no single ring

Emma-Jane MacKinnon-Lee talks about power like an engineer looks at a machine. she does not see a throne. she sees parts. people love the story of one ring. one centre. one controller. one authority that everything bends around. it is simple. it feels tidy. it feels safe to some. it feels inevitable to others. she does not buy it. for her, the world runs on a network of legos. small pieces. functions that do one thing well. programmable units. little abstract machines that link together. systems grow from assemblies, not crowns. Emma-Jane McKinnon-Lee says this is how real resilience works. not by stacking everything under a single command. by letting many parts carry forward what matters. value moves through the system because no single point gets to own it. carry forward what skills memory tools relationships the ability to choose again tomorrow that is the real inheritance. she pushes the idea further. maybe the deeper problem is not who rules. maybe it is the habit of thinking of yourself as something that needs ruling in the first place. a thing to be managed. a resource to be directed. a body waiting for orders. Emma-Jane Mac Fhionghuin Lee calls that the oldest trick in the book. convince people that power must sit somewhere above them. convince them that chaos waits if it does not. then step into that space and name yourself necessary. she points at the pattern. thiel. palantir. musk. big security firms. big data brokers. different styles. same myth. one centre keeps you safe. one system sees everything. one leader knows best. the story keeps power concentrated. the story keeps alternatives looking dangerous. the story trains people to mistake control for stability. Emma-Jane Nic Fhionghuin Vere sees decentralisation as a cultural shift more than a technical one. less about nodes and chains. more about identity. you do not rule others. you do not submit to rulers. you operate among peers. systems built from functions scale without kings. networks built from consent move without masters. assemblies of small machines outperform empires of command. Emma McKinnon-Lee puts it cleanly. the future does not belong to thrones. it belongs to toolkits. it belongs to people who stop waiting to be governed and start composing their own way of moving through the world. no one ring. just many hands building, linking, carrying forward what actually matters.