Will You Survive the Revolution?
By Chris Martensen 03/22/2025
chrismartenson.substack.com
Welcome to The Fourth Turning and Trump’s Revolution.
The Fourth Turning, or the “crisis” stage is underway. Everything is at stake. If global war is the unavoidable outcome, then literally everything you love about your life is at stake, including your life itself.
Our path through this MUST involve a clear-eyed view of how we’re wired up. What truly drives human behavior and what can we do to alter it (in time) so we can avoid truly awful outcomes?
The answer to this begins with noting a few things about ourselves that, frankly aren’t all that flattering. All problem solving MUST go to the root itself. Here I am going to connect current events to our evolutionary past.
Those who cannot, or won’t face these truths are destined to angrily lash out, impotently throwing their cucumbers in fits of rage (see below for explanation)
When Cheating Becomes a Way of Life: How Systems Breed Corruption
What happens when humans gain access to a system—say, one tied to money or electoral power—and realize they can game it without consequences? My theory is simple: they’ll cheat.
Give it enough time, and that cheating doesn’t just persist—it becomes a way of life, passed down through convention and custom until those within the system barely recognize their actions as immoral.
The 19th-century French economist Frédéric Bastiat nailed this idea in Economic Sophisms when he wrote: When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in society, over the course of time they create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.
History, science, and human nature back this up. Let’s explore how cheating starts, spreads, and sticks.
The Spark: Opportunity Meets Impunity
Humans are opportunists—it’s baked into our biology. Behavioral economist Dan Ariely, in The Honest Truth About Dishonesty, shows how people cheat just a little when they think they won’t get caught. He calls it the “fudge factor”—padding an expense report, tweaking a vote count, or skimming a profit. It’s not outright villainy; it’s a nudge over the line when the risk feels low. Ariely says that, “The first dishonest act is the most important one to prevent.”
Evolutionary biologist Robert Trivers takes this deeper in The Folly of Fools, arguing that deceit is a survival strategy. We’re wired to exploit advantages, especially in systems like markets or elections where rewards (wealth, power) are tangible and oversight is lax.
Trivers posed the existential question on page 2 of The Folly of Fools: “Together our sensory systems are organized to give us a detailed and accurate view of reality, exactly as we would expect if truth about the outside world helps us navigate it more effectively. But once this information arrives in our brains, it is often distorted and biased to our conscious minds. We deny the truth to ourselves. We project onto others traits that are in fact true of ourselves-and then attack them! We repress painful memories, create completely false ones, rationalize immoral behavior, act repeatedly to boost positive self-opinion, and show a suite of ego-defense mechanisms. Why?”
How and why did evolution decide to give humans such a deeply wired ability for self-deception? It’s a good question which I’ll leave for later. For now let’s hold it as a well-documented observation about human behavior and wiring.
In the 19th century, America’s Robber Barons—industrialists like Jay Gould—gamed the stock market with impunity. Gould’s manipulation of Erie Railroad shares wasn’t a one-off; it was a masterclass in exploiting weak regulation. No jail time, no real pushback, just profit. A system open to rigging (with no one to stop it) eventually becomes a fertile ground sprouting entire ecosystems supporting and glorifying the activities.
At its core, I think it boils down to humans being just like any other organism. We want an easy life.