A Voyage into the Syllogistic Critique of Modernity: Systemic Decoupling, Physical Limits, and the Axiom of Imperfection
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: Modern industrial civilization operates on a foundational delusion—a "systemic hallucination"—by attempting to decouple economic growth, legal intellectual property, and human desires from physical, thermodynamic, and logical limits. This thesis is proven through a strict, unyielding syllogism: 1. Mathematics and logic are inherently principled. 2. Whatever is principled commands the power of syllogism. 3. The power of syllogism eliminates hallucinations. Because "one cannot grow dishonest patents out of the Earth," the legal and economic constructs of modernity (which assume infinite growth and abstract value) are fundamentally artificial. They are violently decoupled from the Earth's physical boundaries. The phrase "You are not to know you are imperfect" is the psychological defense mechanism of modernity—an enforced institutional blindness that prevents society from acknowledging its structural fragility. To survive this systemic collapse, individuals must rigidly decouple their personal probabilities, keeping their "budgets sad" (economically defensive) and their "loneliness at bay" (existentially grounded) while navigating an unyielding physical reality. Summary Description This preprint bridges rigorous formal logic with existential philosophy and thermodynamic realities. The document is organized into three core architectural movements: The Philosophical & Logical Framework: Translating raw aphorisms into strict logical arguments, demonstrating how formal syllogisms systematically dismantle modern economic myths. The Mechanics of Decoupling: Analyzing the friction between abstract human systems (finance, law, patents) and physical realities (thermodynamics, natural resource exhaustion). The Educational Implementation: Transforming this critique into an actionable, cross-listed undergraduate/graduate university course syllabus and introductory lecture script designed to train the next generation to detect and neutralize systemic "hallucinations."
DOI: 10.17613/e5f4b-9fc71
Author: Riccardo Percy Montague
Language: English
Subfield: General Social Sciences
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7225194356