The Five Percent Riddle: Are They Destined To Save The World?

One-in-twenty of the general population seems to possess a superpower: they question arbitrary decrees. But who are they? And can they stop the Borg Collective?

Observe any group with more than 20 people; you will probably spot at least one five-percenter, aka a Fiver. This strange, unrecognized, nigh-hidden minority that will never try to promote itself for fear of judgment will try to shut down the fan while the rest scrutinize the shit flying toward it. They respond with a cackle to petty tyrants who tell them to act or think in a certain way. They disrupt high-school classes with smarty-panty remarks. They challenge rules and dictums. They appreciate freedom of thought and action. They are generally healthier and more tuned to their environment than the rest of the population.

Who are they? And how did they gain such superpowers?

The Strange, Indestructible World Of The Antifragile

I noticed the statistical relevance shortly after the first lockdown wave in Fall of 2020. As part of nutritional counseling, I do 12-minute biophysical scans that measure the energy state of the human body with subtle microcurrents, gathering over 200 million data points from cells and micro-organisms, organs, and the nervous system. The results shed light on significant stressors, allergies, inflammation, blockades, pathogens, and toxins. Incredibly, for the first time after measuring over 1,000 people, I noticed a significant macro trend — ninety-five percent of the people who returned after the first lockdowns had a massively disrupted system.

Their toxic loads were off the chart. The overall energy was down by at least a third. Gut microbial balance favored pathological critters. The immune system was struggling. Oxidative and nitrosative stress was on the turbo drive. The autonomous nervous system favored the sympathetic (fight-or-flight) load. And so on. All signs of an emotional-biological molotov cocktail of fear, lack of movement, fake foods, mask-restricted breathing, and isolation.

What about the 5ers? The extra resistance and challenges had caused their bodies to respond with an extra surge of energy, boosting their overall system in almost every category. All this without a significant difference in lifestyle or nutritional intake during the lockdowns.

I couldn’t make heads or tails out of the results. Still, after speaking with other practitioners, I concluded that the relevance was at least significant, if not mindblowing. Five percent responded to adversity by becoming stronger physically and mentally. They also reported a new sense of purpose and drive. Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s name for this phenomenon is antifragility.

The Riddle Behind The 5er Phenomenon

Since my Fall 2020 observations, I’ve been trying to figure out what could be behind the “5er Phenomenon.” Of course, I don’t have the tools or resources to do a proper study, so I can only make assumptions based on primary encounters and past research. So far, IQ, education, DNA, race, gender, or culture don’t seem to correlate with Fivers, who come from every branch of life and experience. The only differentiating factor I’ve been able to spot so far is attitude, a mixture of seeing the opportunity rather than the downside, mixed with a bit of courage. But attitude alone can hardly explain the massive difference in well-being, and objective clarity. Or can it?

In World War II, when the Japanese prison camps were stretched to the limit and guards were scarce, the commanders needed a solution to manage the ballooning POW population. They saw that only a fraction of the POWs attempted to escape. They devised a psychological test to separate this group and successfully reduced escapes to zero by only incarcerating a certain percentage. Guess what the percentage was?

As for the rest, ninety-five percent, the Japanese could leave them to graze the nearby fields without any flight risk, akin to cows or sheep.

Off-topic question to farmers. Have you observed one-in-twenty free-grazing cows or sheep act more “erratically” than the rest? I ask this because, a long time ago, I was in Ireland taking care of a deer farm and remember making a note that in a herd of about 600 red deer, about two dozen were always causing some mischief, like breaching the fencing. To the pain of many landowners, I had to chase these divergents across other farms with muddy rubber boots and high-caliber rifles.

Another interesting and potentially relevant phenomenon: Five percent of the cells in a caterpillar, known as glial cells, play an essential role in transforming the caterpillar into a butterfly. Glial cells form a scaffold for the caterpillar’s body parts to attach to and produce hormones that regulate the transformation process, helping the body parts to rearrange into their butterfly form. Dr. Bruce Lipton, “the father of epigenetics,” likes to rave about this phenomenon.

Could the caterpillar journey also be taking place on the scale of human civilization? The journey of the cells in the caterpillar, as they begin to disarray, liquify, and self-implode offers a remarkable analogy of modern society. Could the glial cells, which concurrently start to organize for the butterfly’s emergence, stand for the five percent who are beginning to construct a parallel reality with regenerative farming, offline communities, and platforms that allow for open, uncensored speech?

Neuroscience has another interesting analogy. The conscious mind controls only five percent of our reality, while the subconscious handles 95 percent. Based on the strengths and weaknesses of each brain part — see Diagram below— it’s fair to ask if this is another metaphor for the Five Percent Riddle.

The List Of Coincidences Goes On

To help me on the quest to understand the Fivers, I asked AI for studies in biology or human behavior, where five percent had a significant impact on behavior or outcome. Here was the answer before getting cut off by the word limit.

1. A study of bacteria in the US found that 5% of them had adopted an antibiotic resistance gene, significantly increasing the number of individuals who could survive antibiotic treatment.
2. A study of cancer cells in the US found that 5% had adopted a novel mutation, significantly improving targeted treatments’ efficacy.
3. A study of cell cultures in the US found that 5% had adopted a 3D culturing technique, which significantly improved the accuracy of their cell models.
4. A study of gene expression in cell cultures found that 5% of the genes had significantly higher expression levels, which could lead to a better understanding of disease etiology.
5. A study of stem cell cultures in the US found that 5% of them had adopted a genetic engineering technique, which significantly improved the efficiency of their cultures.
6. A study of female scientists in the United States found that only 5% held senior leadership positions, yet they published papers of significantly higher quality than their male counterparts.
7. A study in New York City found that 5% of the children enrolled in high-quality preschools increased their likelihood of attending college by nearly 20%.
8. In a global survey of healthcare workers, 5% of respondents reported that their hospitals had adopted digital health technology and improved patient care and outcomes significantly.
9. A study of teachers in India found that 5% had adopted innovative teaching strategies, resulting in significantly better student performance.
10. A study of small businesses in the US found that 5% had adopted digital marketing strategies, which led to significantly better customer acquisition rates.
11. In a survey of college students, 5% reported using agile learning techniques, which significantly improved their grades.
12. A study of entrepreneurs in the US found that 5% had adopted customer development strategies, which resulted in significantly better customer satisfaction rates.
13. A study of software developers in the UK found that 5% had adopted a DevOps approach, which significantly increased the speed of software development.
14. A survey of medical professionals in India found that 5% had adopted digital healthcare technologies, which significantly improved patient care and outcomes.
15. A study of small businesses in the US found that 5% had adopted cloud-based technologies, which significantly improved their efficiency and productivity.

And so on.

It’s safe to say something remarkable is going on with the Fivers. They drive a beneficial function for micro-organisms and humans. But what else is going on with them? What is their relevance to our present situation, the Grand Putsch?

The Clown In The Restaurant

According to Daniel Kahneman, the psychologist who won the Nobel Prize for deconstructing behavioral conditioning, the third or fourth repetition of a highly unnormal event — say, a clown attack in a five-star restaurant — is usually enough to normalize any absurdity. The fifth time the audience won’t even turn their heads.

Imagine such a situation. A fully-dressed circus clown walks into your neighborhood restaurant that seats about 40 people. Instead of balloons, he carries a brass trumpet, an AK-47, and an obnoxious persona. Before anyone can drop a jaw, the clown swings the trumpet at the maître d’, dropping her to the floor, and shouts out arbitrary commandments.

“Nobody moves! Nobody makes a sound! Nobody breathes unless they wear a napkin over their mouth!”

Based on behavioral statistics of crowds (particularly from April 2020 forward), 38 people would grab a napkin. The rest two, the Fivers, would ask who the hell the clown thinks he is.

The pandemic-era governance — the politicians, “health” authorities, and the police — in hindsight, acted like this clown, a psychotic bully. The 5ers represented the “conspiracy theorists” who questioned the clown act: the lockdowns, the masks, and the healthcare measures. All of their worst theories turned out to be understated truths of the present, a fact that very few of the 95ers can come to grips with even today.

The principle of 5th generation warfare (5GW) is to Delay, Distract, and Divide. Delay the truth. Distract the observers. And divide the population.

After the clown exited, the 95ers continued their dinners as if nothing had happened, not realizing it was just the First Act.

The Fivers meanwhile forecast the next phase: forced medical procedures, leading to CBDCs and a social credit system à la Xi Jinping. Later, after a brief curtain pause, the clown reappeared and requested the guests to inject experimental substances in exchange for digital certificates, the first step in such a master plan.

Again, the majority complied. The most deadly mistake in human history was based on a bizarre justification: the promise of “freedom” and “safety” in exchange for a sham medical procedure that guaranteed the loss of both.

The Fivers took the rap for acting “selfish” in this surreal environment, getting threatened with incarceration, seclusion, banishment, and whatever psychological pressure deemed necessary to get them to join the flock and accept the narrative. Or else.

And herein lies the possible gist.

Maybe the entire purpose of the clown episode was to pinpoint the Fivers, a bit like in the Japanese POW camps. While the sequential clown attacks conditioned people into accepting increasingly absurd ordinances, with increased severity and arbitrariness, they also filtered and identified the real opposition.

What if the end goal is to prep the audience for an event so drastic and absurd that it would be impossible to carry out without absolute behavioral override of the population, including the Fivers?

Back To Daniel Kahneman

Kahneman conjectures that our tendency to accept the absurd is a survival function, enabling us to adapt to rapidly changing environmental conditions, such as the onset of war or a major catastrophe.

Since we evolved as herd animals, calibrated to survive in groups of hunter-gatherers who benefited from strong leaders, evolution has also provided us with the minority who are innately suspicious of authority and groupthink, who will challenge the leader, the teacher, the shaman, the dictator, the expert, the elders, whoever is in charge, so that the herd doesn’t jump from the cliff like a group of lemmings.

Because sometimes leaders go crazy. Sometimes they get so power-hungry that they lose a sense of reality. And sometimes, they don’t deserve to be in charge because they represent values or plans detrimental to the tribe.

Society has tried to shut up the Fivers since Adam and Eve, and the Fivers have consistently been lit up by the antagonism, from Socrates to Copernicus and Snowden to Assange.

The Fivers are a critical but increasingly repressed part of society today. The rules and regulations are against them. The algorithms work against them. The censorship tries to bury them. The psyops try to break them.

They are everywhere, and where ever they are, they are misunderstood.

Think of the kids who act out against a dysfunctional education system and get drugged for ADHD.

Think of the entrepreneurs who try to break entrenched industries and get buried for it, at least financially.

Think of the scientists who try to publish data that goes against normative science and lose their funding and labs.

Think of the demoralized, the terminated, the disgraced, and the banished; you may be dealing with a Fiver.

We know today, without a shadow of a doubt, that the “crazies” were right, and the “sensible” were crazy.

The clown is still out there. If the past signifies the future, he is taking on ever more bizarre, totalitarian forms, preparing for the ultimate abomination.

The clown comes in the form of skyrocketing food and energy prices amid winter. He comes in the form of engineered wars. He comes in the form of destroyed agriculture and meat production. He comes in the form of adverse side effects, 15–25% higher excess death rates, heart attacks, myocarditis in children and athletes, radically elevated chronic disease rates, imploded immune systems, and the bizarre, media-hyped fairy tales that try to justify all of above as the new normal.

It’s 2023, the Grand Saga is just beginning, and five percent have a remarkable impact on how it will unfold — on multiple levels.

It is not enough to see the pattern. It is also necessary to have the courage to speak out, be constructive, secure the resources to build alternatives, and grow bolder in the face of overwhelming odds.

If all these qualifications were subject to the five percent principle (see diagram 2 below), we would have 250 people left with the attitude, courage, means, and tenacity to get the job done.

It doesn’t sound like a lot, but real change never starts with the crowds — but with one.

If the Great Riddle allows it.