Where in the World Are You?

The distributed nation is worldwide (DN 3.2)

Cover page | Preface | Introduction 1 | Introduction 2 | Introduction 3 |

(Part I) Why: 1.0 | 1.1 | 1.2 | 1.3 | 1.4 | 1.5 | 1.6 | 1.7 | 1.8 | 1.9 | 1.10 | 1.11 | 1.12 | 1.13 | 1.14 | 1.15 | 1.16 | 1.17 | 1.18 | 1.19 | 1.20 | 1.21 |1.22

(Part II) What: 2.0 | 2.1 | 2.2 | 2.3 | 2.4 | 2.5 | 2.6 | 2.7 | 2.8 | 2.9 | 2.10 I 2.11 | 2.12 | 2.13 | 2.14 | 2.15 | 2.16 | 2.17 | 2.XX | 2.18 | 2.19 | 2.20 | 2.21 | | Where: 3.0 | 3.1 | 3.2

Chapter 3.2
Anywhere and everywhere

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YOU are bigger than any government

The year was 1997 and I was sitting in a ratty old armchair in my studio apartment in the East Hollywood neighborhood of Los Angeles. Listening to the El Niño-driven rains beating in the street below, I began scrawling the first few words of a ‘poem’ of sorts:

Big chair,
My house,
My street,
My neighborhood…

It wasn’t meant to be Shakespeare. All I was doing was attempting to fix my position in the universe, starting with my precise location and moving outward from there.

Hitting the high points of both geophysical and political designations, I went on to place myself in Los Angeles; in the LA Basin; on the Pacific tectonic plate…in the United States…in the western hemisphere…of planet Earth…in the inner planets…of our Solar system…in a spiral arm…of the Milky Way galaxy…in our local cluster of galaxies…in our galactic supercluster. That seemed far enough. 

Of course, I am not the only one to have done this—many have no doubt thought about, and perhaps written down, similar progressions. Indeed, a friend recently called my attention to a video, designed by an astrophysicist, depicting a similar survey of the “bigness” of it all. Their version begins with a young woman lying on the grass looking up at the sky. The “camera” then pulls back and takes us into the sky, and then into space, moving through increasing levels of astronomical locales (adding details I missed, like the Kuiper Belt and the inner and outer Oort Clouds).

Having reached the level of the whole universe, the progression then reverses, and zooms back down all the way to the young woman. It then begins a regression, starting with her left eye and moving down through blood vessels, DNA, molecules, atoms, and subatomic particles (with a lot more details in between). And then, of course, the regression reverses and zooms back up to the young woman’s smiling face.

The purpose of this video is to blow your mind with the sheer vastness of existence, every bit as much as I was trying to blow my own mind sitting in that ratty old chair above the noisy streets of East Hollywood. But this time, sitting there watching that video, it dawned on me that as mind-boggling as the physical and spatial progression and regression are, equally overwhelming is the infinity that exists in that one woman lying there.¹

You are a sovereign being. You are a locus of free will—of thought, choice, and action. Wherever you are, you are a locus of infinite possibilities.

You are a part of nature. You are real.

The governments under whose involuntary rule we languish have long been treated as if they were inevitable. For centuries, we have been told that the “state of nature” is terrible condition we desperately scramble to escape, so we can reach the loving embrace of the state.

• Statists say this proudly, imagining a big, powerful state that gives all the special goodies to good girls and boys.

• Classical-liberals say it with eyes downcast, believing that a limited government is both possible and better than the alternative—that it is a “necessary evil.”²

But both say it, and both are wrong. Government is not an inevitable force of nature. The state of nature is not something we “escape.” The state of nature is where we live.

It is government we are trying to escape.

We were not put here to hide behind the skirts of government or suckle like slaves at the withered teat of our masters. We are free. Naturally, morally free.

Wherever you are in the world, your government isn’t bigger than you. You are an infinite being, living in a boundless universe. The distributed nation transcends national boundaries because YOU transcend national boundaries.

Unfortunately, our respective governments do not see it that way. So we must respond accordingly…

WE are bigger than any government

As we have discussed, the first seeds of an idea for the distributed nation were planted several years ago by a work of fiction. Yet in that moment, even I did not have the chutzpah to just up and say, “Okay, time to start our own country!” The idea had to germinate for a while.

Along the way, I began writing a draft “Declaration of Human Independence.” At first, it was merely a muse-driven expression of the realizations I was having about first principles. Slowly, though, it began to take on a more formal character. We humans, I realized, really do need to declare our independence. Formally.

Then, at FreedomFest ‘23 in Memphis, the bell of kismet rang loud and clear. In a speech from the main stage, Max Borders announced the Constitution of Consent contest. In addition to introducing me to Max, this contest gave me the opportunity to take these ideas to the next level. For several months, I worked and re-worked my entry—The Human Constitution—integrating all my recent thoughts with other important truths I have learned over the last couple of decades.

All of this work further reinforced my conviction—now grown to a blossoming tree—that something like our distributed nation needs to become a reality.

You may recall that Part I of this book is titled, “Humans, We Have a Problem.” Not “Americans, We Have a Problem” or “Europeans…” or any other single group. My conviction has been, from the start, that the distributed nation is, and must be, worldwide.

Indeed, I showed an early draft of my Declaration to a colleague and he rejected it on the grounds that I was using universal language rather than just focusing on America. But that did not shake my conviction one bit.

The work we do here is not, and must not be, addressed to any one particular group in any one particular land. Our biggest problems do not stop at national borders, and thus our solutions must not either.

In an early version of that draft declaration, I wrote,

Governments around the world, in concert with other powerful interests, increasingly hold us in contempt. Operating in the open, and in the shadows, they seek ever-greater control of our lives, and place ever-greater constraints upon our rights, prosperity, and freedom.

This oppression takes place in every language, and has become increasingly sophisticated and global in character. The peoples of the earth have rarely found cause to work together, but now the time has come.

When we do our own declaration—and we will—the wording will change, but that sentiment will remain true. Each of us has his or her own individual challenges, and groups of people face problems unique to their location and circumstances. All of these are important to address. But our biggest problems are species-wide, and so our distributed nation must be worldwide.

We may also include, as a companion to our declaration, an enumeration of grievances. Some of these will be specific to particular peoples in particular lands. Others will be shared by us all. We can figure out those details as the time approaches. In the meantime, we have plenty of other tasks before us.

I am based in America, as is Substack, and thus a majority of readers here are American. Yet I have had people from all across the world express interest in the distributed nation concept.

So let’s sound off in the comments. In what part of the world are you located? What problems are unique to your area and situation? What solutions would you like to see? What sorts of things would help?

Part of the operating model of the distributed nation is collaborative intelligence.

So let’s start talking and help each other out!

1. The preceding text is an excerpt from The Freedom Scale: An Accurate Measure of Left and Right, installments of which are being posted here.

2. “Society in every state is a blessing, but Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one: for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries BY A GOVERNMENT, which we might expect in a country WITHOUT GOVERNMENT, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer. Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence; the palaces of kings are built upon the ruins of the bowers of paradise. For were the impulses of conscience clear, uniform and irresistibly obeyed, man would need no other lawgiver; but that not being the case, he finds it necessary to surrender up a part of his property to furnish means for the protection of the rest; and this he is induced to do by the same prudence which in every other case advises him, out of two evils to choose the least. Wherefore, security being the true design and end of government, it unanswerably follows that whatever form thereof appears most likely to ensure it to us, with the least expense and greatest benefit, is preferable to all others.”

—Common Sense: Of the Origin and Design of Government in General,
with Concise Remarks on the English Constitution, by Thomas Paine.