On the Age of Deaf Power

Essays on Attention, Authority, and Collapse

De: Phillip Butler

Narrado por: Virtual Voice

Power does not disappear when systems fail. It simplifies.

On the Age of Deaf Power examines how modern political systems lose coherence—not through sudden collapse, but through a gradual failure of attention. Institutions persist. Authority remains. But understanding erodes.

When systems can no longer process reality at scale, enforcement replaces governance, performance substitutes for perception, and force reenters politics as the cheapest remaining language.

This short book traces that condition.

Drawing on historical patterns and contemporary signals, Phil Butler shows how large systems drift into misalignment: facts stop working, coordination becomes too expensive, and dissent is increasingly treated as disorder. Empires do not fall when they are challenged—but when they lose the ability to distinguish signal from noise, warning from threat.

These essays are not partisan or predictive. They focus on mechanisms, not personalities: how authority behaves when feedback degrades, why emergency powers become routine, and how incoherent governance can persist long after legitimacy thins.

Written during an unsettled moment rather than after its resolution, On the Age of Deaf Power offers orientation rather than answers. Collapse is not inevitable—but once attention fails, recovery becomes difficult, and force begins to stand in for comprehension.

This is a short book for serious readers who sense that something structural is wrong, and want to understand why.

Attention fails first.
Power follows.