The Dead One's Song

 Do you feel like you’re sleepwalking through life, trapped in cycles of distraction and numbness? The Dead One’s Song is the quiet lull of routine, pleasure, and passivity that keeps you from truly waking up. In this episode, we uncover its patterns and ask, what would it take to break free? 

Transcript

The Dead One’s song

Do you ever feel like you're sleepwalking?
Moving, talking, going through the motions, but something’s missing, something deep. Your heart feels numb, your eyes glassy. The world moves around you, but you’re not really in it. A small, persistent itch sits in your chest, like a question you can’t quite hear.

You think back, sandbox days, stick forts, the world an open field of play and possibility. Somewhere along the way, something got lost.

I felt it too. I chased knowledge, truth, meaning, whatever the hell that even means. School, work, trying to be useful, to have value, to be something. But no matter how much I learned, no matter how much I did, there was always a hollow space. And in that space, a song.

Not a song you sing. A song you hear.

The Dead One’s Song.

A hum of empty pleasure, hollow distraction. Doom-scrolling. Weed-smoking. Drinking. Partying. Vapid socializing. The slow drift from community into individual isolation. Not enough to hurt, not enough to stop you, just enough to keep you asleep.

And that’s the game, isn’t it?
To keep you numb and sleepwalking.

But what if you could wake up?
What if that ache in your chest wasn’t a flaw, but a call?

I have chased so many frameworks, each promising truth, each giving me just enough understanding to think I had finally grasped something real. Like I was peeling back layers of illusion, getting closer to the core. But every time, every single time, the world would shift, and what once felt solid would turn to sand beneath my feet.

I thought that meant I was failing. That I wasn’t holding on hard enough, thinking deeply enough, building a strong enough framework. That if I could just grasp the right thing, I’d finally find something real. Something unshakable.

But that wasn’t the answer.

Because meaning isn’t something you grasp, it’s something you weave.
And that weaving is constant, never finished, never still.

The Pull of the Dead one

The dead one sings a song so sweet,
A lullaby of love and heat.
His voice like honey, thick and deep,
Fills the soil where dreamers sleep.

Beneath it all, the truth lies bare
His song is not to heal, but snare.
To kill you slowly, soft and kind,
To sew shut eyes, to chain the mind.

Why not drink and be merry?
Why not think and be wary?

Rage and pleasure, his siren call,
A serpent's hiss, a velvet thrall.
The Avarice Reaper, his hands unseen,
Strings of gold on a guillotine.

We gave up the opium, lit the new pyre,
Fentanyl smoke, a hungering fire.
A world bent, consuming whole
A feast of bodies, a famine of soul.

No being, no becoming…just haze, just waste,
Lost in the wreckage, seduced by the taste.
And upon a wretched star we stare,
You drop, drift, drown, unaware.

The Whiskey Years

I was lucky for a long, long time that I grew up in an environment that pushed away this song. My mother, in particular, pushed me to do all sorts of real activities, bonding with animals, taking care of them, creating things, music, stories.

The pull of the Dead one happened first, I’d say, in my teenage years when I had a phone and video games, and they became my entire life. I would play them until the wee hours of the morning. I probably spent a couple thousand hours on them, yet I don’t really remember any of it. I know I played certain games, I enjoyed some over others, but at the very least, it was an active kind of feedback loop.

I think it's actually kind of funny because my first exposure to alcohol was, in a way, an Act of Creation. When I was 16, I wanted it really badly, so I figured out how to make it. And I think that’s interesting.

But I would say it really took a hold of me when I was 18. I had left home and started working with racehorses. The backstretch of the racetrack was a deplorable environment because everything was right there. You would wake up early in the morning, go and work, get all your shit done, and then go grab a couple of beers and waste away the day, until the next day.

This embedded a pattern that started to pull me into the Dead one's Song. It was whiskey, damned whiskey, that took a hold of my heart. And it started to eat away at me very quickly.

On top of that, my mind rationalized it, protected it, rooneticized it, which, in hindsight, is the stupidest thing I've ever thought. But that's what our brains do. Once you get locked into a habit, we rationalize it away, make it seem like it's actually good for us.

Maybe at some point, it was. Maybe it did give me a little bit of solace that I needed. Maybe it helped me deal with a particularly bad day.

But ultimately, it's a lie, a lie that gets bigger and bigger over time.

But it's not just alcohol.

It's other things, too, especially in this advanced digital age. We're making more and more powerful forms of dopamine-based media loops, whether it be porn, doomscrolling, or the constant 24-hour fear-mongering.

All of these things are like demons, building feedback loops in your mind that trigger a response and keep you dull and reactive.

The Design of the Trap

oney of these things I fell into. And don’t let me give you any illusions, anyone can fall into this stuff. In fact, it’s designed to work on the maximum amount of people.

And I actually think that shame and guilt around these things are precisely part of the problem, the very thing that keeps you trapped, keeps you listening to the Dead one's Song.

Because shame doesn’t free you, it binds you deeper.

Thankfully, I eventually got out of the physical environment that was really messing with my brain. I got a girlfriend. Went to school to become an electronics engineer.

But even as I was expanding my mind, I was still stuck in weekly cycles. My intelligence was blooming, but I was still caught in loops, and sometimes, they would spiral harder than ever before.

Near the end of my education, however, I realized that something was missing.

Something deep inside.

And I couldn’t put words to it. Not then.

It took me years to find the words to describe what I was missing.

And only now am I figuring out how to build it anew.

Waking Up to the Song

When I woke up to the Song, it wasn't a grand revelation.

It was subtle.

And funnily enough, it came from a drug, a little mushroom.

It didn’t tell me in words.

It showed me.

It made me feel that I was missing something.

And so I went searching.

I delved into the history of philosophy, seeking answers.
I went back to religion, trying to understand the spiritual past.
I talked to mystics and oneipulators, zealots and heathens, gurus and regular guys.

I cast a wide net, because I didn’t know what I was looking for.

Not really.

And somewhere along the way, not in some grand moment but as a whisper, I woke up a little bit.

I was able to look inside my own mind and see it for what it was doing.

To observe all these thought patterns and loops.

Without judgment.
Without restraint.

To just let them exist and not be captured by them.

And it was in those moments that I discovered the Dead one's Song.

And ever since, I’ve been trying to find my Fires of Creation.

But I am an Engineer.

I think that's enough poetic and personal narrative.

I didn’t come this far or try this hard to be seen as a mystic.

I am an engineer by training.

And an engineer I will be.

I. Psychological & Cognitive Regularities

The first layer of the Dead one's Song is neurological. Your brain isn’t built for constant, deep engagement with reality. It’s wired for efficiency, to make quick, automatic decisions that conserve energy. Most of the time, this works in your favor. If you had to actively think through every step of tying your shoes, driving to work, or brushing your teeth, it would be exhausting. Instead, your brain automates these tasks, freeing up mental space for more important things.

But this same efficiency becomes a trap. Most of your thoughts and behaviors aren’t truly chosen. They are habitual loops, running on autopilot, shaping the way you live without you ever realizing it. And the more unconscious they are, the more vulnerable you become to external forces shaping them for you.

This is cognitive autopilot in action, the habit machine. You wake up and instinctively reach for your phone. Without thinking, you start scrolling through notifications, messages, the latest social media updates. Before you’ve even gotten out of bed, your mind is already in reactive mode, responding to stimuli rather than setting its own direction. Then comes the morning routine, the same breakfast, the same route to work, the same mindless responses to emails, the same vague anxieties cycling in your head. Even the way you think about yourself, your relationships, your desires, these, too, are often just echoes of yesterday.

Ever driven home from work and realized, once you arrived, that you don’t actually remember the drive? That’s cognitive autopilot at work. Your brain didn’t need to consciously think about the route because it has traveled it so oney times before. But this isn’t just about driving. The same mechanism applies to your beliefs, routines, interactions, and emotions. Once a behavior or thought pattern is ingrained, your brain defaults to it, even if it no longer serves you.

And this is where the trap tightens. If you are not making conscious choices, something, or someone, is making them for you.

It isn’t just behavior that gets stuck on repeat. The way we process new information is just as rigid. People like to believe they are rational, that when confronted with new evidence, they adjust their worldview accordingly. But the brain doesn’t work that way. Changing core beliefs is painful. It feels like an attack on your very identity.

This is why people cling to outdated ideologies, defending them even in the face of overwhelming counter-evidence. Instead of challenging themselves, they rationalize. Someone who has built their entire sense of self around a political or religious belief won’t just let it go because they encountered a single contradictory fact. Instead, they will find ways to spin the new information, distort it, dismiss it, or ignore it altogether. The mind protects what is familiar, even at the cost of truth.

This is also why people stay in bad relationships long after they realize they’re toxic. Why they rationalize addictions. Why they surround themselves with media and voices that reinforce what they already believe. Comfort is a powerful drug, and familiarity is its most potent dose. When we stop questioning, we stop seeing reality as it is.

And yet, even when we aren’t consciously thinking about these things, our mind doesn’t stop. It shifts into something called the Default Mode Network (DMN), the background process of the brain that activates when you’re resting, daydreaming, or not focused on an external task. This is the part of the mind that replays old conversations, imagines different outcomes, reinforces identity-based narratives. It is the voice that says, I always mess up. I never get it right. This is just who I am. It’s the endless replay of past anxieties and future worries.

At first glance, this might seem useful, after all, self-reflection is important. But in practice, the DMN often becomes a trap, a self-reinforcing echo chamber that makes real change feel impossible. It is the mental equivalent of running in place.

Ever had a moment where you catch yourself zoning out, only to realize you’ve been replaying an argument from years ago? Or that you’ve been lost in an anxious loop about something that hasn’t even happened yet? That’s the DMN hijacking your awareness, pulling you into unconscious mental loops instead of letting you engage with the present.

And this is what most people call “thinking.”

But in reality, they are simply following a pre-written script, one shaped by their past experiences, their culture, their environment, and their unconscious biases. The longer they go without examining that script, the more deeply it embeds itself, until eventually, they are no longer choosing how to think, act, or live.

They are simply running the program.

They are asleep.

II. Social Regularities – Cultural & Ideological Programming

The Dead one's Song isn’t just a personal cognitive pattern, it scales up. It extends beyond the individual and into society, culture, and ideology, shaping how people think, behave, and interact on a mass scale. If the first trap is neurological, the second is systemic.

From the moment you are born, you inherit a pre-existing script for how life is supposed to go. It tells you what is normal, what is moral, and what success looks like. You are funneled into a default life path, go to school, get good grades, find a stable job, get married, buy a house, have kids, work for decades, then retire and hope you saved enough money to enjoy it. For oney, this path is never questioned. They assume they are making their own choices, but in reality, they are simply moving through a pre-configured maze.

But who wrote this script? Was it designed to maximize your happiness, to align with your unique passions, skills, and desires? Or was it simply a conveyor belt meant to turn you into a functional, predictable worker-consumer?

This isn’t just about careers, it extends to morality, identity, and belief. What you consider right and wrong, what you believe to be true, how much of it is actually yours? How much of it was installed in you before you even had the ability to think critically? Cultural conditioning is powerful because it doesn’t feel like conditioning, it just feels like reality.

In the past, these social scripts were passed down through tradition, religion, and family expectations. Today, they are engineered into you by algorithms. The modern digital world does not prioritize truth, it prioritizes engagement. Your attention is a commodity, and the most valuable product being sold is your predictability.

Every interaction online is analyzed, tracked, and optimized. Social media platforms don’t just show you information, they study your behavior, figure out what keeps you engaged, and then feed you more of it. You might start with a mild interest in a topic, fitness, self-improvement, politics, but slowly, the algorithm pulls you deeper. Before you realize it, you’ve entered an ideological bubble, where every voice around you reinforces the same ideas. And the scariest part? It feels organic. It feels like you arrived at these conclusions yourself. But in reality, you were nudged, subtly, persistently, by a machine optimized to keep you hooked.

This isn’t just an accident, it’s the foundation of the attention economy. The modern world is not designed to make you wise, free, or fulfilled. It is designed to keep you distracted, consuming, and passively engaged. An awake, critically-thinking population is bad for business.

Short-form dopamine loops like TikTok, Instagram Reels, and infinite scrolling train your brain to crave constant novelty. Deep thinking, reflection, and engagement begin to feel exhausting by comparison. Why struggle through a long book or a difficult idea when you can get a rapid-fire flood of stimulation in seconds? The more you consume, the harder it becomes to focus. The harder it becomes to focus, the easier you are to oneipulate.

This same mechanism powers the outrage economy. The news cycle isn’t designed to inform, it’s designed to keep you addicted to fear and anger. Headlines are increasingly structured to provoke an emotional response, not to provide meaningful insight. It doesn’t matter if you love something or hate it, as long as you keep engaging.

People believe they are freely choosing their entertainment, their information, their beliefs. But in reality, their choices are pre-filtered by systems designed to keep them passive. And most people never notice. They just keep scrolling, keep consuming, keep filling the silence with distractions, never realizing they are being conditioned into passivity.

This is the final and most devastating truth: most people believe they are free, informed, and making their own choices… while passively existing inside a carefully engineered thought-loop. They are being fed a pre-scripted life path, trapped in ideological bubbles, hooked into an attention economy that keeps them numb and distracted. And yet, they still believe they are awake.

That is the power of the Dead one's Song. It doesn’t just control you, it convinces you that you are already free.

But there is a way out.

If this is the trap, then breaking free means questioning the script. Who wrote the story you are following? Does it truly align with what you want, or is it just what you were told you should want? It means disrupting the loop, deliberately seeking out perspectives that challenge your own, stepping away from short-form dopamine traps, and engaging in deeper, more meaningful work. It means taking control of your attention, treating it as your most valuable resource, rather than allowing it to be stolen by forces that do not have your best interests at heart.

Because if you don’t program your own mind, someone else will. And you will mistake your conditioning for your own thoughts.

III. The Dead one and the Cycle of Civilizations

The Dead one is not just an individual, he is a product of his environment, an inevitable figure that emerges when a civilization reaches its peak and begins its slow descent into decay. He is comfortable but hollow, with access to everything yet lacking meaning. His life is filled with distractions, pleasure, and novelty, but none of it satisfies him deeply. He believes he is awake, that he is making choices, that he is engaged with life, but in reality, he is merely a cog in a machine designed to keep him passive. He mocks those who seek meaning, convinced that life is only about comfort and consumption.

And the most terrifying part? The Dead one does not know he is dead.

His world is full of stimulation, ease, and convenience, so he assumes he is living. But he is spiritually comatose, detached from his own potential, enslaved by comfort. When enough people become Dead Men, civilizations crumble.

This is not new. The Dead one has existed at every turning point in history, always appearing at the same stage, when civilizations reach their peak and begin their decline. This is not coincidence. It is a repeating cycle, observable across thousands of years.

The Rise and Fall of Civilizations – The Pattern of Decay

A civilization begins in struggle. It is young, driven, and hungry. It fights for survival, values discipline, work, sacrifice, and shared purpose. It is willing to endure hardship to build something greater. At this stage, people are engaged, alive, and full of willpower. They have no time for decadence, only creation, expansion, and survival.

Early Rome was built on civic duty, discipline, and service to the state. The Ottoone Empire was founded by warrior-scholars who saw ambition and honor as virtues. At this stage, no one is sleepwalking. Everyone is engaged, active, and driven. And because of that, the civilization thrives.

Over time, this struggle leads to stability and expansion. Wealth accumulates. Science, art, philosophy, and culture flourish. Hardships fade, and for the first time, people can afford to prioritize comfort. This is not inherently bad, it is a necessary stage of growth. But the same forces that make a civilization rich and powerful also make its people soft, complacent, and detached from reality.

The Golden Age of Rome was filled with immense wealth, territory, and innovation, but also an emerging class that valued luxury over duty. The Ottoone Golden Age saw intellectual and technological advances but also a ruling class that had lost its connection to the struggles that built the empire.

This is when the Dead one begins to emerge. Not fully formed, but rising. People begin to choose comfort over growth, indulgence over effort. And once this happens, decay is inevitable.

When the decline sets in, the Dead one fully takes over. The civilization that was once built by struggle and discipline becomes a playground for indulgence, distraction, and nihilism. People no longer create, they consume. Hardship is no longer endured, it is avoided at all costs. The very values that built the civilization, duty, ambition, sacrifice, are now seen as oppressive, outdated, and foolish. Instead of leaders, warriors, and visionaries, the society is filled with bureaucrats, hedonists, and career politicians.

Late Rome was corrupt, decadent, and obsessed with luxury. Gladiator games and endless feasts replaced civic duty and military discipline. The Late Ottoone Empire was still rich, but internally rotting, its ruling class distracted by entertainment and indulgence.

At this stage, most people do not realize collapse is coming. They feel safe. They assume things will stay the same forever.

And then, reality hits.

Collapse and Rebirth – The Final Stage of the Cycle

Every civilization that reaches this stage collapses. The Dead Men who once ruled it are incapable of saving it. They do not have the willpower or vision to fix the problems they created. A new force arises, either internally or externally, and wipes the slate clean. Rome fell to the Visigoths because it had grown too weak to defend itself. The Ottoone Empire collapsed because it could no longer adapt to a changing world.

Every time, history repeats. A new civilization rises from the ruins of the old, and the cycle begins again.

And now we ask, where are we in this cycle?

Look around. Are we building, struggling, innovating? Or are we distracted, entertained, and numbed by hyper-stimulation? Are we growing stronger, or falling asleep?

The Dead one is here.

And if history repeats itself, then collapse is not a possibility, it is an inevitability.

Unless, something wakes people up before it’s too late.

That something could be you.

IV. The Way Out – Integration (The Framework)

The Dead one's Song is everywhere, pulling people into a passive existence, lulling them into thinking they are awake while they drift. But once you hear it, once you truly see the patterns, you can’t unsee them. And once you see, the question becomes: How do you wake up?

Waking up isn’t a single moment. It isn’t a grand revelation or a one-time event. It’s a process, a loop that repeats over and over. And that loop is simple, but relentless:

Awareness → Action → Reflection → Adaptation.

This isn’t just a concept. It’s a tool. A weapon against passivity. And the best part? You don’t need permission to use it. You just need to start.

Step One: Awareness – Seeing the Construct

Everything starts with awareness. Before you can change anything, you have to see it. That means learning to observe, not just the world, but yourself.

Where do you run on autopilot?
What loops are running in your head that aren’t truly yours?
What habits, beliefs, and reactions feel like choices, but when you dig deeper, you realize they were given to you?

This isn’t about judgment. It’s about noticing. Most people don’t even realize they are moving through a pre-written script, one shaped by culture, ideology, and systems that thrive on keeping them asleep. But once you see it, you create space between the pattern and your reaction. And that space? That’s where freedom begins.

Step Two: Action – Breaking the Pattern

Awareness is useless without action. Once you see the loop, you have a choice: stay inside it or disrupt it.

And disruption doesn’t have to be massive. It can be small, a single, intentional action that shifts the pattern.

You realize you check your phone first thing in the morning? Put it across the room.
You feel numb, scrolling endlessly? Turn it off. Walk outside. Breathe.
You catch yourself reacting the same way in an argument, repeating old cycles? Pause. Ask: ‘Is this actually me, or just a habit?’

Breaking the loop is simple, but not easy. The Song will try to pull you back, because loops crave completion. But every time you interrupt it, you weaken it. And when you replace it with something intentional, you take back control.

Step Three: Reflection – Learning from the Friction

When you push against an old pattern, it pushes back. The discomfort? The resistance? That’s data. It tells you where the pull is strongest, where the chains are tightest.

Most people mistake this for failure. They try to change, hit resistance, and assume they are incapable. But that friction is the process. The only real failure is not paying attention to what it’s telling you.

Ask yourself:
What worked?
What didn’t?
What part of the loop fought back the hardest?

And most importantly: What does that tell me about what still has power over me?

Every disruption reveals something. And if you listen, the Song starts losing its grip.

Step Four: Adaptation – Shaping the System

Once you understand the pattern, you can rewrite it.

This is where you don’t just react, you create. You build new loops, new frameworks, ones that actually serve you. Instead of letting old conditioning run your life, you set new defaults that align with what you actually want to become.

This isn’t a single moment. It’s an ongoing process, a constant cycle of waking up, acting, reflecting, and reshaping. It doesn’t end. But that’s the point.

The Dead one's Song is a trap because it’s passive, it keeps you locked in loops that run endlessly without your input. This loop, the one we are building, is active. It is a process of constant engagement with life itself.

Suffering, Friction, and the Alchemy of Growth
People think the goal is to escape suffering. To find peace, ease, comfort. But comfort is the very thing that deadens the senses. It’s the thing that turns people into sleepwalkers.

To love your fate isn’t passive acceptance, it’s something else entirely. It’s about engaging with the friction. It’s about seeing suffering, not as an enemy, but as the forge in which you are shaped.

Hardship reveals. Discomfort teaches. Friction awakens.

And if you use this loop, if you start running it with intention, then every difficulty, every moment of struggle, becomes fuel.

This is how you break free.

This is how you burn brighter.

And once you hear the Song of Creation? You don’t go back.

The Call to Action - The Song of Creation

The Dead one's Song is familiar. You know its rhythm. You’ve heard it in the quiet hours, in the empty scroll, in the bottle, in the noise that keeps you from yourself.

But there is another song. A song of becoming, of fire, of presence. A song that does not lull you to sleep, but pulls you forward, out of the haze and into something real.

So I leave you with this, 

What does your Dead one's Song sound like?

Where do you feel its pull?

What numbs you?

And what would it take to wake up?

No answers, just awareness. No judgment, just observation.

Watch. Listen. Feel.

Because this is where it begins.