The Root Cause of Societal Collapse

The Loss of Pattern Recognition

My childhood was perpetually filled with creative people. My parents, both musicians, often hosted gatherings of artists, writers, and performers. At each event a recurring theme emerged: the struggle of the creative mind in a world that seemed increasingly indifferent, if not hostile, to their contributions. Each person laid out what became a very clear window into how our systems exploited and marginalized the most creatively intelligent.

They were very clear about it’s origin. “They’ve changed the game. The schools, the institutions. They made them so they work against us.” Everyone in the room nodded in solemn agreement. These weren’t struggling artists or disgruntled outsiders, these were individuals of profound talent and intellect, recognizing a systematic shift in how society valued different forms of intelligence.

What they had identified, through their lived experience, was the end stage of a transformation that began with the Industrial Revolution. Throughout most of human history, intelligence existed as a holistic blend of multiple faculties:

Cognitive Intelligence: Detail-oriented pattern recognition, analytical processing of specific information and local patterns — the ability to see and understand the small picture with precision.

Somatic Intelligence: Embodied pattern recognition, processing of holistic information through feeling and intuition — the ability to sense and understand the big picture through the body’s knowing.

Creative Intelligence: The natural integration of cognitive and somatic intelligence. Blending small picture details with big picture sensing to generate novel patterns and understandings. This is where new intelligence emerges.

The Devaluing of the Creatives

In many pre-industrial civilizations, intelligence was more interdisciplinary than it is today. Philosophers frequently engaged in artistic and scientific pursuits, and knowledge systems were less rigidly compartmentalized than in modern society. A philosopher was often also a poet, and a scientist might also be an artist.

However, as civilizations advanced, they moved toward greater specialization and bureaucratic control over knowledge. Ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Rome all followed this trajectory. Starting with integrated knowledge systems and later fragmenting intelligence into rigid, specialized disciplines controlled by elites.

The Industrial Revolution did not create this pattern, but it dramatically accelerated it, transforming education and labor systems to prioritize efficiency, standardization, and obedience over holistic intelligence.

It marked the beginning of a new economic order, one that sought to domesticate the last parts of human society that had not yet been controlled by rigid systems of production. Intelligence, once fluid and expansive, was reshaped to serve the needs of industrial efficiency:

• Punctuality over creativity — Timed labor replaced deep thinking.

• Obedience over innovation — Systems rewarded compliance, not insight.

• Specialization over holistic understanding — Knowledge was divided into narrow disconnected fields.

By the time the system was fully entrenched, the most creative and holistic minds were no longer nurtured. They were systematically marginalized, extracted for their insights, and then discarded.

This shift triggered a massive overhaul of education systems, transforming them from institutions that nurtured well-rounded individuals into factories designed to produce obedient workers. This transformation manifested in three critical ways:

1. Standardization: Uniform curricula designed to ensure compliance.

2. Compartmentalization: The strict separation of disciplines.

3. Suppression of Creativity: The marginalization of artistic and integrative expression.

Research confirms that these changes were deliberate mechanisms of control. During periods of social unrest, governments implemented education reforms aimed at producing a population that was more manageable and less likely to question authority (Gatto, 1992; Foucault, 1975).

By the 20th century, the consequences of this transformation were clear:

• Those who excelled at memorization and compliance rose to power.

• Those who saw the whole picture, the holistic thinkers, became increasingly marginalized.

The artists in my childhood home weren’t just lamenting personal challenges; they were witnessing the culmination of this systematic transformation. Their observation about schools and institutions were accurate and prescient. They were identifying, through direct experience, what academics would later document through research: the systematic restructuring of society to favor fragmented over holistic intelligence.

The Rise of the Fragmented

Who rises to power when a system fragments intelligence? This question was posed to everyone, from philosophers to political scientists, which all answered it incorrectly. Because the answer was found in a surprising place: corporate boardrooms.

In 2010, researchers Babiak, Neumann, and Hare published a startling finding: corporate leadership positions had a disproportionately high concentration of individuals with psychopathic traits. This wasn’t a small statistical blip. It was a pattern so consistent it suggested something fundamental about how modern organizations select their leaders.

The system didn’t elevate the smartest, the most creative, or the most capable problem-solvers. Instead, it elevated three distinct groups: