An apotheosis is the glorification of something to a divine level, the treatment of a human or institution as a god.
It’s a climax state. As with a swamp that has become a forest due to the steady deposit of leaves, it’s unstable. It’s the last step before a fall. Anyone and anything can become Icarus. Our doom is sealed when we get too close to the Sun.
Nationalism was born in the 18th century. Ours was the first new nation. Nationalism has dominated political organization since the 19th century, because it delivered leaders beyond those of royal blood. The reign of Louis XVI, then, was an apotheosis for the imperial model. The tumbrel began the end for the divine right of kings.
We’re now at the apotheosis of the nation state. Everyone is now part of a nation state. We can’t conceive of any other structure. Nation states, their leaders, and their philosophies send their people off to war for the glorification of “the people.” It’s a continuing competition for resources, both human and physical. Nationalism is the ultimate zero-sum game. For my nation to prosper, other nations and people must suffer.
Right now, nations are running roughshod over the Earth. This was hidden from America’s sight by the idea that our system was different, that our democracy could let everyone in, give everyone autonomy.
Trump put the lie to this myth. America is no different, no better, than other nations. We’re just as greedy, just as likely to engage in “ethnic cleansing,” the scapegoating of “the other” in the name of “the state,” as other people. Russians, Turks, Chinese, Israelis, Nigerians, Brazilians, Americans – no different.
Nation states, as a group, are now all pushing to destroy human life on this planet. The planet will go on. Something will replace us, given time. Maybe it will be the rats. Or the cockroaches. Time heals all wounds, and time has infinite patience. But there’s a fever in this planet that’s burning us all off it like a virus.
Instead of fighting the fever, nations are all fighting one another.
This includes our nation.
I have always believed that the best system in which technology might prosper is one that offers flexibility. Democracy offers the flexibility of changing opinions. Capitalism offers the flexibility of adapting to changing tastes. Personal liberty gives us all the flexibility to maximize our own human capital.
But listening to the Democrats debate this week, it has become clear that they offer no better answers than Trump does. Nation state politics sets capital against liberty, liberty against democracy, and democracy against capital. It’s an endless game of rock-paper-scissors.
The idea that Bernie Sanders’ socialist paradise will save the planet is as ridiculous as the idea that Trump and Wall Street can do it. We’re all playing the same zero-sum game. Break up the Cloud Czars, or scapegoat the Mexicans. Tax the wealthy or erase the secular. It gets us nowhere.
Nationalism, no matter who runs it or how, is a system of solids. There are solid blocs of voters, there are yes-no decisions. The system under which business runs is fluid. Amazon rises, AT&T falls. The companies that learn to do things better, to give customers more value, or increase productivity, win. The others go away.
But business can’t run democracy. Put businesses in charge of a country and you get fascism, every time. It’s because the businesses that rule will be devoted only to the health of their own businesses. AT&T held political power for a century, but it failed to evolve and is drowning in its own technology debt. GE built our electrical system, but it was killed in just a decade by one man’s hubris.
Liberty without government is anarchy. The Constitution set up a system of ordered liberty. The accent is on order. Liberty must be held within the bounds of law, or my liberty will destroy yours. Nietzsche ain’t peachy, just preachy.
But if the nation state must die, what can possibly replace it?
Technology holds at least a partial answer in the open source model.
With open source, everyone can get their hands on the code. We all build from a high and rising level. Open source foundations are built on consensus. You get the best experts you can, you let them debate a course, you have a structure in place that can ratify their decisions, including the ability of people or groups to fork the code.
Free and Open Source software is currently in a crisis of its founders. It’s a generational thing, like what happens in business when the man who built the company dies or retires. It’s a passing of the torch. It’s messier than in a company because there are more decision makers. But the Free Software Foundation will find new leaders to replace Richard Stallman, Bradley Kuhn, and other leaders who failed to adapt to the reality of women’s agency. It will take time, it may be messy, but the mission will go on.
There’s even the start of a model for politics in the European Union.
The European Union is something of a mess. It’s 27 nations, locked together in an interlocking system of bureaucracies. It’s a confederation, in which there are a variety of political models. Their economies compete, and people are free to move among them, so there is competition on the question of liberty.
I spent two weeks in the EU recently. The most important point is that it’s at peace. It hasn’t gotten capitalism right, it hasn’t gotten democracy right, and it hasn’t gotten liberty right, but it’s at peace. Peace is the most precious thing a government can give its people.
At the apotheosis of the imperial model, 220 years ago, at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, no one knew what might come after it. That’s why it took another 80 years for the nation-state to become the accepted replacement.
We don’t have that much time.
Everyone loves to quote the Declaration of Independence on life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. But it had a deeper purpose, to explain why America’s break with the imperial order was necessary. Here’s what was left of the Jefferson text after the committee of the whole finished with it:
“That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”
The Constitution wasn’t meant to be eternal. We need more flexibility than it currently gives us. Nationalism must die, or humanity will.
It’s up to we, the people, whether we’re focused on business, on non-profit work, or in government, to figure out what that new model is. If we succeed it will spread like the last model did and the world may be saved.
If we can’t, it won’t.
