The Leviathan Cycle and its forerunners

Foreword:

AI did not write this post. I wrote it. However, AI did create some cool art as accompaniments.

Remember: the whole point is about the host, not the guest.

Grant – June 9, 2026.


1. Devastation

The Leviathan coils itself, sucking in the salty air. At last. Curling, its dark body pulses and sways. Red eyes pierce the men on shore. Some run. Some freeze, staring. Some welcome it, finally seeing the end as near, and the start. Some train guns upon it. But there are too many bodies; the mass is too large; it’s a futile task. Air hangs thick. A gull caws and flies away, sensing the doom. We have invited the snake into our home, seeing it as our savior. It was never our savior. The snake devours. It does not forgive. The Leviathan inhales, smelling weakness.

Suddenly, the Leviathan twitches and lunges, crashing onto shore. Immediately blood, bodies, crunched and squeezed until bursting. Cracking bones and peeling flesh. Civility is lost. We have invited the snake into our minds. It eats us.

What fills the place of a culture, negated? The Leviathan is not an invader. It is a guest, and it landed when we stopped believing in ourselves. Mercy, as surrender. When the walls were torn down from within, this was always to be the inevitable end.


2. Desperation

But this drama has occurred many times before. Victory is all but guaranteed if we believe in the only one who can defeat the Leviathan.

Who is Jesus? Order, with a sword. Red covers pure, holy white. Is it wine, or blood? The snake recoils, smaller now. Families and armies pray.

Hold the line! Light pierces darkness. See how the foamy seas have parted. This path will not be flooded.

The savior commands the boundaries to hold. Hierarchy is the last bastion and

WE WILL NOT YIELD.

Jesus excludes. How can it be? He discriminates against evil, to love and shape his sheep. There is no pity for the filthy snake here. “Didn’t we know he was a snake when we invited him?”


3. Resolution.

Oh, the horror!

The beautiful, gory, physical, and metaphorical climax has already been foretold. The Leviathan must die if it arrives to the shore. We alone cannot kill it though, nor would we even if we could. But see the surprised faces. They reveal those who welcomes the serpent: The Saints, the outcasts, me, you…

I do not see the celebrations. The strong have become weak, because their worldview has crumbled.

Professors stare in disbelief. The theory built on induction does not predict the black swan, nor the man in red and white. This wasn’t the plan.

Activists continue shouting in anger. Rage, at what exactly?

The frauds twisting religion. They recoil, as if seeing evil. “This cannot be the Christ! It’s not the one that we fed to the masses.”

The plans of the poor, wealthy, powerful, and weak: all shattered. We placed our hope in that which promised a world of our own making. We sacrificed our faith for a lie: in an Enlightenment universal acceptance that we have no right to give. We forgot that we need to play our part, and we are not the character who decides fate. So, our false devotion is pierced by the sword of truth.

People who make “guilt” their first principle will not survive contact with that which has not.

But there’s a hope. A young girl claps in awe. The rest of us thought that the Leviathan was our savior. But she knows that Jesus is a man, who is in heaven.


4. Revelation

Leviathan arrives, Christ defends, Christ attacks, Leviathan dies. This is the drama playing out in every human heart and mind. Even today, the snake slithers around until it finds the weakest point. Right now, have given up the belief in ourselves. We have negated our identity, our stories, and our collective self-assurance. We have invited a universality of “average” to tear down the “great.” We cannot continue to internalize contradictions.

“I hate myself. Why should I continue to exist?” This is the snake.

Cull your Leviathan before it eats us.


Images generated by Perplexity AI

This post is not about stairs.

This post is not about stairs.

It is about me trying to understand what’s happening in my city, country, and culture. I do it the best way I know how, through metaphors.

If you were walking up the stairs and saw this, what would you do?

Minneapolis, Apr 2, 2021

A New Step #1 was recently installed with new wood. The Old Step #2 matches the original build.

Where would you put your weight to climb the stairs: On #1 or #2? In other words, the question is whether you trust the old or trust the new.

There’s no right answer in every case. Each case depends on the context and personality.

Put my weight on the new: The old step broke away due to time and disintegration. So it’s more likely that the other old step will break, too. The new was installed with newer, better parts.

Put my weight on the old: The old has still more experience than the new, which hasn’t been tested yet. Maybe it was installed wrong and I’m about to find out. The new could be incompatible withe the original build.

This post is about Daunte Wright and Kim Potter. It’s about split second decisions. About desperation and stress. About equality and justice.

Daunte Wright was killed by Kim Potter. This loss is a tragedy for our city, country, and culture. The protests, counter-protests, and surrounding conversation are as much about the moments that ended one life and changed another as it is about competing ideologies; about where we should put our weight.

Old Step #1 broke, and the New Step #1 inserted itself in. There is a new movement calling for justice, demanding outrage, and condemning silence.

We as a people are now looking at Old Step #2.

Is Old Step #2 sturdy or most likely to break?

Was the breaking of Old Step #1 an outlier occurrence, or was it an indicator that the old wood is disintegrating?

Do we trust the original foundations or do we think it’s likely to break and hurt someone else?

Is the New Step #1 incompatible with the original build, or is it more advanced with updated parts?

This very week, during the Chauvin trials of the killing of George Floyd, ideologies are arguing louder than ever again. We have to choose whether to protect Step #2 and trust the sturdiness that lasts. Or we have to choose to replace the outdated old wood and replace it with a newer and updated build.

Dropping the unnecessary stuff.

As a culture, sometimes we drop words at the start of sentences.

For example: instead of saying “I have a friendly announcement that…,” we say “Friendly announcement that…”

And, instead of saying “I’d be happy to do that,” we say “Happy to do that.”

Wonder why we do that? Interested to find out. Quicker to get to the point. Confused or make sense?

Photo by Erol Ahmed on Unsplash