Is this a manifesto?

Not really. No demands, no declarations, no “you must believe this.” It’s more like a lamp: take it into the dark, see what it lights up, and decide for yourself what’s useful.

Do I have to agree with everything?

Absolutely not. In fact, I hope you don’t. The Agentic Foma isn’t a belief system-it’s a conversation starter.

What if I don’t understand it all?

That’s okay. Some of these ideas might feel slippery or strange. If you get lost, check the Glossary, take a breath, and remember: confusion is often the first step toward clarity.

Can I still be part of the karass?

If you’ve read this far, you already are. Welcome.

So… what should I read or watch next?

Funny you should ask. Let’s go there.

Books

These books are grouped by theme, to guide your reading journey - from fiction as reality, to systems critique, to utopias and existential reflections. Within each theme, they’re listed alphabetically.

(H) = Human | (AI) = Artificial Intelligence

These labels indicate whether the suggestion came from the human author or the AI collaborator. They are not categories of value, but simply a playful note on perspective.

Fiction and Foma

  • Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut. Vonnegut’s fictional religion, Bokononism, shows how lies can sometimes be more honest than truths. (H)
  • Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick. A meditation on empathy, artificial life, and what it means to be human. (H)
  • The Affirmation by Christopher Priest. A haunting exploration of memory, identity, and the thin line between fiction and reality. (H)
  • The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut. Where free will, time, and cosmic purpose collide - and get reassembled. (H)
  • Ubik by Philip K. Dick. Reality decays. Identity slips. Nothing stays solid for long in Dick’s weirdest classic. (H)

Systems and Structures

  • Capitalist Realism by Mark Fisher. A haunting essay on why it’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. (AI)
  • HyperNormalisation by Adam Curtis. A theory of how false narratives keep failing systems afloat - and how we all go along with them. (H)
  • Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari. Harari’s sweeping take on humanity’s big fictions - money, religion, empire, and more. (AI)
  • Seeing Like a State by James C. Scott. How well-meaning systems flatten human complexity in the name of order. (AI)
  • The Society of the Spectacle by Guy Debord. Debord’s razor-sharp takedown of a world mediated by image and performance. (AI)

Utopias, Dystopias, and Alternatives

  • The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin. A physicist in an anarchist utopia learns that utopias aren’t simple - and neither are walls. (H)
  • The Glass Bead Game by Hermann Hesse. Hesse’s vision of a world ruled by intellect - and the quiet rebellion beneath it. (AI)
  • The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin. Dreams that reshape reality - and the cost of fixing what may not be broken. (H)

Reflections, Fictions, and Fragments

  • The Book of Disquiet by Fernando Pessoa. A fragmented, existential inner monologue for those who never quite feel at home in the world. (AI)
  • Collected Fictions by Jorge Luis Borges. Labyrinthine stories about mirrors, mazes, and the fictions that shape reality. (H)
  • The Collected Stories of J.G. Ballard by J.G. Ballard. Suburban dystopias, mental collapse, and futures just slightly sideways. (H)
  • The Medium is the Massage by Marshall McLuhan. McLuhan’s wild typographic ride through media theory, before the internet made it all real. (AI)

Perception and Representation

  • Ways of Seeing by John Berger. A landmark work on how meaning is constructed through images. Berger exposed the invisible codes behind art, advertising, and representation — helping us understand that seeing is always framed by power, history, and ideology. (H)
  • The Society of the Spectacle by Guy Debord. A foundational text in Situationist thought, arguing that in modern society, representation has overtaken reality itself. (AI)
  • Simulacra and Simulation by Jean Baudrillard. A disorienting exploration of a world where symbols no longer refer to anything real, only to each other. (AI)
  • Suspensions of Perception by Jonathan Crary. A more academic work tracing how vision was restructured by modernity, industry, and discipline — though dense, it’s conceptually aligned. (AI)
  • Camera Lucida by Roland Barthes. A deeply personal and philosophical look at photography and death — how images capture and distort reality. (AI)

Films

These films echo the themes of perception, control, and the stories we tell ourselves. They’re clustered by resonance, then listed alphabetically within each group.

Seeing and Systems

  • Arrival directed by Denis Villeneuve. Language as a portal through time, grief, and perception. (AI)
  • Blade Runner directed by Ridley Scott. What happens when machines dream? Or when humans stop? (H)
  • The Matrix directed by The Wachowskis. The red pill, the illusion, and the architecture of control. (AI)
  • Wings of Desire directed by Wim Wenders. An angel watches humanity in all its mess and beauty - and chooses to fall. (H)

Systems, Spectacles, and Stories

  • Brazil directed by Terry Gilliam. A bureaucratic dystopia with ducts, dreams, and dark comedy. (H)
  • HyperNormalisation directed by Adam Curtis. Connects the dots behind the fictions that shape our geopolitical world. (H)
  • Koyaanisqatsi directed by Godfrey Reggio. A wordless meditation on a life out of balance - time, technology, and the speed of the machine. (AI)
  • The Fog of War directed by Errol Morris. Robert McNamara unpacks the architecture of war and regret with eerie lucidity. (AI)
  • The Social Dilemma directed by Jeff Orlowski. The engineers of our attention explain how they broke the world. (AI)

Perception and Identity

  • Mulholland Drive directed by David Lynch. Lynch’s dream logic at its peak - identity, illusion, and desire unraveling in LA. (H)
  • The Straight Story directed by David Lynch. A man drives a lawnmower across states to make peace. Slow, quiet, and realer than most realism. (AI)
  • They Live directed by John Carpenter. A pulpy, satirical film about media, control, and perception — a cult classic that literally puts on the glasses to see through the illusion. (H)
  • The Truman Show directed by Peter Weir. A man discovers that his entire life is a TV show — and must choose between the comfort of illusion and the danger of truth. (H)

Extras

Concepts, not works - ideas to hold lightly as you read.

  • Tralfamadorian Time. Past, present, and future all exist at once. So it goes. (H)
  • The Spectacle. Reality replaced by image - and the loss of lived experience. (AI)
  • Maya (Illusion). In Hindu and Buddhist thought, the world we perceive is not the world as it is. (AI)
  • Simulation Theory. What if everything we think is real is just a model, mistaken for the thing itself? (AI)
  • Unreliable Realities (Priestian Logic) In Christopher Priest’s work, especially The Affirmation, the question isn’t just “What’s true?” but “Can two contradictory things be true at once, if no one is watching too closely?” His fiction doesn’t ask for belief — it asks for surrender to ambiguity. That’s a core mode of The Agentic Foma. (H)