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As regular readers know, my goal with this newsletter is to convince you that we need more democracy online. I try to do my homework to back this up (see my Explainer series). Digging into the history of democracy led me to a unique book called The Realness of Things Past: Ancient Greece and Ontological History by Ohio State professor Greg Anderson. Anderson is an expert on ancient Athenian democracy. Instead of writing a conventional history of what the Athenians did, he tries to explain how the Athenians thought. And we will never be able to do that if we try to apply our modern worldview backwards. We need to throw it all out and start over.
What does it mean to have a modern worldview?
Anderson defines the modern worldview as “materialist, anthropocentrist, secularist, and individualist.” To break this down:
Materialist: we believe that there is an objectively true physical reality that is separate from our minds and internal thoughts. (As famous scientist Neil deGrasse Tyson put it, “The good thing about Science is that it’s true, whether or not you believe in it.”)
Anthropocentrist: we define history as the story of humanity, and everything outside of us is purely physical and passive - “resources,” “processes,” “property,” etc. (In other words, there’s no Lorax to speak for the trees, it’s just Oncelers all the way down.)
Secularist: we keep anything supernatural or religious segregated in a realm of belief, so they won’t have undue influence on the realms of government or science that are concerned with reality. (See the late paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould’s idea of non-overlapping magisteria.)
Individualist: we define society as a collection of people who each have their own identity and inherent rights that exist independently of whatever social communities they choose to be a part of. (See the US Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.”
Anderson sets this up to point out that these ideas are A) very new (since the Enlightenment and scientific revolution), and B) radically different from almost every previous worldview in human history.
For the ancient Athenians, the world was literally different
Understanding the Athenians starts by recognizing that for them, the gods were not a religious tradition, worshipped in temples and separate from everyday life. They were real, conscious beings who were omnipresent. Everything in the Athenian world – weather, harvests, families, wars, etc – was intertwined with a non-stop series of sacrifices, festivals, and temple-building to maintain their relationship with the gods. This was all completely necessary and rational; deny it and you would be considered delusional, like believing you are a sovereign citizen who doesn’t have to pay taxes.
The Athenians would also have found the idea of individualism nonsensical. The Athenians only existed as members of a group. Every Athenian was part of a specific family, which was part of a clan, which together made up the Demos, the collective entity consisting of all of the Athenians, which was literally born from, and part of, the land of Attica, personified as the divine entity Ge Kourotrophos (“Land, Nurturer of Youth”). Athenians who died abroad in war had to be brought back so Attica didn’t lose their bodies, while criminals were buried elsewhere to remove their corruption from the land and the Demos. While foreigners could move to Athens and become permanent residents, they (and their descendents) could never be Athenians.
This meant that there was no nation of “Athens” in the sense of a modern country with a government and economy. The Demos was a collection of families and clans that were assumed to be independently managing their own relationships with Attica, the gods, and each other. There were no police – cases only began with one person accusing another of a crime, with volunteer judges and juries. Deliberative bodies were also volunteers, assembled when a societal issue came up that no individual family or clan could resolve such as managing a war. There was no top-down central authority deciding on trade policy or imposing taxes. Athenians exchanged money and goods, but never worked for each other as employees or servants. The wealthy were expected to distribute grain, sponsor festivals, and fund wars as part of their duty to the Demos.
All of this helps explain the parts of Athenian democracy that seem hypocritical to modern eyes. [Warning: neither Anderson nor I condone these next sentences. This is explanatory, not an endorsement.] While women were not eligible to be part of juries or decision-making convenings, their roles as family managers, leaders of essential rituals for the gods, and the literal creators of the next generation of Athenians born of Attica, gave them equal importance to the Demos. And slavery was not a moral issue since, as non-Athenians, they were not part of the Demos, so their welfare was only relevant to the degree it helped Athenian families survive and thrive. Asking an Athenian to give citizenship to slaves would be like asking a modern farmer to let their cows vote.
Fine, but what does this have to do with the Internet?
The Internet is changing society so profoundly that I believe we need to be just as radical looking into the future as Anderson is in looking to the past. In particular, I think “virtual” relationships will be as real to future generations as the gods were to the Athenians. Remote work points in this direction, as many people have found that they can do their jobs perfectly well without a physical-world component. Even parasocial relationships with celebrities may seem valid in this future world. Is there that much difference between being a major IShowSpeed stan and sacrificing at a temple of Zeus?
A world that doesn’t distinguish between real and virtual will challenge the idea of citizenship and nationhood based on physical location. The biggest online platforms are arguably post-national already. They transcend borders, our identities and communities are increasingly tied to them, and their relationship with physical-world governments is fraught. Just look at the criticism that Apple and Google have gotten for renaming Lake Ontario in the United States. What is that, if not the online community deciding which national policies to obey or defy?
To be clear, I think renaming a lake is moronic, and the companies should have found a legal way to fight back. I just think that we are underestimating the seismic mental shift of considering companies as extraterritorial authorities.
Xenophobic nationalism and the Internet don’t mix
I belabor this point because, ironically, some of the biggest beneficiaries of the shift to online worlds are now trying to drag us back to an ancient world of blood and soil, where physical ancestry is inescapable destiny. Many wealthy and powerful people want to get rid of birthright citizenship, stop immigration, and force education to tell a simplified, heroic story of the nation. [See my pieces on Peter Thiel, Alex Karp, and ICE due process.]
I wonder if they even understand that to implement blood-and-soil online, you would need to fragment the Internet to stop people from sharing ideas and building relationships across national borders, just like the censorship regimes in China and Iran. Imagine being asked for proof of citizenship to join UK Instagram, or needing a passport to watch a Canadian video on YouTube.
This might sound ridiculous, but we are already being shunted toward nationalism online. However well-intentioned, the EU right to be forgotten means the Internet in Europe doesn’t look the same as it does in other countries. ByteDance was forced to split off the US version of Tiktok. Child safety regulations are requiring more of us every day to provide government IDs as proof of age. This sounds helpful, but looks less benign in a world where the current US regime has started to collect social media handles from people applying to change their immigration status, and wants to impose (unnecessary) proof of citizenship to vote.
Sic semper tyrannus
I take heart from considering the fate of monarchies in both Athens and Rome. The Athenians were ruled by kings (tyrannus) before a series of reforms and rebellions led them to democracy. The Roman Republic began when the people revolted against their traditional kings (rex) in the 6th or 5th century BC. Julius Caesar was assassinated because a group of senators feared he was trying to bring back the ancient kingship.
I believe that just like the Athenians and Romans, sooner or later the communities who rely on large online platforms are going to ask why they are being ruled from above and demand a say in their future. The question for me is only whether the authorities who rule the platforms, and the demagogues who seek to distort them to support nativism and nationalism, will cede power willingly, or will end up being loathed by future generations just as much as the fallen tyrannus and rex of the distant past.
Ideas? Feedback? Criticism? I want to hear it, because I am sure that I am going to get a lot of things wrong along the way. I will share what I learn with the community as we go. Reach out any time at [email protected].
