The success of speculation normalization required imagining it as intrinsic to human nature

Evidence

A new worldview had settled in, one that reconciled speculation with a new social order in the years leading to the market crash of 1929.13 For this project to succeed, speculation itself had to be imagined as a universal force, “intrinsic to human nature and present in all societal realms” (Preda 2009, 176). — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 133

Categorization

• DEFINE: Direct groundwork for homo speculans: speculation reimagined as a universal human trait across all realms — exactly the premise the book unpacks.