The Foma Files

A living archive of collapsing foma — one case study at a time.

Each File explores how belief systems, institutions, or cultural myths are born, scale, ossify, and eventually fray.

Each File dissects a belief system, institution, or cultural myth that once claimed permanence but now shows its cracks. The goal isn’t to sneer or to preach, but to trace the pattern:

How foma are born (often bold startups of meaning).
How they scale (through rituals, authority, and replication).
How they ossify (becoming more about control than truth).
And how, eventually, they collapse.

Some Files focus on grand arcs — empires, religions, ideologies. Others spotlight individual characters, the denizens of collapsing foma, who embody both the comedy and tragedy of living inside these systems.

Think of this as the fieldwork notebook to The Agentic Foma. The book laid out the theory.
The Files are where we watch foma in the wild.

From Tentmaker to Emperor — The Christian Roll-Up

Phase 1: Paul the Founder — From Tents to Theology Paul was a hustler. He took a small, regional movement centered on a Jewish teacher and rebranded it for the Mediterranean world. He stripped complexity down to a few core claims, created scalable rituals (baptism, breaking bread), and built out a network of franchisees (church planters) who could replicate the model in city after city. It was a classic startup move: simplify, package, and spread fast. The absurdity? A movement founded on love and equality instantly began stratifying who could lead. Women who played central roles in the early gatherings were sidelined, and Paul’s letters laid down restrictions that would echo for centuries. A startup that promised universal love ends up enforcing a hierarchy of celibate men guarding access to the divine. ...