Foma Files

The economic settlement we mistake for capitalism may have depended on something much simpler: capital needed us. For most people, the most valuable economic asset they have ever owned is not a house, a pension or a portfolio of shares. It is their capacity to work. They sell that capacity repeatedly over a lifetime. Its value pays the mortgage, raises the children, funds retirement and turns workers into consumers. Capital owners possess a different kind of asset: ownership of the productive system itself. ...

Why Belief Calms the Animal Brain I went to see Blindboy Boatclub speak at Leisureland. That was the plan: a local pilgrimage, a familiar performance, Galway doing Galway. But as part of the evening, Blindboy brought on behavioral neuroscientist Dr. Michael Keane, and the conversation took an unexpected turn into the machinery of the mind. For readers new to The Agentic Foma, a little context. The book borrows the word foma from Cat’s Cradle - harmless untruths, or necessary fictions, that help human beings make sense of reality. In our use, foma are the stories, beliefs, and frameworks we inherit or construct in order to navigate a world that is far stranger, more complex, and less knowable than we would like to admit. Nations are foma. Money is foma. Identity is foma. Even the self may be a kind of foma. The project of The Agentic Foma is not to destroy these stories, but to see them clearly - and to choose them consciously. ...

I’ve been struck recently by something that doesn’t quite add up. In 2026, some things are endlessly questioned, relativised, picked apart. Others are treated as so obvious they barely need saying. This isn’t about evidence — we have more of that than ever. It’s about something else. Something to do with who carries a thing, and who doesn’t. Once you notice it, the pattern stops being subtle. Two histories, two very different fates Take two catastrophes. ...

Classification: Structural Foma Camouflage: “Personal Responsibility” Primary Function: Compliance Student loans are not debated because they are no longer perceived as policy. They are treated as a fact of nature. In countries where they exist, student debt is framed as inevitable - like gravity applied to young adults. The question is never why this system exists, only how to endure it responsibly. This is how foma stabilizes: alternatives vanish first, critique follows later. ...

The guardians of reason stare into the mirror of AI and see, for the first time, their own borrowed plumage.

Canada is unraveling, but not in the noisy pantomime style of Britain. Its fragility is quieter, bureaucratic, and brittle. For decades, the country held together by scaffolding rather than stone — institutions, slogans, and borrowed myths that looked solid but were never deeply believed. The Rise and Fall of the Canadian Foma 1. The Birth of the Story (1867–1945) Confederation stitched together east and west under Britain’s umbrella. The founding foma was simple: Canada is a nation, bilingual, polite, and different from America. The glue was empire, church, and the frontier myth. ...

“One scarcely knows where to begin.” Introduction Once upon a time, Britain ruled the seas. Today it rules the headlines with AI Prosperity Deals, collapsing infrastructure rebranded as renewal, and “investment pledges” that turn out to be little more than press releases. The pantomime continues, and the Daily Mail writes the reviews. The United Kingdom has become a theatre where empire’s afterglow is staged as farce. The actors change - Thatcher, Blair, Johnson, Starmer - but the script is the same: Britain must always be more important than it is. ...

Britain, A Nation in Decline but Always Entertained The United Kingdom today feels less like a ship of state and more like the Titanic after the iceberg: still afloat, still glamorous, but slowly tilting. And what is the Daily Mail if not the house band, playing loud and lively so that no one has to notice the icy water creeping in? Each headline is another tune to keep the passengers occupied: ...

I saw this headline in 1968. Not the exact words. The shape of it. The loss of contact. The most distant humans ever. The tension. The return. It was new then. It felt like something had opened. I read a similar headline today. “The 40 minutes when the Artemis crew loses contact with the Earth.” The words have been updated. The feeling has not. The reporters lean forward. The tone lowers. The moment is framed. ...