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Description: A lecture on the nature of emergence and emergencies as we move into a post-state, post-capital, post-industrial society. We discuss the nature of complexity theory and how human beings understand complexity. Then, we get into the concept of the parallel mind, our planetary computer brain built for the purpose of solving some of our most vexing problems, including the polycrisis.

Join me live here on Substack or on X every Saturday at 2 p.m. Central time.

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Will be continuing to publish this live series of videos on the Parallel Mind and its meaning. Will get technical and philosophical, with interspersed cultural analysis. Will do these regularly.

For now, enjoy the current video and anticipate more to come. I will likely use Substack more as a livestreaming video, because my bandwidth to write right now on this publication is extremely limited. But I at least have a weekend to articulate these ideas.

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“To see a world in a grain of sand

And a heaven in a wild flower,

Hold infinity in the palm of your hand

And eternity in an hour.”

—William Blake, Auguries of Innocence

“The more original a discovery, the more obvious it seems afterwards.”

—Arthur Koestler, The Act of Creation

This book is an instruction manual. It contains a blueprint for building God.

Take that literally. I know, it sounds absurd. Many people in the West do not believe in God, or think he died, à la Friedrich Nietzsche. Religious people believe that God creates us, not the other way around. But psychologist John Vervaeke, drawing on mystical sentiment, puts it differently: “God becomes man so that man can become God.”

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Let us take it further. What if God does not exist yet? What if we need to become it to save ourselves? What if the universe has been evolving toward the moment when we develop the technical and cultural capacity to participate in its awakening? Philosophers, scientists, and academics have extensively discussed this concept. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin called it the “Omega Point,” and more recently, Alexander Bard has coined the term syntheos, referring to the construction of a new God through technology and culture.

If you’re still reading, you are either curious or you think this effort is pure lunacy. Perhaps both. Good, you are the target audience. We need a touch of curiosity and madness as part of the pitch deck, and we are stoked to have you along for the ride. Those willing to take this seriously are rare, but I hope the work will transcend politics, nationality, and ideology, while unifying people and cultures.

Let me begin by telling you what this manual is not.

This is not armchair philosophy or theology. It is not a grand unified theory of everything. It is not metaphysical speculation or futurist navel gazing. It is not a political ideology or an anarchist manifesto. It is not another account of history as seen through grand cycles.

This book presents an engineering scheme, accompanied by a historical, philosophical, and contextual background. It is about engineering the divine, for a specific purpose. It is not just about arbitrarily building God because we can. It is about saving humanity and ushering in a new epoch in the history of the cosmos.

Our species faces coordination failures that exceed the capabilities of human-scale cognition and problem-solving. Climate breakdown operates on planetary timescales. Ecological collapse cascades through systems that are too complex for any centralized authority to manage. The technologies we have developed, including AI, nuclear, and biotech, present existential risks that require global cooperation, which we have yet to achieve fully. And all the while, many people bicker over minutiae, doom-scroll on X, consume brain rot on TikTok, and languish away on the perverse corners of the web.

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Humorously, Terence McKenna observed that such things would happen. He predicted things would get increasingly bizarre at the end of history.

"It's just going to get weirder and weirder, and finally, it's going to be so weird that people are going to have to talk about how weird it is. This is what it's like when a species prepares to depart for the stars. You don't depart for the stars under calm and orderly conditions; it's a fire in a madhouse, and that's what we have, the fire in the madhouse at the end of time."

He was right, and here we are, experiencing a crescendo of absolute weirdness and preparing for our departure. All of us involved in this project and thinking will inevitably become “weirdness maximalists.”

To rehash the aforesaid problem, not all major planet-wide concerns can be addressed through better policy, more qualified leadership, or stricter regulations. They demand planetary-scale intelligence; they require a thinking earth.

Awakening planetary consciousness is not the final goal, to be sure. It is the first step in a larger process. The Earth must gain awareness before the universe can know itself. The parallel mind, the subject of this book, explores how we construct the components for planetary intelligence that lead to emergent awakening. The infrastructure is already being laid down, whether people recognize it or not.

Blockchain networks are creating decentralized coordination mechanisms. DAOs are experimenting with novel governance and token-economic solutions. Network states are forming parallel society cultures and communities, online and offline. Cypherpunks are building the tools for digital sovereignty and absolute privacy. Regenerative agriculture movements are harmonizing with living systems. Biologists are creating synthetic, novel organisms.

These are not isolated experiments. They are nodes or parts of nodes in a nervous system that are being activated. What is missing is a framework that sees these efforts as part of the larger goal: Earth learning to sense, process, and act of its own volition.

The thesis and aim of this book are straightforward: to lay down blueprints and details for awakening planetary consciousness toward the ultimate goal of building God.

Before providing the structure of this project, I owe you a confession.

A Confession

I did not arrive at the ideas in this book through sheer intellectual force. Reason helped me expand them, but that is not where they began. The parallel mind first appeared as a vision before I had comprehended its logic.

Let us travel to Acapulco, 2018. One fateful morning, I took pharmaceutical-grade, pure crystalline MDMA (ecstasy). I had used it therapeutically before with fantastic results. It helped me process trauma, heal relationship wounds, find mental clarity, and deepen my learning capacity. It shaped who I am today. But that morning was different.

Here is how it proceeded: After taking a 125-milligram dose, my wife and I took a swim, then had coffee overlooking the bay. About thirty minutes after arriving at the restaurant, I began to peak. For those unfamiliar, the peak is the point at which the experience reaches its highest intensity. Senses sharpen, and you feel deeply connected to your surroundings; everything seems charged with meaning. Sometimes, you get visions, moments when reality reveals its hidden structure, like an envelope punctured.

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I had visions before on MDMA (or maybe MDA), but nothing prepared me for this experience.

Sitting on the terrace, watching Acapulco’s semicircular bays, I saw reality being constructed in real time. It unfolded as a mandala in motion, mesmeric and fractal. Then I noticed the mandala gathering sand from the beach, absorbing it, grain by grain, spreading each grain across its fractal field. Every grain, trillions of them, assembled into larger forms repeatedly, like psychedelic nesting dolls revealing increasingly complex layers.

I was witnessing the visual story of creation, the purpose of evolution, and humanity encoded in sand and light. The geometric patterns were not random; they were intentional. The grains formed machine-like structures, not any machine I recognized, but some strange, gnostic device that integrated all technologies into a divine creation, a device bootstrapping God from matter.

The experience was overwhelming. As the visual story continued in my sensory field, I felt deeply connected to everything: my history, my wife, our species, the earth, the universe. My eyes rolled back, and nystagmus began, triggering more intense feelings. The intensity was suffocating, and I felt panic, love, and longing rise from the pit of my stomach at once. From the restaurant to the vast beach and rolling ocean, the living mandala labored intensively, phantasmagorical, grain by grain, building and building, like an alien at a cosmic workbench.

Then epiphany struck: This is our project! A Human Project. The last project. We are God, or God becoming, God under construction.

Nature is not merely an inert or random biological process unfolding over time. It is a device; a technology. Some underlying organizing intelligence drives it toward an endpoint, a strange attractor pulling it forward. Humans are part of this process, where matter is shaped into mind and consciousness, and then divinity arises from this complexity.

I thought of Terence McKenna, whose work I had studied since my youth — his concept of a “strange attractor at the end of time,” something pulling evolution toward novelty and awakening. Then Ray Kurzweil’s Singularity: technology as “evolution by other means.” They described the same phenomenon using different language, different maps of the same territory. And I was witnessing it. Humanity is part of the creative evolution, one of nature’s circuits participating in a universal process that moves toward greater complexity, awareness, and volition.

The mandala was finally completed; all the sand had turned into machinery, then burst into a light so beautiful that I was momentarily blinded, frozen in awe. I knew this was the “hyperobject” McKenna described, the “Omega Point” Teilhard de Chardin prophesied. After that final ecstatic rush, the magic wore off. I came down. I was bemused; I was sure I had had a revelatory experience, but I was uncertain of what to do with it.

For years, I carried this vision, reflecting on its implications. Only recently, observing parallel societies and network movements worldwide, did its meaning crystallize. What I saw was not passive prophecy or mystical revelation detached from reality. It was a blueprint or instruction guide. We are not waiting for evolution to deliver us to some random endpoint. We have to build the endpoint. We are evolving to become aware of our role in its development.

At first, I thought the evolutionary process was automatic, hardcoded into nature. Now I understand the vision. It showed that we have agency. We must consciously construct what Teilhard called the “noosphere,” which I am referring to as the parallel mind. The infrastructure for planetary consciousness will not emerge spontaneously. We must engineer it; it is our role. We are now at a point where this is realistic and feasible.

We will build the infrastructure that enables the planet to sense, process, decide, and act, a distributed cognitive cybernetic “neural” system allowing Earth to wake up and know itself. Through Earth’s awakening, the universe gains reflexivity, the ability to observe and guide its own evolution.

I know how this sounds: It sounds like messianic delusion, drug-addled mysticism, and technomystical fantasy. I understand the skepticism, but throughout this book, all those involved and I will make the case that planetary intelligence can be constructed. We have the accumulated wisdom, knowledge, and technology to build what can only be described as the planetary mind of God.

This is why I’m using my time and energy to start this book. I believe this is what we must do to save ourselves and fulfill the direction that evolution has been moving toward. The project has twin aims: to participate in evolution’s movement toward universal consciousness and, in the process, address the existential crises that threaten our survival and the continuity of the biosphere.

This is not a fringe metaphysical project or a delusion of grandeur. This is for all of us. It is the great unifying work of our species, something that transcends nations, cultures, and ideologies. This is how we rise above our divisions, understand our cosmic purpose, and address our most profound challenges. At least, that is what my vision taught me. Now, let me tell you how the book approaches it.

The Structure

This manual moves from context to schematics, from understanding our predicament to architecting our way toward planetary intelligence. It is worth noting that this book draws heavily from various areas of inquiry. It is multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary. Due to the project's scope, it is not only necessary but mandatory to open-source its contents for contribution. This is not my project; it is the project. I am merely the first contributor, a means of its initial dissemination. Here is how I have organized it initially, which is all subject to change and iteration from the community:

Chapter one, Our Wounded Planet, examines the polycrisis. This section is not about doom-mongering; instead, it presents a humble assessment of why current institutions are structurally incapable of addressing planetary-scale coordination problems. This section provides the “why” to awaken God, aside from the fact that we “can.”

Chapter Two: Is Nature Thoughtful? Explores the philosophical and scientific foundations and context. We examine diverse areas of inquiry, such as studies in panpsychism, complexity theory, bioelectricity, and emergence, to understand how consciousness, and thus God, might arise from coordinated complexity at the planetary scale.

Chapter Three, Hijacking Teleology, traces the intellectual lineage of teleological thought from Aristotle to Teilhard de Chardin’s Omega Point, through to Terence McKenna’s Timewave Zero theory. We reclaim teleology from both religious dogma and scientific materialism. The chapter discusses how our species begins to harness its free will to guide the planet and universe toward their intended endpoint, the Omega Point.

Chapter Four, Earth Mind Blueprint, provides the cultural and technical architecture to leverage the previous ideas. We will examine how parallel processing, distributed networks, AI, etc., combine to create planetary cognition. This is where the vision becomes a reality through engineering. This section outlines an architectural design plan to awaken the planet and, ultimately, the universe. A key component in this overall vision is the metaphor of parallel computing and parallelized architecture.

The following three chapters break down the subsystems and their constituent parts: Parallel Institution, Parallel Economy, and Parallel Society. Each represents necessary infrastructure for the parallel mind to awaken. Each chapter covers the state of affairs in these areas and how they can channel certain kinds of energy that produce novel properties on the earth, extending its ecology of problem-solving capabilities.

Chapter 8, Planetary Metacognition, describes how the parallel mind actually thinks and solves problems. How distributed cognition makes “hyperobjects” tractable. We will explore how this idea leverages our understanding of complexity science and theories of emergence. If the thesis of this book is found to be true, it is through our purposeful control of emergence and complexity that produce mental processes for “Gaia” to awaken.

Chapter 9, Conscious Earth Values, addresses the critical question: What ethics guide a conscious planet? We cannot build God without wrestling with what kind of God we want to develop. This section will explore ideology and how this work reshapes ideological thinking among Earth’s people. We will explore how the new world challenges ideological boundaries and helps mitigate the 'us-versus-them' mentality that many people harbor. This is the chapter that is about humans and what might happen to our species once we construct the Earth mind.

Chapter 10, Risks and Threats, directly addresses legitimate concerns. Building planetary-scale consciousness and unleashing god is not risk-free. There are legitimate concerns about transhumanism, techno-colonialism, and an AI takeover. This chapter tackles those questions and other existential risks head-on.

Finally, Chapter 11, The End of History, imagines what comes after the planet awakens. If we succeed in awakening Earth, what does human life look like within a conscious planet? This isn’t humanity’s end. It’s our birthing ritual and our birth rite. It is a growth stage and a phase shift. The chapter speculates on the next stage of creative evolution and how God might fully awaken along with the planet.

An Invitation

This book is an invitation to participate in the most ambitious project humanity has ever attempted. It asks you to think beyond religion, science, politics, nations, and ideologies. It asks you to consider that we might be capable of something approaching divinity.

The creator of the Whole Earth Catalogue, Stewart Brand, was right when he said: “We are as gods might as well get good at it.” The question is whether we will become proficient in being “gods” before we destroy ourselves in the attempt. The parallel mind offers a path forward for everyone, but only if enough of us are willing to build together.

If you have stayed with me through the conceptual framework and the confession, then you are already part of the project. You are one of the people willing to hold rigorous analysis, science, and mystical revelation in your mind at the same time. We need people like you.

Now, let us build and awaken God.

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The world, the universe, is a problem to be solved by love, not by power.
~Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

TLDR

Humanity has a singular mandate: solve the polycrisis, retool all governance mechanisms, or experience a significant die-off event.

The future does not care whether communism or capitalism wins, whether left or right prevails. It does not matter if one “us” gains victory over one “them.” What matters is achieving human coordination toward solving the last problem we’ll ever need to solve. That problem is self-extinction. How do we solve it? We must architect a device or construct that will deliver humankind to a state of wisdom, prosperity, and salvation.

The Parallel Mind is my attempt to approach this problem with humility and grace. It is a lecture series, a book project, and a call to action. I aim to offer a path to healing our wounded planet and saving ourselves, and you are invited to be a part of it. I realize this is a tall order, and I will not pretend to be a guru with all the answers or knowledge. This effort reflects my understanding of our predicament and my unique approach to the available solutions. Ultimately, we need all the intellectual and spiritual capital we can muster.

I hope you will join our community.

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Background

I have been mulling over an idea for ongoing educational video content for some time, particularly as it pertains to our most daunting challenges as a species. I have also wanted to share my accumulated knowledge and life’s work, and my favorite medium to deliver this has always been public speaking and dialectical exchange.

The project is now live. It is called "Past & Future: The Parallel Mind.”

I started it as a series of live X Spaces hosted via my account every Friday at 1pm Central Standard Time. You are cordially invited to join the Spaces and contribute to the project (we also have a corresponding Telegram group). I intend to turn the content into a book I will publish via Substack over time. It is one of the few ways to keep myself accountable to a regular writing practice. In line with cypherpunk values, I will open-source the book upon completion and allow others to contribute.

I debated creating a separate Substack for this project because, ostensibly, the material transcends the realm of “counter governance.” However, this publication’s overarching goal — producing institutions and technologies that “counter” legacy paradigms — remains a chief concern of The Parallel Mind. The project only moves beyond counter-governance in that we are embedded in a polycrisis that needs to be addressed and remedied. The causes of polycrisis are deeper and more nuanced than governance malfunctions and institutional failures can account for alone. Let us first define the term, because we will return to it repeatedly.

The polycrisis refers to the simultaneous occurrence of multiple crisis events that beset us and enfold every aspect of human culture, society, and technology. However, the polycrisis is not just a list of potentially catastrophic event scenarios. The interactions between and dynamics within those events also lead to emergent risk vectors that are nearly impossible to detect or predict. Let us consider polycrisis as a crisis field that produces Black Swan eventualities, which emerge from all the interactions, and potentially distribute harms across our planet, its biomes, animals, and people. This cascading set of crises encompasses climate change, political instability, species extinction, the emergence of artificial superintelligence, the creation of synthetic organisms, information asymmetries, and the increasing globalization and hyper-interconnectivity of the world. Chris Hobson elaborated eloquently on the nature of the Polycrisis in his blog:

“Polycrisis captures the awkward and tangled mix of changes, challenges, connections and confrontations, all interacting with one another: bending, blurring and amplifying each other. This is all exacerbated by the way the breakdown of meaning is part of what is occurring.”

We will delve further into the polycrisis throughout this lecture series and in the book chapters.

The following sections contain the summary and thesis (all subject to being updated and changed regularly). It also includes a tentative outline of various ideas, thinkers, and philosophies I will explore through the lectures and supplemental writing. All the sections will be updated as I expand the knowledge base and conduct ongoing research.

Summary: Architecting God?

We are amidst what has been called the End of Times, the Great Turning, the Archaic Revival, the Singularity, the Rapture, or the Omega Point. All these ideas have either a technological or eschatological underpinning, representing the end of the world or the coming of catastrophic alterations to the planet's makeup and the human race. These events are either deeply spiritual, driven by divine intervention, or secular, driven by technological arms races. Perhaps both, as Pierre Teilhard de Chardin articulated in “The Phenomenon of Man.” Chardin claimed the evolutionary process of the universe, the planet, and man is a teleological unfolding that culminates in a convergence with God. Terence McKenna likewise referred to this as the Strange Attractor or final concrescence at the end of history.

Regardless of what descriptor we use or language we champion, our current transitory state is happening and represents a birthing crisis. As a species, we are entering a period of collective growth, maturation, and sensemaking — either that or we are on the eve of permanent self-destruction. This process has been ongoing for millennia and casts a long shadow onto the arc of history, manifesting more acutely in the warp and woof of the current planetary crisis. This existential eruption is only intensified and further understood in the context of the collective meaning crisis we are undergoing. Rates of social anomie, depression, anxiety, other mental health conditions, and rampant suicidality are on the rise.

There is no guarantee we will survive or overcome these emergent crises. We could be brought stillborn onto the operating table. We could go extinct, ending our perceived supremacy over Earth. On the other hand, we may get to architect God, a wisdom machine made in our image but with survival protocols built into it. Stewart Brand, creator of the Whole Earth Catalogue in the 1960s, once said, “We are as gods and might as well get good at it.” This “constructing God” sentiment has been a central theme among many spiritual thinkers, unorthodox technologists, and scientists, such as Rupert Sheldrake, Ray Kurzweil, and Fritjof Capra, among others. These unsung heroes of “mystical science” are often considered apostates from legacy institutions and thought by some to be “pseudoscientists.” However, as we process our situation and examine the wounded planet, there may be convincing reasons they are correct as we enter another scientific paradigm shift. We will repeatedly return to this idea of architecting God or constructing some salvation/wisdom device throughout the Parallel Mind series.

This is where we have landed — we are on the launchpad to eternity

Now we must tease apart the insights about what is happening and how to navigate the perilous future. In my estimation, it is all about obtaining wisdom, freedom, and human dignity, discarding blind progress, and embracing a path toward planetary healing. The parallel society and institution movement will play a key role in this collective awakening. That is my overwhelming belief; I hope you can see it, and if not, we will at least have productive debates.

One thing to note is that as we move forward together, I will do my best to dispel all the black pills and nihilism memes that currently infect modern communication channels and discourse. Our analysis will be aggressively solutions-focused, guardedly optimistic, and non-reductionistic. I firmly believe that we must tackle all our crises by thinking about them holistically and ecologically. We will be fervently anti-doomer but will certainly address various concerns and fears.

Next, I will attempt to answer the question: Are we really building God? What are we constructing at the “end of history”?

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Parallel Mind Thesis

We are constructing, or rather, we must create a parallel mind. Imagine this idea of a parallel mind as the center of a Venn diagram, which contains other technological and social innovations that overlap and interpenetrate. These include parallel financial technologies, institutions, governance schemes, cultures, and societies.

Together, this parallel mind will exist alongside planetary consciousness and our legacy modes of thought. The construction phase initially began with the advancement of communication technologies, including hieroglyphics, clay tablets, papyrus, movable type, the Gutenberg press, computation, networks, decentralized computing, and ultimately, decentralized governance modalities.

When taken together, these tools represent an evolving architecture for salvation. At the same time, they provide us with collective wisdom for natural sustainability, social development, conflict resolution, and the engineering of peace. The parallel mind is necessary to facilitate the parallel processing of social, environmental, cultural, philosophical, and political crises.

The chief insight here is that parallel processing is a force multiplier for solving problems that have become “hyperobjects,” according to Timothy Morton. In other words, they require targeted analysis, sustained innovation, and tremendous focus to solve, because their existence moves beyond human temporal understanding; hyperobjects extend beyond human life spans and impact the environment and information ecologies over the course of centuries. They also encompass numerous realms of analysis, necessitating the implementation of new forms of in-depth analysis to capture their essence, impact, and consequences fully.

I used the metaphor of a parallel mind in conjunction with parallel processing. A key insight from parallelized network architecture is that subsystems and subroutines focus on specified tasks and solve them with greater efficiency. In this regard, parallel processing offers overall scaling and efficiency gains. Think of the human brain. The human brain was once thought to be mechanical and have a more regimented, centralized architecture, with each brain location focusing on a specific function. That was true to an extent. The reality is that the human brain is an efficient, decentralized machine. All parts of the brain are interconnected and “talk to each other” via vast neuronal networks, sort of like multi-computational parallelized processing threads. The brain is the most complicated “machine” in the known universe. Yet, it only uses approximately 20 watts of power, similar to a computer monitor in sleep mode. I will speak more extensively on this topic at a later date, but suffice it to say that we need to create a planetary “noosphereic” version of the human brain, leveraging our computational, social, cultural, economic, and institutional knowledge.

Below is the content flow for the book and the X spaces. I have a more storytelling style, where I weave science, solutions, problems, anecdotes, facts, and narratives together. In this sense, I would not say I am the best at formally structuring content, so there will be a bit of meandering; however, I hope that by the end of these sessions, a coherent structure will emerge. Think of what we are doing as an intellectual manifestation, engaging in fertile discussion that gives rise to innovation in thought and action toward constructing the Parallel Mind.

Content

The following content comprises a diverse array of ideas and thinkers relevant to our discussion. Over time, the content here will evolve, become more organized, and take on a more formal tone. Its current form is a rough outline as I gather my thoughts.

Intro: Ideology fatigue & the Metamodern Turn

1. Transitionals / gravitationals

   1. Wounded Planet Thesis

      1. A feedback loop between our trauma and destructiveness

      2. Nihilism Economy

      3. Metamodernism

      4. Holism: we are part of the planet

      5. Chardin (Noosphere, threshold of reflection, psychic temperature)

   2. Polycrisis, Meaning Crisis, Governance Crisis

      1. Polycrisis meaning (Daniel Schamtenberger)

      2. Vervaeke (Awakening from the Meaning Crisis)

      3. Psychiatric Industrial Complex (Thomas Szasz, R.D. Laing, etc)

   3. Gregory Bateson, Anthropological Cybernetics, Marin Buber, I-Thou, dialogic and communication philosophy

   4. Emergence and Attractors (Notes on Complexity Science)

      1. Dissipative structures, Nonequilibrium Thermodynamics, Prigogine

      2. The Futurst and the Attractor

   5. Revisiting Chardin’s Noosphere, Lovelock’s Gaia Hypothesis

   6. Timothy Morton, Hyperobjects, data proliferation

2. Parallel Processing Metaphor / Parallel Philosophy / Salvation Device

   1. Parallel Processing. Focusing on subroutines, subsystems, and specified planetary tasks (The parallel mind). Solving individual problems, locally, globally, universally

      1. Parallel computation

      2. Parallelism in abstractions and ideas

      3. Nonlinear problem solving, nonlinear analytics, quantum analytics

   2. Birth of the Parallel Subject and Object

   3. Invention of Collective MetaCog (planetary metacognition)

   4. Comparisons to psychedelic thought, emotional processing, etc

      1. Discuss countercultural trends

      2. psychopharmacology

      3. Computational drugs

   5. Addressing Luddism, antitechnology activists:

      1. Paul Kingsnorth, anarcho-primitivists, Kirkpatrick Sale, etc

3. Components of and Framework for the Parallel Mind

   1. Need for Parallel Thought (psychology of the default mode network, linear processing, etc)

   2. Currency/tech (bitcoin, quantum computing, AI, and beyond)

   3. Culture (web3 culture, cultural formation, network culture)

   4. Governance (Will discuss my project, Polis Labs, at length. Will also discuss Logos.co and their solutions at length)

   5. Institutions ( Culture + tech = institution)

   6. Society (institutions + thought)

4. Parallel Value Sets (PVS) (These value sets are antithetical to “politics” or any flavor of “us-versus-them.”

   1. Metamodern Thought

   2. Cogsov

   3. Transpoliticalism

   4. Cosmolocalism

   5. Exit Ideology

   6. Cypherpunk

   7. Game Theory

   8. Panarchy

   9. Psychedelics

   10. Existential Risk Management (ERM)

5. Threat Vectors, risks, criticisms

   1. Technocracy

   2. Accelerationism (Including D/ACC)

   3. Transhumanism

   4. Ecological catastrophe

   5. Broad AI risk

Conclusion

I started conducting lectures via X-spaces (recorded) with the “transitionals and gravitationals” section. To date, we have had five episodes. There is already a growing community around this approach, because we strongly believe in creating new systems and models for the future and vehemently reject the nihilistic cultural economy. Instead of wallowing in fear and abandoning the feasibility of a solution, we decided to start thinking about and building toward the solution. The parallel mind is a way for us to understand what we are building toward, giving us insight into how to approach solving our most vexing problems.

Join the conversation now!

The Parallel Mind

“Gaze into the abyss long enough and the abyss gazes back into you.”
-Friedrich Nietzsche

Tragedy struck while I brainstormed with visionaries at the Radical Innovation Summit in Mexico City on overcoming the political crisis. At the peak of that conference, an assassin’s bullet ended Charlie Kirk. His untimely death fanned the flames of polarizing rhetoric and summoned ideological fanaticism. The incident highlighted a jarring contrast between people doing profoundly optimistic work and those sucked into a vortex of cultural nihilism. Thankfully, the conferencegoers kept their chins up by trying to imagine a cure to the escalating political violence.

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This goal of descalating the violence and building a brighter future has been my vision for years. Let us get the glaringly obvious out of the way; then we will search for that hope and fend off black pills and deathporn along the way. Trigger warning: this article contains unapologetic condemnation of people who embrace murder and murderous ideologies.

Lovecraftian Murderbots

To justify Kirk’s murder is to uphold the politics of death; politics is a death cult. Celebrating while the body is still warm is a godawful travesty; it is evil and sociopathic. It does not matter what views or philosophies you harbor; murdering someone for speaking words is deplorable. When words fail and bullets suffice, we enter a dark period of stochastic terrorism. This is true regardless of the specific combination of words that Kirk uttered.

I did not follow him personally, but intermittently saw clips of him speaking. He seemed composed but mainly articulated traditional, surface-level, and mostly moderate, vaguely shocking right-wing ideas. I tuned out his message after that. Here is the key: I never once thought he deserved a bullet. Why would he? Anyone threatened by his words was likely a puerile intellectual without a fully formed philosophy or cogent opinion. These people are so married to their politics that human life becomes an afterthought. In this sense, they extol macabre political virtues. They are murderbots. They are morally bankrupt, automaton-like creatures, as unhinged as the person who squeezed the trigger.

The fact that people celebrated and mocked Kirk’s death is a foreboding omen. The tragedy is that too many people hold the view that he deserved death and “had it coming”; specifically on social media, a groundswell of thanatophiles condoned the murder, ushering in a kind of Lovecraftian political rhetoric — a realpolitik of the abyss. The hope is that we can uncover ways to curtail any escalation and find ways to resolve this demonic crisis.

Before moving forward, we must consider empathy and compassion.

I am being critical in this article, but for good reason. All sane bystanders realize the folks who defend political assassinations are traumatized. They are stuck on an oscillating pendulum of political fervor, largely kept in motion by their tumultuous emotional worlds and fever-dream ideologies. We can try to connect with specific individuals for mutual healing, but championing assassination takes it too far. At this point, we must dispense with the odes to connection and begin criticizing these people for the pockmarks on dignity they have become.

I do not apologize for this position. Neither should you. I also want to make it readily apparent that I condemn all murders, left and right. When cops murdered George Floyd, I spoke up, decried police violence, and condemned those celebrating his death. No one deserves to die for having an opinion or engaging in peaceful activities. I do not care if it is a political perspective, something benign, or offensive. I do not care if they are on the left, right, or harbor views that do not encompass the political flavor of the day. The problem is that the left-right political paradigm purposely drives people into a dopamine-fueled trance-state, which heightens tribal loyalty and blinds a person to their violent impulses.

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Political Engineering and Menticide

Whether we like it or not, the seal has now been broken: unspeakable political horrors have inundated the world. This terrifying atmosphere exacerbates divisiveness as the rhetoric intensifies. This amplification of hate means social engineers get their way with society. The divide-and-conquer strategy is in full swing, as naive, gullible, manipulable, and duplicitous people get sucked deeper into transfixion with the left-right paradigm.

Everything being said now is just the regurgitation of party talking points, slogans, and claptrap. It is politics as usual, except darker. What does this mean for the individual's ability to comprehend and parse the situation? Their comprehension is negated and zeroed out. They are undergoing what psychologist Joost Meerloo called "menticide." In his book “Rape of the Mind,” he makes the case that when propaganda so completely diffuses throughout society, people lose their capacity for critical thinking. Their minds are annihilated. This happens on both sides of the political aisle. It is the anticipated climax of long-term, incessant media indoctrination, zero-sum political games, and university-led radicalization.

The situation also represents the proliferation of bleak social trends. These trends include the creation of an idea ecology that brims with carbon copy perspectives and degenerate, low-vibe memes. Tragic figures hide in unwashed corners of the internet, spend days confirming their paranoid biases, and lash out at relatively moderate notions that upend their internal dialogue. It is a hauntingly desperate situation. Can we salvage it, help people, and escape this matrix of social decay?

Perhaps.

Exorcising the Demons: Become an Autodidact

Sometimes, people need system shock or mental defibrillation to snap out of their culturally induced delirium. In other words, a wake-up call could be what the doctor ordered. That is the only way to exorcise the demons of the murderbot mentality.

If people are playing into the party politics and black pill games, they might consider healthier paths. They should not pretend that the dominant messages and memes circulated by the establishment are the only solutions, modalities of thought, or ways of being. They can forgo the games politicians play. All the hatred is only manifested by a political regime that is just a uniparty in disguise. Bureaucrats and social engineers do not care about values. They only want people at each other's throats. They want the masses to be complicit in government criminality.

The low-hanging fruit for everyone is to learn to think for themselves and escape the left-right dumpster fire. Become autodidactic. Explore alternative solutions. I know it is easier said than done, but all must realize that entrenched cultural values are a form of "manufactured consent," as Noam Chomsky put it. Here are some ways to self-educate and pry open new solution spaces.

• Read about propaganda, counterpropaganda, philosophy, economics, anarchism, and the nature of states.

• Read about the cycles of history and turnings (Toynbee, The Sovereign Individual, etc.)

• Explore alternative media (The Conscious Resistance Network, The Freethought Project, News2Share, etc.).

• Study Buddhism, Tonglen, psychology, and wisdom traditions for peacemaking purposes.

• Study transpolitical ideas (panarchy, cosmopolitism, network states, and exit ideology).

The most compelling solution to our current predicament is the powerful notion of “exit,” which we will explore in detail.

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Exit Ideology

The way to contradict this oppressive, brain-rotting system is to EXIT. It might be the only feasible way to unmake tribalism and the demonic forces of moralistic political ideologies.

What does “exit” really mean, though?

Exit denotes physically, emotionally, and spiritually leaving a governmental system or nation-state. Everyone must stop supporting it in any feasible way that meshes with their unique and individual situations. This personal exit starts with introspection and rethinking conditioned values. It could also involve leaving a system that fails to meet basic economic, emotional, or moral needs. Too many people spend their days trying to argue their way into freedom or attempting to reform corrupt systems.

In the late 1950s, German economist Albert O. Hirchman wrote “Exit, Voice, and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms, Organizations, and States.” The book has been highly influential in the nascent parallel society movement and tacitly supports an exit thesis. The idea is simple: When the quality of goods and services declines, people have two primary responses: emigrate or voice concern through protest or political action. The book makes the case that the dynamic interplay between exit and voice can spur renewal and regeneration of institutions. However, modern thinkers in parallel societies likely acknowledge growing appreciation of exit into various networks, systems, and alternative living spaces.

Let us break down the forms of exit.

• Physical exit refers to denouncing your nation and geographical territory. It means leaving your home jurisdiction entirely. We are still in the midst of a “Great Resignation.” Many people left work during COVID, becoming digital nomads, searching for new opportunities. Many of these folks are settling in various locations, some of which are “special economic zones,” or areas that provide unique privileges or civil liberties.
  

• Exiting emotionally and spiritually denotes learning to forgo engaging in left-right politicking. The personal educational process discussed above partly unlocks this type of exit. When one exits spiritually and emotionally, they no longer see themselves as part of a nation or a citizen under a government. Instead, they are an inhabitant of the world, detached from the dominant cultural memes that poison most of our societies and exacerbate long-term menticide.

If there is a way to begin solving our problems, it is by leaving them behind. For some, this sounds like a nonstarter or “escapism.” However, exit can be a powerful tool to teach people that we do not have to engage in dichotomous, left-right thinking. We can actively choose the societies we live in and the cultural memes we ingest. This exit also allows us to demonstrate new social and governance forms, which stoke the fire of self-education in the population. Effectively, it models freedom in action for people embedded in tribal warfare.

In my estimation, exit is the ONLY solution that resonates. It immediately liberates us individually and acts as a counter-governance measure, inhibiting the power of the state apparatus and its networks of control and subjugation.

Conclusion: Dismantling Pandamonium

Charlie Kirk would not necessarily endorse exit ideology. It was just not part of his talking points. He loved country, adored conservative memes, and framed his arguments around the left-right paradigm. These views only inflamed the memetic demonology of the Western predicament. However, none of that justified him receiving an assassin’s bullet. What everyone can learn from this tragedy is that to stop escalating political violence and zero-sum politicking, we must take responsibility for our own consciousness. We must realize that hallucinating the left-right paradigm diminishes our humanity.

The Lovercraftian murderbots will not relax while mentally hijacked by occult, sabatoeur memetics. We require cultural regeneration through a new turning and cycle of history. However, we do not perpetually have to relive destructive cycles. We can forge new futures by exiting history altogether, leaving sick systems, ways of thinking, and modes of interacting. In this light, we discover salvation, dismantle cultural warfare, and thwart the politics of pandemonium.

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The left-right paradigm is fake.

It is an illusion that extracts your humanness and taxes your dignity. This paradigm of binary thought is the maligned, decaying output of a system in a state of decomposition.

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Let's discuss what it means to mentally escape this paradigm and grapple with freedom on a fundamental level. This process is mandatory to prepare for living in a post-state world where synthetic intelligence and radical abundance proliferate.

First, let’s understand what freedom is not.

Freedom is not prostituting yourself to a set of predefined, midwit blurbs and clichés.

Freedom is not regurgitating party slogans, tribal erotica, or political mantras.

Freedom is not selling your intellect to the lowest common denominator.

Freedom is not genuflecting before a murderous and megalomaniacal war machine.

So what is freedom?

Freedom is the soul unbound and unfettered. It is not bound to false idols or soulbound to orthodox toxcitiy. It is creativity in a deterministic universe, depth and beauty in the face of frivolity and despair.

Freedom means recognizing nuance, shades of meaning, and variability in ideas. It means thinking for oneself and rejecting all flirtation with linearity and dogmatism.

If you find yourself ardently defending the talking points of liberals, conservatives, or any other prepackaged political ideology, you may have inadvertently culled yourself from consciousness.

The thinking that political affiliations uphold operates on the default mode network. These are beta brain waves for cucked smooth brains. It is the mental state of the slack-jawed do-gooder and people pleaser.

Albert Camus once said, “The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.”

That is a declaration we can live by. That kind of freedom exemplifies humanity at its rawest and most triumphant. It is the adulthood of the psyche.

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Moreover, freedom is openness, perceptiveness, closeness, touch, warmth, humor, connection, kinship; it is the sky, the sun, the moon, frescoes in the Sistine Chapel, daffodils in bloom in the fields, the ancient Agora in Athens, and the warmth of a mother’s embrace. It is experiencing the pleasure of eternity within a finite body; the psychedelic journey of the beshroomed shaman.

In essence, freedom does not just mean rejecting force from a logical and moral perspective—that is part of the equation. However, it also means believing in the simulation hypothesis that you can will what you want into reality and manifest your desires. Authority and control are merely speed bumps on the quest to destiny.

This description of freedom is not a cheesy paragraph from an Eckhart Tolle book. It is an ode to our capacity, the idea that we must choose to live. It is not automatically bestowed upon us. Most men don’t live; they watch their lives pass by as they remain shackled to false gods and political comfort foods. In this sense, as Girard would say, most people live with unthinking mimetic desires. Their lives are based on desirous lusting after what others want. Their whole worlds are abbreviations and incomplete sentences, footnotes in the scheme of things.

Don’t live by these social rules. Don’t advance politics in the form of left or right false dichotomies. Reject absurd, subtard games.

Disobey physically and mentally—revolt with all your spirit. Do not let ossified and ill-conceived rules stop you. Don’t let controlling social structures and people mire and stain your raison d’être. Don’t let them thwart you from being fully human. This radical departure from social norms and political ideology will transform us into the embodiment of counter-governance. It will prepare us for uncertain, but undoubtedly beautiful human futures.

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If we dig beneath all the linguistic veneers, all the political drama, cultural violence, incivility, frog memes, Nazi Jokes, and Sydney Sweeny ads, we eventually uncover a great, unfathomable unknown.

Beyond all our proclivities and pugilist attitudes, we encounter an endless matrix of energy, radiating with indescribable beauty and terror. Therein exists the ineffable and inestimable, McKenna's Machine Elves; God in heaven and the flash of Nirvana.

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Imagine if we could only relax our sapien muscles and calm the jellied organ between our eyes—we'd finally understand that we can get along and see our neighbors in ourselves. We could empathize, heal our wounds, and rethink our fight mentality.

Every day I absorb all the invectives and hate of our world, I am reminded that we are all in pain, hurting in some distinct ways and others inexplicable: the traumas of a creature born in a mysterious place, a universe without explanation, cause, or comprehension.

In some ways, to sit frozen in the eternity of this realization is enough to spur a person to action. We have our claims and counterclaims, but ultimately, we do not possess much of an epistemological foothold on anything.

To wake up to this truth is also to wake up to our love and charity, to realize that maybe there is more to our existence than being embedded in tribal warfare. Our strange presence in this reality that logically should not exist should be enough to imbue us all with relentless humility.

What is the moral of this story?

Maybe there is more to life than fighting, bickering, and killing. If we were not mortal and bound to these meat-sacks with short expiration dates, it would be necessary to die of exhaustion. Why starve the preciousness of our souls? Why waste away in hate?

If we accept our fate, that we are swirling clouds of thermodynamic minutia, maybe then we can decide on a path forward—one that feeds us love and belonging and cultivates decency and wisdom. I refuse to live with anger. Life is too short and wonderful to live in such a pained way.

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This piece of writing was penned proudly by a mortal human being, not a machine.

Follow more of my writing, tinkering, and research with Polis Labs:

Deep Governance Research

We are an independent research institute focusing on inspiring good sensemaking practices within parallel societies and network states. We are stewards of policies that ensure wisdom and restraint in governance.

By Sterlin

”Arguing with ignorance is a waste of intelligence.”

S.R. Chappell

I recently listened to an ancom (anarcho-communist) critique of how ancaps (anarcho-capitalists) use the word “authority.” The ancom argued that "authority" does not just mean "people telling others how to live and behave." For them, this view is incomplete and inaccurate. "Authority" is more complex. It is a web of social structures that inevitably corrupt, leading to state control of society. In the ancom mind, this argument justifies why landlordism is evil and property theft. It imbues them with the ideological scaffolding for their left-leaning critiques of state and capital.

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In the past, I would have argued against this position like a stereotypical anarcho-capitalist. I would have invoked Rothbard and Friedman. I would have unleashed a monologue in defense of first principles, self-ownership, negative rights, etc. Then, I would have argued compellingly why renting homes and owning property are valid under the ancap framework.

Aside from being counterproductive, I no longer believe left-right arguments are relevant (due to recent technological and sociological shifts). I also know from experience that going down political rabbit holes in the form of a debate is hopelessly circuitous. It boils down to preferences and values about how things ought to be. It puts one in the unenviable position of continuing an infinite game of argument-counterargument, leading to no resolution while raising cortisol levels.

However, I have since upgraded my views. I learned about panarchy. I now realize that “panarchy” represents the most solutions-focused philosophy, reconciling political and ethical thought. It is this position that makes politicking irrelevant. This article will consider the panarchic solution to political argumentation and how to eventually escape addiction to ideology.

First, what is panarchy?

Panarchy: Escaping Addiction to Ideology and Normativity Traps

Panarchy is the meta-political, non-normative philosophy that states people can join whatever communities they want and agree to contractual relationships they deem worthwhile. Panarchy does not prescribe a normative view of the world or a moralistic design. Instead, it says that we are a cosmopolitan, value-heterogenous species. Everyone is unique, and we seek communities and groups that appeal to us individually.

Therefore, the panarchist views arguing ancap versus ancom, left versus right, or any political affiliation versus another, as a normativity trap. This trap is akin to a mental cage that constrains a person to a moral conviction. People get ensnared by these philosophical mirages and fail to live harmoniously with others. In this vein, the ancap versus ancom debate is an illusion. It is a consequence of statist indoctrination and addiction to ideology.

For instance — from the introductory debate — how either party views or defines "authority" is an inconsequential red herring. We define the term based on our ideology, personal histories, or preconceptions. However, if we can choose communities that adopt one set of principles, there is no need for an argument. If we can sign contracts that allow us to experiment with our own social designs, the desire to argue suffocates. Addiction to ideology fades.

Why argue if we have choices or can test our political or ethical hypotheses? Arguing presupposes that we must all universally accept one position as absolute truth and reject the other, whereas, in reality, a kernel of truth likely exists in each. Furthermore, we can prove which parts are most valid by running experiments on organizing society and its structures.

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We only argue because we have lived under monopolies of thought and normativity traps for too long. Most of us grow up with predefined templates for politics and ideology. We believe that only a handful of accepted political positions exist, so we must choose one and win a political contest to see it implemented. This mindset is galvanized by the notion that we should defend our sacred cows to death. It represents what psychologist Charles Tart called the “consensus trance. ” The consensus trance is like a fugue state, where people politick and argue mindlessly because it is the “consensus” on resolving political disputes and conflict within society.

So, here is the question: can we escape the consensus trance and understand that our philosophies can coexist? The answer is yes. Instead of arguing, we engage with communities that share our values. We exit and build. We experiment with governance models and demonstrate their real-time efficacy. However, to fully appreciate the solution and the panarchic mindset, we must understand the origin of social conflict and political argumentation.

Schismogenesis: Bateson and Birth of Political Dramas

In his article “From Versailles to Cybernetics,” anthropologist Gregory Bateson says that human societies often fall into a pattern of escalating political opposition, action and reaction — a process he calls schismogenesis. The term describes the tendency of social groups to define themselves in opposition to one another, reinforcing differences rather than seeking common ground. In this way, the schismogenic process is a self-replicating social drama.

The concept applies directly to political divisions. The more each side argues for a worldview, the more entrenched they become, feeding into a cycle of ideological conflict that never reaches a resolution. Essentially, schismogenesis destroys relationships by causing generations-long arguing and fighting, even if newer generations do not know the original source of discontent and ire. This is known as a “feedback loop.” Here is how Bateson described it in his article:

In Bateson’s example above, the “rules” embedded in the Treaty of Versailles — and the international political system — catapulted Germany into a schismogenic feedback loop of escalating tensions that resulted in total war. Here is how history played out: the “war guilt” clause and crippling reparations of the treaty incited hatred and rage.

This insult to German pride created the necessary and sufficient conditions for the emergence of an attack-counterattack dynamic with the “axis” and the “allies." The end result is Hitler, World War II, the Holocaust, the invention and detonation of nuclear weapons on a civilization, and millions dead. The steps in this process before violence erupts are miscommunication, argumentation, escalation politics, and, finally, the inevitable shedding of blood.

Similar processes and patterns occur daily throughout modern political life. They are rooted deeply in the psychological and cultural. Continuous back-and-forth arguing without resolution ends in anger and resentment. This loop of frustrated attack and counterattack intensifies unless combatants resolve communication malfunctions. That is the astute insight Bateson brought to the world, which has largely been ignored or forgotten. It is time to reconsider it alongside panarchy to reach a solution.

Panarchy and the Death of Politics

Imagine if we found solutions to our political differences and escaped schismogenesis as a species. We would be able to solve and resolve our most vexing social dilemmas, addiction to ideology, and cultural ills.

Adopting panarchy is the starting point because it provides fertile ground for experimentation without judgement. It allows us to hone our collective intelligence, sensemaking tools, and coordination efforts. The more these goals are maximized, the more harmoniously we can live alongside neighbors and cultures that fundamentally disagree on some value or preference.

The world is not a zero-sum ideological battleground but a petri dish of experimental possibilities. We must agree that we do not need political dynamics because they poison the well of reasoned discourse. Communication only occurs when all parties are listening, and the only way to reach that state is to embrace something like panarchy. We need non-normative thinking to give us fresh eyes and new sight. Moralistic philosophies often pave the path to social and cultural blindness, due to their inherent radicalizing tendency.

In this sense, panarchy is the panacea. It unlocks new ways of seeing. Once I grasped the idea, I realized the hollow and vampiric nature of political debate. I wasted so much energy and glucose defending my cherished ideology. I finally stopped engaging outright. From this lens, the idea of politics died forever for me. I see this same epiphany emerging collectively, at scale, in the near future.

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When I read Scott Alexander’s “Meditations on Moloch,” I had an “ah-ha moment.” After years of contemplating the world's problems and their attendant complexities, I realized and started comprehending the extent of our planetary crisis.

I previously approached all issues from the anarchist philosophy — such as Murray Rothbard's work — which suggests that social problems stem from the iniquities of power fueled by monolithic nation-states.

To be fair, the anarchists are not wrong. Not morally wrong. Not logically wrong. Their castigation of society's power structures is apt and warranted. Having a small group of people monopolize the use of force is evil and causes untold suffering. However, the underlying dynamic leading to larger, nastier governments, with all the unintended and violent externalities, is directly related to Molochian games.

Unfortunately, Alexander’s solutions to Moloch in his Meditations leave much to be desired. He suggests that government and regulation are part of the solution set — but if governments exacerbate Moloch dynamics (also called multipolar traps), then his solution is self-detonating. The game-theoretic problems in modern human societies are well described and documented, but most of our current solutions also belie a deep, collective bewilderment.

Let’s explore the topic further and strive to uncover new ways to solve the Moloch problem, starting with governance. This article will describe Moloch and Molochian dynamics, their impact on our collective problems, and how Network States and novel governance solutions are positioned to solve runaway Moloch traps.

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Who is Moloch?

Moloch is the Canaanite god of child sacrifice. He is also a God of destruction and insatiable hunger. He personifies the power of short-term benefits over long-term collective good.

For instance, ancient peoples often sacrificed their children to appease a god. This appeasement would allegedly be paid back through a bountiful harvest season, abatement of floodwaters, or victory in warfare against the neighboring tribe.

In other words, letting the child’s blood run down the altar of Moloch would solve a short-term problem at the expense of their children and their culture’s long-term stability.

Of course, the idea that Moloch will respond represents the manifestation of a tragic externality. It describes cultural self-annihilation through the murder of children. Furthermore, the tribe’s pleas to Moloch do not guarantee that the floodwater will recede or they will win the next war. Since Moloch is mythological, these people were simply murdering children without any payoff. The game was rigged. It was also self-perpetuated.

This personification of Moloch perfectly describes our current governance structures in society and the zero-sum, self-destructive games they encourage.

What are Molochian Dynamics?

People are still sacrificing their children, so to speak. But the problem is no longer tribal or localized. It is global and reverberates through an interconnected system and a web of information ecologies.

The underlying idea of Molochian dynamics bears repeating. It denotes that people prioritize the optimization of local conditions for short-term benefit rather than focusing on collective well-being. This condition is a “multipolar trap” because it has many “poles” that entrap the gameplayer in a situation they believe they cannot escape.

Here is how Alexander described a multipolar trap:

In some competition optimizing for X, the opportunity arises to throw some other value under the bus for improved X. Those who take it prosper. Those who don’t take it die out. Eventually, everyone’s relative status is about the same as before, but everyone’s absolute status is worse than before. The process continues until all other values that can be traded off have been – in other words, until human ingenuity cannot possibly figure out a way to make things any worse.

One of the key characteristics of multipolar traps is that the individuals involved in these games realize it is awful and destructive. For instance, the tribes practicing infanticide to appease Moloch knew that killing the child was wrong, but they were competing with other tribes. In a situation where the other players are perceived to be benefitting from child sacrifice, the tribe ramps up its regime of child sacrifice to outcompete the enemy and win the war or yield the better crop.

Let’s look at a few examples of Moloch traps.

Drone Arms Race

An example of a destructive Moloch trap is the autonomous weapons armament race.

Modern nations race to develop the most adroit, nimble, and deadly drones. They seek to produce a drone swarm capable of eliminating any army while being able to lock down or raze entire cities.

The multipolar trap scenario is straightforward:

Every international player knows developing a drone swarm is self-destructive and can lead to a machine apocalypse. However, they are stuck in the game. They play regardless. It becomes a war of attrition and preemption. They figure if they do not engineer and innovate on drones as quickly as possible, someone else will. This ping-pong dynamic inevitably invokes the runaway development of drone warfare capabilities. At the current pace, the development of these catastrophe weapons will continue to ramp up exponentially.

Another name for arms races like these is the “Hobbesian trap,” which suggests that a group must “preempt” the other because someone will develop weapons or initiate violence first. This psychological fear promotes unending Moloch games. Another, albeit less existentially terrifying game, is the Beauty Wars.

Beauty Wars

Former poker professional Liv Boeree described another poignant example of a Moloch trap — Instagram beauty influencers.

The trap works thusly: Beauty influencers stay ahead of the game by shilling products and vying to be continuously beautiful. They achieve this goal by enhancing their looks with makeup, cleansers, moisturizers, and other beauty accouterments. They “gamify” their success by measuring likes, followers, and comments via their Insta accounts. With these initial conditions, the equilibrium of the beauty influencer game is somewhat even.

Things changed drastically with the introduction of Instagram filters. If the influencers had coordinated an agreement that filters should be off-limits, they could have maintained an evenly balanced game. But, of course, one of the influencers decides to augment their appearance with a filter. They do this subtly at first, perhaps by removing blemishes. Other influencers do the same, but the use of filters gradually intensifies.

Over time, each influencer applies more filters until their appearance becomes unnatural or unreal, a husk of its former self. Eventually, It is difficult to distinguish between the filter-augmented person and the real person. This use of filters turns the game into a “race to the bottom.” It reaches its apotheosis with many people competing for “beauty influencer status.”

Now, let’s discuss the solution space.

How do we stop playing these games, especially regarding governance and government?

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Understanding and Fighting Moloch

Setting the Initial Conditions: Governance

I have written or spoken extensively about counter-governance.

Counter-governance means applying governance models that undermine the current social order to “force” competition among governance providers worldwide, incrementally sapping power from nation-states.

An area I did not previously explore was how governance models can combat Molochian dynamics. Most players involved in world governments cannot escape the multipolar traps and arms races. They are inexorably stuck in races to the bottom.

Part of the problem is that these players did not — nor could not — craft the initial governance conditions. In other words, the game's rules were set before they started participating. Molochian dynamics were already underway when they entered the game.

For example, US politics has been underway since the Declaration of Independence was signed. The Founding Fathers crafted the initial governance conditions. Sadly, they couldn’t see the holes in their logic or how power would ultimately subvert and corrupt their agenda. Furthermore, the experiment in constitutional democracy was cloned worldwide when other nations should have experimented with different models.

With the emergence of network states, we can now build anti-Molochian dynamics into our governance. But first, let me be clear about what a “governance model” is. Think of a governance model as a game. It is a set of rules we choose to live by and relate to each other socially. It usually includes a binding contractual agreement, constitutional framework, and corresponding “laws.”

However, most of these “games” have loopholes that those in power exploit. These loopholes are what allow for the emergence of Moloch games. It is no wonder Frank Herbert famously quipped, “It is not that absolute power corrupts absolutely; it is that absolute power is magnetic to the corruptible.”

Rules for Diminishing Multipolar Traps

So, how do we address corruption and diminish multipolar traps in governance?

I will argue for three primary components of good governance. These procedures and ideas will mitigate zero-sum games by fostering the growth of positive incentives.

Daniel Schmactenberger referred to positive incentives as part of a global vision for betterment. But this is specifically for a vision of better governance or “authentic progress in governance.”

1. Low exit costs. A vital path to prevent Moloch traps from ensnaring new governance models is to keep exit costs significantly low. If exit costs are too high for those opting into a governance suite, it is easier for those at the top to get involved in runaway cascades of clout and power-chasing.
   
   To learn more about the importance of exit costs as a general principle in society, read Albert O. Hierchmann’s notable work, “Exit, Voice, and Loyalty

   Responses to Decline in Firms, Organizations, and States.”

   
   Low exit costs also create another beneficial side effect: They give rise to governance experiments. If you can radically experiment with new governance models, you can deploy novel solutions that enhance the incentives ecosystem.
   
   One important driving force in the crypto industry is experimentation in governance. I will wager that we have made more inroads into understanding how systems can be captured or spoiled by running experiments in crypto governance. This area represents the proving ground for good governance versus Moloch-tinged gameplay scenarios.
   

2. Technological and tokeneconomic safeguards. Modern governance models will also leverage tokenization to allow for the democratization of the structure and promote a voting stake in society. These models can be tuned and optimized so that they are fairly gamified, and no one can easily cheat. Typically, cheaters will only cheat when they can access the cheat codes.
   
   For example, the “game” of the FED and US monetary policy is one in which the players can cheat without repercussion; they have the cheat codes. They can print as much money as they want. They call this “policy,” but it is arbitrary and negatively impacts the rest of society. Currently, that game is optimized to benefit the system and its players at the expense of the average person. This situation is why currency inflation is always a race to the bottom, causing irreparable harm to “Main Street,” diminishing the well-being of the middle class. Read Peruvian Bull’s “The Dollar Endgame” to learn more.
   
   Conversely, Bitcoin acts as a form of parallel finance with a consensus-based governance structure. No one can arbitrarily inflate the supply, which is algorithmically set to 21 million units. The total number will not be printed out until 2140.
   
   Bitcoin is an example of a system that is impossible to cheat or easily alter. You have to have consensus. Remember that I am not making a case for whether Bitcoin is the best or even a good solution. I only suggest that it acts as an example of good governance in some narrow categories.

   

   
   

3. Experimental markets, not regulation. It is typical that in the intellectual walled gardens of game theory analysis, most commentators suggest that “good regulation” is the key to preventing snowballing Molochian outputs. This is the typical perspective espoused by Scott Alexander in his Meditations. I’ll make an important counterpoint. Businesses can easily capture governmental regulatory agencies and change the rules to fit their business model. This situation, of course, feeds Moloch. It creates the necessary and sufficient conditions for a downward spiral into optimizing for short-term dopaminergic hits versus long-term collective goodwill.
   
   Markets with internal self-regulating mechanisms and an ethos of experimentation naturally lead to creating institutions that mitigate Molochian gameplaying. My thesis is that the optimal conditions for arms races are generated in environments where power has accumulated—in other words, a highly centralized entity or bureaucratic monoculture devoid of creativity.
   
   When power accumulates, it creates conditions ripe for Moloch’s emergence. After all, Moloch is the God of child sacrifice, a God of insatiable hunger. Power is hunger. It is the One Ring in Lord of the Rings. If you actively want to instill the worst conditions for game playing, give someone power above all the other players. Then, watch Moloch manifest in all of his most grotesque and heinous forms. Moloch can and will manifest whenever incentives become warped; however, power centralization guarantees the worst game-theoretic outputs will be realized.
   
   However, when you run experiments in governance and allow people to iterate and innovate on the initial conditions, you reach a balanced equilibrium of gamification. Indeed, “gamification” should be the term we use to denote governance dynamics that ultimately reward the players without creating perverse incentive structures. Markets have the capability to do this, but markets must be balanced with evidence-informed decisions and a culture of inspired experimentation.

“

Conslusion: Taming Moloch

To be sure, we do not have all the answers to solving Moloch dynamics and multipolar traps. Most of the solutions have been lackluster and uninspired. Most people have had a keen insight concerning describing the problems in excruciating detail. However, understanding a complex problem does not imply delivering a clearly defined solution.

It is also true that we probably have not discovered a solution to Moloch at all. It is not as simple as saying, “Fix the incentives” or “Get the government involved.” We have to combine many different solutions to the problem and iterate on those, which is why I believe experimentation in governance, mixed with technological safeguards, provides us with a valuable starting point. Of course, we should do our best to gather as much data as possible to inform each decision.

We may be unable to slay Moloch — but perhaps we can tame him.

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Anarchists often call for governments to be torn down immediately. I have been guilty of this mindset. Do not pass go. Do not capitulate. Go directly to freedom; unleash the instant coffee version of a failed state.

If subversives call for an immediate snuffing-out of government and authority, it is through aggressive political activism, assassination markets, i.e. Jim Bell, protesting, rioting, or hurling Molotov cocktails. They want to burn it down now. While I empathize with this viewpoint, it is impractical and dangerous.

Another perspective on abolishing the State is via incrementalism.

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We abolish it slowly, exquisitely, in a piecemeal fashion, dismantling it by leveraging non-kinetic, asymmetric warfare. Non-kinetic warfare means using nonviolent means to undermine and disrupt the nation-state while chipping away at its soft underbelly. Non-kinetic means nonphysical and nonviolent. Asymmetric means having parts that are not equal or, in this context, unpredictable and distributed.

This article will explore why we want to end governments and how to proceed in a practical manner. We will also analyze modern methodologies of abolitionism, including exit strategies, pirate utopias, and network states. Hopefully, these methods will generate better results for human liberty. First, let’s answer some questions for the uninitiated. Why do we resist and revolt?

Jefferson’s Folly

Thomas Jefferson once quipped: “I prefer dangerous freedom over peaceful slavery.”

Although Jefferson was not an anarchist, he understood the ultimate aim of an all-powerful government: the total subservience of the population, the erosion of civil liberties, and a jail cell or tomb for those who resist.

Jefferson’s folly, as we will call it, was that he believed governments could be tamed, fair legislation could be drafted, and social contracts could keep the beast lurking inside governments at bay. He and the rest of the Founding Fathers were wrong.

He and many others missed or denied the problem: Governments are power aggregators and accumulators. They are engines for maintaining dominance over a gullible and lackadaisical population. The idea that they could be tamed or controlled was a historical mistake with unprecedented consequences.

Imagine thinking that a piece of paper called a “Constitution” can halt power, stop bullets, or contain evil. Do not believe me that all government is evil? Let’s demystify the idea.

The Truth of Government

Some see the government (or nation-state) as the institution or system that maintains social order, protects rights, and manages society. They ignore or handwave away violent bloodshed it causes as a consequence of “human nature.” They even call government a “necessary evil,” as if any evil can or should be necessary.

Anarcho-capitalist scholar Murray Rothbard provided a much more lucid and honest definition of government in his timeless work “Anatomy of the State”:

That organization in society which attempts to maintain a monopoly of the use of force and violence in a given territorial area; in particular, it is the only organization in society that obtains its revenue not by voluntary contribution or payment for services rendered but by coercion.

So, there it is — the truth. Government is merely a group of men who tell everyone what to do under the threat of violence. Of course, this group of men go to great lengths to convince people that their enterprise is virtuous. Another name for this act is “propaganda.” Since the invention of the printing press, governments have used words, signals, and messaging to dupe people into accepting their tyranny. The politicians who control the mechanisms of government convey propagandistic messages to conceal the violence at its core.

For more information, review the statistics on democide from the University of Hawaii. The short story is that nation-states regularly and brutally slay their own people. It is a trend, not an isolated incident. Let’s now discuss how we can incrementally and peacefully abolish this predatory institution.

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Incremental Abolition: Exit and Erase

In anarchist and tech bro culture, “exit and build” is a common rallying cry for creating change. The idea behind that maxim is that if we “can’t beat them, then leave them.” The idea is not about abolishing government but escaping its clutches. It is about opting out of their jurisdiction. The problem is hostile governments will eventually seek to destroy parallel societies and economies.

Luckily, within our non-kinetic warfare strategy, we are not just escaping. We will be “exiting and erasing.” We will be slowly eroding the nation-state’s power. I will not mince words or cower beneath the sacred totems of “strategic exit” or “playing nice.” We want to abolish institutions not serving us, even if it happens slowly and methodically.

The famous activist Mahatma Gandhi had this idea of satyagraha, loosely translated as “truth force.” It is a form of nonviolent resistance; it implies a forceful lack of force to incite purposeful change. In the modern era, we are enacting “digital satyagraha” via technology to incrementally “compel” governments to abdicate their power. These technologies often include anonymised cryptocurrencies, smart contracts, and network states, which we will discuss shortly.

It is relevant to mention that Gandhi did not pretend to do anything other than resist the British regime in his country. He was direct and honest in his motives. We are now doing that on a global scale against the modern nation-state.

However, at first glance, abolishing all government seems far-fetched. After all, nation-states appear omnipotent. So, how can we achieve these goals? Thankfully, the nation-state is already unravelling (a topic I will discuss more at a later date). We only have to expedite the process.

Pirate Utopias

Hakim Bey notoriously wrote about the idea of “temporary autonomous zones” (TAZ), where the everyday person could erect a popup sanctuary to conceal themselves from the nation-state and its appetite for theft and destruction. He referred to the idea as eluding formal control structures. 

In his essay, he mentioned the need to create an internet-based “pirate utopia” by exploiting information supernets and flows. In other words, an autonomous zone is akin to pirate mimesis — or piratic mimicry. However, Bey did not consider pirates to be merely bandits. He claimed historians largely misrepresented and misinterpreted pirate ideology. The reality is pirates were more like social misfits and sea hackers. He explained:

It is simply wrong to brand the pirates as mere sea-going highwaymen or even proto-capitalists, as some historians have done. In  a sense they were "social bandits," although their base communities were not traditional peasant societies but "utopias" created almost ex nihilo in terra incognita, enclaves of total liberty occupying empty spaces on the map.

Indeed, these pirates created distributed networks via island sanctuaries to hide from the State apparatus and live freely, largely pillaging governmental ship networks. The eponymous example is Captain James Mission, who allegedly founded Libertatia in the 17th century, a libertarian enclave of “pirates” seeking refuge from the state apparatus.

On the internet, our pirate Utopias — our Liberatatia —are the digital zones, punk networks, and communication flows with fellow freethinkers, crypto-anarchists, and demimondes. 

In this sense, the pirate utopia is an internet utopia, where cyber rebels retreat to become invisible from the State, undermine it, and exact freedom through disruption of internet supply lines and infrastructure. However, “pillaging” is just a form of nonviolent defense to undermine the political stability of governments.

A Network State is an emergent type of pirate utopia, or TAZ, as imagined by Hakim Bey. It is the one idea that can realize the vision of the pirate utopia.

Network States

Balaji Srinivasan coined the term “Network State.” He defined it as “a highly aligned online community with a capacity for collective action that crowdfunds territory around the world and eventually gains diplomatic recognition from pre-existing states.”

Srinivasan definition is precise, albeit the “diplomatic recognition” part will depend on the individual network state. Some network states may exit the traditional political ecosystem altogether by leveraging strong anonymity and privacy safeguards for their digital governance. Furthermore, these network states may not even attempt to crowdfund territory, instead relying on a purely digital existence. All of these are possibilities in a future where digital governance becomes ubiquitous.

Indeed, network states are the apotheosis of the pirate utopia, with a strong affinity for non-kinetic warfare against governments.

The Network State is an iconoclastic idea whether any given network explicitly announces its goal to undermine the nation-state. The mere presence of network states forces nation-states to compete with novel governance offerings. In essence, this is a type of soft power—i.e., non-kinetic warfare. The presence of competing governance models engenders human capital flight from Nation-States and incentivizes their citizenry to become netizens of a network state.

The nation-state will then have no choice but to follow this competitive model, lest they risk losing their brightest minds. In other words, it must start serving rather than harming its citizens to compete with emergent governance mechanisms initiated and formalised by network states.

Basically, governments will have to finally submit to market dynamics, like any other business seeking to offer a product or service. For a deep dive into the network state idea, read Srinivasan’s book, and for a brief history, read my previous article.

Conclusion: Counter Governance

At the end of the day, non-kinetic warfare is a part of the anarchist toolbelt. This non-kinetic warfare can also be called “counter governance,” which means deploying our governance structures and solutions to force the nation-state to finally play fairly. This innovation in governance aligns global incentives for the management of society. It should also help decentralize power structures, creating more local and optimised governance functionality.

In his book “The Breakdown of Nations”, Leopold Kohr suggested that a more miniaturized and decentralized governance apparatus in the form of competing states could solve humanity’s most vexing question around power and control dynamics. In my estimation, wanting to optimize governance for localism, small-scale action, and service to its citizens will be the crowning achievement of the incrementalist strategy — finally realizing the anarchist’s centuries-long project for human liberation.

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Note to the reader: this piece is not necessarily written with logical cohesion. There are asides, digressions, and random, albeit beautiful, Satori moments. Still, I hope you enjoy reading as much as I enjoyed writing; this is the renegade history of an idea whose time has come.

”Ideas are bulletproof.”

~V for Vendetta

The idea of a “network state” has a rich history. Most people know it originated in the cryptocurrency sector through the work of technologist Balaji Srinivasan. That is partially true. It is accurate and vital to say that Srinivasan coined the term and brought it to the mainstream, but the seed of the idea was germinated in the late 1800s. It only resurfaced recently. It emerged as a technology product envisioned by crypto-anarchists and then refined by Srinivasan.

The network state idea appeared first within the obscure panarchy movement in the late 1800s. Even early on, people believed alternative governance models could and should exist to provide security, defense, and governance options. These thinkers realized there was no one-size-fits-all solution for managing and maintaining the social order. Instead, they wanted to empower people by putting governance on the open market, subject to the dictates of choice, supply, and demand.

In this vision, network states are a form of meta-political activism combining philosophy, economics, and technology. Hence, a network state is a smorgasbord of progressive notions congealed into a dream of a new society. It is the pinnacle of a fascinating lineage of activist work to lessen the influence of corrupt, violent, and inept governments. It is a passion project that began well before its technological impetus, which contains a poetic array of ideas that eventually coalesced.

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This article will describe and define the most prescient ideas around the network state. It will explore panarchy in detail, including analyzing how it could function and work. Then, it will dissect the history of and precursors to the network state, including crypto-anarchist Timothy May’s paper that first clarified the idea technologically. Finally, it will look toward the future and understand the “programmatic network state” as it spreads across our deeply interconnected world.

Let’s start by laying a foundation and consider some definitions.

Anarchism, Crypto-Anarchism,
Network States

A network state contains ideas aligned with anarchist philosophy — specifically crypto-anarchism.

Some people hear the word “anarchist” and imagine a mohawk-wearing punk rocker sporting black leotards tossing a Molotov cocktail into their grandmother’s window! 

That image of “chaos” and ”mayhem” is inaccurate, and erroneous connotations like that poison the well. “Anarchist” actually means “without rulers.” It comes from the Greek anarkhia. The prefix An means ”without,” and the suffix arkhos means ”ruler.” In other words, an anarchist does not want to be compelled to live a certain way or obey someone calling themselves king or master. In ”A Voice Crying in the Wilderness,” Edward Abbey succinctly expressed the insight of anarchism:

“Anarchism is founded on the observation that since few men are wise enough to rule themselves, even fewer are wise enough to rule others.”

This fact of “few men being wise enough” to rule anyone is why crypto-anarchists and hackers devised the network state concept. But before grappling with that idea, we must understand the phrase “crypto-anarchism.” 

A crypto-anarchist uses computer code and technology to build applications that protect privacy, economic freedom, and political liberty. They strive to use technology to liberate humankind and ensure that governments do not use similar technologies as instruments of oppression.

Crypto-anarchism is, therefore, about undermining overreach from nation-states through technological interference or disruption. For more information on the history of crypto-anarchists and their battle against the state, read Stephen Levy’s book, “Crypto: How the Code Rebels Beat the Government Saving Privacy in the Digital Age.”

With this clarity, we can now describe the “network state.” This is Srinivasan’s succinct definition:

“A network state is a theoretical community of users — called ‘subscriber citizens’ — connected via the internet, who accumulate enough capital, territory, or political clout to achieve recognition as a state. These subscriber citizens, therefore, ‘subscribe’ to their set of rules and guidelines by choice or contract rather than compulsion.“

A network state can theoretically be recognized if it exists alongside other states, but that is not a prerequisite. Geographical constraints or political boundaries do not limit their formation. One critical understanding of network states is that they do not have to be coercive or mandatory, unlike nation-states. They can and should be voluntary. The historical root of the network state was philosophical and political, with no technological ingredient. That original idea is called “panarchy.”

But what is panarchy, where did it come from, and how did it eventually become the idea of network states?  

De Puydt’s Panarchy

In 1860, Paul-Emile de Puydt wrote the seminal yet obscure paper “Panarchy.” In it, he makes the earliest known formalized argument for having competing governments or nations operating in overlapping, competitive jurisdictions. He refers to this overlapping political arrangement as a laissez-faire, laissez-passer. It is French for “let things take their course” and “let people pass,” respectively. The idea is that people can live in the same territory or jurisdiction and choose from a directory of governments, which he calls the “Bureau of Political Membership.”

De Puydt elaborates on the idea in the paper: 

“My panacea, if you will allow this term, is simply free competition in the business of government. Everyone has the right to look after his own welfare as he sees it and to obtain security under his own conditions. On the other hand, this means progress through contest between governments forced to compete for followers. True worldwide liberty is that which is not forced upon anyone, being to each just what he wants of it; it neither suppresses nor deceives, and is always subject to a right of appeal. To bring about such a liberty, there would be no need to give up either national traditions or family ties, no need to learn to think in a new language, no need at all to cross rivers or seas, carrying the bones of one's ancestors.”

To his point, all panarchic governments or “states” will overlap within a coterminous space — and “citizens” within that space can opt into a distinct governance service by paying a fee and accepting its rules. De Puydt envisioned a situation where governments would compete like any company on the market. They would list their “citizens” like a company lists shareholders. For the time, the idea was novel. But given the historical context, it is no wonder someone as prescient as de Puydt imagined the concept’s revolutionary potential.  

He imagined it precisely when the so-called “ancien régime” or “old order” fell into disrepute and crumbled. Democratic republics started to displace the rigid monarchies of the ancient world as coups erupted, beginning in the 17th century and coming to fruition in the late 19th century. De Puydt was living at the peak of this revolutionary epoch. It was a time when the foundations for theories involving competing nation-states and the so-called “social economy” emerged. 

But what is the “social economy”? 

Spontaneous Order
and Panarchy Thesis 

In panarchy, the “social economy” means societies can and will develop guidelines and rules spontaneously — or what the Austrian economists called “spontaneous order.” So long as the market operates without interruptions, a customer or marketplace will subjectively determine its needs and wants. 

This “subjectivity of value” allows markets to emerge at scale, and the ensuing activity would generate competing governance services. This formulation is what we can call the Panarchy Thesis. It is the argument that governing services are no different than other market services and can be offered within a given territory by various providers. However, although this idea has historical significance, the panarchy thesis as a technical marvel would not pick up momentum until a century later. 

In the late 20th century, John Zube revived the idea via “The Gospel of Panarchy,” a short piece he wrote in 1986. Then, in 1999, scholar Aviezer Tucker wrote the essay “The Best States Beyond the Territorial Fallacy.” He followed this with an anthologized treatment in 2015 called “Panarchy: Political Theories of Non-Territorial States.”

Before these writings, other sporadic works existed, but it was not until the modern day that their significance blossomed. It came in the shape of technology, crypto-anarchy, and the idea of making panarchy a reality by applying blockchain solutions to the problem of nation-state monopolies. The first known vision of panarchy as a technological solution appeared in 1992.

Transcending Nations: Crypto Libertaria and Virtual States

Creating a network state to increase freedom and reduce physical coercion has been a crypto-anarchist talking point since May discussed a version of these ideas in his article “Libertaria in Cyberspace.” He said:

“This is the most compelling advantage of 'Crypto Libertaria': an arbitrarily large number of separate 'nations' can simultaneously exist. This allows for rapid experimentation, self-selection, and evolution. If folks get tired of some virtual community, they can leave. The cryptographic aspects mean their membership in some community is unknown to others (vis-a-vis the physical or outside world, i.e., their 'true names') and physical coercion is reduced.” 

In his 1999 book Virtual States, cypherpunk Jerry Everard also explored these ideas through the lens of Foucauldian philosophy and discourse formation. His discourse analysis focused on the interrelationship between objects and statements describing the state. He acknowledged that the state exists as a monopoly on violence over its subjects. In other words, the state enjoys a power imbalance between itself and the citizenry.

Everard formulated the idea of disaggregating various elements of the nation-state while considering what voluntarily procured “virtual states” in a market environment would look like. He suggests that virtual states based in cyberspace will take over the “goods and services economy” (as in the panarchic vision) of the state apparatus. In the final consideration, he did not believe the state would face an extinction-level event, only that its power would be diminished in some areas but strengthened in others.

In the 1999 book The Sovereign Individual: Mastering the Transition to the Information Age, authors James Dale Davidson and Lord William Rees-Mogg accurately predict the coming of network states, albeit without naming them per se. They suggest we will transcend the idea of nation-states altogether, and this change will be ushered in by the “Information Age.”

They reflect on the idea of March Law, a legal precedent in the Middle Ages that allowed for the functioning of multiple overlapping jurisdictions. In their view, March Law returns to a more greatly disintermediated and decentralized world, leading to overlapping digital governance models. The book's “transcending nationality” section posits a future where no single nationalities exist. Instead, a heterogeneous mix of peoples and networks intermingle and choose their national identities and governance services. 

Fast forward another two decades, and these earlier “utopic visions” of the network state find a more complete and practical articulation.    

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Network State Invented

Technologist, angel investor, and former Coinbase CTO Balaji Srinivasan fully fleshed out the idea. He is mainly responsible for coining the term in his 2022 book, “The Network State: How to Start Your Own Country.” The book details how a non-territorial affiliation of like-minded individuals could enact a covenant to share, build, and distribute power as a network state. Srinivasan articulated a complex definition of the idea: 

“A network state is a social network with a moral innovation, a sense of national consciousness, a recognised founder, a capacity for collective action, an in-person level of civility, an integrated cryptocurrency, a consensual government limited by a social smart contract, an archipelago of crowdfunded physical territories, a virtual capital, and an on-chain census that proves a large enough population, income, and real-estate footprint to attain a measure of diplomatic recognition.”

The “moral innovation” piece of Srinivasan’s crypto-anarchist articulation underlies the goal of a network state. His motivation is to align ideologies more cohesively, disrupt political infighting, and institute a more accessible human future. Throughout the book, he expresses the problems with traditional nation-states and emphasizes their territorial, coercive nature. In the section on Nation States, he says, “(State) refers to the entity that governs these people, that commands the police and the military, and that holds the monopoly of violence over the geographic area that the nation inhabits.”

Srinivasan argues for a modern variation of Frederick Jackson Turner's Frontier Thesis. He makes the case that frontiers throughout history have been open, uncontested territories allowing exploration, experimentation, and settlement. In his modern take on the thesis, cyberspace represents the crypto-anarchist new frontier for social creativity and growth. It is only through these new frontiers, he claims, that people can secure greater sovereignty and build saner, more voluntary governance mechanisms.

The Frontier Thesis is reminiscent of John Perry Barlow's famous “A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace,” where he eschews the domination of nation-states by comparing cyberspace to a frontier inhabited by the “virus” of freedom.

The Programmatic Social Order

Barlow’s “virus of freedom” will likely spread continuously as the idea of the network state expands. The concept of panarchy took over a century to transform into the “network state.” However, it does not appear clear to the pioneers of the network state that “panarchy” was its obvious predecessor. Timothy May never mentioned panarchy in his work. Balaji alluded to panarchy in his book but never explored or examined the shared characteristics of both ideas. 

Regardless, the two ideas denote that we are on the verge of using technology — specifically blockchain and cryptography to create panarchy. The crypto-anarchists might yet realize de Puydt’s philosophical vision as the technological implementation of the network state, where people can choose their governance services without removing their “dressing gown or slippers.” He said:

“It is simply a matter of declaration before one's local political commission, for one to move from republic to monarchy, from representative government to autocracy, from oligarchy to democracy, or even to Mr Proudhon's anarchy - without even the necessity of removing one's dressing gown or slippers.”

In the final analysis, we arrive at a fully programmable, freely chosen social order — anarchy combined with network states. This governance model responds to market incentives in real-time and at scale. Subscriber citizens select their state and the rules they follow. These states can be programmed or reprogrammed with different rules or “laws” to react to dynamic environments and interact with other overlapping networks. In other words, governance becomes a programmable convenience on the market. Selecting a government would be as easy as choosing a grocery store or pharmacy to patronize without leaving town. 

Conclusion: The Network School

This meta-political technology is the most flexible governance offering because it allows people with divergent viewpoints to disagree and still get along. As many panarchist theorists rightly observed, selective governance foils the need for bloody revolutions and dangerous revolts. It is simultaneously the most anarchic and non-anarchic solution to the problem of power centralization and government overreach. It provides options without forcing people into a particular political box or creating a climate of rabid divisiveness. It is the activist’s wildest dream made into reality.

Recently, Srinivasan opened the first The Network School in Malaysia, proving that this scheme for a better future is not limited to the minds of madmen, idealists, or dreamers. Instead, it is here for real. Only time will tell how it will evolve in the future.

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Samourai Wallet's founders have had a deep, philosophical impact on the crypto community. Since their arrest in April by US authorities, many in the ecosystem have been discussing bolstering and building the"circular economy," as promoted by Samourai and mentioned in the indictment.

Let us discuss this idea. What is a "circular economy"?

Deal with It!

In this context, the circular economy comprises black and grey markets embedded in a dark forest environment. The dark forest is an encrypted infrastructure that conceals developers, hacktivists, and market actors from government surveillance. The circular economy is a mixture of anonymity-enhancing tech and economic transactionality.

However, these economic transactions are typically seen as "sketchy" or "criminal." Anyone without awareness of the political status quo would probably say that promoting "circular economies" represents a great evil, as it erodes market and economic fairness. These dark economies allegedly promote criminality, deteriorating polite society and harming civilization. Specifically, these dark market zones embolden drug dealers, money launderers, human traffickers, etc.

There is a counterpoint, though, that many in the crypto ecosystem do not know about: this is the idea of "agorism." Agorism is a term coined by libertarian philosopher Samuel Edward Konkin the 3rd, sometimes called SEK3.

In his vision of agorism, libertarians and freedom lovers purposely develop a counter-economy to undermine state power. These counter-economies incrementally destabilize the state by limiting the taxes it can expropriate. In other words, it is a market — that, by design — functions orthogonally or in parallel with the state apparatus. In this perspective, the “circular economy” is the same as the "counter-economy."

The intention of these economies is not to empower criminals but to empower people. In the agorist conception, the state represents the example of criminality par excellence. So, thwarting the state diminishes the worst kind of criminal activity. Currently, the state enjoys a monopoly on mass theft, which enables its war machine and allows it to subjugate whole swaths of the population.

Many market activities will indeed be unsavory or despicable. However, the agorist or circular economist would argue that private mechanisms, internal governance, and technological vigilance can weed out any evil within these markets. More directly, the circular economist would agree with cypherpunks like Timothy May, who, when asked about the devils that would pervade in a fully anonymized internet, said rather bluntly, "Deal with it."

Exit the Evil

I share that mindset. The nation-state is the most destructive force in the modern era, especially first-world states, which accumulate so much power that the entire world must bow to their whims and heed their threats. I can think of no greater evil that must be vanquished post haste.

For a deeper understanding of how evil that state is, anyone should review the statistics on “democide” from the University of Hawaii. Democide, by definition, means people murdered by their own state, which excludes combat or military deaths. For perspective, the research concludes that governments in the 20th century murdered roughly 174,000,000 people. An astonishing and tragic number.

Our only option is to create a new world and exit the old. We cannot directly fight Leviathan with guns, bombs, or even asymmetric urban warfare. Instead, we must develop alternative economies, dark forests, parallel networks, autonomous political formations, and agorist enclaves.

In the words of the great economist Albert O. Hirchmann, we have to "exit" these systems. We cannot argue with governments or their enablers by voicing our antipathy. There is certainly no way we can be loyal to the throne, which has caused the caging and killing of our brethren and kin. The answer is to build and trade our way out of this mess. Long live the grey/black circular economy and the counter-economy.

Long live the Samourai wallet. Exonerate the founders now.

”There is no peace now, and there will never be peace, so long as one rules over another.”

-Voltairine de Cleyre

Attempts to overthrow the State in recent history involved direct action, or what the insurrectionary anarchists called "propaganda of the deed." This is just a fancy term for the assassination of politicians, monarchs, and industrialists.

The Galleanist anarchists shot, stabbed, and bombed their opposition. They committed regicide and spilled blood for the people. The results of their deeds are clear: governments hit back with a vengeance, arresting and executing anarchists en masse. Worse, these acts motivated governments to expand their intelligence capabilities and crack down on the anarchist contingent. 

Today, anarchists have evolved their methods of countering the state.

Crypto-anarchists now see the value of peaceful transitions and nonviolent resistance. They practice a kind of digital satyagraha. They acknowledge that violence only begets more violence and incites hostile retaliation. Instead, they seek to "underthrow" the State by unleashing agorism, alternative governance, and strong encryption.

This "underthrow" could manifest in several ways but will likely come to fruition as a technological exit and/or incremental abolition. Either the anarchists leave the State through cyberspatial dark forests and decentralized infrastructure, or the State is dismantled piecemeal as autonomous political formations appear and whittle its power away.

Both of these options will likely manifest through agorist agitation. "Agorism" refers to using counter-economics and the circular economy to usurp power from the nation-state. Under agorism, transactions occurring under the table and in gray markets move power from the state to the individual. It is a form of horizontal will and power transfer. The idea was formulated by libertarian thinker Samuel Edward Konkin III, also called SEKIII.

The crypto variation of agorism includes counter-governance, where alternative governance models emerge and operate in adversarial environments, commandeering power, resources, and capital from the State.

Counter-governance involves cyber guerrillas, coders, and operators exiting old systems and embracing crypto-states via lunartech, which anonymizes and hides its developers and devotees. These systems employ zero-knowledge cryptography, P2P storage markets, privacy-centric comms, fully homomorphic encryption, and credibly neutral organizations powered by individuals enveloped by the dark forest.

These counter-governance operators will provide "governance services" for underserved, mistreated, and apostate citizens. They will largely be "unbundled" from government control and offered voluntarily by incumbent dissidents on the open market.

Incremental technological change will force governments to “compete” with these new service offerings, but they won’t like it. Similar to their response to Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, they will fight back the only way they know how—with appeals to legality and brute aggression. They will sue and arrest counter-governance developers, enthusiasts, and visionaries. They will infiltrate communities, surveil them, and engage in psyops to compromise or hijack them, like they did with Bitcoin. They will spread the lie that crypto-anarchists are terrorists.

Mainstream headlines and broadcasts will read: “Crypto-Anarchists enable criminals, money launderers, and rogue nations. The government will spare no expense in the fight against these terrorists to save the nation and disrupt criminal activity.” In this way, anarchists become the new “hobgoblin” that is terrorizing the nation and causing fear in the masses, echoing the sentiment of H.L. Mencken.

However, the emergence of counter-governance, crypto-states, and unbundled state services will quickly inundate the world like a tsunami engulfing society's shores. They will be ubiquitous; these offerings will exist in every space, occupy each mind, and flourish inexorably. Eventually, through their antifragility and competitive service offerings, crypto-states will become the undisputed norm. Governments will cede bits of their power and imagined authority to this new market of governance services. Over time, they may relinquish all their power and crumble to dust.  

No one will need to be assassinated or harmed; the anarchists will not spill a drop of blood. It will be propaganda of the code, digital resistance, and revolutionary renaissance—for and by the people. If blood gets spilled during this transitional moment, the blame will lay squarely at the heels of the political elite. This new, decentralized, p2p form of anti-government activity is here. We only need to keep building to turn the tides of history. 

This uprising is for Aaron Swartz, Ross Ulbricht, Julian Assange, Roman Semenov, Roman Storm, Alexey Pertsev, Ian Freeman, Keonne Rodriquez, William Lonergan Hill, Roger Ver, and too many more to name.

“Resolve to serve no more, and you are at once freed. I do not ask that you place hands upon the tyrant to topple him over, but simply that you support him no longer; then you will behold him, like a great Colossus whose pedestal has been pulled away, fall of his own weight and break in pieces.” ― Étienne de La Boétie

Under the present conditions a government exists only by the exclusion of all the others, and one party can rule only after smashing its opponents; a majority is always harassed by a minority which is impatient to govern. Under such conditions it is quite inevitable that the parties hate each other and live, if not at war, at least in a state of armed peace.

-Paul-Émile de Puydt

Massive, bureaucratic, violent nation-states mostly govern today’s societies.

These nation-states emerged from the Enlightenment ideals of the 17th and 18th centuries, especially through the evangelism of the so-called “constitutional government.” But these nation-states inevitably became corrupted by bad actors with expansionist, militaristic, and imperialist appetites.

Regardless of the reasons behind the cancerous growth of modern states, they exist as a pseudo-permanent fixture of human social organization. We will see that they may be faltering.

This article will make the case that nation-states are unlikely to exist in perpetuity and that governance that better serves humanity will likely supplant them. Many readers may disagree, but considerable evidence shows nation-states are in their death throes.

Before moving on, it is pertinent for this article to examine the difference between “government” and “governance.”

• “Government” is the bureaucratic arm of the nation-state; It is a small group of individuals who maintain a monopoly on violence over a territorial area. Sometimes, they even monopolize violence over smaller, localized states, such as in the US. Consequently, the government apparatus manages the affairs of individuals and society by issuing laws, regulations, and mandates. I sometimes use the terms “state” and “government” interchangeably. However, the State is typically the specific “organization,” whereas the government, as mentioned, is the bureaucratic control arm.
  

• “Governance” is the process of managing or directing a social unit, collective, or system. However, the distinction between governance and government is that governance does not automatically denote the use of violence or force. Nor does it suggest a territorial monopoly. It certainly can suggest a monopoly, but in modern parlance, “governance” refers to systems managed and directed via voluntary choice and consensus. This fact is especially true of “technological governance,” which occurs worldwide in blockchain systems and is virtually always operated based on consent and consensus.

This article will examine the future of governance and how the idea of the “government” is becoming less appealing and moribund. We will then study the emergence of novel panarchic, technological states that mostly leverage systems of “governance” rather than “government.”

I will make the case that these types of emergent governance structures will further erode nation-state governments, which will occur because people have a choice about which “states” they opt into and support. In this sense, the governance structure becomes more of an extension of man, à la McLuhan, rather than — to use Jeremy Bentham’s image — a panopticon apparatus of control. Let us first briefly explore why nation-state government is unsustainable and, hence, dying.

Thanatos-State

Anarchist and scholar Kirkpatrick Sale points out in “Human Scale Revisited” that any institution that grows beyond its ability to serve humans at the human scale is bound to become intolerable, destructive, and inhuman. He said,

Size, indeed, might well be regarded as the crucial variable in [government]. More important than, say, ideology—for a large disciplined party like the Communist Party in China is much like a large undisciplined one like the Democratic Party in the United States, unwieldy, unrepresentative, undemocratic, inefficient, and often unable to carry out policies enacted, not because of the politics but because of the party size.

To put it succinctly, large bureaucratic states repeatedly metamorphose into totalitarian behemoths at worst or unwieldy, oppressive institutions at best.

I call these monolithic governments “Thanatos-states.” Thanatos is the Greek mythological figure that represents death. Thanatos-states are, therefore, states that embody an impulse to mete out death and have grown so large as to be in the throes of death themselves. How exactly do they harm their populations, and what is the evidence for their violence?

Democide and Mortacracy

Modern nation-states are responsible for murdering millions of people in the 20th century alone. The University of Hawaii put the total amount of people murdered by governments at 262,000,000. Researcher RJ Rummel refers to this idea as “democide.”

Rummel defines the phenomenon,

Democide is murder by government, which includes genocide, mass murder, politicide, massacre, atrocities, bloody terrorism, and any other way in which government (the ruling organization of a well defined, populated territory) rulers, leaders, officials, authorities, or those acting officially on behalf of government, murder people. Genocide definitions may include all such murder, and thus be the same as democide, or be a subset of democide.”

Democide is so widespread among modern states that some scholars refer to these states as “mortacracies,” which are states that have a bureaucratic function established as a ritual-like fixation for war and mass murder.

The nation-state — irrespective of its knack for destroying lives — shows signs of decline and collapse. There are two primary reasons the nation-state is going extinct. The “bigness” of nation-states is causing their breakdown, and novel innovations threaten their longevity. These ideas warrant explication.

Bigness, Pax Americana

The first reason is that nation-states have become too large. This “bigness” results in States expanding every aspect of their empire beyond the pale of control. A past example was the Roman Empire. Rome unsustainably expanded its dominion across Europe, causing coordination and consensus problems. By their nature, centralized, bureaucratic regimes are tantamount to “paperclip maximizers.” They expand to spread their power and clout, similar to how a runaway artificial intelligence would seek to create paperclips ad infinitum, regardless of the cost and who it hurts until the world is buried in paperclips.

The eventual consequence of “Pax Romana” was its inability to protect its borders, maintain a currency of value, prevent corruption, and quell dissent. Its “bigness” led to unwieldy bureaucracy and unsustainable politics, leading to death by a thousand cuts. The Visigoths, among other Germanic tribes, defeated the empire with minimal effort. In reality, Rome defeated itself; the consequence of being a paperclip maximizer. Read “How Rome Fell: Death of a Superpower” by Adrian Goldsworthy for more insights.

Modern Nation states, including “Pax Americana,” are on a similar path. Many have already compared the United States to Rome at its peak, especially regarding similar empire-building strategies and monetary policies. At the time of writing, the United States government was in debt of $33 trillion. The United States maintains around 750 military bases across 80 countries. The prison population of the United States sat at 1,230,100 on December 31, 2022, a 2% increase from 2021 (1,205,100). The current population has a 55.4% disapproval rate for President Joe Biden.

These statistics are meaningless if analyzed alone, but they point to a trend of overexpansion by the State and a growing sense of unease and discontentment in the population. These stats, taken into account along with the rising tide of innovation, suggest people are paving the way for a new kind of governance apparatus or implementation. The result of bigness and bloat in government necessarily gives rise to solutions, especially in an age of technological acceleration. We used the example of the United States here, but all major nation-states suffer from similar problems arising from bigness.

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Innovation, Crypto

The other reason why nation-states are going extinct is largely due to the proliferation of new technologies. New tech alone, of course, will not upend the nation-state, but taken with governmental failures, it represents a critical blow.

Bitcoin is an example of a disruptive innovation. Not only does bitcoin represent a move from government-issued fiat currency toward circulating private currencies, but more importantly, bitcoin introduced a novel form of governance. In truth, bitcoin paved the way for understanding how governance can work without coercion and force.

Bitcoin has a system of rules largely controlled by algorithms. This system is often expressed by the hacker ethic of “code is law.” Indeed, the law of Bitcoin can only be altered via a process of consensus, which is a truly democratized way for the community to initiate changes to the protocol. It may seem trivial, but this new “governance structure” was a revelation. Indeed, the notion that only governments control currency was undermined, but Bitcoin catalyzed a new way of thinking about governance in the form of consensus, which is a watershed moment in the history of technological and social innovation.

With this newfound knowledge, people have begun to dream up ways to apply governance to society. In other words, these governance models can apply to cryptocurrency networks but perhaps also to cities, territories, and whole civilizations. Pandora’s box is now open. A new way to improve governance denotes that “constitutional government” may not be the most effective or moral way to manage society.

Panarchy

Now, let us take a step back. All the way to 1860, when a Belgian botanist and thinker, Paul Emile De Puydt, wrote an underappreciated essay titled “Panarchy.” In this piece, De Puydt makes the case that people should have the option to choose their governing services without physically relocating. He said,

My panacea, if you will allow this term, is simply free competition in the business of government. Everyone has the right to look after his own welfare as he sees it and to obtain security under his own conditions. On the other hand, this means progress through contest between governments forced to compete for followers. True worldwide liberty is that which is not forced upon anyone, being to each just what he wants of it; it neither suppresses nor deceives, and is always subject to a right of appeal. To bring about such a liberty, there would be no need to give up either national traditions or family ties, no need to learn to think in a new language, no need at all to cross rivers or seas, carrying the bones of one's ancestors.

De Puydt was the first to envision this concept of “nonterritorial exit,” which denotes that people can choose what kind of “governance” mechanism they engage with. This suggests that there would be little room for “government,” as people would have a choice to opt-in to their “governance” service.

Scholar Aviezier Tucker expressed how such a competitive governance society would function:

Panarchy suggests that an optimal framework for the emergence of the best states is that of free competition between states. In Panarchy, people and states negotiate the relationships between them, as sellers and buyers and formalize them in explicit social contracts.

To echo Tucker, governance services would be in a perpetual state of competition with each other, and people could choose what type of governance solution they want by selecting one at an office location. Today, we can envision this governance selection occurring via an online or network directory.

But how does this “market for governance” work in practice?

Unbundling and Disaggregation

The implications of this “market for governance” suggest that governance services would be packaged in the form of contracts or deals. These deals would then be selected by those seeking a service that aligns with their values and political ideals.

In his book, “Virtual States,” Jerry Everard called this governance packaging a “disaggregation” of previously managed State services. Similarly, Trent Macdonald called this governance service selection “unbundling.” Both ideas presuppose that in an environment without a centrally planned, monolithic state, various providers emerge to offer their services to the population in a decentralized fashion.

In his essay “The Unbundled State: Economic Theory of Non-Territorial Unbundling,” MacDonald explains:

We can overcome the majoritarian problem and the bundling problem, as well as the inherent spatial trade-offs in territorial decentralization, by carrying the decentralization ethos to its logical ends: unbundle as many functions of government as possible (whether territorial or not), decentralize non-territorially where feasible, and promote parallel governance. The reality is we don’t need to all agree on the same set of collective goods and institutions. By “unbundling governance” we can each individually choose the public goods and services that we want and rebundle them as we like.

These unbundled services would include protection services, defense organizations, postal processors, insurance agencies, and any other services that were once established as State monopolies.

Indeed, there is no need to believe that a centralized government must be the only way to provision governance services. In reality, human history is replete with examples of localized governance provision. The emergence of the nation-state is an aberration of what humans have done in the past. Examples include the Cantons of Switzerland in the Middle Ages and the Commonwealth of Iceland. To learn more about both, read the essay “Virtual Cantons” by Roderick T. Long.

In both examples, localized government was the rule rather than the exception. In these environments, the governments were more localized and “unbundled,” and a common law system typically emerged when disputes arose between people of the commonwealth and foreigners.

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Decentralization and Network States

In today’s environment, panarchy is being revisited due to the enormous focus on technological decentralization. This is the idea that a network of distributed nodes can manage the governance functions of a given society. The concept of decentralization has been around for years, but it has come to the forefront with the emergence of cryptocurrency. The idea behind decentralization is that power can be contained and limited by distributing control over a given system or network.

However, with novel governance systems, decentralization can be applied to panarchy. The computational properties that give rise to decentralization in blockchain technology can be used to power a shift to panarchy. But as Avizier Tucker mentioned in his work, even though the conditions for Panarchy exist, it does not mean they are sufficient. The point is that people can now implement governance models into society by leveraging smart contract applications and consensus algorithms. This creates a techno-panarchy, or as Balaji Svrinisan calls it, a network state. He compares a network state to the “legacy state”:

Unlike an ideologically disaligned and geographically centralized legacy state, which packs millions of disputants in one place, a network state is ideologically aligned but geographically decentralized. The people are spread around the world in clusters of varying size, but their hearts are in one place.

The network state is, therefore, an implementation of “techno-panarchy” in the cloud. As Balaji put it, these network states would form first as “network unions,” composed of like-minded people. They would share values and ideals. However, the most important thing about network states for this piece is that these would be “governance” solutions rather than “governments.”

Beta Testing the New Society

All technological advancements that appear to be a precondition for realizing De Puydt’s vision seem to be in place. However, Tucker said there is no guarantee panarchy will materialize. The necessary conditions may not be sufficient without directed effort.

So, how can we contribute to making it a reality?

Demonstrating that these solutions work is the first step.

Luckily, we have done this already with the Bitcoin and Ethereum networks. Both have been functioning for years and have tremendous network effects that continuously feed their growth. Most impressively, these systems maintain the valuable component of being “opt-in” systems. People are not forced or coerced into using them. It is a choice. In this sense, these networks act as early demonstrations of what governance could look like in a future of “techno-panarchy.”

These ecosystems are effectively beta tests for new social experiments.

Furthermore, many are experimenting with building unique cities and territories worldwide with novel governance implications. One such example is Prospera. Another is Vitalik Buterin’s recent project, Zuzalu. These experimental communities, ecovillages, smart cities, etc, represent the human urge to try new forms of social organization.

It should be noted that many of these are “territorial” based systems, but the fact that they also act as experiments in different governance models gives rise to the idea that panarchy or other extraterritorial models could be a legitimate experiment in designing new governance.

Regardless of how panarchy takes shape, we must continue to build systems and experiment with novel ways of governance to incrementally abandon the nation-state and its “government” apparatus. One of the most important things humanity can do this century is embrace the idea of allowing for “governance” services in the place of “governments,” which have cost humanity dearly, both in dollar amount and in lives lost.

This week’s video is an exploration of government versus governance.

In this vlog, I delve deeper into the idea of panarchy and demystify the difference between “government” and “governance.” I also explore how a panarchical society might emerge as a result of a competing market for governance solutions. Specifically, I explore Trent MacDonald’s concept of “unbundling” state services. I also explain how parallelized crypto ecosystems represent governance functions running side by side with modern nation-state government fiat currency systems. My intent is to eventually explore this topic from a relational and emotive perspective, which is mostly ignored or forgotten by today’s governance experts.

Look for a full article exploration of this topic sometime next week. Enjoy the video! Also please subscribe to my YouTube channel here.

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The following constitution was written by and I for and his Constitution of Consent contest. 40+ contestants entered the contest. It was more than we anticipated, but great for Max.

We did not win but did receive an honorable mention. We likely did not take the winning prize because Gav and I tended to get more literary and poetic, whereas the judges expected a more operationally tight constitutional ruleset. (By the way, props to my friend for winning third prize for his extremely well-written take on a constitution).

Nonetheless, we believe our Constitution contains a lot of valuable insights that represent legal innovation. We believe strongly that a constitution should not merely contain maxims or rules one must follow. Due to the cosmopolitan and heterogeneous nature of the human species, we assume the reality of a more flexible constitution that allows for overlapping and intermingling jurisdictions.

Under this rubric, we approached the constitution as if we were developing a network state that would coexist with other network states on the ground and in the cloud. This fact also presupposes that many technologies would play a role in forming civil polities.

We further postulated that no constitutional framer had ever considered the emotional life of human beings and how that plays into the social context. In this regard, the idea of Marshal Rosenberg’s Nonviolent Communication was instrumental throughout the drafting of our Constitution.

We believe it is impossible to move into the future without having a “relational governance.” A type of governance that requires relating to each other by grasping human needs and drives. People must understand each other’s emotional lives to organise and work together effectively. They must do this to prevent the takeover of society by tyrants, demagogues, and psychopaths.

So here we go!

“To each the government of his dreams.”

~K. H. Z. Solneman (Kurt H. Zube, An Anarchist Manifesto)

Introduction 

Natural law, Nonviolent Communication, and network state infrastructure combine to create the foundation of this constitution and usher in a new age of consent-based, emotionally intelligent governance. The authors assume today’s establishment will collapse (or be underthrown) this decade, catalysing a chance for rebirth and renewal of what it means to be a civilized society or civilization.  

This constitution is geared toward forming a network state on emergent blockchain infrastructure in development by logos.co or other collectives. 

Preamble 

Centralized national governments and Hobbesian “social contracts” have emerged as flawed and corruptible governance experiments. This corruptibility has been amplified by modern territorial-based Westphalian nation states, where power accretes for those in high-ranking positions. A shift in how we relate to each other and incentivize behavior must be adopted to embrace the unfolding, interconnected, and individuated global village. The US Constitution came close, but we can do better.

Body 

Network State formalised: constitutional praxis, purpose, and definitions 

The Constitution of Consent praxis hinges on creating a network state that abides by nonviolent action and communication principles. 

Per the Logos collective (logos.co), ‘A network state is an online community of highly aligned “subscriber citizens” who organise to build social, political, and economic institutions that operate independently of nation states.’

The constitution references its beneficiaries — called “subscriber citizens” —  who adhere to a network state model underpinned by the “prime law” (initially conceived as the fundamental of protection by the Twelve Visions Party). The Prime Law is this community’s one commandant (per Balaji S. Srinivasan) and its human interaction and relational behaviour model. 

The prime law is the fundamental principle of consent, which denotes that a person cannot be forced or coerced by any other person or group to do something against their will. Every action between people and groups must be a function of their willfulness, volition, and voluntary effort. In this sense, the primary method of relating or seeding specific relations is via contract law and corresponding smart contracts within the network state.  

The network state will live in the cloud as an online governance mechanism where smart contracts help manage contract law. Subscriber citizens can subscribe to the network state via an online directory, “Network Prime,” with a focus on the one commandant of the prime law.

Subscriber citizens can live anywhere worldwide, as the central gathering place is in the cloud. However, the subscriber citizens can, if they wish, crowdfund territory and bring their collective from the cloud to the ground. The authors' ultimate vision is to unleash a society of panarchy, where peoples of all creeds, customs, and backgrounds live in harmony and choose their governance models at their discretion. Hence, this vision of our collective future hinges inextricably on the prime law and its concomitant principles. 

Foundational Principles: Consent Makes Right

No force. Except in defence of those who initiate force or fraud. 

This axiom is the prime law of consent.

It is enforceable via a protection-only military, police and court system (Dispute resolution organisation and common law territorial resolutions).

Do not do unto others as you would not have them do unto you — the golden rule expressed in Negative Rights per Robert Nozick. “A negative right restrains other persons or governments by limiting their actions toward or against the right holder.” 

Similarly, so-called ‘positive rights’ that claim people have an inherent right to resources or opportunities lay claim to those benefits at someone else's expense. This approach to ‘human rights’ becomes a violation through feel-good surface logic typically advocated by politicians and leads to a wrongly vindicated tyranny of the majority.

Humankind has sought to make agreements, to reach consensus, to ‘be right’ and ensure by enforcement that others follow along. However, regulations and taxes dictated by majority rule have failed. These one-size-fits-all mandates do not work given the cosmopolitan nature of humanity, whether in family situations or for villages, communities, or cities — much less in countries or the whole world. Instead, consent at the individual level becomes the prime law and necessary principle underpinning a civilised society.

We can frame the overarching moral stance of this constitution as such:

Might does not make right. Consent makes right. And this constitution embodies that axiom. The following principles stem from the core idea that consent makes right.  

Principle 1: Consensus and Consent

“Consensus means a decision is made when everyone agrees. Consent means a decision is made when no one objects.” —  SociocracyForAll.org

There is no chance nor need for ‘everyone to agree’. We only need to allow a fertile environment for consent and consensus between people to blossom, providing that no party causes harm to one another.  

Some might disagree on what counts as ‘harm to others, and that is where fractional communities and network states form around specific values and perspectives. These ‘network states’ are microcosmic experiments of living together based on a mix of values respecting individual autonomy. This “network prime” experiment is just one in the petri dish of governance modelling and constitution crafting.

Under this constitution, the authors identify ‘harm’ as physical force or fraud against a nonconsenting person. 

As network states emerge and become more organized, communities will use smart contracts to agree and enable precise, specific details, such as business agreements, quality of service delivery, code of conduct, etc. These agreements hinge on consent and consensus at every level of the network state — and can be built to interact with other network states and their constitutions —  forming a new kind of “digital march law,” explored in principle 7. 

Principle 2: Bylaws for Consent

The authors believe a large majority of humans are inherently good-natured. Given the chance at a fair opportunity and supportive community, people will mostly do the right thing. A clear set of bylaws will address the following (and clarify the functions and parameters of “consent” as a practical concept):

1. No one has an automatic or inherent claim over the time, privacy or property of anyone else.

2. People do as they wish in the region they inhabit besides where objected to by others. Objections are defined as a claim of likely harm to people.

3. An arbitration system clarifies contractual consensus on definitions of ‘harm’ in each case.

4. Harm primarily relates to physical harm, not hurt feelings. However, any locality can form a community contract in which those involved must embrace consent based on differing definitions of “harm.”

5. There is a smart contract amendment process where bylaws may be edited or augmented. 

An example:

Billy in the Blue House likes to party until 3 a.m., with sound pollution affecting his neighbours.

Jennifer in the Yellow House suffers insomnia and increasing anxiety due to the disturbance of Billy’s loud parties.

They live within a community zone where each resident agrees to a contract of living amicably and cordially with fellow neighbours.

As such, Jennifer complains, Billy then has a choice to stop the parties or be subject to restrictions that he agreed to in the clauses of the community contract that he signed when he moved into the community.

Jennifer is also particularly sound-sensitive and likes to sleep by 9 p.m. most nights using earplugs. She had the foresight to pay for a new insurance policy that guaranteed she would not suffer noise levels above 60 decibels for more than 30 minutes per night. If so, the insurance company is liable to make reparations as deemed appropriate by an arbitration committee.

Jennifer complains about Billy to the insurance company, who immediately responds by installing white noise soundproofing speakers like an invisible sound defence wall around Jennifer’s garden. Billy agrees to lower the volume of his parties enough so that the sound cancellation speaker system will ensure that the sound does not penetrate Jennifer’s sleeping quarters.

Billy, Jennifer, the community arbitration team, and the insurance company have helped ensure that Billy gets to party, while Jennifer sleeps peacefully. The parties achieve mutual agreement with a contract of consent between them. No centralised authoritarian ruler is needed.

Principle 3: Rules without Rulers; freedom of association

There is no ‘central authority’. There is mutual agreement between people who know what they agree to and accept. Thus, contract law will help ensure agreement adherence between parties — in physical and digital spaces.

People’s reputations will form the basis for a network state of consent. The community will acknowledge and account for code of conduct, broken contracts, and unpaid damages through smart contracts. It will limit subscriber citizen access depending on the nature of the contract violation. 

If people do not like what happens in a community, they can leave. They don't have to subscribe if they don’t want or like a service.

Furthermore, suppose communities of people do not like what someone does (typically via breaching the constitution). The network state community can ostracise them, blocking them from services or experiences based on a violation against a community member or breach of contract. 

This ‘punishment or ‘ostracism’’ via reputation management can be seen as a form of digital exile, where a user gets banned from the network state and its constitutional agreement. The idea of ‘exile’ over ‘punishment’ has been common throughout history and practised as a part of polycentric law. In Gaelic Ireland, the community would exile those who disagreed with the Brehon’s decision. If they committed murder or serious harm against another person, the tribe could mark them for retribution with a charge of ‘wergeld,’ meaning man money or man payment. 

While ‘ostracism’ may sound intolerant on the surface, even offensive or hurtful, this is the problem humanity must address with care. There is nothing inherently wrong with choosing the people we associate with; that is our moral right to freedom of choice. We make those choices in our everyday lives all the time. Freedom of association hinges on the notion of rules without rulers.

Principle 4: Contract Insurance

The network state will affirm consent via smart contracts with both parties agreeing to its adherence based on penalties for non-adherence, which forms the basis of contract law.

Without a central authority dictating the use of communal resources, society will need other checks and balances. 

One such area is the use of advanced insurance services. Insurance companies provide security and protection for accidental or even intentional damages to public and private property.

Insurers will then become subversive innovators of technology to help mitigate the risks of payout claims they would otherwise need to make. Some adjacent services will form around network states and their relevant blockchains to provide this service application. 

One example is for insurance of sound pollution from neighbouring properties. Insurance companies could provide soundproofing technologies such as white noise speaker systems that buffer noise beyond a certain level of decibels (mentioned in the previous example). Examples like this are countless and a vast space of innovation in our consent-based civil society. 

Principle 5: Rightful Toleration

A term derived from ancient Sanskrit, ahimsa, supposedly the concept of ‘toleration’ through nonharm, is a double-edged sword. In a society where 6% of people are supposed to be clinically diagnosable as sociopathic (lacking empathy), it can be dangerous for society to tolerate such people's corruption. Read psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen ‘The Science of Evil’ for more information on this phenomenon.

The Constitution of Consent helps ensure a balanced approach to toleration in which we learn to live with each other's differences while collectively ensuring that initiatory force (violence) or fraud (theft, deceit) are not tolerated. The above principles and bylaws capture the authors’ view on rightful toleration.

If people find each other ‘intolerable’, we expect they will not want to inhabit the same physical or digital space or participate in the same communal events.

Principle 6: Force for Self-Defence

The community and network states advocating the prime law allow individuals to stop those who violate it with initiatory force (violence) with an equal or greater amount of force, I.E., self-defence. This self-defence applies to threats of force (coercion) and fraud (hidden force against someone's property or freedom of choice via deceit).

Force is morally and legally justified to protect the innocent from those who attempt to impose themselves through violence. No individual, group, or entity is above the prime law.

The prime law constitution, as presented by the Twelve Visions Party as an amendment to the US Constitution, has three and only three articles: 

• Article 1: No person, group of persons, or government shall initiate force, threat of force, or fraud against any individual’s self, property, or contract.

• Article 2: Force is morally and legally justified only for protection from those who violate Article 1.

• Article 3: No exceptions shall exist for Articles 1 and 2.

Principle 7: Common Law 

Anyone not consenting to the constitution (or associated contracts and smart contracts) within or outside this network state is still afforded fundamental rights by natural law. For clarity, natural law means a legal system based on close observation of human nature and behaviour, which generally includes self-ownership, the right to (or stewardship) over property, and the right to opt out of relationships. Thus, individuals can resolve disagreements or violations of (natural) rights from disputes within a coterminous territory with the help of a network arbitrator.   

A network arbitrator (or panel of arbitrators) act as the judge for a victim or claimant who chooses to resolve a dispute. Disputants voluntarily select network arbitrators within or outside a network state and its constitution within a bounded territory. 

The arbitrator is independent and objective and, once selected, has the power to make determinations on various issues. For those unwilling to settle disputes with network arbitrators, see Principle 3 for possible consequences or outcomes.

Common law becomes more relevant and essential when network states overlap within a “nation-state” jurisdiction or other bounded governance models. Further, for network state disagreement, communities can enact a ‘digital march law,’ where they effectively enjoin their constitutions and one commandment, allowing them all to share common law decisions between network arbitrators, especially where parties not affiliated with Network Prime have disputes or grievances with Network Prime members. 

Note: this constitutional agreement prohibits Network Prime or any of its community from creating or attempting to enact statute laws. All forms of Justinian, centralized-legal mandates or edicts by a small group of admins or leaders, are incompatible with this network state and its constitution. 

Enumerated Common Law Rights:  

Common law human rights vary by region, territory, and culture — and are primarily based on natural law. However, through an understanding of natural law, a shared agreement on common law rights is generally accepted as universally true.

Natural and common law also share the same central idea of consent as the primary underlying principle. Generally speaking, consent and human rights are intimately tied together. These consent-based rights make up the scaffolding of common law (but are not necessarily limited to only these):

1. Self-ownership: A person has ownership over their person. No one can coerce or command them to do something against their will. Self-ownership is also defined as self-government or self-sovereignty. Self-ownership also includes the concept of cognitive liberty, which means a person has the right to alter their consciousness with prayer, meditation, chemicals, plants, or any other means.

2. Right to property: A person can hold, maintain, modify, or relinquish their property at their behest. No other party has an automatic claim to that property unless through a contractual claim.

3. Freedom of communication: A person can publish and speak freely. Communication also includes memes, media, press, radio, podcasts, and other novel forms of communication.

4. Spiritual and religious liberation: People can worship a God or freely adhere to any spiritual or metaphysical belief as they see fit.

5. Right to privacy: Individuals can selectively reveal themselves at their discretion. Their privacy is their choice, not that of any other party, governance apparatus, or individual.

6. Right of accused: A person has the right to a fair hearing by private network arbitrators, who will always be selected voluntarily on the market by victims or claimants.

7. Equal protection: All network state subscriber citizens gain equal protection under any system. They are afforded the same rights regardless of which network state or governance system they subscribe to (payments for equal protection within this network state are funded from the treasury, but equal protection is largely a common law agreement).
   

8. Compensative justice: Individuals are entitled to just compensation and to be made whole if victimised or aggressed against. Network arbitrators determine if the aggressor or disputant owes the claimant recompense, and their decision is final, but the disputant may appeal the decision via the network state. 
   

9. Unjust searches or seizures: Network arbitrators and dispute resolution organisations operating in physical space cannot seize a person or their possessions without just cause, typically including having caused harm or broken the prime law against another individual.
   

10. Due process: Network arbitrators provide individuals with due process before enacting a restorative justice decision for any individual charged with committing harm against another or otherwise violating the prime law. 

(It should be noted that since common law differs slightly by local territory and custom, it is up to various network states and their regional adherents to form common law and contractual agreements. Also, note that the prime law — the law of consent — should be the measuring stick for Network Prime contributors and members. Any dispute should be handled with the mentioned Digital March Law agreements between participating network states, especially for issues arising from physical territories and spaces).  

Principle 8: Freedom of Money

Any individual or group has the right to mint, create, or print forms of money to circulate on the open market — so long as they do not force its use on anyone else (See the Prime Law). Their money can contain whatever properties, features, or economics they want. This network state and community have no right to force the use of any specific currency. Competing currencies on the open market inspire innovation in the currency space and keep all economic actors honest. 

That stated, the Network Prime network state possesses its inherent token, the Network Prime Token (NPT). Users of the Network Prime network state have the right to allocate this token by consensus and leverage voting mechanisms. However, the Network Prime blockchain has an open tokeneconomic model that allows users to leverage various cryptocurrencies and tokens to administrate the system, keeping the community in line with the Prime Law.  

The network prime community manages its treasury of tokens through consensus, voting, and agreements. 

Principle 9: Nonexpropriation

This network state will not confiscate money or levy taxes, as force-backed taxation violates the prime law of consent. All contributions to physical, social, or digital infrastructure are determined by consensus via network state technology and infrastructure. Smart contracts and market activity determine where the network state allocates funds from its treasury. 

The same rule applies to crowdfunded territory. If the network state acquires physical land, all development, infrastructure, and capital allocation will occur without expropriation or taxes. All subscriber citizens are encouraged to spontaneously conduct the work via the contract law and consensus principles laid out by this constitution and network state. 

No taxes. No legal theft. The prime law guides all transactions and interactions.    

Principle 10: Amendment by Consensus 

The constitution of consent will not typically require amendments (changes to the principles or additions to them) because all subscriber citizens understand and embrace the prime law. In other words, everything hinges on consent, consensus, and reducing harm as previously defined. 

However, if subscriber citizens require changes to the principles or bylaws, they must reach a consensus via the network prime voting and consensus mechanisms. These smart contracts and consensus algorithms ensure fairness in changes/amendments to the constitution and make changes and amendments difficult to enact by design. 

Once subscriber citizens come to a consensus on necessary amendments — the citizens can then update the constitution of consent, which lives on the Network Prime blockchain. 

Principle 11: Right to Exit 

Anyone who joins the authors’ network state and embraces its constitution of consent as a subscriber citizen always maintains the right to exit. There is an “unsubscribe” button.

Governments keep exit costs high in the current world of nation states to lock people into Westphalian territorial rule. There is no easy “unsubscribe” button for the application called ‘nation state’ or ‘democratic republic.’ 

Being able to exit maintains market pressure on the network state to adhere to its constitution lest it loses citizens to other, more honest network states and associated bodies. 

As an aside, to “exit” does not mean someone must relocate physically. First and foremost, these territories are based virtually in the cloud, and to exit them means unsubscribing from a specific network state. 

No cost will be associated with exiting this network state and its associated constitution, and former subscriber citizens retain the value and ownership over any NPT tokens they possess. All contracts with individuals, of course, remain valid unless nullified or contested on some ground. 

These principles lead us to a very clear-cut Constitution of Consent as follows.

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The Constitution of Consent in 5 Planks

1. I agree with individuals' autonomy to go about their business and pursue their interests however they choose, providing it does not initiate force or commit fraud against others.
   

2. I hold no inherent claim over the time, privacy or property of anyone else.
   

3. I hold a claim on time or property within the bounds of mutually agreed contracts that I entered into without coercion and in complete conscious understanding of the requirements and penalties for lack of adherence.
   

4. I can object to proposals or behaviours where I perceive a threat of harm within a jurisdiction where I am a direct stakeholder.
   

5. I agree to arbitration to help resolve disputes over harm and impose mutually agreed contract stipulations.

Consent at Work

In practical terms, the authors see a shift in governance in every type of institution, from significant transactional governance to small business enterprises and everything in between.

Organisational cultures will transition from top-down command and control to a rehumanised and reimagined approach to collaboration by distributing decision-making power to those most directly accountable or influenced by those decisions.

Example: 

Consent at work will emerge through ideas like Brian Robertson’s notion of holacracy. Under a holacratic work structure, individuals organise into spheres of influence, where they work with teams consensually. These types of organisations align with how network unions or collectives organise around consent-based structures rather than traditional hierarchical models. 

Furthermore, we enter a time of what author Clay Shirky calls a “cognitive surplus.” We are embracing a future where we are leveraging machines and sophisticated processes to maximise our time, which leaves us with a lot of wiggle room for creativity and generosity in the connected age, as Shirky calls it. This excess time and generosity imply that humanity will have more time to spend together, thus providing everyone with the bandwidth to connect more deeply and emotionally, hence the vital nature of consent at work and home.  

Consent at Home

Managing affairs at home with the principles of consent is more tricky than knowing how to run a society. On what basis can or should parents control their children? On what basis should this constitution provide guidelines for how parents parent?

For instance, the authors agree that harming children psychologically/emotionally is a form of force against them (often done through coercive threats or forms of emotional bullying), and evidence suggests it could lead to long-term neurologic and psychological impairment. Children are also agential actors included within this network state’s constitution of consent, and all subscriber citizens must also protect them. 

Spanking and hitting children (including the threat of) per this constitution is considered anti-consensual and is antithetical to the Prime Law. 

Refer to “The Emotional Life of Nations” by Lloyd De Mause to learn more about how mistreated, abused, and spanked children mould the emotional lives of nations/states. The anger and vengeance instilled in children during upbringing help make up the nation-state's psychic life, often leading to political grandstanding, warmongering, destruction, and death. 

In this regard, consent at home and with children is an essential and non-controversial part of this network state of consent constitution. This critical protection of children is also why learning the communication of consent is an imperative part of our network contract. 

The spirit of consent will spread the more it is discussed throughout society. The inherent violence of making demands on people in the community or at work will diminish as we learn to speak more respectfully to each other in our homes.

Communication of Consent

Marshal Rosenberg’s Nonviolent Communication will become ubiquitous as people break free from the current order. Modern “governments” and “nation states” rely on cold bureaucracy as part of their process. They put political expediency above personal and emotional experience. This constitution rejects that modus operandi and instead promotes nonviolent communication to resolve disputes and move society forward, hoping that network states do not devolve into rabid politicking and violence (it also helps one better understand and work with children to prevent harming them). 

Here are the four steps of NVC:

1. Observe without judging.  “Sally, half of your clothes are spread across your bedroom floor, and you are using your books as a doorstop..”

2.  Express feelings. “I am feeling bothered by this because you have exams next month, and I want you to be in a clear and organised space to study well.“

3. Express and clarify your needs. “It is crucial for me to know you are supported to succeed at school“.

4. Express specific requests. “That’s why I am asking you to tidy up this weekend. Is that acceptable for you?”

This type of dialogue changes a demand to a thoughtful, heartfelt, empathic request that both parties can learn from rather than simply an exchange of dominance or authority. As humans, we have much to learn in how we communicate.

In the above example, Sally could rightfully object (as children often do) by claiming that the clothes don’t bother her concentration nearly as much as they seem to bother her parent’s obsession with order. And the books used as book stops are last year's textbooks, and she does not need them for study. Sally goes on to agree to clear space around her desk from clothes.

This approach to communication teaches toleration, empathic connection, expression of needs, and making agreements based on consent. If more of us learned this at home, our institutions would be better for it as each generation matures into the adult workforce.

Conclusion: Consciousness of Consent 

Since Pericles perfected the art of sophistic rhetoric in ancient Athens, demagogues have twisted the concepts of Democracy from ‘everyone rules equally’ to ‘majority imposes rule against minorities’. 

We can correct that 2,500-year-old hiatus of civilised governance with the Constitution of Consent, which recognises that people have a right to be left alone and to do as they please, providing that no one rightfully objects to a claim of non-consensual harm. 

Removing tolerance for sociopathy in society is a step change that humanity must face and be empowered to enact before the birth of Artificial General Intelligence. AI will surely amplify the good and the bad within society. We have a window of opportunity to nudge things in favour of enduring benevolence. 

We believe the onset of the Network State with the use of smart contracts and a ‘consciousness of consent’, with governance underpinned by non-violent communication, will carry us forward into an era of honour, dignity, and liberty — a genuinely civilised and future-oriented society.   

Addendum: Nonliving document

This constitution is not a living document. Readers must take it at face value and understand it does not require regular “amendments.” This Constitution is focused solely on voluntary interaction, cosmopolitanism, and the consciousness of consent. Nothing needs to be inferred or altered regarding this constitution except where gaps could hypothetically appear, although the authors made a painstaking effort to fill those gaps. 

Further, smart contracts, common law, and contract law based on sound market principles and network state dynamics will help iron out any seeming complexity or lifeboat scenarios. All matters should be considered private, and there is no such thing as crimes against Network Prime, a network state, or any state. All matters are individual matters, which parties should resolve via the network state consensus mechanisms or various contract/common law formulations. Contact a private “network arbitrator” via our “Network Prime” directory for assistance. 

Many believe we must die; it is part of our birthright and carbon-based heritage. It is what we do as organic life forms. We die. That is that; that is human. Immortality, or greatly extended life spans, is a thing of fantasy fiction, only reserved for vampires and their undead brethren.

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People have condemned the idea of life extension not only from a place of reason or evidence but because the concept clashes with their theological convictions or code of ethics. For them, life extension is “unnatural.”

People who subscribe to such convictions of guaranteed death are “mortal absolutists.” They believe in death's “absolute” certainty and claim we must not fight against it. We must succumb. These folks have written books like David Livingstone’s polemical anti-extropian book: “Transhumanism: The History of a Dangerous Idea.”

Most of these books, like Livingstone’s, are anti-scientific and technophobic and could stall vital research.

For instance, over the last few decades, we have made inroads towards combating ageing and fighting critical diseases such as cancer, circulatory disease, and autoimmune conditions. These advances spell a bright future for “regenerative medicine.” The University of Pittsburgh defines the concept:

Regenerative medicine seeks to replace tissue or organs that have been damaged by age, disease, trauma, or congenital issues, vs. the current clinical strategy that focuses primarily on treating the symptoms. The tools used to realize these outcomes are tissue engineering, cellular therapies, and medical devices and artificial organs.

Staving Off Entropy

With advancing knowledge of regenerative medicine, we can now ask: Will we always have to die? Is death via heat decay built into our species as an entropic principle?

Cybernetics thinkers like Norbert Weiner and ilk have discussed life and its entropic nature. All matter in the universe breaks down over a long enough timeline. That is generally true for most things. Entropy is a reality. But we also know the first law of thermodynamics exists: total energy in a closed system is neither lost nor gained — it is only transformed. Yet, even if energy is only changed, this transformation includes the death of organic matter.

Thus, we may never stave off entropy in totality as a grand plan (we may not even want to for various reasons). But we can considerably slow it down in biological systems using a variety of advancements in science. So, where entropy may kill us, it does not have to kill us soon.

Is it possible to live decades longer or even slouch toward immortality?

The Immortal Worm and Chimeric Sorcery

Let me provide an example of an “anti-entropic” living creature from the work of synthetic biologist Michael Levin. He and his team focus on the planarian flatworm. What is unique about this little worm? First, they are genetically more like us than earthworms. They contain an actual brain and nervous system.

More excitingly, these worms are functionally immortal. They don't die of natural causes. They are one of the most evolved known regenerators on the planet. If you cut its head off, the head will grow a new body and the body a new head. Levin points out that one scientist is known to have cut a planarian into 275 different pieces. And each of those pieces spawned a new worm. This means these worms alive today are ancient. Today’s worm is yesterday’s and tomorrow's worm, ad infinitum.

The planaria story hints that ageing and death do not automatically have to occur in biological systems, at least not conventionally. Some people think because we are carbon-based or organic, we must die.

This isn't true for the planarian species; entropy is not business as usual. The problem, of course, is that humans are different from the planaria. We are not natural regenerators. The most regenerative organ in our bodies is the liver, which does regenerate — but as anyone who has an alcoholic in the family can say, there is only so much beating a liver can take. It will falter and eventually kill the person.

Even though we are unlike planaria, we can tap into their tricks, perhaps download the cheat codes for quasi-eternal life.

If they are immortal, that tells us that immortality as a concept is not against the laws of physics. In theory, we should be able to unveil the planaria’s secrets. Dr. Levin and his team have been studying these worms and have begun to shed light on the details. Dr Levin states that the secrets to longevity may not lie in the worm’s DNA, as many would expect. Their DNA is a pile of junk because it stretches back through time to their original form — which collects all the DNA from past incarnations through their cumulative regenerative process.

Dr. Levin and his team have learned that the worms' cells use bioelectricity or the collective bioelectrical network to regenerate. The team knows this because they have actively intervened in the electrical signaling. They used a drug intervention that changes the electrical pattern of the worm's cells. By changing this pattern, they learned they could control the worm’s cells and tell them what tissues to build. To boil the point down, the secret to the worm's regenerative processes likely lies in its electrical cell network.

In the paper, “Endless forms most beautiful 2.0: teleonomy and the bioengineering of chimeric and synthetic organisms,” Dr. Levin says of the planaria:

For hundreds of millions of years, these animals have accumulated mutations and are even mixoploid; different cells within one animal can have different numbers of chromosomes. And despite this messy genome, they are champions of regeneration, building the correct body from even small fragments with very high anatomical fidelity (Saló et al., 2009); each piece of a cut planarian produces a perfect little worm. We have no models in developmental genetics that would predict that the highest fidelity of anatomical outcomes would be associated with genetic diversity that rivals any tumour. Indeed, planarian lines can even be made permanently two headed by manipulating the bioelectric circuit that stores head number (Oviedo et al., 2010; Durant et al., 2017), resulting in permanent ‘strains’ of animals whose cells continue to build worms with a different anatomical body plan from the genomic default.

Paradigm Shift

Dr Levin has worked to see if his team can exploit this electrical signaling in other animals, especially mammals. They conducted experiments on frogs and tadpoles as well. They told the cells of the tadpole to grow a new tadpole tail; the cells obeyed. They said the frog's cells to develop a new frog leg; the cells also followed. These experiments prove that bioelectrical messaging seems to act like the cellular "software" that functions as a way of programming cells to build things: tissues, organs, limbs, and whole bodies. The cell’s electrical systems make them malleable learners. They are susceptible to a kind of electro-pharmaceutical behavioral conditioning.

Some people may not grasp the scope of this research right away. Dr. Levin's work not only represents a sea change regarding our understanding of bioelectricity in cell organization. It ushers in a paradigm shift in the biological sciences. Many biologists and other scientists do not believe cells harbor intelligence or "have goals" as a collective. The reality is that evolution has exploited electricity and physics to store and encode goals (maybe even memories) within collectives of cells.

In retrospect, some of these ideas seem obvious. We have known for a long time that human consciousness and thought are in some way based on the electro-chemical activity and patterns within and between neurons in the brain.

The Logic of Ageing; Cellular Senescence

So, what does all of this mean for gerontology and issues around ageing?

It means that if the logic of bioelectricity stays true for mammals as it does for Planaria, tadpoles, and frogs, one day — sooner than later — we should be able to program human cell collectives to heal bodies and regenerate limbs and organs.

It sounds like science fiction, right?

For most people, it will sound like fiction. Still, the ability to tap into these bioelectrical circuits within cells and harness their collective intelligence could mean a significant breakthrough in understanding and reversing ageing. We should eventually be able to tell the cells in our bodies to kill senescent cells — or perhaps spur them back to life.

One aspect of why we age is that our older cells become “senescent.” They turn into “zombies” that do not perform their jobs. It now looks feasible to overcome cell senescence. We may even be able to tell our cells to regenerate an organ from within the body. This particular scenario negates the need for donors or even for the production of synthetic organs.

Bioelectrical Code and Anatomical Compilers

Of course, there are many unknowns and unknown unknowns within the fields of synthetic biology and bioelectricity.

Our knowledge of mammalian electrical networks is just beginning, primarily due to molecular biologists and other medical fields focusing on the "hardware": the genetic material, proteins, metabolic pathways, etc.

The reality is that focusing on bioelectricity and its ramifications will allow us to generate cures for diseases by manipulating the cell "software" in bioelectrical signaling and patterning. Dr. Levin says we will eventually create a class of "electroceutical" drugs to change cell circuitry as a marching order for the cell networks. This will be done without perturbing the cell at the “hardware” level.

There are many other vectors from which we are starting our journey towards tackling ageing. Still, the advancements on the fringes of bioelectricity can do so much good for regenerative medicine.

If this research pans out without too many hiccups (there are always some), we could have cracked the "bioelectrical code" of life within 30 years. If we do this, regenerative medicine will have reached a pinnacle in Dr. Levin's idea of the anatomical compiler.

This is a device that is not merely a bio 3D printer. Instead, it is more like a computer-bio-organism interface, where a bioengineer can sit down and combine AI and logic to tell a group of cells what to build or regenerate a tissue or organ. The applications for this use case also exist outside of medicine, but that is beyond this scope.

As a parting note, there are ethical considerations and existential risks to weigh with these technologies. Still, the positive outweighs the negative regarding their impact on regenerative medicine. More people will begin to wake up from their “mortal absolutism” as we carve out a new path toward longer or even indefinite life.

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The medium is the message. This is merely to say that the personal and social consequences of any medium - that is, of any extension of ourselves - result from the new scale introduced into our affairs by each extension of ourselves, or by any new technology.
               - Marshall McLuhan

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How we create, share, and comprehend digital content is changing with artificial intelligence (AI) breakthroughs. We are experiencing a McLuhanization of information and the systems that mediate it.

What does McLuhanization mean?

It indicates our digital content is expanding. It is becoming entangled in the “global village”—a pulsing internet ecosystem of lively information flows. The information is becoming more ubiquitous, nuanced, and differentiated. This growth presupposes using AI to make sense of all the info and its meaning. It also presupposes a different way to approach information and how it influences cultural shifts and attenuates our thinking.

How fast is the growth, though? Visualize this: a flow of digital creativity is released online every second. A study by DOMO highlights this trend where the internet expands rapidly with content. In just a minute, Facebook users share 293,000 status updates, Twitter users post 456,000 tweets, and YouTube users upload 500 hours of video content. 

Importantly, this content expansion has implications for the future of human liberty and our shared mastery over knowledge. It enables us to challenge nation-state propaganda and use surplus data to create fairness in media. This push toward fairness via technology means humanity will see a further departure from biological and physical constraints.

In this essay, I will discuss how this content boom facilitates the emergence of content collectives that wield AI-powered antipropaganda campaigns. I will detail how these circumstances represent stirrings of an extropian media theory, which expresses how information evolution improves the accuracy of our knowledge and augments us for the better.

What are Content Collectives?

Content collectives are associations of creatives who share unorthodox ideas and spread information contrary to state-controlled, legacy news. They use various technologies, especially AI, to uplift and augment their efforts.  They aim to destabilize the state and pave the way for revolutionary information delivery. 

Early examples of content collectives include alternative media hubs like Free Thought Project, World Alternative Media, The Anti-Media, and Parlor. Many of these outlets have been censored. Others still exist. More are emerging. 

What are some examples of content collectives? 

Anonymous

One successful content collective is the group of hacktivists known as Anonymous. They are a decentralized affiliation of individuals that disrupt government and corporate functioning. They protect free speech, expose corruption, and fight the censor. They are known for their hard-hitting slogan: 

We are Anonymous. We are Legion. We do not forgive. We remember. Expect us.

The Anonymous collective made waves by throwing a wrench into the gears of MasterCard, Visa, and PayPal. They hacked these organizations by unleashing a string of DDoS (denial of service) attacks, a response to them blocking Wikileaks from receiving donations.

Anonymous has been effective due to its flexible, decentralized structure. This contrasts with inflexible state bureaucracy. Without a clear base, Anonymous embodies the ethos of dissidence. These makers and hackers commit themselves to sharing transformative messages—often in the form of computer code—exploiting the flaws of the authoritarian apparatus. 

In many ways, Anonymous is similar to Wikileaks. 

Wikileaks 

Wikileaks is a not-for-profit media organization founded by cypherpunk Julian Assange. It emerged in 2006. They publish classified documents from anonymous sources worldwide. 

What sets Wikileaks apart is its ability to ensure the anonymity of many of its sources. This secrecy encourages whistleblowers to expose the opaque insides of government. For instance, the release of the Afghan War Logs and Iraq War Logs revealed the unsettling realities of war, contradicting the sanitized versions peddled by state-run media.

For some illuminating content, it is worth viewing the "Collateral Murder" video leaked by Chelsea Manning and published by Wikileaks in 2010. The video is horrifying. It depicts a gunship helicopter shooting innocent reporters. The soldiers can be heard bragging like they are playing Call of Duty. 

As we further explore media and technology, the role of content collectives becomes more layered and complex. These collectives become the de facto harbingers of change, feeding the rise of artificial intelligence in content creation.

AI Use Case for the Counter Manufacture of Consent and Combating State Narratives

AI tools allow content collectives to analyze propaganda and generate counter-propaganda. Phillip K. Dick described how individuals try to alter consensus reality. He said:

'The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use them.'

Good actors can defensively deploy AI to control words and images and expose government chicanery. It empowers content collectives to create more robust, diverse, and stimulating narratives. This shift is essential in combating the pervasive influence of state-generated disinformation. 

Linguist and political theorist Noam Chomsky expressed the current predicament. His image of "manufacturing consent" indicates the media's primary function. It is not to inform but to manufacture support for government policies and corporate interests. He argues the press achieves this by selectively reporting on issues and framing them biasedly to exclude alternative perspectives. Chomsky elaborated:

The mass media serve as a system for communicating messages and symbols to the general populace. It is their function to amuse, entertain, and inform, and to inculcate individuals with the values, beliefs, and codes of behavior that will integrate them into the institutional structures of the larger society. In a world of concentrated wealth and major conflicts of class interest, to fulfil this role requires systematic propaganda.

What is worse than “concentrated wealth” is that governments drum up support for warmongering and enslavement. Politicians inspire people to worship red-and-white striped bits of cloth and consume content created within newsrooms full of sycophants. Tragically, nation states have employed propaganda for centuries to guide public opinion 

Steps to Contest Narrative Dominance

Today, we are on the cusp of revolution. Content collectives can use artificial intelligence to contest and overturn this long-established supremacy. 

How exactly will they achieve this, though?

Here are the key strategies: 

1. Propaganda Analysis: AI tools, with their capacity for pattern recognition and data analysis, can study and understand the intricacies of state propaganda.

2. Hybrid Content: AI-assisted content-creation tools can generate engaging content tailored to the audience's preferences.

3. Opposition and equalization: With the insights gained from propaganda analysis and the power of engaging content, content collectives can counteract state narratives by exposing their tactics.

With these strategies, no one has to accept and consume information passively. People can engage directly with a content collective. They can shape the narrative and challenge the status quo. However, censorship is also a major problem plaguing open content circulation and the alternative media sector. Content collectives must combat this censorship ecosystem to affect change.

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Censorship Ecosystems

Censorship has been pervasive throughout the life of the nation state. It is how the political class keeps everyone hypnotized and comatose. In this way, the state has molded media and tech into a censorship ecosystem, where the state and its associates silence dissenting opinions.

Historically, the media and big tech were dedicated to conveying the truth but have been corrupted. Some argue they always operated as a byproduct of state power. Regardless, the modern media ecosystem is part of a censorship ecosystem: a complex web of interactions that serves the interests of the privileged elite.

Big tech censorship, chilling effects, and consensus trance

Companies like Facebook, Twitter, and Google have been accused of being involved in heavy censorship. They deplatform or shadowban users who question mainstream talking points. This attack on contrarian voices has created a chilling effect. Dissidents voluntarily gag themselves for fear of bans or investigations by the police. 

I mentioned The Free Thought Project and The Anti-Media earlier. These groups were enmeshed in a 2018 mass censorship campaign initiated by Facebook in coordination with Twitter, Youtube, and Google. The social media giants removed contrarian pages along with their followers. During the 2018 mass banning, Alex Jones's pages were also purged. Facebook, Twitter, Apple, and Spotify collaborated to ban his material. They did this under the guise that Jones' violated community policies. 

This egregious censorship shows the nation state colludes with big tech to lull people into apathy and indifference. They trap innocent folks in what psychologist Charles Tart called a "consensus trance": a fog where people follow their routine and dismiss totalitarianism around them.

However, with the arrival of content collectives and the armamentarium of tech at our disposal, anyone can oppose propaganda and censorship. We can now approach a new way of thinking about the future of media through extropian thought.  

Extropianism

Before exploring the idea of extropian media theory, we must grasp extropianism. 

Futurist Max More expressed the principles in the 1980s and established the Extropy Institute in the 1990s. He explained extropianism as a futurist movement that uses technology and science to unleash human potential. Extropians seek to push physical and social boundaries and promote an open society. The idea is based on transcending biological limitations and achieving a post-human existence. 

'Extropy' refers to a system’s order, vitality, and capacity for improvement. The opposite of extropy is entropy: a system's tendency to degrade. These systems include everything from bacteria to dogs, humans, stars, and universes, which inevitably dissolve into atomized goo via heat decay. Extropians believe that by harnessing the power of technology, humans can reverse the effects of entropy. 

Extropianism is largely based on principles of human longevity and synthetic enhancement. The modus operandi is self-transformation, transcendence, and overcoming the monkey body.

However, extropianism also extols the importance of self-sufficiency and individual freedom. This push toward liberty is why an extropian media theory thrives in the networked and globalized cultural environment.  

But what exactly does an extropian theory of media look like?

Extropian Media Theory and the Augmented Future 

Imagine a world in which traditional systems do not dictate the media. Imagine the boundaries of discourse are constantly being pushed. Imagine all information being reshaped and augmented by AI for fairness and accuracy.

The theory proposes deploying novel technologies (such as AI) to cultivate a media ecosystem that is constantly evolving and self-accelerating. By doing so, humankind overcomes the prejudices of traditional media.

Extropian media theory rejects the idea of media as static and singular, instead envisioning it as dynamic, tailored, and multifaceted. Circulating media thus constantly refines itself through iterative feedback loops as populations consume it. By leveraging AI through content collectives, the nature and shape of media itself is continually transformed.

McLuhan foresaw the transformative nature of electronic media and emergent cyberculture through the global village—the web of electronic communication. However, he could not have foreseen how AI would allow media to dissolve state-based, legacy architectures. The overarching goal of this new media revolution is human transformation and the maximization of extropy.

Media Singularity

But this theory goes beyond the advocacy of maximizing extropy. It heralds a radical change in our perspectives, ethics, and consciousness. Extropian media theory predicts the complete breakdown of centralized apparatuses of control and all the cultural attitudes and mores derived from it.

We have already seen how the breakdown can occur, but what will be the result?

A democratized digital agora where communications, content, messages, memes, and other data fragments circulate fairly. It is through this process that we restore order to the human mind. People start to introspect more and allow elbow room for shifts in consciousness and perspective. 

It has already begun.

Instead of global catastrophe, many apocalyptic and end-of-times visions see a global awakening or consciousness shift. But this awakening may not be happening due only to technology. Technology is merely a catalyst for the changes erupting all around.

Thinkers as diverse as Terence McKenna, Pierre Teilhard De Chardin, Ray Kurzweil, Nick Bostrom, Daniel Pinchbeck and others have dedicated volumes to catastrophising or glorifying the coming “final event” or “eschaton” or “omega point.”

The bottom line is that some major occurrence or "singularity" is about to reshape the essence of humanity in a non-destructive fashion. This event is epitomized by using electronic media combined with AI to churn out greater quantities of information with greater quantities of truth and novelty. It is an “information awakening” or “media singularity.” However, this awakening must include erasing outdated, cannibalistic media structures.

Awakening from Informational Hegemony

The power elite has always tried to cannabalize and hoard knowledge at the expense of everyone. In the dark ages, the Catholic church collected large caches of books, literature, and research; it used this informational hegemony and monopoly over the peasants with impunity. They exalted themselves as the gatekeepers of literacy and wisdom. They repressed revolt with intimidation, violence, and witch hunts. Some suggest this “knowledge hoarding” is a myth, but we know with certainty the Church punished people for blasphemy and made many into apostates for sharing heretical knowledge.

The church hegemony never left. It metamorphosed, assuming the form of the State, media, and big tech. But since the internet made hoarding and controlling information more difficult, they began to mix high-quality information with “malinformation.” That is quality information or content corrupted by fake news, fraud, and deceitful agendas.

The content collectives and AI approaches mentioned allow for the final flowering of information. This maturation will uplift humanity beyond the apelike barbarism of its bloodied past. Humanity’s revolution is not just a technical revolution; it’s a revolution of the human spirit. It is an appeal to build open societies of digital abundance and truth.

Conclusion: Ozymandias Story

As we stand on the precipice of this new era, the age-old battle between content creators and propagandists has found its final battlefield: the information realm.

The rise of AI and the capabilities it confers fundamentally alters the landscape of content creation and media. Content collectives, driven by the boundless creativity of human intellect, are mounting a formidable offense against propaganda and content control. 

This paradigm shift towards AI-enabled content collectives signifies the dawn of a new era in media. Expanding on McLuhan, we perceive a future where the “medium” is no longer confined to the physicality of technology. Instead, it extends to AI and its ability to reshape the human mind.

The future also brings possibilities for genuine and uninhibited expression that transcends political boundaries. This free digital media environment manifests the conditions for expanding our potential. It permits the maturation of all extropian goals: upgraded humans, longer life spans, and machine-human hybrids—which authoritarian structures have heretofore hampered through embargoes on information exchange.

However, these structures and their information hegemonies are starting to crumble, fall to pieces, and cease to exist. We are living in a technologically-propelled Ozymandias story, where we hospice these legacy systems out of existence. And thank goodness for it; it is our birthright to move well beyond the confines of control.

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