San Antonio Palopó, Guatemala. November 2024. 5:47 AM.
The lake is black glass. The volcanoes are shadows against a sky beginning to pale. I’m sitting on a stone wall built in 1640, watching Don Miguel move through his milpa in the pre-dawn dark.
He plants the way his grandfather planted. Corn, beans, squash. The same rotation for 400 years.
Thirty minutes away as the crow flies, in the city, algorithms are rewriting reality at millisecond speed.
The distance between these two systems is the subject of everything I write here.
What This Is
This Substack operates on two tracks that prove each other’s thesis:
Track One: The Mechanisms
A 10-essay diagnostic sequence examining how civilizations collapse through recurring patterns—Fear Loops, Purity Spirals, Unity Myths, Optimization Traps. These mechanisms destroyed the Tokugawa Shogunate, the Soviet Union, the Roman Empire. They’re running now at algorithmic speed.
Not history lessons. Diagnostic machinery.
Each essay follows the same architecture:
A historical moment (concrete, cinematic, dated)
The mechanism revealed (how it works, why it persists)
The modern parallel (AI platforms, corporate systems, digital infrastructure)
The endpoint (what happens when the mechanism runs to completion)
Track Two: The Witness Position
For 30 years I’ve lived in a Guatemalan highland village where traditional systems persist alongside digital acceleration. I’ve watched what survives when empires collapse. I’ve watched what fails when systems optimize beyond human capacity.
These posts document what you see when you occupy the threshold between persistence and collapse. Gardens that outlast governments. Water systems that predate Spanish conquest. Knowledge that moves through practice rather than text.
The witness position isn’t tourism. It’s knowledge earned the long way—by living inside a system long enough to see what persists.
Track Three: The Novel
OR, OPTIMISM™ is a companion novel that dramatizes the same mechanisms through contemporary corporate and algorithmic systems. Where the essays diagnose clinically, the novel shows the machinery running through human lives.
Excerpts and artifacts from the novel world appear here periodically—HR flowcharts, corporate communications, leaked documents. The novel dramatizes what the nonfiction explains. The nonfiction gives language to what the novel shows.
Why Two Books?
Because collapse operates on two registers simultaneously:
The systemic level: abstract mechanisms, historical patterns, structural inevitabilities.
The human level: what it feels like when the system runs through your body, your job, your relationships.
Out here, that looks like water that sometimes runs and sometimes doesn’t. Buses that arrive when they can. Gardens that keep producing anyway.
The essays give you the diagnostic framework. The novel gives you the experience. The Guatemala material gives you the proof that alternatives exist.
Together they form a complete picture of how systems break and what persists when they do.
How to Navigate
If you’re new, start here:
Mechanisms That Break Civilizations - Series introduction
The Fear Loop - Essay #1 (FREE)
The Purity Spiral - Essay #2 (FREE)
If you want the complete diagnostic system, subscribe. Essays 3-10 are paid-only. You’re getting the conceptual machinery that took 30 years to map.
If you want the witness position, subscribe. The Guatemala material—what survives when systems fail, what gardens know that empires don’t—is paid-only.
If you want to watch the mechanisms dramatized in real time, subscribe. Novel excerpts and artifacts are paid-only.
What You’re Actually Subscribing To
Not more content. Not more takes. Not more noise.
You’re subscribing to diagnostic clarity about the machinery running beneath contemporary life.
You’re getting the mechanisms that broke Japan, Rome, and the Soviet Union—now operating at algorithmic speed through AI, platforms, and corporate systems.
This isn’t optimism. This isn’t pessimism.
This is diagnosis.
The Publishing Plan
Both books are moving toward commercial publication. The nonfiction manuscript Systems of the World: Mechanisms That Break Civilizations is 85% complete. The novel is in development.
This Substack serves three purposes:
Proof of concept - showing agents and publishers there’s commercial demand for this intellectual project
Platform building - demonstrating I can reach readers directly
Revenue generation - supporting the 3-6 months of focused work needed to complete both manuscripts
When the books publish (target: 2026), subscribers here will have watched the entire intellectual architecture get built in real time.
You’ll have seen the scaffolding before anyone else saw the building.
The Posting Rhythm
Expect one substantial post per week:
Mechanism essays (alternating weeks)
Guatemala witness material (alternating weeks)
Novel excerpts/artifacts (monthly)
Meta-commentary on the writing process (occasional)
Every piece exists because it matters.
What This Costs
Free tier: Essays 1-2, series introduction, occasional open posts
Paid tier: $7/month or $70/year
Essays 3-10 (complete diagnostic sequence)
All Guatemala witness material
All novel excerpts and artifacts
All meta-commentary on the writing/publishing process
The paid tier isn’t a tip jar. You’re getting the complete intellectual machinery that took three decades to develop. You’re getting material that will form the core of two commercially published books. You’re getting it before agents, before publishers, before the general reading public.
Early access to diagnostic frameworks that explain how algorithmic systems are replicating historical collapse patterns at computational speed.
Why I’m Writing This
Because the mechanisms are running.
Fear Loops operating through AI panic and content moderation. Purity Spirals automated through platform algorithms. Unity Myths manufactured through engagement optimization. Optimization Traps coded into corporate KPIs.
The same patterns that destroyed the Tokugawa Shogunate are now running at the speed of computation.
And nobody is naming them.
This Substack names them.
It gives you the diagnostic framework to recognize collapse machinery before it completes its cycle.
Seeing clearly is the first form of protection.
It shows you what persists when systems fail.
It demonstrates that alternatives exist—not utopian fantasies, but functional systems that match extraction to regeneration rates.
The Commitment
I post every week. One substantial piece. No filler.
You read when it serves you. No obligation. No guilt.
The archive is organized. The navigation is clear. The paywall is honest.
I don’t do “engagement.” I don’t do “community building.” I don’t do “thought leadership.”
I do diagnostic clarity about civilizational collapse mechanisms.
If that’s what you need, subscribe.
If not, the free essays will give you enough to recognize the patterns when you encounter them.
The question isn’t whether these mechanisms are running.
They are.
The question is whether you can see them before they complete their cycle.
If this work helps you see the machinery more clearly, subscribe. If not, start with Essay #1: The Fear Loop — it will give you enough to recognize the patterns when you meet them.
U. Ortego writes from San Antonio Palopó, Guatemala, where he has lived for 30 years observing the collision between traditional and algorithmic systems. This Substack documents the mechanisms that break civilizations and the alternatives that persist when they do.
Asombrosa
nice writeup