The Japanese "Chushingura" (忠臣蔵) is a fictionalized version of the story of the 47 ronin who chose to avenge the death of their master, even at the cost of their lives. The real event took place in 1701 in Edo (above, an interpretation by Utagawa Hiroshige). Much of the emotional value of the Chushingura derives from the contrast between the ronin, who saw the world, in terms of personal honor, and the government, which saw only laws and their rigid enforcement. Would it be possible to contrast the dominance of the state by creating new types of social structures, maybe different kinds of states, that replicate some of the characteristics of the ancient, honor-based associations? Not an easy task, of course, but things always change, and the future could bring big surprises.
Once, there was the possibility to quit. Motivated groups of people could flee from the band of psychopathic murderers who claimed to be their masters and settle somewhere else to create a new state. In the past, the Pilgrim Fathers did that, and later the Mormons. It didn't always work so well, but at least they had a chance. But now, of course, where in the world could you run? The only places theoretically free from governments are micro-islands or abandoned oil drilling platforms. There would seem to be no hope. And yet, there could be ways if we think out of the box.
First, what is a state, exactly? In the modern version, a state is defined by the land it controls: it has rigid boundaries called "borders." But what really keeps the state together is its control of money. The state issues money (actually, central banks do that, also empowering ordinary banks to do the same. But it is all under state control, anyway). Then, the state takes back the money it has issued in the form of tax, fines, and other forms of extortion. It is this circular loop that keeps citizens bound to the state in a relationship that we can only define as a soft version of slavery (maybe not even so soft). You need money to survive, and the only way to get money is to obey the state. In recent times, we have seen states moving directly to seize the bank accounts of those citizens who were deemed guilty of dissent. It was a way to remark that citizens don't really own the money they think they own. All the money belongs to the state. (*)
Because of the enormous power of money, everything inside the borders of a state is absolutely, completely, and irreversibly under the control of the state. Outside, there is another state, just as absolutist, suspicious, paranoid, and ruled by the same kind of murderous psychopaths. If you are the offspring of citizens of a certain state, you are by definition a slave to the government of that state. It is called "ius sanguinis." Some states apply the ius soli, which states that citizens are those people born inside the border of the state. It changes nothing to the fact that you have no choice.
But it was not always like this. In ancient times, your place in society was not defined by physical boundaries and not even by money, but by your allegiance to a liege lord to whom you pledged fealty. A pledge of fealty was no joke. It involved a deep bond of reciprocal obligations based on personal honor. To realize how deep that bond could be, you just have to think of the story of the forty-seven Japanese ronin, who took as a mission to avenge the death of their lord. Their action was a direct challenge to the power of the Japanese state, which reacted by sentencing all of them to death.
Unlike modern citizenship in a state, fealty was, within some limits, a choice. Your "state" was where your lord was, independently of fixed borders. You can see an echo of these ancient uses in the "Dune" novel by Frank Herbert. It is when the Emperor orders the house of Atreids to leave their possession on planet Caledon and move to Arrakis. The followers of the Atreids are not bound to Caledon, they all move with their lords to Arrakis.
For some reason, most likely because of the pervasive corruption brought by money, the idea of pledging fealty to a noble house is completely out of fashion, nowadays. But things constantly change. States have become such monstrosities that many people are reasoning about replacing them with something else or, at least, making them a little more flexible and less violent and bloodthirsty. And here comes a possibility: the Metaverse.
I know that, for many of us, the term "Metaverse" is nearly the same thing as enslavement by a totalitarian state. But when a new technology appears, you never know how it may evolve and what it may lead to. On this subject, I had a flash of understanding when I read the article "Virtual Reality and the Network State" by Ryan Matters, which just appeared on "Off Guardian." Absolutely worth reading. Let me report here some of the points that Matters makes, citing from his post.
The term “metaverse” was first used by futurist and Science fiction writer, Neal Stephenson in his 1992 book Snow Crash to describe a “theoretical” 3D virtual reality that ordinary people could occupy. ....
A deeper look at Stephenson’s work reveals some interesting themes, for the list of topics explored in his books reads like the meeting agenda from a closed session at Davos; climate change, global pandemics, biological warfare, nanotechnology, geo-engineering, robotics, cryptography, virtual reality, the list goes on.
In fact, not only has Stephenson written about the “metaverse” before it became a thing, but some people even credit his 1999 book Cryptonomicon with sketching the basis for the concept of cryptocurrency!
Like certain science fiction writers before him, Stephenson is clearly privy to more than he lets on. And his close relationships with billionaire technocrats like Bezos and Gates only fuel my suspicions that he’s not merely a novelist with a good imagination and an uncanny knack for predicting the future.
But alas, we must return to the topic at hand – the metaverse, a virtual world whereyou can go about many of your everyday life’s day-to-day interactions and occurrences – in your avatar form. This form can be a human, animal, or something more abstract with its customizable appearance.Yes, that’s right. You can be whatever you want to be. Your avatar (a word popularised by Stephenson!) could be a boy, girl, dog, buffalo, toaster – anything you like!
You can then interact with other people’s avatars in this virtual world. In the Metaverse, you can buy and sell land, attend concerts and go to museums, build a house, and more.
As the work of Neal Stephenson shows, the “metaverse” is not a new idea. The concept has been gradually leaked into mainstream culture over the last twenty plus years. Just think of video games like Second Life and movies like The Matrix or Ready Player One.
It was only last year (2021) that Facebook rebranded as “meta”, positioning itself for a future in which it will play a leading role in developing the infrastructure to realise the metaverse.
Still not sure how this all fits together? Simple: With a virtual world like the “metaverse” comes virtual money and virtual goods, i.e., cryptocurrency and NFTs. Without cryptocurrency, the metaverse would not be possible. (...)
Apart from the concerning philosophical and psychological implications of living life in a VR, web3 brings with it all kinds of new possible futures, some of which may actually be an improvement to the way society currently functions, with its reliance upon corrupt central banks and infiltrated governments.
Futurist and former CTO of Coinbase, Balaji Srinivasan, envisions a world in which the blockchain has allowed online communities to “materialise” into the real world as independent, sovereign states. He calls this concept the “network state” and he defines it as follows:The Network State is a digital nation launched first as an online community before materialising physically on land after reaching critical mass.In other words, the “network state”, according to Srinivasan, will be the next version of the nation state. He maintains that, due to the decentralised nature of the blockchain, network states will begin as geographically decentralised communities, connected via the internet.
This community will be made up of regular people who believe in a common cause; it will be a group that is capable of collective action. Eventually, the community will begin to build up its own, internal economy using cryptocurrency.
This will allow them to start holding in-person meet-ups in the real world and eventually crowd-fund apartments, houses and even towns to establish co-living facilities and bring digital community members into the real world.
The final step of the process is for the new community to negotiate diplomatic recognition from pre-existing governments, increasing sovereignty and becoming a true network state.
This leads us to Srinivasan’s more complex definition of the concept:A network state is a social network with a moral innovation, a sense of national consciousness, a recognized 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.Srinivasan’s philosophy is an interesting one, and despite being a self-proclaimed transhumanist, he just may have outlined a realistic route to gaining independence from the centrally-controlled, ever-more-authoritarian, world state.
Is it really possible? At the very least, it is an interesting possibility. If you think about that, all states are virtual. The same is true for money: it is a purely virtual entity. Now, the key point of a metaverse state would be an integrated cryptocurrency based on blockchain technology. There is an interesting parallel between the concept of "honor" and of "blockchain." Your honor is determined mainly by what you did in the past. As Maximus Decimus Meridius noted, "what you do in life, echoes in eternity." It is just like a blockchain that cannot be altered once it is established.
Of course, like the real state, the metastate would not be just virtual: it would extend into the real world with real entities. It could have a police, laws, real real estate, and more. It could even have a real-world army and engage in diplomatic treaties with other meta- or real states. The main difference is that virtual states would have no borders. They would co-exist in the same areas, although their citizens may tend to live in specific regions.
It is not as farfetched as it may seem at first sight: the idea is floating in the memesphere. For instance, Neil Degrassse Tyson proposed in 2016 a virtual state that he called "#Rationalia" whose constitution would consist of a single line " All policy shall be based on the weight of evidence." The reactions were overwhelmingly negative for several good reasons, mainly because Tyson's idea lacked the fundamental element of a metastate, the integrated cryptocurrency. But metastates already exist in an embryonic form: they are called "corporations." More specifically, they are "multinational corporations." What they need to become full-fledged metastates is their own currency. That would be a small step for a corporation, but a big step for humankind. Companies are not alien from issuing their own currency: do you remember the song by Merle Travis, "16 tons"? The protagonist of the song says he "owes his soul to the company store." It means that the company was implementing a closed currency circuit in which the salaries of the workers could only be spent at the company store. In a sense, it issued its own currency.
If we survive the global collapse, and if traditional states keep in their evil ways, one day we might really choose to become citizens of a virtual state. Would that free us from the paranoid monsters that now rule the world? Who knows? The future always surprises you!
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A list of the posts on "Seneca Effects" of the series "The Age of Exterminations
9. Creating your Own State https://thesenecaeffect.blogspot.com/2022/08/the-age-of-exterminations-how-to-create.html
8. How to Destroy Western Europe https://thesenecaeffect.blogspot.com/2022/05/the-age-of-extermination-viii-how-to.html
7. Going Undercover https://thesenecaeffect.blogspot.com/2022/05/the-age-of-exterminations-v-can-we.html
6. The Great Famine to Come https://thesenecaeffect.blogspot.com/2021/10/the-age-of-exterminations-vi-great.html
5. Suicide as a weapon https://thesenecaeffect.blogspot.com/2021/10/the-age-of-exterminations-v-killing.html
4. How to kill the Rich https://thesenecaeffect.blogspot.com/2021/10/the-age-of-exterminations-iv-how-to.html
3. Why you should be worried. https://thesenecaeffect.blogspot.com/2021/10/the-age-of-exterminations-iii-you.html
2. How to exterminate the Young https://thesenecaeffect.blogspot.com/2021/09/the-age-of-exterminations-ii-how-to.html
1. Exterminating the Witches https://thesenecaeffect.blogspot.com/2021/09/the-age-of-exterminations-who-will-be.html
Greetings Ugo, as you have written so frankly...
ReplyDelete"States are the most ruthless killing machines ever created in the history of humankind. They are managed by evil entities called "governments" that claim the right to seize your property, force you to speak a specific language, bomb entire populations to smithereens, send you to die in a humid trench in the mountains, and much more."
I would see a virtual world as a simple technological and more cost efficient means of implementing the above... only perhaps much worse if the connectivity extended into a persons property, civil rights, and social freedoms. I can imagine such a scenario where reality is mixed with an invented fiction all delivered in a package that dulls the senses and potentially conscribes the world of the user into what a government will allow. LOL, alas, I have become an old Luddite and I will forego the whole meta experience. The human mind is too precious to put digital boundaries around. Maybe useful as a forum of sorts though... as long as the tool is kept safe from weaponization.
V/r
Lee
The beauty of the future is that it is so full of different possibilities. And those who create new technologies are those who misunderstand the most how these technologies will change the world. Who knows what the Metaverse will do to us?
DeleteMany good points, but a state remains a state, virtual or not. Unfortunately the network is real, just like the drinking water pipe, so that's an extra point for the physical state. The example of the pilgrims that are now living in a state not better that the others is very clear to me.
ReplyDeleteI love the internet as way to communicate, but am very disappointed of social networks, too much smalltalk and nonsense for me.
Regards,
Etienne
"But what really keeps the state together is its control of money. The state issues money (actually, central banks do that, but it is the same). Then, the state takes back the money it has issued in the form of tax, fines, and other forms of extortion. It is this circular loop that keeps citizens bound to the state in a relationship that we can only define as a slightly softened version of slavery."
ReplyDeleteBit of an exaggeration, no? No more than 20% of the money in circulation is created by governments, often much less. Sure, governments control interest rates, but the power to create most of our money was relinquished by governments centuries ago. Even The Bank of England states that private banks create 80% of the money out there (in the form of loans).
https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/knowledgebank/how-is-money-created
Theoretically, only the central banks can "create money," but you are right that when a bank extends a credit to a customer, it creates money, too! It is also true that the amount of money that ordinary banks can create is limited by laws, so, it is still under government control. It is a detail, but I added a note in the text. Thanks!
Delete"Ugo Bardi (extracted) writes that, in Chile, ‘The energy required to mine copper rose by 50% from 2001 and 2010, but the total copper output increased just 13% … The US copper mining industry has also been energy hungry. The limits to mineral extraction are not limits of quantity; they are limits of energy."
ReplyDeleteGod knows how we underestimate what Ugo has done and written in fact-finding - over the years.
Above quoted statement has been read today, by chance, over https://energyskeptic.com/2022/why-how-mining-metals-for-renewables-will-destroy-the-planet-not-prevent-the-energy-crisis
I always wanted to say that Ugo respects commentators here, like the writer of this comment, so much, by approving their comments - no matter how they demonstrate ignorance in what they commentate - over what Ugo himself has discovered and written years and years earlier - on records.
Thank you, Ugo.
As the house of cards that make up globalised trade is trembling in the breeze, supply chains continue to erode & corruption generates increasing inequality, many current states will dissolve. Look at Somalia still a failed state after decades, effectively replaced by a patchwork of shifting warlords, much of the world's surface will revert to this status. And the root cause of that is the irreversible decline of energy:-
ReplyDeletehttps://consciousnessofsheep.co.uk/2022/08/30/net-zero-is-dead-so-what-now/
Even the 'rich' countries will suffer this time for a change.
I like all Neal Stephenson's books.
ReplyDeleteThere are many ways to live on the margin, even today.
Earlier this summer I met two guys from a Western European country, who live under the radar. No bank account. No insurance. No car. No taxes. Living in a squatted area. They do quite a lot of support work for homeless people and others who live on the margins.
It is still possible, but it is quite hard.
Freedom and autonomy vs. comfort and conformance.
Usually, there is room on the margins, and throughout history people have defected from society to live in on the edges. Graeber wrote about this in his book Debt, if I remember correctly. The key is to live a less opulent lifestyle than everybody else. Then nobody will see you.
I am not ready to abandon my creature comforts for a life in freedom. For now, I stay in the State.
Peace,
Goran
I feel it's worth to mention Liberland here. It was an attempt at creating a micro-nation in a 7km2 disputed territory between Serbia and Croatia back in 2015. They created a cryptocurrency called Merit as the national currency. To put it mildly, neither Serbia nor Croatia took kindly to this and the currently official population is zero. I haven't payed much attention to this, but it seems like they changed the goal to a decentralized state back in 2019. Maybe it will be the first network-state?
ReplyDelete