3. A Unified World
2. A Look ahead
Now that we've laid the groundwork for understanding our predicament, you might be wondering, "Where do we go from here?" It's one thing to recognize the trap we're in, but it's another to find a way out. That's exactly what we're going to explore in the rest of this book.
Think of what you've read so far as the diagnosis. We've identified the disease that's threatening our species: our outdated tribal territorial sovereignty (TTS) societies. But a diagnosis alone doesn't cure the patient. What we need now is a treatment plan, a roadmap to guide us from where we are to where we need to be.
In the following chapters, we're going to embark on an intellectual journey together. We'll explore alternative ways of organizing our world, dive into the wisdom of past thinkers who grappled with these same issues, and ultimately, craft a vision for a future that doesn't just avoid extinction but allows humanity to truly flourish.
Part One: Introduction
The introduction (the part you are readying now) is designed to lay out the general approach the book will take to dealing with the issue of our impending extinction. It is designed to generate interest by generating hope. It is designed to help you see that there is a very clear reason we are on the verge of extinction and that, if we understand this reason, we can understand the exact steps needed to prevent it and find the best way to take those steps.
The main theme of this introduction is that the problems that threaten our existence—mostly war and environmental destruction—are not independent problems that can be attacked in isolation. They are essentially growing pains in an evolutionary process.
We evolved.
All of the realities of our existence did not evolve at the exact same pace. The mental tools that allow us to build weapons evolved very rapidly, due to evolutionary pressures inherent in the type of society we inherited from our ape ancestors, tribal territorial sovereignty societies (TTS societies). This type of society divides the species into individual tribal units that act as teams to compete for feeding territory and other resources. The teams that can’t compete well are wiped out, together with their gene line. Any genetic influence within the team that slows the rate of growth in abilities t make weapons wipes out the team. Any genetic influence that prevents a tribal unit (including a ‘state’ or a ‘nation’) from acting in a brutal and unmerciful way (for example, any intrinsic empathy or compassion that is ingrained in the national psyche) can lead to defeat for that tribal unit. Any feelings or impulses that prevent maximal weapons production (for example, feelings of regard for the environment) can wipe out the entire tribal unit (nation or state) that harbors, fosters, or encourages these feelings.
The problems that threaten the existence of the human race are therefore not what we would call ‘bugs’ in an otherwise well functioning society, they are features of the type of society that we have inherited from our evolutionary ancestors. If we keep this system, we keep these features. If we keep them long enough, they will destroy us. If we want to prevent this, we need to understand that we can’t get by leaving the animal system in place and trying to deal with problems one ware at a time, or one environmental catastrophe at a time.
We need to accept that the evolution of our societal structures has lagged behind the evolution of our weapons design and combat skills. We need to let our societies catch up to our progress in other areas, by rerouting the intellectual capital we now devote to research on weapons and indoctrination methods (to make people more patriotic and willing to kill and die ‘for their country’) to analysis of societies. We need to accept our animal past and understand that we MUST transcend our animalistic feelings or we will grow no more as a species.
The main purpose of this introduction is to generate a feeling of hope. I want you to realize that we are actually in a fantastic position now. We have new tools that never existed before. We can see with our own eyes that the imaginary lines are artificial and people are basically the same no matter where they were born, in relation to the location of imaginary lines (none of us chose the place of our birth). We have fantastic tools that we can use to get over these growing pains and get on to the next phase of our progress through destiny.
Part Two: The Socratic
Part Two of this book explains a type of society I call a ‘Socratic’
There are many different categories or types of societies that can exist. The TTS society is a category or type of society that has many different variants. (Feudal systems, for example, are different than modern industrial systems, but both are built on tribal territorial sovereignty.) More than 2,300 years ago, Socrates pointed out that societies that divide the world into independent and sovereign political units (he called these societies ‘πολιτείες ’ which would be pronounced ‘politiaks.”) are inherently violent and destructive. War is an inherent part of these societies. War is little more than organized and planned mass murder and destruction on the most massive scale possible. We can’t start with this foundational element and build a sound society (one with the quality Socrates called ‘δικαιοσύνη’). If we want a sound society, we need to start with some other foundation.
Socrates then worked out the characteristics that societies must have to be sound (have ‘δικαιοσύνη,’ to use his term). He pointed out the same things we have discussed in this introduction so far: it requires rethinking of the basic realities of our societies, particularly the role of the entities called ‘states’ and ‘nations.’ It requires that we divert some of the effort normally devoted to building weapons and indoctrinating children to make them warriors to analysis of society.
At the time, his country was at war. The authorities thought these ideas were extremely dangerous, mainly because Socrates made them so understandable. People, and particularly young people, accepted his ideas and, rather than devoting their lives to advancing the interests of their ‘country,’ started to try to advance the interests of the human race. The authorities could see that the war spirit and patriotism of the youth of Athens was weakening and, because the movement Socrates was part of actually existed all over the Medeterranian region (it had actually existed long before Socrates was born; Fact Based History goes over the movement in detail), Socrates ideas threatened the very existence of the state-based system (the one Socrates called ‘πολιτείες.’) They had Socrates arrested and, ultimately, put to death in an attempt to end this threat. Of course, after Socrates was arrested and executed, the authorities collected all of his writings and destroyed them, so we don’t have anything directly from his own pen today. However, many of the people he had influenced didn’t want Socrates ideas to die with the man, so they did their best to reconstruct his work and circulate it. We got Socrates ideas from them.
These ideas were always considered dangerous and many attempts were made to wipe them from the face of the Earth. We only have about 3 pages of what appears to be Plato’s key book in the sequence, called Critias, as the rest, along with key parts of other books, was destroyed and seems to be lost forever. But we do have enough information to put together a basic idea of idea of the foundational principles tht human societies must have to be sound societies (to have the quality Socrates used the term ‘δικαιοσύνη’ to describe). The Socratic society described in Part Two is built on these principles.
Socratic societies are one type among many types of societies that are within the capabilities of thinking beings with physical needs (the category of beings that includes humans, which almost inhabit many of the septillions of planets in this vast universe). The book Possible Societies goes over the different things that can vary about societies of these beings and show that we can break down the different societies that are possible into different categories or types. Some of the types of societies have forces that divide the individuals into tribal units that compete for resources, making them violent and destructive. Others do not have these forces. In these ‘other’ societies, peaceful cooperation and responsible relationships with the physical world are possible. These other types of societies can be ‘sound societies’ or, to use the term Socrates used, they can have ‘δικαιοσύνη.’
The book Possible Societies shows that there are actually a great many ways that thinking beings with physical needs can organize themselves that are not destructive or built on competitive violence. Possible Societies explanations the different things that can vary and shows how altering them can alter the types of societies that exist. I think this information is fascinating, but the analysis is quite long and some of it requires understanding some fairly complex math and technical processes. You don’t have to understand the details of all possible societies to understand that sound societies are possible. You only need an example of a society that meets the basic requirements that Socrates set for societies to be sound.
The Socratic society explained in Part Two is presented as an ‘example society.’ It is designed to show you that a sound society is a possible society. It can exist and operate in totally understandable ways. (In fact, sound societies are much easier to understand than TTS societies, because war based must have structures that encourage organized mass murder, and logic tells us that any society built to encourage this must use indoctrination to make people accept things that logic tells us are not true. Their structures must work against normal human nature. Sound societies can be far simpler because they can work with human nature, rather than against it.)
I want this example to be as easy to read and follow as possible, so I have framed it as a science fiction story. (As opposed to a technical analysis of society.) It starts with 1,000 people from modern times, including you the reader and myself the author, who go back in time 4 million years. We come ot a time before humans existed, so we don’t have to conform to any existing nations, alliances, or societal structures. None of these things exist and, if we don’t intentionally create them, they won’t exist.
We can make decisions as a group and vote on them. Any decisions we make as a group and vote to approve will have been made and approved by a majority of the members of the human race. This means that any decisions we make will reflect the will of the majority of the members of the human race as a whole.
All of the people in our group are from the 21st century. We have all been through an education system that attempted to make us willing to believe the things called ‘nations’ were real things and had a right to sovereignty and willing to fight to the death to protect this sovereignty. Some people were more swayed by this education than others. Some of them want to build our new system on the same foundation as the old one: they want to divide our 1,000 people into different nationalities, divide the land around us into different territories, assign each territory to a nationality, and let the fighting begin.
But the great majority of the members of our group don’t think this is a good way to start our existence on Earth. Since our group is the entire human race, this means a majority of the members of the human race don’t want to divide the human race and the world this way.
The nationalists include some fanatics. They say they have a right to sovereignty and will fight to get it, killing as many others as necessary to make this happen.
We will hold a meeting to discuss how to deal with this issue. The vast majority don’t want nations and don’t think it is a good idea to let a minority start organizing mass murder events to create something the vast majority don’t want. We are in a hostile world 4 million years in the past. We heed to work together as a group to survive. We pass a starting resolution that will eventually become what you may think of as the ‘prime directive’ of the human race. If people want to live with the majority and gain the benefits of organized and civilized life, they must accept rules passed by the majority, even if they don’t agree with them. Any that organize for mass murder to try to get away with things the majority don’t want them to do will be asked to leave. Only a tiny minority of our people are so fanatically nationalistic that they are willing to even consider using violence to get a right to form a nation and none of the members of this tiny minority are willing to have to face banishment from an organized community to have the right to do things that they want to do. In the end, our prime directive holds:
The will of the majority of the members of the human race determines global issues on Earth. The members of the human race agree to act together as a community to make sure no group that is less than the majority can force the majority to accept polices we don’t want.
The Evolution of Socratic
Our group in the remote past will call our new home ‘Pastland.’ We all have skills and talents that we brought back from the 21st century. We understand technology and the circumstances of our time transport have allowed us to bring substantial technology back with us.
We will put our skills to work. We will recreate the parts of the 21st century Earth that we like and want. We will find that we can build all of these things without having any need for ‘independent and sovereign nations.’ We will set up a system to propose rules we want to apply to the human race and set up elections where the human race votes, in popular elections, to determine which of these rules will be policy. It isn’t necessary to have ‘sovereign nations’ to have any of the things we want. We won’t need them and our prime directive essentially prohibits any group that wants to break way from the human race and become independent from doing so. We have agreed that we, the members of the human race, are united in one thing: we will not allow groups to subvert the will of the human race by force or use of violence. Our prime directive really only prohibits one thing: the entities we call ‘sovereign and independent nations’ can’t exist.
Everything else is on the table.
I want you to really understand the Socratic society, so I will describe it in great detail. I will ask you to put yourself into the position of decision maker. You have choices. What do you want? I want you to be able to relate to realities in Pastland so one of the first things we will create is the tool of ‘money.’ We will have a large number of the paper certificates that we call ‘United States currency’ with us and we will decide to use this as money. We will follow an economy and see how prices are set. You will see that the same basic forces determine prices in societies without independent and sovereign nations as determine prices in societies with nations. (In both cases, the main forces are supply and demand.). You will be able to see what is avaialble in markets and how much things cost.
In the end, we will have a society that looks a lot like our 21st century societies superficially. Prices are similar, wages are similar, and rents and housing costs are similar. But, while the details will be very similar, the foundational elements of the society will be entirely different. The human race will be in charge of matters that affect the human race. We don’t benefit from divisions and war and we don’t need them. We are all harmed in very real ways from environmental destruction and, ince there are no offsetting benefits in Socratic societies (as there are in TTS societies, which need the destruction to have success in war), we won’t have policies that allow it.
Part Three: Reforming Societies
After we understand the Socratic, we will go on to the next step in the problem.
Our group in Pastland can easily create a sound society because we are starting from scratch. We don’t have a legacy of millions of years of tribal territorial competition, where the drive for sovereignty has been turned into policy through thousands of years of competition. We don’t have to start with an existing system and convert it into a sound system.
In our 21st century world, we aren’t starting from scratch. We must start with the system that was in place when we were born. We can’t change the past or make it disappear. It is there and we must deal with it.
Part Thee of Preventing Extinction is about making a transition. After you finish Part Two, you will understand two entirely different kinds of societies. The first is the TTS society, the one into which you were born on the real world and came to understand by experiencing it. The second is the Socratic, which is built on tools that tie the human race together into a community of humankind, able to work together in an organized way on matters that affect the entire human race.
As noted above, there are many different kinds of societies that thinking beings with physical needs (the category of beings that includes humans) can form. Some are destructive and violent. Some are not. The Socratic system is an example of a society in the latter category. It is not the only kind of society that can exist where the beings don’t divide into tribes to compete over territorial sovereignty. It is an example of such a society, one that is ‘flushed out’ in a way that is designed to make you, the reader, comfortable. It is designed to be as close to the type of society that we have in our 21st century world as possible, and still be in the category of a ‘sound society.’
I didn’t pick this example at random. I picked it to present as an example because it is the closest society to the TTS societies we have now that is structurally sound. (The book Possible Societies shows that there are a great many sound societies that operate entirely differently than the societies we have now and wouldn’t even be recognizable to people from 21st century Earth.) The people who create the Socratic include you the reader and myself the author. There are things we like and want. We like and want nice meals, nice places to live, cars, roads, and stores, for example. We are comfortable with money and wouldn’t know how to live in a system without money. (Many systems have existed on Earth in the past that didn’t have money and humans were able to live good lives in them. But it is hard for us, living with money all our lives, to imagine how they did it.)
I chose this example precisely because it is so similar to 21st century Earth societies. Part Three deals with the idea of a transition between societies. We start with what we have now. (We have no choice about our starting society: it was in place when we were born.) We then start to create structures that will put it onto a path that will eventually lead to a Socratic society.
Part Three is called ‘reforming societies.’ The societies we have now have a certain form. Part Three explains a set of steps that, if taken, will empower the human race in a very specific way. We will see that we don’t have to actually invent the structures needed for this. Many people in the past, including Socrates have understood the basic problem with TTS societies and tried to create structures to correct it. Part Three discusses the important attempts that have been made so far to change the course of human progress. I think you will be surprised to find that many of these attempts came extremely close to working.
You aren’t very likely to find analysis of attempts to change society in conventional history books, because these books cater to ideas consistent with tribal territorial sovereignty and are designed mainly to glorify war. The book Fact Based History deals with historical issues that conventional history books—particularly those written to provide background information for children in government run schools—leave out. We actually know a lot about the attempts to change the world and can see that many of them very nearly worked.
If we understand the things that have been tried before, and understand the exact reasons that the people who wanted to keep our animalistic system were able to defeat them, we can see that nothing crazy is required. We need an organization that represents the human race. We need to find a way to create funding for this organization so it can actually have some impact on word events.
We have prototypes of these organizations; they already exist. We just need to understand the exact steps that must be taken to give these organizations power and control over world events. This is one of the reasons we must understand a ‘destination society’ before we can create a plan that will get us where we want to go. It just isn’t possible to plan a trip if you don’t have a destination in mind from the start.
Part Four: Details
The theme of this introduction to Preventing Extinction is that we need to make structural changes to our societies to survive as a race. Part Three explains how to put us onto a path that will cause the course of human history to change direction. We can’t make these changes overnight. We must make a transition. The transition will take time.
Part Three explains the general idea of change and explains how to get the process moving along. You may equate this to the idea of using antibiotics to cure the disease of tuberculosis. If you loved one is dying of this disease, you need to wipe out the cause of the disease. This take time. The antibiotics interfere in the reproduction of the bacteria that cause tuberculosis. The rate of growth of the tumors slows but does not stop. Your loved one may still die, even after treatment has started. You need to do your best to make her as strong as possible so that her body’s natural defenses will overpower the bacteria.
The antibiotics don’t do anything for the symptoms of tuberculosis. She will continue to have bloody cough even after treatment has begun and can have coughing fits that will kill her. She will continue to have fevers that are so high they can melt her brain and may kill her. Here body’s resouirces will continue to be consumed by this disease (that used to be called ‘consumption’). You can’t just give her a few shots of antibiotics and expect her to walk out of the hospital in perfect health. You need to have a treatment plan that focuses on the antibiotics but deals with all aspects of the disease.
If we want to prevent extinction for our race, we need to take the same approach. We must understand that war and destruction are not superficial aspects of our societies, they are deeply engrained aspects of our systems. Wars existed before humans even evolved and our societies evolved around them. They are integral aspects of our societies and policy makers in the world actually use them, creating war intentionally to deal with certain other problems that are inherent parts of TTS societies.
One example involves the problem called ‘unemployment.’ Over the centuries, rulers have found their countries can compete better in war if they have rigid hierarchies and ‘class systems,’ where the members of one of the classes, the lowest, have no claim on any of the wealth the world produces and will die if they can’t ‘get a job’ and sell their labor. TTS societies that tried to operate in ways that gave people incomes without having to work couldn’t compete militarily and industrially with societies that accepted and enforced the class structure. Cultural evolution wiped them out and, in our world today, the class structure exists everywhere.
This system can collapse if there isn’t enough work for all members of society born into this lowest ‘class.’ If there aren’t enough jobs they must compete for the few jobs that do exist by agreeing to work for less. Wages fall. Falling wages doesn’t create additional work and the unemployed must continue to compete for work. Wages can fall below the level of substance. (In times of high unemployment, even people who work as many hours as they can stay awake sometimes can’t feed their families.) With fewer people working, and far lower wages for those who do work, spending collapses and factories and farms start to lay off workers. This makes the problem even worse and, if policy makers can’t find a way to create enormous numbers of jobs quickly, the system will collapse.
Policy makers know that wars create jobs. They intentionally create wars, even if there is no reason for the war other than to put people to work killing each other. World War Two appears to be an example of an intentionally created war. The planet was in a depression. Politicians in Germany, Italy, and Japan knew war would put people to work. They campaigned on the issue of war: if they got into power, their country would go to war and this would pull it out of the depression. They kept their promises.
The creation of work is not a good thing in all societies. It is only good in societies that are forced, by the basic requirements of war, to create a class structure and leave one class with no claim to anything the world produces. Socratic societies won’t need to create artificial wars and subsidize destruction to put people to work because it won’t be forced into the class system.
As noted earlier, others have understood the steps that have to be taken and tried to take them. But they had a hard time doing this because the majority of the people in society, having been raised and educated to act like animals and organize for war, didn’t understand what was happening. Their minds were under the control of the animalist leaders of the tribal systems, who had total control over the information stream.
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