Nothingness

The Nothingness: How We Built Our Civilization on Pure Fiction

Somewhere in a galaxy far, far away, two neutron stars collide, sending gravitational waves rippling through the fabric of spacetime. The universe doesn’t care. It doesn’t care about your mortgage, your 401(k), your crypto holdings, or your limited-edition CSGO skins. The trajectory of those neutron stars was never going to change based on how many people believe in Bitcoin or whether the Fed raises interest rates by another 25 basis points.

And yet, here we are—a society built entirely on belief.

Paper Money: From Gold to Good Faith

Once upon a time, money was real. It was backed by gold, a shiny metal that humans arbitrarily decided had intrinsic value. Then, in 1971, Nixon looked at the financial system and said, “Screw it, let’s just use faith instead.” And just like that, the gold standard was gone, replaced by the full faith and credit of the U.S. government.

What does that even mean? It means money is valuable because we all agree it is. It means the dollars in your bank account aren’t tied to anything tangible—just government promises and central bank policies. It means your paycheck, your savings, your entire financial security is one collective hallucination away from being worthless.

Late-Stage Capitalism: Value from Nothingness

And so, we arrived here—Late-Stage Capitalism, where real estate prices went from reasonable human numbers to mid-six-figure hallucinations based on low-interest rates, speculative bubbles, and an unrelenting need to park wealth in assets.

• Housing? It’s not about shelter, it’s about investment.
• Stocks? Half of them are just meme-driven momentum plays.
• NFTs? Digital pictures of monkeys sold for millions.
• Bitcoin? Magic internet money created out of thin air… and yet, somehow, worth more than the GDP of some small countries.

How? Because people believe in it.

The Cycle of Belief: How Everything Gains Value from Nothing

If money, real estate, and crypto can derive their value from collective belief, what else can? Literally anything. The market doesn’t care about reality; it only cares about demand.

• CSGO skins used to be worthless pixels. Now, some are worth thousands.
• Luxury brands charge 10x the manufacturing cost because people associate them with status.
• A Banksy painting gains value when shredded because “art.”
• Conflict, uncertainty, and panic drive up the value of commodities like oil, gold, and war stocks.

Nothing in this world has intrinsic value. The only thing that gives anything worth is the belief that it has worth.

The Absurdity of It All

At the end of the day, it’s all a mass delusion. The things we kill ourselves over—money, status, prestige, property—none of them actually exist in any meaningful way outside of our collective imagination.

The neutron stars don’t care. The universe doesn’t care.

And yet, humans will keep playing the game, because what else are we supposed to do?