Imagine the World Post-Government.

luka

Well-known member
i will answer this at some point maybe. i was just thinking about it while lying in bed still half-asleep.
 

constant escape

winter withered, warm
The shriveling of policy-backed bureaucratic pretenses, perhaps? Revealing power's tendency toward private nodes?

I'd say it would be a sort of extremity of the nation-to-corporation transition. Pockets of private, military-grade power, without any omnipresent policy framework to hold them accountable. Unless, perhaps, it would be in their private interest to revitalize or sustain such policy frameworks.

It would be interesting to see what ideological residues persists, clinging to what bodies of power, after any such systemic collapse.

Am I correct in assuming that a post-government world is necessarily either post-collapse, or communism?
 

luka

Well-known member
No. It's a corporate world as you say. Private police/security for those who can afford it. Private utilities. Each space with its own set of local rules
 

constant escape

winter withered, warm
Yeah I'd say if there is some kind of collapse of governmental agency, and its effectively a free for all, then corporations will become the explicit agenda-setters, rather than just the implicit agenda-setters they are now.
 

constant escape

winter withered, warm
But considering how corporate rule, either explicit or implicit, can transition into communism, is interesting. I'd imagine we could see some wild permutations of communism under these circumstances. Could be a communism for the genetically engineered, bending human nature to conform with utopia.
 

constant escape

winter withered, warm
Communism here means an operational society despite the lack of a governmental body. Would-be governmental power being diffused among the would-be governed. And as @thirdform has pointed out, free time. Free time, to pursue this or that crusade, vocation, etc.

If you could genetically engineer humans to be self-governing, perhaps. Short of actual genetic reengineering, it would take staggering thorough levels of psychic engineering, essentially religious I gather.
 

constant escape

winter withered, warm
Jared Leto's character from Bladerunner 2049 comes to mind, albeit in a jazzed-up and somewhat silly way. Messianic corporate hubris.
 

constant escape

winter withered, warm
Not sure what the neuroscience is on how social structures and hierarchies are established, but I'd imagine its only a matter of time before we have insight there. Not that we're nearly to the point where we can reengineer ourselves to that extent, but again thats just a matter of time.

edit: neuroscience, neuropsychology perhaps
 

constant escape

winter withered, warm
Screen-Shot-2021-01-11-at-4-57-08-AM.png
 

constant escape

winter withered, warm
Got carried away there. Anyway, I suppose one way to think about this transition is this: If we are currently at the stage where corporations are de facto agenda setters, and politics is increasingly reduced to a formal interfacing with whatever portion of the population thinks they're paying attention, at what point does this insulating/interfacing mechanism break?

That said, I still tend to believe there are pockets of policymakers here and there that are sincerely working to better society, but I also tend to believe that such sincerity does not extend through the policy-making apparatus. Could just be naive there, on either account.
 
Top