Extinction by Inequality: Goliath’s 5,000 Year Curse
Time to benefit from our full scope History for understanding our imminent Societal Collapse
Writings and excerpts from Damian Carrington’s interview with Luke Kemp, author of Goliath's Curse: The History of Future and Societal Collapse 2025, and a research associate at the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, University of Cambridge.
Goliath’s Curse is Luke Kemp’s epic analysis of 5,000 years of civilization in which he argues that our global collapse is coming:
inequality, specifically, is what makes our ‘self-termination most likely.’
our leaders have propagated inequality because they have mostly been ‘walking versions of the Dark Triad.’
this paradigm has been ‘on-going for centuries.’
Up until the 20th century, Kemp's research shows that after a Goliath collapses, the average person is often better off. People become healthier and more egalitarian social structures based on mutual aid and shared responsibility often emerge. And he suggests the average person is inherently more cooperative than Goliaths allow them to be.
WATCH ALL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMbtY4ljEMQ
The Inequitable Lead Us to Inequity
“Our ‘civilized’ history is best told as a story of organized crime. It’s one group creating a monopoly on resources through the use of violence over a certain territory and population.” -Luke Kemp
“The three most powerful men in the world, right now, are a walking version of the Dark Triad: Trump is a textbook narcissist, Putin is a cold psychopath, and Xi Jinping came to rule China by being a master Machiavellian manipulator.” -Luke Kemp
“Our corporations and, increasingly, our algorithms, also resemble these kinds of people. They’re basically amplifying the worst of us. These ‘agents of doom’ are the source of our current trajectory towards societal collapse.” -Luke Kemp
“Understand that our biggest, most threatening crises are not created out of the full scope of Human Nature but, in fact, only by a singular facet of it possessed in unequal supply by only a small number of us...almost all men (Ruler archetypes)...who then bring out the worst in us, by imposing their competitive profit-power motives upon us all, while concealing all the risks...and they appear throughout our history in an on-going, systemic, cyclical, perpetual rhythm.”
“Our large, psychopathic corporations which produce global catastrophic risk: nuclear weapons, climate change, AI, are only produced by a very small number of secretive, highly wealthy, powerful groups of men, like the military-industrial complex, big tech, and the fossil fuel industry.” -Luke Kemp
Kemp says we have long been brainwashed by Rulers justifying Their Dominance:
from the self-declared pharaohs of Egypt…
to the Phoenicians,
then Greek-Roman Emperors…
to the Middle Ages kings’ of Spain, Portugal, France, Britan, United States…
to tech titans selling us their techno-utopias.
Inequity Leads Us to Extinction
“It’s always been easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of Goliaths. (too big to fail) That’s because these are stories that have been hammered into us over the space of 5,000 years…by the Goliaths.” -Luke Kemp
“Today, we don’t have regional empires so much as we have one single, interconnected Global Goliath. All our societies act within one single global economic system –capitalism- so collapse today will be disastrous for all.” -Luke Kemp
Now we are in the ‘Global Goliath’, the endgame for humanity.
Like the final moves in a chess match that determine the result…with the stakes at their highest level ever.
All due to the relentless, unchecked rise of unequal acting Ruler Archetypes scaffolding up from their exploitation of wood-stone, to bronze-iron, to fossil fuels, to silicon chips...with only their own self-interests in mind…and the proletariats’ lack of consistency in holding them accountable and focused on the immediate task at hand.
Kemp sees two possible outcomes for our society:
self-destruction
fundamental transformation
For him, the first is the most likely, but escaping global collapse could be achieved.
Main Actions: Fighting against the Perpetual Creep toward Inequity
“First and foremost, we need to create genuine Democratic Societies to level all the forms of power that lead to Goliaths.” -Luke Kemp
This means that, at least, one of our only two parties does not take money from corporate lobbyists, in order to live large and get re-elected.
This means running our societal systems through citizen assemblies-juries, aided by digital technologies to enable Direct Democracy at Large Scales. As his historical analysis shows that more democratic societies tend to be more resilient.
“If you’d had a citizens’ jury sitting over the fossil fuel companies when they discovered how much damage and death their products would cause, do you think they would have said: ‘Yes, go ahead, annihilate the Earth...we’re good with you burying the facts-analysis and running disinformation campaigns.” -Luke Kemp
“Escaping collapse also requires taxing wealth, otherwise the rich find ways to rig the democratic system.”
“I’d cap wealth at $10m. That’s far more than anyone needs. A famous oil tycoon once said money is just a way for the rich to keep score. Why should we allow these people to keep score at the risk of destroying the entire planet?” -Luke Kemp
“Today, people find it easier to imagine that we can build intelligence on silicon than we can secure democracy at scale, or that we can escape arms races. It’s complete bullshit. Of course we can do democracy at scale. We’re a naturally social, altruistic, democratic species and we all have an anti-dominance intuition. Look around…more of us want it than don’t.” -Luke Kemp
Kemp rejects the suggestion that he’s simply presenting a politically leftwing take on history.
“There is nothing inherently left wing about democracy. Nor does the left have a monopoly on fighting corruption. Holding power accountable by making sure companies pay for the social-environmental damages they cause…just makes our economy more democratic…less unequal.” -Luke Kemp
He also has a message for individuals:
“Collapse isn’t just caused by structures, but also people. If you want to save the world then the first step is doing your part to stop destroying it. So, don’t be a dick. Don’t work for big tech, arms manufacturers, the fossil fuel industry...more.” -Luke Kemp
“Each one of us can refuse Relationships based on Domination and Share Power whenever we can.”
Despite the possibility of avoiding collapse, Kemp remains pessimistic about our prospects.
“We’re dealing with 5,000-years of indoctrination...incredibly difficult to reverse...along with accelerated inequality and the elite’s capture of our politics.”
“But even if you don’t have hope, it’s about doing the right thing...fighting for democracy and for people to not be exploited. And even if we fail, at the very least, we didn’t contribute to the problem.” -Luke Kemp
Recap
Kemp uses the term Goliaths to describe kingdoms and empires, aka societies built on domination, such as the Roman Empire: state over citizen, rich over poor, master over slave, and men over women...with the U.S. as its modern doppelgänger. He says that, like the biblical warrior slain by David’s slingshot, Goliaths began in the bronze age, and were steeped in violence and often surprisingly fragile.
Kemp’s, Dark Triad refers to the personality traits of:
1. narcissism, 2. psychopathy, 3. Machiavellianism: prioritizes achieving political goals over moral considerations.
He argues that these traits, are almost always prevalent in our powerful elites, and they drive self-interested behavior that leads to widening inequality and, ultimately, societal collapse…as 5,000 years of our history shows.
Key aspects of Kemp's view on the Dark Triad:
A ‘Goliath’ pathology: Kemp uses the metaphor of ‘Goliath’ to describe hierarchical, powerful, and ultimately fragile societies. Working in both Up-Down directions, the average people of society express-demand a need for order-authority as the cyclical nature of their shared existence becomes too chaotic…which then gives rise to the opportunity claimed, more often, by self-interested dicks or individuals with Dark Triad personality traits...and so a Goliath kingdom-empire is born.
Not Human Nature: Kemp emphasizes that the Dark Triad is not a reflection of inherent human nature. Instead, it’s an outcome of Societal Nature described above. He contrasts the behavior of Dark Triad leaders with the Egalitarian-Cooperative Nature of earlier human hunter-gatherer societies.
A Choice, not a Destiny: Despite his pessimistic analysis, Kemp maintains that societal collapse is not an inevitability. By understanding how the Dark Triad influences global risks, societies can choose a different path toward genuine democracy, resilience, and a redistribution of power and wealth.
“In the book, I talk about this idea of Goliath Evolution. That over time, Goliaths have found new norms, governance mechanisms, but also new sources of Goliath Fuel to allow for far larger dominance hierarchies that can hold more people in place...like creating artificial scarcities or real scarcities for things we don't need in order to allow for the perpetuation of the Pyramidal Goliath Society to maintain itself.
(Ponzi scheme at full global scale) -Luke Kemp
I am compelled to understand why we do what we do...day in-day out...year after year...eon after eon...always getting the same results we don’t necessarily want.
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