Two From the Hegemon substack. First up the complete "How to monetize the rise of Medieval Peasant Brain," December 15, 2025:
A short guide for the downwardly mobile elite
Do you have the cultural capital of elite education, yet are now scraping by on gig economy scraps? Think of it as an arbitrage opportunity! As we leave the Gutenberg Parenthesis and enter a techno-feudal oral culture, their epistemic decay becomes your revenue stream.
• Stop writing immediately. Writing is for losers. Pivot entirely to oral/visual formats. Your voice and face are the artifacts of authority, not your citations.
• Do not fall into the trap of irony. The peasant brain cannot process irony; it reads it as vague malice. You must be post-ironic. You must inhabit the role so fully even you aren’t sure if you’re serious anymore.
• The peasant brain is terrified of a cold, godless universe. You can redirect that terror to more legible targets like immigrants or Jews, or sell them solutions that fit into a bottle. (the good news is you don’t have to choose)
• The peasantry feels sick and low-energy because they eat seed oils and doomscroll. But do they know that vitamins are an Ancestral Vitality Stack? Leverage your elite vocabulary to write that TikTok script. Remember it’s not magnesium it’s Mineral of the Stoics. This is the highest margin vertical for the downwardly mobile elite.
• The Court Jester Strategy. Instead of enchanting the peasants, you could entertain the new feudal lords. Becoming the intelligent pet of a tech billionaire is a wonderful sinecure. Use your humanities education to provide philosophical cover for their sociopathy. Quote Marcus Aurelius to justify intrusive surveillance, cite Machiavelli to explain a failed startup. They will pay handsomely to feel like philosopher kings instead of boring money-grubbers.
• The Trad Turn Strategy. The peasant fantasy is the Cottage. Monetize the aesthetic of a life you cannot afford. Champion the return to tradition for an audience trapped in daily squalor. Critique modernity (which is easy, because we can all see the ugliness) and curate images of past beauty (also easy, because all the ugliness disappears).
• Remember, you possess forbidden knowledge. You have read the scary books so they don’t have to. Allow yourself to be the conduit that brings the truth forward. Good luck, and happy holidays!
Possibly also of interest:
UPDATED--Are You a Recent Graduate Who Hasn't Found a Job? Consider Becoming a Charlatan
And back to Hegemon, February 2, 2026:
