Academia Iluministă (50)
Thomas Kuhn in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions introduced a radically different way of looking at scientific progress. He contested the view that science is objective, dispassionate and follows a steady, linear upwards trajectory of progress. Instead, he said that science involved “paradigms”, which can be thought of as intellectual frameworks in which scientific theories are produced. While a certain paradigm reigns, all of the accepted theories belong to that paradigm, and any theories which disagree with it are rejected, marginalized and ridiculed. A scientific establishment upholds the paradigm. Funding is given to those scientists who are supportive of the paradigm and denied to anyone who isn’t. The paradigm becomes a kind of religion, with its high priests and sacred theories that must not be challenged. Heretics aren’t welcome.
The paradigm can link into non-scientific arenas such as the prevailing economic, religious and political systems. Western science is closely tied to capitalism, industry and business and was once under the direction of the Judaeo-Christian paradigm. If capitalism gives money to science then science does capitalism’s bidding. The paradigm reflects the dominant culture rather than purely scientific considerations. It invariably becomes compromised, corrupted and part of a whole system of thought and attitudes, ruled over ultimately by the super rich, like everything else. Look at how many top scientists have worked for the military-industrial complex.
Kuhn described “normal science” as the science that takes places while a particular paradigm reigns. Normal science tends to endure over long periods. The Newtonian paradigm lasted for over 200 years, with all of the science taking place within that time reflecting Newtonian thinking.
However, anomalies start to accumulate. Initially, these are conveniently ignored. As more and more appear, they put a growing strain on the paradigm, which gradually becomes less credible. Eventually it breaks down and revolution erupts. A new paradigm must be found that is better at dealing with the anomalies. Thus Newtonian physics gave way to relativity theory and quantum mechanics. Einstein was heavily involved in the formation of both of the new theories and yet even he couldn’t reconcile himself with the revolutionary implications of quantum mechanics and remained loyal to much of the Newtonian paradigm. By the time of his death, many scientists regarded him as a sad old man who couldn’t move with the times. What a fate for such an innovator!
The current paradigm of physics remains quantum mechanics and relativity theory, but it is already known that they are incompatible and thus a new paradigm is sought in which they will be reconciled. The best candidate for the reconciliation is said to be “M-Theory” based on “superstrings”.
Science proceeds by ways of long periods of normal science, followed by “revolutionary science” when the best new paradigm vies with and then takes over from its predecessor. Once the new paradigm is entrenched, normal science resumes and the new ideas become the establishment paradigm.
Kuhn pointed out that the new paradigm often doesn’t win over the supporters of the old paradigm, who remain wedded to their old ideas – just as Einstein remained wedded to the objective determinism of Newtonian physics rather than the observer-created, probabilistic world of quantum physics.
Often, the old paradigm literally dies out – when those who were brought up with it die, just as Max Planck remarked.
If Kuhn is right and rival paradigms can co-exist for a while, with the old paradigm gradually being killed off by the deaths of its supporters rather than being triumphantly replaced by the new paradigm, then it implies that science is partisan, non-objective, and not even particularly rational i.e. the evidence is not deemed sufficient to decide the matter. In other words, science is a belief system.
That’s particularly true in the case of Islamic “science”, which is fundamentally flawed because it invokes the concepts of haram (forbidden) and halal (praiseworthy) in relation to the Koran i.e. Islamic science is not allowed to contradict Mohammed’s “revelation”. If it does, it is wrong and must be rejected. Hence Islamic science is a joke that can make no conceivable progress.
C.P. Snow described the sciences on the one hand and arts and humanities on the other as “two cultures” that had ceased communicating with each other. We might say that they belong to two different paradigms. The gap has arisen because science is now so specialised and complex that it’s extremely hard for a non-scientist to get any real idea of what’s going on. Equally, scientists have no time to engage with the humanities since the demands science places on them are so onerous. Even worse, there is a fundamental difference in brain-wiring and psychological types between those who work in science and those in the humanities. Very few people can bridge the gap.
Scientists and technologists are overwhelmingly rationals, with a few idealists in the mix. Those in the humanities are overwhelmingly artisans with a few guardians in the mix.
Doesn’t the suspicion grow that different personality types have a strong tendency to drift apart and create separate worlds? It’s one of the most natural processes in the world. Shouldn’t we accept the reality of this and take it to its logical conclusions? i.e. rather than have a one-size-fits-all world where we all get thrown together in one gigantic melting point and have to blindly navigate our way around in a frequently hostile and incomprehensible environment, why don’t we create four worlds – one for rationals, one for idealists, one for artisans and one for guardians. Or perhaps only two are needed: one for sensers (the guardians and artisans who have sensing as either their primary or auxiliary function) and one for intuitives (the rationals and idealists who have intuition as their primary or auxiliary function).
In Zeitgeist 3 – Moving Forward, the Project Earth section shows a wonderful utopian city based on neat, perfectly designed concentric circles. When rationals and idealists see this, they think, “WOW!!! I want to live there.” When guardians and artisans look at it, they say, “What a load of crap. Only geeks, nerds and dorks could dream up something like that.” The sensers outnumber the intuitives by four to one. The Zeitgeist vision can never be realised while the sensers rule the world.
The ruling Western paradigm is: Judaeo-Christian Abrahamism, democracy, capitalism, “freedom”, liberalism, sensing, materialism and “negative liberty”. All mainstream thinking takes place within this paradigm. If you want to get on in the world, you had better play the game and obey this paradigm. Don’t dare challenge it and become a heretic.
The Illuminati’s heretical and revolutionary paradigm, the one with which we seek to replace the old paradigm, is: Illuminism, meritocracy, social capitalism, freedom, radicalism, intuition, idealism and “positive liberty” This will be the final paradigm shift, the one ordained by the dialectic of freedom. But the followers of the old paradigm will never fully embrace it. Only when they have all died off will the old paradigm finally vanish.
That’s why children are the key to the future. If all children are brought up and educated with the new paradigm, there’s nothing the parents can do, just as there was nothing the English Catholics could do as their children were inculcated with Protestantism in the time of Henry VIII and his successors. Within two generations, a Catholic country had become toxically anti-Catholic. The old paradigm was well and truly dead.brought up and educated with the new paradigm, there’s nothing the parents can do, just as there was nothing the English Catholics could do as their children were inculcated with Protestantism in the time of Henry VIII and his successors. Within two generations, a Catholic country had become toxically anti-Catholic. The old paradigm was well and truly dead.
That’s how the game works. The revolutionaries change the paradigm and then the children are brought up under the new regime and reflect the new paradigm. Their parents are powerless to prevent it.
At the moment, no one in any country has any choice about what paradigm they will live under. If we are free human beings then shouldn’t we be offered options?
As Kierkegaard wrote, “How did I get into the world? Why was I not asked about it and why was I not informed of the rules and regulations but just thrust into the ranks as if I had been bought by a peddling shanghaier of human beings? How did I get involved in this big enterprise called existence? Why should I be involved? Isn’t it a matter of choice? And if I am compelled to be involved, where is the manager—I have something to say about this. Is there no manager? To whom shall I make my complaint?”
Why should any of us have to accept a paradigm we didn’t choose? Why should we be subjects to its laws and ideology? Does that not make us slaves?
All of us MUST have a choice of which paradigm we live under. We have to escape the tyranny of one-size-fits-all systems that are there for the convenience of the privileged elite and allow them to exert maximum control over us.
It’s agony for idealists and rationals to suffer the dumbed-down materialism of the guardians and artisans. We can’t allow them to dictate to us. We are much smarter than they are. We have to act together and use our superior intelligence to create the Zeitgeist world. We will never be free unless we cooperate and combine our incredible strengths.
The world needs a minimum of two paradigms. That’s the basic level of choice. Four paradigms is probably the best number, giving us a broader but manageable set of choices. Wouldn’t you like to know that there was a part of the world specially designed for people like you where you can enjoy an optimised life?
Freedom is about choices, so where are our choices? Sure, we can choose what objects to buy, what things to consume, but we have no say at all about what type of paradigm we live under. All of us get just one – the paradigm of the ruling elite.
The dialectic of freedom demands free choices between different paradigms. Only then will we feel truly free.
We could go even further in the pursuit of choice and create an entirely new model of society based on the concept of the city-state, which was the model adopted by ancient Greece, the founder of Western civilisation. The achievements of the ancient Greeks were so astounding that even now it’s impossible to look upon them with anything other than awe. Was the city-state model fundamental to their success? If so, shouldn’t we be trying to resurrect it?
For example, could this model resolve the tensions building in the multiethnic, multicultural melting point of the modern UK? Unlike America, the UK does not expect its citizens to be British first and foremost. There are many people who physically live in Britain, but are not of Britain i.e. they openly proclaim their allegiance to foreign powers such as Pakistan.
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The Ancient Greek Solution to Multiculturalism:
Contrary to the rhetoric of the politicians, the UK is not a shining example of multiculturalism, but a patchwork of sullen, mutually suspicious ghettoes. Perhaps the UK should look to history for remedies. The city-states of Ancient Greece, of Renaissance Italy, and Germany under the Holy Roman Empire were all highly successful and arguably set the intellectual agenda for the world. Does the citystate model provide the best way of handling Islamic fundamentalism?
Britons are constantly told of how much more tolerant they are than the French, Germans, Danes etc., and how they’ve handled the issue of immigration so much more successfully. Of course, it’s all spin. Britain is a seething cauldron of racial and cultural tension, and as soon as you talk to real people in real bars, you hear the bile pouring out.
Multicultural Britain is Ghetto Britain. The whole country is riven with unacknowledged apartheid. A BBC Panorama programme highlighted the case of Blackburn. This town has been split in two, into a white half (where “white” refers to the indigenous population of Britain) and a Muslim half (mostly immigrants from Pakistan). Panorama tracked the movements of two taxis – one driven by a white man and the other by a Muslim – and discovered that neither taxi ever ventured into the respective “wrong” side of town.
Blackburn is simply a more visible version of what has happened throughout the UK – “no-go” areas have popped up everywhere. The process is a familiar one. Immigrant families enter certain districts of a town, “white flight” soon becomes evident and immigrants gradually populate the whole district. The immigrant area relentlessly expands until it reaches some clearly defined barrier such as a river, a motorway, countryside etc.
Neither the immigrants nor the whites (and, of course, the immigrants are often white themselves these days, from Eastern Europe) are engaging in anything sinister. Immigrants like to be with those who share their culture, language, understand their problems, enjoy their cuisine and ways of doing thing etc. It’s only natural that they should congregate in the same places. By the same token, the indigenous population have, on the whole, no desire to end up surrounded by an imported culture alien to them, so as soon as the immigrant population reaches a certain critical mass in a particular area, the indigenous population departs. Some people might suspect underlying racism, but how can it be non-racist for immigrants to wish to stick together and then racist for the indigenous population to wish to do exactly the same?
We now live in patchwork Britain. Communities are developing separately from each other, with different standards of living, different cultural norms and alternative ways of perceiving the world. Resentment, suspicion and hostility between different communities are only to be expected. If this divided nation is the manifestation of the great triumph of multiculturalism, something has gone horribly wrong.
Are there examples from history that might provide genuinely successful models of multicultural development? One that leaps out is Ancient Greece. For obvious reasons, it can’t be considered an example of racial multiculturalism (everyone was of the same race), but the city-states that comprised Ancient Greece unquestionably promoted the coexistence of radically different cultures.
The two most notable Greek city-states were, famously, Athens and Sparta. Athens was a democracy (although women had no vote and neither did the huge slave population, nor freedmen, nor anyone not born in Athens), and produced famous philosophers such as Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, great tragic playwrights such as Euripides, Sophocles and Aeschylus, comic writers such as Aristophanes, beautiful architecture such as the Parthenon, wonderful sculptures, and great historians such as Herodotus and Thucydides. It also had a superb navy and became a great maritime and mercantile power.
Sparta, by contrast, operated a system of dual monarchy. It was a ferocious military power, and the ability of its soldiers became legendary. It deliberately didn’t build walls around the city to demonstrate that its soldiers were the only defence it required. The concentration on military affairs left no room for anything else. Sparta produced no significant architecture, philosophy, poetry or art: a sterile culture in almost every way. It maintained a reign of terror over a huge slave population (the helots), fearing the slaves were always on the point of revolt. Oddly, women were highly esteemed in Sparta and enjoyed far more privileges than other Greek women. Amongst other things, they were encouraged to train and exercise, thus becoming famed for their beautifully honed bodies: the predecessors of today’s Californian gym bunnies.
Thebes and Corinth were the other two most prominent Greek city-states, though there were scores of others, mostly in alliance with the major players. Competition was fierce between the city-states, sublimated in the form of great events such as the Olympics, but often expressed in savage wars.
Nevertheless, it was from these Greek city-states that practically the whole of modern European culture emanated. And it was again thanks to city-states that European culture emerged from a bleak period of stagnation in the Dark and Middle Ages. The Renaissance sprang from the Italian city-states of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries: world-renowned cities such as Florence, Rome, Naples, Turin, Bologna, Sienna, Milan and Venice. Without this particular Italianate city-state structure, the Renaissance may never have happened. As in Ancient Greece, competition between city-states was bitter, and violent conflicts frequent. Nevertheless, art, science and culture in general flowered in this cut-throat environment. Great patrons of the arts such as the Medicis came to the fore. Culture, like war, was in a sense a continuation of politics by other means; another way of demonstrating a city-state’s power, status and superiority. Science and technology, as engines of progress in weapons’ design, were heavily supported. Political theorists such as Machiavelli also found themselves in vogue.
Germany, in the time of the Holy Roman Empire, was largely a collection of city-states, and in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries it too became a powerhouse of advances in philosophy, science, maths, music and literature.
Scotland in the eighteenth century was in some sense a large citystate centred on Edinburgh, with a burning desire to distinguish itself following the Union with England in 1707. The Scottish Enlightenment gave us several figures of global importance including Adam Smith, the founder of economic science and first theoretician of free market capitalism, and David Hume in philosophy, perhaps the greatest sceptic of all, to whom all philosophers must pay due regard.
History has demonstrated over and over that city-states bring something extra to the party. The intense rivalry they engender often becomes associated with accelerated advances in science, technology, philosophy and art. City-states are a tried-and-tested antidote to stagnation and cultural stultification.
So, how could modern Britain make use of city-states to address the problem of multiculturalism? The key is not to be frightened by ghettoisation, but to take it much further and transform it into a positive virtue. We could have a Hindu city-state for the Indian community, a city-state for Orthodox Jews, one for Catholics, Baptists, Methodists, Anglicans, Jehovah’s Witnesses etc.
Muslims tend to be either liberal or fundamentalist. There could be a city-state for each type. The Islamic fundamentalist city-state should be allowed to apply its own local laws, which would no doubt involve Sharia Law.
Some might say that in this time of the War on Terror, it would be mad to allow fundamentalists to set up their own “safe haven” within Britain. However, this policy would actually enhance security. All those disaffected youths who spend their time loathing Britain and the West would now throw their energies into proving the “superiority” of their Islamic city-state. Their efforts would be constructively channelled and result in productive outcomes. Far from attacking Britain, they would become proud Muslims and ultimately proud Britons too, just as the Athenians and Spartans were proud of their city-states and proud of being Greeks. When the time came, they fought together against the common enemy, Persia.
Fundamentalist Muslim women could happily wear the hijab, niqab, the burqa without offending anyone. The Islamic city-state could send its children to its own Islamic schools without interference.
Of course, any Muslim who preferred not to live in a Muslim citystate wouldn’t have to, but they’d also have to leave behind the visible signs of their religion if they chose to go to a non-Muslim city-state. No veils; no ethnic wear; no mosques.
Let the white, racist British National Party have their own citystate, and let them expend their energies on trying to run it successfully. Handicapped and disabled people could have their own purpose-built, state-of-the-art city-state if they so desired, and the opportunity to run their own affairs without being discriminated against. Lesbians and gay men, swingers, the elderly, intellectuals, artists, loved-up smug couples, sexy singles, “nuclear” families, careerists – they could all have their own city-states where they could indulge their lifestyles and have them tailored for their specific needs, without aggravating others. Those who couldn’t care less about differences between people could have their own liberal city-states where anything goes. Meritocrats could run one city-state, royalists and supporters of privilege another. Animal lovers could have a city that revolved around their pets. People might choose to live with those of the same psychological type. The smartest and most creative people could live together. People would go only where they felt most comfortable, to the city-state that most met their needs. Everyone would freely choose. No one would be in any way compelled.
There could also be a city-state for all new immigrants. Any newcomer to the UK would have to stay in this city-state for at least a year before being allowed to move to a different city-state in the UK proper. Since their own quality of life would be adversely impacted by too much immigration, the immigrant community in this city-state would find it in their interests to restrict the number of new immigrants coming into the country. If this city-state is sealed off from the rest of the country then the quality of life of the immigrants who live there becomes directly dependent on whom they let in. It’s a counterintuitive solution to immigration, but perhaps exactly what’s needed. Having immigrants police themselves might prove the perfect method for controlling immigration.
Historically, city-states have proved disproportionately creative and rapidly adaptive to changing circumstances. Citizens tend to take greater pride in their city-state than they do in their nation as a whole. Their self-respect, self-confidence and self-pride are all higher. Separate communities can evolve without interference from disapproving opponents. Ghettoes can be transformed from minuses into pluses. Is this the perfect model for multicultural Britain?
Isn’t there anyone who dreams of the glories of Athens, Sparta, Thebes and Corinth being reborn in grey, dreary old Britain? Being broken into city-states could energise the whole country. In the old Ealing comedy Passport to Pimlico, a tiny part of London declared itself a separate state. Perhaps the film wasn’t so much fanciful as prophetic.
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The world has run out of ideas. The old systems have reached the end of the road. They are unfit for purpose. New visions, new futures, new choices are demanded. We can have tailor-made education systems for everyone, and tailor-made city-states where they can live. Who but the enemies of freedom would oppose a new world based on genuine choice? The one-size-fits-all, sausage machine view of the world is long past its sell-by date. It hasn’t made us happy. We will be happy only when we live in environments that make sense to us, where we feel at home, surrounded by friends and allies on the same wavelength. Only then will we flourish and make the most of ourselves.
In the past, race, religion and culture have been used as the basis for separation, but psychology is the only truly rational, and indeed moral, basis for dividing people into groups. Division by skin colour is blind prejudice and utterly ridiculous. Division by Myers-Briggs types is about ensuring a rational world. Much of the world seems incomprehensible and in truth it really is – because it’s mostly the product of others types of mentality with which few of us have any sympathy or empathy. If you want the world to make sense you have to order it so that you are mostly surrounded by people on your wavelength.
To rationals in particular, the need for a rational world is paramount. The Zeitgeist movies present a rational new vision of the world. The trouble is that most people aren’t rational and are not seduced by Zeitgeist. How do you persuade the irrational of the rational way forward? They don’t know what you’re talking about.
The rationals and idealists – the intuitives – must act as one irresistible force. We have no choice if we want a better world. Otherwise we will be condemned to live forever under the tyranny of the irrational sensers.
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The Rationals:
Most members of the Illuminati are INTJ and INTP.
INTJ (the Mastermind):
Dominant function: Introverted Intuition
Auxiliary: Extraverted Thinking
Tertiary: Introverted Feeling
Inferior: Extraverted Sensing
INTP (the Architect):
Dominant: Introverted Thinking
Auxiliary: Extraverted Intuition
Tertiary: Introverted Sensing
Inferior: Extraverted Feeling
Note how the INTPs are extraverted where the INTJs are introverted, and introverted where the INTJs are extraverted. They are an introversion/ extraversion mirror image. Many of the leadership of the Old World Order are ENTJ and ENTP:
ENTJ (the Fieldmarshal):
Dominant: Extraverted Thinking
Auxiliary: Introverted Intuition
Tertiary: Extraverted Sensing
Inferior: Introverted Feeling
ENTP (the Inventor):
Dominant: Extraverted Intuition
Auxiliary: Introverted Thinking
Tertiary: Extraverted Feeling
Inferior: Introverted Sensing
Note how similar ENTJ is to INTJ; the main difference being that INTJ has a dominant function of introverted intuition and auxiliary function of extraverted thinking, whereas ENTJ have a dominant function of extraverted thinking and auxiliary function of introverted intuition. They are a dominant/
The ENTPs and INTPs have a similar relationship. Where the INTP has a dominant function of introverted thinking, it is the auxiliary for the ENTP. Where the INTP has an auxiliary function of extraverted intuition, it is the dominant function for the ENTP.
If the ENTJs and ENTPs could unite with the INTJs and INTPs, it would be game over.
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The Choice Paradigm:
Why did communism fail to overthrow capitalism in the West? A number of reasons have been advanced, such as the capitalist ruling class using their control of the media and education system to create a false consciousness amongst the people whereby they were subtly indoctrinated into supporting the ideology of the rulers, an ideology hostile to their own interests. A much simpler analysis can be provided. Any objective comparison of capitalism and communism shows that the former offered much more choice and freedom than the latter, even if much of it was illusory. In the Soviet Union, you could not even enjoy the illusion of voting the government out of office. There was only one political party – the Communist Party, so you had no access to alternative political voices. Dissent was ruthlessly suppressed. The secret police were everywhere. There was no free speech. As for buying goods and services, you had to take whatever Communism put in front of you from its selection of state monopolies. There was almost no choice and all of the goods and services were of inferior quality.
Any system that seeks to replace capitalism must offer more choice, more freedom, higher quality and more fulfilling lives. Communism, in retrospect, made almost every mistake imaginable. The “cure for capitalism” actually ended up worse than the disease.
Most people won’t tolerate being told what’s best for them. They won’t conduct themselves rationally. They will always act emotionally and according to ruthless self-interest as they perceive it. Capitalism has understood human psychology extremely well.
Either the people are dragged kicking and screaming into the modern age by a superior, dominant force, or they must be seduced.
The city-state paradigm, no matter how seemingly impractical, offers a glimpse of a radically new world with an astonishing degree of freedom and choice. We can create bespoke political systems for people, giving them exactly the “micro-world” they have clamoured for. Then it’s up to them whether their chosen city-state sinks or swims. They will have to work hard and they will have no one to blame but themselves if everything goes wrong. The State thus transfers to the people the responsibility for the State’s success. Every citizen will be active and engaged: they will have no choice. If they are part of a city-state that they have personally chosen and which then goes horribly wrong, they have had their political vision refuted in the only way that counts – in the open for all to see. They can’t claim that it was anyone else’s fault. They chose it and they fucked it up. So, if that’s what goes down then a) their political thinking is rejected forever and b) they have to go begging to another city-state to be allowed in there.
“Phantom” (a leading member of The Movement) enquired whether “socialist” meritocracy had close affinities to Social Libertarianism and other sophisticated types of anarchism and hence whether The Movement should seek to garner support from such quarters. He also mentioned the ongoing “basic income” debate – involving whether or not everyone should receive a guaranteed income from the State for being a citizen – that has been raging in The Movement’s forum and is examined in another book in this series (Voices of the Movement).
Phantom said, “The ideal state will be one where the citizens participate in society out of their own conscious & knowing volition as opposed to being duped or forced into it.”
He’s exactly right, but one thing is certain – there’s no one-size-fits-all political system that will command everyone’s loyalty and devotion.
In our book entitled New World Order, we proposed that 16 education systems should be constructed for primary school children, corresponding to the 16 Myers-Briggs types. Every personality type would thus get a bespoke education rather than the one-size-fits-all treatment they receive at the present time. Who can doubt that such an education system would produce enormously superior students? No one would be alienated from school. Every kid would thrive.
Exactly the same type of thinking can be extended to politics via the city-state model. Instead of imposing a totalitarian one-size-fits-all system on everyone, leaving most people distinctly cold and uninspired, we create multiple political systems and every citizen can freely choose the political system that most appeals to them.
The basic income debate reveals radically different views of human nature. There’s no point at all in trying to reconcile the two visions, or to hold a democratic vote to decide the issue. Neither party to the debate would find it acceptable if they lost, and indeed why should they? Both think they’re right, and both have presented their cases passionately and skilfully.
We can’t shout down one side and say that they’ve got it wrong somehow. The only rational way forward, respecting the principles of greater freedom, choice and citizen engagement, is to say that in a meritocratic system, both options will be given their chance to flourish.
Every citizen can get what they want – if they can find enough supporters to join them in their enterprise. But it’s then their personal responsibility to make it work. Those who support basic income will have to create their own economic system to pay for it. Those who think it will be a disaster do not have to participate in it. A compromise would make both parties unhappy. Using the city-state model, both sides get what they want, and they will be proved right or wrong in due course.
One of the accusations made against the basic income ideology is that it would inevitably result in a group of parasites living off the work of others. Well, all those who harbour that suspicion would of course stay well clear. Those who think it can succeed will be the only victims if it goes belly up. What is fairer than ensuring that people live with the consequences of their own choices; that they stand or fall by their own efforts?
Phantom suggested that it should be the State’s priority to “preserve and maximize the freedoms of the individual and to support them regardless.” The State can achieve these goals only by being multi-faceted and infinitely flexible. Consider the USA. There are fifty States, with significant autonomy, ruled by a Federal government (mostly immensely unpopular and regarded almost as fascist). Utah is a “Mormon” State. California is socially liberal, with the city of San Francisco being renowned for its gay population. Many southern States are racist. Many Bible Belt States have a Christian fundamentalist ethos. Alaska and Montana are for the outdoors types. Every State has its own stereotype.
In other words, a de facto city-state model already exists. Why not adjust the balance so that the Federal Government’s power is massively reduced, and the autonomy of the States greatly increased? They can have their own constitution, laws and ways of doing things. Every citizen can go to whatever State most suits their inclinations. The Federal Government becomes merely a body for ensuring good relations between the States. But wouldn’t economic mayhem result? Each State would have radically different economic policies, after all.
In Europe, a one-size-fits-all currency – the Euro – has been in use throughout the “Euro zone”, with disastrous consequences. What the Euro experiment has proved beyond doubt is that you can have a single currency only if all the countries that use the currency have similar economies and economic policies i.e. they need to be much more closely integrated. The Euro needs a united and closely integrated Europe.
You must introduce separate currencies if you increase national or state economic autonomy. And you have to impose strict firewalls to prevent a catastrophe in one place spreading everywhere else. The global economy almost collapsed in 2008 because there were no banking firewalls in the West – all the banks were multinational leviathans with their fingers in every pie. They were all dependent on each other. When one got into trouble, they all did – madness!
What would America say to having the dollar broken up into fifty separate currencies to allow each State to run its economy and banks exactly as it sees fit? The Ayn Randists could abolish all regulation, as they’ve always desired. The anarcho-capitalist libertarians could do whatever they like. The anarchists could have the government-free State they’ve always craved. Socialist libertarianism could flourish in New York or California. Everyone could get what they want. No more compromise. No more having to water everything down.
The world would retreat from globalisation to localisation, from “big is beautiful” to small and bespoke. The faceless, impersonal forces of capitalist globalization would be halted at a stroke.
True freedom is about being allowed to make highly specific choices about how you live your life. If you are part of a vast human mass all with radically different opinions, you will never get what you want. Everything will always be bitterly contested and reduced to an ineffectual compromise. However, if you can get together with people on the same wavelength, you can say goodbye to compromise, disputation and muddle. You and your colleagues can single-mindedly build your own dream state.
Most people don’t feel any engagement with politics. Why should they? It’s just a game that takes place far away in a congress, parliament or assembly. The whole thing is a cynical set of deals and compromises that give no one what they want. What’s the point? Every citizen must become engaged and active and they will do so only if their State reflects who they are.
Freedom and choice are maximised when you get to choose what kind of State you live in. Why not be an American with fifty sub-Americas to choose from? The ancient Greek city-states were proudly independent, but were still Greek and cooperated when necessary.
Why go on trying to find a common way of living with anarchists, libertarians, anarcho-capitalist libertarians, Ayn Randists, rednecks, the Tea Party, Republicans, Democrats, Christian fundamentalists, Mormons, Muslims, Survivalists, Rapturists etc etc?
How will you ever be happy when you are surrounded by people you actively loathe? Imagine being in a State full of people who all share your enthusiasms and ways of thinking. You can be friends with all of them. You can all work together with a common purpose. You’re all pulling in the same direction rather than endlessly squabbling. Don’t you think you will be able to achieve infinitely more?
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3/7
