Preface for 'The Distributed Nation'

Time to break the chain.

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

Author’s Note for Substack

Time is short and the need is great. Unlike my last book, which I wrote, rewrote, expanded, and obsessively edited over a 15-year period, this needs to get done now. Over the last 12 months, I have done a lot of groundwork, but none of the official writing. I will thus be writing this book on the fly, here on Substack…trying to stay just a little ahead of the wave.

This means that I may, at times and without notification, edit previous sections, change the order of things, and make any alterations necessary to create the best possible presentation.

However, from your standpoint, dear reader, this will simply be a series of articles, just like all my other articles. The only difference is that they will proceed in order toward a particular goal.

That goal will be just what so many of you have been asking for: a solution. Instead of just continuing to explore problems, we will be laying a pathway out of the darkness. The time is now.

I want as many people as possible to read this. To that end, I have decided, for the time being at least, not to put it behind a paywall.

However, in order to keep writing, I do need your backing, so I am asking that you choose to support my work, and the broader purposes of this book, if you can. For those who do, here is a special link with a discount.

If we are ever going to take this from the idea phase to actual implementation, it will require resources. For the cost of the occasional cup of coffee, you can help get us to that point.

With all that said, let’s get started!

PREFACE

One pill,
Two pill,
Red pill,
Blue pill.
Black pill, white pill…
Which one is the right pill?

Well, here we are.

Things are a mess. 

We all vary in our understanding of just how much of a mess, and where the mess came from…

Some of us accept mainstream narratives and favor conventional explanations.

Some of us have looked under a few rocks and maybe gone down a couple of rabbit holes in search of answers.

Some of us have traveled so deep down so many rabbit holes that it has become hard to remember what the sunlight even looks like anymore.

Some of us have stopped looking in holes, and have simply accepted that it’s turtles all the way down.

Frankly, I do not know anyone who isn’t at least a little bit tired and disoriented these days. Even the steadiest among us has a vague sense that the center cannot hold. That some rough beast slouches its way ever closer.

Who’s really running the show? Why do they do what they do? How deep does the rabbit hole go?

I don’t know.

I don’t travel down many rabbit holes these days. There’s no need—the notion that things are unfathomably weird is already baked into my cake.

Besides…I think we deserve better than to spend all our time in holes. 

I know, I know. They—whoever they are—make it hard. We didn’t make this mess—they did. Trying to figure out what they are doing, and why, is just self-defense.

Fair enough.

But is this then to be our lot, and our children’s, and their children’s, forever? An endless quest down an endless series of endless holes? Is that all there is?

When do we get to live in the sunshine?

Perhaps you have an answer in mind:

We get to live in the sunshine once we’ve voted hard enough, elected the right leaders, and put the right policies into place.

So how’s that plan working out?

In fact, how has that plan ever worked out? Has it ever done more than simply slow the rate of decay?

Is this really what we want to bequeath to our children? An endless pitched battle, where we lose a little more ground, year after year, decade after decade? And when our shield arm finally tires, to simply pass the task to them, and they to their children, forever? Is that all there is?

Generation after generation—our hearts puffed with patriotic pride—we feed them that same tired old platitude: “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.”

Here’s your tricorne hat, son. Here’s your ballot. Now go forth and be vigilant.

And what task of vigilance do we give them? To somehow restrain a government that violates their liberty as a part of its normal operations.

It isn’t pride we should be feeling. It’s shame. Shame that we are condemning our children to the same belief under which we have languished for so long: that this is the best we can possibly do.

It isn’t.

For the last 18 months here at the Freedom Scale, we have been exploring a realization that is far worse than anything you’ll find down any rabbit hole: that virtually no form of government that has ever existed is morally acceptable in any way.

Thus far, no one has been able to refute the case I have made. Instead, they ask the next logical question: What’s the alternative?

This book will explore just such an alternative.

But it will not just be me writing at you. We will be working on this together, refining the plan as we go. Making it better, through the miracle of collaborative intelligence.

In the end, we will end up with something that we may actually be able to implement. Perhaps even sooner than you think.

You asked for alternatives. You asked for solutions.

Well, here they come.