Making the World Safe for Sanity
Although active, our Pleistocene ancestors on good days may have 'worked' but a few hours a day to meet their needs. With the Agricultural Revolution, our late Neolithic ancestors, apart from kings and priests, and their supporting servants, worked from sunup to sundown. The unintended result of increasing food production was a hundred-fold increase in world population, first by agriculture and then by fossil fueled industrial society. Human happiness decreased and pathology increased. With food surplus and the amassing of wealth in villages, military conquest became both possible and desirable. Military gangs either took what they wanted or gave protection from other gangs if given what they wanted. Thus empire building began and has yet to end.
With the Industrial Revolution, things got worse for the masses for a time, then the preponderance of energy slaves mitigated impoverished lives so workers could become consumers encouraged by incessant ad copy to serve their providers by wanting more, more, and evermore. Nation-states protected their citizens from other nation-states as their citizens gave them what they wanted, by choice or otherwise, leading to an age of nationalism. But from the nineteenth century on, corporate interests have grown so that now the nationalist lackeys exist more to serve them. War, once mainly the business of nations, is now big business carried out in parts of the world lacking major corporate assets or markets at risk of loss. Full-on global warfare would not be in the corporate interest. We have corporate interests to thank for a delay in, even avoidance of, WWIII. But when the global mercantile power subsystem weakens, the people of nation-states will again demand that the servants of the state and their military make them great.
Empire building, form the village level up, a problem for the last ten thousand years, needs a solution. Politics as usual offers no real solutions, but merely endless belief in solutions. A global government could be our worst nightmare. A Federation of Communities that would only exist to enforce global laws and set limits, may not be. The first law would be: No empire building. One community, of whatever size, could not forcibly take over another community, human or biotic, however small. Nation-states would become anachronistic. Some organization on approximately the same level is needed, but as military powers they would cease to exist as would their cultural hegemony. They may continue as administrative vestiges, but no one would identify with them, define their existence in terms of them—live, kill, or die for them.
Territories would have to be defined by communities occupying a few hectares on up. The Federation would be supported by them and serve only, apart from protecting the planet and human habitats, to prevent hostile takeovers, using force if compelled. Optimal community size might number in the dozens or hundreds, with a few dozen communities making up a regional management unit. Cities formed around high energy sources would be a collection of communities. Protecting a few hundred from a few thousand would not require a huge global expenditure to support a huge military-industrial complex. By retaining the best of the military tradition and making it mobile, the world would end up with a small military force to willingly support. As some professionals say, “Peace is our profession,” and well it could be.
With the passing of nation-states, what would become of corporations? They may currently be the dominate power structure on the planet, but they didn't seek it, there was no intent, no cabal of industrialists plotting their global takeover, just individuals perusing self-interest. Even if on occasion there was a smoke filled room, it was not mere intent that fueled the Industrial Revolution. It was fossil electron donating stuff from the ground. Corporations are essentially amoeboid creatures that blob about the globe driven by the contingencies of profit, engulfing what they seek and corrupting, where allowed, those who need to be. They may be composed of highly intelligent individuals well paid to serve their moneyed interests, but in outward behavior they are remarkably stupid. They are so low on the life form list that blame would be as inappropriate as blaming an amoeba for doing what it does. They merely need to have limits defined for them, clearly and slowly so they can understand them, and they will continue to work, perhaps doing fabulously good work, within those limits. Corporations will be villains only if the rules of the game, the contingencies of reinforcement (currently unmanaged), selects for short-term rewards. As Emerson noted, "The merchant [including multinational corporations] serves the purse, The eater [the people] serves his meat; 'Tis the day of the chattel, Web to weave, and corn to grind, Things are in the saddle, And ride mankind." Humans need to understand and their understanding and love needs to alter the rules of the game, the dynamics of the system that selects for their behavior.
Aside from protecting the planet from corporations, the Federation will need to protect Earth from the people. Land and sea not under the footprint of a community would belong to Nature, and be under the protection of the Federation. Access and exploitation, if any, would have to be carefully limited. The Federation would limit and manage the human footprint on Nature's preserve on whose health our existence depends. A major work of the Federation would be the restoration of damaged lands and seas. The entire planet cannot be a resource for humans to exploit. We must leave room for Nature, the not-self, of which we are one.
There are two incompatible narratives of life's pale blue dot and the place of humans on it. One would be essentially the same story if humans or bamboo were not on it, and one is based on conquest by overly complex societies who cannot persist, but can only grow in dominion for a time. The other is based on the Mystery, the vast sea of the unknown that lies all undiscovered about us, of which we can wonder and iterate towards knowing. The mysterious is the source of all true art, science, and religion (without the fear), the source of our much needed humilitas, if we would be sane. The magisterium that can be told of is not the What-is. Your love and understanding can be humancentric or naturcentric, but not both. One worldview partakes of the What-is, is more complex than we can know, so stand down, let go into not-knowing, into abelief, into wonder, and learn to dance with the system.