Here we examine how the lineage of builders, maintainers, and repairers thinned, and what happens to a nation when the people who once kept its systems alive are no longer there to pass their knowledge down.
The Small World Series
South Korea is not collapsing. It is contracting inward, unable to maintain the systems it built. The small world eroded, and now the big world is thinning. This is not a Korean crisis. It is simply happening there first.
Lineage & Infrastructure
A clear look at why the heaviest and most dangerous work in society was overwhelmingly male, and how misremembering that history obscures the real problem: the disappearance of the builder and maintainer lineage that keeps a nation functioning.
Lineage & Infrastructure
America’s infrastructure still stands, but the lineage of builders who once maintained it has thinned to the point of fragility. This essay traces how a nation that depended on skilled hands slowly lost the people who knew how to keep its foundations alive.
Lineage & Infrastructure
EAs the repairers age out, and no one replaces them, outages lengthen, costs rise, and institutions turn to compelled service and recalled retirees. This is what happens when a nation loses the people who keep it running.