Peer morality will give us a future.

Society is headed for collapse. The collapse cannot be prevented. I have an idea how to rebuild afterwards, on a better foundation. I call it peer morality.

But first, why the collapse is inevitable: it is the culmination of a process that has played out over thousands of years. Moral systems have evolved, but they haven’t overcome the core fault: that they are non-reciprocal. They all separate taking from giving.

Master morality fell apart in the bronze age collapse three millennia ago. It had no concept of equality, thus no justice, thus no peace.

Slave morality has its roots in the axial age, but never completely took over until our own times. By taking over, it has stamped out reciprocity. By stamping out reciprocity, it has doomed itself.

Slave morality is falling apart in our current age, poisoned by its own hypocrisy. Its concept of equality is empirically false, leading to unsustainable cognitive dissonance. Its concept of justice is incoherent, leading to irreconcilable conflict.

The disintegration of slave morality manifests as beggar morality and thief morality. Thus non-reciprocal morality descends into hell.

(Beggar morality: “you owe me because you have and I lack.” Thief morality: “everything belongs to me, so I have a right to take it.”)

Peer morality is the way forward for civilization. Peer morality is reciprocal, and based on shared merit. It’s the reciprocity that makes it work.

The only reason the old systems lasted as long as they did was because of a certain hypocrisy: people were reciprocal when they dared, but felt forced to deny it. Peer morality puts reciprocity in its proper place as the core a sane and workable moral code. Reciprocity without shame.

There’s a strong hint of this idea in the ancient chivalric ethos. The best of us instinctively understand that there must be a brotherhood of mutual respect, based on merit. But the idea never wins out to become the whole basis of a culture. Even then, the ethos was polluted by classism and condescension.

We must make peer morality the whole basis of the next culture, that will establish itself after the collapse. This will be a stronger culture, a stronger foundation for civilization. And the peers stand a better chance of surviving the collapse. The future belongs to those who show up. The non-stupid shall inherit the earth.

Find your peers and love them as brothers. Take people as you find them. Love your true equals. Conversely: give yourself permission to despise fools, cowards and thieves wherever you find them. In either case, no favoritism or discrimination on any basis other than manifest merit.

Peer morality is a foundation for sustainable civic virtue. It establishes rule of law. The Magna Carta first articulated the principle: only our peers can judge us.

A danger for peer morality is it could degenerate into a sort of tribalism. Identity politics is a version of peerdom poisoned by slave morality. Make peerdom based on merit, and the peers will put the tribalists in their place.

Nepotism and racialism are also a distortion of peer morality. Peerdom is not in the blood. It is in the spirit. The peers recognize their own.

Peerdom is the only true equality. Peerdom leaves room for freedom without savagery, civilization without slavery. Peerdom is earned freedom.

Deontology is for people who can’t think for themselves, which is most people. If we must have a deontology – and we must – let it be peer morality.