Across history, technological and political transitions have been narrated through the lens of archetypes: offerings, sacrifice, disruption, and balance. Communities and individuals have often been cast as carriers of mythic roles, symbols of continuity or rupture, regardless of their actual contribution. The rhetoric of sacrifice in particular has been durable, in cultural scripts that recycle legitimacy by suggesting that progress demands an offering. In a world where data analytics pipelines can parse terabytes of signals from energy grids, markets, and biological systems, the persistence of such narratives is less a quaint tradition than a distortion. Symbolic scripts operate on perception, while the true mechanics of continuity rest on infrastructure design, feedback, and algorithmic optimisation. Recognising that they are not the substitute for systems that operate on physics, law, and mechanics, is imperative.
Symbolic practices attempt to assert themselves in many places. In South Sudan, the highly publicised case of under-age “marriage competition” brides illustrated how ceremonial customs collide with national laws intended to protect children. In South Africa, the practice of ukuthwala – once a form of consensual elopement, has, in some regions, shifted into coerced child unions. These practices function as forms of entanglement, assigning individuals roles of twinning, mirroring, sacrifice, switching, or symbolic example. Yet they demonstrate a key mismatch: without genuine connection or consent, such bonds do not carry systemic weight. They may be enacted ceremonially, but they unravel quickly when tested against the physics of autonomy, rights, and institutional frameworks. The same kind of distortion can be seen in modern sectors that should be governed by science. Energy transitions are often cast as moral crusades, but the technical challenge is one of optimisation under constraints: orchestrating distributed grids, balancing intermittency, and integrating storage at scale. Artificial intelligence is still debated in the register of saviour versus destroyer, rather than through the lens of its architecture: training efficiency, safety protocols, and scaling thresholds. Geopolitical narratives too recycle archetypes, branding some nations as eternal balancers or troublemakers, even though digital simulations and predictive analytics reveal behaviours that are mostly driven by supply chains, capital flows, systemic balance/imbalance, and infrastructure choices. The difference between ritual narrative and systemic mechanics becomes sharper when looking at how societies calculate value. Old scripts elevate individuals as sacrificial figures, suggesting their worth is in removal. Modern systems, however, quantify value in terms of functional contribution. A thought leader designing resilience through cross-sector data analytics generates measurable outcomes. Their value is not symbolic but systemic. To target such actors as ritual figures of sacrifice is to weaken the very systems that depend on their resonance. When contribution is lost, it cannot be replaced through a twin substitution.
Ritual unions may have various purposes – entanglement, mirroring, twinning, sacrifice, switching, making an example – but without genuine bonding and real direct connection, they remain conceptual. And as concept only, where there is no shared resonance of consent or collaboration, the connection lacks foundation and durability. Such arrangements are fragile in principle and can be voided at the moment of realisation, rejection, or recognition of misalignment. They do not bind physically, legally, or functionally. In systemic terms, they are null, void. These unions are also structurally fragile because they often hinge on a single archetype or designated figure. If that individual is never aware of their supposed role, never informed, and never connected through genuine contact or bonding, then the script lacks any real anchor. In such cases, the person may simply disengage without constraint, not out of evasion but because no binding mechanism ever existed. The entire narrative then collapses under its own weight, revealed as conceptual rather than realistic. This fragility raises a further question: if the leading archetype of a ritual concept withdraws or fails to align, what contingency exists? In engineered systems, continuity is preserved through contingency, backup, distributed function, substitute, and fail-safes. Power grids have reserve capacity, AI platforms have backup nodes, and biological systems adapt through parallel pathways. Ritual frameworks, by contrast, rarely provide for substitution. They depend and persist on one chosen symbolic actor to sustain the entire script, and when that resonance is absent, the programme has no fallback. The absence of contingency highlights the difference between symbolic entanglements, which collapse quickly under stress, and adaptive infrastructures, which are designed to endure variability.
In a ritual script basing itself on a physics blueprint, an electron and positron pairing has definable symmetry and predictable annihilation properties. But if the positron is redirected toward a non-electron partner with different properties and qualities, or enforced to pretend to swap roles, the mismatch generates anomalies and irregularities. The bond lacks coherence because the underlying particles were never designed to pair in that way. Attempts to reinforce the link by adding further nodes or intermediaries; stretching the network through layers of association or even invoking a “six degrees of separation” logic; only reveal weaknesses in the mechanism. Each added layer highlights the absence of a genuine anchor and accelerates disconnection. Conceptual entanglements that are redirected, multiplied, or artificially substituted expose their lack of systemic foundation in the same way. Rather than strengthening continuity, such diversions hasten collapse and render the bond void. Enforced contrasts such as a prince-and-pauper analogy forced to swap roles, or particles never designed to calibrate together, will quickly be flagged as compromised systems and thus isolated. Paired systems endure through symmetry and calibrated reciprocity; by contrast, deliberate mispairings or artificially extended networks are flagged as unsustainable and void. Once collapse occurs, all consecutive attempts have no effect and produce no change, and naturally, individual archetype in the pairing will and should look for a new compatible partner.
A further weakness is the absence of proper remuneration and appreciation. Modern systems recognise value through compensation, acknowledgement, and functional integration. When a ritual framework demands the presence of an archetype while offering neither recognition nor reward to one or more, it creates the conditions for disengagement. Why sustain a script that extracts without reciprocation? The mismatch is inevitable: undervaluation accelerates collapse of the scriptures. Conceptual rituals, then based on the circumstances above, are questionable to serve as universal mechanisms. They may carry significance for believers, but they cannot impose themselves upon those who do not share the same wavelength. An enforced bond or ritual placement without authentic connection collapses easily, revealed instead as systemic mislead – from an exploitation of perception, to attempt to reverse engineer a concept – rather than a foundation in any level of physics or mechanics.
Continuity in modern societies depends on bonds that are verifiable. Legal contracts, biological interaction, or collaborative outputs generate measurable consequences in physics, law, everyday life, and institutional design. Symbolic scripts cannot override these, even when it is being used as a concept or blueprint. Whether or not the chosen archetypes are under strict control, vicinity and boundaries; the absence of realistic, factual interaction between the pair, suggest a vague forced line between the two that can easily collapse and be easier to deny. The implication is not whether or not ritual entanglement should be dismissed, but that they cannot operate as binding systems across populations. For those attuned to them, they may hold cultural and mythical resonance. For those outside or attempted to be removed, they remain overlays that easily collapse. Therefore infrastructures that distinguish between symbolic association and design, measuring worth by merit and contribution rather than sacrificial placement may be favourable. Once exploitation or persistent misalignment is recognised, conceptual scripts collapse, and continuity reverts to and searches for systems grounded in clarity, real connection, and compatible resonance.
When such conceptual entanglements collapse, the outcome must be accepted rather than resisted. A bond that was never anchored in reality cannot be sustained indefinitely, and recognition of its failure is part of systemic clarity. Once the pairing no longer resonates, it ceases to pair at all. In many cases, one or both parties will form new entanglements; grounded in compatible connection and alignment. Continuity does not depend on enforcing and preserving every script; it depends on recognising when scripts have ended and allowing new bonds, based on merit and resonance, to emerge.
References
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John Murray. “South Sudan girl ‘sold’ in Facebook child marriage auction.”
The Guardian. 27 Sept 2024. “Ukuthwala.” Wikipedia. Accessed 2025.
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