The Beginning
May you live in interesting times
The modern nation state arose slowly sometime between 1492 and 1776 and since then has become the single most important institution of political organization. I don't think it's going to be the institution of the future though. It's shortcomings were apparent a hundred years ago when WWI demonstrated our capacity to kill each other at an unprecedented scale. The League of Nations (and after WWII, the United Nations) were born to address the flaws of the nation state but neither has ever caught our imagination. Meanwhile, a fresh worry has emerged and soon will overtake all other anxieties: how are we going to govern the earth?
Machiavelli wrote at a moment of collapse, in the sixteenth century, when the force field of the Church was weak and political actors were being released from their traditional obligations and constraints. The state had not yet come into being: it was something to create, an opportunity for invention and originality. By the time Weber began writing about politics, the state had become a mighty arsenal, with rules and claims of its own. Weber’s politician may have had more power at his disposal than Machiavelli’s prince, but he was more checked in its use. Perhaps that’s why Weber built into his conception of power the recoil of institutions.
Ideas
Industrial Food Production and the Pandemic
We need to change the way we grow and consume food.
Covid-19 comes from the primary forest, from bat caves. In a world without industrial agriculture encroaching on that forest, in a world without the corporatization of a wild-food industry, Covid-19 would probably never have left those caves.
Highlight
How to know who’s trustworthy
Fake news is perhaps the single biggest threat to democracy. While we can try to regulate it through policy and anti-trust legislation, the perception of truth and falsehood comes down to trust and the mechanisms through which we assess trustworthiness.
Technology
What Is The Internet Doing To Boomers’ Brains?
Social media platforms are sucking a generation into a misinformation rabbit hole. The last time they spoke, John’s father accused him of being part of the deep state.
Futures
The Next Decade Could Be Even Worse
A historian believes he has discovered iron laws that predict the rise and fall of societies. He has bad news.
The End
Technologies of Trust
Our biggest challenge is to learn how to live together without oppression and without ravaging the nonhuman world.
That, in turn, requires we trust each other. Some of the most important innovations of human history are technologies are trust: money, government, social security.
Unfortunately, every technology of trust can turn upon itself and destroy the very trust it was designed to foster. Such is life.