Beyond Trust part 2: Seeding the future.

So our high trust society is irreversibly disintegrating all around us. What do we do?

The first thing we do is figure out how to function without it. Then we can work on trying to rebuild a new high trust society. In order to win, you first need to avoid losing. Survival is a prerequisite for… pretty much everything, actually.

And we can’t take survival for granted.

A naive approach is to look at how people get by in low trust societies throughout the world. The problem with this is: survive is all they do. They never actually improve the situation. They are blackpilled.

I’d like to see if we can do better. Take survival not as an end in itself, but a means to en end. The end goal is to re-create high trust society. Or at least higher trust than what we’re descending into.

Bonus: make it sustainable, so that future generations needn’t go through all this again.

Beyond Trust part 1: High trust is doomed. – Deep, Dark Thou

Some survive in a way that also allows hope for a better future to survive. Call this the seed mentality. Be the seed in the ground that can sprout some day into a new flourishing organism.

What are the virtues of a good seed?

1. It lies dormant.
2. It lies hidden.
3. It preserves its potential
4. It recognizes when the time has come to sprout.
5. It is alone.

Graham Greene: “It is impossible to go through life without trust. That is to be imprisoned within the worst cell of all: oneself.”

Shut up, Graham. You’re not helping.

By the way, some selves are less of a prison than others. If you don’t feel comfortable in your own self, then there’s nothing I can do for you, and nothing you can do for the future. The individual self is the starting point. The individual who dares to stand alone is the foundation.

Straw Man Objector: “The community is the foundation! We must build upon community!”

The community is crumbling. Try again.

SMO: “Then shore up the foundation!”

I’m looking for a more permanent solution. Throwing sandbags on a crumbling levee doesn’t even buy much time. It’s cope.

SMO: “We need more community friendly laws!”

May as well wish for a pet unicorn while you’re at it. Anyway, that’s kind of fascist, and fascism doesn’t work. Even Franco gave up on it eventually.

SMO: “I’m not advocating fascism! I’m advocating… uh….”

You’re advocating something so vague, sentimentalist and alarmist that anyone who tries to implement it will end up re-inventing fascism. Let’s move on.

SMO: “The family is the foundation!”

Likewise. Family is crumbling, and filial piety is fascism writ small.

SMO: “Did you just call Confucius a fascist?”

Almost. I called Confucianists petty fascists. And Christian fundamentalists, too. But that’s a topic for another day. Let’s move on.

SMO: “Church is the foundation!”

Seriously?

I’ve spent enough time in church to know what that’s worth. Organized religion is cope. It’s just a way of circling the wagons around a cargo cult of community. Oh, and family.

SMO: “Church is all about God!”

No it isn’t. That’s just marketing.

SMO: “Church is about community! And family! Family too!”

That’s all true, in a fashion. A cargo cult fashion.

Oh, and every church crumbles sooner or later. That’s how you know it’s a cargo cult.

SMO: “The family that prays together stays together!”

Not necessarily. No amount of desperate piety can fix crazy or stupid. Bad parents gonna parent badly. Can you come up with something else?

SMO: “Credentialed expertise is the, um… science and peer review… uh… no…”

Take your time.

SMO: “Uh… friendship is the foundation!”

Ah. Getting warmer now. But not there yet. What does friendship rest on?

SMO: “Friendship rests on fellow feeling!”

That’s awfully vague. For a foundation, we need something more… concrete.

SMO: “The individual cannot stand alone!”

Some can, some can’t. Those who can’t are doomed. Those who can are the seed of the future.

SMO: “Your analogy is flawed. There’s never just one seed!”

One is the minimum. If there are more than one, they lie separately, survive separately and sprout separately. Except the ones that die in the ground. Those don’t figure into the future. The future belongs to those who show up.

SMO: “If the seeds worked together, they would survive together!”

That’s not how seeds work. Seeds are not a collective. They live or die individually, and make it up on volume. The strongest seeds sprout, and Darwin is appeased.

SMO: “Never mind how seeds work! It’s a bad analogy!”

Give me a better one.

SMO: “We are all in this together!”

Manifestly untrue. We are all in this separately. That’s what this is all about.

SMO: “How do you build a high trust society without trust?”

By understanding what comes first. That’s what foundations are about. It’s about first principles.

Let me clarify that. It’s about first principles done right. The first step to doing first principles right is to get the correct first principles. That means you need to think it all through.

SMO: “Trust is fundamental! It’s the first principle!”

I’m not sure my straw man knows what the word “fundamental” means. Anyway, it isn’t. Trust is a superstructure.

SMO: “All sorts of things are built on trust!”

Only after trust itself has been built on something else.

SMO: “On what?”

About time you asked…

TO BE CONTINUED