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History doesn’t repeat, but it rhymes.
What happened to Jesus’ original radical teachings isn’t just ancient history. It’s tomorrow’s new normal.
For decades after his death, Jesus’ words lived only in the memories and mouths of his followers. Stories passed from person to person. Parables shared around fires. Wisdom transmitted through direct experience rather than authorized texts.
Then came the councils. The committees. The emperors with agendas.
By the 4th century, powerful men decided which stories were ‘in’ and which were ‘out.’ The Council of Nicaea. The Easter Letter of Athanasius. The canonical gospels that reinforced hierarchy over the Gnostic texts that empowered individuals.
What began as fluid, adaptive teachings became frozen dogma. What started as an invitation to personal transformation became institutional doctrine. A revolutionary movement of the margins was repositioned as the official religion of empire.
When power structures feel threatened by decentralized wisdom, they don’t debate it. They bury it. Then they rewrite it. Then they tell you their version was the original all along.
Sound familiar?
Metacrisis, Metaphysics, Municipalities. MMM.
Not just three fancy words. A framework for making sense of today’s uncertainty and chaos.
While the world obsesses over the latest outrage and the next crisis, MMM asks a different question: What if we’re not facing separate problems, but one interconnected challenge? And what if the solution begins right where you live?
At a time filled with din, disinformation, disruption — not to mention existential wobble — we don’t need another meeting — or another annual gathering of the parties — that continue to lead nowhere. We need a map. We need tools. We need action.
Two thousand years ago, Jesus of Nazareth taught a radical idea: decentralized, adaptive communities operating through mutual aid and ecological reciprocity. Today it’s called bioregionalism.
The Roman Empire had other plans.
By the 4th century, his subversive, network-based teachings were systematically marginalized. The Byzantine Empire, with its state religion, transformed Christianity into a tool for control. Jesus’ emphasis on inner transformation became codified narratives that aligned with imperial interests.
Fast forward to 2025.
Today’s empire doesn’t wear togas. It wears algorithms. It doesn’t burn scrolls; it shadowbans accounts. It doesn’t exile heretics; it demonetizes creators. It doesn’t rewrite texts; it adjusts “community guidelines.” It doesn’t nurture philosophers; it rewards viral soundbites and reduces complex ideas to shareable memes.
Look at how AI content filters encode establishment values as “safety.” Watch how decentralized knowledge platforms get labeled “misinformation hubs.” Notice how regenerative economic models get dismissed as “unrealistic” by the very institutions that crashed the global economy multiple times.
The pattern remains: decentralized wisdom gets squashed when it threatens centralized power.
What Material Consciousness buried then, it’s burying now.
Metaphysics isn’t what you think it is.
Before it became academic abstractions, Cicero saw it as something else entirely: a rigorous approach to understanding what’s ultimately real beyond physical sciences and the economy of the day.
He called it ‘relegere’ — the careful reconsideration of things perceived to be real. Not blind faith. Not rigid doctrine. But thoughtful inquiry.
Today, our ‘things perceived to be real’ wear different clothes. We worship at the altar of GDP. We place our faith in the Invisible Hand of the market. We’ve replaced a religious text with algorithms and priests with financial engineers.
But what if these new gods are just as imaginary? What if our economic systems — like Byzantine creeds — are just human constructs masquerading as universal truths?
True metaphysics asks: What coordinates human behavior when our current systems fail? What remains when our financial systems collapse? What’s actually real beneath our shared hallucinations?
Change doesn’t start in Washington, Silicon Valley, or even the Vatican.
It starts where you live.
Municipalities are human-scale. They’re where abstract policies meet concrete reality. They’re where people with different viewpoints still need to fix the same potholes.
They’re also where the failures of Material Consciousness become impossible to ignore. Where homelessness can’t be hidden behind economic theories. Where drought can’t be dismissed with quarterly earnings.
Most importantly, municipalities have legal authority. They can experiment. They can implement mutual credit systems. They can value what markets overlook.
While nations debate, cities act.
While platforms algorithmically amplify division, neighbors find common ground.
The leap from Material to Mycelial Consciousness won’t happen in think tanks or TED talks. It will happen street by street, neighborhood by neighborhood. It will happen across dinner tables where friends and family sit face-to-face, having real conversations instead of exchanging social media jabs. These patient dialogues — where we look into each other’s eyes and actually listen — are how belief systems have always changed, one human connection at a time. What needs to happen in municipalities is simple. The challenge is changing collective beliefs (preferably without a crisis — that’s when anything is possible.)
Invitation
So here’s the invitation:
Join us for an inaugural series of 4 webinars exploring Metacrisis, Metaphysics, and Municipalities. The first starts on Monday 12 May.
Not to talk. To act. Not to complain. To build. Not to predict collapse. To navigate the Momentous Leap.
These aren’t presentations. They’re the foundation of a Community of Practice. A gathering of people who recognize that evolution isn’t optional — it’s inevitable.
As Founding Members of this Community of Practice, you won’t just study change. You’ll embody it.
Before you dismiss this as just another online event, ask yourself: What if the Roman Empire had possessed the internet? What if Jesus’ (original) teachings had spread through decentralized networks before they could be co-opted?
The tools for our evolution are already here. The question is whether we’ll use them.
The Punctuated Equilibrium Theory of Change tells us that significant transformation doesn’t happen gradually. It occurs in bursts after long periods of stability shattered by crisis.
We are in such a burst now.
The metacrisis isn’t coming. It’s here. The censorship isn’t theoretical. It’s happening. The choice isn’t distant. It’s immediate.
Will we repeat the bifurcation that buried wisdom 2,000 years ago? Or will we write a new story?
Join us. Read the PETOC founding document. Become part of the Community of Practice.
Because this time, the mycelial network won’t be silenced.
References
The Bifurcation of Christianity: An exploration of how Jesus’ oral teachings were changed into the canonized Bible. Deep Dive
Timeline of Christianity: A list of significant moments that profoundly shaped Christianity’s theological, political, and cultural development across nearly 1,500 years of history. Deep Dive
Doctrine of Discovery: Invoked by Pope Alexander VI in 1452 & 1493, the Doctrine of Discovery established a spiritual, political, and legal justification for colonization and seizure of land not inhabited by Christians. This doctrine, which has been embedded in our human psyche for more than 570 years, has resulted in a small percentage of society driven by dominion and a large percentage of society suffering under longstanding trauma. https://doctrineofdiscovery.org
and Deep Dive
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