Humankind has come a long way. First, in the hunter-gatherer era, humans were free and equal, roaming the world in small, tight bands, but had the basic problem of an unreliable food supply. This was solved by transitioning to agriculture, which created a new problem: tyrannical, unequal societies in which a privileged few ruled over the poor, powerless peasant masses.
The problems of the agricultural era were solved by the miracle of the industrial revolution and the modern era, in which scientific and technological progress sped up tremendously and greatly increased the standard of living throughout societies. At the same time, political and economic freedom increased greatly with the spread of liberal democracy.
This created a new problem, a good problem: how to thrive in abundance. How do you think about life now that you have the basic problems of food and shelter solved? How do you intentionally design a better society now that the technology exists to spread ideas and organize people en masse?
This led to the introduction of two new totalitarian ideologies in the twentieth century: communism and fascism. This was perhaps the greatest disaster in the history of human endeavors, leading to the loss of around one hundred million lives. By the end of the twentieth century, these grand experiments were largely over, and classical liberalism, the combination of constitutional democracy and basically free markets, had emerged as the clear winner.
Now, thirty years after the fall of the Soviet Union, here we are, with our political contests all within the safe confines of liberal democracy. And…it’s kind of a letdown. This is it? All there is left to do is endlessly cycle between the center-left and center-right? Where is the grand vision? The left wants to endlessly replay the Civil Rights Era. The right wants to endlessly replay Leave it to Beaver. But we aren’t in the mid-twentieth century any more.
We need to go forward. But how? It’s not clear. We can’t return to the simpler times before the modern era. We certainly don’t want to repeat the totalitarian social experiments of the twentieth century. Neither do we want to stay stuck in the dreary cycle of the two parties reacting to each other.
We’re getting diminishing returns from the classical liberal playbook. Classical liberalism is a really good set of ideas, and humanity has done quite well in the last couple of centuries by gradually fulfilling the promise of classical liberalism. We’ve largely conquered the old problems of poverty and brutal injustice.
Perhaps the problem with liberalism is that it just doesn’t feel right somehow. It delivers the goods, literally, but it feels somehow empty. Both the left and right have criticized the hollowness and materialism of classical liberalism. There is a kind of romantic reaction and yearning for a simpler time that comes from both sides. The left wants to return to the simple egalitarianism and low impact on nature of the nomadic tribe. The right wants to return to the community and stability of the small, rural town.
Maybe both sides can get what they want, without destroying the rich, peaceful world we have. Perhaps each side, and every group in between, can make forks of the liberal society that are tuned for their visions of the good life. Of course, this is already happening to some extent. In the US, the woke left has San Francisco, Portland, and Seattle. The traditionalist right has thousands of towns and small towns across the country. Both are chafing under the dictates of federal and even state governments. Red and Blue America are like a couple that can’t stand each other any more but are still coexisting uncomfortably in the same house.
Maybe instead of stubbornly trying to make it work, we can just separate. Again, this is already happening. California and Florida are emerging as sharply differing symbols of Blue America and Red America. Polarization is usually seen as a bad thing, but it might not necessarily be so. Maybe instead of futilely fighting polarization, we can take it as a given and work with it. We can do it right.
Looking further ahead, we may end up sorting into opt-in, deeply aligned communities as described in Balaji Srinivasan’s The Network State. There could be a woke society, a traditional Catholic society, and a techno-libertarian society, each with its own laws. This could happen if people form aligned groups online and create enclaves on land and gradually gain sovereignty. The overall effect would be a greater diversity of societies to choose from, and more innovation at the societal level. We can see what works by giving local polities more autonomy.
It’s hard to imagine right now, but it is an extrapolation of existing trends. The current situation feels unsustainable and undesirable. The answer might be effectively thickening the market of societies. After all, it is the unusually politically splintered nature of 17th-century Europe that is often credited for enabling the great societal innovation of classical liberalism in the last few centuries. Perhaps we can usher in a new renaissance by creating new societies.