The Bubble and the Machine: How Lucifer Inflates and Ahriman Harvests III

3. The Collapse as Opportunity (Ahriman at Work)

• The more inflated the bubble, the more catastrophic the collapse.
• Ahriman needs this collapse, because it’s the moment when people will trade freedom for order.
• Digital Central Bank Currencies (CBDCs), biometric IDs, AI-driven social credit systems: "We can’t afford another collapse—let us manage every transaction and movement."
• The collapse will also justify mass consolidation: small businesses, local farms, even independent thought get swallowed by the “too big to fail” entities.

Ahrimanic signature: mechanized security and control, justified by fear.

If Lucifer’s role is to inflate illusions, Ahriman’s role is to wait for their collapse. He does not rush. He is patient because he knows that the more inflated the bubble becomes, the more total the despair will be when it bursts. And in that despair, humanity will accept almost anything that promises security and order.

The tightening grip

When the collapse comes, it will not be gentle. Markets will seize, governments will panic, and people—accustomed to comfort—will feel they have no ground left to stand on. It is in this vacuum that Ahriman’s machine steps forward, offering the one thing people crave: control.

The promises will sound reasonable:

• “We cannot afford another collapse. Let us manage every transaction and prevent another crisis.”
• “We will give you a guaranteed income, but it must be tied to a digital currency we control.”
• “For safety, we will need to know where everyone is, what everyone buys, and what everyone says online.”

We can already see the contours of this future:

• Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) that allow governments to monitor and freeze accounts at will.
• Biometric ID systems that tie every action to a single, trackable identity.
• AI-driven social credit infrastructures that reward obedience and punish dissent.

The machine as shadow

At first glance, this seems like pure tyranny. And in its unredeemed form, it is. Ahriman would like nothing better than a world where every transaction, every movement, and even every thought is monitored and pre-programmed.

But here too, if we look deeper, we can see the shadow of a capacity humanity must develop. Ahriman’s machine is the distorted mirror of a true ordering principle—a rightful ability to coordinate life so that it serves the whole. It calls for an exact, yet living thinking..

Metamorphosis: reclaiming the true ordering principle

We cannot afford to simply “smash the machine.” If we do, we leave the flaw intact and the same logic will rebuild itself in another form. Nor can we naively accept it as progress.

The third way is to redeem the machine’s capacity:

• To recognize that systems of coordination are necessary, but they must be transparent, human-centered, and morally awake, not totalizing.
• To rebuild economic and social structures that serve life rather than control it.
• To unmask the worldview that says human beings cannot be trusted with freedom and must be managed like data points.

This is a profoundly difficult task, because it requires courage to step into the very structures we might instinctively flee from—and transform them from within. But they can be entered more easily, once a living, yet exact while it follows life's lawfulness, thinking, beholding and shaping comes in sight.

The hidden opportunity

The collapse, for all its suffering, forces humanity to confront its dependence on illusions. It strips away the false security of the bubble and brings us face-to-face with the question:

“Will you surrender your freedom for safety? Or will you awaken and rebuild systems that are worthy of the human being?”

If we choose the latter, the machine can become something entirely different: a vessel through which the economic and political spheres truly support the spiritual pole of society, rather than suffocate it.

This is the work of metamorphosis. To see Ahriman’s machine not as an enemy to be annihilated, but as a distorted shadow of the lawful order we must reclaim and humanize. The collapse that he engineers can, if we meet it with clarity, become the turning point where we begin to build what the world actually needs.