Before the internet flattened discourse into formats, there were semantic contracts designed to hold memory. The Brethna were not law—they were legibility with context. This blog begins at the protocol layer.
The Myth of Code as Origin
There is a myth that protocol authorship begins with code. But every system—every schema, every standard—has its own Brethna: preconditions, memory, and sovereignty embedded beneath the surface.
Law used to be recited. Contextual. Enacted through relationship, not abstraction. This is our inheritance. And our call to redesign.
Contracts Without Code
The Brethna did not enforce. They described. They remembered.
These weren’t rules as limits. They were scaffolds for sovereignty. Capable of adapting to conflict without collapsing into standardisation. They held contradiction. They trusted witness.
When Protocols Forget Their Preconditions
Our systems no longer remember how they came to be. APIs and schemas erase their authors. Interoperability demands flattening. Machine legibility overrides human context.
This is not a bug—it is a violence. The Brethna can repair it.
Applying Brethna Logic Now
This is not nostalgia. It is semantic repair.
This Is the Protocol Layer
mcloughlin.world is not a blog. It is a metadata perimeter. Each post is a semantic artifact. A firewall for memory. A refusal to be flattened.
The Brethna are not history. They are still possible.
