— with copious annotation
Introduction
0.0| Opening Thoughts
In which the origin and scope of this book are articulated, sparing no exposure of sentiment.
0.1| If You Only Have Five Minutes
A spectacularly concise summary of the major assertions and advisements of this book.
0.2 | How to Get the Most Out of This Book
How to derive maximum benefit from this book, as a personal and community resource.
0.3| Linguistic Ontology and Other Fancy Terms We Need
It’s a glossary. It’s just in the front because … shit. I don’t know why glossaries aren’t always in the front. This is how we make sure we’re on the same page through the rest of the book.
0.4| Correct Me, Please!
Exactly what it sounds like. This is my personal plea to you to share your feedback — affirmative, corrective, and ugly.
Part 1| General Observations
1.0 The Fear We Loath to Face
What is holding most folks back from the quest to develop sovereignty isn’t a lack of intelligence, information, or ideology.
1.1| There are Levels to the Game
Universal principles exist. They apply across contexts and scales. Dishonesty creates complexity. Honesty creates depth. It’s true in business, romance, and painting. There are also patterns, persistent phenomena and qualities which appear in limited contexts or at certain scales. This chapter is about some of what is the same at all scales of social organization and some of what is very different.
1.2| Tribalism, Modified Tit-for-Tat & Identity
Design is about dealing with reality and organizing a signal capable of penetrating the noise. Dealing with reality means understanding constraints. These are the base constraints of social design.
1.3| Listening with Eager, Fuzzy & Paranoid Ears
Of the many failings in perceiving and thinking which impair our ability to participate as helpful members of society. A fresh and optimistic take on biases, instincts, and phobias.
1.4| We’ve Done Pretty Well, But Where Do We Go from Here?
Despite the limitations articulated in the previous two chapters, we have really done alright for ourselves. In this look at the patterns and anti-patterns of our major successes, we see why we’ve grown and thrived as well as what is holding us back.
1.5| We’re Goin’ Down With a Ship in the Harbor
We have to address the fact that we keep doing what we’ve always done expecting to get different results. Here, we take a sneak peek at the prognosis, by recognizing some of the people and organizations who have already shown us promising novel approaches and recovered some ancient solutions as well.
1.6| The Nature of Hoi Polloi
Of the many hard truths which this work confronts few are so harsh as the revelation that the conflict between fatalism and free will is a simple false dichotomy. In this chapter we look at the surprisingly fundamental principles that determine the inevitability of the common conformist. We also examine the affordances which provide the counter-intuitive truths of freedom and free will.
1.7| The Failure of Popular Thinking
In the previous two chapters, we established that there are methods for solving all of the problems we have and that most people will always do whatever is incentivized. So now we have to look at what’s stopping folks from doing what’s is obviously good for them.
1.8| Choking the Maw of Hell
Population growth has introduced a phase change in society. There’s little chance that Rousseau, Paine, or Marx could have anticipated the game theoretics of Rule 34 — especially since none of them had ever heard of game theory. So, how do we deal with the fact that those who authored our prevailing ideologies had no clue about our current realities?
1.9| The New Mainstream
We experienced a massive convergence of culture during the Cold War, immediately followed by a spectacular fracturing, the implications have gone largely unnoticed in political thought. It did, however, change everything.
1.10| The Problem of Linguistic Ontology
How we talk about things is both a part of the problem and one of our greatest tools for creating solutions. Oddly, all social factions agree on that statement — yet none of them know the how or why of what to do about it.
1.11| We Are All Communities Within Communities
You aren’t just a brain with a body or a body with a brain. In fact, functionally, your brain is minimally four different people who don’t speak the same language or care about the same things. We have to deal with that before we can get any kind of good at social design.
1.12| God Smuggling
Whether you believe in a flying spaghetti monster, nothing, chaos, or an old Greek guy on a cloud, there’s something to which everyone attributes the origin of all value and sacredness. And, we can’t really do politics until we deal with what that means.
Part 2| Design
2.0| Design is Problem Solving
So! You wanna solve big kid problems? We’re going to look at the elements of problem solving that connect heaven to earth, literally and figuratively. This is an attempt at a first principles argument describing the tether between the immaterial divine and the everyday problems of that itchy dude asking you for change from the intersection median.
2.1| Magic is Real
In times of antiquity, the designers of society were always the mystics, sages, and philosophers at the side of the crown. From hermeticists like John Dee and Isaac Newton to Taoists like Sun Bin and the Wang Li Ping, the subject of social design — through subtlety and incentive — has always been a living craft. Only now, its methods and histories are open to all.
2.2| Emergence & Design
Emergence is a particularly slippery concept with enormous potential implications. A naive view of emergence suggests that it is simply the tendency of the average occurrence to become a standard. Examined closely, emergence may reveal the nature of sentience itself, or at least the best method for planning train lines.
2.3| Subjectivity and the Myth of Paradox
Everything that anyone ever told you is a paradox is just an invitation to a greater level, or different type, of understanding. If you can grok that, and rise to it, then many seemingly impossible problems start to melt away.
2.5| Ideology is the Opposite of Design
If an ideology is a consistent belief about what structures, institutions, laws, or cultural attributes are best for people in general — then design is both antithetical to and superior to every possible ideology.
— but only in all cases that have ever or ever could be conceived of.
2.6| Essentialism
Among the beliefs we have to start hacking away at is the urge to essentialize. This is the vile habit which joins the far right and far left. But, if we approach this moral and material weakness with grace and compassion, we may be able move on from it, and come away better than we would have been without it.
2.7| Correct Answers
In order to understand the harm of ideology we have to wrest the notions of objective reality and singular correct answers apart. We have been trained to believe that the one implies the other. Not so. And, to do this in a clear and practical way, we have to unpack some of the flaws in industrialism — specifically our assumptions about education, employment, and arithmetic.
2.8| Jumping to Solution
A point of discipline central to design is that of remaining in discomfort as long and as thoroughly as possible. If you will not abide discomfort longer than you have to, close the book and simply accept that neither your life nor your influence on the world will ever be better than they are now. Simply remaining uncomfortable will build character. But deliberately staying uncomfortable, moving into the discomfort, and doing it with disciplined process — that solves problems. This chapter is about the process of exploring discomfort from the inside.
2.9| Litigiousness
Closely related to both our interest in single correct answers and our attachment to satisficing premature ideas is our tendency to address problems by making rules and passing judgement. But, there are better ways of dealing with virtually everything that we currently treat this way.
2.10| Rigidity & the Myth of Belief
Forming beliefs and living with attachment to them feels as natural as breathing. We can, though, live more fulfilled lives and close the gap between problem and solution if we practice the art of killing our darlings.
2.11| Introduction to Designing Society
Everyone who passionately believes that their ideology is capable of solving society’s problems is either not the origin of that ideology or else is completely mad. Anyone who has really grappled with social problems themselves knows their ideas have limits. The exercises in this chapter will give you that experience.
2.12| Patterns, Values & Meaning
Surveying the landscape is the part of the design process that reveals the individuality of each design problem. In this chapter, you’ll learn methods for going deep and broad in social problem exploration. This is a crash course in differential diagnosis for social maladies.
2.13| Social Design Systems
Many of the design frameworks which have illuminated the path for this work have been developed by folks working in smaller design scopes than social problems. In this chapter, we explore why a research project concerning role playing games might be our greatest hope for understanding political discourse and why a controversial architect may be our greatest hope for understanding the meaning of life.
2.14| Boring Wins
Again. For the people in the back. Boring wins. Let’s make a dramatic shift toward a meta-analysis of the publicly available thinking of some of the most successful people who ever shared about it. Spoiler: Everything worthwhile starts out as really exciting, gets boring fast, and only succeeds if the principle agents care enough about the people downstream to embrace the boredom and execute like a long distance runner.
2.15| Design is not a good thing.
Despite all the emphasis in this work on the importance of design, and its superiority to every possible ideology, it is most important to remember that this means that design is amoral. A piece of the critical error within every ideology is the assertion that some particular method is what is good for people. We can only hope for methods, processes, and frameworks to be effective. Effectiveness, I hope we can learn to understand, is not goodness.
Part 3| Sovereignty
3.0| A Simple Definition, Painstakingly Clarified
Sovereignty is the meeting point of clear perception and determination of action. That sounds simple. It isn’t. This chapter is dedicated to understanding the complexities which arise from the meeting of these two simple ideas — at every level of human relationship.
3.1| Maximum Sovereignty Requires Goodness
In the previous part of this book we talked about the amoral function of design. Design is a fundamentally amoral function. Sovereignty is not. Yes, there is a ‘the good guy always wins’ function in reality. And, understanding the way that less savory characters get around it is quite the gut punch.
3.2| The Value of Reality
Just as it is an achievement for a fish to conceive of water, it is of no small consequence that we understand the significance of our reality. In this chapter we dissect and move beyond the naturalistic fallacy to the deep goodness of the real.
3.3| Discipline and Grit
Personal tales of pain and hard won fights, and an analysis of what differentiates a hobby from a discipline. We need to understand the differences between education and training, and why both are so critical to the success of communities.
3.4| Civilians and Citizens
Needful controversial take: Anyone who believes that they have any rights which aren’t at least as much an obligation as a privilege cannot be a citizen. Such individuals, ironically, only survive as a direct result of the fruits of the labors and successes of the dutiful, though softhearted, citizens who believe the opposite. Notably, this chapter is more about farming than fighting.
3.5| Constitution, Leadership & Civics
Here, we get into a delineation in political theaters which allows us to better diagnose social problems and anticipate limitations in potential solutions.
3.6| Secular v. Theocratic
If a religion is a set of beliefs which guide decision-making and behavioral expectations, then every person who wishes to avoid catastrophic dysfunction in life must be governed by a theocracy — that theocracy just doesn’t have to be a function of the state. Yeah, this one is gonna burn some bridges.
3.7| Power Can Be Taken and Given; Sovereignty Cannot
On the necessity of hierarchy and the nobility of seeking to eliminate it. This chapter delves into the unacknowledged components of the moral failures of powerful people, the sneaky way in which democracy is tyrannical by default, and why a Victorian typesetter may have told us everything we needed to know about the rise of artificial intelligence.
3.8| Geometries of Organization
Here, we look at four basic types of structure — hierarchical and otherwise — by which social groups may be organized. We explore some considerations of each. And we expose the weakness in believing that certain social constructions have moral value.
3.9| Unenforceable Rules
Here, we juxtapose the War on Drugs with bad parenting and show why one should only make a rule which one can reliably enforce. This has implications regarding firearms, abortion, drag, prostitution, and many other social issues at every level of society — even in our own minds.
3.10| Blame
Fault is an overrated element of social problem solving. Here, we go into a case for restorative justice that has nothing to do with softhearted sentimentality or entitlement and everything to do with living in a safer and nobler world.
3.11| Identity Based Community
I Seem To Be a Verb is a situationist book that hit teenage Deacon like an unexpected erection. In this chapter we delve into many examples of identity-based communities. We divide those communities into noun and adjective based communities and verb and adverb based communities and talk about how to make the most of what we find.
3.12| Limits of Executive Fidelity
How well can you represent a bowl of fruit in paint on a canvas? If a business owner describes a project and its desired outcomes, what follows? In this chapter we explore the principles behind distributed telephone games at various scales.
3.13| Aggregation
Assembly line workers are stronger for unionizing. But are their unions stronger for having aggregated into the Teamsters? Are the federated states of America stronger for having become a single union? Or do we become stronger in some ways and more vulnerable in others — like steal that becomes more brittle the better it is at holding an edge.
3.14| Punching Up & Punching Down
Punching down is wrong. But punching up is stupid. Maybe it just isn’t a good idea to pick fights. In this chapter we look at the various moral and material implications of initiating conflict and aggression. We examine the difference between fault and responsibility in order to understand the issue of victim blaming. Et cetera.
3.15| Don’t Blame Socialists, But Don’t Be One Either
A close look at why the two prevailing socioeconomic paradigms are both appealing but ultimately dead ends. We deal with the traps involved in both Marx’s peaceful ideal of solidarity building and the iron fist. And, we’re going to show why the people that socialists call capitalists have made all of the same mistakes. So, none of this can be treated as a defense of capitalism.
3.16| I’m hoping you’ll help me figure this out.
A detailed acknowledgement of the specific gaps in understanding which arise from the fact that this body of thought is mostly drawn from small scale victories and the failures of the last few centuries.
3.17| Methodological Identity
Anatomy and physiology of a healthy identity formed through service, pursuit of mastery, and awareness of lineage — with examples.
3.18| Individual Sovereignty
What does it look like to live the life of a self-sovereign individual. Spoiler: It isn’t especially glamorous. Examples given include people running the gamut of financial stability and social influence. And, we must make a macabre nod to the one guarantee of self-sovereignty which has created leverage from nothing through the ages.
3.19| Organizational Sovereignty
Some dynamics change at the organizational level — like potential lifespan. Here, we look at some institutions from a humble coffee shop to family businesses and fraternal orders nearly a millennia old.
3.20| Community Sovereignty
More personal tales of sunburned passion and woe, mixed in with observations about how community sovereignty differs from organizational sovereignty.
3.21| The State
Specific concerns about the development and limitation of sovereignty in the state — mostly the latter.
Part 4| Praxis
4.0| Be Gnostic
Making the switch from trying to be right to thinking with your hands and getting past struggling with reality to really establishing a relationship with everything — but the not so woo woo version.
4.1| Value Reality
Seeing reality as not merely indifferent, and the benefit that can be derived from living as though reality itself is on your side.
4.2| Honor Consent
A specific framework for developing a deeper understanding of, respect for, and reflexive adherence to the virtue of honoring consent.
4.3| Correct the Fundamental Flaw
How to be consistently less wrong about the world, and why all social design and cooperative efforts must accept the call to philosophy or suffer the consequences.
4.4| Need Each Other
On understanding and practicing interdependence in a way which avoids codependence, facilitates community cohesion, and builds steadily increasing strength.
4.5| Values, Purpose, Goals, Objectives, Metrics
A process for visioning which integrates the promotion of virtuous living, understanding of history, ambitious achievement, and measurable progress.
4.6| Basta! and Dayenu
How to avoid becoming either a victim or a villain, seen through two different cultural notions of ‘enough’.
4.7| Argue in Good Faith
Why and how to explore, collaborate, and disagree with grace and mutuality. Looking at fallacies, communication patterns, and the Overton window.
4.8| Accountability Practices
When and how to use restorative process, what to do when that fails, and dealing with worst case scenarios in community standards violation. And, why both community and celebrity cancellation are a bad idea.
4.9| The Universal Design Meta-Process
Like science, which is also not an ideology — or didn’t used to be — design is a process. There are different design frameworks, and we can see a unifying pattern which is consistent between them all.
4.10| Commit to Sovereignty
Dealing with the uncomfortable mindset switch that comes with outgrowing the civilian way of viewing the world and embracing the call to citizenship.
4.11| Embrace Perfection
A look at why society is failing to metabolize the idea of finite and infinite games and how to overcome this error in order to live a truly satisfied life.
4.12| A Different Take on Health & Fitness
A framework for both valuing cultural differences and facilitating critique of cultural elements.
4.13| Don’t Be a Freelancer on a Football Pitch
On the importance of and processes for getting involved with organizations dedicated to building sovereignty.
4.14| Don’t Hate On the State
Why the reality of the state has to be — minimally — accepted, if not appreciated. And some tips for doing that, even when the state makes it really hard.
4.15| Conflict & Violence
A very brief primer on a framework for dealing with conflict and mitigating violence.
4.16| Economics
A review of commonly held beliefs and models regarding the rules of the house, and a little how-to and how-not-to regarding economic interventions.
4.17| Find God
Not exactly an evangelical plea, mostly because I don’t have a specific recommendation for where you should look. But, if you do look for divinity, you’re likely to find it. And it helps.
4.18| The Worst Thing
An impassioned plea to leave all of your stories of victimhood behind before pursuing a life of increasing sovereignty.
Part 5| Closing
5.0| Facing the Primal Fear
Dealing with the uncomfortable fact that even those considered destitute are generally too comfortable to enact change. Taking a close look at coping mechanisms, solutions, and the factors that lead us to choose one over the other.
5.1| Death is the End
Odd as it may seem, ‘death’ is layered. There isn’t just one change that happens at the point of death. But, for the context of this book, we need to look at the layer that means complete termination.
5.2| We Are the Dreamers of the Dream
Nature is sweet and brutal, indifferent to pain and pleasure. On our best days, we are one with nature. Let’s explore what that means, both the poetics and the mechanics.
And then let’s get to work.