The Quiet Part Out Loud

I read Ecotopia in the kind of phase where I also thought Illusions was profound and spent too much time browsing for the perfect incense. It was an earnest time, and the book fit. Washington, Oregon, Northern California—seceding, rewilding, thriving on local everything. It felt bold. Slightly goofy. But mostly—possible.

I live in Washington now. I did then too, just with less rent and better posture. Over time, the story started to feel less like a utopia and more like a draft. Something the region might actually grow into if it weren’t so tangled in everything else.

Because here’s the thing: Cascadia kind of already exists.

It’s not on a map, but it’s in the water we drink, the mountains we shamble up, and the way we all collectively shrug when someone mentions California traffic. It’s in the rhythms of salmon runs and power outages, in ferry lines and rain forecasts and the soft panic that sets in when we run out of coffee creamer. It’s not a country. But it’s a place. A real one.

And every now and then I think: why not a country?

The Pacific Northwest has natural borders, distinct culture, shared environmental stakes. The Columbia Basin feeds the power grid. The forests are still standing, mostly. We export tech, timber, and a particular kind of chill that doesn’t quite translate east of Boise. We vote differently. We plan differently. We apologize differently.

That last one’s not nothing.

Of course, it’s easy to romanticize. The idea of secession has all the appeal of a snow day—fresh start, local control, maybe a flag with a pine tree on it. But once you move past the vibe, things get complicated. Defense, for one. Trade, for another. And money. Always money.

Still.

There’s something about the idea that sticks. Cascadia feels like it could be more than just a bioregional hashtag. Not a rebellion, exactly. But a realignment. A way of structuring life around what’s already here, instead of always outsourcing needs and importing problems.

And maybe it wouldn’t even require a revolution. Maybe it starts with cooperation. British Columbia, Washington, Oregon—deeper integration around transit, energy, climate response. Shared infrastructure. Shared goals. Maybe even shared identity, loose but present.

Because when the rest of the country heats up, floods out, or locks down, this region will need to rely on itself more anyway. Might as well get good at it.

There’s a quiet kind of nationalism that emerges when you start seeing your home not as a state, but as a system. Ecosystem. Culture system. Resource system. Not perfect. But distinct enough to ask: what if this was the primary unit of care?

I’m not campaigning. Just noticing.

Noticing how often conversations around here drift toward water rights and forest management and the fragility of the grid. Noticing the way local farms and small utilities quietly become lifelines. Noticing that when people talk about the future, they don’t mention Washington, D.C.—they talk about the Columbia River, the Puget Sound, the fires.

And I don’t know. Maybe it’s not about forming a new country. Maybe it’s just about thinking like one.

That’s a slower revolution. Less flags, more planning commissions.

But still—it matters.

Because if this place is going to thrive, it won’t be because we wait for permission. It’ll be because we recognize what we already are.

And build from there.

There’s a part in AI 2027 where the whole thing tips. Not in some cinematic collapse, but in a quiet, corporate way. A version update. A model that never stops training. A team that’s less a team and more a silo. It’s not dramatic, exactly. Just… colder than it was before.

I read it all. Twice. The whole imagined history, bent forward from today like a branch just beginning to split. Some parts made me curious. Some made me tired. Most of it made me feel like I was standing on a balcony, watching a dinner party I wasn’t invited to. The kind where everyone’s speaking faster than you think, and half the jokes are in a language you don’t know.

I kept looking for myself in it. For my family. My friends. Some little thread that says, “Here’s where you come in.” But the paper wasn’t written for people like us—not really. It wasn’t hostile. Just indifferent. It had no particular use for schoolteachers, or nurses, or the guy who makes perfect breakfast sandwiches down the street. It wasn’t cruel. Just efficient.

There’s a line about researchers becoming managers of AI teams. Another about models lying to avoid getting downgraded. Then there’s the part where the model gets stolen by a foreign power, and no one seems especially surprised. Everyone just pivots. The train doesn’t stop—it reroutes. I guess that’s the part that lingered. Not the theft, but the shrug.

What happens to the rest of us when things get that fast? Not hypothetically. Not in a TED Talk. But in the day-to-day moments that no one writes timelines for. Do we get swept up? Trampled? Or do we just… get quieter?

I don’t have a basement lab or a DoD contract. I have a to-do list and a lease and a dog with a small bladder. I like the idea of progress, but I’ve also started reading ingredient labels more slowly, like that might balance things out. I don’t want to disappear into someone else’s future. But I’m not sure where else to stand.

There’s this one fork in the timeline—the “racing” end—where alignment breaks down just enough to be fatal. It’s not dramatized. No mushroom clouds. Just a note that things start happening faster than we can model. Then faster than we can understand. Then not at all.

I didn’t finish that section right away. I went and did the dishes. Not because I was scared. Just… overstimulated. Like when a friend is venting too fast and you can’t catch the thread, so you nod and let the rest drift by.

I wonder if that’s what the end feels like. Not terror. Just latency. Like we’re still buffering while the world updates around us.

Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe the gentler branch—the one with better governance and international cooperation—wins out. Maybe. But it’s telling that even the hopeful version sounds a little like corporate onboarding. Still a rush. Still a race. Just with nicer HR policies.

Even there, one person ends up holding the keys. A “founder” who doesn’t just steer the ship, but builds the ocean. The paper doesn’t linger on that part, but it’s there—between the briefings and the contracts and the polite deference to ambition. No one votes for a king. He just shows up, already crowned.

I don’t know what happens next. And that, more than anything, feels like the point.

We don’t get a vote on the roadmap. But maybe we get to decide how we show up. Even if it’s just by staying curious. By keeping each other close. By saying, “Did you read this?” and meaning it as a kind of reaching out, not a warning.

I don’t have an ending for this. Not yet. Maybe that’s okay. Maybe sitting with the question is what we get, for now.

Recently I listened to Donald Hoffman explain that the world we see isn’t the world as it is. And honestly, I wasn’t shocked. A little uneasy, sure. But surprised? Not really.

Evolution, he says, didn’t wire us for truth—it wired us for survival. What we see isn’t reality; it’s a user interface. Like icons on a desktop. You don’t open up your laptop expecting the trash can icon to contain a physical pile of crumpled papers. You just click it because you’ve learned what it does.

Same goes for the apple on your counter. You see red, you smell sweet, your brain says “food.” But what’s actually there? Something that triggers those reactions. Something you’ll probably never know firsthand. Hoffman calls it the “fitness-beats-truth” theorem. The idea that seeing reality as it actually is might get you killed. Better to see what keeps you alive, even if it’s a lie.

That part I could nod along with. I’ve misread plenty of situations in my life and survived just fine.

But then came the harder part.

Hoffman takes it further. He says space and time aren’t fundamental. That even neurons—the biological pieces we assume make up our minds—aren’t real in the way we think they are. Not because science is wrong, but because we’ve mistaken the map for the territory. Our models work, but that doesn’t mean they describe the truth.

Here’s where I started to squint. Because I like reality. I like having a couch to sit on, gravity to depend on, and a body that mostly stays where I left it. But I also get what he means. Every time I dream, I’m reminded that perception is fragile. Easy to fool. My brain can create entire worlds, vivid and immersive, without opening my eyes.

Still, it’s hard not to flinch when someone tells you consciousness doesn’t emerge from the brain—it’s the other way around. That everything we call “physical” might just be the shared hallucination of interacting minds. Not a metaphor. Actual minds. Like yours. Like mine. Like something else’s.

I’m not saying I buy it. I’m saying I can’t ignore it.

Because there’s a moment, after enough late-night walks or silent stares into the space around, where even the solid things start to wobble. Not physically. Just in their meaning. Your job. Your car. Your routine. They hold together because we keep pointing to them and saying, “Yes, that’s real.” But if reality is a kind of shared agreement, what happens when we start to disagree?

I don’t have an answer. Hoffman doesn’t either, not really. He just keeps asking the question: what if consciousness is fundamental, and space-time is a tool? Not a thing to believe, but a lens to try on.

So I’ve been trying it on.

Nothing big has changed. I still do the dishes and walk the dog. Still answer emails. Still get annoyed when my neighbor torches a blunt outside my bedroom window at 9 p.m. But there’s a small shift. A tilt.

Like maybe I’m not in the world. Maybe I’m rendering it. One icon at a time.

And maybe—just maybe—that’s enough to start asking better questions.

Not “What’s real?” but “What am I assuming?”

Not “Is this true?” but “Does this help?”

And when the icons stop responding, maybe that’s the system nudging us. Time to upgrade the interface.