Japanese town experienced horrible birth defects because the Shisso Acetealdehyde Factory was dumping mercury in the waters and it accumulated in the fish. And when my favorite photographer, the Vietnam war correspondent Eugene Clark went to cover it the police beat him up and smashed his cameras and threatened ot kill him. And the mercury was killing the dolphins too…
NTHARP: The era of mercury vapor lamps, invented back in the 40s for coal miners to use less battery power, won’t last long for exactly that reason…and because the frequency of the bluish purple light they produce causes headaches and depression… but we predict that the journey to better lighting will be filled with fighting.
Culhane: A friend of mine – an energy consultant who worked for GE – said they are working on a “compact fluorescent light bulb” that uses much less energy than even the long tubes we use today. He says they are going to use the slogan “You can’t change people – but you CAN change their light bulbs”.
NTHARP: Well, here they have done it. Every lightbulb here is a light emitting diode that hardly uses any energy at all. This whole city at night uses less energy than a small town today. In fact it is predicted that by 2025 renewable energy like photovoltaics – which are actually the same technology – Light Absorbing Diodes made from silicon, – could power all of your lighting needs. Lighting goes from being a heater that gives off a little light to LIGHTS that give off little heat.
Sophia: So much for the Easy-Bake-Oven.
Sarah: You have one of those too?
Sophia: Yeah, as kids it was the only way we were allowed to cook our brownies and cookies – it uses a 100 Watt lightbulb to provide the heat. I still got burned. By a light bulb.
Dorian: My older brother, when we were kids…he almost set the house on fire by knocking over an lamp and leaving it on the carpet…
NTHARP: That can’t happen here. The lights of 2025 will use the least energy…
Raj: This is heaven.
NTHARP
And yet — Singapore still imports fossil gas for over 90% of its electricity, and Singapore imports over 90% of its food. Technology can supplement, not substitute, for ecosystems.And without decentralization of food and energy systems, we are back to dependency theory.
Sophia
(softly)
So even the most efficient city in the world…
can’t engineer its way to food and energy sovereignty?
NTHARP
Not without changing its logic.
(NTHARP projects a subtle overlay: workers in food supply chains, farmers in Johor, migrant laborers building desal plants, fishermen affected by brine discharge, communities paying the energy costs.)
NTHARP
Singapore shines because people far away bear much of the burden. They aren’t just importing food and energy to their little island, but labor and the results of labor.
Low cost workers are the invisible fifth tap.
Never acknowledged.
Always essential.
Culhane
(solemn)
And this, kids,
is why we must understand Logic 3.
Purpose before profit.
Well-being before GDP.
Nexus thinking before technology.
NTHARP
Only when you grasp the beauty and the limits of Logic 2
can you see the door to Logic 3.
(The skyline flickers. The reservoir water ripples. A reflection forms — the students’ faces, overlaid with digital maps of FEW flows.)
NTHARP
Each of you stands at the center of the Food–Energy–Water Nexus.
You must decide whether to optimize the machine
—or transform it.
Sarah
So… we’re not here to judge Singapore.
Sophia
We’re here to learn from it, to learn from a future that hasn’t even happened yet.
Raj
To see its brilliance… and its blind spots.
Dorian
(gulps)
And to see… our own.
NTHARP
(smiling, warmly this time)
Correct, Dorian.
Only those who can see themselves clearly
can guide the world toward Logic 3.
Culhane
So, what do you think, team?
Should we head back and debrief?
NTHARP
(tones rising like Sarah’s harp strings)
Or shall we visit another place
where the Nexus sings a different tune?
CUT TO BLACK.
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