The Shmoo Diaries: Chapter 5 - The Practice of Seeing Clearly

Hi everyone,

How's your week going?

Mine has been busy, closed-door conversations with AI founders who are trying to keep the future from being swallowed by the usual giants. Big ideas. Real stakes. A quiet urgency you don’t hear on conference stages or in press releases.

In the space between those conversations, my client responsibilities, and picking up my grandkids at school. something clicked. I knew how the Shmoo Diaries needed to end

Why Any of This Matters

After four chapters, it's hard to miss the pattern.

When something revolutionary appears, the first reaction is panic.

When it can’t be owned, it gets dismissed.

When it can’t be controlled economically, it’s boxed in through infrastructure.

And when it still refuses to die, legitimacy itself gets redefined—just to rebuild the gate.

The result is always the same: revolution gets captured, power concentrates, and the gap widens to unsustainability.

The printing press concentrated publishing power. The assembly line concentrated industrial power. The internet concentrated platform power. AI is following the same path in real time.

Each time, most people don't see it happening until it's already finished.

The Damage Is Not Abstract 

When revolutions get captured, opportunity narrows.

Innovation slows.

Talent gets wasted because it doesn't come through approved channels.

Meanwhile, those at the top accumulate not just wealth but also the ability to rewrite the rules, avoid accountability, and ensure the system continues to serve them.

That concentration is not sustainable. It never has been.

The question is not whether this pattern exists. The question is why we keep repeating it.

Why We Keep Missing It

The pattern persists because it's hard to see while it's happening.

By the time most people notice they're constrained, the infrastructure is locked in. The defaults are set. The legitimacy markers are defined.

We argue about outcomes while the leverage sits upstream, in decisions never framed as political.

Who funds the computing? Who controls the platforms? Who decides what's reasonable?

Those choices harden quickly. Once they do, changing them becomes exponentially harder.

Visibility matters because it breaks the cycle. If you can see the Morgan calculation happening in real time, recognize when legitimacy preserves control rather than ensures quality, ask who benefits from keeping something difficult, you're no longer operating blind.

That shift, from unconscious participation to conscious choice, is where power begins.

The Tools That Cannot Be Captured 

There aren't many tools left that resist capture. But there are a few.

Critical Thinking - The ability to ask better questions. To examine assumptions. To follow incentives. To distinguish between what sounds reasonable and what is actually true.

Mindfulness -The ability to see what's happening without reacting blindly. To stay present when systems are designed to keep you distracted.

Emotional intelligence - The ability to understand what you're feeling and why. To recognize when fear, anger, or desperation is being leveraged to shape your choices.

Together, these three create discernment without judgment, the ability to see what's happening, recognize who benefits, and make choices based on clarity rather than reflex.

It's one of the few things that cannot be metered, owned, or legitimized out of existence.

What This Allows

When you see the pattern clearly, you ask different questions.

Not just "Is this good or bad?" but "Who decided this was the question?"

Not just "Is this safe?" but "Safe for whom, and at what cost?"

Not just "Is this legitimate?" but "Who benefits from this definition of legitimacy?"

That clarity changes how you participate. You stop waiting for permission you don't need. You stop deferring to credentials that don't reflect capability. You stop mistaking institutional approval for actual quality.

You build anyway. Not recklessly. But without mistaking gatekeeping for guidance.

From Individual Clarity to Systemic Change

When enough people can see the pattern, the pattern loses power.

When enough people stop complying with systems that exist only to preserve themselves, those systems must adapt or collapse.

This doesn't happen through revolution. It happens through permeation.

People who see clearly operate despite the system. Some build alternatives. Some run for office. Some teach others to see. Over time, the ideas spread, not because they're imposed, but because they make sense to people tired of explanations that don't hold up.

This is how change works when power doesn't want to move. Not through force. Through clarity that refuses to stay silent.

Why This Is Not a Prescription

I still have more questions than I do answers.

 The point I'm trying to make is that I've seen this pattern play out across forty years, through industries that no longer exist, through disruptions that killed nearly five hundred competitors.

I know what happens when people don't see it coming. They lose everything, not because they weren't smart or capable, but because they couldn't see the calculation until it was finished.

I'm not advocating for any one solution. I'm advocating for awareness. For the practice of seeing clearly. For refusing to accept that the way things are is the way things have to be.

Your conclusions will be different from mine. They should be.

What matters is that we practice discernment. That we stop accepting legitimacy at face value.

That we ask who benefits before we defer.

Where the Shmoo Comes Back

The Shmoo has been sitting on my desk for forty years, a reminder that goodness was possible, even if systems didn't know what to do with it.

The Shmoo was destroyed because abundance without ownership breaks the system.

But the idea it represents cannot be destroyed.

The idea that things could be easier.

That tools could empower rather than extract.

That revolutions could actually flatten hierarchies.

That idea keeps reappearing, with the printing press, with Tesla's wireless energy, with the internet, with AI.

Every time, the system tries to capture it. And every time, some part of it escapes.

The question is whether we recognize it when it does.

What Happens Next

AI is still a fledgling technology. This first iteration will likely experience corrections, maybe even collapse. Something better will emerge, something that requires less energy, costs less to run, and becomes accessible to more people. At least that's what the AI founders I was speaking with hope.

The pattern suggests it will be captured. History suggests concentration will win again.

But history also shows that visibility changes outcomes.

When people can see the Morgan calculation happening, they make different choices. When they understand how legitimacy is weaponized, they stop complying. When they recognize infrastructure as a decoy, they build alternatives.

None of that guarantees a different result. But it makes it possible.

And possibility is what the Shmoo represented. Not certainty. Just the stubborn insistence that things could be better, even when every system is designed to ensure they stay the same.

A Final Thought

The most important skill you can develop right now is the ability to see clearly.

Not to be right. Not to have all the answers. Just to see what's actually happening. To recognize the calculation. To ask who benefits.

That practice becomes immunity to capture.

You cannot be controlled by a pattern you can see. You cannot be manipulated by legitimacy you've learned to question. You cannot be constrained by infrastructure you understand well enough to work around.

The Shmoo is still on my desk. Still reminding me that good is possible. Still refusing to disappear.

That's where I am. Still watching. Still asking. Still practicing discernment.

The question is whether you will practice seeing clearly enough to reach your own conclusions.

Because once you can see it, you cannot unsee it.

And that changes everything.

This concludes The Shmoo Diaries. Thank you for reading this series about abundance, control, and the practice of seeing clearly.

Warmly,

 Jan

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