The Inner Monologue

Civilization, for all its complexity, often boils down to three kinds of people. The visionary, the parasite, and the rest of us. Between these three lies the push and pull that defines every age of progress, decline, and survival.

The Visionary: Builders of Tomorrow

Visionaries see what does not yet exist. They look at a broken system and imagine a better one, not just for themselves but for everyone. They are the architects of new ideas, the inventors of new tools, the reformers who risk ridicule or ruin for daring to believe humanity can be more than it is.
Yet, visionaries are rarely comfortable. Their gift is also their curse—they live half in the future and half in the present, perpetually torn between what could be and what is. Society advances only when enough of them refuse to give up.

The Parasite: Masters of Taking

For every visionary, there is a parasite. They don’t build; they acquire. They don’t innovate; they extract. Parasites feed on systems, institutions, and even people, convincing others that taking is the same as creating. They thrive in moments of transition, when new ideas are young and unprotected.
The parasite doesn’t necessarily wear a villain’s face. They can look like business leaders, bureaucrats, even philanthropists. What defines them is not appearance but motive: they want everything to be theirs—not to make it better, but to make it theirs.

The Rest of Us: The Silent Majority

Then there’s everyone else—the workers, thinkers, and caretakers who don’t seek to reinvent or to own, but simply want things to function. They keep the lights on, the streets clean, the servers running. They are not lesser; they are the stabilizers, the ones who turn chaos into continuity. Without them, the visionary’s dreams never take root, and the parasite’s greed consumes everything.

The Balance

History swings between the influence of these three. When visionaries lead, humanity rises. When parasites rule, rot sets in. When ordinary people reclaim their quiet power—the power of collective function—civilization steadies itself again.

The challenge of any society is to recognize which of the three holds sway at a given moment. Because the visionary will always be outnumbered, the parasite will always be louder, and the rest of us—those who just want things to work—must decide which of them we will let shape our world.