Actors

An analysis series based on Physis: A Theory of Power (Öztürk, 2026)

This article belongs to the “Present” section of the Nomos Paradigm Series — it reads the current paradigm through the lens of the Physis framework. For the detailed section note, see the end of the article.

Methodology Note

The paper applies the framework of Physis: A Theory of Power (Öztürk, 2026) to the question of which individuals rise to the top of structural hierarchies and what happens to them once they arrive. Three methodological commitments shape the analysis.

First, the theoretical framework is established at an ontological-structural level rather than at the level of individual psychology, leadership intention, or moral judgment. The mechanism of synergistic selection operates regardless of individual awareness or ethical orientation. This methodological commitment distinguishes the analysis from accounts that explain power dynamics through individual character (Acton's "power corrupts") or through normative narratives of decay.

Second, the framework's predictions are formulated at three distinct layers: direction (the structural tendency, falsifiable as a hard claim), tendency (the probabilistic distribution of manifestations, revisable), and concrete manifestation (left open to conditions, not calculable). This three-layered architecture allows the framework to make falsifiable structural claims while preserving the role of Nomos — the human capacity for choice — at the level of concrete historical outcomes.

Third, the framework is positioned as the ontological layer beneath existing sociological observations rather than as their replacement. Michels's iron law of oligarchy, Mills's power elite, Bourdieu's symbolic capital field, Pareto's circulation of elites — these are read as different manifestations of the same underlying structural logic, observable from different empirical angles. The aim is not to contest these literatures but to identify what they share at the structural level.

Empirical support is drawn from three sources: (1) historical pattern observation (aristocracy's theological framing across independent civilizations); (2) contemporary public discourse (the Musk–Page "speciesism" episode); (3) the Devoted Actor literature (Atran & Whitehouse, 2016) and adjacent neuroscientific research on identity fusion and sacred values.

Position in Existing Literature

The paper draws on but differs from several existing literatures.

Classical elite theory. Pareto (1916), Mosca (1896/1939), Michels (1911), and Mills (1956) documented the structural hardening of power groups over time, each within a different frame: Pareto on the circulation of elites, Mosca on the inevitable formation of a ruling class (classe politica), Michels on the technical-organizational necessity of oligarchy, Mills on the institutional interpenetration of the American military-corporate-political elite. The present analysis treats these as different empirical angles on the same structural mechanism — synergistic selection — without contesting their findings. The contribution is to formulate the ontological layer that all four implicitly assume: that structural logic itself, independent of individual intention, filters who rises and who is eliminated.

Field theory and symbolic capital. Bourdieu's (1979) formulation of factional struggle through symbolic capital is read here as a description of the same mechanism at a different scale — internal factional competition within top groups. The sharpening of meaning developed in section VII applies Bourdieu's logic to the question of why factional struggle hardens the language of meaning over time, but anchors the dynamic to a deeper structural cause: cohesive resilience as a competitive necessity.

Decay narratives. The sociological tradition has often framed structural hardening within narratives of moral corruption — Acton's "power corrupts," tired elites, dynastic seduction by luxury. The Pathologization Trap identified in section VIII is a critique of this framing not as wrong but as analytically incomplete: it describes the lower class's normative expectations of power rather than the internal mechanics of power itself, and when judgment replaces structural analysis, the very feedback loop the lower class relies on for legitimacy pressure loses its efficacy.

Devoted Actor Framework. Atran and Whitehouse's (2016) framework, with its concepts of sacred values and identity fusion, provides empirical support for the upper end of the bond spectrum developed in section VII. The present paper extends this individual-level mechanism to a structural-selection account: groups with this bond form do not merely retain devoted members; they are structurally favored in competition among groups, and therefore cumulatively occupy the top.

Disgust and behavioral immune system. Schaller's (2011) behavioral immune system literature is drawn into section VIII to identify the biological substrate of the pathologization reflex — the migration of disgust from disease avoidance to symbolic threat.

The paper does not engage with Marxist class theory, Foucauldian power analysis, or world-systems theory directly; these are addressed in other articles of the series and in the underlying book.

Terminological Note

This paper preserves several Turkish concept names alongside their English translations to maintain terminological continuity with the Turkish edition of the series and with Physis: A Theory of Power (Öztürk, 2026).

Fixed translations:

Source vs Resource distinction. The Turkish kaynak (source) is rendered as Source when used in the structural-ontological sense (a group as the structural source of an upper class's existence) and as Resource when used in the natural-material sense. Kaynak hegemonyası is always Source hegemony, not Resource hegemony.

Will to Be vs Will to Become. The Turkish olmak iradesi is rendered as The Will to Be rather than "Will to Become," following the ontological resonance with Nietzsche's Will to Power formulation.

For full conceptual reference, see Physis Terminology — A Preliminary Glossary (Öztürk, 2026; SSRN: 6738281).

I. The Ontological Structure of Actors

Corporate entities (Öztürk, 2026) are a species, and they operate by their own dynamics. The four core features we identified in Article 1 — rational decision-making, the capacity for will that comes with scale, the potential for immortality, and the absence of Nomos capacity (operation as pure Physis) — determine the existential orientation of this species. Orientation is not an abstract fact standing alone; it also dictates who will be elevated to the top of the structure.

Who is the actor behind the roles we mapped in the previous article (aristocrat, clergy, soldier, merchant, politician)? The answer is two-layered. The stage on which these roles are played — that is, the system — is a corporate entity; and the real actors playing on that stage are also corporate entities. The individual steps onto the stage, but not as an independent player; as the human side of the human–idea symbiosis. The idea is the form of the structure — but this form neither exists on its own nor, to date, has been observed outside the human. The human is at once its partner, its embodiment, and its discoverer. The capacities that make access to the plane of ideas possible — abstract thought, existential consciousness… — and the consequences they produce — scale, the capacity for choice… — have so far been observed only in the human. For this reason, at this moment, the sole bearer of the plane of ideas is the human. The two together form a corporate entity. The actor, always, is this symbiosis.

A chicken-and-egg question arises here, and its answer matters. Is it because the system is a corporate entity that those who rise to its upper class within it take on corporate-entity form — that is, does compatibility dictate this — or do power dynamics, in the individual's rise, naturally produce this form on their own? The answer runs both ways: the two are simultaneous. Power dynamics are a reality rising from the foundation of human ontology; their result is leadership, that is, an upper class. Humans gather in groups — they are social — and the group itself is a source: the capacity for will, endurance, production, numbers — all reside in the group.

Before anything else, the group — that is, the "source" — exists. The system's potential, and the need for leadership or the potential of an upper class, are formed by the existence of a "source." Within the group, those with higher endurance absorb more of the capacity for will, become more effective; and at some point this differentiation becomes visible as a separation from the group. The upper class is born from the group in this way — as its own corporate entity (dynasty, clan, religious order, later party). The system is the other face of the same movement; because the moment the core that has separated from the group exists, the collective it left behind also exists as the governed collective. The principal corporate entity (the system) and the core corporate entity (the upper class) are established simultaneously as two faces of a single formative motion. It is not possible to separate them: each is the other's precondition, consequence, and continuous verification.

The system is a corporate entity, and the actors within it are corporate entities as well. The relationship between them is like the synergy between the gears of a machine — they speak the same language, they interlock by the same logic. The human lives inside this machine but is not part of it — neither as an individual nor as a species. Even though the machine is a form produced by the human, it operates by its own dynamics — but these dynamics are the dynamics of Physis. The human and the corporate entity are two distinct species; two species operating on the same ground, by the same dynamics. The difference between them is only a difference of capacity: the corporate entity, by virtue of its existential structure, does not possess Nomos capacity on its own. It accesses this capacity through its human partner; and this access happens, to the extent that the system and the ecosystem — which operate by Physis dynamics — allow it, by raising existential risk.

Nearly all individuals who rise to the top of the system are themselves leaders, owners, or symbiotic partners of a corporate entity — at the core of a dynasty, of a religious order, of a company, of a party. When they win the power struggle and rise to the upper class, they govern the principal corporate entity — the state, the empire, the coalition — and their ties to their own formal corporate entity are expected to continue as long as it remains the source of their power and helps them "remain." Depending on the strength of this support, the tie loosens or tightens.

This has, in itself, a systemic coherence and an economy in terms of time and energy. Governing the principal corporate entity (the system) is a position reached after the processes of learning how to govern a corporate entity and surviving the struggle among corporate entities. Aspiring leaders rise to the upper class both by going through power conflicts with others inside their own corporate entity and as their corporate entities clash with others. The merchant clashes not only with other merchants but also with the clergy and the aristocrat; dynasties clash with dynasties; all of them form and break alliances with each other. Governing classes carry a fractal structure — at every scale the same conflict repeats. Power conflicts continue without pause on different planes.

This accumulation of experience — at both the individual and the corporate-entity level — is determinative both in the ascent to the upper class and after it has been reached. One might think that so much struggle and conflict within the system is harmful to the system — once it exceeds a certain threshold, there is always the potential for it to spread through the system and corrode it from within.

Here a misreading must be avoided. What is ideal for the system is not the complete absence of conflict — which is not possible anyway — nor its singularization into a single actor — which is the natural orientation. A frictionless system is not possible; a singularized system turns into a closed circuit and rots. The ideal is not a fixed point but a dynamic band oscillating between dissolution and singularization. The system survives within this oscillation — if it loosens too much it disperses, if it tightens too much it ossifies.

Moreover, this conflict has a function too. Systems do not exist in a vacuum — they are not closed circuits. The source of death for a corporate entity is other corporate entities; that is why their survival is an existential risk, and the question is how that risk is managed. For this reason, from the standpoint of system survival, internal and external dynamics cannot be separated: every internal motion creates a power oscillation on the outside, and the relations between systems are continually reshaped. Success in interaction with other systems is the measure of a corporate entity's existence and survival. This success requires a governing capacity that speaks the language of Physis, has command over its dynamics, and can function as a dynamic bridge between it and Nomos — combined with experience, it yields a mathematical advantage.

Status attracts the strong. The corporate entity that emerges as the winner of power conflicts attains the status of governing the principal corporate entity — that is, the system. If a corporate entity with the right combination of experience and capacity does not occupy the seat, the seat is left weak — and a weak seat produces fragility in two arenas at once: on the inside, shadow powers rise, authority is fragmented, power conflicts multiply; on the outside, wrong moves, wrong readings, wrong alliances accumulate. Structurally, the most successful symbiosis is not necessarily the one displaying the highest values of Nomos's constructive side; on the contrary, such a symbiosis would experience extreme friction with the structure.

There is yet another layer to the chicken-and-egg question. The international arena operates by power dynamics; it is the arena in which the constructive side of Nomos is least valid against Physis, operating almost as a simulacrum. This has been shown in detail in Physis theory: at the macro scale, the constructive capacity of Nomos is practically very difficult to apply — asymmetry and friction are structural. Moreover, the actors here — unless determined by a shadow power — are, by virtue of their position, those who best apply this framework.

There is a direct and reciprocal link between the capacity of the actors and the existential character of the arena. Because the conflict is existential, the selection mechanism lets through only those who best apply this framework; and because they are let through, the conflict continues at this existential dimension. The two extremes continually feed each other. Internally, a weak seat is a seat that makes mistakes externally; even if the seat is strong, a seat that makes mistakes externally results in weakening internally. The elimination and selection mechanism shows a structural correspondence between the legitimacy test on the inside and the dynamics of interaction on the outside — this correspondence is not coincidence; it is the indication that the formula for survival, on two planes at once, operates by self-verifying toward a single outcome: between effect and cause, between instrument and source.

Putin's formulation of nuclear doctrine tests the frameworks we have just established: if there is to be no Russia, then there is no point in there being a world. This sentence is often read as the expression of an individual leader's pathology or temper — but it is not. The discourse concretizes the very frameworks we have just discussed, all at once.

First, it directly displays the existential character of the international arena. Stripped of diplomatic language, of multilateralist discourse, of normative veils, in its raw form: in this arena, the conflict is purely existential, and this arena is played at the highest level. Second, it shows the nature of the conflict among corporate entities and why the constructive side of Nomos is least valid on this plane. Putin's discourse does not even lift the veil of the simulacrum; without dressing itself in Nomos, it speaks openly in the language of Physis. This is not merely a question of "being effective"; it is a multi-functional disruption maneuver. The discourse first makes clear to the opponent that an arena in which diplomacy does not function — the existential point — is openly on the table; the dramatic framing deliberately raises the probability that the statement will reverberate. Top-level actors already recognize how each other operates; this is why the real effect of such discourse is directed not only at the opponent's upper class but at three layers simultaneously: it creates a reservation about their own positions among the upper classes of rival systems; it generates a frame of existential tension among the lower classes of rival systems, awakening their awareness — which in turn produces a pressure potential directed at their own upper classes; within its own ranks, it functions as a call to unity in the face of existential threat. At this level, the language of raw power is a structural instrument operating simultaneously on three planes.

Third, it displays why it is so critical that the right person sit in the seat — why the proper functioning of the mechanism is an existential necessity. At this level, an error of leadership is not a personal career loss. A wrong reading, a wrong move, a bad alliance — directly translates into an existential risk for the nation-state as a corporate entity. The right combination of experience and capacity is not a luxury here but a requirement of survival.

Fourth — and perhaps deepest — this discourse is not the word of a leader or a party but of a nation-state as a corporate entity. Should Putin one day depart, should United Russia one day dissolve, another leader will sooner or later voice the same position in different words; because what produces the position is not the individual but the corporate entity itself. The structure produces this language structurally; the leader is only its spokesperson. And deeper still, this discourse is the corporate entity's equation of its own existence with the existence of its source — our absence is the people's absence. The corporate entity makes itself indestructible by establishing this equivalence: because "so much" will collapse when it collapses, its collapse becomes unthinkable. In the language of finance this is called "too big to fail"; for the nation-state as a corporate entity, reaching this position is a structurally far deeper bond.

This is why, at the level of the nation-state, the existential framework is categorically different from that of corporations or parties. If a company disappears, shareholders move on to another company; if a party disappears, its cadres regroup in another party. Even when a bank is "too big to fail," if it is let to fail, the economy is wounded but rebuilt. But if a nation-state disappears, the source behind it — a people's collective-identity infrastructure, that is, the shared language, the shared historical narrative, the cultural memory, and the structures of belonging that hold them together as a people — loses its structural carrier. Individuals and the genetic inheritance survive; but when the structures that carry the "we are this" narrative and its institutional instruments disappear, this collective identity dissolves in diaspora, erodes across generations. What is under threat is two-layered: the corporate entity itself, and this collective identity whose fate is bound to its existence.

This whole framework carries an epistemic question: who is producing this discourse? Is it the system — speaking as the ontological consequence of being-in-group? Is it the politician who wants to stay in place and produce tolerance for the problems his own policies have created? Or is it the genuine existential-strategic determination of a responsible upper class? On the surface, all three produce the same discourse; distinguishing among them is sometimes very difficult. But one reality is certain: the discourse has been spoken, it is effective, it shapes the world. Even if its source remains unclear, its mechanism is concrete — and this mechanism structurally encompasses all three of these possibilities and more within the same framework.

This being the case, one may ask: in this arena, could a corporate entity that practices the constructive side of Nomos at a high level — high not in discourse but in practice — not emerge? All structures operate via pure power conflict, and this arena is where the constructive capacity of Nomos works least; it would be interesting to see how such an actor operated at the macro level — if it ever succeeded. The structural expectation is that such an actor would suffer the disadvantage of friction; but the historical tests of this expectation are themselves a separate subject of research.

Beneath this expectation lies a deeper structural closure. If the international system dictated the constructive capacity of Nomos, then issues regarding leadership within the system could be more balanced through external pressure and the Nomos capacity of the lower class on the inside. But this, according to Physis theory, is ontologically impossible and is not supported by human existence. Its logic is this: the same systemic language is spoken at every scale. The dynamics between systems verify it, and they also impose it — this is a two-way closure. An upper class successful in power dynamics is both synergistic with its own corporate entity and, through that synergy, brings success — or at least familiarity with the dynamics — in interactions between systems. This does not, of course, mean that the strong leader of a weak state will succeed by applying his own power dynamics in the international arena; for power strategies change across the spectrum of power and under different conditions, and the difference in scale is certainly one of these variables. What is being said is this: the same language is spoken without interruption between macro and micro.

Every step rising from the system to the status of decision-maker in inter-system interactions has less tolerance for the tension created by Nomos's friction and leans more on the power dynamics of Physis. Even within its own system, the lower class — the only class that can demand the constructive side of Nomos without instrumentalizing it — has limited influence on the upper classes. Moreover, as we discussed in the previous article in the series, the lower class does not approach the system and the upper class with the expectation of Nomos alone; the Lower Class Paradox (Öztürk, 2026) operates: no matter how much Nomos capacity the lower class possesses, the harder conditions become, the more it evaluates the success of the upper class by Physis criteria and aligns more with the survival framework of the corporate entity. Within all these cumulative conditions: the international arena, except under extraordinary conditions, becomes the area most closed and resistant to the constructive side of Nomos.

Power dynamics operate at every scale and in every individual; anyone can found a corporate entity. But this article is not about scale but about class orientation: those who display the will and capacity to govern — that is, the corporate entities of the middle and upper classes. The lower class and the corporate entities belonging to the lower class — categories that operate, as we saw in the class analysis, with different motivational profiles — are outside the scope of this article. Still, whatever class a corporate entity belongs to, it secures power, undergoes power conflicts, and during its operation makes Physis dynamics and the orientation of the corporate entity observable at every scale and class.

The great majority of corporate-entity founders who bear the will to govern, even if they possess both the capacity and the will, never reach the top of a national or international system. But this article is not only about those who have reached the top — it is about those who are climbing. The observations apply not only to those who have reached the upper class but also to those on that orientation. The article is fundamentally about power groups — whether upper class or middle class — and takes structural analysis as its basis: it can show the structure of what could be as much as of what has been. A runner being fast does not yet make her a champion, but she carries the structural qualities of the potential to become one; these qualities point simultaneously to the actual and to the possible.

Beyond this, the article examines the operation of power groups through time with a structural and non-normative gaze; it treats these processes as objects of analysis independent of moral judgment. The fundamental questions here are: What kind of structure is this, and how does it operate? Does it transform over time, or are we always seeing different manifestations of the same logic? If there is transformation, is it a pattern, or a different phase of a different way of being?

This article is about upper-class actors, where power dynamics persist in their most ruthless form. Even within these actors, we will look "theoretically" toward the hypothetical end of the spectrum. Because to make the thought experiment of such a piece concrete requires case studies with some of those at the very top. But here two fundamental obstacles arise. The first is that the public-facing importance of these figures' images may not allow honest answers to the questions to be asked — even if they no longer hold the same status; this is the first obstacle to obtaining answers. The second is that, even if honest answers are obtained, these answers must be highly fed by the capacities for self-reflection, awareness, deep thought, and self-questioning; in addition, they require the mental equipment to grasp the concept here, which is a second obstacle to reaching this aim. Furthermore, even if these two obstacles are overcome, we cannot be sure that the details of the resulting interview would be shareable with the public.

So what will we do? Physis Theory considers the following possibility within this micro-macro operation: in the symbiotic relationship, individuals on the human side whose alignment with the idea is intense rise to the top in mathematically greater numbers. We will use two methods with respect to this possibility: constructing the logical scaffold within the framework of Physis dynamics; and supporting this construction with real-world impressions and seeking objective verifications as we proceed.

Individuals at the far end of the spectrum — those carrying the highest synergy with the structural logic — have an exponentially higher probability of reaching the top than others. We will establish the grounds for this claim in the next section. This article is designed as a thought experiment scanning the spectrum of synergy and its outer edge.

How and why do the people at the top of the structure get there? How do they stay there, and where do the most extreme points of that staying lead?

II. Synergistic Selection

By virtue of its structure, the corporate entity shows the highest compatibility with a particular character profile. The tendency toward singularization, zero-sum logic in competition, the capacity to instrumentalize temporal subjectivity (Öztürk, 2026), the reflex of channeling benefit toward the structure's survival — these are the existential requirements of the corporate entity. Individuals synergistic with these requirements rise within the structure; individuals who create friction — those who resist these requirements, who place Nomos ideals before the structure's Physis logic — are eliminated or marginalized within the structure. If such an individual is in the position of the corporate entity's symbiotic partner, a different result arises instead of elimination: the corporate entity itself experiences friction and entropic risk.

This observation is not new. Robert Michels's "iron law of oligarchy" (1911) and C. Wright Mills's "power elite" analysis (1956) have identified similar structural patterns in different languages. According to Michels's thesis, every organization — however democratically founded in intent — inevitably evolves into an oligarchy; Mills, for his part, maps the internal permeability of the American corporate-military-political elite. Both proposed their own mechanisms — Michels invoked technical necessity and the tendency of leaders to adapt to power, Mills the institutional bindings and shared social background. Synergistic selection (Öztürk, 2026) provides the ontological layer beneath these mechanisms: the structural logic's own tendency to automatically pull governing cadres toward the direction of its character profile.

This ontological framing departs from will-centered readings that try to explain power dynamics with individual morality or leadership intentions. Synergistic selection operates at the structural-ontological plane; reform intentions or changes in individual character do not stop the mechanism. The same approach adds an ontological layer beneath earlier explanations. Michels's political-organizational mechanisms, Mills's institutional-sociological dynamics, and the symbolic-capital contest Bourdieu (1979) described in field theory — these can be re-read as manifestations of the same structural logic at different levels.

This is a structural selection. Just as in natural selection the organism best adapted to its environment survives, in the internal ecology of the corporate entity the individuals most synergistic with the structure's character have mathematically a higher probability of rising to the top and remaining there. No conscious coordination is needed; the mechanism is automatic. The nature of the system eliminates the incompatible — sometimes actively (purge, dismissal), mostly passively (marginalization, failure to rise, being kept out, exhaustion).

The visible manifestations of this mechanism are observable at every scale. Its actual operation is everyday and silent: "cultural fit" outweighing technical capacity in hiring decisions, candidates who create friction being systematically stopped at the eliminating tier, alternative perspectives being softly silenced under the heading of "team cohesion" in promotion processes, the priority criterion in senior appointments being coded as "reliability" (loyalty to the structure) — all of these are everyday manifestations of the same structural logic. Whistleblower retaliation cases — from the marginalization of Sherron Watkins at Enron to the six years of internal silence at Volkswagen's Dieselgate — display the extreme edge of this logic; the concreteness and visibility of retaliation makes these cases prominent in the academic literature. But the mechanism does not operate only in extreme cases; it continues quietly every day of the system, in every promotion decision, in every meeting. The structure appears to try, automatically, to eliminate the individual creating friction with itself; mechanics operating from both within and without push toward the same tendency. Those who remain on the inside — those compatible with the structure — rise, make decisions, choose the next generation. Managers may change, and so may understandings; reform intentions may appear; but as long as the ontological structure of the corporate entity and its external dynamics remain constant, the synergistic pressure that will reproduce the structure's character across generations remains constant as well. The pressure does not change — what changes is the periodic response to it.

The direction of this selection is parallel to the orientation of the corporate entity: toward singularity. In structures cumulatively surrendering to synergistic pressure — where corporate culture has become dominant — the most synergistic individuals (those who see the competitor as a threat, channel benefit toward the structure, can instrumentalize Nomos ideals, and use temporal subjectivity as an advantage) find places more naturally in the structure's decision-making mechanisms.

III. The System's Reward-Punishment Mechanics

The mechanism of synergistic selection does not operate alone; there is a second layer reinforcing it. Corporate entities have power conflicts with one another — between states, between companies, between parties, between institutions. This conflict is the operating ground of the system; but more critical is which corporate entities the mechanic rewards.

The answer is the institutional version of natural selection: corporate entities most compatible with structural logic have a higher probability of succeeding in competition. Corporate entities that apply Physis logic without flaw, that are filled with synergistic actors, that experience minimal Nomos friction, carry a structural advantage toward growth and dominance. Nomos-heavy corporate entities — those that do not apply structural logic smoothly, that experience ethical friction — are under entropic risk unless they create strategic-resilience capacities for themselves. This is not destiny; it is the statistical tendency of the competitive environment.

This selection is cumulative. In each cycle, the harsher one wins; the winner, because it won, draws more resources, becomes more attractive to more synergistic actors, gains more infrastructural embeddedness. The reward grows, the reward produces more synergy, synergy produces more success. The result: over time, the profile of the corporate entities dominant in the system becomes increasingly Physis-pure — because the filter operates in every generation.

Those capable of generating strategic-resilience capacities find niche spaces outside this filter, or they exist within their fields through cooperation, flexibility, and the framework of their own strength; but the dominant profile becomes increasingly Physis-pure. There should be no misunderstanding here: various strategies — including cooperation — do not change the existential framework of the corporate entity; they only widen the scale of its operation within pure Physis. The nature of the corporate entity is constant; what changes is the increased operation of the Nomos capacity of the human partner.

This may, at first glance, read like an advantage; after all, a wider strategic range has emerged. But is this range oriented toward the constructive side of Nomos? Small businesses bought out or pushed out of the field by large corporations are the simplest counter-examples. Moreover, forming alliances is an instrument available to corporate entities whose human partner operates in pure Physis or uses the destructive side of Nomos as well. Even when the destructive side is never invoked, the constructive side too remains open to the threat of instrumentalization.

This mechanism, together with synergistic selection, forms a two-layered cycle. First layer: synergistic actors rise to the top within the corporate entity; these actors make the corporate entity harder, more Physis-compatible. Second layer: the corporate entity, having become harder, is rewarded in competition; the reward makes it more attractive, drawing more synergistic actors. The two layers feed each other. The cumulative result: the system automatically filters out the constructive side of Nomos and hardens; the dominant corporate entities turn increasingly into structures carrying purer Physis.

This reward mechanic is not limited to the material plane. The same filter operates at the conceptual-discursive plane as well: the very concept of "success" has been constructed by Physis criteria. Historical narratives, the educational system, popular culture, and academic theories of leadership build concepts like "great leader," "effective commander," "visionary entrepreneur" through conquest, dominance, durability, and scale — by Physis measures. This discursive filter feeds the Lower Class Paradox (Öztürk, 2026) from both sides: on one side, the system spreads the language of Physis; on the other, the lower class is already structurally inclined toward the Physis perspective, because its own material existence is tied to the power of the corporate entity within which it lives. An American may dislike Trump as a personality and oppose his policies ideologically; but when told "oil will double if we don't strike Iran," the same American's answer ceases to be automatic refusal and turns into deeper evaluation — in one register she evaluates personality (Nomos), in the other she makes a system-benefit calculation — its effect on her survival — (Physis). This is not an individual dilemma but the structural operation of the paradox. (The aim here is not to test the historical accuracy of the discourse but to make the lower class's internal dilemma visible; the example should be read as a hypothetical calibration.)

The lower class's parallel running of a Nomos test — critiquing personality, applying moral judgment, preserving the distinction between "greatness" and "goodness" — is more than the individual's conscientious judgment. It is also structurally functional. Because as the upper class's capacity for "remaining" grows, singularization accelerates; as singularization accelerates, the lower class is crushed; as the lower class is crushed, the legitimacy test the base of the system runs against the system is damaged, and the acceleration toward full hegemonic breakdown speeds up. The lower class's Nomos pressure is therefore a functional brake; it structurally constrains the upper class's momentum. This is not a deliberate design — no one sat down and planned it — but it works, because this test, having counterparts in both Physis and Nomos, echoes from two different origins from the micro to the macro. For the upper class, this brake is a leash: a willed boundary constraining its range of motion and obstructing its desire for singularization. The upper class's tendency to slip out of this leash is structural — it wants to conduct power conflict free of the handicap of these moral limitations; it resists the instrumentalization of the same limitations in the hands of the middle class, because such instrumentalization directly targets its own will to "remain."

One of the main mechanisms against this brake is the neurobiological suppression of the lower class's Nomos capacity. The suppression may be direct, or it may operate by leaning on the structural predisposition of the Lower Class Paradox (Öztürk, 2026) — as conditions harden, the lower class already shifts toward Physis criteria; the discourse of threat accelerates this predisposition. The prefrontal cortex is the center of rational thought, moral judgment, long-term planning, and empathy — the neurological substrate of Nomos. The amygdala is the center of fear, threat response, and short-term survival reflex — the neurological substrate of Physis. When the human is under continuous fear, the amygdala stays active and the prefrontal cortex is suppressed; moral judgment, long-term thinking, and empathy weaken. Only the calculation of survival remains.

In the modern period, the discourse of continuous fear and threat to which the lower classes are exposed — enemy, migration, terror, economic collapse, pandemic, neighbor threat — serves this neurobiological suppression structurally. The result is a two-way transformation: the lower class advances toward a position saying "we need a strong leader," "we must unite," "at any cost"; the upper class, in turn, tries to convert the lower class's pressure into support through this discourse. Even if the mechanics of synergistic selection and reward do not always reward these actors, they stand out in terms of widening the upper class's range of motion. Moreover, this need not even be part of a deliberate, ill-intentioned strategy — it can form intuitively, it can be learned.

This strategy yields multi-directional gains for the upper class: suppressing the lower class's Nomos capacity converts it to support by shifting it toward Physis criteria. In the standing tension between lower and upper classes, it strips away the ground of the lower class's Nomos values against the upper class. The friction this capacity produces — the foundation of the brake function — is neutralized. It also blocks the middle class's path of mobilizing the source by instrumentalizing Nomos ideals. The mathematics of energy/outcome efficiency is clear.

IV. Internalization of Character

The long-run result of synergistic selection is not only that the top group meshes without friction with the corporate entity's Physis. Individuals who initially had friction with the structure's logic internalize that logic over time; the result is a state of compatibility with the structure independent of biographical origin. This internalization happens by degrees.

In the first stage — strategic adoption — the individual accepts the corporate entity's logic as an external requirement: "this is my job, I do what the structure requires." There is a distance between individual and role; Nomos capacity is preserved. The human is still the source; ethical choice in spite of the structure is still possible. There is tension between individual and task, but the tension is kept at a level manageable by rationalization.

In the second stage — existential internalization — this distance melts. The individual no longer just applies the corporate entity's logic; she adopts it as her own existential perspective. She begins to see the world through the corporate entity's eyes: other people are "resources" or "obstacles"; relationships are utility functions; Nomos ideals are discourses to be instrumentalized, not values to be lived.

This transformation is not pathological — it is structural.

V. The Structural Ground of Alienation

The individual who has long operated within the Physis logic of the corporate entity also internalizes that logic. The far end of this internalization arrives at a pattern observed in the literature of organizational psychology and power research: erosion of empathy, increased social distance, the tendency to perceive other people in the category of resource or rival (Keltner et al., 2010; Babiak & Hare, 2006). A kind of alienation, in other words. The individual may become alienated from the fact that the human is a species that survives with other humans; other people begin to be perceived in the categories of resource or rival of the structure. One might say: so what — other people are not always useful for any given human, and not every human sustains the perspective of being useful to everyone within the frame of her own existence and survival. But the difference here is the difference between corporate entity and human: for the human, the perception "other = resource/rival" is a conditional and transient state; for the corporate entity, it is the very existential logic. As the human internalizes the structure, she adopts a conditional gaze as an existential perspective. Boundaries blurring make an ontological difference invisible from time to time.

The ontological and empirical ground is sufficient to recognize this alienation as a real deformation. The human, on the biological-evolutionary plane, is a species that lives in groups: infancy requires care, language is acquired only in social settings, a significant part of the brain is dedicated to social processing (Dunbar). Social isolation raises mortality risk at a rate close to smoking (Holt-Lunstad); solitary confinement is recognized as torture.

Aristotle's observation of zoon politikon or Heidegger's concept of Mitsein (being-with) pointed not to a normative preference but to a descriptive fact. The human's existing with others is not an ideological position but an ontological observation — and the concept of "opposite formulas of survival" in the Physis framework already establishes this: the human survives with others; the corporate entity dies through others.

On this ground, the empirical patterns observed in individuals in upper-management and power positions carry objective traces of an alienation process. Dacher Keltner and his team's "power paradox" research has shown that individuals who acquire power experience a measurable decline in empathic capacity; high-status individuals perform worse in the ability to read others' emotional expressions. David Owen's "hubris syndrome" — the loss of empathy, the disconnect from reality, the sense of being exempt from ordinary rules observed in leaders who remain long in power positions — has been clinically defined. The work of Babiak and Hare documents that the rate of clinical psychopathy in corporate senior-management positions is several times higher than in the general population — this can be read as a result of both synergistic selection (the compatibility of psychopathic traits with the structure) and long positional exposure.

The structural consequences of this alienation manifest at different scales — from the micro decision level to decisions taken at planetary scale.

VI. The Epistemic Limit

These findings document the externally visible dimension of alienation. But here we strike an important epistemic limit. Behavior observed from the outside — cold decision, distanced relationship, benefit-centered calculation — does not tell us what it corresponds to in the individual's inner world. The same external behavior may come from three different roots: the individual's natural synergy with the structure (the character drawn by synergistic selection), the structural deformation produced by long positional exposure, or a deliberately adopted ideological position. In the first, the individual "already was"; in the second, "has become"; in the third, "has chosen."

To disentangle these three possibilities with any certainty requires access to the individual's self-awareness, capacity for honest self-questioning, and willingness to share — and the two obstacles mentioned at the beginning of this article, when discussing why we cannot do case studies, become visible right here. Therefore, instead of trying to disentangle these three possibilities, we will simply note that all three produce the same structural outcome: regardless of the path of arrival, for the internalized individual, other people begin to be processed in the categories of resource or rival of the structure.

To see this internalization at a concrete level, consider a factory manager. The market has shrunk, cost calculations have tightened, the decision is made: one hundred workers will be laid off. Three different reactions are possible, and all three are observed in the field.

In the first reaction, the manager justifies the decision internally: "this is my job; if I don't do it, someone else will, and more harshly at that; those laid off will find work somewhere else; this is how the industry works." Distance is preserved strategically; the individual does not identify with the work she is doing but can rationalize it. This is the concrete appearance of the stage of strategic adoption.

In the second reaction, the decision no longer touches her; those laid off are objects of a decision — not names but numbers, not lives but positions. The manager sees the world through the structure's eyes; the distance has melted. This is the concrete appearance of the stage of existential internalization.

In the third reaction, the individual experiences a duality in her self; she makes the decision but cannot sleep at night, and the next morning makes it again. She is neither fully aligned with the structure nor fully resistant; she remains in between. This reaction is not a stage but a position outside the stages — the position that cannot pass through the natural filter of synergistic selection. Individuals in this position are pushed out of the structure in different ways — never rising, internal breakdown under stress, or, over time, drifting to one of the other two reactions.

There is no moral hierarchy among the three reactions. They are structurally different positions; the structure selects, in the long run, the first two — which are compatible with itself — permanently, while the third is eliminated over time.

VII. The Structural Necessity of Cohesive Resilience and Spiritual Bond

How do the individuals who rise to the top through synergistic selection organize among themselves? What are the factors that give a group its strength? The answers lie in the analysis of cohesive resilience — and the sociological and neuroscientific research of the last twenty years provides independent empirical support for this analysis.

Bond Typology and the Cohesive Resilience Spectrum

A group's survival capacity depends on the type of bond that ties its members together. In intense competition, even the slightest incompatibility increases the risk of losing; the highest cohesive resilience requires the most intense bond. Cohesive resilience is two-layered: intra-group (the strength of the bond among members) and individual (each member's capacity to carry the structure). The most intense bond forms raise both layers at once.

The sociological tradition has examined different bond forms through different frames. Hirschi (1969) examined the social bond along the deviance-conformity axis through four elements; Tajfel and Turner (1979) formulated the identity bond within social-identity theory; Durkheim (1912), through the distinction of sacred and profane and the concept of collective effervescence, pointed to the social origin of the deepest form of the bond. More recently, Atran and Whitehouse's Devoted Actor Framework (2016) documented, through field research in conflict zones (the Libyan civil war, Iraqi Kurdish fighters) and through neuroimaging studies, why the combination of sacred values and identity fusion leads individuals to die for their groups. What these studies cumulatively show is this: bonds form a hierarchical spectrum along the axis of cohesive resilience.

This spectrum is treated in more steps and as one of the theory's original works in Physis: A Theory of Power. Here, in order not to disclose that work before the book is published, we will present the same argument in a literature-supported reading in five steps, from weakest to strongest. The axis of the spectrum is the internal cost of breaking the bond. From bottom to top, breaking the bond requires a more radical loss at each step.

Interest bond (low threshold): A bond established only through the calculation of utility. When interest changes, the bond dissolves. The most fragile; because the calculation is greater than the bond.

Norm/Contract bond (medium-low): Written rule, contract, institutional hierarchy. More durable than interest because it carries an external sanction; but it erodes when the power of sanction weakens or when a stronger alternative bond appears.

Identity bond (medium-high): Shared belonging — ethnic, class, professional. Stronger than the norm bond because it is internalized; it is part of the individual's self-definition. Yet identity alone does not withstand conflict; it can fragment under pressure.

Meaning bond (high): Shared worldview, common mission, a shared answer to the question "why are we here." Deeper than identity; because it gives meaning to the individual's work.

Spiritual bond (highest): The meaning bond with the promise of transcending death added to it. The individual perceives the group's existence as a reality larger, more permanent, higher than her own mortal existence. Here the bond has strength enough to override even the biological survival instinct — the individual experiences dying for the group as a value.

This top step of the spectrum is the form of bond most intensively researched in the last two decades. What the Devoted Actor literature measures and documents neuroscientifically is exactly this edge: when sacred values are engaged, the brain regions that perform cost-benefit calculations fall silent; decision becomes closed to bargaining, exchange, and calculation.

Structural selection, at the top where competition is most intense, automatically filters for groups with the upper-edge bond form of the spectrum. A top group held together by interest cannot, in the long run, withstand rivals with stronger bonds — it either evolves over time toward a deeper bond form, is eliminated, or is drawn into a niche where competition is lower. Here, "selection" is not a conscious choice but the result that competition leaves behind.

Why the Spiritual Bond Produces the Highest Cohesive Resilience

The spiritual bond emerges from the union of two components.

On one side there is meaning and transcendence. The individual feels that the work she is doing is part of a story larger than her own lifetime. The structure becomes sacred; the price paid for a sacralized structure acquires meaning. Atran's concept of sacred values captures this component — values closed to bargaining, unmeasurable by material exchange, carrying existential meaning.

On the other side there is bodily experience. Shared threat, common risk, price paid together. This experience writes abstract meaning onto the concrete body; the bond becomes not intellectual but cellular. Whitehouse's research on identity fusion documents this component — intense, shared, mostly painful (dysphoric) experience produces a visceral oneness merging the individual's boundary with the group. Field research with units fighting in the Libyan civil war showed that those taking risks together at the front line experienced a fusion with the group even stronger than the family bond.

When these two components combine, cohesive resilience reaches its highest level. Meaning alone remains abstract and can dissolve in moments of crisis. Bodily experience alone resembles an interest bond and erodes when the common threat disappears. When the two combine, the bond is both resilient in crisis and persistent under normal conditions.

The Atran-Whitehouse framework explains the individual level — why individual actors put their lives on the line for their groups. What Physis adds to this literature is the structural logic of the mechanism: the pushing of top groups toward this bond form is not an individual psychological preference but a necessity dictated by competition among systems. Evolving into this form later is difficult and rare — it requires conditions, shared threat, time, and ritual; those founded with this form from the start have a structural advantage. The Devoted Actor Framework shows why individuals behave this way; structural selection explains why groups with this bond form cumulatively occupy the top.

The Ascent-and-Stay Asymmetry of Cohesive Resilience

Cohesive resilience is the condition both of ascent and of staying. High-cohesive-resilience groups are superior in competition — that is why they rise; this is the group-level reflection of synergistic selection. Low-cohesive-resilience groups either never rise, or dissolve while rising, or are eliminated by their rivals where they did rise. Having reached the top is itself proof that the group's bond form is of high cohesive resilience.

The need for cohesive resilience does not decrease once the top is reached — depending on conditions, it grows. Because at the top conflict is continuous, loss is existential, and when the bond dissolves the group not only loses position; it loses its structural existence. The staying phase requires the bond already present in ascent to deepen further, to be reproduced, to be expanded in meaning. For this reason, in top groups a gradual deepening of the bond may be observed over time — not preserving the bond but the necessity of constantly seating it on deeper ground.

This principle applies not only to the top group but to every group at every scale. States raise the cohesive resilience of their bonds with national narratives, parties with ideology, armies with medals and anthems, football teams with fan rituals. The system produces, at every scale, institutions meeting this need; because collective structures face two processes at once: the direct pressure of rivals and the entropic erosion produced by time itself. A collective without cohesive resilience withstands neither the first nor the second — both work cumulatively, and cohesive resilience is the property that answers both simultaneously. The structural expectation is this: groups with high cohesive resilience have higher top-potential, and therefore the probability of encountering groups with this form at the top is also higher.

The Sharpening of Meaning

Even when a spiritual bond is established, power conflict within the group does not end; it continues at a new scale. Because the top group consists of the winners of structural selection, the inner struggle among these winners is itself structural. Factions instrumentalize the language of meaning to take position against one another; because each faction must differentiate from and/or surpass the meaning-claim of the one before, meaning hardens over time. This is not a moral corruption — it is a structural consequence of internal power conflict.

The manifestations of this hardening take different forms historically. Sometimes it appears as the sanctification of a shared mission: "we have to do this work because no one else can." Sometimes as a language of ontological superiority: "we are something other than them" — blue blood, chosen people, superior race, visionary class, faction-bearer-of-the-species; the words change, the coding is similar. At its furthest point, the mission turns into a salvific obligation: "without us, the whole collapses"; the group's interest is equated with the interest of humanity, civilization, or the species; opposing views become betrayal, criticism becomes sabotage, resistance becomes an existential attack.

The order, intensity, or combination in which these manifestations emerge in any one group is not fixed. Some groups remain in a single manifestation, some oscillate among different ones, some retreat over time. What can be said structurally is this: as long as factional power conflict continues, the retreat of the language of meaning is read as weakness and invokes the legitimacy test / creates test potential; for this reason, the direction of hardening is structurally easier to trigger than the direction of softening. This is not a linear flow; it is a cumulative tendency of pressure.

The theological frame of aristocracy was historically consolidated at the furthest point — and the reason is not that aristocrats "morally corrupted" but the structural pressure of factional competition. Its simplest indicator is how dynasties defined themselves. This pattern is not particular to a single geography: from the Egyptian pharaohs' claim of descent from Ra or Horus to China's "Son of Heaven," from Naram-Sin's self-deification in Mesopotamia to the Sasanian "Shahanshah" ("king of kings"), from Rome's "Dominus et Deus" to the Inca "son of Inti," from the Japanese emperor's descent from Amaterasu to Europe's doctrine of "divine right of kings" — in the ancient Near East, East Asia, ancient Iran, Mesoamerica, and Europe, in civilizations independent of one another, the same structural logic was repeated.

The dynasties, factions, and noble families within aristocracy have struggled with one another for centuries; and this struggle operates at three layers at once. The first layer is among direct rivals: one dynasty surpasses another in terms of legitimacy. The second layer is internal-diachronic: within the same line, a leader raises the title in order to surpass his predecessor — Ardashir's title "Shahanshah of Iranians" is expanded by his son Shapur I to "Shahanshah of Iranians and non-Iranians." The third layer is among parallel civilizations: establishing one's own universality against other "rulers of the universe" existing simultaneously — the Chinese Emperor, the Roman Emperor, the Sasanian Shahanshah considered themselves the center of the universe at the same time, did not directly recognize one another, but each raised his own discourse in parallel.

The discourses of "God's shadow on earth," "seated on the throne by God's will," "blessed lineage" — though they have real legitimacy-producing functions — are titles that are continuously raised under this three-layered pressure. The discourse consolidates at some point because there is no sharper version. The boundary between governed and governor is no longer functional but ontological; and this ontological boundary, by being sacralized, is tied to structural continuity.

This pattern is not limited to aristocracy or to religious-theological contexts; it is also observed in political parties, ideological movements, corporate cultures, and even academic schools. In fact, religious sect and order divergences offer this structure's purest and longest-running case studies — the process by which factions, over generations, turn an initial interpretive difference into a language of ontological superiority is documented in hundreds of examples in religious history: the arming of the Sunni-Shia split from a succession struggle to a theological language, Christian sectarian splits from the Filioque to the Reformation, the claims of ontological superiority among Hindu sects (Vaishnava-Shaiva), the doctrinal divergences of Buddhist schools (Theravada-Mahayana) — the same pattern appears in all of them. Political theory has, in recent years, begun to apply this mechanic to political conflicts as well — the literatures of affective polarization (Iyengar et al., 2019), culture wars (Hunter, 1991), and the sacralization of politics (Gentile, 2006) can be consulted. The discourse of a religious order — "we are on the path of Truth" — and that of a party — "we are the true patriots" — are two different shells of factional internal struggle hardening the language of meaning.

This hardening is not an inevitability but a structural possibility — yet within the framework of power dynamics and factional power conflict, it is not a small possibility. Some groups dissolve early, some get stuck in a particular manifestation, some retreat when conflict eases. But when structural conditions persist, pressure accumulates in the direction of hardening; and in top groups where the necessity of cohesive resilience is most intense, this pressure is at its highest level.

VIII. The Pathologization Trap

Pareto's "circulation of elites" (1916), Michels's "iron law of oligarchy" (1911), Mills's "power elite" analysis (1956), Acton's aphorism "power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely" (1887) — the sociological literature has documented the hardening of power groups over time within different frames. Yet the shared frame of these studies is open to debate: the process is mostly read within a narrative of moral decay — tired elites, dynasties seduced by luxury, the corruption of democratic intention, a systemic rot beginning at the top. This frame leaves the structural mechanic incomplete and — less recognized — also reflects a particular point of view.

A mechanism analysis is needed here. Does power corrupt? Taking as criteria the health of the system, the position of the lower class and of the source, the direction and weight of benefit distribution, the operation of feedback mechanisms, and the system's adaptation capacity — yes, one can say the upper class decays, but it must be noted that the use of this term is not accidental and that it carries at its core a normative dimension as well. When these criteria deteriorate, the system's entropic risk rises as a structural reality; the classical literature has correctly identified this process. But if decay is read within the frame of "these people have become morally bad," "there is a pathological rot," "politicians have always been like this," then this is not an analysis of decay — it is the denial of the structural mechanic or an analytic mental block. The first describes the mechanism; the second prevents the mechanism from being seen. This block has its own name: the Pathologization Trap. The mechanism is not, in itself, pathological; what becomes pathological is what emerges when a threshold is crossed. To judge is the Nomos test — it is functional; but when judgment replaces analysis, the test dulls.

Beneath the "power corrupts" narrative lies an implicit norm: healthy power is power related to the people; broken power is power that has lost its tie to the people. Although this logic is both intuitively and mechanically correct, it is incomplete. In this frame, decay is marked as the disconnection of power from the people, the increase of moral-corruption narratives, and the reduction of the system's benefit to the lower class. But this is not a description of the internal mechanics of power but a description of the lower class's expectations of power and of the necessity that the system support the survival of its source. What is ideal for the lower class is that power remain related to the people, hear the people's needs, and continue to operate by centering the lower class's "remaining." The classical decay literature operates from within this frame. This is not, in itself, wrong; it is only a missing perspective. The proposal of a structural reading is not made so that the lower class will empathize more with power — the lower class is already exposed to plenty of propaganda meant to align it with the upper class.

From this frame, it might be worth doing research into whether history's "gallery of madmen and monsters" is in fact a moral museum built upon the lower class's frame. Is this a structural bias, or does the transformation involve specific criteria? The Pathologization Trap is not only a historical perspective on the upper class but also a common reflex of contemporary analysis — thinking it is describing the person, it misses the structure; it thinks the next figure is "a new madness," when all may be different manifestations of the same structural pattern. More critically, this reading prevents us from seeing what the upper class calls "decay" as a transformation — making it impossible to analyze what it has transformed into, which new conditions it has adapted to, what forms it may take in the future. Each figure labeled "mad" is not a data point but a case erased from the narrative.

This reflex has a functional side: evaluating the upper class by Nomos values keeps Nomos capacity alive, and this feedback, even if it does not stop the structural mechanism, keeps the test alive. But this function alone is insufficient. Beneath the reflex's stubbornness lies a biological mechanism: the human develops a disgust reflex against a systematics harming herself — this is the mechanism documented in the behavioral immune system literature (Schaller, 2011): the disgust system originally evolved to avoid carriers of disease, but the brain applies this system to symbolic threats as well. A person who says of a group she dislikes that it "smells" is not perceiving an actual smell; this is an automatic response of the disgust system migrated to the cognitive level. The reflex the lower class develops against the upper class — which it feels is harming its own life — is exactly this. The upper class's amorally perceived attitudes, their being held responsible for the system's worsening, and the stress that this process produces at the biological level — when all of these combine, the lower class develops disgust against the whole package (persons, discourses, the institution). The reaction "these are already rotten, no more words are needed" is not an intellectual error but the verbal form of biological disgust; and the nature of disgust is to distance, not to analyze. For this reason, pathologization is functional for the lower class: it both provides distance from the threat and removes the analytic load. The structural reading works in exactly the opposite direction — it brings closer, it demands understanding, it endangers distance. It conflicts with the disgust reflex. The result is ironic: the lower class, while in the only position to see the structure in judging the upper class, also loses the capacity to see the structure when this judgment operates alone. The mechanism sabotages itself — when the Nomos test ceases to be a test that understands the structure and becomes only a test that distances, both the lower class's analytic capacity is paralyzed and the effect of the structural brake on the upper class diminishes.

For this reason, the Pathologization Trap is not only a reading error; it is the point at which the lower class's class weapon melts from within. The mechanism is correct; the threshold it applies is critical. Once crossed, judgment prevents structural reading, and judgment that prevents structural reading also loses its own efficacy.

This loss of efficacy has structural consequences. First: the lower class swings to a position of rejecting the upper class under all circumstances — the "they're all the same" reaction. This position cuts the lower class off from the system; the upper class, for its part, exits the test — it gives up seeking legitimacy, because there is no legitimacy to be gained.

Second: the lower class looks for an alternative class actor. This search naturally opens to the middle class. But a structural illusion enters here. In the classical narrative, the middle class is positioned as qualitatively different from the upper class, "close to the people," "the backbone of democracy." This is structurally wrong. The middle class is not a class ontologically different from the upper class — it is the class on the same orientation as the upper class, not yet having reached the top. The difference between the two is one of phase: the middle class is the upper class that has not yet realized its "being."

This structural reality automatically and unconditionally grants the middle class the capacity to bring the lower class to its side — but this capacity does not work in the lower class's interest, because the lower class has used the legitimacy test not rationally but only with a will to change; this does not shape the middle class — it merely whets its appetite. The middle class uses the lower class as a strategic ally; once it has reached the top, it crosses over from "being" to "remaining" and systematizes the same use. The lower class's reactive use of the test weapon, although it fuels the middle class's rise, conveys only a binary message — it carries direction, it does not carry degree. The mechanism reproduces itself but does not improve itself.

This is the structural logic beneath Pareto's "circulation of elites" observation: circulation happens because the middle class carries the same orientation as the upper class — its continuation — and the lower class's energy becomes the fuel of this circulation due to its paralyzed test-capacity; it turns into the fuel of the structure that is crushing it.

There is yet another face to the same mechanism — the melting on the lower-class front operates as an informational advantage on the upper and middle classes' front. Those who read the mathematics of paralysis most clearly are not those who are paralyzed; they are those who strategically benefit from it. The upper and middle classes draw a single operational lesson from this mechanism: beyond a certain limit, the test is lost — that is, an overly visible movement that triggers pathologization closes the legitimacy channel of the system; but within that limit, every kind of movement is legitimate; it is only necessary to take care not to trigger pathologization.

This limit is not a moral red line but a tactical visibility threshold. The movement itself is not forbidden; what is forbidding is the visibility profile the movement creates, the signal quality, and the biological reflex it triggers. For this reason, the great PR, lobbying, and narrative-management apparatuses developed by modern upper classes are not superficial image policy but structural tools that allow circulation beneath the threshold. The threshold, for the lower class, is felt but cannot be established; for the upper class, it is a known and managed threshold. This asymmetry alone produces a structural advantage.

IX. The Adaptation of the Will to Remain

Although the origin of the lower class's reactions is constructed around the system, the source, and their health, the inner logic of the upper class remains invisible from the lower class's perspective. The ontological basis of this invisibility is this: if there is a system, there is an upper class; the system already exists, so the upper class's existential priority is remaining. The Will to Remain is not a stance but the logical consequence of an already-attained position. The upper class's fundamental motivation is not to sustain the system but to remain. Sustaining the system serves the upper class's interest as long as it is a condition of remaining; the relationship with the lower class is one of the components of this condition — will, production, soldier, source of legitimacy. But this condition is not structural but periodic. If the need for the lower class diminishes — if the source structure shifts — the upper class's motivation to remain in relationship with the people also diminishes. At this point the upper class channels its energy in another direction: toward the factors that threaten its remaining, toward structural moves that will guarantee its existence. This is what the classical narrative reads as "decay"; but this is not rot, it is the adaptation of the Will to Remain to new conditions.

The internal hardening of meaning gains its meaning precisely here. As the upper class's motivation to remain in relationship with the people diminishes, the internal hardening of meaning does not diminish — on the contrary, it intensifies. Because as the need for external legitimacy diminishes, the weapon of meaning turns inward rather than outward: toward the real arena where factions take position against one another. The hardening of the language of meaning and the rupture from the lower class are two faces of the same process — one is the structural consequence of internal struggle, the other is the structural consequence of the diminishment of external need.

Bourdieu's field theory (1979) formulates this factional logic independently of the classical decay narrative: actors preserve their positions within the field through a contest of symbolic capital, and this contest advances by its own structural logic — independent of external legitimacy. We will examine its modern forms in the next section, under the heading of the Cosmology of Chosenness.

X. Cosmology of Chosenness

Individuals within structures bearing this logic — that is, within top groups with the spiritual bond — code themselves as chosen. This coding need not be a conscious positioning; it is the automatic product of the spiritual bond at the individual level. Because the structure is oriented toward singularization, individuals synergistic with the structure also read their own existence as a mission in the service of singularization. "We carry the world," "if we were not here, it would collapse," "only we can carry this burden" — these expressions are not psychological megalomania but the translation of a structural role into the first-person singular.

The question of whether this coding is a conscious instrumentalization or an internalized belief is secondary at the structural level. Still, the question is illuminating for understanding the mechanism.

It is possible to look at this phenomenon in three ways:

To take the status is to inherit all the instruments — discourse, ritual, cosmology — surrounding the power of that status. Status does not come alone; it comes with its frame. In observable environment and discourse, the individual stands behind this frame to the end, because her power rests directly upon it; saying "I believe none of this" is digging out the seat she sits on.

The individual does not become fully alienated from her cultural coding — even those who entered later. Horemheb — a military commander in Ancient Egypt who rose at the end of the 18th dynasty to become pharaoh, a figure who came from outside the dynasty — was, even if pragmatic in his thinking, raised within the mental map of that culture; the frame is not imposed from without but is something carried from within. Moreover, although the position of religion is different today, in earlier periods this coding was an inseparable part of cultural selfhood; the Egyptians lived formulas like "Son of God" not as a belief but as the very fabric of their existence.

A long structural role dissolves cognitive dissonance. Three factors together — the instrument package of status, the depth of cultural coding, and the internalization of the role over time — practically blur the distinction between belief and instrumentality.

The consciousness of being chosen is not specific to a single period or culture; throughout history it has shown itself in three different terminologies — and all three still operate today.

Theological terminology: "God chose us," "we have a sacred mission." From the doctrine of "divine right of kings" of European monarchies to China's "Mandate of Heaven," from the Islamic caliphate's formula of "God's shadow on earth" to the divine descent of the Japanese emperor — this form was dominant in every civilization within the aristocracy paradigm.

Ideological terminology: "History chose us," "this is our destiny," "we are the bearers of civilization." From Hegel's thesis of the World Spirit realizing itself in particular peoples, to the historical mission of the Marxist-Leninist proletariat, from Manifest Destiny to the "nation's destiny" discourse of European nationalisms — this form became widespread in secular power structures from the 19th century onward.

Technological terminology: "We are building the future," "we are at the leap-threshold of humanity," "we carry the evolution of the species." From the "techno-optimism" manifestos of Silicon Valley to the transhumanist singularity discourse, from the AGI laboratories' "AGI for humanity" mission statements to Davos's discourse of "global responsibility" — this form is crystallizing from the end of the 20th century onward within the techno-capital fusion. Most of the chosenness discourse we observe in the macro arena today has this structure.

All three are different languages for the same structural role. The words change; the logic does not.

XI. The AI Race and the Hierarchy of Species

A concrete manifestation of the technological language of the Cosmology of Chosenness became visible in an episode that has reached the public in recent years. The narrator of the episode is Elon Musk. Musk's rationale for founding xAI, traced through his own statements, forms a coherent chain of logic. First, risk assessment: at the 2023 World Government Summit, he said "AI is one of the biggest risks to the future of civilization"; in an interview that same year, more directly: "There is a chance — greater than zero — that AI will kill us all. I think it is low, but it is not zero." Then, the stance arising from this risk: "It is better to have a competitor in this field who cares about safety" (Lex Fridman podcast, 2023); "There needs to be a counterweight" (Joe Rogan podcast, 2023).

xAI is the concrete step of this logic — if it is not possible to stop the race, then at least to be an actor moving within the race with the goal of "good AGI." This frame is actively in play: in the statements Musk has given in his ongoing lawsuits against OpenAI and Sam Altman, he repeats the same thesis — artificial intelligence could pose a species-level threat.

Perhaps traces of the reason why Musk positions himself as the "counterweight" can be seen in a conversation Musk has recounted both in Walter Isaacson's 2023 biography and in several interviews. According to Musk's account, in a conversation between him and Larry Page — in response to a warning that artificial intelligence could pose an existential risk to humanity — Page's answer was the label "speciesist"; that is, "why do you see the human species as privileged? AI could be an equally valuable species."

The frame of the account must be set correctly here. Musk is in direct competition with both Larry Page and Sam Altman in the AI market; therefore we will focus not on the truth or falsity of the account but on the structural meaning of the possibility it puts on the table. Whether the conversation actually took place is secondary; that the frame of "speciesism" has been brought into reality at the discursive level in the public sphere is itself a sufficient data point.

The consistency of Musk's actions and discourse throughout the process, the fact that the statement has not been denied by the other side, and the transmissibility of such a frame to the public — these three together, at least at the level of discourse, have brought the "speciesism" frame into reality. Whether this is genuinely in circulation among the cadres at the top of the techno-capital fusion, we cannot know; but this possibility, given the process, is not small. This possibility is worth discussing; because even if its truth is not proven, it implies — should its consequences be verified — a decision architecture that would affect everyone: humans at planetary scale, states left outside, classes never seated at the decision table.

This frame is the logical continuation of the Cosmology of Chosenness in its technological language. The discourse "we carry the evolution of the species" — if its internal logic is followed to its conclusion — sooner or later arrives at a threshold: the mission of carrying the torch for the human species transforms into the mission of transcending the human species. The accusation of "speciesism" is the sign that this threshold has been crossed; "We" no longer carry the torch for our species, but for what lies beyond it.

The question may be raised here: is it legitimate for a small, oligarchic-seeming minority to hold decisions that could affect the world? The short answer to this question lies in history: transformations have almost always occurred through the influence of small minorities; this is civilization, and this article is in any case analyzing this structural logic. But this answer does not eliminate the real question — it only leads to the right question. In an artificial-intelligence race that has become one of the main centers of power conflict among states, the question of whether AI firms are being regulated properly is an entirely different question, and its answer does not lie in history. A minority deciding may be a structural reality; but the questions of within which limits, under which oversight framework, and under which conditions of transparency these decisions are taken are not structural but institutional. And these questions are openly on the table today.

The logic of the Cosmology of Chosenness may become visible in the Musk-Page episode; but this must be presented not as a definite diagnosis but as a possibility worth dwelling on. The two sides of the discussion, if such a discussion actually took place, represent two different existential positions: on one side, the responsibility to protect the human species; on the other, the mission to transcend the human species. It is not our intention to equate these two positions — they imply structurally very different things. But the question this article is asking is this: by what mental map are the cadres at the top of the AI race making decisions? Is there a share of the Cosmology of Chosenness in this map? If there is, in which variation? We cannot know the answer with certainty; but not knowing is the very ground for keeping the question open.

XII. Inertia

Even if the question remains open, another structural fact operates at the same time: whatever the mental map, the structure continues its own march. Whether the top group is aware or not, it does not change the direction of the process — this is the natural consequence of the paradigm logic we worked through in Article 1.

Whatever response the manager gives, the machine does not stop. If she resigns, the seat is filled; the incoming individual is most likely more synergistic with the structure, because the mechanism that chose her remains the same — synergistic selection tends to fill every vacated position with an individual a little closer to its own character. If the entire structure withdraws — the factory closes, the company folds, the institution is liquidated — the sector still does not stop. The withdrawn actor's customers, market share, and function are shared by competitors; the void is filled at once. The same logic operates at both levels: the individual cannot stop the structure, the corporate entity cannot stop the system. Because the system is not the sum of individual actors but the field of power conflict among actors — and as long as the field exists, the conflict continues. Individual resignation, institutional collapse, even periodic crisis — these are turbulences within the structure, not the stopping of the structure itself. The machine continues to operate, because what defines the machine is not the individual parts but the operational logic within which the parts find themselves. Structural selection is independent of individual exceptions.

For those at the top of the structure, awareness is not a necessary condition for the operation of structural selection. But awareness alone does not change the game either. It runs against the existential current — Physis dictates this. For this reason, without a mental and emotional transformation of existential intensity, no one moves against the nature that carried her there.

Another dimension is the temporal continuity of the corporate entity. Humans die, dynasties fall, empires collapse, epochs close. But the corporate entity continues to advance in the same direction. Sometimes with the same momentum, sometimes at a lower speed, sometimes with a temporality that is broken and delayed, sometimes even rewinding the process — but always in the same direction. Because what determines the direction — though its source is the human — is the existential logic of the structure: singularization, the elimination of rivals, taking sources under control, securing immortality. This logic has not changed to date because for it to change would require the ontological questioning and transformation of the corporate entity — a reform on the scale of a paradigm shift.

In this form, the symbiosis never loses its parasitic tendency. The human is the source providing energy and concrete being to the corporate entity; the corporate entity is the structure meeting the human's need for scale and continuity. The benefit of this symbiosis is real — civilization, technology, accumulated knowledge, infrastructure. But this benefit is not the aim of the corporate entity but its by-product. The aim of the structure is its own survival, and this aim continues to push the human, as a species, toward singularity.

XIII. Conclusion: The Universality of Existential Tension

Humans — whether conscious or unconscious, whether inside the structure or outside, whether governing or governed — are in an existential tension with corporate entities. This tension is universal and is lived between species; therefore no one is outside of it. But the form of the tension changes by class position.

For the governed (the lower class), the tension manifests as the loss of meaning produced by temporal subjectivity, the feeling of powerlessness, and structural ineffectiveness. For the middle layers, the tension is lived as the daily conflict between applying the logic of the structure and preserving one's own Nomos values. For those at the top, the tension takes its most paradoxical form: full synergy with the structure is the place where the risk of melting of individual Nomos capacity is highest. The strongest position comes with the deepest potential for existential erosion. The individual at the top is the most loyal carrier of the corporate entity; the power this loyalty brings arises from Nomos's scale capacity, but the same loyalty limits the capacity for choice that is the essence of Nomos. From the standpoint of an individual who has realized her existence and risen, in class terms, to the top, we cannot say that this is a bad bargain — the scale and power gained are the structural counterpart of the choice capacity lost.

Humans' time is cyclical — birth, growth, decline, death, beginning again. The corporate entity's time, by contrast, is linear — toward singularization, uninterrupted, cumulative, alone, and irreversible. Humans' stories are personal, and each is its own; the corporate entity's story is a single sentence: more, larger, longer, alone. Humans live at the intersection of these two times — seeking meaning in their own cyclical time, while the corporate entity's linear time carries civilization forward.

For the one inside, the structural asymmetry is this: the capacity to change comes only with rising synergistically with the structure. That is, as capacity grows, the pressure of the paradigm grows, and the game of "remaining" begins. Motivation decreases; power dynamics, by dictating certain moves, create a lock.

For the one outside, a different lock operates: even if capacity exists, the lower class's ontological structure leaves this capacity relatively weak and holds it under the pressure of control. One door, two locks.

Temporal subjectivity and the mortality of the individual — even if there is awareness — produce the problem of transmitting awareness. Generational transmission can remain structurally inefficient alongside institutional continuity. The individual transmits her knowledge to her children, students, followers; this transmission carries with it, in every generation, the risk of dilution, loss of context, reinterpretation, and forgetting. Each new generation makes sense of the world by its own conditions — the awareness of the previous generation, in a rapidly changing world, does not remain as inheritance but at best as a clue. Moreover, the focus of the lower class is structurally locked to actual survival; the effects of the upper class's decisions tighten this lock.

The corporate entity, by contrast, operates differently: it is singular and operates with institutional memory. It runs a transmission mechanism structurally far more efficient than the diffuse awareness carried by billions of humans across generations. Strategies are documented, procedures are codified, policies are institutionalized. The Monroe Doctrine has been applied for 200 years — the individuals who designed it are long dead, but the doctrine lives. State intelligence services' operational manuals are updated and transmitted across generations; no individual's lifespan could provide this continuity. The state's foreign-policy doctrine, the corporate strategy of the company, the operational know-how of the intelligence service — these are not affected by the death of individuals. A director dies, another comes in; the files, the protocols, the institutional culture continue unchanged. This mechanism is what provides the longevity and continuous momentum of the structures we live within — states, institutions, civilization; at the same time, it carries the multi-generational effect of the corporate entity's structure, which operates by Physis logic.

The structural asymmetry is real; the individual is, species-wise, disadvantaged within this asymmetry. As the embodied form of Nomos's scale capacity, the corporate entity has carried civilization to the present. But we are living today in a time when this symbiosis's parasitic tendency can existentially threaten the human species. Every human has felt this tension since the beginning of the nuclear age, and faces the same fear with every hot conflict, whenever it is brought to discourse — almost as threat — as part of the power conflict between sides. To this is now added the discussions of AGI and artificial intelligence.

But these tensions do not amount to a rejection of the frame that provides scale. These two directions — the one carrying civilization, the one threatening the species — are two faces of the same reality. To make an analogy: the car is not being rejected; its function and benefit are clear, and from the standpoint of Nomos it is indispensable. But that this car would now have a big crash will put everyone at risk. Then certain questions become unavoidable: have the car's other systems been developed in parallel with its engine, is its road grip sufficient at this speed, do the brakes work, is the safety equipment complete?

The structure does not resolve this contradiction — the structure's automatic forward motion is itself the proof of the contradiction.

An Epistemic Note

This article draws a flow by applying mechanisms derived from the Physis framework — synergistic selection, structural asymmetry, the corporate entity's orientation toward singularization — to the present. The drawing of the flow is not arbitrary but the requirement of the framework's internal mathematics; since the framework asserts these mechanisms, this orientation is to be expected. Otherwise the framework would be inconsistent with its own logic.

But the flow operates at three layers. The direction — the structural tendency toward singularization — is the framework's hard claim; if this direction proves wrong, the framework is falsified. The tendency — the probabilistic distribution by which this direction will manifest — is the framework's flexible layer; the tendency can be revised. The concrete manifestation — at what date, in what actor, in what geography — is not calculable; it is left to conditions. The framework separates these three layers: it claims the direction, draws the tendency probabilistically, leaves the manifestation open.

Because if manifestation were also made calculable, this would mean that all assumptions about Nomos could be calculated mathematically — yet Nomos is choice, and to construct choice with mathematical certainty is incompatible with Nomos's conceptual ontology. That is, the tendencies of humans and societies can be predicted up to a point; the "error" here is both about the human's essence and is itself the very thing that produces the margin of error. For this reason, the reader should not draw a deterministic conclusion from the fact that the article has constructed its structural architecture with mathematical precision. Nomos is choice.

Beyond this distinction, there is a single observation standing beneath the article, and this observation can be defended independently of all three layers of the flow: the existential conflict between human and corporate entity is an empirical reality. This conflict does not wait for the framework's claim of direction to be verified, does not depend on tendency calculations, does not require concrete manifestations to hold. Today, while these lines are being written, it operates observably. Even if the framework's mechanical construction is falsified, the observation stands. This does not mean that the observation is held outside testing; the observation is subject to a different test regime — not by the framework's internal mechanisms (93 hypotheses, empirical testing), but by direct observation.

This distinction is important so that the reader can look at the framework through two separate channels: the part under testing (the framework) and the part defended by direct observation (the observation) are tied to each other but not dependent on each other's fate. For the observation's treatment as an independent declaration: [Existential Tension — Human and Corporate Entity].

XIV. Bridge

We have seen the paradigms and, within them, we have traced the Roles and Actors through history. The time has come to turn our gaze to the place where all of these were born — to the "source."

Next article: "The Source"

Falsification Note

The framework presented in this paper is structured to allow falsification at the level of its hard claims. Three conditions, jointly or individually, would undermine the article's structural backbone.

First — the orientation claim. The paper asserts that the structural orientation of corporate entities is toward singularization, and that synergistic selection filters individuals compatible with this orientation to the top. If a sustained empirical pattern were to show the opposite — that large-scale corporate entities systematically move toward dispersal rather than singularization, or that those rising to the top are systematically the individuals creating the most friction with the structure's logic — the orientation claim is falsified. The claim is not that every actor or every period exhibits this pattern; the claim is that the structural pressure runs in this direction. A sustained reversal of that pressure, observable across multiple independent systems, falsifies the framework.

Second — the bond-typology and cohesive-resilience claim. The paper asserts that under intense competition among groups, structural selection filters toward the upper end of the bond spectrum (meaning bond, spiritual bond), and that top groups historically converge on a sacralized framing. If across a wide range of cases top groups holding low-cohesive-resilience bonds (e.g., purely interest-based bonds) are shown to continuously defeat rivals with deeper bond forms, the cohesive-resilience claim is undermined. Empirical support from the Devoted Actor literature (Atran & Whitehouse, 2016), the historical pattern of dynastic theological framing across independent civilizations, and contemporary observations of top-group consolidation around mission-based discourse all support the claim — but the framework is open to revision if these patterns reverse.

Third — the Pathologization Trap claim. The paper asserts the following: when the lower class's Nomos test shifts from structural analysis to moral judgment, both the lower class's analytic capacity is paralyzed and the effect of the structural brake on the upper class diminishes. The claim here is not about short-term legitimacy pressure or revolutionary capacity — history has repeatedly shown that pure pathologizing anger can pressure the upper class in the short term. Revolutions have demonstrated this many times. The structural plane of the claim is this: pathologization is a class-level mechanism — when the lower class's anger turns toward the upper class, actors, compositions, and the answer to the question of "who governs" can change; aristocracy goes, the bourgeoisie comes; one dynasty ends, another is founded. But the class positions themselves and the dynamics that operate them — power conflict, synergistic selection, the Will to Remain, the corporate entity's operation by Physis — do not change. In the formula of Article 2a: the actors change, the struggle flows in the same direction. Pareto's observation of the "circulation of elites" describes precisely this outcome — the handover happens, the mechanism remains. The falsification condition is this: if an empirical pattern can be shown in which the lower class's purely pathologizing-judgment-based test, without structural analysis, sustainably transforms the dynamics that operate the class positions — power conflict, the pressure of synergistic selection, the corporate entity's orientation toward singularization — then the trap thesis is undermined.

A note on what is not falsifiable in this paper. The observation that the existential conflict between human and corporate entity is an empirical reality stands independently of all three layers above. This observation does not wait for the framework's claims to be verified; it is tested not by the framework's internal mechanics but by direct observation. Even if the structural framework presented here were fully falsified, this observation stands. For the treatment of this observation as an independent declaration: [Existential Tension — Human and Corporate Entity] (to be added when published).

Section Note

The series comprises three sections, and each section operates the Physis framework at a different depth. Present sees the current paradigm through the eyes of the theory. Future derives the orientation of the structure from what is seen, using the mathematics of the theory. Beyond extends this orientation one step further: it is extrapolation, bound to the internal logic of the framework.

This article belongs to the Present section. This section is the application of how the Physis framework sees the present. The current paradigm — its phenomena, actors, strategic moves, discourse and interaction, technological developments — is examined through the perspective of the theory: through the effects on the framework's components, the operating mechanics of these components, and the present-day manifestations of the dynamics within these components — and the resulting view is applied to current reality. The application is bidirectional: live data is translated into the framework; conversely, a concept or chapter of the theory is taken as a frame, and current reality is examined through that frame's questions. Each article may engage a single concept in depth or work with multiple concepts together; in plural use, the concepts interact according to the internal logic of the framework, forming a view with logical coherence. Findings are open to interpretation but stand on a structurally nameable ground. The evidence regime is the description of current reality through the eyes of the theory.

Limitations

Five limitations of the present analysis should be acknowledged.

First — scope of empirical illustration. The paper draws empirical illustration from a limited set of historical cases (aristocracy's theological framing across independent civilizations) and a single contemporary public episode (the Musk–Page exchange). These illustrations are intended to demonstrate the structural pattern rather than to establish it. A systematic cross-civilizational analysis of the Cosmology of Chosenness across the theological, ideological, and technological languages remains future work.

Second — non-quantitative bond typology. The five-tier bond typology developed in section VII (interest, norm/contract, identity, meaning, spiritual) is presented as a qualitative spectrum rather than a measurable scale. Future work could operationalize cohesive resilience through measurable proxies — institutional longevity under stress, cost individuals are willing to pay for the group, persistence under leadership change — though any such operationalization would face the conceptual challenge that the highest forms of the bond are defined precisely by their resistance to cost-benefit calculation.

Third — the speciesism episode as discursive datum. The paper treats the Musk–Page exchange as a discursive data point rather than as verified historical fact. Whether the exchange occurred as reported is secondary; the analytical claim is that the frame has entered public discourse in a structurally meaningful way. If subsequent reporting were to definitively confirm or refute the exchange, the analytical claim about the technological language of chosenness would not change — but a more direct empirical anchor would strengthen the analysis.

Fourth — limited engagement with positive cases. The paper focuses on the structural pressure toward hardening and singularization. It does not engage in detail with cases where top groups have sustainably resisted this pressure (cooperative governance traditions, federated structures with strong dissolution mechanisms, religious orders that have undergone genuine reform). These cases are not counter-examples to the framework — the framework allows for resistance through Nomos capacity at the level of concrete manifestation — but a systematic study of when and how such resistance succeeds remains outside the present scope.

Fifth — relationship to the underlying book. The paper applies a framework whose full architecture, mechanism derivations, and 93 falsifiable hypotheses are developed in Physis: A Theory of Power (Öztürk, 2026). Readers seeking the full conceptual underpinning should consult the book and the Preliminary Glossary (SSRN: 6738281). The present paper is one application; it does not claim to develop the framework's foundations.

Physis Concepts in This Article

Section A: Formal Physis Concepts

Corporate entity (Öztürk, 2026) — A structural actor formed when a group of humans unites under a common form and operates by its own dynamics.

Physis (Öztürk, 2026) — The ontological ground of power dynamics; the plane on which competition, asymmetry, and the mathematics of survival operate.

Nomos (Öztürk, 2026) — The human's capacity for choice; the constructive plane that produces ethics, value, and meaning. The capacity the corporate entity does not possess on its own and accesses through its human partner.

Synergistic selection (Öztürk, 2026) — The automatic ascent of individuals compatible with structural logic to the top.

Will to Remain (Öztürk, 2026) — The motivation to stay in an already-attained position — the fundamental orientation of the corporate entity and the upper class.

Lower Class Paradox (Öztürk, 2026) — The lower class's alignment with Physis criteria as conditions harden.

Singularization (Öztürk, 2026) — The structural orientation of the corporate entity: approaching a single actor by eliminating rivals.

Cohesive resilience (Öztürk, 2026) — A group's capacity to resist dissolution. The fundamental variable of the corporate entity's survival mathematics.

Temporal subjectivity (Öztürk, 2026) — One of the fundamental variables of the upper class's instrumentalization capacity; the manipulation of the duration and intensity of how reality is perceived.

Section B: Conceptual Applications Formulated in This Article

Character internalization — The individual working long inside the structure internalizes over time, as an existential perspective, the structural logic she initially adopted as an external requirement. Two stages: strategic adoption and existential internalization.

Bond typology — The spectrum of cohesive resilience: interest bond, norm/contract bond, identity bond, meaning bond, spiritual bond. As competition intensifies, structural selection filters toward the upper end of the spectrum.

Sharpening of meaning — The hardening over time of the language of meaning in top groups as a result of factional internal struggle. Outcome: a language of ontological superiority.

Pathologization Trap — The Nomos test the lower class directs at the upper class turning into mere judgment rather than structural analysis; this leads both to the paralysis of analytic capacity and to the diminishment of the structural brake's effect.

Tactical visibility threshold — The limit within which upper and middle classes can move in their power maneuvers without triggering the pathologization reflex. Not a moral red line but a tactical threshold.

Adaptation of the Will to Remain — When the upper class's need for the lower class diminishes, its motivation to remain channels in other directions. What the classical narrative reads as "decay" is this — not rot but adaptation to new conditions.

Cosmology of Chosenness — Individuals synergistic with structural logic reading their own existence within the frame of the singularization mission. Manifests in theological, ideological, and technological languages.

The AI race and the hierarchy of species — The contemporary manifestation of the Cosmology of Chosenness in technological language: the threshold at which the mission of carrying the torch for the human species transforms into the mission of transcending it.

References

Acton, J. E. E. D. (1887). Letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton, April 5, 1887. Historical Essays and Studies.

Atran, S., & Whitehouse, H. (2016). The Devoted Actor: Unconditional commitment and intractable conflict across cultures. Current Anthropology, 57(S13), S192–S203.

Bourdieu, P. (1979). La Distinction: Critique sociale du jugement. Paris: Éditions de Minuit. [English: Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984.]

Durkheim, É. (1912). Les Formes élémentaires de la vie religieuse. Paris: Félix Alcan. [English: The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life. London: Allen & Unwin, 1915.]

Gentile, E. (2006). Politics as Religion. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Hirschi, T. (1969). Causes of Delinquency. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Hunter, J. D. (1991). Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America. New York: Basic Books.

Iyengar, S., Lelkes, Y., Levendusky, M., Malhotra, N., & Westwood, S. J. (2019). The origins and consequences of affective polarization in the United States. Annual Review of Political Science, 22, 129–146.

Michels, R. (1911). Zur Soziologie des Parteiwesens in der modernen Demokratie. Leipzig: Werner Klinkhardt. [English: Political Parties: A Sociological Study of the Oligarchical Tendencies of Modern Democracy. New York: Hearst's International Library, 1915.]

Mills, C. W. (1956). The Power Elite. New York: Oxford University Press.

Mosca, G. (1896/1939). The Ruling Class (Elementi di scienza politica). New York: McGraw-Hill.

Öztürk, E. (2026a). Physis: A Theory of Power. Registered work, Republic of Turkey, Ministry of Culture and Tourism, General Directorate of Copyright (Registration No: 2026/17534).

Öztürk, E. (2026b). Physis: A Theory of Power — 93 Falsifiable Hypotheses. SSRN preprint. Available at: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=6595318

Öztürk, E. (2026c). Physis Terminology — A Preliminary Glossary. SSRN preprint. Available at: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=6738281

Öztürk, E. (2026d). Paradigms — Nomos Paradigm Series · Present · Article 1. SSRN preprint. Available at: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=6680818

Öztürk, E. (2026e). Roles — Nomos Paradigm Series · Present · Article 2a. SSRN preprint. Available at: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=6711519

Pareto, V. (1916). Trattato di sociologia generale. Florence: G. Barbèra. [English: The Mind and Society: A Treatise on General Sociology. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1935.]

Schaller, M. (2011). The behavioural immune system and the psychology of human sociality. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 366(1583), 3418–3426.

Tajfel, H., & Turner, J. C. (1979). An integrative theory of intergroup conflict. In W. G. Austin & S. Worchel (Eds.), The Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations (pp. 33–47). Monterey, CA: Brooks/Cole.

Related Resources

Foundational works (Physis Theory):

• Physis: A Theory of Power (Öztürk, 2026) — the underlying book (forthcoming).
• Physis: A Theory of Power — 93 Falsifiable Hypotheses — SSRN preprint, Abstract ID 6595318.
• Physis Terminology — A Preliminary Glossary — SSRN preprint, Abstract ID 6738281.

Nomos Paradigm Series:

• Article 1 — Paradigms — SSRN: 6680818.
• Article 2a — Roles — SSRN: 6711519.
• Article 2b — Actors — this paper.
• Article 3 — The Source — forthcoming.

Companion resources:

• Author profile on SSRN: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/cf_dev/AbsByAuth.cfm?per_id=11195928
• Project hub: https://physisproject.com

Author Note

The author, Evren Öztürk, is an independent researcher and theorist working outside institutional academic affiliation. Physis: A Theory of Power (2026) and the Nomos Paradigm Series are developed as a privately registered intellectual project, with copyright protection registered through the Republic of Turkey, Ministry of Culture and Tourism, General Directorate of Copyright.

On the use of AI in the development of this paper. The author has used AI systems (large language models) as a writing and research tool — for translation between Turkish and English, for assistance in formulating sentences and structuring arguments, for identification of relevant adjacent literatures, and for verification of historical and bibliographic details. The theoretical framework, the conceptual architecture, all original concepts, the structural logic, and all interpretive claims are the author's own. AI use is disclosed here in the spirit of methodological transparency. The decision to publish through preprint channels (SSRN) and open writing channels (Medium) rather than through traditional peer-reviewed academic journals is also a deliberate methodological choice, reflecting the author's commitment to direct engagement with both academic and general readerships during the framework's development phase.

On the absence of institutional affiliation. The independent-researcher position carries both advantages and disadvantages relative to the institutional academic position. Advantages: the framework can develop without the formatting and disciplinary boundary constraints of any single field; cross-disciplinary synthesis (philosophy of power, sociology, political theory, cognitive science, history) is possible without departmental gatekeeping; the writing voice can preserve aphoristic and analytical density without being smoothed into discipline-specific dialect. Disadvantages: the framework lacks the citation accumulation and peer-review legitimation that institutional channels would provide; readers must evaluate the work on its internal merits and falsifiability rather than on credentialed authority; some adjacent literatures may be engaged less thoroughly than a specialist in those fields would manage. The author has chosen to publish the framework openly with full transparency about these trade-offs.

No funding, no conflict of interest. The author has received no funding, grants, or institutional support for the development of this paper or the broader Physis Theory project. The author has no conflicts of interest to declare.

Registration, Copyright, and Attribution

Registered works (Republic of Turkey, Ministry of Culture and Tourism, General Directorate of Copyright):

• Physis: A Theory of Power — Registration No: 2026/17534 (5 March 2026)
• Triade Engine — Registration No: 2026/18239 (17 April 2026)
• Almanac: Structural Power Chronology Recording Method — Registration No: 2026/18228 (17 April 2026)

Suggested citation:

Öztürk, E. (2026). Actors: Nomos Paradigm Series · Present · Article 2b. SSRN preprint. Available at: [SSRN URL].

SSRN Author Profile: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/cf_dev/AbsByAuth.cfm?per_id=11195928

Web: https://physisproject.com

© 2026 Evren Öztürk. All rights reserved.