I once heard that if a shark stops swimming it dies. The story goes that sharks have no ability to force water over their gills, aside from moving forward; so they are condemned to a life of endless swimming, never stopping to rest. This is striking and odd at first, but the lesson is obvious: any organism, institution, or family which stops moving forward inevitably stalls out and dies. We might not need to literally walk forward to keep our lungs flush with air, but a failure to provide for the morrow means a failure to survive into tomorrow.

Only a fool rests on his laurels.

So let us apply this principle in considering nationalism and post-nationalism. What was nationalism in the first place, if not an adaptive strategy to maintain the lifeblood of power within families, companies, and institutions? And how has the changing environment caused the adaptive strategies to change? What are the incentives, and what is currently possible?

Ultimately what I’m trying to describe is the nature of power. Who has it, and how is it wielded? How does technology change it? What does actual power look like, and how does it behave in the modern era? And what is merely the trappings of power – the legacy outfits which are hanging around, but for all practical purposes are powerless? By understanding the nature of power, and the ecosystem in which it thrives, we can gain a better understanding of our world, and what might actually be done to improve our lot within it.

The beginning and end of nationhood

One of the greatest tools we moderns have at our finger tips is strategy games and history simulators; never before have the complex interactions between independent agents competing for scarce resources been manifest within a controlled, measurable environment. Campaigns can be simulated and iterated again and again, allowing a scientific test of strategic principles in a manner which was heretofore impossible.

Of particular note for present purposes is the game Europa Universalis IV: a grand strategy game which starts in 1444 and ends in 1821. It is a game utterly lacking in pre-defined victory conditions; you, the player, are expected to make your own goals. Pick a nation, any nation – all the way down to Native American tribes – and try and accrue power. You make your own victory conditions – and play until the clock runs out.

The question I want to explore is: why did the developers choose these particular dates?

A bit of historical background, then: the Roman Empire is typically considered to have collapsed from 376 to 476 A.D.. It began with the invasion of the Huns from the East, driving the Goths to migrate, invade, and overwhelm. It ended with the dissolution of the Empire into the Western Roman Empire, and the Byzantine Empire to the East, and then the loss of administrative control over the governors throughout Central and Western Europe. The administrative organization of Rome is recalled through the bureaucracy of the Catholic Church (“cleric” and “clerk” both come from the same Latin root), but aside from that it was forgotten, and new systems were developed.

From 476 to 800 we had the “Dark Ages” – a period without central authority or regularization between different polities. Political organization was local; in almost all cases the ruling family was a descendent of a Roman governor or trade consortium, but without a centralized Roman bureaucracy providing courts and infrastructure, new systems of administration had to be developed. They were technically Roman; Latin was the common tongue and the language of scholars; but independent experimentation was the defacto norm.

This period of political chaos came to an end with the crowning of Charlemagne as Holy Roman Emperor on Christmas Day of 800 A.D.. Coming to be known as the Pater Europae, his crowning set the standard of the new political order. The past four centuries had seen rulers who were little more than thugs and merchants; this isn’t to say that they lacked moral character, merely that in desperate times one doesn’t have the luxury of high culture. Charlemagne, for instance, always regretted his illiteracy; he never had the time to study his letters, the demands of ruling his empire were too great.

But despite being rough-hewn, Charlemagne’s crowning at the hands of Pope Leo III acted as a seed crystal for the new political order. Throughout Europe the new norm became the anointed king; the system of nobility and peasants; population doubled thanks to rule of law and the systematizing of Just War theory (which forbade looting and pillaging). From his crowning to the Black Death for 1348, a strong industrial and political base was established, until finally the presumptions of the past began to show their age.

Many at the time viewed the plague as a judgment from God; and in a sense, it was. The social system established by Charlemagne was extremely rigid; with little consideration for moral nuance or personal accountability. The morality was explicit, not implicit – as befitting an illiterate population on the brink of survival, suffering constant banditry. But by the turn of the Fourteenth century, the peasantry had become (relatively) literate, economically prosperous, and socially responsible. The rigid class structure inherited from Charlemagne now saw peasants being forced to till soil so rough that even modern agriculture leaves it fallow; priests inheriting their positions and abandoning their personal spiritual discipline; nobility acting like absentee landlords, failing to defend their peasants courageously or engaging in petty conflicts with their neighbours with flagrantly frivolity. Europe’s newly developed wealth was running into a clogged up economy, preventing it from achieving its full potential by an archaic social and legal system.

This was what made the Black Death – and the endemic bubonic plagues during the succeeding decades – the ‘judgement’ that it proved to be. Its effects were worsened by the out-of-date rules, while it simultaneously eroded those rules. The result was a Fifteenth Century which saw the freeing up of human capital, an artistic reinvention of the human spirit, an explosion in technology, and the ritualization of the gentry’s nobility; it was the Black Death which created the Renaissance. This is the historical landscape of Europa Universalis IV, all the way up to 1821 when modernity became fully entrenched.

So what was life like for the powerful during that time, during which the seeds of both Nationalism and Internationalism were beginning to germinate?

Power in the Middle Ages

Several images come immediately to mind. Castles – a combination of manor, business headquarters, and defensive emplacement. Belief – not just faith, but a population who truly believes – that God is manifest, salvation possible, that the King is anointed to rule, and that justice is fundamentally just. Oral traditions and local culture. The prevalence of body guards and close quarters combat.

It was an era of conspicuous power. Pomp and ceremony were used to enhance the status of the monarch, and of the lesser nobility and bourgeoisie; given that it was already obvious who was in charge, these social tools were employed to make them seem superhuman, irreproachable. Power was local and personal; monarchs transmitted it across vast distance through personal relationships and royal symbolism, but in a day-to-day sense they were only able to directly surveil what was within a day’s ride. Logistical networks didn’t allow for overnight transcontinental deliveries; each village and each region needed to be self-sufficient. A strong monarch required a strong and loyal people. Etiquette was more important than lawyers; etiquette was the surface level of a deep ocean of culture, defining the ethics of not just interpersonal relations, but also international relations.  The nation was nothing more and nothing less than the power projection of the monarch, his family, and those families whose interests were directly aligned with his. Louis the XIV put it perfectly when he said “L’etat c’est moi.”

So – given that we no longer have monarchs ruling the world – where does that leave the nation? Is it anything more than legacy software?

Literacy and Promissory Notes

Whatever you think of them, the Rothschilds were the first ones to really see the potential that mass literacy offered. In 1422, what did it mean to get a loan? What did it mean to pay a tribute? Inevitably it meant carrying out chests full of heavy gold ingots, and transporting them across vast distances – a tempting target if ever there was one. Part of the reason for these massive castles is that they were needed to store all of the gold; your average peasant was physically incapable of being wealthier than what he could reasonably store and reasonably defend. It was this physical limitation which the Rothschild patriarch had the foresight to see past.

“My sons,” he said on his deathbed, “My sons, I want you to always keep faith with one another. Go out and establish a bank in each of the financial capitals of Europe – London, Vienna, Paris – and when one of your clients wishes to send money across the continent, don’t risk that money to the roads where it can be taken through banditry and taxation. Instead – send a promissory note with your seal on it to one of your siblings, and then deliver the gold to your clients account. Through this we will control the finances of the continent.”

And this is exactly what came to pass. They took the risk out of possessing great wealth by centralizing it in their well-defended banks. They adopted the boring, conservative style of modern finance rather than the pomp and ceremony of the powerful in previous eras. Ultimately they used this bloodline-based financial market to gain a better understanding of the power positions of the different monarchs, and ultimately subvert them – financing both sides of the various European wars, thus guaranteeing that no matter who lost, the Rothschilds won. Say what you will about the morality of this – a shark which stops swimming, drowns – if it hadn’t been them it would have been the Blauschilds.  The advent of widespread literacy and fast transport and communication meant that power was no longer local.

That is the essence of modernity: fast, easy transport and communication, alongside impregnable, robust institutions which serve as storehouses of power.

The Nature of Modern Power

Let’s consider, side by side, how power manifested in the past and how it manifests today. From that we’ll consider institutions, and what it means for the Post-Nationalist world order.

Power then was explicit; now it’s implicit.

Every medieval peasant knew the name of his liege lord; if he didn’t, he might as well not have one. It served the nobility to be bigger than life, to dress extravagantly. Any infantryman on the battlefield could discern who was issuing orders; ergo, the noble might as well wear something garish. Modern military officers wish to remain hidden in the crowd – they’re too obvious of a target for snipers. In the medieval military a decorative full-plate garniture would, if anything, identify them as a target to be captured alive. The same principle applies to daily life. It’s not the outfit that makes the man powerful – leaders of nations dress only slightly better than your average car salesman while performing the functions of government. And during their off hours, it’s not the clothing that makes the man, it’s the Visa Black Card they carry in their wallet.

Much as the Rothschilds didn’t want to carry their wealth on the road, the modern powerful don’t want to make obvious targets of themselves.

Power then was local; now it’s international.

For the medieval lord, the local relationships were paramount. Your relationship with your knights, your relationship with the village elders, your relationship with the Bishop. Community arose out of the soil, rather than out of class. All power came from the soil which fed you. With the advent of the industrial revolution, however, the balance of farming versus production flipped. Where once you had 90% of the population engaged in agriculture, now you had 90% of the population living in urban settings. The important marker of a person became not which province or county you came from, but which economic or social class you belonged to. The medieval lord needed the personal loyalty of his soldiers; your modern 1%er has never met a police officer, and hobnobs with elites residing in a variety of urban settings. The 0.01% goes beyond this, associating with a class of people who are beyond the restrictions of particular citizenship, private-jetting their way to wherever they please.

Power then was responsible; now it’s unaccountable.

Being both explicit and local, medieval power found it prudent to re-invest their power locally. Building new infrastructure, defending their people, improving the agriculture – of all of these were directly beneficial to a lord; one who failed on all these fronts was likely to suffer predation – if not from peasants with pitchforks, then from a neighbouring lord who saw his territory as easy pickings, a superior to whom he owed fealty who was unimpressed with his land management, or from the political machinations of a merchant or priest who called out his behavior. The modern form of power knows no such responsibility. Jeff Bezos can do whatever he wants with his wealth, all he owes his vassals is minimum wage. Bill Gates can fund massive drug campaigns, without worry of ever facing a medical tribunal. And George Soros is free to short nations, causing untold damage to the economy and human lives, but so long as he obeys the letter of the law he’s free to fund climate change activists.

The modern nadirs of power have no incentive to care for their subjects.

The Contradiction at the Root of Rootless Power

Modern power is rootless and cosmopolitan. And so are most of us peasants. After all, we’re playing the same game as the powerful, just with less cash. The medieval peasant was heavily invested in his farm, in his neighbours, and in his children; the modern peasant rents, makes his friends at whatever university or job he attends, and expects his children to raise themselves (if he even has any). The Agenda 2030 plan – “You’ll own nothing and be happy!” – seems to make a bit more sense in this context. It’s not just a demand from the powerful, who want you as a monthly renter of their software, their property, and your country (so long as you obey the pacification laws) – it’s a description of how they themselves live their lives. They might “own” a property on paper – but ultimately they move around so much, that it’s just a more elaborate form of renting. They might invest in home repairs of their Los Angeles mansion – after all, this improves the resale value – but they’re certainly not invested in improving the local working conditions of Californian peasants.

And this is where the problem becomes evident. Renters just don’t treat their property as well as owners do. This goes for your car, your house –  and your society.

For society to function, you need to establish a high-trust culture. A culture which has both carrot and stick – the ‘carrot’ of shared social mores (in which, if you keep your word, you’re rewarded with the reputation of being an honourable man) and the stick of responsibility (if you fail to uphold your promises, we know where you live). The high trust culture we see today – the institutions which are generally honest – are a legacy of a previous era. Never underestimate the momentum of an institution. But that era is gone, and there is no longer any strong push to maintain it. In fact, quite the opposite: destroying the local mores benefits the Human Resource Officer by converting people into individuated units which can be moved around at will, and relocated on demand. Thus we see the love of multiculturalism – which is, of course, nothing of the sort. It’s Globohomo – Global Homogenization. You can have whatever ‘culture’ you want, so long as it consists of nothing of great substance which might interrupt your work duties. Dress however you want, listen to whatever you want, divert yourself with one of the thousands of pre-fabbed subcultures provided by the entertainment industry – but don’t you dare think of adhering to an ancestral belief which causes friction with your fellow diversity. As a side benefit, a diverse workforce is far less likely to unionize – but the prime motivator is the necessity of the culture being global.

Of course, this is no culture at all. And with no culture, no ethos or ethnos, what common spirit is there to rally around, to build up that high trust culture? Why cooperate instead of defect when cooperation is punished, and defection lauded?

Or to put it into material terms: Jeff Bezos requires a Homogenized Global ‘Culture’ for his business empire to exist – Amazon is premised upon the fast delivery of products made halfway around the planet. Ethnic conflicts are forbidden under his rule, as surely as heresy was banned by the medieval lord.

He also needs a high-trust culture for his business empire. The moment a plurality of people start stealing the packages from where they’re left on the doorstep, the whole enterprise becomes untenable.

Jeff Bezos needs a watered down, international cookie-cutter culture of no moral worth to have an empire. But for that empire to function, he also needs strong, local cultures which generate high trust from a sense of shared identity. Amazon is living a lie; it’s trying to have its cake and eat it too.

And it’s not just Amazon you should be worried about. What about the medical profession? Is a paycheque and a medical review board really enough? Or do we want our physicians to be motivated by love of their community? What about your auto mechanics? Or your politicians?

Both Capitalism and Communism were attempts to address the shift in power which arrived with the Industrial Revolution; both have now failed, only serving to monopolize power in the hands of the most ruthless, rather than the most needy (Communism) or innovative (Capitalism). The only solution which can work is to start uniting power and responsibility once more. Somewhere between ethos and ethnos is where a great leaders might once again emerge. But until that happens – don’t lie to yourself about which game is being played. Your own power as an individual is just as international and divested as theirs; know this, and make the most of it.