We're way past the point where we can pretend there isn't going to be another global conflict. There's too much bureaucracy that's amputed process at the knees, hogtied it, and then mired it in slowly-solidifying cement. Process itself is too heavy, with too many moving parts that are too separated, and too frequently told they're the only team that actually matters.
There's too many people in positions they have no qualification or competency for, and too many people in society who'll keep f-cking putting people like that in those positions, because "they're so funnneeeee!!! I looooovvvve their Twitter drama! And snowflakes deserve to be triggered, hurrr-hurrr, am I right?!"
There's too many bullsh*t jobs which have no justification other than the barriers they create to people in jobs that are actually achieving things society will genuinely benefit from - because there are too many vested interests involved in keeping people in those bullsh*t jobs, rather than setting them free with a modest monthly seed fund to find their purpose, and improve society through it.
And there's too many fucking billionaires. (Yes, I normally do a minimal edit, because I respect people who dislike profanity, and want them to feel okay reading my words, but sometimes, you just need to use the English language robustly and ruggedly, as it was intended to be used.) For me, the ideal number of billionaires on the planet is 0. None. Nada. Nil.
A billionaire is an absolutely unnecessary parasite on society at this point. In the Victorian era, the wealthiest used their wealth to create pleasant societal surroundings - they gave ordinary people parks and libraries, they created generational employment building stately homes and pure follies. They built businesses that were designed to still be in business when the great-grandchildren of their very first employees came into the workforce.
Should people be able to make a chunk of money through their own initiative, skills, and their leadership of those with complementary skills? Absolutely - but, once you kick over a million in a single year, every other single pence you generate goes into funds for social goods. Those funds are clearly defined and their beneficiaries ring-fenced: poverty relief, support for entrepreneurs, support for those entering agriculture without a family background, disasters and emergency contingencies, free-at-point-of access health and education, and whose money goes to which pot is determined by automated lot-drawing, so that every fund gets an equal amount of people contributing, and the rich can't simply support their own pet projects. To ensure people remain incentivised to make money that they won't benefit from, every seven years 10% of each fund is pooled together, and a lottery generated from the top twenty highest contributors, with the successful contributor getting the full 10% payout. Additionally, individuals can apply to be considered for exemption from the cap and contributions if they personally commit to direct patronage and evidenced-outcomes support for, mentorship of, and investment in individuals from deprivileged backgrounds,with the clear, pathwayed intention of creating the next cohort of contributors.
Things like foreign aid, military preparedness, and infrastructure? The "Company of the State" should be in the business of generating income through export of goods, services, and knowledge, and collaborative creation in STEM, and this income used for those international and domestic necessities. This will require politicians - all politicians, starting from local authority councillors - to be provably qualified and capable of achieving the highest possible income generation for the business that is the national State entity. There are very replicable processes and templates for recruiting for those skills - we just haven't hitherto been applying those metrics to the people we're considering for the leadership of our country and control of our lives.
Part of this should be a new reality of "blind appointment" for politics - every single stage of assessment is done without any knowledge of who the applicant is. Initially, this will be nameless CVs. Qualifications and experience only - no institution names. A drop-box email that's automatically assigned to all applicants. In-person interviews are first-round remote with camera off. Next rounds are on-site in-person, but screened, so the interviewers can hear, but not see, the applicant. The applicants' faces are only seen in the final round interview. We can no longer allow the cult of personality, or "who's best at the media manipulation game", to determine who leads entire nations.
Secondary and higher education should be tailored to peoples' ambitions, with a wide variety of socially beneficial opportunities presented during the first year of secondary education, so people can make an informed selection of 3-5 possible careers, that the remainder of their education is then carried out in partnership with highly experienced professionals in those industries to tailor their skills, temperament, and capacity to the things they genuinely want to do.
In my case, at 12, my responses to "what do you want to do for a job?" were:
. Writer
. Vet
. Haulage company owner, via truck driver initially
. Racehorse trainer
Becoming a vet fell away as I didn't have the science strengths - but maybe I would have gained those strengths had I had tailored, committed, professional support from age 12.
Driving trucks fell away because at 19, I was deemed to not be medically fit to continue learning to drive - it turned out, 15 years later, when I eventually was registered legally blind, that I should have been registered legally blind at 19. Had that happened, I might be further along in my life at 39.
Because it's really difficult to get well-paying jobs when you live in rural England and can't drive, and it's impossible to move to less rural parts of England if you don't have a decently paid job or parental support, I never made enough money to build enough savings to own any kind of physical business, let alone a haulage business, which is one of the quickest ways to lose a lot of money, if you're open-eyed and brutally honest about it.
Being a racehorse trainer fell away because, not being able to drive, I had no possibility of being able to drive a horse trailer, no ability to easily travel across the country - and, again, no chance of ever building up the level of savings that would enable me to buy an equestrian property.
I was paid as a writer for a decent chunk of time, across freelance white label content, in-house marketing, being paid for writing articles. And here I still am, writing for free in the hope that one day, all of the people who are currently insisting, loudly, that they "hate AI slop!" will start paying this human writer again. (Because they are...not doing that. With anyone who is actually a human creator. And the government isn't out here supporting the continued existence of those of us who are pretty much only good at being creative.)
I've recently realised I'm definitely no worse at art than a bunch of people who are blithely plastering their socials with their scribbles - I enjoy the process of making art, just as I enjoy the process of writing; I don't believe that "the money will always come eventually" if you "just do what you love" - I'm living proof that's mostly bs, though I hope it might one day come true. So, I've started making art again. I've already had one exhibition this year, and have a second coming up in a couple of weeks. I gave up art entirely in my early 20s because I wasn't making money from it, and didn't feel I would ever be "good enough" to make money from art - but people are making money from literally nothing in the year of our Lord 2026, and have been for a while, so I might as well give it another shot.
12 year olds absolutely know what they want to do as adults - it's just easier, lower effort, and more affordable for education to pretend they couldn't possibly, and focus on creating a generation of mediocre at irrelevant crap every five years, rather than investing in excellence.
There's too many people in positions they have no qualification or competency for, and too many people in society who'll keep f-cking putting people like that in those positions, because "they're so funnneeeee!!! I looooovvvve their Twitter drama! And snowflakes deserve to be triggered, hurrr-hurrr, am I right?!"
There's too many bullsh*t jobs which have no justification other than the barriers they create to people in jobs that are actually achieving things society will genuinely benefit from - because there are too many vested interests involved in keeping people in those bullsh*t jobs, rather than setting them free with a modest monthly seed fund to find their purpose, and improve society through it.
And there's too many fucking billionaires. (Yes, I normally do a minimal edit, because I respect people who dislike profanity, and want them to feel okay reading my words, but sometimes, you just need to use the English language robustly and ruggedly, as it was intended to be used.) For me, the ideal number of billionaires on the planet is 0. None. Nada. Nil.
A billionaire is an absolutely unnecessary parasite on society at this point. In the Victorian era, the wealthiest used their wealth to create pleasant societal surroundings - they gave ordinary people parks and libraries, they created generational employment building stately homes and pure follies. They built businesses that were designed to still be in business when the great-grandchildren of their very first employees came into the workforce.
Should people be able to make a chunk of money through their own initiative, skills, and their leadership of those with complementary skills? Absolutely - but, once you kick over a million in a single year, every other single pence you generate goes into funds for social goods. Those funds are clearly defined and their beneficiaries ring-fenced: poverty relief, support for entrepreneurs, support for those entering agriculture without a family background, disasters and emergency contingencies, free-at-point-of access health and education, and whose money goes to which pot is determined by automated lot-drawing, so that every fund gets an equal amount of people contributing, and the rich can't simply support their own pet projects. To ensure people remain incentivised to make money that they won't benefit from, every seven years 10% of each fund is pooled together, and a lottery generated from the top twenty highest contributors, with the successful contributor getting the full 10% payout. Additionally, individuals can apply to be considered for exemption from the cap and contributions if they personally commit to direct patronage and evidenced-outcomes support for, mentorship of, and investment in individuals from deprivileged backgrounds,with the clear, pathwayed intention of creating the next cohort of contributors.
Things like foreign aid, military preparedness, and infrastructure? The "Company of the State" should be in the business of generating income through export of goods, services, and knowledge, and collaborative creation in STEM, and this income used for those international and domestic necessities. This will require politicians - all politicians, starting from local authority councillors - to be provably qualified and capable of achieving the highest possible income generation for the business that is the national State entity. There are very replicable processes and templates for recruiting for those skills - we just haven't hitherto been applying those metrics to the people we're considering for the leadership of our country and control of our lives.
Part of this should be a new reality of "blind appointment" for politics - every single stage of assessment is done without any knowledge of who the applicant is. Initially, this will be nameless CVs. Qualifications and experience only - no institution names. A drop-box email that's automatically assigned to all applicants. In-person interviews are first-round remote with camera off. Next rounds are on-site in-person, but screened, so the interviewers can hear, but not see, the applicant. The applicants' faces are only seen in the final round interview. We can no longer allow the cult of personality, or "who's best at the media manipulation game", to determine who leads entire nations.
Secondary and higher education should be tailored to peoples' ambitions, with a wide variety of socially beneficial opportunities presented during the first year of secondary education, so people can make an informed selection of 3-5 possible careers, that the remainder of their education is then carried out in partnership with highly experienced professionals in those industries to tailor their skills, temperament, and capacity to the things they genuinely want to do.
In my case, at 12, my responses to "what do you want to do for a job?" were:
. Writer
. Vet
. Haulage company owner, via truck driver initially
. Racehorse trainer
Becoming a vet fell away as I didn't have the science strengths - but maybe I would have gained those strengths had I had tailored, committed, professional support from age 12.
Driving trucks fell away because at 19, I was deemed to not be medically fit to continue learning to drive - it turned out, 15 years later, when I eventually was registered legally blind, that I should have been registered legally blind at 19. Had that happened, I might be further along in my life at 39.
Because it's really difficult to get well-paying jobs when you live in rural England and can't drive, and it's impossible to move to less rural parts of England if you don't have a decently paid job or parental support, I never made enough money to build enough savings to own any kind of physical business, let alone a haulage business, which is one of the quickest ways to lose a lot of money, if you're open-eyed and brutally honest about it.
Being a racehorse trainer fell away because, not being able to drive, I had no possibility of being able to drive a horse trailer, no ability to easily travel across the country - and, again, no chance of ever building up the level of savings that would enable me to buy an equestrian property.
I was paid as a writer for a decent chunk of time, across freelance white label content, in-house marketing, being paid for writing articles. And here I still am, writing for free in the hope that one day, all of the people who are currently insisting, loudly, that they "hate AI slop!" will start paying this human writer again. (Because they are...not doing that. With anyone who is actually a human creator. And the government isn't out here supporting the continued existence of those of us who are pretty much only good at being creative.)
I've recently realised I'm definitely no worse at art than a bunch of people who are blithely plastering their socials with their scribbles - I enjoy the process of making art, just as I enjoy the process of writing; I don't believe that "the money will always come eventually" if you "just do what you love" - I'm living proof that's mostly bs, though I hope it might one day come true. So, I've started making art again. I've already had one exhibition this year, and have a second coming up in a couple of weeks. I gave up art entirely in my early 20s because I wasn't making money from it, and didn't feel I would ever be "good enough" to make money from art - but people are making money from literally nothing in the year of our Lord 2026, and have been for a while, so I might as well give it another shot.
12 year olds absolutely know what they want to do as adults - it's just easier, lower effort, and more affordable for education to pretend they couldn't possibly, and focus on creating a generation of mediocre at irrelevant crap every five years, rather than investing in excellence.
So; that's what is. But the title of this post is what comes after World War 3.
Because World War 3 is going to happen - we've had a good run of nothing more serious than some intense firefights thousands of miles away from our Western European comfort zones. It only took twenty-one years from the end of World War 1 for World War 2 to kick off. We've had almost four times as long. We should recognise that achievement, and accept that major global conflicts are simply an episodic form of population control for a species which refuses to stop breeding, over-consuming resources, and, increasingly, refuses to die in any other way.
Some of us will survive World War 3, just as some people have always survived every armed conflict. Those people will be responsible for what comes after World War 3.
What is needed after World War 3 is for every single person who survives, regardless of their ethnicity, their gender, their social background, their income and savings, to be able to pursue their genuine purpose. Not necessarily their life purpose - my work purpose is very much communication; my life purpose, which also remains unfulfilled, is collaboration. (I can't afford to be in proximity to the people I want to collaborate with, and I can't afford to offer them anything to take up space in their DMs or emails.)
When people are pursuing their genuine purpose, they are calmer, better, nicer people. Think about the way Elon Musk was before he got distracted from his purpose (technology exploration) by "making as much money as possible", and how rapidly he's spiralled since he moved from that purpose. Donald Trump, by all accounts, was never especially likable, even to other ultra-wealthy entrepreneurs he socialised with, but he was fairly innocuous in his arseholery when he was pursuing his purpose (business and entertainment) - the disastrous impacts America is currently enduring are because he moved away from his purpose; the Presidency of any country, but especially America, is not business. Barack Obama aged noticably in his Presidency, because the Presidency is exhausting, and all-consuming, but Obama was a great President because he was in alignment with his purpose - building the framework of society; that's something that law is centrally engaged with; the building of society's framework.
And calmer, more focused, more fulfilled people make more money. Think about any arts and crafts fair you might go to - are you going to spend much time or cash with the stallholder who slumps in a chair, arms folded, scowling? No; your wallet relaxes as you chat to the enthusiastic, but boundaries-aware, stallholder who hands you things to feel and look at more closely, who shares the stories of their creations with you, whose body language is open and engaged.
What's true on a low level is even more true at the highest levels.
The UK's society and systems are currently directly opposed to people pursuing their purpose, especially if those people do not have social support or generational wealth.
That needs to begin changing now - because it really doesn't feel that we have a lot of time before World War 3 is something the media is reporting on daily, rather than merely speculating about.
Because World War 3 is going to happen - we've had a good run of nothing more serious than some intense firefights thousands of miles away from our Western European comfort zones. It only took twenty-one years from the end of World War 1 for World War 2 to kick off. We've had almost four times as long. We should recognise that achievement, and accept that major global conflicts are simply an episodic form of population control for a species which refuses to stop breeding, over-consuming resources, and, increasingly, refuses to die in any other way.
Some of us will survive World War 3, just as some people have always survived every armed conflict. Those people will be responsible for what comes after World War 3.
What is needed after World War 3 is for every single person who survives, regardless of their ethnicity, their gender, their social background, their income and savings, to be able to pursue their genuine purpose. Not necessarily their life purpose - my work purpose is very much communication; my life purpose, which also remains unfulfilled, is collaboration. (I can't afford to be in proximity to the people I want to collaborate with, and I can't afford to offer them anything to take up space in their DMs or emails.)
When people are pursuing their genuine purpose, they are calmer, better, nicer people. Think about the way Elon Musk was before he got distracted from his purpose (technology exploration) by "making as much money as possible", and how rapidly he's spiralled since he moved from that purpose. Donald Trump, by all accounts, was never especially likable, even to other ultra-wealthy entrepreneurs he socialised with, but he was fairly innocuous in his arseholery when he was pursuing his purpose (business and entertainment) - the disastrous impacts America is currently enduring are because he moved away from his purpose; the Presidency of any country, but especially America, is not business. Barack Obama aged noticably in his Presidency, because the Presidency is exhausting, and all-consuming, but Obama was a great President because he was in alignment with his purpose - building the framework of society; that's something that law is centrally engaged with; the building of society's framework.
And calmer, more focused, more fulfilled people make more money. Think about any arts and crafts fair you might go to - are you going to spend much time or cash with the stallholder who slumps in a chair, arms folded, scowling? No; your wallet relaxes as you chat to the enthusiastic, but boundaries-aware, stallholder who hands you things to feel and look at more closely, who shares the stories of their creations with you, whose body language is open and engaged.
What's true on a low level is even more true at the highest levels.
The UK's society and systems are currently directly opposed to people pursuing their purpose, especially if those people do not have social support or generational wealth.
That needs to begin changing now - because it really doesn't feel that we have a lot of time before World War 3 is something the media is reporting on daily, rather than merely speculating about.
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