#New Story

How Do You Keep Control After the End of the World?

The shark in the static, billionaire escape fantasies, and the fragility of control in the polycrisis

Austereogram of a shark. Want to see the image? Click here to read the Wikipedia article that explains the proper viewing technique. Here is the link to the image on Wikimedia Commons. Created by Fred Hsu — attribution link here.

Have you ever stared at one of those strange Magic-Eye posters?

Like the one above that looks like random static until, suddenly, a shark leaps out at you? Nothing in the image changes. Only your way of seeing does. The hidden picture was always there, waiting for your eyes to adjust.

That’s how the illusion of control works. We’ve been trained to see one story and it tells us monetary wealth buys freedom, dominance buys safety, and technology buys power. It’s a pattern so familiar we rarely question it, even as cracks split open all around us. But if we shift our gaze and start to look at what’s happening differently, the picture changes. The shark emerges. The hidden truth becomes impossible to ignore.

In truth, there is no such thing as “being in control” in this lifetime. Life begins and ends without our consent. Birth, love, and death are the only absolutes. None of these great transformations answer to money. Still, the illusion of wealth as power persists.

Nowhere is the illusion more grotesque than in the schemes of the ultra-rich. It’s not just their wealth…