10/19/2026
‘The Rabbit Hole and The Golden Afternoon’
By Samantha Taylor (Auntie Sam, The Queen of Nonsense)
I don’t expect anyone to read this, it’s far too long. I’m leaving it here for posterity. If my books get to humanity and I’m gone I want the future to know I saw the broken systems of this world for what they are and I did my best to use my own POWER OF ONE to push humanity forward towards a kinder future.
‘THE TRUTH ABOUT HOMO SAPIENS’
Humans are self-domesticated primates. We reached our current evolutionary state in small, hunter-gatherer tribes around 300,000 years ago. Human bodies are not heavily s*xually dimorphic, and human males do not have enlarged canine teeth. Instead, Homo sapiens self-domesticated through language, tool use, and the organic development of culture and art.
Although all other species of Homo—including those we interbred with, like Neanderthals, Denisovans, and ghost populations—are extinct, we have a living representation of our evolutionary path in the genus Pan in Africa: the Bonobo. Human and Bonobo DNA is almost 99% identical.
Unlike chimpanzees, whose brains have entirely different chemical levels and release systems from ours, due to convergent evolution the Bonobo brain and the human brain share a nearly identical neural architecture.
Both human and Bonobo brains rely on serotonin, dopamine, endorphins, and oxytocin to form and solidify group connections. Other than the basic survival needs of s*x and food, the acts of helping and caring provide our brains with the greatest, most long-lasting chemical rewards.
Because Bonobos are self-domesticated chimpanzees, just as humans are self-domesticated primates, our brains evolved specifically for cooperation, mutual respect, and egalitarian communities. This is how hunter-gatherer tribes functioned, and even our first proto-cities, like Çatalhöyük, were entirely egalitarian.
‘FALLING DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE’
The fracture began when humanity built up a resource surplus to manage. At that intersection, certain humans decided they should escape manual labor, manage the surplus, control the rest of the populace, and lead lives of extravagance for doing less work. As the book Call Me Ishmael brilliantly illustrates: he who controls the food, controls the people.
This systemic shift was coupled with a biological violation: men decided they should choose the mates.
This goes entirely against mammalian evolution, primate evolution, and basic biology. In nature, females choose the mates. Even in species like gorillas that exhibit extreme s*xual dimorphism and massive canines, it is ultimately the females who decide which Silverback is dominant.
By enforcing this unnatural hierarchy, human males cut their own brains off from the highest internal reward system: self-care.
Basic self-care naturally rewards the brain. When you clean your habitat, your brain releases dopamine and serotonin. When you perform physical hygiene, you trigger all the feel-good chemicals at once (primates fundamentally love to groom). Fixing a healthy meal, taking a mindful walk, staying hydrated, and taking deep breaths every hour all trigger neural rewards because the human body cannot live without these actions.
But there is a catch: to get the biological reward, you must perform the self-care for yourself. If you outsource your self-care to someone else your brain does not send you those chemical rewards leading to a profound neurological imbalance.
When human males went against biology and decided they should choose the mates, they also outsourced their daily self-care to the women. This left their brains with very few paths to chemical rewards: food, s*x, and "pack ranking"—the act of putting others down to feel superior. Unfortunately, the only one of these that provides oxytocin (the bonding chemical) is s*x, and that only works if a genuine emotional bond occurs during and after.
The current advanced societies are built squarely on this broken foundation. It is buried so deeply under the complex layers of modern life that people aren’t even aware of it anymore. They have built their entire lives around artificial systems of pack ranking just to feed their brains dopamine.
Grades – pack ranking.
Sports – pack ranking.
Jobs – pack ranking.
Almost everything people do in modern society is a form of pack ranking—except for giving, caring, helping, and mentoring.
Even our imaginary money system is just pack ranking.
Money is literally nothing: a digital system of checks and balances monitoring who managed the "nothing" well.
Humans have existed as a species for 300,000 years, yet someone has a billion dollars? No. Humans just love to count and measure things. Our defining characteristics as a species are chins, counting, comparing, and measuring.
The gold standard went out in 1933. Since then, money has been paper and systems. Now it is digital and we are renaming it.
Before that, humans hauled around shiny rocks. Why? Because our brains love sparkle. We evolved as plains-striding primates in Africa, and we desperately needed to notice where the water was.
Today, technology has allowed the 1% to completely lock out the rest of the world. There isn’t a single modern biography where the person isn’t a product of nepotism that started generations ago. Technology simply allowed the elite to lock the door so the populace can no longer break through.
Internet algorithms are intentionally designed to focus on the known (what has already been said and done) and the mediocre. To go viral, content must be mediocre but provocative. That is what the dopamine-harvesting system demands, especially on social media. It keeps people bored but superficially stimulated so they scroll endlessly and can be advertised to.
Advertising is the single biggest waste of resources and human energy on Earth, consuming exorbitant amounts of imaginary money and human potential.
Internet algorithms intentionally suppress genius because genius makes you think, and the system cannot have that. If people started thinking, they might realize how upside-down and backwards this rabbit hole really is.
‘MANUFACTURED SCARCITY IN AN ABUNDANT WORLD’
We live in a beautiful, abundant world that could easily take care of all eight billion humans if it were properly nurtured. The technologies we possess today give us the power to build that world right now.
No one asks to be born, and no one chooses who they are born as. Therefore: the time, means, and education required for a person to do their basic daily self-care needed to stay alive are fundamental human rights.
Humanity has never reached its full potential because the global population has never been given the education, time, and means to practice daily self-care.
Every human needs clean air, clean water, a clean habitat, clothing, and medical care—including dental care FOR LIFE TO SURVIVE THE LIFE THEY NEVER ASKED FOR.
This is not a long list. It is outrageous that we are still failing to take care of our own species.
‘LIVING GLOBALLY AND EXISTING LOCALLY DOWN THE CURRENT RABBIT HOLE OR LIVING LOCALLY AND EXISTING GLOBALLY IN THE GOLDEN AFTERNOON’
We are currently reaching a time of peak human population. Every species hits a point where it reaches a maximum baseline and then naturally declines; humanity will likely peak around 10 billion people. That is why the world feels so messy right now.
Science has shown us that we are one species sharing a closed ecosystem with nowhere else to go.
You would think that once we saw our planet from space we would have been humbled into taking care of our home and each other. Instead, the broken systems are so deeply entrenched we didn't learn.
Right now, we live globally and exist locally—the ultimate backwards rabbit hole.
We need to live locally and exist globally.
Every building should have, solar panels, wind turbines, and a rain catchment system. These must be linked to small, local power grids and water treatment centers which are vastly safer than our current centralized infrastructure. By meeting water and power needs locally, we reclaim autonomy.
Where do we get the materials for community based microgrids and water management systems? We recycle the infrastructure of the giant, predatory utility companies and repurpose those materials into localized systems.
Now every community has water and power.
Once we have sustainable, localized energy and water we must feed ourselves.
It is time for Victory Gardens 2.0 and small-scale, local animal husbandry.
Turn half of every yard, every vacant lot, and every rooftop into a garden.
Establish local dairies and micro-farms. Small-scale animal husbandry for dairy and meat is ethical, organic, and entirely achievable.
Victory Gardens provided 40% of the crops in the United States during World War II, and they didn’t have our modern technology. With local greenhouses, communities can even enjoy tropical fruits anywhere in the world. We can have our cake and eat it too and everything can be grown locally. Thank you technology.
We must also re-evaluate breeding.
In a world of eight billion people, reproduction can no longer be treated as a default life purpose.
People often have families to give their own lives meaning, but to raise children properly and set a good example you must know the meaning of your own life first and that purpose cannot be connected to anyone else. It must be yours alone.
Because our current systems require a lifetime of indoctrination, children often lose their unique, innate genius the minute parents begin teaching them anything beyond basic self-care.
Having a child must be recognized for what it truly is: I am choosing to force human consciousness onto another being. And no matter how blessed a life is, being human is never easy.
We must implement mandatory s*x education and freely available birth control everywhere, worldwide.
When women have total control over their reproductive health they automatically choose to have fewer children because they want to take excellent care of the ones they have.
The baseline standard for choosing to have a child should be: Do you know yourself? Do you have a life purpose outside the pack-ranking systems of society that is dependent on you alone beyond reproduction? Have you fulfilled that purpose and are you content? Are you ready to dedicate the rest of your life—not just 18 years, but for life—to another human’s well-being?
If you do not possess these things for yourself, you cannot help your children achieve them.
Under these criteria, many women would naturally age out of breeding and that is perfectly fine. There are eight billion of us here. That is plenty of humans.
When reproduction is treated as a person's sole purpose children are treated as empty vessels for parents to mold, fill, and live through vicariously. This empty molding is the exact mechanism that steals humanity’s unique, innate genius at birth. It is a perpetual cycle that parents endlessly repeat.
Every single human is a one-in-a-billion-galaxies entity on the only planet we know that supports life. That makes every human life an absolute miracle. Not because of the physical act of giving birth—which is a basic biological function—but because you have brought forth a totally unique consciousness that has never existed before and will never exist again.
Parents must be incredibly careful with it; the survival of that unique genius starts entirely in their hands.
‘School Down the Rabbit Hole AKA Prison for Children’
This brings us to school: the prison for children.
I know this system intimately because I spent my entire life inside public education. When I was born, my mother was a Head Start teacher. She took me to school with her often. By age seven, I was creating her classroom bulletin board art from scratch and correcting student worksheets. By age twelve I was editing stories, essays, and research papers with her at night.
I went on to become an elementary education student in college then a fifth-grade teacher myself. I actively chose to teach the inclusion class, because the real world includes everyone and so should the classroom.
School is structurally worse than prison. Even in prison you can generally get a drink of water or use the restroom when you need to. School is an institutional system of indoctrination based entirely on bullying, pack ranking, and forced conformity. Its explicit purpose is to turn students into compliant workers and passive consumers who never question societal structures. It systematically kills genius. Unless a child possesses a naturally contrary brain that questions absolutely everything, the school system will take their unique genius and bury it deep.
They can function in society but they will never create something spectacular and completely unique to them the way they were born to do.
Poverty, prison, and homelessness all stem directly from the children’s prison system we call ‘school’.
Teachers do their best every day to nurture and mentor their students inside this broken system. They are working around a system that is the way it is because we don’t trust the very people we should with the education of children, the teachers themselves.
Instead we put the power in the hands of administrators, curriculum programs and their developers, and government testing.
They create and maintain the prison for children while teachers do their best to comply with systems they don’t even like.
All to prepare the children of the general population for their exciting future as slaves to the 1%.
‘Being a Slave Down the Rabbit Hole or Living a Life of Purpose in The Golden Afternoon’
In an abundant, localized world no one has to work a slave job.
Because we do everything upside down, factories and mega-farms mass-produce products that are packaged and shipped across the globe. This setup robs humanity of its inherent purpose.
So many forms of unique individual genius involve botany, nurturing plants, working with animals, or practicing herbal medicine—creating the very things people need for proper self-care, like natural soaps, shampoos, and lotions.
We have taken the vocations that give human life a sense of tangible meaning and handed them over to mass production. Mass production is the technology that replaced us.
A person's true job should be creating these products on a small scale, naturally, ethically, and locally for their immediate community.
Instead, people go to slave jobs to earn imaginary money just to purchase the basic survival items that should be birthrights.
Factory work is a slave job, and distributing those mass-produced goods creates millions more slave jobs. Packing products, hauling cargo, driving trucks, flying cargo planes, unloading pallets, and working retail registers are all slave jobs. No one’s cosmic purpose is to drive a delivery truck or sell commercial toothpaste.
Conversely, it is a profound life purpose to create all-natural dental care or herbal remedies for your neighbors.
People try to do this today but they are forced to do it within the market system. They have to charge outrageous prices just to survive the cost of having a business and being alive and the moment an ethical small company gains traction, a massive corporation buys them out.
If we recycle our cities to rebuild smaller, self-sufficient, interconnected communities, we can give humanity its real purpose back: making life genuinely enjoyable for ourselves and our neighbors.
Artistic pursuits, beekeeping, brewing, crafting organic items, carving furniture, sewing, baking, raising livestock, gardening, and mentoring children, local sporting activities, are all life purposes that people naturally love.
Today, people exhaust themselves at slave jobs just to secure the money and time to be alive and pursue these passions as hobbies.
No one’s life purpose is selling insurance. Yet, people with deep interpersonal genius can absolutely gather resources and organize an empathetic community to take care of any neighbor who suffers an accident or tragedy. Healing people is a life purpose. Mentoring people is a life purpose. These roles are meant to be sourced directly from the local community. The town doctor used to know you, your lifestyle, your family, and your environment.
When we source what we need locally everyone in the community has a clear purpose they get to choose.
And the systems of the world are entirely wrong about a cared-for populace; secure people do not sit idle.
When humans have healthy brains and healthy bodies, they desperately want to create and contribute. When everyone's needs are met through the shared life purposes of others community members forge unbreakable bonds. You cannot pursue your purpose without a community to receive the fruits of your labor.
That reciprocal exchange is what connects us.
‘Where are the Children in The Golden Afternoon?’
In this restored local community structure, expecting parents, young children, elders, and anyone who loves kids get to hang out together in the community crèche if they choose.
This is a beautiful, locally supplied community property with lovely facilities filled with fresh foods, natural goods, and all one needs to learn and manage their own basic self care.
Because every single life is a one-in-a-billion-galaxies entity it must be carefully nurtured to thrive and bloom so humanity can enjoy and benefit from its unique genius.
The community elders will also receive any necessary self care assistance and kokua at the community crèche. The youth and the elders shall thrive together in the heart of the local community for the comfort and peace of the elders depends entirely on how we train our youth. Nurturing children is the single most valuable investment a community can make and nurturing the elders is the thank you all people deserve for their lifetime of contribution to their community.
In the crèche, children learn to listen to their own bodies. They learn how to breathe properly, how to stay hydrated, and how to listen to internal signals to know exactly when and what to eat. They slowly learn to prepare that food for themselves. They are provided a safe environment for mindful walks, outdoor play, and deep exploration.
This applies to the elders as well.
Once self-care is mastered children will learn to read for true comprehension, grasp basic mathematics, use technology as a tool, and write for explicit meaning and communication.
In the community crèche children are not forcefully taught; instead, they learn how to learn. They discover how their own brains operate, how to access raw information, and how to critically vet that information to see if it is correct and where it originated.
Every human being is born a self-directed learner; we simply need to let children learn how to teach themselves.
Once children have mastered their own self care, have a learning foundation, and understand how their brains function then the children are ready to go out into the community they live in daily. They will not be locked away from their community in a prison for children because children belong in the world in which they will live.
Once a child has mastered self-care, the basics of processing information, and an understanding of their own brain, we will naturally see them gravitate toward specific activities in the community. This is when hands-on apprenticeships begin.
Children raised free of indoctrination will tell us and show us exactly where they belong in this world and exactly what they are meant to do with their lives.
Those who wish to pursue advanced sciences or hyper-specialized interests can transition to dedicated macro-communities centered around the specific geographic locations best suited for that research once they reach that educational level in their chosen field.
While living locally in self sufficient, self sustaining communities humanity can still exist globally by using technology to connect with other self-sufficient communities all over the earth.
We possess all the technology required to live locally and exist globally right now.
But because our current systems are locked down by the 1%, and because the internet is programmed to harvest dopamine through provocative mediocrity we must bypass the machine entirely.
‘How To Escape from The Rabbit Hole Into The Golden Afternoon’
We change our world through The Power of One.
Every single person must do what they can, right now, right where they are,to push humanity in a better direction.
The only moment that actually exists is the present moment.
The only things any human being truly controls is their own thoughts and actions.
Stay present, take excellent care of your own body and mind, and give kokua (help) using your personal genius in each passing moment.
Auntie Sam The Queen of Nonsense and my Power of One’
My personal Power of One is making up silly stories that rhyme and doodling. I am one of those humans built specifically for nonsense —I have been described as both a Pied Piper and a Mary Poppins. Yes, I lure people in then let them know they’re practically perfect in their own unique way.
I sit at a very particular and small table of authors. At my author’s table all the other members are men, and they are all dead.
I have earned my place at this table through the 28 books I have written and illustrated.
I may never sit at this table in the eyes of mainstream humanity, but I don’t need the world to validate my place at this table. I know I belong there and that is all that matters.
I sit with Edward Lear, Lewis Carroll, Dr. Seuss, Roald Dahl, and Shel Silverstein, all men, all dead.
I have searched and searched for a woman author who commands the same humor, the same sharp snark, and the same penchant for making up original words. There isn’t one. AI has told me so. I am the missing female voice in the genre of conversational poetry and nonsense rhyme.
Furthermore, Carroll and Dahl didn’t illustrate their own work and I do (though I consider Quentin Blake, Dahl’s illustrator, to be my biggest visual influence).
Dr. Seuss and Shel Silverstein built massive publishing empires but both had deep, legacy connections to the commercial media world. Seuss was a political cartoonist for The New Yorker; Silverstein was a cartoonist for Pl***oy. They also lived before the 1% completely locked out the world and programmed technology to reward the mediocre.
I was literally born into the public education system and I spent my life there. Because of that background, I write curriculum like breathing. Everything I create naturally aligns with National Core Content Standards. These books are tools for learning.
The information, rhythm, and rhyme of the poetry activate the left hemisphere of the brain while the poetic language activates the right. Coloring activates both brain hemispheres simultaneously while putting the brain into a meditative state. The books also make people laugh and that’s my favorite thing about them.
Once upon a time, I tried to run a traditional book business but it failed because I gave away far more books than I ever sold.
I had to because the books naturally improve reading comprehension while relaxing the reader and making them laugh. So I went full non-profit in 2021 to give every single book I write to directly to humanity.
All of my books are completely free at www.thepoetryzonewithsam.org. Anyone can click a book title in the purple box, hit the download file, and instantly access the work. If you print it as a two-sided booklet with a cardstock cover, fold it in half, and staple it, you can manufacture an entire classroom set matched directly to your curriculum for pennies. My books are completely free on Facebook, the Internet Archive, and Wikimedia Commons.
I deliberately designed my copyright page to void it giving the world explicit permission to copy, print, and distribute the words and art in all The Poetry Zone with Sam books with zero restrictions and no credit required. I have placed my life's work directly into the public domain now.
The Poetry Zone With Sam
Copyright- Samantha Taylor 2017
All Poetry, Illustrations, and Cover Art by Sam
Aloha From Auntie Sam, The Queen of Nonsense,
I love to give. Giving is my favorite. It brings me great joy. And I have a gift I can alway give. That gift is books. Books live inside of me. I adore books. I feel lucky I get to create them. When you have a gift there's only one thing to do with it, give it away. The only way to receive the Poetry Zone with Sam books is as a gift and I'm happy to present you with the gift of books today, TA-DA! I hope you find your gift and I hope you give it away because giving feels good. And remember, you have received a gift from The Queen of Nonsense and I'm your Auntie. This makes YOU royalty. As royalty it's up to you to protect all people and the planet we share while blazing trails with YOUR OWN POWER OF ONE to make this paradise of a world a more beautiful place for all.
Aloha, Sam
As a non profit book gifting organization The Poetry Zone with Sam gives the world permission to copy and share the words and art in all The Poetry Zone with Sam books.
Because the world needs words.
The Poetry Zone with Sam thepoetryzonewithsam.org
[email protected]
This is my power of one and how I’m pointing the way out of the current RABBIT HOLE into THE GOLDEN AFTERNOON of my dreams.
