A 20-part End Up Here series · 2036 thought experiment
Why do we have rules? What work do they do for us? And which rules might no longer be needed if the conditions that created them change?
20 episodes · four movements · one open questionAI-generated concept artwork · illustrative, not documentary
The question underneath the series
Rules help us coordinate, protect one another, settle disagreements and limit power. They also accumulate. They reach into work, food, ownership, trade, safety, privacy, movement and ordinary daily choices.
I want to trace how that happened, then ask what might change by 2036 if superintelligence changes work, scarcity, competition and exchange. The future here is a question, not a prediction. Fewer disputes would not mean no harm; less ownership would not mean no boundaries; and laws that shrink must leave the protections people still need.
Five voices across time
These people did not agree on one theory of law. Their words open different questions about authority, conduct, participation, resistance and equal dignity. The portraits and historical images are separately sourced; none of the quotations claims their support for this 2036 scenario.
Babylonian king · law collection prologue
“So that the strong should not harm the weak.”
A ruler's own account of what his laws were meant to do. The prologue presents an ideal and a claim to authority; it is not a modern legal code.
Text: Yale Avalon Project, trans. L. W. King
Image: Statens Museum for Kunst / Wikimedia Commons, CC0
Analects 2.3 · virtue, ritual and order
“Lead them with virtue and regulate them by ritual, and they will acquire a sense of shame—and moreover, they will be orderly.”
One translation contrasts moral example and ritual with governing chiefly through commands and punishment.
Text: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, citing E. Slingerland
Image: The Met, public domain · later artistic portrait
First Court Statement · 1962
“The right to participate in the making of the laws by which one is governed.”
Mandela argued that equality before law includes a voice in making the law and access to protection when rights are violated.
Text: United Nations transcript
Image: South Africa The Good News, CC BY 2.0
Letter from Birmingham Jail · 1963
“One has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.”
King’s argument about civil disobedience belongs to the specific struggle against segregation and unjust injunctions he describes in the letter.
Text: Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute, Stanford
Image: Kheel Center, Cornell University Library, CC BY 2.0
A phrase that changed the reach of a right
“All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.”
This is Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights—not a personal quotation. Mehta is widely credited with helping replace “all men” with inclusive wording during the collective drafting process.
Text: United Nations, UDHR Article 1 · Mehta's contribution
Image: Clara E. Sipprell, Amon Carter Museum, public domain
A concrete place to start
Food makes the density of rules visible. A meal carries decisions about land, growing, labour, transport, ingredients, safety, labelling, sale, nutrition and waste. Each rule has a job. Together they show how deeply systems have entered everyday life.
The question is what changes—and what remains
If people no longer had to work for survival, compete for basic security or exchange goods in the same way, parts of employment law, commercial law, debt, title and dispute resolution might contract. The series tests each area against its present purpose, the condition that could change, the human need that remains and the risk if a protection is removed.
What happens to rules about wages, hours and workplace safety if a job is no longer the price of survival?
Could access and care replace some exclusive title, while personal boundaries and privacy remain firm?
If buying, selling and debt shrink, which contract disputes become less common—and which disagreements remain?
Could prevention and reduced desperation change some crime? Harm, coercion, error and wrongful accusation still need attention.
Consent, bodily autonomy and support for people with less power remain central even in abundance.
Who can ask for reasons, challenge a rule, appeal a decision and obtain a remedy?
The model to keep returning to
I remain a person in the physical world. My digital self inhabits the other world: the digital space. It is shared by many people's digital selves and connected across the world. It is not one local territory, one collective mind or necessarily one central authority.
Would my digital self follow the same rules as my embodied self? How might many digital selves negotiate shared rules—and what would stop a majority from ganging up on a group?
The series · 20 episodes
The first part asks why rules exist. The next maps the society that generates them. Then the series tests what superintelligence might unwind. The closing episodes make freedom visible in daily life and ask how rules could work in a shared digital space.
Part I · Foundations
Part II · The system
Part III · What changes?
Part IV · Freedom, then the other world
The question I want to leave open
If some rules no longer need to govern our lives, what must still be protected—and who gets to decide?
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