The Fateful Step

---

Introduction

• # 1 The Fateful Step: An Insight that Might Help Human Civilization Survive

Part 1: The Inevitable Reign of Power

• # 2 What Rules This World?
• # 3 How the Ways of Power Spread Like a Contaminant to Pervade the Human World
• # 4 Why It Matters
• # 5 The Central Challenge Facing Any Civilization-Creating Species
• # 6 Keeping the Central Challenge Always Before Our Eyes
• # 7 Some Known Unknowns
• # 8 Additional Problematic Dynamics

Part 2: A Force in Human Civilization Spreading Brokenness in Shape-Shifting Ways

• # 9 Some Things I’ve Left Out of the Story
• # 10 Human Consciousness as Grist for the Mill of Power-Maximization
• # 11 How Brokenness in the Overarching System Inflicted Brokenness on the Creatures Within It
• # 12 How Brokenness Moves Through the Human World in Shape-Shifting Ways

Part 3: A Secular Understanding of ‘the Battle Between Good and Evil’

• # 13 Toward a Secular Understanding of “The Battle Between Good and Evil”
• # 14 My Path Toward Understanding “Evil”
• # 15 The Clarifying Effect of the “Pure Case”

Part 4: How the Force of Brokenness Gained Great Power in the America of this Era

• # 16 The Systemic Nature of the American Crisis
• # 17 How the Republican Party Got Hijacked by the Force of Brokenness

Part 5:

Part 6:

Epilogue