Mark 8 is one of those chapters that feels like three stories stitched together, but when you sit with it long enough, you realize it is really one long conversation about sight. Not eyesight alone, but perception. Not what the eyes register, but what the soul recognizes. The chapter opens with hungry crowds and ends with a suffering Messiah, and in between stands a blind man who is healed in stages and disciples who can see miracles but still cannot see meaning. This chapter is not about Jesus proving who He is. It is about exposing what kind of vision His followers actually have.

The chapter begins with a familiar miracle, but it carries a strange emotional tone. Jesus looks at the crowd and says He has compassion on them because they have been with Him three days and have nothing to eat. That detail matters. These are not casual listeners who wandered over for an afternoon sermon. These are people who stayed. They lingered. They gave time, energy, and hunger to hear Him. Jesus does not simply notice their physical need; He connects it to their spiritual persistence. They have stayed long enough to forget themselves. Their bodies are empty, but their attention has been full. This is a quiet indictment of how we often measure devotion. We imagine faith as something that fits neatly between meals and appointments. These people let faith interrupt their routine. They stayed until hunger forced a reckoning.

The disciples respond the way practical people always do. They point out the impossibility of feeding so many in such a desolate place. Their question is not hostile; it is logical. Where could anyone get enough bread to feed them here? The miracle that follows feels almost understated compared to the feeding of the five thousand earlier in Mark’s Gospel. This time it is four thousand. This time there are seven loaves instead of five. This time there are baskets left over again, but a different number. The repetition itself becomes part of the message. Jesus is not running out of power. The miracle is not diminishing. The issue is not supply. The issue is memory. The disciples have already seen this happen once, and yet they react as if they have learned nothing.

This is one of the most uncomfortable truths about discipleship. Exposure to miracles does not automatically create understanding. You can watch God provide and still panic the next time provision is needed. You can see Him rescue and still doubt the next rescue. The human heart does not store faith the way it stores information. It has to be re-learned, re-trusted, and re-claimed again and again. Mark 8 is brutally honest about that. The disciples are not villains here. They are us. They are people who have evidence but still struggle with expectation.

After the crowd is fed and sent away, Jesus immediately encounters the Pharisees. They demand a sign from heaven. This is one of the most revealing moments in the chapter because it shows two kinds of blindness side by side. The crowd saw bread multiply. The Pharisees see nothing but a debate opportunity. They are not asking for a sign because they lack evidence. They are asking because no evidence will ever be enough for a heart that has already decided. Jesus sighs deeply in His spirit. That sigh is not frustration at ignorance. It is grief over stubbornness. There is a difference between not knowing and not wanting to know. The Pharisees want a spectacle that fits their expectations. Jesus refuses because signs do not heal pride. They only entertain it.

Then comes one of the most puzzling conversations in the chapter. Jesus warns His disciples to beware of the yeast of the Pharisees and of Herod. The disciples immediately assume He is talking about literal bread because they forgot to bring enough. This moment feels almost comical, but it is deeply tragic. Jesus is speaking about influence, about corruption, about a mindset that spreads quietly and changes everything from the inside. They are worried about lunch. He asks them a series of questions that sound like an interrogation, but they are really diagnostic. Do you still not understand? Are your hearts hardened? Do you have eyes but fail to see, and ears but fail to hear? Do you not remember when I broke the five loaves for the five thousand? How many baskets did you pick up? When I broke the seven loaves for the four thousand, how many baskets did you pick up? And still you do not understand.

This is one of the few moments in the Gospels where Jesus seems almost incredulous with His own disciples. Not angry, but astonished that repetition has not yet produced recognition. They know the numbers. They remember the leftovers. But they have not connected the dots. They have data without insight. This is the danger of religious familiarity. You can know the story and miss the point. You can quote the miracle and ignore the meaning. Jesus is not rebuking them for forgetting bread. He is rebuking them for forgetting what the bread revealed about Him.

Immediately after this conversation comes the healing of the blind man at Bethsaida. Jesus leads him outside the village, spits on his eyes, and lays hands on him. When asked if he sees anything, the man says he sees people, but they look like trees walking around. Jesus then lays hands on him again, and his sight is fully restored. This is the only miracle in the Gospels that happens in stages. It is impossible to read this in isolation from the conversation that just happened. The disciples see, but not clearly. They perceive Jesus, but their vision is blurry. They recognize power, but not purpose. The man’s partial healing becomes a living parable of the disciples’ partial understanding.

The miracle says something profound about how spiritual vision often develops. We want instant clarity. We want complete understanding in one touch. But God often heals perception the way He heals this man’s sight: progressively. First comes awareness, then comes accuracy. First comes recognition, then comes depth. The disciples are in the “trees walking” stage. They know Jesus is extraordinary, but they do not yet grasp the cost of following Him.

This sets the stage for the most famous exchange in the chapter. Jesus asks His disciples who people say He is. They give safe answers. John the Baptist. Elijah. One of the prophets. Then He asks them directly who they say He is. Peter answers, “You are the Christ.” This is a turning point in Mark’s Gospel. For the first time, a disciple publicly names Jesus as the Messiah. But the moment is immediately complicated. Jesus begins to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer, be rejected, be killed, and after three days rise again. Peter takes Him aside and rebukes Him. The same mouth that confessed Christ now corrects Him. The same insight that recognized His identity rejects His mission.

Jesus’ response is sharp and unforgettable. “Get behind me, Satan. You are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.” This is not an insult as much as it is a diagnosis. Peter’s problem is not lack of loyalty. It is misplaced focus. He wants a Messiah without a cross. He wants victory without suffering. He wants glory without sacrifice. And Jesus names that mindset as adversarial to God’s purposes. Not because Peter is evil, but because he is still seeing like a man who measures success by comfort and control.

This is where Mark 8 becomes intensely personal. Jesus does not stop with correcting Peter. He turns to the crowd and explains what following Him actually means. “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” This is not poetic language in this context. The cross is not a metaphor yet. It is an instrument of execution. Jesus is saying that following Him will involve a willingness to lose control over one’s own life story. He continues by explaining the paradox that whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for His sake and the gospel’s will save it.

This teaching dismantles the idea that faith is meant to secure personal advantage. Jesus frames discipleship as an exchange of narratives. You can write your own story and protect it at all costs, or you can surrender it and receive a better one. He asks what it profits a person to gain the whole world and lose their soul. That is not a warning about material success alone. It is a warning about distorted priorities. You can achieve everything you aimed for and still miss the reason you exist.

He ends the chapter with a statement about being ashamed of Him and His words in a generation that is adulterous and sinful. The language is relational. Adultery is betrayal, not ignorance. Jesus is saying that allegiance matters. Identity matters. What you confess publicly shapes what you become privately.

Taken together, Mark 8 reads like a journey from hunger to sight to surrender. It starts with bread and ends with a cross. It begins with compassion and ends with confrontation. It shows us people who stay with Jesus for food, religious leaders who demand proof, disciples who misunderstand, a blind man who gradually sees, and a follower who correctly names Jesus but wrongly resists His mission. Every scene is about perception. Who sees clearly. Who does not. Who thinks they understand. Who admits they do not.

This chapter exposes a hard truth: it is possible to be near Jesus and still miss Him. You can be fed by Him and still misunderstand Him. You can confess Him and still resist His way. Spiritual blindness is not always total darkness. Sometimes it is blurry vision that thinks it is clear.

The feeding miracle reminds us that Jesus meets physical need with spiritual purpose. The Pharisees remind us that pride can reject truth even when it is visible. The disciples remind us that experience does not equal understanding. The blind man reminds us that healing can be progressive. Peter reminds us that confession without comprehension leads to conflict. And Jesus reminds us that following Him means redefining what it means to win.

Mark 8 is not a chapter about miracles as much as it is about meaning. The bread is not just bread. The blindness is not just blindness. The cross is not just tragedy. Everything points toward the question Jesus asks every reader: do you see what I am really doing, or only what you want me to be doing?

In this chapter, Jesus refuses to be a miracle dispenser, a sign performer, or a political Messiah. He chooses to be a suffering Savior. That choice offends expectations. It confuses followers. It threatens power. But it reveals God. The compassion that feeds crowds becomes the compassion that carries a cross. The same hands that break bread will soon be nailed. The same disciples who collect baskets will scatter in fear. And yet, the story does not end in loss. It ends in promise. Losing life for His sake leads to saving it. Seeing clearly comes after surrender.

Mark 8 invites every believer to examine what kind of sight they have. Are we like the crowd, drawn to what Jesus can give? Are we like the Pharisees, demanding proof on our terms? Are we like the disciples, remembering facts but missing meaning? Are we like the blind man, seeing partially and needing another touch? Or are we willing to become people who see the cross not as failure but as fulfillment?

This chapter does not flatter faith. It refines it. It does not simplify discipleship. It deepens it. And it does not offer an easy Jesus. It reveals a costly one. The question that lingers after reading Mark 8 is not whether Jesus is powerful. It is whether we are willing to follow Him when power looks like sacrifice and vision looks like surrender.

And that is where the chapter quietly leaves us. With bread in our hands, a cross on the horizon, and a question in our hearts about what it really means to see.

What makes Mark 8 so unsettling is that no one in the chapter is openly hostile to Jesus except the Pharisees, and yet almost everyone misunderstands Him in some way. The crowd stays, but they stay for bread. The disciples follow, but they follow with assumptions. Peter believes, but he believes with conditions. The blind man sees, but only after a process. This is not a story about enemies of faith. It is a story about the limits of human perception even when God is standing right in front of us.

There is something quietly revolutionary about the way Jesus refuses to give the Pharisees a sign. They are asking for proof that conforms to their system. They want heaven to perform on command. Jesus will not participate in that kind of relationship. Faith, in this chapter, is not a contract where God must meet demands. It is a posture of recognition. The irony is that the people demanding a sign are surrounded by them. Bread has multiplied. Sick people have been healed. Crowds have been changed. But the Pharisees want a sign that protects their authority rather than challenges it. They want confirmation without conversion.

This moment forces a hard question on the reader. Are we looking for God to prove Himself, or are we willing to be transformed by Him? The difference is subtle but massive. Proof leaves the observer unchanged. Transformation requires surrender. Jesus refuses the sign because He knows it would feed curiosity without changing loyalty. He will not reinforce a kind of faith that wants power without repentance.

The warning about yeast follows naturally. Yeast is small. It works invisibly. It spreads quietly. Jesus is not warning about public enemies. He is warning about internal contamination. The yeast of the Pharisees is pride disguised as righteousness. The yeast of Herod is power disguised as security. Both promise control. Both distort vision. And both operate slowly enough that people rarely notice until the whole loaf has changed. This is why Jesus connects the warning to memory. He asks about the baskets left over because memory is supposed to guard perception. When you forget what God has done, you become vulnerable to false explanations of reality. When you forget provision, fear becomes logical. When you forget power, compromise becomes attractive.

The disciples’ confusion about bread reveals how fear shrinks understanding. They reduce a spiritual warning to a logistical problem. They assume Jesus is upset about groceries instead of influence. This is not because they are stupid. It is because anxiety narrows focus. When survival feels threatened, meaning disappears. This is one of the hidden lessons of the chapter. Spiritual blindness often comes from emotional pressure, not intellectual failure. The disciples are not failing a theology exam. They are revealing a stress response. They are worried about running out, so they cannot hear about corruption.

The healing of the blind man in stages becomes even more powerful when seen in this light. Jesus does not fail the first time. He is not struggling. He is illustrating something. Partial sight is still sight, but it is not enough for navigation. Seeing people as trees is better than seeing nothing, but it is not yet accurate. The miracle mirrors the disciples’ journey. They can see Jesus as a prophet, a teacher, a miracle worker. But they cannot yet see Him as a suffering Messiah. Their vision is real but incomplete.

This is deeply encouraging for anyone who feels stuck between belief and understanding. Mark 8 does not shame partial sight. It acknowledges it. Jesus does not abandon the blind man when his vision is blurry. He touches him again. He does not abandon the disciples when their understanding is shallow. He keeps teaching them. This reveals a God who is patient with process. Clarity is not demanded instantly. It is cultivated through continued contact.

Peter’s confession is often celebrated, but Mark 8 refuses to let it stand alone. Naming Jesus as the Christ is only half the revelation. Understanding what kind of Christ He is becomes the real challenge. Peter’s rebuke shows how easy it is to project our values onto God. Peter wants a victorious Messiah because that is what makes sense to him. A suffering Messiah feels wrong. It feels like a mistake. It feels like failure. But Jesus identifies this instinct as opposition to God’s purposes. Not because suffering is good in itself, but because love requires it.

This moment reshapes what it means to be “for” Jesus. Peter thinks he is protecting Him. He thinks he is being loyal. But loyalty that resists God’s plan becomes sabotage without realizing it. This is one of the most uncomfortable truths in the chapter. You can oppose God while thinking you are defending Him. You can rebuke the cross because you want the crown too soon. Jesus’ words to Peter are not a personal attack. They are a spiritual correction. He exposes the difference between human-centered thinking and God-centered purpose.

When Jesus calls the crowd to Himself and speaks about taking up the cross, He is not speaking only to His inner circle. He is redefining discipleship for everyone. This is not elite language for spiritual professionals. It is a public invitation with a public cost. The cross is not presented as a tragedy to avoid but as a path to follow. This would have been shocking. Crosses were symbols of humiliation and control. They were warnings along Roman roads. To say “take up your cross” was to say “accept a future that is not safe, not prestigious, and not controlled by you.”

Yet Jesus pairs this with a promise about life. Losing life for His sake leads to saving it. This is not poetic contradiction. It is a redefinition of what life is. Life is not defined as survival or comfort. It is defined as alignment with God’s purpose. The chapter challenges the assumption that success equals preservation. According to Jesus, preservation can lead to loss if it becomes the highest goal. The soul is not preserved by avoiding sacrifice. It is preserved by participating in truth.

The question about gaining the whole world exposes how easily values can be inverted. The world represents achievement, recognition, power, and security. Jesus does not say these things are meaningless. He says they are insufficient. They cannot replace the soul. They cannot heal identity. They cannot substitute for purpose. You can gain everything visible and still lose what is invisible but essential. This is not a threat. It is a diagnosis of misplaced trade-offs.

The final warning about being ashamed of Him frames faith as relational loyalty rather than private opinion. Shame is about distance. It is about hiding association. Jesus places His own identity and His words together. To reject His teaching is to reject Him. To accept Him while hiding His words is still rejection. In a generation described as adulterous and sinful, faith is not just belief. It is alignment. It is visible association with a different story.

When all these pieces are held together, Mark 8 becomes a map of spiritual perception. It shows how hunger can lead to compassion, how pride can block evidence, how fear can distort meaning, how partial healing can reflect partial understanding, how confession can coexist with resistance, and how following Jesus means redefining what life itself means.

This chapter also reveals something crucial about Jesus’ identity. He is not only the one who multiplies bread. He is the one who interprets it. He does not only heal blindness. He exposes it. He does not only accept confession. He corrects misunderstanding. He does not only invite followers. He explains the cost. The Messiah revealed in Mark 8 is not a convenience. He is a transformation.

There is a quiet progression in the chapter from physical to spiritual, from external to internal. It begins with bodies that need food. It ends with souls that must choose. It begins with crowds who stay. It ends with individuals who must decide. The miracles become fewer, but the demands become deeper. Jesus feeds many, but He confronts each.

One of the most haunting questions in the chapter is Jesus’ repeated “Do you still not understand?” It is not asked once. It is layered. It is persistent. It is not because He expects instant mastery. It is because understanding is the point of proximity. Being near Jesus is meant to change how we see everything else. If proximity does not lead to transformation, something is blocking vision.

This makes Mark 8 a chapter of mirrors. It does not allow the reader to stand outside the story. Every character represents a possible posture. The crowd reflects our desire for provision. The Pharisees reflect our demand for control. The disciples reflect our confusion. The blind man reflects our process. Peter reflects our mixture of faith and fear. And Jesus stands in the center, not only performing acts but interpreting reality.

The chapter also reframes what it means to be chosen. The disciples are chosen, but they are not immune to misunderstanding. Peter is chosen, but he still resists the cross. Chosenness does not eliminate struggle. It deepens responsibility. The closer one is to Jesus, the more necessary it becomes to see clearly.

In this way, Mark 8 refuses to romanticize discipleship. It shows its cost before it shows its glory. It speaks of death before resurrection. It names loss before life. This is not pessimism. It is honesty. The Gospel does not promise ease. It promises meaning. And meaning often requires letting go of stories we would rather keep.

The compassion at the beginning of the chapter and the call to the cross at the end are not opposites. They are connected. The same heart that feeds the hungry is the heart that embraces sacrifice. Compassion without surrender becomes sentiment. Surrender without compassion becomes cruelty. Jesus embodies both. He feeds because He cares. He suffers because He loves. The cross is not a contradiction of compassion. It is its fullest expression.

Mark 8 also reveals something about memory as a spiritual discipline. Jesus keeps pointing back to what has already happened. How many baskets? How many loaves? Memory is not nostalgia here. It is instruction. Forgetting is dangerous not because it erases the past, but because it distorts the present. When the disciples forget what Jesus has done, they misinterpret what He says. This shows how theology is shaped by remembrance. What you remember about God influences what you expect from Him.

The blind man’s healing outside the village is also significant. Jesus leads him away from familiar surroundings before restoring sight. This suggests that vision sometimes requires separation. Old environments can reinforce old perceptions. Seeing clearly may require distance from what once defined you. This is not rejection of community. It is reorientation of identity.

Peter’s resistance to the suffering Messiah reveals how deeply we prefer narratives of triumph. We want God to fix problems without transforming values. We want solutions without surrender. But Jesus insists that the kingdom does not arrive through domination but through love. The cross is not an accident in the story. It is the story. Mark 8 places this truth at the center of the Gospel, not at the end. Before Jerusalem. Before betrayal. Before the final miracles. The meaning of the cross is introduced early so that everything after it can be interpreted correctly.

The invitation to deny oneself is often misunderstood as self-hatred. In Mark 8, it is not about despising identity. It is about releasing ownership. It is the difference between saying “this is my life” and saying “this is God’s life in me.” The denial is not of worth but of control. Taking up the cross is not seeking pain. It is accepting purpose.

The paradox of losing life to save it also reveals something about fear. Fear tells us that letting go will destroy us. Jesus tells us that clinging will. The chapter places these voices in contrast. Fear speaks through the disciples’ worry about bread. Fear speaks through Peter’s rebuke. Jesus answers fear with memory, meaning, and mission.

Mark 8 does not end with resolution. It ends with tension. The disciples still do not fully understand. The cross is still ahead. The crowd is still deciding. The reader is still invited. This is intentional. The chapter does not close a story. It opens a question. Who do you say that I am, and what will that mean for how you live?

In this way, Mark 8 becomes less about events and more about vision. It is a chapter about learning to see God differently, life differently, and oneself differently. It is about moving from consumption to commitment, from admiration to allegiance, from partial sight to costly clarity.

The bread reminds us that God cares about our needs. The blindness reminds us that we do not always see His ways. The cross reminds us that love will not avoid sacrifice. And the invitation reminds us that discipleship is not about adding Jesus to our story but about letting Him rewrite it.

Mark 8 is not meant to be comfortable. It is meant to be honest. It shows us that faith grows through misunderstanding, that vision sharpens through surrender, and that life is found through loss. It asks us to examine what kind of Messiah we want and what kind of followers we are willing to be.

In the end, the chapter leaves us with a strange but powerful image. Hands that once broke bread will one day be pierced. Eyes that once saw trees walking will one day see clearly. Disciples who once argued about loaves will one day proclaim resurrection. And a question that once echoed in Caesarea Philippi will echo through history: who do you say that I am?

The answer is not just a confession. It is a direction. And Mark 8 makes clear that the direction leads not only to glory, but through a cross first.

Your friend, Douglas Vandergraph

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Des fées sur la grève ou des anges mâles aux cheveux bouclés, le train qui passe entre les nuages, Pygas se baignant, que l'on n'a jamais vue, en somme tout ce qui dure sans durée, l'ennui, les êtres désirés par l'esprit du regard, le train revenu qui pénètre en gare, le parler muet d'une chose, la scène des absentés qui rejouent leur départ, les villes où l'on va sans aller, la liste sans fin que l'on se dresse, avant la mort, dans le cerveau.

Nombre d’occurrences : 14

#VoyageauLexique

Dans ce deuxième Voyage au Lexique, je continue d’explorer, en me gardant de les exploiter, les mots de Ma vie au village (in Journal de la brousse endormie) dont le nombre d’occurrences est significatif.

Something peculiar happened when software development teams started delegating code generation to AI assistants. The traditional burden of implementation, that painstaking process of translating designs into working software, began shifting elsewhere. But it did not disappear. Instead, it transformed into something altogether different: an intensified requirement for architectural rigour that many teams were unprepared to provide.

In early 2025, a randomised controlled trial conducted by METR examined how AI tools affect the productivity of experienced open-source developers. Sixteen developers with moderate AI experience completed 246 tasks in mature projects on which they had an average of five years of prior experience. Each task was randomly assigned to allow or disallow usage of early 2025 AI tools. The finding shocked the industry: developers using AI tools took 19% longer to complete tasks than those working without them. Before starting, developers had forecast that AI would reduce their completion time by 24%. Even after finishing the study, participants still believed AI had made them faster, despite the data proving otherwise.

This perception gap reveals something fundamental about the current state of AI-assisted development. The tools are genuinely powerful, but their power comes with hidden costs that manifest as architectural drift, context exhaustion, and what practitioners have come to call the “zig-zag problem”: the iterative back-and-forth that emerges when teams dive into implementation without sufficient upfront specification.

The Great Delegation

The scale of AI adoption in software development has been nothing short of revolutionary. By March 2025, Y Combinator reported that 25% of startups in its Winter 2025 batch had codebases that were 95% AI-generated. These were not weekend projects built by hobbyists. These were venture-backed companies building production systems, with the cohort growing 10% per week in aggregate, making it the fastest-growing batch in YC history.

As CEO Garry Tan explained, the implications were profound: teams no longer needed fifty or a hundred engineers. They did not have to raise as much capital. The money went further. Companies like Red Barn Robotics developed AI-driven agricultural robots securing millions in contracts. Deepnight built military-grade night vision software for the US Army. Delve launched with over 100 customers and a multi-million pound run rate, all with remarkably lean teams.

Jared Friedman, YC's managing partner, emphasised a crucial point about these companies: “It's not like we funded a bunch of non-technical founders. Every one of these people is highly technical, completely capable of building their own products from scratch. A year ago, they would have built their product from scratch, but now 95% of it is built by an AI.”

Yet beneath these success stories lurked a more complicated reality. Pete Hodgson, writing about AI coding assistants in May 2025, captured the core problem with devastating clarity: “The state of the art with coding agents in 2025 is that every time you start a new chat session, your agent is reset to the same knowledge as a brand new hire, one who has carefully read through all the onboarding material and is good at searching through the codebase for context.”

This “brand new hire” phenomenon explains why architectural planning has become so critical. Traditional developers build mental models of codebases over months and years. They internalise team conventions, understand why certain patterns exist, and recognise the historical context behind architectural decisions. AI assistants possess none of this institutional memory. They approach each session with technical competence but zero contextual awareness.

The burden that has shifted is not the mechanical act of writing code. It is the responsibility for ensuring that generated code fits coherently within existing systems, adheres to established patterns, and serves long-term maintainability rather than short-term convenience.

Context Windows and the Memory Problem

To understand why architectural planning matters more with AI assistants, you must first understand how these systems process information. Every AI model operates within what engineers call a context window: the total amount of text it can consider simultaneously. By late 2025, leading models routinely supported 200,000 tokens or more, with some reaching one million tokens. Google's Gemini models offered input windows of over a million tokens, enough to analyse entire books or multi-file repositories in a single session.

But raw capacity tells only part of the story. Timothy Biondollo, writing about the fundamental limitations of AI coding assistants, articulated what he calls the Principle of Compounding Contextual Error: “If an AI interaction does not resolve the problem quickly, the likelihood of successful resolution drops with each additional interaction.”

The mechanics are straightforward but devastating. As you pile on error messages, stack traces, and correction prompts, you fill the context window with what amounts to garbage data. The model is reading a history full of its own mistakes, which biases it toward repeating them. A long, winding debugging session is often counterproductive. Instead of fixing the bug, you are frequently better off resetting the context and starting fresh with a refined prompt.

This dynamic fundamentally changes how teams must approach complex development tasks. With human developers, extended debugging sessions can be productive because humans learn from their mistakes within a session. They build understanding incrementally. AI assistants do the opposite: their performance degrades as sessions extend because their context becomes polluted with failed attempts.

The practical implication is that teams cannot rely on AI assistants to self-correct through iteration. The tools lack the metacognitive capacity to recognise when they are heading down unproductive paths. They will cheerfully continue generating variations of flawed solutions until the context window fills with a history of failures, at which point the quality of suggestions deteriorates further.

Predictions from industry analysts suggest that one million or more tokens will become standard for flagship models in 2025 and 2026, with ten million token contexts emerging in specialised models by 2027. True “infinite context” solutions may arrive in production by 2028. Yet even with these expansions, the fundamental challenge remains: more tokens do not eliminate the problem of context pollution. They merely delay its onset.

The Specification Renaissance

This context limitation has driven a renaissance in software specification practices. What the industry has come to call spec-driven development represents one of 2025's most significant methodological shifts, though it lacks the visibility of trendier terms like vibe coding.

Thoughtworks describes spec-driven development as a paradigm that uses well-crafted software requirement specifications as prompts for AI coding agents to generate executable code. The approach explicitly separates requirements analysis from implementation, formalising requirements into structured documents before any code generation begins.

GitHub released Spec Kit, an open-source toolkit that provides templates and workflows for this approach. The framework structures development through four distinct phases: Specify, Plan, Tasks, and Implement. Each phase produces specific artifacts that carry forward to subsequent stages.

In the Specify phase, developers capture user journeys and desired outcomes. As the Spec Kit documentation emphasises, this is not about technical stacks or application design. It focuses on experiences and what success looks like: who will use the system, what problem it solves, how users will interact with it, and what outcomes matter. This specification becomes a living artifact that evolves as teams learn more about users and their needs.

The Plan phase gets technical. Developers encode their desired stack, architecture, and constraints. If an organisation standardises on certain technologies, this is where those requirements become explicit. The plan captures compliance requirements, performance targets, and security policies that will guide implementation.

The Tasks phase breaks specifications into focused, reviewable work units. Each task solves a specific piece of the puzzle and enables isolated testing and validation. Rather than asking an AI to generate an entire feature, developers decompose work into atomic units that can be independently verified.

Only in the Implement phase do AI agents begin generating code, now guided by clear specifications and plans rather than vague prompts. The approach transforms fuzzy intent into unambiguous instructions that language models can reliably execute.

Planning Artifacts That Actually Work

Not all specification documents prove equally effective at guiding AI assistants. Through extensive experimentation, the industry has converged on several artifact types that demonstrably reduce architectural drift.

The spec.md file has emerged as foundational. Addy Osmani, Chrome engineering lead at Google, recommends creating a comprehensive specification document containing requirements, architecture decisions, data models, and testing strategy. This document forms the basis for development, providing complete context before any code generation begins. Osmani describes the approach as doing “waterfall in fifteen minutes” through collaborative specification refinement with the AI before any code generation occurs.

Tasks.md serves a complementary function, breaking work into incremental, testable steps with validation criteria. Rather than jumping straight into code, this process establishes intent first. The AI assistant then uses these documents as context for generation, ensuring each piece of work connects coherently to the larger whole.

Plan.md captures the technical approach: a short overview of the goal, the main steps or phases required to achieve it, and any dependencies, risks, or considerations to keep in mind. This document bridges the gap between what the system should do and how it should be built.

Perhaps most critically, the CLAUDE.md file (or equivalent for other AI tools) has become what practitioners call the agent's constitution, its primary source of truth for how a specific repository works. HumanLayer, a company building tooling for AI development workflows, recommends keeping this file under sixty lines. The general consensus is that less than three hundred lines works best, with shorter being even better.

The rationale for brevity is counterintuitive but essential. Since CLAUDE.md content gets injected into every single session, bloated files consume precious context window space that should be reserved for task-specific information. The document should contain universally applicable information: core application features, technology stacks, and project notes that should never be forgotten. Anthropic's own guidance emphasises preferring pointers to copies: rather than including code snippets that will become outdated, include file and line references that point the assistant to authoritative context.

Architecture Decision Records in the AI Era

A particularly interesting development involves the application of Architecture Decision Records to AI-assisted development. Doug Todd has demonstrated transformative results using ADRs with Claude and Claude Code, showing how these documents provide exactly the kind of structured context that AI assistants need.

ADRs provide enough structure to ensure key points are addressed, but express that structure in natural language, which is perfect for large language model consumption. They capture not just what was decided, but why, recording the context, options considered, and reasoning behind architectural choices.

Chris Swan, writing about this approach, notes that ADRs might currently be an elite team practice, but they are becoming part of a boilerplate approach to working with AI coding assistants. This becomes increasingly important as teams shift to agent swarm approaches, where they are effectively managing teams of AI workers, exactly the sort of environment that ADRs were originally created for.

The transformation begins when teams stop thinking of ADRs as documentation and start treating them as executable specifications for both human and AI behaviour. Every ADR includes structured metadata and clear instructions that AI assistants can parse and apply immediately. Accepted decisions become mandatory requirements. Proposed decisions become considerations. Deprecated and superseded decisions trigger active avoidance patterns.

Dave Patten describes using AI agents to enforce architectural standards, noting that LLMs and autonomous agents are being embedded in modern pipelines to enforce architectural principles. The goal is not perfection but catching drift early before it becomes systemic.

ADR rot poses a continuing challenge. It does not happen overnight. At first, everything looks healthy: the repository is clean, decisions feel current, and engineers actually reference ADRs. Then reality sets in. Teams ship features, refactor services, migrate infrastructure, and retire old systems. If no one tends the ADR log, it quietly drifts out of sync with the system. Once that happens, engineers stop trusting it. The AI assistant, fed outdated context, produces code that reflects decisions the team has already moved past.

The Zig-Zag Problem

Without these planning artifacts, teams inevitably encounter what practitioners call the zig-zag problem: iterative back-and-forth that wastes cycles and produces inconsistent results. One developer who leaned heavily on AI generation for a rushed project described the outcome as “an inconsistent mess, duplicate logic, mismatched method names, no coherent architecture.” He realised he had been “building, building, building” without stepping back to see what the AI had woven together. The fix required painful refactoring.

The zig-zag emerges from a fundamental mismatch between how humans and AI assistants approach problem-solving. Human developers naturally maintain mental models that constrain their solutions. They remember what they tried before, understand why certain approaches failed, and build incrementally toward coherent systems.

AI assistants lack this continuity. Each response optimises for the immediate prompt without consideration of the larger trajectory. Ask for a feature and you will get a feature, but that feature may duplicate existing functionality, violate established patterns, or introduce dependencies that conflict with architectural principles.

Qodo's research on AI code quality found that about a third of developers verify AI code more quickly than writing it from scratch, whilst the remaining two-thirds require more time for verification. Roughly a fifth face heavy overruns of 50 to 100 percent or more, making verification the bottleneck. Approximately 11 percent of developers reported code verification taking much longer, with many code mismatches requiring deep rework.

The solution lies in constraining the problem space before engaging AI assistance. Hodgson identifies three key strategies: constrain the problem by being more directive in prompts and specifying exact approaches; provide missing context by expanding prompts with specific details about team conventions and technical choices; and enable tool-based context discovery through integrations that give AI access to schemas, documentation, and requirements.

Structuring Handoffs Between Planning and Implementation

The transition from planning to implementation represents a critical handoff that many teams execute poorly. GitHub's Spec Kit documentation emphasises that specifications should include everything a developer, or an AI agent, needs to know to start building: the problem, the approach, required components, validation criteria, and a checklist for handoff. By following a standard, the transition from planning to doing becomes clear and predictable.

This handoff structure differs fundamentally from traditional agile workflows. In conventional development, a user story might contain just enough information for a human developer to ask clarifying questions and fill in gaps through conversation. AI assistants cannot engage in this kind of collaborative refinement. They interpret prompts literally and generate solutions based on whatever context they possess.

The Thoughtworks analysis of spec-driven development emphasises that AI coding agents receive finalised specifications along with predefined constraints via rules files or agent configuration documents. The workflow emphasises context engineering: carefully curating information for agent-LLM interaction, including real-time documentation integration through protocols that give assistants access to external knowledge sources.

Critically, this approach does not represent a return to waterfall methodology. Spec-driven development creates shorter feedback cycles than traditional waterfall's excessively long ones. The specification phase might take minutes rather than weeks. The key difference is that it happens before implementation rather than alongside it.

Microsoft's approach to agentic AI explicitly addresses handoff friction. Their tools bridge the gap between design and development, eliminating time-consuming handoff processes. Designers iterate in their preferred tools whilst developers focus on business logic and functionality, with the agent handling implementation details. Teams now receive notifications that issues are detected, analysed, fixed, and documented, all without human intervention. The agent creates issues with complete details so teams can review what happened and consider longer-term solutions during regular working hours.

The practical workflow involves marking progress and requiring the AI agent to update task tracking documents with checkmarks or completion notes. This gives visibility into what is done and what remains. Reviews happen after each phase: before moving to the next set of tasks, teams review code changes, run tests, and confirm correctness.

The Self-Correction Illusion

Perhaps the most dangerous misconception about AI coding assistants is that they can self-correct through iteration. The METR study's finding that developers take 19% longer with AI tools, despite perceiving themselves as faster, points to a fundamental misunderstanding of how these tools operate.

The problem intensifies in extended sessions. When you see auto-compacting messages during a long coding session, quality drops. Responses become vaguer. What was once a capable coding partner becomes noticeably less effective. This degradation occurs because compaction loses information. The more compaction happens, the vaguer everything becomes. Long coding sessions feel like they degrade over time because you are literally watching the AI forget.

Instead of attempting marathon sessions where you expect the AI to learn and improve, effective workflows embrace a different approach: stop trying to do everything in one session. For projects spanning multiple sessions, implementing comprehensive logging and documentation serves as external memory. Documentation becomes the only bridge between sessions, requiring teams to write down everything needed to resume work effectively whilst minimising prose to conserve context window space.

Anthropic's September 2025 announcement of new context management capabilities represented a systematic approach to this problem. The introduction of context editing and memory tools enabled agents to complete workflows that would otherwise fail due to context exhaustion, whilst reducing token consumption by 84 percent in testing. In a 100-turn web search evaluation, context editing enabled agents to complete workflows that would otherwise fail due to context exhaustion.

The recommended practice involves dividing and conquering with sub-agents: modularising large objectives and delegating API research, security review, or feature planning to specialised sub-agents. Each sub-agent gets its own context window, preventing any single session from approaching limits. Telling the assistant to use sub-agents to verify details or investigate particular questions, especially early in a conversation or task, tends to preserve context availability without much downside in terms of lost efficiency.

Extended thinking modes also help. Anthropic recommends using specific phrases to trigger additional computation time: “think” triggers basic extended thinking, whilst “think hard,” “think harder,” and “ultrathink” map to increasing levels of thinking budget. These modes give the model additional time to evaluate alternatives more thoroughly, reducing the need for iterative correction.

Practical Limits of AI Self-Correction

Understanding the practical boundaries of AI self-correction helps teams design appropriate workflows. Several patterns consistently cause problems.

Open solution spaces present the first major limitation. When problems have multiple valid solutions, it is extremely unlikely that an AI will choose the right one without explicit guidance. The AI assistant makes design decisions at the level of a fairly junior engineer and lacks the experience to challenge requirements or suggest alternatives.

Implicit knowledge creates another barrier. The AI has no awareness of your team's conventions, preferred libraries, business context, or historical decisions. Every session starts fresh, requiring explicit provision of context that human team members carry implicitly. Anthropic's own research emphasises that Claude is already smart enough. Intelligence is not the bottleneck; context is. Every organisation has its own workflows, standards, and knowledge systems, and the assistant does not inherently know any of these.

Compound errors represent a third limitation. Once an AI starts down a wrong path, subsequent suggestions build on that flawed foundation. Without human intervention to recognise and redirect, entire implementation approaches can go astray.

The solution is not more iteration but better specification. Teams seeing meaningful results treat context as an engineering surface, determining what should be visible to the agent, when, and in what form. More information is not always better. AI can be more effective when further abstracted from the underlying system because the solution space becomes wider, allowing better leverage of generative and creative capabilities.

The Rules File Ecosystem

The tooling ecosystem has evolved to support these context management requirements. Cursor, one of the most popular AI coding environments, has developed an elaborate rules system. Large language models do not retain memory between completions, so rules provide persistent, reusable context at the prompt level. When applied, rule contents are included at the start of the model context, giving the AI consistent guidance for generating code.

The system distinguishes between project rules, stored in the .cursor/rules directory and version-controlled with the codebase, and global rules that apply across all projects. Project rules encode domain-specific knowledge, standardise patterns, and automate project workflows. They can be scoped using path patterns, invoked manually, or included based on relevance.

The legacy .cursorrules file has been deprecated in favour of individual .mdc files inside the .cursor/rules/ directory. This change provides better organisation, easier updates, and more focused rule management. Each rule lives in its own file with the .mdc (Markdown Components) extension, allowing for both metadata in frontmatter and rule content in the body.

The critical insight for 2025 is setting up what practitioners call the quartet: Model Context Protocol servers, rules files, memories, and auto-run configurations at the start of projects. This reduces token usage by only activating relevant rules when needed, giving the language model more mental space to focus on specific tasks rather than remembering irrelevant guidelines.

Skills represent another evolution: organised folders of instructions, scripts, and resources that AI assistants can dynamically discover and load. These function as professional knowledge packs that raise the quality and consistency of outputs across entire organisations.

Code Quality and the Verification Burden

The shift in architectural burden comes with significant implications for code quality. A landmark Veracode study in 2025 analysed over 100 large language models across 80 coding tasks and found that 45 percent of AI-generated code introduces security vulnerabilities. These were not minor bugs but critical flaws, including those in the OWASP Top 10.

In March 2025, a vibe-coded payment gateway approved over 1.5 million pounds in fraudulent transactions due to inadequate input validation. The AI had copied insecure patterns from its training data, creating a vulnerability that human developers would have caught during review.

Technical debt compounds the problem. Over 40 percent of junior developers admitted to deploying AI-generated code they did not fully understand. AI-generated code tends to include 2.4 times more abstraction layers than human developers would implement for equivalent tasks, leading to unnecessary complexity. Forrester forecast an incoming technical debt tsunami over the following two years due to advanced AI coding agents.

The verification burden has shifted substantially. Where implementation was once the bottleneck, review now consumes disproportionate resources. Code review times ballooned by approximately 91 percent in teams with high AI usage. The human approval loop became the chokepoint.

Teams with strong code review processes experience quality improvements when using AI tools, whilst those without see quality decline. This amplification effect makes thoughtful implementation essential. The solution involves treating AI-generated code as untrusted by default. Every piece of generated code should pass through the same quality gates as human-written code: automated testing, security scanning, code review, and architectural assessment.

The Team Structure Question

These dynamics have implications for how development teams should be structured. The concern that senior developers will spend their time training AI instead of training junior developers is real and significant. Some organisations report that senior developers became more adept at leveraging AI whilst spending less time mentoring, potentially creating future talent gaps.

Effective teams structure practices to preserve learning opportunities. Pair programming sessions include AI as a third participant rather than a replacement for human pairing. Code review processes use AI-generated code as teaching opportunities. Architectural discussions explicitly evaluate AI suggestions against alternatives.

Research on pair programming shows that two sets of eyes catch mistakes early, with studies finding pair-programmed code has up to 15 percent fewer defects. A meta-analysis found pairs typically consider more design alternatives than programmers working alone, arrive at simpler and more maintainable designs, and catch design defects earlier. Teams are adapting this practice: one developer interacts with the AI whilst another reviews the generated code and guides the conversation, creating three-way collaboration that preserves learning benefits.

The skill set required for effective AI collaboration differs from traditional development. Where implementation expertise once dominated, context engineering has become equally important. The most effective developers of 2025 are still those who write great code, but they increasingly augment that skill by mastering the art of providing persistent, high-quality context.

Surveying the Transformed Landscape

The architectural planning burden that has shifted to human developers represents a permanent change in how software gets built. AI assistants will continue improving, context windows will expand, and tooling will mature. But the fundamental requirement for clear specifications, structured context, and human oversight will remain.

Microsoft's chief product officer for AI, Aparna Chennapragada, sees 2026 as a new era for alliances between technology and people. If recent years were about AI answering questions and reasoning through problems, the next wave will be about true collaboration. The future is not about replacing humans but about amplifying them. GitHub's chief product officer, Mario Rodriguez, predicts repository intelligence: AI that understands not just lines of code but the relationships and history behind them.

By 2030, all IT work is forecast to involve AI, with CIOs predicting 75 percent will be human-AI collaboration and 25 percent fully autonomous AI tasks. A survey of over 700 CIOs indicates that by 2030, none of the IT workload will be performed solely by humans. Software engineering will be less about writing code and more about orchestrating intelligent systems. Engineers who adapt to these changes, embracing AI collaboration, focusing on design thinking, and staying curious about emerging technologies, will thrive.

The teams succeeding at this transition share common characteristics. They invest in planning artifacts before implementation begins. They maintain clear specifications that constrain AI behaviour. They structure reviews and handoffs deliberately. They recognise that AI assistants are powerful but require constant guidance.

The zig-zagging that emerges from insufficient upfront specification is not a bug in the AI but a feature of how these tools operate. They excel at generating solutions within well-defined problem spaces. They struggle when asked to infer constraints that have not been made explicit.

The architecture tax is real, and teams that refuse to pay it will find themselves trapped in cycles of generation and revision that consume more time than traditional development ever did. But teams that embrace the new planning requirements, that treat specification as engineering rather than documentation, will discover capabilities that fundamentally change what small groups of developers can accomplish.

The future of software development is not about choosing between human expertise and AI capability. It is about recognising that AI amplifies whatever approach teams bring to it. Disciplined teams with clear architectures get better results. Teams that rely on iteration and improvisation get the zig-zag.

The planning burden has shifted. The question is whether teams will rise to meet it.

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References and Sources

1. METR, “Measuring the Impact of Early-2025 AI on Experienced Open-Source Developer Productivity” (July 2025)
2. Y Combinator, reported in TechCrunch, “A Quarter of Startups in YC's Current Cohort Have Codebases That Are Almost Entirely AI-Generated” (March 2025)
3. Pete Hodgson, “Why Your AI Coding Assistant Keeps Doing It Wrong, and How To Fix It” (May 2025)
4. Thoughtworks, “Spec-driven development: Unpacking one of 2025's key new AI-assisted engineering practices” (2025)
5. GitHub Blog, “Spec-driven development with AI: Get started with a new open source toolkit” (2025)
6. Addy Osmani, “My LLM coding workflow going into 2026” (December 2025)
7. Timothy Biondollo, “How I Solved the Biggest Problem with AI Coding Assistants” (Medium, 2025)
8. HumanLayer Blog, “Writing a good CLAUDE.md” (2025)
9. Chris Swan's Weblog, “Using Architecture Decision Records (ADRs) with AI coding assistants” (July 2025)
10. Dave Patten, “Using AI Agents to Enforce Architectural Standards” (Medium, 2025)
11. Qodo, “State of AI code quality in 2025” (2025)
12. Veracode, AI Code Security Study (2025)
13. Anthropic, “Claude Code: Best practices for agentic coding” (2025)
14. Anthropic, “Effective context engineering for AI agents” (2025)
15. Cursor Documentation, “Rules for AI” (2025)
16. MIT Technology Review, “From vibe coding to context engineering: 2025 in software development” (November 2025)
17. Microsoft, “What's next in AI: 7 trends to watch in 2026” (2025)
18. IT Brief, “CIOs forecast all IT work will involve AI-human collaboration by 2030” (2025)
19. Stack Overflow, “2025 Developer Survey” (2025)
20. Red Hat Developer, “How spec-driven development improves AI coding quality” (October 2025)

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Tim Green UK-based Systems Theorist & Independent Technology Writer

Tim explores the intersections of artificial intelligence, decentralised cognition, and posthuman ethics. His work, published at smarterarticles.co.uk, challenges dominant narratives of technological progress while proposing interdisciplinary frameworks for collective intelligence and digital stewardship.

His writing has been featured on Ground News and shared by independent researchers across both academic and technological communities.

ORCID: 0009-0002-0156-9795 Email: tim@smarterarticles.co.uk

I recently started watching the new Star Trek series, Starfleet Academy, which I'm so far finding to be a very fun and unique addition to the ever-growing Trek universe. For those unfamiliar with it, it's set in the 32nd century, directly after the final season of Discovery, and it reprises some of that series' characters. I was excited to see snarky engineer Jett Reno (Tig Notaro) among the academy's faculty, and Admiral Vance (Oded Fehr) is back as Starfleet's commander-in-chief. They've also dipped back into the past and brought back The Doctor, who has added an aging subroutine to his program but is otherwise much the same wisecracking, opera-loving hologram I came to know and love on Voyager.

Starfleet Academy is a departure from past Star Trek series in a number of ways. The name is a clue to a big one: its primary focus isn't the crew of a ship or station, but cadets in the newly reopened academy. While there was some space galavanting in the first episode (and may be more in the future, since the USS Athena is on-hand as a “mobile classroom”) the second and third are set entirely on the Starfleet Academy grounds in San Francisco, making it the first Star Trek series to use Earth as its primary setting. The overall tone of the show is different from other series, too. It still has that trademark Star Trek utopian optimism, though that takes on a unique flavor in the post-burn world of the 32nd century. At this point in the timeline, the Federation is rebuiding after having been nearly destroyed during the Burn, a catastrophic event that made warp travel impossible for roughly 120 years. In Discovery and Starfleet Academy, we're seeing a humbled Federation, one that's rediscovering its purpose after a long disruption, which honestly feels like the kind of message the world needs right now: that a hopeful future is possible, even after everything seemed like it was ruined irreparably.

That's one of the things I like the most about the recent shows, though—they're all unique and have a clear point of view that's distinctive from the rest. This is a departure from the TNG/DS9/Voyager era, where the three series flowed smoothly into each other and all had a similar flavor, even if they did each have a distinctive personality. The Star Trek shows of the 2020s span nearly a millennium of in-universe time (2256-3191) and their dominant tone ranges from fairly bleak and laced with regret (Picard) to straight-up comedy (Lower Decks). 

That variety also makes it a bit tricky to compare and rank them, but I decided to give it a shot anyway. Rather than trying to compare them from a quality or “how much I like it” standpoint, I considered them from more of the craft angle, focusing on things like the worldbuilding, narrative arcs, and character development. These go hand-in-hand with a sci-fi series like Star Trek, where alien cultures are established through their interactions with the crew. It's too early to know where Starfleet Academy will fit into the list (Star Trek series have historically not risen to their best within their first 3 episodes) and there are two animated series I haven't watched (the original animated series from the '70s and Prodigy). Otherwise, here's my ranking of every Star Trek TV show thus far, from the least effective from a craft standpoint to the best. 

9. The Original Series. 

The original Star Trek does get props for being the show that started it all. It also is definitely a product of its times. Viewer expectations in the '60s were different than they are today, especially when it comes to the seriousness-level of sci-fi as a genre. 

All that being said, objectively from a modern standpoint—it's not great. It's fun, campy, entertaining, and chock full of iconic moments that have become pop culture touchstones. But the character development is light even for the core crew, with much of their emotional arcs and histories developing more in the movies than the series, and it often takes a very surface, trope-driven approach to the various alien cultures that the Enterprise encounters on its travels. There are a lot of good reasons to watch the original Star Trek, but it's not the one I'd study for worldbuilding. 

8. Enterprise

I'm something of an Enterprise apologist. There are definitely some aspects of it that make it worth watching, and many of those are unique worldbuilding details. It gives a glimpse into the earliest years of human space exploration, before the existence of universal translators, when transporter technology is still new and somewhat buggy and an away mission needs to be followed by time in a decontamination chamber. They also spend some time developing the political landscape that leads up to the creation of the Federation, and it's fun to see an intergalactic landscape where humans are still down around the bottom of the pecking order, trying to prove themselves to more established neighbors like the Andorans and Vulcans. 

Where Enterprise struggles is in pretty much every other aspect of storytelling craft. A lot of that awesome worldbuilding potential I mentioned wasn't really utilized. The plots were sometimes convoluted, sometimes felt contrived, and were often poorly paced, and a lot of the dialogue is...rough, we'll say. Enterprise ends up being one of those shows that falls into the “neat idea poorly executed” category.

7. Lower Decks

Let me start off with saying: I adore Lower Decks. It strikes the perfect balance of having new characters to fall in love with and cameos from other series to keep the show connected to the broader Trek universe. In fact, from here on up in the list, every single show is one I'd recommend pretty much anyone to watch (one of the reasons I didn't want to bother with a pure enjoyment ranking). 

Lower Decks does a lot of things right. The humor is spot on, the characters are distinctive and likeable, and the storylines are exactly the level of convoluted and absurd that you want in a sitcom set on a starship. For anybody who writes speculative humor, I'd say that Lower Decks is a must-watch. But it mostly plays in the same parts of the Trek universe as previous series, rather than expanding it further. It's certainly not bad, but it doesn't demonstrate the same degree of craft as the higher-ranking series below.

6. Picard

Tonally, Picard is the least Trek-ish of the Star Trek series. The dominant vibe of most Star Trek series is a future-looking optimism. With Picard, we see our beloved captain now retired and reckoning with his past. Some new characters and ideas are introduced, but for the most part it travels over similar terrain as the rest of the Next Gen-era series and movies that preceded it. 

What gives Picard the edge over Lower Decks is the depth of its character development, which for me is the strongest aspect of this series. Some of the fan service-ey cameos were a bit clunky, but for the most part the characters are fully realized and play off of each other beautifully over the course of the series. I would say that Picard is the best Star Trek series to study for people who write literary or character-driven speculative fiction.

5. Next Generation

Putting Next Generation near the middle of the pack might be the most controversial rating on this list, because on most lists you'll find it up in the top slot. And with good reason—it's got strong characters, great dialogue, and some of the best storytelling across sci-fi television (with the exception of a few clunker episodes, but any show that runs for 7 seasons is going to have a few duds). 

The reason I have Next Gen a bit lower is simply because it doesn't have the same depth of world and character development as the shows in the top 4 slots. While there are some narrative arcs that span multiple episodes, the early seasons especially still take predominantly an episodic format. The character development is light and sporadic until later in the series, and many of the aliens encountered are one-offs with fairly shallow, trope-based identities. It does have some shining worldbuilding moments, including some for the conlangers of the world, but it’s not as consistently deep in that regard as series higher on the list.

4. Strange New Worlds

Strange New Worlds is another spin-off series that plays with familiar characters. It's set on the Enterprise in the years before Captain Kirk takes the helm, when it's still under the command of Captain Pike. But the main thing it does differently than spin-offs like Picard or Lower Decks is that it shows the familiar crew members from a new angle. We get glimpses of Kirk as a brash young officer, see Uhura come into her own as a promising cadet, and get fresh insights into Spock's background. The most interesting twist, though, is the character of Pike. From the start of the series, he knows his career will end with him paralyzed by a terrible training accident, foreknowledge that colors all of his choices and adds another layer to his character, beyond just a reinvisioning of a figure from the past. 

Strange New Worlds is on the other end of the spectrum from Picard—I would say it's the most Trek-ish of the modern Trek series. It truly embodies the spirit of the original, but with modern storytelling conventions, better dialogue, and deeper development of both the characters and the world they inhabit. The development of the Gorn as a multi-episode villain is one particular highlight, and though they have their share of alien-of-the-week episodes, even the cultures in one-off episodes tend to be more fully realized than they were in past series. 

3. Voyager

Though it takes place in the same general timespan as Next Gen and Deep Space 9, Voyager quickly found a very on-brand way to expand the Star Trek universe beyond the places past series had already trod. In the first episode, Voyager is suddenly transported to the Delta Quadrant, 70,000 lightyears away from Earth. This immediately gives the series stakes and a sense of direction that the other shows lacked. The crew of Voyager isn't just out exploring—they're on a mission to get home. 

On top of this, the exploration of the Delta quadrant gives Voyager a lot of opportunities to discover new species. It takes full advantage of this to introduce some unique characters, like the Undine (species 8472), who come from an external dimension known as fluidic space. They also do some new things with established species, like the introduction of Borg who have been freed from the collective. Altogether, I would say it's one of the richest of the Star Trek shows from a worldbuilding perspective, and matches the other series of its era for character development and storytelling. 

2. Discovery

I know Discovery has gotten some hate, and it did have a bit of a rough start (though it's certainly not the only Star Trek series I would say that's true of). When it comes to expanding the Star Trek universe, though, it's automatically at the top of that list. It filled in a key time period of the pre-Original Series era of the core Federation: the Klingon War, an event that's referenced often but was never shown to this level of depth. While the depiction of Klingons in the series was controversial, the extensive use of the Klingon language is a definite point in the series' favor from a worldbuilding perspective. On top of that, it took an extended foray into the Mirror Universe then zoomed hundreds of years into the future, to show the viewers a completely new era of the federation. 

And then there's the spore drive. Does it completely make sense according to actual science and the laws of physics? Not really. But it's a very cool and unique idea, and I also have mad respect for the deft maneuvering to introduce such an off-the-wall technology in a prequel and adequately explain within the show why that technology is never mentioned in other series that take place in the universe's future. When it comes to alien cultures, every worldbuilder should watch the arc around Species 10C and how it explores first contact communication. I would also say that Michael Burnham's character arc is one of the most dramatic of all the Star Trek protagonists, and many secondary characters like Tilly, Saru, and Hugh get similary strong and satisfying arcs.

1. Deep Space Nine

Deep Space Nine comes very close to being the perfect sci-fi television program. It has its fun, alien-of-the-week episodes, which admittedly do often utilize a similarly shallow culture building as Nex Generation in the early seasons. What catapults DS9 up to the top slot is the fact that it's set on a stationary space station. Because of this, it spends significant time exploring the Bajoran and Cardassian conflict, then later the various cultures involved in the Dominion War. Viewers are also introduced to the Prophets, an advanced species that lives inside the wormhole to the Gamma Quadrant near Bajor. To the Bajorans, the Propets are essentially their gods, central to their theology. Past Star Trek series lightly explored religion in one-off episodes, but DS9 was the first one to explore the topic in-depth.

The rest of the craft in DS9 is as strong as its worldbuilding. Every member of the core bridge crew gets a satisfying arc over the course of the series, as do what might seem like peripheral characters, like Garak, Quark, Rom, and Jake. The dialogue is sharp, the pacing is on-point, and the finale is suitably epic for the scope of the story being told. If someone wants to study Star Trek at its best, I would say DS9 is the way to go. 

 See similar posts:

#StarTrek #Worldbuilding #SciFi #TV

There is a strange tragedy that can happen to a life when it grows up surrounded by the wrong voices. A creature can be born with strength in its bones and fire in its lungs, yet never know it, simply because it learned how to survive before it ever learned who it was. The old story about the lion raised among sheep is not just a parable about animals. It is a mirror held up to the human soul. It reveals what happens when identity is shaped more by environment than by design, more by fear than by truth, more by habit than by calling.

The lion cub did not wake up one day and decide to pretend he was a sheep. He did not choose weakness. He did not reject power. He simply grew up in a place where power was never modeled. He learned what he saw. He absorbed what he was surrounded by. He adapted to what kept him safe. Slowly, instinct was replaced by imitation. Strength was replaced by caution. Hunger was replaced by grazing. He learned to walk with his head low instead of his chest forward. He learned to move with the flock instead of leading anything. And the most dangerous thing was not that he lived like a sheep, but that it felt normal to him.

Comfort is often the greatest thief of destiny. When life feels manageable, we stop asking what we were made for. When survival becomes the goal, purpose quietly slips out the back door. The lion was not miserable. He was not in pain. He was not being attacked. He was fed. He was protected. He belonged. And yet, something inside him was asleep. There is a kind of life that feels safe but never feels true. There is a kind of peace that is really just the absence of challenge. There is a kind of happiness that is really just the numbness of untested potential.

Many people live exactly this way. They are not broken. They are not hopeless. They are not lost in some dramatic sense. They are simply underliving. They are surviving when they were meant to reign. They are blending in when they were meant to stand out. They are staying quiet when they were meant to speak. They are grazing when they were meant to roar.

We are shaped by what we grow up around. A child raised in fear learns to measure every step. A child raised in criticism learns to doubt their voice. A child raised in chaos learns to brace instead of build. A child raised without encouragement learns to keep dreams small so disappointment will hurt less. Over time, this shaping becomes identity. The mind says, “This is who I am,” when it is really saying, “This is what I learned.” The heart says, “This is all I can be,” when it is really saying, “This is all I have seen.”

The lion’s world was defined by sheep, so he assumed he was one. And when the real lion finally appeared in the valley, something happened that had never happened before. His body recognized what his mind could not yet accept. He trembled. That trembling was not fear of danger. It was fear of truth. Truth has weight. Truth disrupts. Truth does not ask permission to rearrange your self-image. It simply stands there and exposes the gap between who you have been and who you are.

The real lion did not attack him. He did not mock him. He did not shame him. He did not force him. He called him. “Hello, lion.” And the sheep-raised lion replied with the most tragic sentence in the story. “I am not a lion. I am a sheep.” That sentence is spoken every day in different forms by human beings. “I am not strong.” “I am not gifted.” “I am not chosen.” “I am not capable.” “I am not worthy.” “I am not called.” “I am just ordinary.” “I am just broken.” “I am just like everyone else.”

Identity confusion does not sound dramatic. It sounds humble. It sounds realistic. It sounds cautious. It sounds responsible. But underneath it is a denial of design. The lion was not lying when he said he was a sheep. He was describing his behavior. But behavior is not identity. What you have been doing is not necessarily what you are. How you have been living is not proof of who you were created to be. Survival patterns can mask true nature for a long time.

The real lion did not argue with him in circles. He did not lecture him. He did not debate philosophy. He took him to the river. He showed him his reflection. He let reality speak. That moment at the water was not about persuasion. It was about revelation. For the first time, the lion raised among sheep saw himself without the filter of the flock. He saw his face without their fear. He saw his body without their posture. He saw his eyes without their anxiety. He saw his form without their limitations.

In Scripture, water is always connected to truth and transformation. It is where reflection happens. It is where cleansing happens. It is where calling is revealed. The Word of God functions in the same way. It is not first a list of rules. It is a mirror. It shows you who God is, and in doing so, it shows you who you are not and who you are meant to be. It strips away the borrowed identity you picked up from pain, culture, fear, and disappointment, and it replaces it with divine design.

When the lion saw himself, something inside him woke up. It was not taught. It was not practiced. It was not rehearsed. It was remembered. Power surged through his body. Instinct rose up. Breath filled his lungs. And he roared. The sound was not learned. It was released. It had always been there. It had simply never been invited out.

The valley shook. The sheep trembled. And the lie collapsed. From that day forward, he could never live as a sheep again, because once you see truth, you cannot unsee it. Awareness changes everything. Revelation creates responsibility. Once you know who you are, you cannot pretend you do not.

This is where the story stops being a story and becomes a calling. Because spiritually, many people are lions living like sheep. They believe in God, but they do not trust Him. They read Scripture, but they do not apply it. They pray, but they do not move. They know verses about courage, but they live by habits of fear. They know verses about power, but they live by patterns of avoidance.

The Bible does not describe believers as timid creatures hiding in tall grass. It calls them children of God, heirs with Christ, temples of the Holy Spirit, more than conquerors, ambassadors, chosen, royal, set apart. These are not sheep words. These are lion words. They imply authority, purpose, movement, and responsibility.

Yet many Christians have been spiritually raised among sheep. They have been taught that faith means staying safe. They have been taught that obedience means staying small. They have been taught that humility means hiding. They have been taught that devotion means blending in. Over time, faith becomes passive instead of active. Prayer becomes private instead of powerful. Calling becomes theoretical instead of lived.

The enemy does not need to destroy your faith if he can convince you to domesticate it. He does not need to steal your salvation if he can neutralize your obedience. He does not need to silence God if he can keep you from acting on what you hear. A lion that never roars is not dangerous. A believer who never steps forward is not disruptive. A calling that stays in the heart but never reaches the hands does not change the valley.

Jesus did not come into the world to create cautious followers. He came to create witnesses. He did not say, “Stay comfortable.” He said, “Follow me.” He did not say, “Protect yourself.” He said, “Take up your cross.” He did not say, “Blend in.” He said, “Be light.” He did not say, “Hide your lamp.” He said, “Let it shine.” Every invitation of Christ is an invitation to live beyond fear. Every command of Christ assumes courage.

The sheep-raised lion always had strength. He just never exercised it. And this is the quiet tragedy of many lives. They are not empty. They are unused. They are not powerless. They are undeployed. They are not without gifts. They are without courage to use them. They are not without calling. They are without belief in it.

Roaring is risky. Roaring changes the atmosphere. Roaring announces presence. Roaring exposes difference. When the lion roared, the sheep trembled. That is not because the sheep were evil. It is because they were unprepared for authority. When you step into who God made you to be, some people will feel uncomfortable, not because you are wrong, but because your obedience highlights their avoidance.

This is why many people prefer to stay sheep. Sheep do not challenge the valley. Sheep do not disrupt routines. Sheep do not draw attention. Sheep do not require courage. Sheep survive quietly. But lions transform landscapes. Lions move things. Lions change what is possible in a place.

The Lion of the tribe of Judah is not called that by accident. It is a picture of kingship, authority, and victory. To belong to Christ is to belong to that lineage. That does not mean arrogance. It means assignment. It does not mean domination. It means responsibility. It does not mean pride. It means purpose.

The roar of the lion in the story was not about showing off. It was about alignment. His outer life finally matched his inner nature. That is what obedience does. It brings the inside and the outside into agreement. It makes your actions line up with your identity. It makes your walk reflect your calling.

Many people wait for confidence before they act, but confidence often comes after obedience. The lion did not roar because he felt powerful. He felt powerful because he roared. Movement awakens what stillness keeps asleep. Faith grows when it is used. Courage strengthens when it is practiced. Identity becomes solid when it is lived.

The valley did not change when the lion believed he was a lion. The valley changed when he acted like one. And that is the difference between inspiration and transformation. Inspiration feels good. Transformation reshapes reality. It is not enough to think differently. You must walk differently. You must speak differently. You must choose differently. You must live differently.

This story is not telling you to become something new. It is telling you to remember something true. You are not what fear taught you. You are not what trauma shaped you into. You are not what disappointment labeled you. You are not what culture reduced you to. You are what God created you to be.

When you finally look into the mirror of truth, you may feel the same trembling the lion felt. Because truth always disrupts comfort. It always challenges routine. It always exposes the gap between potential and practice. But that trembling is not a warning. It is a signal that something inside you is waking up.

God does not reveal identity to shame you. He reveals it to free you. He does not show you who you are to condemn you for who you have been. He shows you who you are so you can stop living as less.

There is a moment in every serious spiritual life when God says, “Look.” Not look at your fear. Look at your reflection. Look at what I made. Look at what I placed inside you. Look at what I called you to carry. Look at what you have been avoiding. Look at what you have been minimizing. Look at what you have been treating as ordinary when I designed it as holy.

And when you see it, you will feel a choice rise up inside you. You can go back to the flock and keep grazing, or you can step forward and roar. You can go back to comfort, or you can move into calling. You can go back to fear, or you can walk in faith. You can go back to blending in, or you can become who you were meant to be.

The lion did not stop being in the valley. He stopped being defined by it. That is the goal. Not escape. Authority. Not withdrawal. Influence. Not isolation. Transformation.

Your life is a valley. Your family is a valley. Your workplace is a valley. Your generation is a valley. And valleys do not change when sheep move through them. Valleys change when lions wake up.

This is not about personality. It is about obedience. It is not about dominance. It is about faithfulness. It is not about noise. It is about presence. It is not about proving something. It is about fulfilling something.

There is a roar inside you that does not sound like anger. It sounds like prayer. It sounds like courage. It sounds like truth. It sounds like obedience. It sounds like forgiveness. It sounds like service. It sounds like hope spoken where despair has been loud.

The valley does not need more sheep. It needs awakened lions.

And the mirror is still there.

The mirror is still there.

It waits quietly, like truth always does. It does not shout. It does not chase. It does not force. It simply reflects what is real when someone is brave enough to look. The lion did not become different at the river. He became aware. Awareness is the doorway to transformation. It is the moment when a person stops explaining their limitations and starts questioning them. It is the moment when you realize that what you assumed was your nature may only have been your training.

This is why God so often brings people to still places. Scripture shows Him meeting people at wells, by rivers, in deserts, on mountains. These are not random settings. They are places without distraction, places where reflection can happen. Noise keeps us from seeing ourselves. Routine keeps us from questioning ourselves. Discomfort is often the first mercy God uses to get our attention. The valley was quiet enough for the lion to finally hear something other than sheep. The river was still enough for him to finally see something other than habit.

Many people pray for change without ever pausing long enough to see what needs to change. They ask God for strength but avoid situations that require it. They ask God for clarity but refuse to sit still. They ask God for purpose but stay in patterns that prevent discovery. Identity is rarely revealed in crowds. It is revealed in moments of encounter.

The lion could have turned away from the water. He could have said, “This is uncomfortable.” He could have said, “I like who I am.” He could have said, “This is too much.” But curiosity opened the door that fear had kept shut. And in that reflection, the story of his life began to change direction.

That is what happens when God calls someone out of hiding. It does not always look dramatic on the outside. Often it is a quiet internal shift. A thought that says, “Maybe I am more than this.” A prayer that says, “Lord, show me who I really am.” A moment that says, “I cannot keep pretending I was made to live this small.”

From that moment on, the lion did not suddenly know how to hunt. He did not suddenly rule the valley. He did not suddenly master his world. He simply began to walk differently. His posture changed. His awareness changed. His decisions changed. He no longer took his cues from sheep. He began to learn from lions.

This is where many people stumble. They want the roar without the walk. They want the authority without the obedience. They want the courage without the discipline. But identity is learned through action. The lion became a lion by walking like one. He became strong by using strength. He became bold by stepping forward. The same is true in spiritual life. Faith that is never used stays theoretical. Courage that is never practiced stays imaginary. Purpose that is never obeyed stays hidden.

The Word of God does not just describe who you are. It trains you how to live as who you are. It does not only say, “You are chosen.” It says, “Walk worthy of your calling.” It does not only say, “You are free.” It says, “Stand firm in that freedom.” It does not only say, “You are light.” It says, “Let your light shine.” Identity always comes with instruction. Revelation always comes with responsibility.

The sheep-raised lion had learned one way of moving through the world. Now he had to unlearn it. This is one of the hardest parts of spiritual growth. You do not just add faith to your life. You remove fear. You do not just learn courage. You unlearn avoidance. You do not just receive purpose. You release excuses. Growth is not only about becoming. It is about shedding.

Many people think obedience is about doing more. Often it is about doing less of what kept you small. Less hiding. Less hesitating. Less waiting for permission. Less pretending you were not called. Less telling yourself stories about why you cannot. Less rehearsing fear in your mind.

The lion had to leave the flock. Not because the sheep were evil, but because their lifestyle no longer matched his identity. This does not mean you abandon people. It means you stop letting fear set your pace. It means you stop letting doubt shape your decisions. It means you stop letting comfort define your boundaries. It means you stop letting the smallest voice in the room determine your direction.

There is a grief that comes with awakening. The lion realized he had spent his life grazing when he could have been living. He had spent his days hiding when he could have been leading. He had spent his energy fitting in when he could have been standing out. Awareness always brings regret. But regret is not condemnation. It is a signal that growth has begun. It is proof that you now see something you did not see before.

God does not reveal your calling to make you feel guilty about your past. He reveals it to change your future. He does not show you your strength to shame you for weakness. He shows you your strength to pull you forward. He does not show you your purpose to accuse you of wasting time. He shows you your purpose so you can redeem time.

The roar of the lion did not destroy the valley. It redefined it. The sheep were not harmed. They were simply no longer in charge of the story. When a lion awakens, the environment has to adjust. When a believer begins to live in truth, the atmosphere around them changes. Fear loses its dominance. Hopelessness loses its voice. Passivity loses its authority.

This is why awakening feels threatening to systems built on comfort. A lion does not fit into a field designed for sheep. Courage does not fit into a culture built on caution. Conviction does not fit into a world built on compromise. Obedience does not fit into environments shaped by fear. When you change, the world around you has to decide whether to change with you or resist you.

Jesus warned His disciples of this. He said that light exposes darkness, not by attacking it, but by existing. A lion does not have to roar at sheep to be different. It is different by nature. In the same way, obedience does not need to argue with fear. It simply walks forward. Faith does not need to convince doubt. It simply acts.

The lion in the story did not stay at the river. He went back into the valley. But now he walked through it with awareness. He was no longer confused about who he was. He was no longer dependent on the flock for cues. He was no longer afraid of his own voice. This is the picture of mature faith. Not withdrawal from the world, but engagement with it from a place of truth.

Your valley may look like a workplace where fear sets the tone. It may look like a family where dysfunction feels normal. It may look like a church where calling has been replaced with comfort. It may look like a culture where faith is treated as private instead of powerful. It may look like a season where you have been surviving instead of serving.

God does not remove you from the valley to awaken you. He awakens you so you can walk differently in it. He does not pull you out of your environment to make you holy. He makes you holy so you can influence your environment. The goal is not escape. It is transformation.

The roar in the story was not just a sound. It was a declaration. It said, “I know who I am now.” Your roar may not be loud. It may look like a decision to forgive when bitterness felt safer. It may look like speaking truth when silence felt easier. It may look like stepping into ministry when comfort felt better. It may look like trusting God when control felt necessary. It may look like obedience in a place where no one expects it.

Every roar disrupts something. It disrupts fear. It disrupts lies. It disrupts stagnation. It disrupts the story that says, “This is how it has always been.” When the lion roared, the valley learned something new. When you live in faith, the people around you learn something new. They see a different way to live. They see courage embodied. They see hope practiced. They see obedience modeled.

The world does not need more explanations of God. It needs more demonstrations of what life looks like when God is trusted. It does not need more arguments. It needs more witnesses. It does not need more noise. It needs more presence. A lion does not convince the valley he is a lion with words. He convinces it by walking like one.

This is why Scripture repeatedly connects faith with action. Faith without works is dead, not because works save you, but because living faith moves. It changes direction. It changes posture. It changes habits. It changes priorities. It changes what you tolerate and what you pursue. A lion who never leaves the flock has not truly believed what he saw in the mirror.

The enemy’s most effective strategy is not temptation. It is identity distortion. If he can convince you that you are small, you will live small. If he can convince you that you are weak, you will avoid responsibility. If he can convince you that you are unqualified, you will never step forward. He does not need to remove your gifts. He only needs to make you doubt them.

God’s strategy is always revelation. He does not argue with lies. He exposes them with truth. He does not shame you for believing them. He shows you something better. He takes you to the river and says, “Look again.” Look at what I made. Look at what I placed inside you. Look at what I called you to carry. Look at what you have been settling for.

There is a difference between humility and denial. Humility says, “I need God.” Denial says, “I have nothing to offer.” Humility says, “I depend on grace.” Denial says, “I am insignificant.” Humility bows before God. Denial hides from calling. The lion was not being humble when he said he was a sheep. He was being unaware. And God does not awaken people so they can become proud. He awakens them so they can become useful.

The awakened lion did not go out to dominate the sheep. He went out to live according to his nature. In the same way, faith is not about overpowering others. It is about fulfilling what God designed you to be. It is not about proving something. It is about obeying something. It is not about self-glory. It is about God’s glory being visible through your life.

There is a holy dissatisfaction that comes with awakening. You can no longer be content with grazing. You can no longer be satisfied with routine. You can no longer pretend comfort is the same as peace. You begin to feel the pull of calling. You begin to sense that your life is meant to count for something more than survival. This is not restlessness. It is remembrance.

The lion did not create his roar. He released it. You do not create your calling. You respond to it. You do not invent your purpose. You uncover it. You do not manufacture courage. You practice it. You do not produce faith. You exercise it.

There will be days when the valley feels loud again. There will be days when the sheep seem safer. There will be days when grazing looks easier than hunting. Awakening is not a one-time event. It is a daily choice. Every morning you decide whether you will walk as who you are or retreat to what is familiar. Every day you choose whether you will live from fear or from faith. Every day you choose whether you will let the mirror of truth define you or the voices of the valley.

The story of the lion does not end with a throne. It ends with awareness. That is the true victory. The lion no longer needed someone else to tell him who he was. He no longer needed the flock’s approval. He no longer needed safety to feel alive. He had found alignment between his nature and his life.

That is what God desires for you. Not just belief in Him, but alignment with Him. Not just knowledge of Scripture, but embodiment of it. Not just agreement with truth, but obedience to it. Not just comfort in faith, but courage through faith.

You were never meant to live as a spiritual sheep grazing in fear. You were meant to walk as a child of God carrying light. You were never meant to hide what God placed inside you. You were meant to steward it. You were never meant to shrink your life to fit your fear. You were meant to stretch your faith to match your calling.

The mirror is still there. The river is still flowing. The truth is still waiting.

Look again.

Not at your failures. Not at your past. Not at your fear.

Look at what God made.

Then walk like it. Speak like it. Pray like it. Live like it.

The valley does not need another sheep. It needs an awakened lion.

And God is still in the business of waking them up.

Watch Douglas Vandergraph’s inspiring faith-based videos on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@douglasvandergraph

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Your friend, Douglas Vandergraph

#FaithOverFear #CalledNotComfortable #ChristianMotivation #SpiritualAwakening #WalkInPurpose #LionOfJudah #BiblicalEncouragement #FaithInAction #ChristianInspiration #HopeInChrist

In Summary: * Nearly halftime of the Rams – Seahawks game and the Rams are leading 13 to 10. Most noteworthy today is how San Antonio missed the brunt of this big Winter Storm that's complicating so much of the country. We've had some icing, but what the local weather guys are making a big deal about is the cold. Really? Tonight into Monday morning we may dip down to 18 degrees, and the same thing Monday night into Tuesday morning. But both days will see us up into the 30s. Huh. That's not so bad.

Prayers, etc.: *I have a daily prayer regimen I try to follow throughout the day from early morning, as soon as I roll out of bed, until head hits pillow at night. Details of that regimen are linked to my link tree, which is linked to my profile page here.

Health Metrics: * bw= 224.87 lbs. * bp= 145/88 (65)

Exercise: * morning stretches, balance exercises, kegel pelvic floor exercises, half squats, calf raises, wall push-ups

Diet: * 07:00 – 1 HEB Bakery cookie * 08:00 – 1 ham sandwich, 1 banana, 1 HEB Bakery cookie * 10:30 – magic purple yam dessert * 11:40 – 1 more ham sandwich * 17:45 – fried vegetable patties

Activities, Chores, etc.: * 06:45 – bank accounts activity monitored * 07:10 – read, pray, follow news reports from various sources, surf the socials * 10:00 – tuned into the B97 – The Home for IU Women's Basketball, hoping to hear the Pregame Show then the call of this game between the Indiana University Women's Basketball Team and the Purdue University Boilermakers. * 10:30 – charged car battery jump start charger up to full * 14:20 – started the wife's car and let it run for a few minutes to make sure it'll start for her tomorrow morning * 15:00 – watching the NFL on CBS, Patriots vs Broncos, the game in progress, near the end of the 2nd Quarter * 17:10 – after the Patriots win, I've switched over to FOX to watch the Seahawks / Rams game.

Chess: * 11:20 – moved in all pending CC games

I know many people who use social media only to follow businesses they care about, so that they can hear about specials, promotions, events, and changes to hours. It's true that some businesses don't update their website or provide a newsletter, so I can understand the appeal of using social media to follow them. The situation seems to be getting better, though, with more and more businesses maintaining a healthy online presence outside of the big, centralized social platforms.

I don't want to be too cynical, but using social media for this purpose does seem like opt-in advertising on some level. It's too bad that many with these users will also be manipulated into liking, commenting, buying, sharing, following, radicalizing, and you know, dismantling democracy.

#Life #SocialMedia #Tech

another week cycle is nearing its end. It’s too cold for crocs outside, where the half moon stands pale and alone on a dark blue sky. The white ground is covered by hard-packed snow. Slippery like a sprung trap.

Because of my fitness class, where I arrived last minute to grab the last step board — there weren’t any spots left, except at the very front where you see the instructor only from the side; ”it doesn’t matter”, I said, ”I’m so good at this” — I got a mild headache. There wasn’t any time to fill my bottle.

And I have done some laundry

Some things I am thinking about is that my brain and my feelings have been running out of sync for a long time. Either I realise that I should be angry, instead I have a guilty conscience. Other times I feel strong reactions in my gut long before my brain understands why.

It’s exactly like in Neon Genesis Evangelion: an Eva pilot might face smilar synchronisation problems when running the Eva Unit! Sometimes the pilot is even rejected.

It’s exactly like this right now.

But that’s just how it is.

I’ll try to feel a bit sorry for myself now.

I think I have too much going for me to succeed.

I’m the luckiest man I know!

Our Father Who art in heaven Hallowed be Thy name Thy Kingdom come Thy will be done on Earth as it is in heaven Give us this day our daily Bread And forgive us our trespasses As we forgive those who trespass against us And lead us not into temptation But deliver us from evil

Amen

Jesus is Lord! Come Lord Jesus!

Come Lord Jesus! Christ is Lord!

Spring (Quispamsis)

Meenan’s forward seeing rates of high heaven and Celtic run, Lazarus’ key to upper those believe, in the bounty of constant rain, muzzled by the 1 and groom, all shocks landing Atlantic sky, a better weapon than ICBM, a standing army fit for good, and days of rice to tell the tale, what suffer for- the truth is scoundrel, women join the Western sky, and boats dotting the velvet verse, to pray in Christ for Eucharist and Holy fever everywhere, a dam would burst in general time, as word and worm are here and there, to shoes for more than them and her, classes of being for shores that give, I am a starburst; I am you, and we not are need of a data design, upon this day and upper lip, a Hampton journey tempered- to cc and back, across the fields, to what was salt and see, power of attorney in the middle of night, for mercy on farms and h11, the gladdest gift of Indigenous time, people posthumously known as saints, in something St. Bernard would wait, for American days of 59 below, and Sussex breaks for understanding, all glory but Him, we are prostrate and proud, but mercy not known til March and esteem, men of high office who would stand in for God, to death is this unto great common, vapour and value to modest renew, in May there are fonts of four and more, underknowing to Grand Ile but praying, for water in course to become us, and bluster, and pay, to march and forswear on the Navy, and blue in time for Iran that is small, whose temper is witching and rough, Save the Queen, save the raindrop and orca scare for North landing, and June in time for Sparrow’s worth dawn, and No place beyond Quispamsis is quiet forswear- building fort and dawn and pleasing the East but forswearing the sat craze of balmy dew; striking man and the dirge of the old in ovation, restless dew in an island of few and seeking what style but November, we are solid our walk and pretend our esteem, and King’s Landing pro-bono in bond to our knees.

In Awareness They Are

And sollow to the pen And this speaking heir A tiny they and slander For what knows of Women Upon them chances, poem In things begot like beatings and solemn lacrymation Solid ten and Winter Because we pray at length and run this day- to the origin of bees Pretend thy bloodspan is ⛽️ and abattoir Prehearsing the upstanding jeer Phones to be a pull at the card Unelected and we knew- was the solid plan of who must have died- a long time ago For new and hatched This Appalachianest day For storing days of days and data Unprobably dead, working tales A prayer to know this massive win Apostasy of chancing uprightful and year A wait for the reunion And what might be real to fortunes tomorrow But fulsome disk and knowlet shine In courses due of Sam and printer Looking back the other, timing strength- For images and example The wine is here and do not go…

#fiction #movie

Warning: Contains spoilers

Hamnet is a Shakespeare movie, except it is not actually about Shakespeare. Sure, William Shakespeare (played by Paul Mescal) features, but a bit like Leonardo DiCaprio’s Bob Ferguson in One Battle After Another, he is neither its central character nor commands the majority of screentime. According to my local cinema’s blurb, Hamnet concerns ‘the healing power of art and creativity’. That is not untrue insofar as the movie culminates in a performance of Hamlet, which the movie portrays as Shakespeare’s means of processing his son’s death. Yet to interpret the movie by its finale alone seems to me to deny the centrality of Anne ‘Agnes’ Hathaway (played by Jessie Buckley), and her embodiment of the universal grief over the loss of those who die before their time.

Hamnet’s unflinching portrayal of visceral sorrow has ignited a debate among critics on whether the movie emotionally manipulates its audience to the extent that it could be considered ‘grief porn’. This is a surprising argument to me. Objecting that a movie about the death of a child centres grief feels like objecting that a Marvel movie contains superheroes and mediocre CGI. Rather than fault a movie for our discomfort, it is worth considering if it is not our cultural inhibitions around emotions that is to blame.

None of this matters yet at the beginning of Hamnet, when Agnes and William are just falling in love. Each in their own way, they are both outsiders. Like her hawk, Agnes is a forest creature, representative of a fading medieval tradition of herbalism and (witch)craft. Will is an aspiring poet by night, impoverished Latin teacher by day, who, as the audience knows, will become one of the foremost incarnations of the early modern period that is set to eclipse medieval norms and customers. We are witness to a transition where the rooted magic of plants and place will give way to the illusory magic of show and spectacle. And a transition that, it should be noted, was often carried out by violence against people like Agnes who stood accused of witchcraft.

Agnes’ second pregnancy symbolises this traumatic rupture with the Old Ways when she is forcefully denied giving birth in the forest and instead made to deliver at home – though a birthing stool is still more sensible than the methods 'modern’ science would inflict on future generations of women. Compounding Agnes’ distress is the sudden realisation that she is giving birth to twins, despite premonitions that she will be survived by only two children. From that moment, she is quietly convinced that her unexpected second daughter will pass before her time.

For a time though, things are go well for the Shakespeares, although Will is mostly absent from both his family and the screen, building his career as a playwright in faraway London, leaving it to Agnes and William’s extended family to care for their children. Their domestic life is beautifully captured by director Chloé Zhao and cinematographer Łukasz Żal, conveying a moderate yet not impoverished existence that feels plausible, which reminded me of similar scenes in 2023’s Znachor – despite the latter being set four centuries later.

Yet in the end, misfortune strikes as plague sweeps the land, afflicting first Judith but ultimately killing Hamnet instead. Buckley’s portrayal of Agnes’ grief over Hamnet’s death is raw and visceral, as is her depiction of Agnes’ subsequent bitterness at the absence of her husband, whose sorrow is more restrained and distant. This is where the debate over Hamnet’s emotional interaction with its audience, and its reliance on tropes of feminine and masculine ways of expressing grief comes most to the fore.

It is undeniably true that Hamnet seeks an emotional response from its audience, and that the death of a child is not exactly a subtle way to extract this. Some critics contend that this in and of itself invalidates any appeal the movie might make to our emotions. Viz. the BBC:

But as most of us already know that the death of a child is devastating, they seem more exploitative than insightful.

This is an odd line of argument. Most of us also already know that guns kill people, yet there is no shortage of movies containing copious amounts of gun violence. An entire franchise has been built on the premise that a man going on an intercontinental murderous rampage is a reasonable response to him losing his dog.

Rather than attributing our discomfort to Hamnet’s portrayal of tragedy, I wonder if it does not instead originate with our societal and cultural inhibitions on grief and mourning. The welcome triumphs of modern medicine over a host of lethal ailments are undeniable, but also seem to have engendered a collective need to disavow infirmity, illness and death altogether. Our desire to believe that science now holds the cure for any ailment, possibly driven by capitalist imperatives to forever be productive, means we must banish from sight any signs to the contrary. Hamnet is a timely reminder of our not-so-distant past when death was a more familiar companion.

For while Hamnet’s lure is that we are witnessing a grief that is special, its power lies in showing that it is universal. In the end, I’m not particularly invested in whether Hamlet really was Shakespeare’s way of processing his grief over Hamnet’s death. The movie posits rather than demonstrates the connection, and it makes for a satisfying and moving finale, but the story leading up to that point does not require it. Instead, the most poignant scene for me is a rather understated exchange between Susanna and Shakespeare’s mother Mary (played by Emily Watson), where we learn that she, too, has lost some of her children.

Here is universal, intergenerational sorrow. The silent pain, both individual and collective, over the loss of children taken before their time. Of generations of women dying in childbirth. Of brothers and sisters succumbing to mysterious plagues and diseases, chance infections or simple misfortune. Of family and friends taken by and natural calamity.

In The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction Ursula K. Le Guin persuasively argues there is an alternative mode of telling our stories and histories: the story of life, of the bag that carries home the food or medicine, the shelter that is home or community. Despite the centrality of death, Hamnet is what Le Guin would call a ‘life story’. A story about grief, and how we heal from it through community (as we saw in Small Acts of Love).

And it is a story about rage. Le Guin’s carrier bag is also a medicine bundle, representing human efforts throughout the ages to heal, to prevent suffering, or to ease pain where no cure was available. Grieving loss can transform into fury against uncaring gods or the vast universe for whom the death of our loved ones pales beyond insignificance, fueling resolve to spare future generations the same fate. Where these efforts are frustrated not by the impersonal obstacles of nature, but by human forces who seek to prevent or even negate our collective capabilities to prevent suffering, rage is surely the justified response.

At its best, Hamnet reminds us that while grief over the passing of those we love is an inseparable part of what it means to be alive, so is the ability to overcome it through connection, community and love. Rather than denying our mortality and its attendant sorrows by hiding its manifold expressions from our view, we must learn how collectively give them space and process them. Yet where our pain results not from blind, impersonal chance, but the choices of those who hold power over us, we must also resolve to do what we can to spare others from the same fate. To adapt the famous last words of Joe Hill: first mourn, but then organise.

Notes & Suggestions

• To contribute to efforts to provide care and minimise suffering right now, consider supporting Medecins Sans Frontieres, the International Committee of the Red Cross, or similar organisations.
• Joe Hill’s original, oft-quoted exhortation is of course “Don’t mourn – organise!”. However, as we saw in Hannah Proctor’s Burnout, refusing to mourn our losses impairs our ability to organise over the long run.
• Collective action through a union, tenants or neighbourhood organisation, political party, or other campaigning organisation can be a powerful antidote to grief or anxiety.

There are some things that Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, has done right. (Right means that I agree with it. If you disagree with it, then it would be wrong, right?) I would not have known about these HOA updates if it weren’t for Deborah Goonan’s website, Independent American Communities.

According to HB 1203:

The bill prohibits homeowners’ associations from issuing a fine or suspension for:

·     Leaving garbage receptacles at the curb or end of the driveway less than 24 hours before or after the designated garbage collection day or time.

·     Leaving holiday decorations or lights up longer than indicated in the governing documents, unless such decorations or lights are left up for longer than one week after the association provides written notice of the violation to the parcel owner.

The bill also provides that homeowners’ associations may not prohibit a homeowner or others from parking:

·     A personal vehicle, including a pickup truck, in the property owner’s driveway or in any other area where they have a right to park.

·     A work vehicle, which is not a commercial motor vehicle, in the property owner’s driveway.

·     Their assigned first responder vehicle on public roads or rights-of-way within the homeowners’ association.

These were some of the things listed in this lightweight bill. Not enough for real change. But enough to look like Floridian homeowners’ cries are being addressed.

We don’t need HOAs using our own money to punish us while applying the rules and consequences arbitrarily throughout the neighborhood. But it isn’t like Florida is known for good politics for the people…well, maybe some people…

Het gebrek aan spreekplicht voor beroepsgeheimplichtigen bij (seksueel) geweld op minderjarigen heeft tastbare gevolgen op het terrein. De parlementaire onderzoekscommissie “slachtoffers” uit 2023 stelde vast dat er “te veel dossiers {zijn} waarin werd gezwegen en niks gedaan werd”.

Het spreekrecht wordt op het terrein uit onmacht ten aanzien van het schuldig verzuim van de procureurs ingevuld als omerta rond kindermishandeling. Meer daarover in een toekomstig artikel.

Ter herinnering

Artikel 458 bis van het strafwetboek had er reeds een lange weg opzitten toen in 2020 het “wetsvoorstel tot wijziging van het Strafwetboek wat betreft de aangifteplicht van bepaalde misdrijven gepleegd op minderjarigen of kwetsbare personen” bij hoogdringendheid aan het parlement werd voorgesteld.

Het parlement heeft het voorstel tot hoogdringende behandeling toen weg gestemd op 15/10/2020 … omdat het een uiterst belangrijke aangelegenheid werd bevonden door de kamerleden die de noodzaak van een grondige behandeling in de commissie justitie bevestigden.

Valerie Van Peel (N-VA): “Hoe belangrijk is het dat wij de discussie nu beginnen en niet pas over een half jaar? Ik denk dat dat voor de hand ligt. Bij de verstrenging die voorligt, moeten de kinderen die we de vorige keer echt zijn vergeten – dat hebben de cijfers jammer genoeg duidelijk gemaakt –, onze eerste prioriteit zijn.”

Servais Verherstraeten (CD&V): “Een uiterst belangrijk voorstel dat een behandeling in de commissie voor Justitie verdient”

De Voorzitster: “Ik stel voor dat de fractievoorzitters zich over dit verzoek uitspreken.”

Stemden voor: Peter De Roover (NV-A); Barbara Pas (VB); Raoul Hedebouw (PVDA-PTB)

Stemden tegen: Servais Verherstraeten (CD&V); Benoît Piedboeuf (MR); Maggie De Block (Open Vld / Anders); Gilles Vanden Burre (Ecolo-Groen); Ahmed Laaouej (PS); Melissa Depraetere (Vooruit)

De urgentie wordt verworpen

De rest van de legislatuur werd er niks verder ondernomen, de CD&V had haar slag thuis gehaald en de omerta kon verder zijn gang gaan. Tot …

de POC slachtoffers van 2024

In de laatste sprint, vier jaar later, net voor het einde van de legislatuur, dook plots in het verslag van de “parlementaire onderzoekscommissie belast met het onderzoek naar de aanpak van seksueel misbruik, in de Kerk en daarbuiten, met inbegrip van de gerechtelijke behandeling, en de gevolgen op vandaag voor slachtoffers en samenleving” op 03/05/2024 een aanbeveling 90 op:

1. De federale regering dient de nodige initiatieven te nemen, zoals het onderzoeken van de mogelijkheid om het spreekrecht in artikel 458bis Strafwetboek (artikel 356 nieuw Strafwetboek) te vervangen door een spreekverplichting wanneer een minderjarige of kwetsbare persoon slachtoffer is of dreigt te worden van zeer ernstige misdrijven, zoals seksueel geweld. Rekening houdend met de bezorgdheden vanuit de praktijk, zou daarbij kunnen worden ingezet op een verplicht multidisciplinair casusoverleg tussen politie, justitie en hulpverlening ter bevordering van de informatiedeling. Daarnaast moet ook gewezen worden op het schuldig verzuim uit artikel 422bis Strafwetboek (artikel 300 en volgende nieuwe Strafwetboek) dat in bepaalde situaties ook tot een spreekverplichting leidt.

Slachtoffers vroegen in hun getuigenissen om beroepsgeheimplichtigen te verplichten aangifte te doen van seksueel geweld op minderjarigen, zoals ook internationale instrumenten België daartoe verplichten.

een “nieuw” wetsvoorstel

Pas weer een jaar later, 11/03/2025, wordt werk gemaakt van een nieuw “wetsvoorstel tot wijziging van het Strafwetboek voor wat betreft de aangifteplicht van bepaalde misdrijven gepleegd op minderjarigen of kwetsbare personen.”

de beroepsgeheimplichtige torpedo

Beroepsgeheimplichtigen steigeren, en komen op initiatief van de “Ligue Bruxelloise Francophone pour la Santé Mentale” (Franstalige Brusselse Liga voor Geestelijke Gezondheid) samen in een open brief op 28/04/2025, die werd aangepast op 28/05/2025, waarin zij eisen dat hun beroepsgeheim blijft bestaan. Geen meldingsplicht van seksueel geweld op minderjarigen aub !

De waslijst aan aangewende misplaatste excuses is een walgelijke spiegel van het omerta fenomeen waar seksueel misbruik op minderjarigen tot op vandaag systemisch aan onderhevig is in onze maatschappij. De boodschap van de hulpverleners is duidelijk: zwijg en onderga, wij niet-slachtoffers weten het beter.

Een week voordat het parlement het wetsvoorstel zou beginnen behandelen, barst de hel los in de pers. De belangen van de beroepsgeheimplichtigen worden gehuld in een vermeend belang te zwijgen bij (seksueel) geweld op minderjarigen.

de toekomst van het wetsvoorstel ?

Het parlement moet voor zulks door henzelf belangrijk en dringend bevonden onderwerp toch tonen dat ze iets doet.

De commissie justitie startte de werkzaamheden rond het wetsvoorstel op 24/06/2025, 5 jaar nadat het parlement vond dat het een “uiterst belangrijk voorstel dat een behandeling in de commissie voor Justitie verdient” en dankzij de CD&V naar de Griekse kalender verwezen werd.

De week erop, op 01/07/2025 bij de regeling van de werkzaamheden in de commissie wordt gedurende 15 minuten beslist tot hoorzittingen en schriftelijke adviezen. Er wordt gevraagd om namen aan het secretariaat door te geven, en men zou kijken wie al of niet beschikbaar zou zijn voor advies. De spanningen tussen politieke fracties wordt duidelijk voor wie tussen de lijnen kan lezen.

De uiteindelijke lijst van adviezen die het parlement zou solliciteren werd opgevraagd, en door het secretariaat van de commissie geweigerd. Geen publieke participatie (pottenkijkers in de ogen van het parlement) aub !

Hoorzittingen

Op 23/09/2025 werden gehoord:

• Nicolaas Vinckier, vertegenwoordiger van de Orde van Vlaamse Balies;
• Jean-Noël Bastenière, vertegenwoordiger van avocats.be;
• Patricia Innaurato en Isabelle Soenen, vertegenwoordigers van het College van de hoven en rechtbanken;
• Tom Goffin, professor aan de UGent;
• Benoît Dejemeppe, voorzitter, en Michel Deneyer, vice-voorzitter van de Orde der artsen;
• Tim Stroobants, directeur van het Vlaams Expertisecentrum Kindermishandeling.

Op 30/09/2025 werden gehoord:

• Christelle Trifaux en Valérie Devis, vertegenwoordigsters van de “Conseil Communautaire de la Prévention, de l'Aide à la Jeunesse et de la Protection de la Jeunesse”;
• Solayman Laqdim, “Délégué général aux droits de l’enfant”;
• Caroline Vrijens, Kinderrechtencommissaris;
• Isabelle Gilain, vertegenwoordigster van “SOS Enfants”;
• Céline Nieuwenhuys, secretaris-generaal van de “Fédération des Services Sociaux”.

De commissie wordt in deze hoorzittingen een bijna unaniem schaamteloos “experten” pleidooi voorgeschoteld ten voordele van de omerta. Nergens is het “te veel dossiers waarin werd gezwegen en niks gedaan werd” waarmee het wetsvoorstel werd ingediend te bespeuren. De experten zullen het wel beter weten …

Tijdens de hoorzittingen halen de experten tal van rechten door elkaar, en wordt een ware omerta mayonnaise, zonder dewelke de friet niet Belgisch is, geserveerd. De rechten en angsten van vrouwen en hulpverleners staan centraal. Het belang van misbruikte kinderen en slachtoffers is duidelijk ondergeschikt aan die van de volwassenen praxis.

Wat sinds dien?

Sinds deze hoorzittingen is het volstrekt stil, en blijven nieuwe gevallen van misbruik voortschrijdend verder gaan. Nu spreken schaakmat staat in functie van de “professionals”, is er weinig tot geen reden voor het parlement om iets aan de omerta te doen, tot … de volgende woede uitbarsting van het volk het probleem nogmaals op de agenda plaatst, om zoals gebruikelijk evensnel weer te verdwijnen.

Nochtans, Koen Geens over het onderwerp:

“Dat hoeft niet klikken te heten. Dat hoeft zorgen voor anderen te zijn. De angst dat wanneer men klikt het onmiddellijk gepenaliseerd wordt is natuurlijk een van de grote redenen waarom het ook niet gebeurt in veel gevallen.”

“later, wanneer een kreupele oude man met een rollator naar de beklaagde bank klimt, en men zegt hij is nog toerekeningsvatbaar… Dat is wat wij doen. Met overtuiging. En met verwijt. Vooral aan de anderen.”

De verplichte aanpak

De aanpak van de oorsprong van het probleem is nochtans de eenvoud zelve:

• spreekplicht voor alle beroepsgeheimplichtigen, en dus voor iedereen in de samenleving zonder “beroepsverschuiling”;
• bescherming en ondersteuning van slachtoffers en hulpverleners;
• persoonlijke verantwoordelijkheid voor schuldig verzuim, in bijzonder voor schuldig verzuim uitgaande van (de almacht van) procureurs.

Deze drie samen zijn essentieel. Over deze verplichtingen van de Staat wordt van zodra wij daar tijd voor kunnen vrijmaken gepubliceerd.

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alle informatie op deze site, zoals maar niet beperkt tot documenten en/of audio-opnames en/of video-opnames en/of foto's, is gemaakt en/of verzameld en gepubliceerd in het belang van gerechtigheid, samenleving en het Universele Recht op Waarheid

children for status is een onafhankelijk collectief dat schuldig verzuim door de Staat ten aanzien van seksueel geweld op minderjarigen en kinderhandel oplossingsgericht documenteert en aanklaagt

To recap, in my neighborhood, we used to pay $50 per month for CDD fees and also $50 per month for HOA fees. As of January 2026, the HOA fees are $103 per month. There are 717 homes here.

• 717 x $103/month = Holy shit! We’re rich!

Back when I attended that one meeting, I learned that only 40% of the homeowners in the community paid the HOA fees (and this was before the neighborhood was complete). OMG! How did we survive in this community? And what became of the people who were not paying their fees?

When you close on your home, you also get your 150-page HOA document and you become part of a club…or maybe it is a gang. Usually when you join a club/gang, it is to reap benefits for yourself by having a large entity fight on your behalf for the things you want and need. Think workers unions. Alternatively, you could join a club-gang in order to boost your self esteem and have the backing of others to hate on a bully other people who you deem lesser than yourself. Think of the KKK. But do you ever envision yourself joining a clubgang that you pay into that will fight you?

Everything is dandy while you are part of the in group:

• You have a nice lawn that you run your water bill up with and poison the earth with chemicals.
• You attend the neighborhood holiday events accepting Jello shots from strangers who could poison you or maybe they have cats on the kitchen counter.
• You workout in the gym, wiping down the equipment and leaving things neat and orderly.
• You shower, then swim in the pool and don’t leave condoms and diapers in or around the jacuzzi.
• You roll your neighbors garbage bins from out the street where the trash collector dropped them two feet from the curb.
• You walk around the neighborhood, smiling at suspected serial killers and people who would live somewhere “nicer” and more homogeneous if they could.

And then you run into a snag, or two snags, or threes snags, or continuous snags in your life and you turn into enemy of the State, I mean, HOA. Your HOA is not your advocate nor your friend even when they declare in an e-mail:

The board is not above nor below the community we are one.

They can and will use their resources, I mean your resources, to fight against you.