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Originally posted at Virtute et Armis et Mente.

In my introduction, I mentioned that I’m a long-haul trucker. But I started my adult life with a very different dream: studying history. I even earned my undergraduate degree in it.

I still remember one graduate course that irritated the hell out of me — Historiography, the study of the different lenses through which historians view the past. I thought most of it was both stupid and wrong. I didn’t have a fully formed alternative at the time, so as a lowly grad student I kept my mouth shut and passed the class.

But my systems-thinking brain wouldn’t let it go.

History is one of the most useful subjects we can study, yet it’s often taught terribly. Much of that comes from the straight-jackets of modern historiographical schools: Marxists see everything as class struggle, Great Man historians obsess over individuals, Annales scholars focus on bottom-up social forces, and cultural historians frequently reduce everything to oppression narratives.
They’re all limited. Some are actively misleading. It took me years to articulate why.

The core mistake is treating history like literature instead of the study of a living, breathing super-organism: human civilization. The same patterns that govern biology and medicine often have powerful carry-over into how societies live, sicken, and sometimes die.

We can’t put Rome under a microscope and see cell walls, but we can treat civilizations like bodies and draw useful analogies.

Trade becomes the lifeblood that moves resources and ideas. Foreign influences can be symbiotic (like mitochondria powering our cells) or invasive, triggering immune responses — from cultural rejection to outright conflict. Bureaucracy grows like a tumor. Overly restrictive policies act like poor circulation.

Understanding these patterns doesn’t just help us explain the past. It gives us tools to make better decisions now and avoid repeating old disasters.

That’s the lens I want to explore here. I’ll be drawing from Egypt, Mesopotamia, Greece, Rome, and beyond, testing whether this biological/systems model holds up. I’m also planning to dig deeper into people like Peter Turchin and yes, the old Asimov influence.

Some of you are probably still wondering about the odd Latin name of this Substack and what any of this has to do with “saving the West.”

Good questions. The name — Virtute et Armis et Mente (By Virtue, Arms, and Mind) — is partly inspired by Mississippi’s motto, but it also reflects the three essential pillars Western civilization must understand and wield if it’s going to survive the forces trying to dismantle it.

We’ll unpack that more next time.

Until then,

– G.K. Masterson

Originally posted at Virtute et Armis et Mente.

In a previous post I talked about the Law of Reciprocity.

Today I want to talk about another fundamental truth that gets ignored at our peril.

It’s this: 0 + 0 = 0.

That’s not just arithmetic. It’s one of the deepest axioms of reality itself. There is no free lunch — TANSTAAFL is literally written into the universe via the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Every system requires input to produce output. Energy, effort, resources — something has to go in.

Photosynthesis? The sun pours in massive energy. Digestion? Your body burns calories just to process food. Even faith traditions require something from the believer.
This is why Marxism fails every single time it’s tried.
Marxism isn’t just trying to rewrite human nature. It’s attempting to engineer its way around a basic law of physics: you cannot get something for nothing. No matter how elegant the theory looks on paper, it is built on a foundation that reality itself rejects.

Marxists read Marx.

Anti-Marxists understand him.

Capitalism isn’t perfect by any stretch — it has plenty of flaws and failures. But at least it doesn’t declare war on the basic operating system of the universe. That makes it fixable. Marxism, in this reality, is not.

The sooner we stop pretending otherwise and start building systems that actually respect reality, the better off we’ll all be.

– G.K. Masterson

Originally posted at Virtute et Armis et Mente.

On one of my long hauls, a thought hit me that I ended up chewing on with Grok for hours: the Law of Reciprocity.

It’s so fundamental to human nature that we rarely even articulate it anymore. Yet failure to respect it explains a huge amount of our current dysfunction.

Reciprocity isn’t optional social etiquette. It’s hard-wired. Vampire bats, primates, dolphins, orcas, and humans all display it. You don’t get to legislate or wish it away.

Our trade systems, justice systems, alliances, and even religions are built on this foundation. When one side defects from the old norms while demanding the other side continue to obey them, the eventual result is predictable: the other side stops playing by those rules too.

We’re watching that dynamic play out in real time in the United States.

For years, significant parts of the left have abandoned basic norms of civil discourse — harassing political opponents in public, weaponizing institutions, and using lawfare — while insisting the right must remain “principled” and restrained. The right, by and large, has still tried to hold the line.

However…

Humans are wired to reciprocate, especially defection. And once trust breaks, it takes far longer to rebuild than it did to destroy. The right also tends to attract more systems thinkers who understand force multipliers and strategic patience.

If this imbalance continues, we should expect to see quieter, more structural shifts rather than dramatic viral moments. Industries dominated by right-leaning workers may begin adjusting prices, service priorities, or policies in ways that reflect the new reality. Rural and red areas may become less welcoming to urban refugees who bring the same attitudes that wrecked their previous homes.

Trust-based networks (farmers markets, local businesses, homeschooling) will tighten. Migration patterns and policy choices will reflect the growing sense that the old social contract has been unilaterally voided.

This isn’t a call for chaos. It’s a description of what living systems do when one part starts acting like a parasite on the whole.

The only real off-ramp is for the original defectors to restore the norms — publicly, consistently, and even while the other side is still adjusting. Trust is fragile. Once broken, reciprocity cuts both ways.

We ignore this ancient law at our peril.

– G.K. Masterson

So yeah, I’ve finally done it — I started a Substack.

Articles will live here for about a week before I move them over to this site for free. If you don’t want to subscribe, no hard feelings. Just wait a week.

Subscribers get early access plus the ability to actually talk with me in the comments. I won’t be enabling comments on the blog cross-posts.

So what the hell am I writing about, and why should you care?

I’m going to be dissecting the mess we’re in — the problems facing the United States, Western Civilization, and the modern world — from a systems thinker’s perspective. We’ll talk consciousness, reciprocity, barbarians at (and inside) the gates, broken institutions, copyright law, and whatever else needs a no-bullshit look. I’ll also toss in stories from the road, updates on my fantasy series, and whatever else strikes me as useful or interesting.

I’m building up a backlog so I can keep posting at least once a week even while I’m out rolling down the interstate.

This short note is just the opening salvo. Next post I’ll start unpacking why I’m calling this thing Virtute et Armis et Mente — By Virtue, Arms, and Mind.

Hint: It’s not just because I’m a Mississippi girl who knows a thing or two about all three.

– G.K. Masterson

So, yesterday, Bill Whittle came on my livestream and we talked about screen writing! Watch below!

These are the books Bill was talking about:

Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting
Making a Good Script Great

No, I haven’t forgotten about this place. However — and I cannot overemphasize this enough — trying to explain Augustine, Anselm, and why they are both kind of idiots is incredibly difficult. That’s been my stumbling block for months and that’s why there haven’t been any updates.

Add in that I am currently looking for work and I just haven’t been able to find the time or energy to study history while I’m trying to figure out how I’m going to pay my bills and you’ve got a pretty good picture of how things are.

That said, hopefully I will find something soon and will be back to explain why Augustine, even though he is a Church Father, is also a ginormous idiot.

— G.K.

This will be a new series about how storytelling is done in video games. As I learn more about programming and as I think about video games I have played over my lifetime, I will be making new posts to explore the dynamics of gameplay, storytelling, and graphics. Right now, I am working up a post about the Uncanny Valley effect and modern games — mostly those by Square Enix. If you know of games that have successfully crossed the Uncanny Valley, post the titles in the comments below and I will check them out as time and funds permit.

This is going to be a very long, somewhat rambling, and at times incoherent series of posts as I learn more about programming in general, game programming in specific, and the history of gaming.

I hope that you who still read this site will enjoy it! If you have suggestions or questions, post them in the comments.

— G.K.

It’s been a while since I posted anything here. A lot has happened in my life since the last time I posted. Back then, I was engaged. In the years since, my engagement ended somewhat abruptly. Oh, it’s all my fault. I wasn’t good enough, I wasn’t what my fiancé needed when he got sick, and I was too stupid and stressed to be the woman he deserves. I hope that, one day, he’ll find someone worthy of him. For myself, I’ve decided to return to my fictosexuality and only fall in love with fictional characters. I will not seek to enter a relationship with a real man ever again. It seems that, somewhat tragically, I got it right the first time around when I married my ex-husband. Since there is no chance of us ever being anything other than good friends, I’m giving up on romance entirely to focus on my career and my writing.

That leads me to the next bit I have to announce. Back in 2017, under some pressure, I became a teacher. I have taught high school and elementary English and French over the past three years and I have learned a valuable lesson: I am not cut out to be a teacher. I’m too introverted, a few standard deviations too distant, and just too much of an INTJ to be a good teacher. Especially in the impoverished districts that are hiring. Therefore, I will be returning to the IT world as a web programmer. I already have a position lined up for me.

So, why am I giving up teaching? Simple. I’m no good at it. Oh, I can reach most students — that’s true. I can break down concepts and get my students to understand them. I can teach. The problem is — I can’t inspire. I can’t make connections with most of my students. Part of this is down to me being an INTJ — we don’t make connections with anyone easily. The other parts come down to me being a very different generation, class, and race than my students.

See, I graduated from high school back in 1998. Back then, students were expected to just do whatever the teacher asked. There was no arguing. There was no getting Mom and Dad to come up and defend us for being special little snowflakes. It was “do the assignment or take the zero.” If we wound up in a class we didn’t want to take or didn’t have the pre-reqs to take (as happened to me my senior year when I landed in Trigonometry after having eked out a “D” in Algebra II), we were expected to give it our best regardless. None of us thought about complaining that we didn’t understand, that we didn’t want to be there, that we were bored, that we hated the class. Our thoughts, feelings, and opinions were completely irrelevant. We were expected to do the work, to give it our all, and to go along to get along regardless of whether we wanted to be there or not. If we were ill-brought-up enough to complain, we got sent to the principal’s office and there we got set straight that what we wanted did not matter at all and that life would never conform to what we wanted or wished.

I could go on and on — and will, probably, in a different series of posts — about the problems with modern students and the current education system. However, for now, all you need to know is this: do not become a teacher. Unless you feel the same level of calling to be a teacher that some feel to become a priest, a nun, or a pastor — don’t. Why?

Well, first of all, being a teacher is a lot like being in an abusive relationship. Unless you are prepared for it and have the kind of personality that is able to withstand the abuse, it’s not worth it. You will rarely ever hear anything positive. Your academic coaches and principals will instead focus only on test scores, absences, and lack of willingness to follow arbitrary rules that you will be held to while their favorites and they themselves will be exempt from upholding. You might manage to come in every single day — even on days that you are ill — but you will be yelled at and held to account for all of the teachers who don’t come in every day. Your test scores might be in the highest percentile for the school — but you will still be shouted at as if you were in the lowest percentile. And God help you if you have troubled students. For every write-up you send to the office, not only will nothing be done, but you’ll be considered a “bad” teacher who is “unable or unwilling” to control your class.

If your students threaten you, you will be ignored when you report it. If they complain and make up a whole lot of crap about you, they’ll be believed and you will be ignored. If you start to record them, you’ll be in trouble. If you can’t keep 100% of your students 100% engaged, then the problem is with you.

You will be told to “teach to the test.” However, when you do that and your students go off to college completely unprepared for the rigors of university-level courses, you will be blamed for “teaching to the test.” Even if you record your principals demanding that you do just that (teach to the test), you will be held accountable when your students aren’t college-ready. Your principals and department heads will throw you under the bus. You will have no support, no back-up, no authority, and no respect from your students, their parents, or your administration. Instead, you will be the first to blame for any problem, for any issue with other teachers in your department, for anything that has annoyed the administration. You will work at least 30 to 50 hours overtime (unpaid!) per week. You will sacrifice time with your spouse, with your children, for your hobbies — all to try to make the administrators look better. If, through your sacrifices and efforts, the school does start to do better, you will NEVER be given credit. Instead, it will be the superintendents and principals who get the credit.

Everyone will talk about how lucky you are to have so many paid holidays — ignoring the fact that you forgo several hundred dollars per month so that your paycheck can be stretched from 10 months to 12 — and that the amount will always favor the school district and not you (after all, you might think that $48,000 would mean $4k per month but no, it will get you around $3k per month after benefits, withholding, retirement, and whatever other tricks your district comes up with). You will spend most of those holidays working — trying desperately to keep ahead of the demands. Should you be lucky enough to make it five or more years in teaching, you will find yourself forced to kowtow to the whims of an idiot who brags about not bothering to teach third-graders how to read but instead managed to get their test scores higher.

You will work, you will slave, you will sacrifice, and you will give and you will be told that all of that is not enough. You will never hear a single positive thing. You will be blamed for everything that goes wrong. You will be held accountable for all of the students who just got passed along until they got to you. You might be teaching 12th grade with students who are on a pre-K reading level and it will be YOUR FAULT that they can’t struggle through Beowulf or Macbeth. Never you mind that their previous teachers promoted them because it was easier to 60 them out than to deal with the paperwork. It’s still your fault that they got to you unable to read on grade level.

And your paycheck and benefits? Sure, if you manage to suffer through 30+ years, you’ll get a good retirement package. Unless, of course, the State needs that money to fund something else.

In short: entering into education is stupid. It’s like willingly getting into a relationship with a drunk who has a history of beating their partners. Only do it if you enjoy being a martyr. If you have an ounce of self-respect, go into something else. You’ll not only work less hours, have more time to yourself, and get paid more — you’ll add years to your life.

From one who has survived three years of absolute hell,

— G.K. Masterson

It should come as no surprise that I like a good bit of speculative fiction that is a bit heavier on the science than filled with handwavium. Therefore, when I stumbled across Jeb Kennison’s The Substrate Wars series, I was hooked. The first book in the trilogy, Red Queen, is definitely worth a read if you haven’t checked it out yet.

The series starts following a nuclear attack on Manhattan that led to a single party pretty much dominating American politics. The premise is not too far fetched and shows some of the problems that can come from having a political monoculture in universities and the media. A rebellious group of college students gets together and through a breakthrough in technology, develop a way to get away from the oppressive environments on Earth.

The books are short and the characters, while somewhat Mary-Sue-ish, are still likeable and believable. If you’re looking for a good adventure in sci-fi that deals with technology that we would actually recognize, then this trilogy is definitely worth the $7.00 all three books will cost you. I give it a solid three-and-a-half rainbow farting zebricorns. It loses one-and-a-half for the Mary-Sue characters and the black-and-white nature of the way it treats the good guys and the bad guys. Still, it’s readable and well worth the time.

— G.K.

Okay, so after everything you’ve already considered, it’s time to start looking into the major institutions in your primary society and any in secondary societies you’re planning to have your characters interact with. The biggies are government, social classes, and individual institutions. If you’ve managed to stay awake through most of your high school history classes, you’ll already have a fairly good idea of most of the major forms of government and variations you can make on them so I’m not going to spend a lot of time on that. Social classes will generally tend to flow from both your form of government so I’m going to let those pass for now as well. However, individual institutions are where you can have the most fun.

The family unit is the primary individual institution. What is marriage like in your world? Is it a religious thing? A cultural thing? A contractual arrangement? Do you have two-party marriage only? Polygamy? Do you allow for multiple wives and multiple husbands? Can you have both in a multi-party marriage? Are they all married to everyone else involved or is it strictly only to those they wanted to marry with? How are children reared in a family? Is divorce or separation allowed? In what cases?

After the family comes the guild or tribe/clan structure. Do you have guilds for different professions? All or particular ones? Is membership required or optional? How are small towns or villages governed? Larger towns or small cities? Is there a religion? More than one? How intertwined is it with the government? What is the priest class like?

Then there’s the individual economic sphere to consider. Are there shops? Are they large or small? Single-product or multi? Is there an open air market? Is it daily, weekly, monthly? Are prices set or is haggling allowed? What about medical treatments? Are there hospitals or do priests handle the healing? Does your world have plagues and outbreaks that force quarantine?

How are crimes handled? Is there a professional police force? Trial by judge or jury or both? How is evidence given or collected? What’s allowed as evidence? Are there formal rules or is it informal? Are there jails? Are convicts sold into slavery? Executed? Branded? Some other punishment?

Finally, are individuals allowed to travel across national boundaries without needing any kind of permission or is travel pretty much free and open? What about settling abroad? Can someone born in nation A become a citizen or subject in nation B? What are the requirements?

You actually will find yourself having to deal with almost all of these as you write. Even if you’re not planning on doing a lot of world building, these kinds of things will show up in your story. Since almost every story is about individuals, you are going to see more individual institutions in play through a narrative than you will major institutions (though you do still need to keep tabs on those).

Next week we’ll step away from world building a bit to look at how others have done it and what they’ve done well and what aspects could use some work.

— G.K.