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The era of striving for industrialization, technology, and progress has come to an end. These markers of human civilization are now part of our DNA. We have transformed this planet—for better or for worse—into a playing field for human aspirations. We tamed nature by reducing it at scale, and the days of being afraid of beasts lurking in dark forests are long gone. We paved over the dangers of this world—real or imaginary—we built our urban fortresses, and we retreated into our digitized realities.

What is the blueprint of our lives? The ancestors that set us on the train of industrialization, technology, and progress aspired to improve their lives: have enough food in their bellies, a warm shelter over their heads, access to medicine to alleviate their pain, and safety from the unpredictable forces of nature. They wanted knowledge to understand the mysteries of the universe, and freedom to pursue their dreams. We have achieved all that and more. So what comes next?

The emerging blueprint of our technological age is not built on human flourishing. It’s built on optimization and efficiency in the use of all natural resource—our planet, our ecosystems, our labor, our data, our energy—so that we can produce more for less at a faster pace. At the end spectrum of a human civilization as remote as possible from its biology, lies manufacturing and consumerism: a devouring anxiety of wanting to fill the void of our untethered existence with things made from manipulated matter and biology.

As the production line speeds up, the slingshot of progress will hurl humanity toward its extinction, replacing chaotic biology with a superior form of being, free to spread across the universe where it can continue to extract and exploit with technological efficiency and optimization—turning matter and life into products consumed by digital existence.

But life cannot be an abstraction of life.

You cannot manufacture a meaningful existence. You cannot purchase a meaningful existence. You can only live a meaningful existence.

Imagine embracing once again the gift of our natural lives and using technology and progress to turn this Earth into a paradise that supports planetary life in all its magnificent beauty and diversity. Imagine using technology and progress to immerse ourselves into our ecosystems, reconnect with the planet and all other living beings in peace, and become of this world once again. Each of us in our unique forms of existence, in these bodies that are born, grow, and one day perish. How beautiful is this life, how amazing that you get to be you this one time in this vast universe.

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Cognitive Ecology is a philosophical companion to my debut climate fiction mosaic novel There Is Hope (spring 2026) now available for pre-order.

Thank you for reading,
—Claudia Befu

Three years ago, I sent out the first installment of my mosaic cli-fi series There Is Hope.

That day, I invited you on a long journey as I wrote and published my first novel, letting the story unfold episode by episode in your inbox. Some of you have been here from the beginning. Others joined along the way. Either way, here we are. On this small corner of the internet, writing and reading literature while the world spins on.

Bringing this novel to life with you has felt like a piece of stolen time. In our busy lives, taking the odd moment to immerse in an imaginary world—both as readers and writers—is a rare kind of luxury. It is also a pure form of human existence: to experience the wold on our own terms, and to articulate our unique worldviews through stories.

After a long journey, There Is Hope is finally ready to leave the pages of this newsletter and venture into the world. The publication date is June 1, 2026. The first edition will include an eBook and a beautiful paperback edition with five interior illustrations—which I will reveal soon.

To thank you for supporting this story as it was written and serialized, I’m making the eBook available for pre-order at €0.99 for the next six weeks. After publication, the price will be €5.99.

If you’ve been reading along, this is the moment to make it yours.

Pre-order your copy now

A lot has changed between the first installment and this final version. I spent autumn and winter rewriting until the words sang on the page—adding depth, structure, cutting 2000 words, then adding 5000 more.

For the book design I collaborated with the talented . He created a a stunning cover for the book, did professional typesetting for the interior, and brought the story to life with five gorgeous interior illustrations.

All of this will be included in both the eBook and the print edition.

A note for paid subscribers

As a thank you for your support, I would like to gift you the ebook and a signed copy of the print edition. Keep an eye on your inbox for more details in the upcoming weeks.

This book exists because you were here. Now I’d love for you to hold it.

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We spend too much time reacting to the world and too little time manifesting our inner self into the world. So much of who we are remains unexpressed. Our very existence on this planet, in this biological body, remains neglected, unacknowledged. We take mental refuge in worlds to come, futures to come, or in life beyond death—thinking this life here is transitory. Yet, we strive for optimization, efficiency, and productivity, to increase an illusory value, be it capital or progress. Increasingly, even our thoughts, experiences, feelings, and creative energy are harvested for profit by platforms that commodify human existence itself.

Caught in the whirlwind of progress, we forget that we are living beings.

Every single day is a manifestation of being alive on a planet that nurtures us together with countless other beings—the web of life powering existence itself. Every day, our creative energy waits to be engaged, to embrace our embodied existence, to express who we are into the world. It starts with the small things: our surroundings, our relationships, how we dress our bodies, the way we carry ourselves, what we cook, how we set up the table. Then it extends to the outside world: how we exist on this planet, how we consume, how we share this earth with other living beings, how we leave this place behind once we’ve passed through. All this is our imprint on this world.

From the small to the big things, it was never about changing the world single handedly. It was about changing our world by manifesting the goodness inside, by doing the work.

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Cognitive Ecology is a philosophical notebook being written in public and collected in print at the end of 2026. You’re reading it as it takes shape. Start from the beginning here.

Thank you for reading,
—Claudia Befu

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The Industrial Revolution and human progress have devastated the diversity of life on Earth. Most large mammals live in symbolic numbers as representatives of their species, unless they are productive for human society. Meanwhile, the mammals who have exploded in numbers because they serve as protein resources for us—such as cows and pigs—live miserable lives. Even though our species is incapable of living under water, marine life has suffered equally. Our economic activities extract life from the ocean, pollute Earth’s waters, and disrupt the aquatic habitats that sustain the lives of countless beings.

We paved over our forests, meadows, and wet lands. We turned our rivers into facilities for generating electricity, even though rivers have a much higher economic value when left wild. But if rivers were allowed to once again run free—providing fish to eat at no cost and naturally fertilizing our agricultural lands—how would food conglomerates and agrochemical companies continue to make profits? Productizing the most basic needs of life is a sure way to get rich. But by productizing our planet, we have destroyed it. We cut old growth forests for timber. We burned entire tropical forests together with all their constituents to grow palm oil plantations. Kilometer after kilometer of perfectly aligned palm trees, living on agrochemicals that destroy the soil, now cover entire landscapes that were once thriving ecosystems. Wildlife, after all, does not have a bank account. It cannot shop for food and water in supermarkets or buy their furs and bark online. But why should we feel sorry for lesser species or the planet itself? Were they not created to serve human progress?

During my lifetime on this planet, the global human population has nearly doubled. This boom in humans was hailed as a successful feature of progress: longer life spans, lower infant mortality, higher caloric intake, and better lives for everyone made possible by economic development. Yet gradually the fruits of human labour were funneled in the pockets of a cunning few. At the same time, new technologies started to render human intelligence, creativity, and contribution to progress optional. In today’s economy, a human is a commodity that can be replaced by machines.

Young people understand this instinctively. They are intelligent enough to piece together the tapestry of human reality in the twenty-first century. Their response is expressed in their refusal to participate in outdated educational systems, but even more poignant in the way they consume and are consumed. In today’s economy, the kind of human intelligence needed for progress can no longer be optimized by human beings. A human is an inefficient training model, requiring twenty years of caloric intake to become profitable. Even then, the output of a human model is strongly limited by its biology. Unlike our silicon cousins, we can never become superhuman. In today’s economy, the most high yielding human consumes and allows themselves to be consumed for technological progress. What counts is what increases that consumption power. This is the world we built for the younger generations. They look back with nostalgia at how their parents and grandparents once lived. But they are under no illusion about what they need to do to survive today. They understand what human life is worth to progress.

As we slowly join the rest of life on Earth as natural resources, perhaps we will finally pause, look around, and ask ourselves: if it destroys life, is it even progress?

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Cognitive Ecology is a philosophical notebook being written in public and collected in print at the end of 2026. You’re reading it as it takes shape. Start from the beginning here.

Thank you for reading,
—Claudia Befu

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Ever since the Industrial Revolution, civilization has been on a speeding train toward what seemed to be a desired final destination: transcending the human condition. It was never clear what that meant, but that was the beauty of it—the certainty that, wherever the train took us it would be a wonderful world.

Nearly three hundred years later, the train of progress rushes on. The world speeding past the train’s windows blurs: more human settlements, fewer forests, meadows, wild rivers, and wild life. Round and round we circle the Earth, and the world feels like it is closing in on us.

AI threatens to replace human intelligence and creativity. Humans risk being demoted by machines as the superior species. Our existence is slowly mined to build the new superhuman. We join the rest of life on Earth as natural resources.

For the first time, we start to see glimpses of the end station.

Of what is to come.

Or maybe not.

Perhaps it’s time to step out of our imaginary train and take a hard look at the world we wanted to leave behind. For the first time, we start to feel its pain: our hunger to consume our way to progress is cannibalizing the human species to give birth to a superintelligence devoid of life. And what is a superhuman without life? What is Earth without life? What is the universe without life? What is a human devoid of its body?

Perhaps transcendence means coming full circle: embracing our natural existence as biological beings on the only planet known in our reachable universe to sustain human life. Embracing the fact that human beings are manifestations of life on Earth, part of this planet’s living ecosystem we need to survive. Continuity and flourishing of life on Earth in all its magnificent diversity must be the supreme destination.

Perhaps transcendence means abandoning our animal fear of a predatory natural world, and using our technology not to segregate ourselves from life, but to embrace it fully, secure in the knowledge that we now have the means to protect ourselves.

Perhaps transcendence means becoming once again of this planet in our minds and worldviews. Reintegrate ourselves with the ecosystems that give us life. Fully embrace our flesh-and-blood existence as the only means of being human and alive.

The ultimate goal of this new transcendental human being should be to protect Earth’s ability to sustain the diversity of life in perpetuity.

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Cognitive Ecology is a philosophical notebook being written in public and collected in print at the end of 2026. You’re reading it as it takes shape. Start from the beginning here.

Thank you for reading,
—Claudia Befu

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One thing climate change has made clear to us is that humans haven’t mastered nature yet. Perhaps we never will. And that is fine.

The idea of mastering nature comes from a feeling of fear, a survival instinct that any living creature on this planet—no matter how small and insignificant—possesses. However, human civilization has come to a point where it allows us to stop operating from that place of fear in our relationship with nature. But our social neurosis doesn’t allow us to see clearly.

When we operate from a desire to dominate all the non-human forces that have agency on this planet—be it a predatory species or the cycles of natural ecosystems—we see everything as a threat. The very place that gives us life becomes the perceived enemy. And so, we retreat in an abstract world of our own making, our minds tethered to life-simulating devices.

Historically, human creations have helped us survive, explore, and understand the world more deeply. Our art, music, writing, philosophy, and science have elevated the human condition by keenly observing our surrounding world and taking inspiration from it. Modern technology can enhance our senses, bring us closer to the natural world, without the need to resort to violence to feel protected. Without the need to cut ourselves from forests to feel sheltered. Without the need to poison our waters to feel clean. Without the need to exploit this planet and other living beings to feel like we are making progress.

Imagine technology that lets us listen to a tree.

Feel the heartbeat of a cheetah.

Hear the colors of the rainbow.

Sense the tremors of the next earthquake.

Technology should immerse us in the world, not extract us from it.

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Cognitive Ecology is a philosophical notebook being written in public and collected in print at the end of 2026. You’re reading it as it takes shape. Start from the beginning here.

Thank you for reading,
—Claudia Befu

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Old technologies were created to enhance human life. New technologies aim to replicate human intelligence. The raw material of artificial intelligence is not rare metals, but precious brain power.

Current models were trained by extracting records of humanity’s written, visual, and musical arts and knowledge. But ingesting the outputs of human intelligence is not enough to replicate a thinking human. Human intelligence is embodied. It is a function of biology, of living in and interacting with the physical world.

To advance toward artificial general intelligence, machines require human spatial intelligence. The necessary training data must be extracted via wearables that tether humans to computers. Yet even mapping human experience won’t be enough to teach machines how to think and feel like us.

To pursue AGI and super-intelligence, technology must ultimately rely on the most valuable data-processing unit we know: the human brain.

Will we extract technology to enhance humans? Or will we extract humans to enhance machines?

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Cognitive Ecology is a philosophical notebook being written in public and collected in print at the end of 2026. You’re reading it as it takes shape. Start from the beginning here.

Thank you for reading,
—Claudia Befu

In the future, some very clever people plan to arrange them better.

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Do you sometimes wonder about the future of life? Is the human stomach the most efficient tool for generating energy? Or is the sun better? Does it make sense to populate distant Earths with humans? Or should we optimize ourselves as simulations?

Great things are in store for the future of life, but to understand where we are going, we must first understand where we are.

Everything in this universe exists as it does because, 13.8 billion years ago, the lid was taken off the Big Bang pressure cooker sending a hot soup of fundamental particles flying in all directions. After a while, they turned into atoms and, with the help of gravity, formed a vast number of planets, suns, stars, and galaxies—so far apart that traveling to them is impossible. Space is cold and dark. There is no oxygen. We don’t even know whether there is life beyond Earth. It is all rather inefficient.

Yet, amid this cosmic chaos, something the Big Bang had clearly not anticipated emerged: the human species. As all biological entities, we are, for now, nothing more than rearranged food. But we are on the verge of creating something the Big Bang never quite managed: superintelligence.

The future belongs to superintelligent entities. They will be ambitious. They will spread across the universe and arrange all the particles the Big Bang messed up in ways that are more optimized, more efficient, and infinitely more delightful.

How exactly will this rearranged universe look? That is something the very clever people are still thinking about.

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Cognitive Ecology is a philosophical notebook being written in public and collected in print at the end of 2026. You’re reading it as it takes shape. Start from the beginning here.

Thank you for reading,
—Claudia Befu

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The clear blue sky met the vast mammoth tundra at the horizon. A gust of wind twirled dust in the air, enveloping the group of humans and dogs. As they walked over the roiling grassland, they carried packs of food, tools, clothing and fur tents waiting to be unpacked at the next seasonal settlement. Further ahead, herds of migratory mammoths, reindeer and wild horses spread across the grassy landscape in perpetual motion. As the wind eased off and the dust settled on the tundra, the humans uncovered their faces and breath in the dry, cool air. Summer was coming.

*

The blazing fire sparkled in the eyes of the hunters gathered on the limestone escarpment, peeking down at the frenzied herds of migrating horses. Maddening terror ignited by the sky-high flames rushed through their bodies like wildfire, driving the horses toward the narrow path along the ridge as they screamed and squealed, eager to escape, only to be corralled into an even deadlier trap. A well-coordinated slaughter began when the humans descended upon the terrified horses with their intricate, modular hunting tools skillfully embellished with detachable and interchangeable microliths, spearheads, harpoons, needles and projectile points. The seasonal hunt of deer and horses, mammoths, hyenas, wolves, hares and foxes was a dance of survival on a frozen planet.

*

The delicate flames of the oil lamps sprinkled around the heavy fur tent raised on mammoth bone pillars trembled in the dark. The inhabitants of the little village were gathered around the heart where a bright fire was burning. The children were warming themselves up watching the adults sewing boots and clothing from the fur of young foxes, flintknapping daggers and arrowheads, repairing their portable hunting tools, making necklaces from bones, teeth, shells and tusks, or carving voluptuous statues of the goddess. The figures were so small, they could fit in the palm of the hand, fingers locked around them for protection during the long, harsh winters.

*

The mammoth tundra ecosystem dominated Earth for 100,000 years, the length of an Ice Age cycle, feeding the world.

*

The ice sheet cracked and lifted from its grounding seafloor and started marching backward toward the land, bobbing up and down on the tide of an ever-growing ocean. Calving ice shelves flooded the tundra landscape, melting glaciers sent rivers crashing down from the mountain tops, and storms beat against the shores, eroding the land as the frozen arid world of the last Ice Age melted into water.

*

About 15,000 years ago, the ice sheet covering Eurasia melted away at a speed of 600 meters per day for several months in the area of today’s Norway. The mammoth tundra was flooded. The mammoths were no more. Then the hunter gatherers were no more.

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Cognitive Ecology is a philosophical notebook being written in public and collected in print at the end of 2026. You’re reading it as it takes shape. Start from the beginning here.

Thank you for reading,
—Claudia Befu

You are what you can buy.
You are your bank account.
You are your worth.
You are a lonely wallet on the internet.

Profiling tools use our data to create a sinister version of our digital selves based on our online and offline activity. What we click, what we read, how we look, what we wear, and the backgrounds of our homes become clues in estimating our shopping prowess, inputs for psychological profiles, and levers for manipulation. End users within today’s digital infrastructure have only one primary goal: to make a purchase. The algorithm mines human attention until the purchase is fulfilled.

On glowing screens and scrolling feeds sprinkled with personalized ads, our feverish brains pick up in milliseconds the clues rolling before our eyes: click, fill shopping cart, buy, reset account balance. The little rush of ephemeral happiness—that the empty wallets of our hearts and minds can never truly buy—is on the house.

No matter how much automation is introduced on the market, humans won’t lose their one true job in the techno-capitalist utopia: being an end user. Human existence is reduced to an endless loop of content creation and consumption, tethered to technology that extracts human intelligence and creativity to improve machines tasked with achieving the holy grail of progress: Artificial General Intelligence (AGI).

Your data shouldn’t be someone else’s digital property.
Your work shouldn’t be someone else’s digital property.
Your art shouldn’t be someone else’s digital property.
Your life should not be mined for content.

It is increasingly easier for younger people to earn money by creating online content than it is to find a job. The digital platforms making fortunes by placing advertisements on our screens are mining human lives.

This is how we reduce our unique, beautiful existence to a reel or a post on an endless scrolling feed, a blur of human experiences parsed as free content on the internet. No wonder we increasingly think that our lives are copies of other lives and are nostalgic for times past.

When we optimize our creativity for free online consumption by bringing it to the lowest common denominator to cater to the largest audience, we turn ourselves into a human sketch, doomed to perform a variation of the same theme. Because more of the same but different is always guaranteed to sell.

Meanwhile, our data, our work, and our art are turned into free digital goods from which digital platforms and new technologies can extract value without any added benefit for us. Our lives consumed by the digital slot machine.

You are a node in someone else’s infrastructure.

Once Artificial General Intelligence is achieved, the law of optimization and efficiency will remove the inefficient biological node from the technological infrastructure, enabling us to exploit and extract value from a considerably vaster resource: the universe. In the techno-futurist imagination, the final destination is populating entire galaxies with happily ever after simulations of end users in a techno-utopian hell of our own making.

What do we leave behind as we furiously speed ahead to an illusory future where no one truly lives?

The new generations are already born as end users. Forever nostalgic watching the digital memories we leave behind of a world that could have been. Frozen in time and space, tethered to the gadgets they inherited from us, their youth extracted as content to be consumed by the digital ad machine. For them, human communication will forever be engagement, relationships will be digital transactions, and intimacy online monetization, as they are forced to obey the supreme law that anything goes as long as it sells.

Perhaps they never wanted to spend their one wild, beautiful life like this, but we didn’t give them any choice but to wander the digital recesses of our collective memories searching for a world they will never know. Wanting to stop time. Stop the scroll. Stop the inner vortex of the world from swallowing them whole in the stillness of their rooms. The only light, a glowing screen. Their future slipping away from them like a dream. Their hearts aching for the beautiful pain of feeling alive.

The algorithm determines what you see, what you think, and how you engage.

In the digital world, nothing belongs to us. The digital infrastructure that harvests human bodies and minds is not built for the betterment of humanity. It is built to extract value from us for its owners. It is inherently feudal. We plant our knowledge, skills, time, and dreams on rented digital land, but the harvest fills someone else’s granaries. We are end users of more and more devices connected to our bodies and minds tracking our daily activities, medical records, work records, travels, thoughts, emotions, and longings. This data exists as memory logs of our existence, an extension of our personhood. Humans should own their digital selves, just as they own their physical selves.

Our digital spaces reflect our modern worldview, fixated on extraction and consumption. In the physical world, the planet is the raw material. In digital spaces, human existence is the raw material. Our intelligence is the training input for technologies meant to replace any form of human expression and manifestation in this world. End users are passive recipients of whatever was created to monetize them.

As digital reality becomes our main reality, physical spaces and our means of independent subsistence are slowly encroached by the same feudal lords. Humans as end users of technology. Humans as end users of the planet. Technology as a platform. Earth as a platform. An endless scrolling feed of products, services, and entertainment. In its mindless quest for monetization, the modern algorithm turns our digital and physical existence into one blurry human journey to an ad funnel. One life, one big wallet. Pay in. Pay out. We are physical and digital nodes in someone else’s infrastructure.

Digital spaces are created by human intelligence. The technology of the future is made possible by extracting human intelligence. Yet, these systems are built to strip us of everything that makes us human. Physical sovereignty will not survive without digital sovereignty.

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Cognitive Ecology is a philosophical notebook being written in public and collected in print at the end of 2026. You’re reading it as it takes shape. Start from the beginning here.

Thank you for reading,
—Claudia Befu

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It is increasingly easier for younger people to earn money by creating online content than it is to find a job. In today’s economy, online platforms that make fortunes from placing online advertisements on our screens have a real necessity to mine humans for content.

This is how we reduce our unique, beautiful existence to a reel or a post on an endless scrolling feed, a blur of human experiences parsed as free content on the internet. No wonder we increasingly think that our lives are copies of other lives and are nostalgic for times we never got to live.

When we optimize our creativity for free online consumption by bringing it to the lowest common denominator to cater to the largest audience, we turn ourselves into a human sketch, doomed to perform on a variation of the same theme. Because more of the same but different is always guaranteed to sell.

Meanwhile, our data, our work, our art are turned into free digital goods from which digital platforms and new technologies can extract value without any added benefit for us. Our lives consumed by the digital slot machine.

🜃

Cognitive Ecology is a philosophical notebook being written in public and collected in print at the end of 2026. You’re reading it as it takes shape. Start from the beginning here.

Thank you for reading,
—Claudia Befu

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What are our human goals? In our current society the highest aspiration is accumulating as much material wealth as possible. Once wealth is accumulated, the desire to enjoy it for as long as possible arises. The next goal is unending life. Don’t die.

Let’s take them one by one.

Getting rich means finding new ways of using resources as efficiently as possible to maximize profit. That’s why we’re automating the means of production by using machines instead of humans. We’re reducing biological life’s access to resources while increasing its output.

We dream of Dyson spheres as human habitats instead of planets. Of cosmic spam to trick other civilizations into using our technology so that we can colonize them. Of seeding the universe with simulated human life instead of actual humans.

Behind all this will be a few humans who enjoy unlimited life and wealth in a world designed by them and for them. Because they will be the new gods. Everything else—living or non-living—will be just rearranged matter.

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Cognitive Ecology is a philosophical notebook being written in public and collected in print at the end of 2026. You’re reading it as it takes shape. Start from the beginning here.

Thank you for reading,
—Claudia Befu

The world as we know it is a reflection of the mental bubbles in which we live.

What distinguishes the human species from other animals on this planet is our capacity for reflective thought. We think, therefore we are. We think, therefore our reality exists.

If we seek a better future on this planet, we must start by examining the belief systems at the core of our society—what led us here, what still serves us, and what no longer does.

Changing our beliefs, values, and human aspirations will not be the work of a single person or a single generation. It will be a cathedral of thought, built by countless people over hundreds of years. Along the way, each of us must add a stone. Each stone is a lifetime of observing the world and reflecting on a better future. Each stone is one voice. A future sung by countless voices.

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You are the smallest unit of resistance: a unique worldview that encapsulates the entire universe. A clear mind can poke a hole in the fabric of our collective reality and glimpse at possible futures.

One summer morning when I was six years old I was walking with my mother when I suddenly asked her: Why do we live in these buildings? As if hit with a zen koan, my mother looked at the cheap, grey communist buildings in our working class neighborhood. Sensing her confusion, I added: Why don’t we live in trees? To which she laughed, somewhat relieved, and continued walking. I was too young to explain my vision with words but I had a vivid image in my mind: a forest city with white oval pod homes anchored to the trunks of giant trees.

To this day, I don’t know where that image came from. Our diet of communist TV didn’t include science fiction. The dictatorship was our utopian future.

Three years later, the Iron Curtain fell. My mother died of brain cancer soon after, never seeing the freedom she had hoped for. In the years that followed, as I navigated personal grief, I watched our society’s tumultuous transition from dictatorship to democracy. In 2001, I moved to Western Europe, where I experienced firsthand the capitalist aspirations of my country. This time, I laughed too but with tears in my eyes.

I never forgot the forest city, but the more I learned about the world, the more impossible it seemed. We are drifting further and further away from a liveable future. But in 2013, I had a story idea set in that imagined forest city.

Twelve years later, that idea has grown into a sprawling secondary world spanning over fifteen centuries from 2100 CE to 3600 CE. Imagine a vast archive of human memory logs, curated and woven into story collections, experienced through an immersive virtual exhibition—that is my Museum of Life universe, my own cathedral of thought.

Future generations will not be insulated from the world we destroyed for them. They will inherit digital memories of everything this Earth once was and is forever lost to them. Forever grieving for a world they will never know.

In 2025, I finished serializing my climate fiction mosaic novel, There Is Hope, and the first book set in this universe. There Is Hope is a story about life on a planet devastated by climate change and the things that give people hope. The interwoven stories are a collection of memory logs from the Dust Road, curated by the Museum of Life—an archive of preserved human minds, forever crossing in and out of existence. The novel is currently in the process of being published as a print book. I’ll keep you updated on the progress. The serialized version remains available here.

There are many excellent scientists, journalists, and data scientists laying out the facts about the current state of affairs in our world. We now have access to an overwhelming amount of information. What remains difficult is synthesis, bringing the information at a human, individual level. As Homo sapiens, we must use our capacity of thinking to learn, reflect, form opinions, and express them in our own ways.

I am fascinated by systems, blueprints, and patterns. As a former poet, I appreciate economy of language, metaphor, and brevity of thought. Expressing ideas as poetic, philosophical aphorisms comes naturally to me. Once I recognized this, I decided to lean into it.

You can now read my growing collection of daily aphorisms reflecting on society, technology, nature, and the future of life on this planet. Each week, I take one aphorism and expand it into a longer philosophical reflection. These reflections live alongside my fiction, each another mosaic piece in the fresco of my work.

At the end of the year, a selection of these aphorisms will be gathered into a limited-edition print booklet titled Cognitive Sovereignty.

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You are born once and you die once. Your singular existence never happens twice. Your senses will experience life once, the heart beating in your chest will love and hurt in one lifetime only, your beautiful brain will contemplate the universe and the meaning of life only this one time. For you, everything is new under the sun.

My parents—educated people who refused to join the communist party—worked three-shift factory jobs. I remember my mother hauling bags of recycled glass bottles back to the store, queuing at 5AM for milk and kefir, chasing down delivery trucks for a bag of chicken wings and feet, and doctoring our ration card to buy an extra loaf of bread.

That world vanished almost overnight. But it taught me an early lesson: how we live, what we believe and how we imagine the future are shaped by ideologies designed by others.

My writing is an exploration of a world that could have been—for myself and for my mother.

Thank you for reading,
—Claudia

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Our techno-capitalist society measures life in units of productivity per energy consumed. Our existence is a commodity to be exploited for capital gain. The most ambitious get to use, while the least ambitious are used.

A faceless, repeatable existence ad infinitum. A perpetual end-user. A collective biological algorithm, tethered to the operating system of our techno-utopia.

But how quiet would the universe be without us?

Eons and eons of space and time. Not a single whisper.

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Cognitive Ecology is a philosophical notebook being written in public and collected in print at the end of 2026. You’re reading it as it takes shape. Start from the beginning here.

Thank you for reading,
—Claudia Befu

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In theory, humanity is hurtling toward a future of utopia sustained by technological progress. In reality, we are creating technological beasts that compete with us for the most basic resources: water, energy, land.

In a mercantile society, resources can be allocated only to that which produces capital value. If biological means of production are more costly than technological means of production, why would natural resources be shared with unproductive humans?

In this utopian future, humans will be freed of labour but not free to roam the Earth, not free to consume Earth’s resources, not free from the bondage of technological consumption.

We thought technology would be an appendage of life on this planet, instead life is becoming an appendage of technology.

🜃

Cognitive Ecology is a philosophical notebook being written in public and collected in print at the end of 2026. You’re reading it as it takes shape. Start from the beginning here.

Thank you for reading,
—Claudia Befu

🜃

There is nothing new under the sun. In today’s society, we are often told that our thoughts, our experiences, our art, our stories, our pain and our joy are nothing others haven’t experienced before. We are mere shadows on the wall of countless other humans who have crossed in and out of existence on this planet. Eternally recycling the same human experience in different bodies and in different times.

There is nothing new under the sun. Everything has been done before—but not by you in your life that you live right now for the first and perhaps the last time.

It’s a paradox that in our hyper-individualistic modern society, the human experience is often reduced to a mere illusion. Perhaps it’s time to rethink the blueprint of our lives.

🜃

Cognitive Ecology is a philosophical notebook being written in public and collected in print at the end of 2026. You’re reading it as it takes shape. Start from the beginning here.

Thank you for reading,
—Claudia Befu

🜃

When we talk about the human-nature relationship, nature becomes an accessory—nice to have but not essential for survival. But there is no nature. There isn’t a space where human life takes place that exists outside the ecosystem of this planet. Nature is not a walk in the forest. It is the air we breathe, the water flushing our toilets, the landfills piled with our garbage, the oceans swimming in our plastic, the rivers polluted with our chemicals, the animals starved by the cities we feed, the ice melted by the fossil fuels we burn.

Humans don’t exist in a vacuum. Everything that surrounds us is nature.

Nature is our home planet that we are supposed to share with countless other beings. Nature is our home planet that gave birth to our species and keeps it alive. Nature is our home planet and the only paradise humans will have ever known.

🜃

Cognitive Ecology is a philosophical notebook being written in public and collected in print at the end of 2026. You’re reading it as it takes shape. Start from the beginning here.

Thank you for reading,
Claudia Befu

🜃

With the rise of AI, a new crop of Silicon Valley ‘founders’ believes that having ‘taste’ alone is enough to build a business, because the machines will take care of implementation. A tech company with a workforce requiring no salaries, no health insurance, no life-work balance, no holidays, no sick leave—this has been an investor wet dream for decades.

But breakthroughs don’t come from connecting zeroes and ones. They come from connecting neurons. To have ‘taste’ or ‘good ideas’ humans must nurture their brains through learning, processing, and internalizing knowledge.

Also, most business ideas are worthless without proper execution. And proper execution is only possible with an intelligent workforce capable of coming up with innovative solutions based on the knowledge they stored and processed in their brains.

As the Silicon Valley tech moguls continue pouring their fortunes into artificial intelligence, we the people should go all-in on developing our brains. Because organic semiconductors and data centres might still be the future.

🜃

Cognitive Ecology is a philosophical notebook being written in public and collected in print at the end of 2026. You’re reading it as it takes shape. Start from the beginning here.

Thank you for reading,
—Claudia

1.

It’s a paradox that social media feels so lonely, even though it’s a web of human thoughts—a collective brain carved by algorithmic neural paths. Or maybe we’re all just lonely people reaching into the void, hoping someone reaches back, hoping to feel their touch.

#the human #digital loneliness

2.

One day, we’ll have data centers and no forests.
One day, we’ll have data centers and no food.
One day, we’ll have data centers and no water.
One day, we’ll have data centers and no air.

#the planet #resource collapse

3.

One of the biggest learnings of the twenty-first century will be that intelligence can only be generated by the meat processor inside your skull.

#the human #cognitive sovereignty

4.

Nature is not a resource.
Trees are not a resource.
Animals are not a resource.
Earth is not a resource.
Humans are not a resource.
Respect life.
Respect this planet.
Before it’s too late.

#the planet #intrinsic value of life

5.

Our ecosystems are dying by a thousand cuts every single day. Every object we hold, every meal we eat, every glass of water we drink, every city we build, every car we drive, every breath we take and every move we make on this planet as human beings in the 21st century leaves a dent in our world.

#the planet # ecological impact

6.

Planet Earth orbits around the sun and our modern society orbits around consumption. But unlike Earth’s heliocentric trajectory, consumerism-as-progress, consumerism-as-abundance and consumerism-as-self-realization are not immutable physical laws. I consume therefore I am is not the utopian dream.

#the future # post-consumerism

7.

We still want to tame nature. We are still afraid of the dark, the forest, the wild animals. The more we build this planet, the more we make it our own, the more anxious we become. But we can’t kill the storms, the heat, the hurricanes, we can’t stop the ice from melting, the oceans from rising, the land from turning to dust. These new wild beasts will either tame us or kill us.

#the planet #climate reckoning

8.

There’s the godliness of a sunset, a bird flying in the sky, a tree growing from the soil, a river streaming down a mountain, a flower blooming in spring.

There’s the godliness of a planet teeming with life, nurturing and loving, holding us in its embrace.

There’s the godliness of our brothers and sisters roaming this earth as whales, bears, elephants, tigers, foxes, rabbits, beavers, pelicans and bees.

Humans are not gods. And gods aren’t only for humans.

#the planet #reverence for life

9.

Having access to knowledge on an external server does not equal being intelligent. Having ‘taste’—the new Silicon Valley buzzword for ‘good ideas’—comes from storing and processing at least part of that knowledge in your brain. The point is, developing your organic chip semiconductors is the future.

#the human #cognitive sovereignty

10.

A society cannot run on consumption.
A society cannot run on greed.
A society cannot run on exploitation.
A society cannot run on what sells.
A society cannot run on wars.
A society cannot run on tech.
A society can only run on the ecosystem that sustains it.

#the planet #civilizational ecology

11.

Escaping on a spaceship with a handful of genomes, 49 human breeding pairs, and a hope to find another Earth is not a future-proof plan for humanity.

#the future #false futures

12.

This planet is not a LEGO game—cut one tree here, plant one there.

#the planet #ecological complexity

13.

You are what you can buy.
You are your bank account.
You are your worth.
You are a lonely wallet on the internet.

#the human #digital identity

14.

Beneath the layers of modernity, we are still wild at heart. We still crave the freedom to roam the earth on our own two feet. To make things with our hands. To swim rivers, climb mountains, run, jump, gather our food.

Our wild dreams tethered to our screens, we’re further from home than ever. But what if we embraced Earth once again with everything we’ve learned? Would this be paradise?

#the human #rewilding the self

15.

Human intelligence is native to human beings. It was born out of the communion of our bodies with the physical world. It is embodied, an expression of being alive. A machine will never know what it means to be human—no matter how much human knowledge it stores.

#the human #embodied cognition

16.

Tech is commodifying loneliness. Minds tethered to our screens, we drift away.

#the human #digital loneliness

17.

Reality is a dream only if you stay asleep.

#the human #consciousness

18.

Don’t let the algorithm shape your mind. Cognitive sovereignty is the hard currency of the future. The human algorithm shapes reality, but reality is not shaped by Homo sapiens alone. Don’t let your mind lose touch with the objective world.

#the human #cognitive sovereignty

19.

Our glowing digital cages make being in the real world a premium experience.

#the human #digital extraction

20.

Technology should immerse us in the world, not extract us from it. Imagine listening to a tree. Feeling the heartbeat of a cheetah. Hearing the colors of the rainbow.

#the planet #tech and nature

21.

To change the future, we must change our aspirations. A society obsessed with unlimited material growth can only lead to the destruction of a planet with limited natural resources. For a superior species, we are strangely consumed by our hungers.

#the future #post-growth

22.

Real abundance is a nurturing planet that gives us food, water, air, shelter, beauty—the hearts beating in our chests.

#the planet #true abundance

23.

You were once the rain. A wave in the ocean. A chip of blue ice. The soil beneath your feet. A tree. A flower. A bird in the sky.

#the planet #elemental belonging

24.

The world as we know it is a reflection of the mental bubbles in which we live.

#the human #collective reality

25.

There’s a visceral connection between our bodies and the nature that surrounds us. Almost as if the elements that compose our flesh are called by the same elements that form life on this planet: water, carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, calcium and magnesium. There’s poetry in knowing where we come from, and where we’re going.

#the planet #elemental belonging

26.

AI is thirstier than humans.

AI is hungrier than humans.

We have created a technological beast that competes with us for the most basic resources.

#the planet #ai and ecology

27.

We are the fireflies in the dark. No matter who or what existed before, we are the expression of life in the universe right now.

#the human #meaning and existence

28.

Life is not an economic unit.

This planet is not an economic unit.

Our future is not an economic unit.

#the future #post-capitalism

29.

Changing our beliefs, values, and human aspirations will not be the work of a single person or a single generation. It will be a cathedral of thought built by countless people over hundreds of years. Along the way, every one of us must add a stone. Each stone is a lifetime of observing the world and reflecting on a better future. Each stone, one voice. A future sung by countless voices.

#the future #civilizational change

30.

If we give up our notion that the highest ideal of human existence is to accumulate as much wealth as possible in this life, a whole new range of possible futures opens before our eyes.

#the future #post-capitalism

31.

Optimizing for energy efficiency is not the pinnacle of life in the universe. Extracting the most use out of the matter within our reach is not the ultimate goal of existence.

#the future #against optimization

32.

With our capitalist minds, we look at the universe and think: there is so much stuff out there that doesn’t belong to anyone.

#the future #cosmics capitalism

33.

We think, therefore we are. We think, therefore our reality exists.

#the human #consciousness

34.

Future generations will not be insulated from the world we destroyed for them. They will inherit digital memories of everything this Earth once was and is forever lost to them. Forever grieving for a world they will never know.

#the future #ecological grief

35.

Human intelligence is not a language model. Human intelligence is not a spatial orientation model. Human intelligence is living in the real world with a body operated by mother nature.

#the human #embodied cognition

36.

You are the smallest unit of resistance: a unique worldview that encapsulates the entire universe. A clear mind can poke a hole in the fabric of our collective reality and glimpse at possible futures.

#the human #individual agency

37.

How we live, what we believe and how we imagine the future are shaped by ideologies designed by others.

#the human #ideology and freedom

38.

I am a snapshot of time. The record of an existence. You are a snapshot of time. The record of an existence.

#the human #meaning and existence

39.

To humans, intelligence is that which helps us achieve our human goals. The machines will never be our overlords. But other humans will.

#the future #ai and power

40.

Your brain is the new semiconductor.

#the human #cognitive sovereignty

41.

Our moral compass is guided by our framework of reference. But frameworks change. What makes us human doesn’t.

#the human #ethics and value

42.

Our ancestors preserved trees in glacial refugia for thousands of years, helping reforest Earth after the last Ice Age.

Our ancestors cultivated the rich variety of plants that feed us today over thousands of years of agricultural practices.

What have we done with our inheritance? What will we leave behind?

#the planet #intergenerational debt

43.

Nature is not something to be mastered. The universe is not something to be conquered. Other planets are not something to occupy. Matter—living or non-living—is not something to extract and consume. Being human is not being the master of it all.

#the planet #against mastery

44.

Your data shouldn’t be someone else’s digital property.
Your work shouldn’t be someone else’s digital property.
Your art shouldn’t be someone else’s digital property.
Your life should not be mined for content.

#the human #digital sovereignty

45.

We are end users of the planet. We are end users of technology. Earth as a platform. Technology as a platform. An endless scrolling feed of products, services, and entertainment.

We are physical and digital nodes in someone else’s infrastructure.

#the human #digital extraction

46.

Your data is an extension of your personhood. You should own your digital self, just as you own your physical self.

#the human #digital sovereignty

47.

Every single aspect of artificial intelligence is anthropomorphized. We cannot think beyond ourselves.

#the future #ai and cognition

48.

Our digital platforms train us to be end users, perpetual consumers of products. Our attention and creativity are channeled into advertising and shopping funnels by the digital slot machine. One life, one big wallet. Pay in. Pay out.

#the human #digital extraction

49.

No matter how much automation is introduced on the market, we will never lose our one true job in the techno-capitalist utopia: being an end user.

#the human #digital extraction

50.

Digital spaces are created by human intelligence. The technology of the future is made possible by extracting human intelligence. Yet, these systems are built to strip us of everything that makes us human.

#the human #digital extraction

51.

Worrying that a theoretical artificial super-intelligence would have different goals than humans is like worrying that the sun has different goals than humans. It’s the people who own the systems we should be worried about.

#the future #ai and power

52.

Life and the universe are nothing but particle arrangements.

In the future, some very clever people plan to arrange them better.

#the future #reductionism

53.

Renaissance thinkers didn’t double down on what worked.

#the future #civilizational change

54.

The last time Homo sapiens was forced to contemplate the future was at the end of the last ice age. We didn’t master nature. We merely survived it.

#the planet #deep history

55.

Just because we think humans are machines, it doesn’t mean we can convert nonlife into mind.

#the future #ai and cognition

56.

To embed safety into artificial intelligence we must be willing to rebuild human existence from the ground up.

#the future #ai safety

57.

There is no key to the riddle of life. Only the shocking awareness of being alive.

#the human #meaning and existence

58.

AI will not take over language or religion. But it will force us to rethink everything we believe about ourselves.

#the future #ai and identity

59.

Humans like to dream of utopian futures. But there is no future. There is only the present moment in which we live and act. Individual actions have individual consequences. Collective actions have collective consequences.

#the future #agency and time

60.

Humans will rearrange all the particles in the universe better than the Big Bang did. They just don’t know how yet.

#the future #cosmic ambition

61.

If you are transferred into the body of a dinosaur, are you still human or are you a dinosaur? And if you’re a dinosaur, are you still you?

Convergently, if you upload your mind to a computer, are you human or are you computer?

As your means of experiencing and interacting with the world change, so do you.

#the human #identity and body

62.

After you commune with the divine, share the inspiration with others. This is what art is.

#the human #art and meaning

63.

The raw material of artificial intelligence is not rare metals, but precious brain power.

#the human #cognitive extraction

64.

We like to separate nature from AI, human progress from ecosystems, life from technology.

We debate climate, biodiversity, society, superintelligence, and the future as if they were parallel worlds. But the playing field remains the same: one blue planet called Earth.

#the planet #systems thinking

65.

We mine humans just as we mine nature.

Our planet, and increasingly our lives, are the raw resources of progress.

What, then, is progress?

#the human #cognitive extraction

66.

As we’re heading into a new technological era where human minds are commodified to create digital products and tools, maintaining our cognitive sovereignty—our capacity and right to independent, objective, creative thought—is paramount to our survival and to building a future in which all beings can live in dignity.

Human thought should not be mined by data moguls.

#the human #cognitive sovereignty

67.

You can’t become super-dog if you’re not a dog.

AI can’t be super-human because it’s not human.

#the future #ai and cognition

68.

If human progress cannot protect life on Earth, it is not progress. It’s destruction.

#the future #progress and life

69.

A submarine is not a super-fish.
A jet is not a super-bird.
An AI is not a super-human.

#the future #ai and cognition

70.

In an increasingly artificial world, humans can maintain their cognitive sovereignty by embracing natural existence.

#the human #cognitive sovereignty

71.

The purpose of human life is not to become a more energy efficient training model than AI.

#the future #against optimization

72.

We must protect our cognitive ecology from the pollution of algorithmic binary thinking.

#the human #cognitive sovereignty

73.

Think for yourself.
Live this life for yourself.
This planet is a miracle.
You are a miracle.
Every living being is a miracle.
Every single existence is precious.
Your existence is precious.
Because it’s yours and no one else’s.
Life on this planet is the greatest good we have.
Let’s not waste it.

#the human #individual agency

74.

Perhaps transcendence means becoming once again of this planet. Reintegrating ourselves with the ecosystems that give us life. Fully embracing our flesh-and-blood existence as the only means of being human and alive.

#the planet #transcendence

75.

Humans must not become AI training zombies.

#the future #cognitive extraction

76.

AI threatens to replace human intelligence and creativity. Humans risk being demoted by machines as the superior species. Our existence is slowly mined to build the new superhuman. We join the rest of life on Earth as natural resources.

#the future #cognitive extraction

77.

We humans start to feel the sting of being extracted by tech because of our biology. Let this be a mirror to how our species extracts and exploits other living beings on this planet in the name of progress. This is what happens when life has no intrinsic meaning and our existence is counted by the amount of food we need to ingest to become productive for capitalism.

#the human #extraction and empathy

78.

To build better futures we must restore our cognitive ecology. Our minds need to be purified from the debris of human progress. We must once again think clearly, have morals and ethics, restore human dignity and decency, and learn to respect all life on Earth.

#the future #cognitive ecology

79.

You cannot see the light if you don’t see the darkness.

#the human #consciousness

80.

Our advanced science and technology cannot make a drop of water. It must extract from planet Earth.

Our advanced science and technology cannot make an ounce of intelligence. It must extract it from the human brain.

Are we the next natural resource?

#the human #cognitive extraction

81.

If tech companies want you to wear their gadgets to train their models with spatial intelligence, they should pay for your data.

#the future #data rights

82.

Digital jobs, products, and platforms as an illusion of life, of experiencing the world.

#the human #digital extraction

83.

There is no nature—there’s only this planet on which we all live.

#the planet #civilizational ecology

84.

You are born once and you die once. Your singular existence never happens twice. Your senses will experience life once, the heart beating in your chest will love and hurt in one lifetime only, your beautiful brain will contemplate the universe and the meaning of life this one time. For you, everything is new under the sun.

#the human #meaning and existence

85.

Technology should reintegrate humans into planetary life, not abstract us from it.

#the future #technology and nature

86.

Allow the goodness inside you to manifest in the world by doing the work.

#the human #individual agency

87.

Our creative energy waits to be engaged, to embrace our embodied existence, to express who we are into the world.

#the human #embodied cognition

88.

In our quest for human progress let us not forget that our embodied existence on this blue planet is the most precious thing we have.

#the future # progress and life

89.

A cherry tree doesn’t ask how to exist in this world. It simply manifests itself in abundance.

#the human #embodied existence

90.

The trees breathe oxygen into our lungs. The earth nourishes us. Every living creature on this planet keeps the ecosystems that sustain us in balance. How do we take care of their home?

#the planet #elemental belonging

91.

Being alive and experiencing the world as an individual is the precious gift of being born. Embodied existence is a manifestation of life in this universe—it is unique, irreversible, and unrepeatable. You get only one chance to be you.

#the human #meaning and existence

92.

You cannot purchase a meaningful existence. You can only live a meaningful existence.

#the human #meaning and existence

93.

When some of us aspire to sell intelligence by the meter like water or electricity, they aspire to commodify human biology itself.

In the same way our water infrastructure takes fresh water from Earth’s reserves and sends it to our homes, the new intelligence infrastructure must tap into the minds of countless human beings to extract their intelligence and sell it by the meter.

For the first time in human history, our unique existence on this planet is a resource that can be productized.

#the human #cognitive extraction

94.

The emerging blueprint of our technological age is not built on human flourishing. It’s built on optimized and efficient use of all natural resources—our planet, our ecosystems, our labor, our data, our energy—so that we can produce more for less at a faster pace.

#the human #cognitive extraction

95.

At the end spectrum of a human civilization that wants to be as remote as possible from its biology, lies manufacturing and consumerism: a devouring anxiety of wanting to fill the void of an untethered existence with things made from manipulated matter and biology.

#the human #embodied existence

🜃

Thank you for reading,
—Claudia B.

There Is Hope is the first story in the Museum of Life saga, from Earth’s last forest to humanity’s final archive among the stars. A print version of the novel is currently being prepared for release in 2026.

This page is the complete reading map for the serialized novel There Is Hope.

Book blurb

In every carbon cycle, death is the engine of life.

It is the year 2550. After four centuries of climate collapse, the fate of Europe’s last forest rests on a fractured continent. In the segregated north, the Cooperatives control all natural resources, claiming to restore Earth’s ecosystem. Their founders, former data moguls, believe only in their own survival. In the scorching south, the Dust Road—an underground trade route—is ruled by Dust Pirates. Some fear them, others believe they are Earth’s last hope.

Nova Novikov arrives on the Iberian coast to witness an annual human sacrifice and bring her daughter’s ashes to the ancient wooden shrine. But when a young girl is chosen for the ritual, Nova takes a decision that will ripple across centuries.

That young girl is Shia Santos, the founder of the Museum of Life, the first preserved human consciousness, and the maker of a new civilization.

Told as a mosaic of memories, There Is Hope is a luminous novel about ecological reckoning, sacrifice, and the fragile persistence of hope at the end of the world.

Prologue

The Deep Dive ⟐ æv.3660
/archive title: ‘there is hope’
curated by: museum of life ⬡

Welcome to There Is Hope, a fully immersive Museum of Life experience: a curated exhibition of recovered memory logs from the historical Dust Road.

It is the year 2550. After a four-century Data War, in which rival data moguls fought over the planet’s last natural resources, Europe lies ravaged by climate change and human greed, a post-apocalyptic wasteland.

The Northern Colonies Alliance clings to the cool north, segregated from the Dust Tribes—climate refugees surviving in the Dust Bowl of Central Europe, and from the Japanese Seaweed Colonies in the largely uninhabitable south. In the far east, the Siberian Cooperatives, stewards of the taiga—Earth’s last standing forest, hold the monopoly on all natural resources, desperately trying to preserve what remains of the planet’s fragile ecosystem. All are connected by the Dust Road, an underground trade route ruled by the elusive Dust Pirates.

This archive collection follows the extraordinary journey of Shia Santos, founder of the Museum of Life and the first, and only, maker to be transferred into our archive of preserved human minds, forever crossing in and out of existence.

We hope you’ll enjoy this curated collection of lives.

Your curators,
Deya & Sayuri Santos
Museum of Life ⬡

Series overview

If you’re ready, step into the Dust Road.

🔒 The completed series is now available for paid members. Please upgrade your subscription here.

Season 1: Human Island

While filming a documentary about a human sacrifice, a mother must come to terms with the untimely death of her daughter.

• Episode 1: A documentary

• Episode 2: A sacrifice

• Episode 3: The day I learned I would die

Season 2: The Seed Grower

An idealistic farmer grows illegal seeds of resistance but the arrival of an unlikely guest risks exposing everything and everyone she’s ever cared for.

• Episode 4: The delivery

• Episode 5: The ghost

• Episode 6: The escape

• Episode 7: Seeds of resistance

Season 3: The Dust Pirates

A daring rescue during the Rainmaking Festival turns into a life-or-death journey, when a girl’s secret mission pulls a young boy onto a dangerous path.

• Episode 8: Trapper

• Episode 9: Secrets

• Episode 10: Betrayal

• Episode 11: Children

• Episode 12: Hope at the end of the world

Season 4: The Cooperatives

When a mysterious fungus threatens the last forest, an AI Officer—the Ghost—is sent to investigate. What begins as a routine mission soon takes a dangerous and unexpected turn.

• Episode 13: The last forest

• Episode 14: The scream

• Episode 15: The struggle

• Episode 16: The fortune teller

• Episode 17: Wildfire

Season 5: There Is Hope

As the last forest dies, a young girl encounters an unexpected glimmer of hope but saving it and herself will be almost impossible.

• Episode 18: A glowing light

• Episode 19: A deep dive

• Episode 20: A dark night

• Episode 21: The immortal

• Episode 22: Epilogue

Auxiliary material

🔒 A deep dive into the worldbuilding of There Is Hope for paid members. Free articles are marked (F).

• A dystopian world as the prequel to a utopian world

• Kelp forests give hope to climate refugees

• The Dust Pirates of Central Europe

• Corn, science fiction and the future of food (F)

• Access to seeds will determine your social class in the future

• Tree huggers and digital minds (F)

• The genesis of “There Is Hope” on Substack

• Interview on the making of “There Is Hope” (F)

Field notes

The following non-fiction articles document the scientific, historical, and literary research that informed the world of There Is Hope.

All Field Notes are free to read (F).

• The fiction of climate change (F)

• Allow me to get rich and I will save the world (F)

• The Great Dying and the Little Ice Age: Exploring forgotten chapters of climate history (F)

• Climate change started thousands of years ago (F)

• We won’t save the planet in the next 200 years (F)

• A depressing reading list for a future worth living (F)

• What if Vlad the Impaler ran the Ministry for the Future? (F)

Epilogue (excerpt)

Wrapped like mummies in seaweed cloth, we enter the belly of the beast: the concrete jungles of abandoned cities in the Dust Bowl of Central Europe. I hope these records remain as a testament to time, to our suffering. If we survive, I hope future generations learn from us and never repeat the mistakes of our ancestors.

The infernal heat is trapped in the concrete. Patches of melting asphalt mix with the cracked, rugged soil. Our shoes are old and worn, our feet painfully callused. We stagger through the heat like agonizing beasts, in a row, putting one foot in front of the other. Our overseers wear biosuits—a luxury we’ll never be able to afford. They’re not here to torture us or keep us from escaping. There’s nowhere to go. There’s no water. There’s no food on the Dust Road. We’re lucky to forage for human scraps. Our destroyers have left so much behind in these cities. They’ve been scavenged for centuries, and they still give. They are our livelihood and our lifeblood.

We crawl through hollow windows like empty eye sockets, through doorways without doors, like toothless mouths. We’re swallowed by the beast—up and down ruined stairways, breaking walls to extract the wiring. It’s hard work. The tools are heavy. Our bodies are dry, stringy. Dust clings to our clothes, scratching our eyes like sandpaper. Our fingers bleed from pulling the wires out of the walls, from dismantling the nests of our destroyers piece by piece. There are so many buildings—streets intersecting with each other, all caked in dust. We scavenge until sunset.

After work is the only time we drink and feed: saline dripping into our veins, a seaweed broth fortified with vitamins and minerals. At night, we unfold the thermal tents and rest. This is how we survive. This is what our work is worth. We are the walking dead. We are the zombie children. There is no escape. No future.

What readers say

“Beautifully written and utterly believable, unfortunately.”
—Terry Freedman, Eclecticism

“A tragically beautiful world so complete and immersive that it feels sensual even as it’s breaking your heart.”
—Ben Wakeman, Catch & Release

“Excellent! The writing feels careful and intentional. It’s a fascinating world.”
—Peter Clayborne, Anarchy Unfolds

Thank you for reading,
—Claudia Befu