Daniel read this essay as the core of his argument presented on May 23, 2026. View the argument report here.
NOTE: This unformatted essay is still being developed.
what is your opinion on nationalism? religion? and the desire to obtain wealth? as the three relate to each other.
(i think that all three are worldwide mass mental illness.) there is a widespread cognitive health crisis we’re living through, and our current systems enforce this crisis. the continuously repeated patterns of societal structure, though showing definite progress in terms of “guaranteed” access to human organizational comfort and (relative) safety, also show the tendency to make the same mistakes over and over again in only addressing small pieces of civilizational imbalance for the “classes” that inevitably exist in each age and variety of human collective endeavour.
* i am only referring generally to the past 10-12,000 years of human civilization resulting from the development of settled agriculture, and the beginning of restriction of access to food and other human survival necessities behind gated human-created systems of control or domination – always enforced by violence or threatened exile from said survival comforts, including socialization. this period includes the currently accepted 5,000 years of “high” human civilization starting with sumer and egypt. *
- the part that religion has played in human culture – indeed, religion itself – has evolved extensively since its beginnings, vague and partially obscured by the mists of time. this is a long, very nuanced and complicated historical subject to tackle (at the risk of massive understatement). my assertion at the beginning of this paper is not intended to insult people who follow religious traditions that they are personally, culturally invested in; i do not offer this part of my philosophical perspective with a demeaning spirit. i do understand the natural reaction this statement will provoke and i offer a preemptive apology, as i don’t contend that anyone should lose the right to believe and live by guiding moral and social precepts of a spiritual nature. i only wish to invite everyone who participates to attempt to view the historical presence of the spectrum of all human religions objectively, instead of reacting subjectively from a defensive viewpoint internal to their personal religion. i will expand on my assertions and i humbly request the reader’s patience with me until the position is presented fully.
wealth, in the forms it exists and the way it’s amassed in the generally worldwide-recognized socioeconomic system that we all participate in regardless of political government type, causes poverty.
there was a fundamental metamorphosis that began to take place in human day-to-day culture as we transitioned from the tribal hunting/gathering practices that formed its then-contemporary basis, to a settled agricultural model. this also affected our religions as our settled cultures grew into city/state civilizations, which i will address next. the important takeaway from the cultural standpoint right now is that day-to-day labor, work, began to become specialized instead of everyone having more generalized survival skills. the cultural items, the everyday goods, the technology, began to move away from a utilitarian/survival aesthetic. previously, the main focus of daily life can be imagined something akin to the pursuit of your current food source, ensuring you have adequate shelter from the elements along with protection from both environmental threats and other family/tribal groups, and (knowing humans) trying to have sex. we can also infer that people had – before settled agriculture – at least a rudimentary interest in artistic expression, astronomical observation, and spirituality through forms of shamanism and animism; archaeological and anthropological evidence supports this inference.
as the “neolithic” agricultural revolution began to take hold, we settled on claimed lands. no longer was the pursuit of food, safety and shelter such an omnipresent reality. the concerns of daily life and culture began to flower: the development of artisanal and engineering skills, along with symbol systems to represent language and concepts like basic maths, are evidence of this fundamental shift. these factors and our apparent human industriousness, along with our apparently inherent human “tribal” hierarchical organizational tendencies, contributed to the creation of what i would posit are the first forms of wealth. these would be food wealth, land and mineral wealth, the wealth of created societal goods, architectural wealth and knowledge wealth.
at some point early in this process, what we would consider the alpha or chief of the family group can be inferred to have at least a more weighted voice if not full say over the distribution of these newly created cultural goods, what happened on the land claimed by the group, how resources collected by the tribe/village were used, et cetera – not to mention first pick of the food and first reproductive choice. for cultures that also included shamanism, we can assume they likely also had influence in some of this decision-making or directly on the alpha/chief’s power. we can also see the evolution of this power dynamic in the status and power wielded by the god-kings of the first city-states and kingdoms, emboldened and reinforced by the evolving, institutional religions of the era.
this is a good point to pivot back to the religious aspect of this metamorphosis. from what we can discern of the extant data, the early shamanistic/animistic expressions, strongly influenced by female sexual energy and veneration, seem to have been supplanted by the time the first kingdoms were recording their own annals. in their place were strongly patriarchal systems of belief, giving moral reinforcement to a divine right of rule, while working symbiotically with the state to give context to the framework of behaviour expected from members of society, no matter their social class. it is unclear what prompted this incredibly dynamic shift in the social purpose of spiritual practices, though the effect cannot be denied. as a matter of fact, sumer, the earliest highly organized “large” civilization we have relatively comprehensible data from (sorry indus valley), can not even be accurately described as a “kingdom”; before the rise of their first kings, they were ruled by religious councils interpreting the will of the gods.
there is a point to this superficial walk through early discernible history: the religious or spiritual aspects of social organization have always had some effect on or symbiotic existence with the power structure of the current social order. as we grew into larger sedentary organized civilizations, this relationship grew to encompass keeping the bulk of the populace – a valuable resource, the producers of the various forms of emerging wealth – behaving in accordance with the moral/social standards desired by said power structures, while also accepting the moral right of their elevated classes. while this may have started with just the religious “officials” and whatever version of a leader or dynasty a given culture had, as the civilizations grew in complexity, so too were new strata of wealthy, “empowered” classes created based on the growth of different sectors of economies. these were merchant classes, noble/landed bloodlines, elites based on access to knowledge, etc.
there is a natural mechanism present in forms of life on our planet, including humans, that is recognized as an us/them dichotomy where “othering” of individuals not recognized as part of one’s identified group results in competitive survival actions being acceptable up to and including termination of life. this often doesn’t take place on just an individual scale. in humans, the first expressions can safely be described as family and tribal identifications. as settled civilization and culture grew more complex, so too increased the layering of societal structures and thus the amount of grouping resulting in othering; currently ethnic/cultural or “racial” groupings (another concept we’ll address) remain strong expressions on a planetary scale, while “tribalism” grown into modern nationalism and various large institutional religions compete in the same global arena. this is only the beginning of the separation and division present in our current society, however.
what can we synthesize from our brief look at the early development of this civilizational cycle? the power dynamic of humans was evolving. self-identified groups had social structures that involved work that created forms of wealth. control of various forms of this wealth flowed further up the complexifying strata of socially-empowered classes. guidelines for social expectations of behaviour and morality were proffered by religions that also created or reinforced the cultural acceptance of socially-empowered classes and a right of rule or lawmaking by the top level of this social hierarchy, often offered as divinely inherited or bestowed.
is this sounding familiar to anyone?
instead of the small-scale strength-probing skirmishes that are a hallmark of “primitive” tribal-type human organization, these new, complexifying civilizations had a very different approach to “othered” cultures they came into conflict with: war. the impetus to kill, sacrifice one’s life, or to command humans to do so because of the identification of a separate culture group as an ideological enemy of your “nation”, became a devastating force added to the potent brew of societal evolution.
the emergence of both trade money and representative money must be addressed in this part of the conversation, as these created new wealth systems for power structures to exploit, and thus new potential rewards as motivation for violent conquest of othered groups. it’s another extremely complex subject, as trade and money can be used both as an external tool for force application or for soft power, and internally to encourage adherence to societal pressures and enact oppressive policies by power structures. eventually, these financial systems became so intertwined with trade, daily commerce and other forms of wealth that the perception of access to money is equated with the concept of “wealth” in general by humans today.
in the context of this paper’s goals, it is not necessary to catalogue all of humanity’s legacy of political structures. the emergence of the democratic idea does seem to be acknowledged as the best option by a plurality of humans. when speaking of the evolution of democracy, of course the united states will be brought up, being in the forefront of the global cultural zeitgeist. firstly, the state of human social progress in our section of the world at the time of the nation’s founding can be charitably described as…problematic. there was both a level of pragmatism and exploitative intent in the original design of the country’s power structures. the version of representative democracy we settled on at the beginning of the “american experiment” was inspired by other human examples, was not supposed to be an endstate of societal progress, and obviously started a sea change on the human global stage in terms of political thought that has led to the present day.
*in progress*
representative democracy is outdated because of human technological and social progress. in addition, because of said current socioeconomic systems in which it exists, it ends up creating what it is supposed to remove: a ruling upper class in society just like in autocratic, monarchic or theocratic political systems. the difference is the access to attaining said upper class status and the reasons said status is defended as morally right.
direct democracy, coupled with guaranteed access to across-the-board high quality education, housing, healthcare, food, transportation, and recreation, is the goal to move towards.
part of this movement towards that goal, based on my earlier assertions, should be the elimination of the ability for any one person, family, company, organization or “nation” to amass control of a material resource, land resource, data resource, or currency/financial resource. that system and frame of thinking has to be eliminated. if there is no need to amass said wealth to have the things you want – to both have a good quality of life, the enjoyment and recreation you want, and the ability to be creative and add to society beneficially if you desire – it would eliminate a significant amount of inequality in society and the impetus for a large portion of “crime” as well.
it is untenable to enact true systemic change in the direction that is desirable through totalitarianism/force. for years, i’ve worried that because of the inertia, entrenched power structures, indoctrination of mother culture and ability to co-opt dissent that are inherent in the existing national/societal structure of humanity, systemic change would only be remotely possible under a few conditions. mass human die-off due to war or catastrophe/cataclysm seemed to be an integral part of these types of scenarios, which is of course NOT the desirable path to take towards our goal. lately however, i am getting the impression that the possibilities are shifting due to multiple factors.
there is a paradigm shift coming in the way we exist that is nigh on incomprehensible to us the way we exist currently. i think the following statements, when looked at together, start to paint some startling possibilities. worldwide instantaneous communication, while more and more of us are plugged into each other’s daily lives through various social media. the growing inability, because of this social reality, to stop any piece of data or information from being disseminated. the race to understand and create machine/bioengineered intelligence that is beyond our current natural human operating parameters or potential. the creation of “artificial” body parts that also surpass current normal human operating parameters. integrated human interfaces a la neuralink (definitely not neuralink itself). the continued evolution of 3d printing technology, with the goal of being able to reuse raw materials instead of them staying locked in one manufactured form when creating goods for societal use. these are just the tip of the iceberg that i can list off of the top of my head.
there is an opportunity now to build together, face to face planet-wide, a newly realized and fully democratic phase of development in human civilization that seems unprecedented. as far as we know. an opportunity to build an alternative to the prevailing organizational and political theories of the past few hundred years. i reject marx, smith – and those who have iterated their ideas since – as the pinnacle of human societal theory, thought and evolution. in the macro scheme of things (politically speaking), these long-dead humans seem to form the backbone of all competing “left/right” factions across a large swathe of the planet.
they both miss the point.
this is not to fault the evolving systems that have been utilized by humanity to reach a point where we can consider making a societal shift of this magnitude, or even just start planning for it. to quote propagandhi, “yes, i recognize the irony – the system i oppose affords me the luxury of biting the hand that feeds. that’s exactly why privileged f**** like me should feel obliged to whine and kick and scream til everyone has everything they need.” yes, there has been a legacy of different types of subjugation throughout our discernible history since the agricultural revolution that began 10-12,000 years ago. the breadth of variety and inventiveness of these exploitative control mechanisms would surely boggle one’s mind, if they were ever fully catalogued.
these seem to be a remnant of hierarchical expressions practiced not only by our forebears, but by other social forms of life on our planet – i.e. “natural systems”. now, here is a question: would you acknowledge that an essential part of humanity’s unique evolutionary path in building our civilization so far has been removing ourselves from “natural” processes, or their ability to affect us? this is rich material for discourse and debate – starting with the naturalistic fallacy.
*in progress*