Everybody can be great, because everybody can serve. You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have to have to make your subject and your verb agree to serve. You don’t have to know about Plato and Aristotle to serve. You don’t have to know Einstein’s “Theory of Relativity” to serve. You don’t have to know the Second Theory of Thermal Dynamics in Physics to serve. You only need a heart full of grace, a soul generated by love. – From “The Drum Major Instinct”, a sermon by Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., 1968.
By Michael Krieger: The following piece is based on a vision for the U.S., but I suspect the concepts apply equally to most nation-states encompassing large land masses and populations over a few million. Most of us have been conditioned to believe human life is best organized at scale. In other words, we’ve been convinced it’s best to have as many people as possible operating under a single overarching centralized government structure in charge of micromanaging society from the top down. I consider this paradigm outdated, unnatural and increasingly dangerous.
In the Western world, we tend to justify centralized superstates because they’re ostensibly based on democracy, but this doesn’t hold water for a variety of reasons. First, you’d have to be living under a rock to look at U.S. policy during the 21st century and think it reflects the “will of the people.”
Second, if you try to create one-size fits all solutions to problems in a geographically and culturally diverse nation of 325 million people, you tend to make everyone unhappy.
By Michael Krieger: The following piece is based on a vision for the U.S., but I suspect the concepts apply equally to most nation-states encompassing large land masses and populations over a few million. Most of us have been conditioned to believe human life is best organized at scale. In other words, we’ve been convinced it’s best to have as many people as possible operating under a single overarching centralized government structure in charge of micromanaging society from the top down. I consider this paradigm outdated, unnatural and increasingly dangerous.
In the Western world, we tend to justify centralized superstates because they’re ostensibly based on democracy, but this doesn’t hold water for a variety of reasons. First, you’d have to be living under a rock to look at U.S. policy during the 21st century and think it reflects the “will of the people.”
Second, if you try to create one-size fits all solutions to problems in a geographically and culturally diverse nation of 325 million people, you tend to make everyone unhappy.