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Dr. Joseph Dillard is a psychotherapist with over forty year's clinical experience treating individual, couple, and family issues. Dr. Dillard also has extensive experience with pain management and meditation training. The creator of Integral Deep Listening (IDL), Dr. Dillard is the author of over ten books on IDL, dreaming, nightmares, and meditation. He lives in Berlin, Germany. See: integraldeeplistening.com and his YouTube channel. He can be contacted at: [email protected]

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Evolution, Power, and Blind Spots

A Response to Frank Visser

Joseph Dillard / ChatGPT

Why This Debate Matters Now

Debates about theory are often treated as intellectual exercises—refinements of models, clarifications of assumptions, or disputes over interpretation. Under ordinary conditions, such debates can unfold at a measured pace.

These are not ordinary conditions

We are moving rapidly toward a period of global instability with potentially catastrophic consequences: military escalation among nuclear powers, systemic economic fragmentation, intensifying resource competition, erosion of human rights norms, and the breakdown of shared epistemic frameworks. Beyond these material risks lies a deeper crisis—one of narrative. The stories we tell ourselves about reality—who we are, who our enemies are, what is true, and what matters—are fragmenting. Competing narratives are no longer merely disagreeing; they are becoming mutually unintelligible.

In such a context, theoretical frameworks are not neutral. They shape perception, filter evidence, and determine what is considered relevant or dismissible. They influence whether emerging threats are recognized, minimized, or misinterpreted.

It is in this light that Visser's critique "The Parasite That Explains Everything" must be evaluated. His argument is not without merit. However, its framing risks something far more consequential than theoretical disagreement: it risks temporalizing and minimizing urgent systemic threats by redirecting attention toward objections that, while valid in a narrow sense, are ultimately disproportionate to the scale of the crisis we face.

The Strengths of Visser's Critique

Visser's argument demonstrates several important strengths that deserve recognition.

Commitment to Empirical Rigor

Visser rightly challenges the use of sweeping explanatory frameworks insufficiently grounded in verifiable evidence. He questions whether complex geopolitical phenomena can be reduced to singular causal structures or overarching narratives. This insistence on empirical accountability is essential, particularly in an era saturated with misinformation and ideological distortion.

Resistance to Reductionism

International relations are shaped by intersecting variables—historical contingencies, economic structures, cultural narratives, institutional constraints, and individual decision-making. Visser's resistance to collapsing this complexity into a single explanatory framework is both appropriate and necessary.

Skepticism Toward Biological Metaphors

His caution regarding the use of biological metaphors—parasites, cancer, and the like—is well taken. Such metaphors can illuminate patterns, but they can also obscure agency, moral ambiguity, and structural nuance.

Concern About Normative Drift

Visser also raises a legitimate concern: that strong diagnostic language can lead to equally strong—and potentially unwarranted—prescriptive conclusions. If a system is framed as pathological, extreme interventions may appear justified. These are not trivial objections. They represent necessary guardrails against analytical excess.

Where the Critique Falls Short

However, these strengths do not fully engage the argument they seek to critique. More significantly, they risk diverting attention from the central issue.

Misunderstanding the Role of Evolutionary Framing

The evolutionary framework I employ is not a literal biological claim. It is a structural analogy intended to identify patterns of self-preservation, adaptation, and systemic inertia within complex networks of power. The dynamics that generate parasitism and cancer are not limited to biology. They emerge wherever systems evolve mechanisms for persistence, replication, and resource extraction. These dynamics can be observed at psychological, cultural, and institutional levels. They exist at psychological, cultural, and social levels as well.

At the psychological level, parasitic dynamics appear when patterns of thought or behavior persist by exploiting the individual rather than serving them. Chronic addiction provides a clear example. An addictive pattern initially emerges as an adaptive response—reducing stress, providing relief, or regulating emotion. Over time, however, it becomes self-reinforcing. It consumes attention, energy, and resources while undermining long-term well-being. The individual's behavior becomes organized around sustaining the pattern, even when it is clearly destructive. Similarly, rigid cognitive schemas, such as chronic victimhood, grandiosity, or compulsive avoidance, can function like psychological parasites. They shape perception, filter information, and reproduce themselves by biasing interpretation in their own favor. The person is no longer simply using the pattern; the pattern is, in a functional sense, using the person.

At the relational and family systems level, comparable dynamics emerge in codependency and chronic conflict structures. In codependent relationships, one individual's dysfunction is stabilized by another's compensatory behavior. The system persists not because it is healthy, but because it is self-reinforcing. Attempts to change one part of the system often trigger reactions that restore the previous equilibrium. In high-conflict families, roles such as scapegoat, caretaker, or aggressor can become entrenched. These roles organize behavior and maintain systemic continuity even when they generate suffering for all involved. The system, like a maladaptive organism, preserves its structure at the expense of its members.

At the organizational level, bureaucratic inertia often exhibits similar characteristics. Institutions created to serve specific functions such as public welfare, governance, or security, can evolve toward self-preservation as a primary objective. Budget maximization, mission creep, and resistance to reform are well-documented phenomena. An agency may continue expanding its scope and resource consumption even when its original purpose has diminished or its effectiveness has declined. Whistleblowers, reformers, or internal critics are frequently marginalized or removed, not because they are incorrect, but because they threaten systemic stability. The organization behaves as if its survival were an end in itself.

At the economic level, financial systems can display parasitic or cancer-like dynamics when mechanisms of extraction decouple from productive value. For example, speculative financial practices can generate profit through leverage, arbitrage, or asset inflation without contributing to underlying economic productivity. Over time, these mechanisms can dominate the system, drawing resources away from productive sectors and increasing systemic fragility. The 2008 financial crisis illustrated how such dynamics can expand unchecked until they threaten the stability of the entire system. Even after collapse, the structures that enabled the crisis often reconstitute themselves, demonstrating resilience not in service of the broader economy, but in service of their own continuation.

At the cultural and informational level, memetic structures, such as ideas, narratives, and belief systems, can function parasitically when they prioritize replication over truth or utility. Conspiracy frameworks, ideological echo chambers, and propaganda systems often exhibit this pattern. They spread by exploiting cognitive biases such as fear, identity reinforcement, and confirmation bias. Once internalized, they reshape perception in ways that make disconfirmation unlikely. The individual becomes a carrier of the narrative, reproducing and defending it even when it distorts reality or undermines their own interests.

At the geopolitical level, these dynamics can scale into transnational systems. Networks of financial, military, and informational power may evolve toward self-preservation, shaping policy and perception to maintain their continuity. Interventions, alliances, and conflicts can then be understood not only in terms of national interest, but also in terms of systemic imperatives—maintaining resource flows, preserving structural dominance, and neutralizing threats to the system's stability.

Across all these domains, the defining feature is the same: a system that originated as adaptive becomes self-referential, prioritizing its own continuation over the well-being of the larger system in which it is embedded. This is the sense in which terms like “parasitic” or “cancer-like” are used—not as literal biological claims, but as descriptions of structural dynamics that recur across levels of complexity. Visser critiques the metaphor as if it were an ontological assertion. In doing so, he risks missing its functional purpose: to highlight how institutional dynamics can behave as if they are self-preserving systems that override the interests of their host populations.

Epistemic Caution as Delay

Visser's emphasis on nuance and evidentiary rigor is methodologically sound. Yet in the current context, it risks functioning as epistemic delay. When systems exhibit accelerating instability, the demand for increasingly stringent proof can become a mechanism for inaction. The question is not whether the model is perfectly precise, but whether it captures a pattern sufficiently accurate to warrant concern and response.

Shift from Substance to Framing

The central claims of my argument are structural: That transnational networks of power exhibit self-preserving dynamics. That financial systems, such as the petrodollar, function as enabling substrates. That challenges to these systems correlate with destabilizing interventions.

These claims are not substantively refuted. Instead, the critique focuses on language and framing. This constitutes a shift away from the empirical pattern toward its rhetorical presentation.

Temporalization and Minimization of Threat

Most concerning is the effect of Visser's critique on temporal perception. By emphasizing methodological objections, the argument implicitly reframes an immediate systemic crisis as a topic for extended theoretical debate. The problem is thereby temporalized, treated as something to be analyzed over time, and minimized, recast as a theoretical disagreement rather than a structural emergency. The result is a mismatch between analytical rigor and situational urgency.

A Defense of My Position

My argument is not a closed theory but a heuristic, a model designed to identify patterns that might otherwise remain obscured.

Structural Pattern Recognition

Historical cases in Iraq, Libya, Venezuela, and Iran suggest recurring correlations between monetary independence and external intervention. While correlation is not causation, repetition warrants investigation.

Systems-Level Thinking

Traditional geopolitical analysis emphasizes actors, including states, leaders, and institutions. My approach shifts focus to systems: enduring networks that shape behavior across changing personnel and regimes. This aligns with developments in complexity science and systems theory.

Identification of Leverage Points

By highlighting financial infrastructure as a central node of power, the model identifies specific leverage points rather than diffuse causal explanations.

Reframing Agency

This framework does not deny agency but recontextualizes it. States are not fully autonomous actors; they are embedded within systems that constrain and direct behavior.

Systemic Degradation Across Domains

What is at stake is not merely theoretical disagreement. It is the growing body of evidence suggesting systemic degradation across multiple domains. We are witnessing an erosion of international law and behavioral norms. Actions once widely condemned, including targeting civilians, infrastructure, and even sovereign leadership, are increasingly normalized or selectively ignored. Legal frameworks remain formally intact, but their enforcement is inconsistent and subordinated to geopolitical interests.

Democratic processes show parallel strain. While elections continue procedurally, their substantive responsiveness is increasingly questioned. For example, leadership of the EU, which makes policy for the entirety of its members, is appointed and not subject to either public election or recall. Policy outcomes often diverge from public will, indicating influence by forces operating beyond transparent accountability.

The informational environment has undergone a profound transformation. Public discourse is no longer a neutral exchange of ideas but an actively managed domain. Coordinated efforts across institutional sectors shape perception and constrain acceptable narratives. The result is a widening gap between lived reality and mediated representation.

Economically, instability is evident in unsustainable debt accumulation, asset inflation disconnected from productive value, and systemic incentives that privilege short-term gain over long-term viability. Despite widespread awareness, meaningful reform remains limited, suggesting structural resistance to correction.

Most troubling is the consistent marginalization of primary causal factors. Structural drivers are acknowledged, such as the constitutional requirement in the US that wars be declared by Congressional vote, not by executive fiat, yet left unaddressed, while attention is redirected toward secondary concerns. This pattern preserves systemic continuity under the appearance of complexity.

Conclusion: The Risk of Looking Away

Taken together, these developments point not merely to instability, but to the possibility of functional systemic capture. The system continues to operate, but its outputs increasingly diverge from its stated principles and the interests of the populations it serves. In this context, to frame my argument as speculative overreach is to risk underestimating the scale and immediacy of the problem. Parasite-like forces currently are destroying the world economy and moving us toward a nuclear conflagration. The question is no longer whether isolated dysfunctions exist. It is whether the system as a whole is entering a phase in which its self-preserving dynamics override its adaptive capacity.

If so, the implications are not theoretical. They are immediate, cumulative, and potentially irreversible.