Rise of the Unimportant People

No return to normal.

The New Unhinged
Dec 17, 2025

Most people adapted, that should worry you

By now, you’ve had to have noticed something unsettling. Despite everything, people haven’t stopped functioning.

They’re still working.
Still creating.
Still moving.
Still adapting.

Not because things are fine, because humans are extremely good at adjusting to broken conditions. That’s what makes this phase dangerous.

Civilizations don’t fail when people stop functioning. They fail when people learn how to function inside dysfunction and call it normal.

Functioning Does Not Mean Healthy

The mistake most people make:

They see adaptation and assume stability. They see survival and mistake it for success. But adaptation only means one thing:

• the organism has changed its behavior to survive the environment.

It says nothing about whether the environment is sane. Or ethical.
Or worth preserving.

Humans adapt to:

• abusive relationships

• corrupt systems

• unstable economies

• incoherent narratives

All the time.

Quietly.
Efficiently.
At great internal cost.

Your ability to tolerate bullshit is not proof the bullshit is acceptable.

Rise of the Unimportant People

The part most people miss: Power isn’t concentrating only at the top. It’s also redistributing sideways. Toward:

• people who can interpret patterns

• people who stay calm under uncertainty

• people who build trust in small rooms

• people who don’t need mass approval to act

Influence is shrinking in size but increasing in density

This is why some nobody voices suddenly matter more than legacy institutions. They’re not louder. They’re clearer.

And clarity travels faster than authority once trust is gone.

The Anti-Hustle Skill Set

The future isn’t rewarding:

• constant certainty

• rigid identity

• blind optimism

• speed for its own sake

It’s rewarding:

• discernment

• nervous system regulation

• adaptability without fragmentation

• meaning without fanaticism

• independence without isolation

These aren’t personality traits. They’re survival skills for post-coherence reality.

The algorithm can’t teach them.
Institutions forgot how.
You’re learning them by necessity.

Choose Carefully. This Part Sticks

This era doesn’t ask you to panic. It asks you to notice. To see:

• what you’re adapting to

• what you’re normalizing

• what you’re internalizing

• what you’re letting become permanent

You don’t need to opt out of the world. But you do need to choose how you stay in it. Because whatever you normalize long enough eventually feels like who you are.

No Return to Normal

You are not watching history. You are participating in a transition. Old systems are not coming back. New ones aren’t finished forming.

In between, humans do what they’ve always done:

They improvise.
They cluster.
They build meaning in fragments.
They survive.

The question isn’t whether you’ll adapt.

You already have.

The question is whether you’ll do it consciously, or let the environment decide what you become.

Survival bought time. It didn’t buy direction.

Continues at https://substack.com/home/post/p-181763075

Without prejudice and without recourse
Doreen Agostino
Our Greater Destiny Blog
evolution