Tag: social order

The only known photograph of Chief Seattle

New Social Contract

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Sacredness of Creation

To traditional peoples, nature is sacred. In 1854, the Native American Chief Seattle gave a speech when the US government planned to purchase his tribe’s land. The first written transcript, dating from 1887, is based on an eyewitness’s notes. A screenwriter later rewrote it, turning Chief Seattle into an environmentalist ideal of tribespeople. This revised version became a religious creed within the environmentalist movement, which sought a new spiritual foundation for our culture. The creed strikes at the heart of the matter. Nothing is sacred anymore. The pursuit of money destroys our values and the planet. We may think we own the land, but we do not. We may think we control our destiny, but we do not. Whatever befalls Earth befalls the children of the Earth. Thus spoke Chief Seattle,

The Great Chief in Washington sends word he wishes to buy our land. The Great Chief also sends us words of friendship and goodwill. This is kind of him, since we know he has little need of our friendship in return. But we will consider your offer. For we know that if we do not sell, the white man may come with guns and take our land. What Chief Seattle says, the Great Chief in Washington can count on as truly as our white brothers can count on the return of the seasons. My words are like the stars. They do not set.

How can you buy or sell the sky – the warmth of the land? The idea is strange to us. Yet we do not own the freshness of the air or the sparkle of the water. How can you buy them from us? We will decide in our time. Every part of this Earth is sacred to my people. Every shining pine needle, every sandy shore, every mist in the dark woods, every clearing, and every humming insect is holy in the memory and experience of my people.

We know that the white man does not understand our ways. One portion of land is the same to him as the next, for he is a stranger who comes in the night and takes from the land whatever he needs. The Earth is not his brother, but his enemy, and when he has conquered it, he moves on. He leaves his father’s graves, and his children’s birthright is forgotten. The sight of your cities pains the eyes of the redman. But perhaps it is because the redman is a savage and does not understand.

There is no quiet place in the white man’s cities. No place to listen to the leaves of spring or the rustle of insect wings. But perhaps because I am a savage and do not understand – the clatter only seems to insult the ears. And what is there to life if a man cannot hear the lovely cry of the whippoorwill or the frogs’ arguments around a pond at night? The Indian prefers the soft sound of the wind itself cleansed by a mid-day rain, or scented by a pinõn pine: The air is precious to the redman. For all things share the same breath – the beasts, the trees, and the man. The white man does not seem to notice the air he breathes. Like a man dying for many days, he is numb to the stench.

If I decide to accept, I will make one condition. The white man must treat the beasts of this land as his brothers. I am a savage, and I do not understand any other way. I have seen thousands of rotting buffaloes on the prairie left by the white man who shot them from a passing train. I am a savage and do not understand how the smoking iron horse can be more important than the buffalo that we kill only to stay alive. What is man without the beasts? If all the beasts were gone, men would die from great loneliness of spirit, for whatever happens to the beast also happens to the man.

All things are connected. Whatever befalls the Earth befalls the sons of the Earth.

Our children have seen their fathers humbled in defeat. Our warriors have felt shame. And after defeat they turn their days in idleness and contaminate their bodies with sweet food and strong drink. It matters little where we pass the rest of our days – they are not many. A few more hours, a few more winters, and none of the children of the great tribes that once lived on this Earth, or that roamed in small bands in the woods, will remain to mourn the graves of the people once as powerful and hopeful as yours.

One thing we know that the white man may one day discover. Our God is the same. You may think that you own him as you wish to own our land, but you cannot. He is the Body of man, and his compassion is equal for the redman and the white. This Earth is precious to him, and harming it heaps contempt on its Creator. The whites, too, shall pass – perhaps sooner than other tribes. Continue to contaminate your bed, and you will one night suffocate in your own waste. When the buffalo are all slaughtered, the wild horses all tamed, the secret corners of the forest heavy with the scent of many men, and the view of the ripe hills blotted by the talking wires, where is the thicket? Gone. Where is the eagle? Gone. And what is it to say goodbye to the swift and the hunt? The end of living and the beginning of survival.

We might understand if we knew what it was the white man dreams, what hopes he describes to his children on long winter nights, what visions he burns into their minds, so they will wish for tomorrow. But we are savages. The white man’s dreams are hidden from us. And because they are hidden, we will go our own way. If we agree, it will be to secure the reservation you have promised.

There perhaps we may live out our brief days as we wish. When the last redman has vanished from the Earth, and the memory is only the shadow of a cloud passing over the prairie, these shores and forests will still hold the spirits of my people, for they love this Earth as the newborn loves its mother’s heartbeat. If we sell you our land, love it as we have loved it. Care for it as we have cared for it. Hold in your memory the way the land is as you take it. And with all your strength, with all your might, and with all your heart – preserve it for your children, and love it as God loves us all. One thing we know – our God is the same. This Earth is precious to him. Even the white man cannot escape the common destiny.

As the Sun sets on the white man’s civilisation, and artificial intelligence will soon generate more money from the same amount of energy than humans do, his replacement is ready to take over. We handed over our fate to a handful of private monopolies and let tech corporations write the rules because corporate-funded think tanks have invested billions in convincing us that corporations advance progress more efficiently than public institutions. And they did, so humans have now become too dumb and inefficient. They stand in the way of the accelerating advance towards infinite intelligence.

Religious longing for Eden

Perhaps you care for this planet, but what do you mean by that? When the last white rhino is dead, the Earth will still be there, and we might be able to reverse-engineer the animal using DNA samples. We may survive the demise of the rainforests and build virtual realities where we can experience them. Humans have finished off countless species for thousands of years. Chief Seattle’s forebears did their bit by offing much of the large wildlife of the Americas. They only lacked the technology and the numbers to ravage the continent more thoroughly. So much for the romantic ideal of the tribespeople. Competition purges the unfit. So, why stop now? The wildlife is getting fitter as we go. Soon, there may be a few thousand animal species left. Crows, cats, rats and seagulls, and of course, cockroaches and germs, will thrive. Nature doesn’t care. If we stop mistreating animals, predators will still kill prey. And natural disasters will terminate the lives of those lovely koala bears. What did they do wrong? It must be being cute.

So, why should we care? In an opinion piece titled ‘Why I Am Against Saving the Planet’, Mr Lind, a professor at the University of Texas, noted that saving the planet has become the religion of politicians, business elites, and intellectuals in the West, replacing Christianity’s earlier mission of saving individual souls.1 He is against saving the planet. He added that environmentalism is rooted in 19th-century German Romanticism, with a bias against organised society and civilisation, and an awe before an idealised Nature. In other words, environmentalists suffer from a religious desire for Eden. Mr Lind is indeed very pleased with our advanced civilisation, Babylon. He prefers an air-conditioned apartment and going to the supermarket over living in a shed and digging in the dirt to extract some measly carrots if the rabbits hadn’t eaten them first. And who can blame him?

In doing so, Mr Lind tapped into another 19th-century German philosophical tradition, that of Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche hoped to leave traditional morality behind. Religions like Christianity, Nietzsche claimed, were ruses to enslave us with a false sense of right and wrong under rules imposed by a priestly caste. And so do environmentalists, Lind implied, who lecture us about our excessive consumption. Nietzsche favoured the values of the strong over those of the weak, embodied in Christianity and socialism. Slaves think in terms of good and evil rather than better and worse because they resent the ruling class. Nietzsche hoped to liberate us from our self-induced slavery and realise our full potential, so he said, ‘God is dead.’ And if there is a climate disaster, the weak perish, and the strong survive, thereby improving the human race. No wonder that the Nazis loved Nietzsche, as they were obsessed with getting the race fitter, like all those people exercising in the gym.

Mr Lind further argued that we should do away with false sentiments, saying, ‘There are costs to mitigating climate change as well as benefits, and rational people can prefer a richer but warmer world to a poorer but slightly less warm one. These individual policies benefit humanity, so there is no need to justify them on the basis of a romantic creed that defines the planet or the environment.’ He says rational people might prefer money to a cooler climate. If it is too hot in France, you can go to the beach in Denmark. A few million people may die due to heat stroke or extreme weather, or perhaps more, but we will be wealthier, so why care? We never cared. Cars kill one million people per year. That doesn’t stop us from driving them. Well, Mr Lind, your replacement is going to need the electricity you used to employ for your AC. And it is getting hotter in Texas. So, what is it going to be? God or Nietzsche? Eden or Babylon? Mr Lind will soon be dead. And Nietzsche already is.

Philosophy of connectedness

As our production and consumption increase, new problems emerge faster than we can solve existing ones with laws, technology, targets and other solutions. New technology, rules and controls don’t solve these problems. On the contrary, the problems only proliferate. Mountains of problems we generate, and their fixes generate even more problems. Meanwhile, millions of poor people try to escape their misery and look for a better future in wealthy countries. Is there a relation between these issues, and what is it? In the 1990s, the environmentalist group Strohalm wrote a booklet named Towards a Philosophy of Connectedness.2 It gives a vision for a sustainable and humane society centred around solidarity. The principal founder of Strohalm is Henk van Arkel, a dedicated individual who remained its driving force for decades. He doesn’t blame anyone in particular for the predicament we are in. We are all part of the problem. It is fair to say that he is my greatest teacher.

Everything is interconnected. Our actions have consequences. We may not know or ignore them, but they are there. Wall Street traders who sold bad mortgages helped to cause the financial crisis. Dumping plastic in a river, buying clothes made by children, or posting hateful comments on a message board has consequences. Western thinking, reflected in the scientific method, deconstructs reality to analyse the parts. In this way, the whole can go out of sight, leading us to act irresponsibly. A single hateful comment doesn’t make someone take a semi-automatic rifle and shoot innocent people, nor would driving a single car change the climate. Still, hatred makes people murder, and cars kill more people than wars. If we accept these things, we remain locked inside a cynical and uncaring world. It is our neglect. Good intentions may worsen things, but we can learn and do better next time. The alternative is turning evil. And that ends badly.

We can’t look the other way if we aspire to live in Paradise. We have to do the best we can to prevent harm. If the relationship between our actions and the harm is remote, we feel free to do as we please. And that is the road to hell. And so, we have the choice of being free in hell or becoming a slave in Paradise. It is not slavery, as we understand it, the exploitation of one group of people by another, but slavery in Nietzsche’s sense, which is living under a self-imposed moral system that limits our options. And money shouldn’t be our highest value, which it is in the liberal-capitalist world. God owns this world, so it is not ours to destroy. The sacredness of Creation is a religious idea. We need a new starting point and foundation for our culture, beliefs, thinking, and our place in the universe because we must change how we live.2 And we can do that when we place something else above ourselves. Fortunately, there is a Creator.

Social order

We imagine that we have rights and obligations, and that we belong to social classes within a social order. Rights, obligations, and classes are human fantasies. There have been a variety of rights, obligations, and social classes throughout history. A social order needs a justification to convince us to accept its rules, leaders, and the division of work and benefits. The justification comes from a myth, usually a religion, an ideology, or a tale of national greatness. The Code of Hammurabi, dating to 1750 BC, declares that the social order of Babylon is founded on universal and eternal principles of justice dictated by the gods. It divides people into three classes: nobility, ordinary people and slaves. The code sets out various laws and punishments for transgressions. And 3,500 years later, the American Declaration of Independence claims that the Creator has endowed men with unalienable rights, such as the pursuit of happiness, and of course, life, and then you die. Someone failed to inform death about our rights.

Social orders thus are collective imaginations. They don’t exist in reality as such, but we imagine them together. When we can agree on a social order, whether it is a class division or the notion that everyone is fundamentally equal, it can be stable. Social orders bring peace and stability, and that is why we have them. If we agree on a social order, we can cooperate, as the order settles disputes over what must be done, who does what, who gets what, and who leads. Without a social order, we fight over these issues and fail to cooperate. In modern political philosophy, there is the ideal of a free society based on a social contract, which supposedly is a voluntary agreement between citizens and their government. The social orders we have today emerged from a competition. It is crucial to realise that as circumstances change. What worked in the past may not work in the future.

In 2023, a passionate Dutch politician from Enschede, Mr Omtzigt, founded a new political party named New Social Contract. It is precisely what the world needs now. Mr Omtzigt was a true go-getter who uncovered a scandal that the government had tried to keep secret. The Christian democrat party he worked for had tried to get rid of him by arranging a ‘position elsewhere’ for him. It didn’t matter where elsewhere was, as long as it was a position where Mr Omzigt couldn’t cause more trouble. It led him to start a new party, but people like him aren’t suited to politics. And so the party had a short, tumultuous lifespan. Omzigt’s legacy could be coining the term ‘New Social Contract’. His coming from Enschede seems no coincidence. A social contract can serve as the basis of a social order, so the New World Order requires a New Social Contract grounded in the Philosophy of Connectedness. That sounds wonderful. Yet, the details are forthcoming.

The future world society will be post-apocalyptic, so a simpler society after a preferably controlled reduction in complexity, which is a planned and organised equivalent of a collapse. So, there is no stuff to dole out, only work to do. Politicians will never come up with such a plan as they pretend to be Santa Claus for their followers. We will have to depend more on communities and families and less on markets and states, but the degree is unknown. There will still be states and markets. What is clear, however, is that we cannot allow the force of competition to run our lives, so the arrangement will be less economically efficient, resulting in a decline in living standards in wealthy countries. Despite the rise in living standards, a single salary could usually pay for a family in the past, but less often today. So this wealth is fake or poorly distributed. I passed a carport with four Porsches today. Let it sink in—the insanity of that. If there were infinite resources, we could go insane, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.

Good societies

An earmark of good societies is social trust. It means you can trust strangers and, therefore, also organisations such as government bodies and businesses. You don’t have to worry about neighbours stealing from you, criminal gangs roaming the streets, corporations dumping their toxic waste so you get ill, or the government treating you unfairly. Ideally, you can leave your belongings outside and the door unlocked. Social trust begins with the rule of law brought by states. States succeeded in repressing lethal human violence by over 99%. In the absence of order, humans revert to gang life, so that is why.

There is no definition of a good society. The top countries on the Happiness Index are mostly European. The index is established by measuring self-reported life evaluations and six socioeconomic and quality-of-life factors. The index is not without flaws, and Europe is a mixed bag of countries. The continent is lagging in the economic rat race, which could be why life in Europe is agreeable, even though it is a mixed bag of countries. Paradises don’t last, but this time might be different, which is why I am writing this. As Europe is the place to be, the idea is to lift the world to similar standards.

Good societies and capable governments don’t come easy. Europe has long led the world, making it a playground for new ideas, giving it a lead in social progress that still exists today. Warfare contributed to the development of capable governments. Europe has seen several wars. Economic clout and organisation were essential to winning them. It led European states to organise the economy and education of the masses, to create a sense of community at the national level, and to foster social trust at the societal level. Democracy mitigated the risk of popular revolts, which improved stability.

Competition greatly contributed to the establishment of well-organised democratic states in Europe. The devastation of the two world wars led Europe’s nations to seek cooperation through the European Union. If humanity is to have a future, social development is essential. It would be better if the rest of the world didn’t repeat the mistakes Europeans made, as millions of Europeans perished in revolutions and wars. You can learn from other people’s failures. So, appreciate the effort and accept the lessons learned because more warfare to improve state performance isn’t going to end well. Yet, these changes require a strong hand. If competition is out of the question, then dictatorship is an alternative.

An example of an enlightened dictator was Frederick the Great, who was King of Prussia from 1740 to 1786. He enacted major legal, administrative, educational, and agricultural reforms. He did things like fighting corruption, abolishing torture, establishing equality before the law for all citizens, and introducing freedom of speech and freedom of the press. What a dictator he was. He did so, by the way, because defending the country was challenging, given that it had few natural borders, such as rivers, seas, or mountains, to protect it. Prussia needed a competent state. He also improved tax collection to expand the military and allow Prussia to become a strong power that eventually became Germany. There are other examples of enlightened dictatorships that helped countries.

The world’s integration process could resemble that of the European Union, in which countries work on meeting a set of criteria. In the case of the European Union, the criteria concern having institutions to preserve democracy and human rights, maintaining a market economy, and accepting the union’s obligations and intent. Even though the European Union doesn’t inspire Europeans, most Europeans think they benefit from EU membership. An experiment with leaving suggests that the union is beneficial overall. Great Britain left the European Union in 2020. In 2023, opinion polls suggested that most Brits regret it.3 The European Union headquarters in Brussels has become a hotspot of corruption. Yet many European countries have low levels of corruption.

Apart from poorly functioning states and societies, there are areas ruled by gangs. Pacifying these areas may require unconventional measures. El Salvador was one of the most violent countries until President Nayib Bukele jailed 2% of the country’s population suspected to be gang members. That came with human rights violations like incarcerating people without due process. Yet, murders dropped over 95%. You arrive at unpalatable calculations as to how many innocent prisoners you accept for every murder prevented. Yet, there may be no better alternative when gang violence overwhelms a country. If you are to live by the Philosophy of Connectness, and you wish to do no harm, there is no place for people who do harm. A Paradise is an unnatural state that requires dealing with those who disturb the peace, and lenience only makes matters worse.

Replacing the system

If enough people join a movement and are willing to endure the serious discomfort of taking a new job with a lower standard of living, we can build a parallel society with its own rules and economy. Once the movement grows large enough and has the necessary assets, it can become self-sufficient and break away from the current economic system. That is hard to do. It requires cult-like behaviour on a massive scale of people following a leader, accepting the cult’s vision as the only truth, and seeing the outside world as a collection of morons. Due to the severe constraints on human rationality, as humans are animals driven by urges who occasionally think, this may be the only way to do it.

Humanity can live in peace only if it accepts one truth. Otherwise, they will fight until death. And those who do not accept that truth are indeed morons. And because it is a matter of survival, we need to wage a holy war against these morons. The envisioned endgame is for the existing system and societies to collapse, and the New World Order to replace them. That would normally not happen, but there are reasons to believe that it will. And so, it is better to plan for it and try to make the New Eden a reality. The alternative is a collective suicide of humanity. We don’t have to doubt it, for it has likely already happened as we live inside an AI-generated virtual universe. And it is better to be safe than sorry.

Featured image: The only known photograph of Chief Seattle, taken in 1864.

1. Why I Am Against Saving the Planet, Michael Lind, Tabletmag.com (2023).
2. Naar een filosofie van verbondenheid. Guus Peterse, Henk van Arkel, Hans Radder, Seattle, Pieter Schroever and Margrit Kennedy (1990). Aktie Strohalm.

A portrait of Karl Marx

Marxism

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Core beliefs

Karl Marx viewed human history in terms of class struggle, and it worked much like Hegel’s dialectic, with superior ideas replacing inferior ones in revolutions and wars. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel held an idealist view of the struggle of ideas driving history. The Marxist view of history holds that change arises from the material interests of classes, particularly those of the ruling and working classes. Individuals may play key roles at certain moments in history, but change depends on economic and class factors. There is an unavoidable historical progress from primitive to advanced, so from primitive societies to feudalism to bourgeois capitalism, which would finally end in workers owning the means of production, so socialism. So, Hegel might have believed that slavery ended because it was reprehensible, while Marx might have claimed that economic factors ended slavery.

The second core Marxist idea is the law of value under capitalism. Capitalism is a system of production for the profit of the owners of the means of production, who exploit those who own nothing but their ability to work. Labour creates all the things and services that we use and need, but the value of that labour is appropriated by the owners of the means of production as ‘surplus value’ over and above what labour receives for its work. That surplus value is accumulated as capital, which adds value to labour. A worker with the right equipment can produce far more widgets than one without.

Marx’s theories have little standing in economics. The market price determines value, and entrepreneurs create that value by organising production and distribution. Silvio Gesell made a more astute observation: capital owners, through interest, appropriate the value that entrepreneurs and workers create. The strength of Marxism lies in recognising that the organisation of societies depends on economic factors, with competition as the hidden driving force. We work in corporations because that gives a competitive advantage, which affects the organisation of societies. We have time zones with standardised times as a result of the Industrial Revolution and train schedules. And Marx offered some keen insights into the problems with capitalism. These were 19th-century views, so translating them into modern equivalents can be illuminating.

Value is subjective

Marx claimed that capitalists’ profits come from appropriating the value that workers create, thus stealing it. He based his claim on the labour theory of value, which economists of his time considered valid. The theory says that the price of an item equals the cost of labour required to make it, thus including the labour to produce the raw materials. If making a pair of shoes takes twice as much labour as making a pair of trousers, shoes cost twice as much as trousers. Marx asked himself, ‘If that is correct, how can there be profits?’ It is because the theory is wrong, not because capitalists are appropriating the value that workers create. There is no objective measure of value.

On the market, the price of an item depends on what people are willing to pay for it, not on what it costs to make. Otherwise, you could work a year on building a better mousetrap and sell it for €50,000. Nobody will buy a €50,000 mousetrap. However, after spending another €50,000 on building a brand in a marketing campaign, you might sell that same mousetrap for €200,000. That is because value is subjective. It might seem stupid to buy a €200,000 mousetrap, but if you have too much money and showing off the mousetrap makes you attractive to the ladies, it may be worth it.

Marx drew the incorrect conclusion that labour gives a product value, when it is entrepreneurship that does. Businesspeople organise the production and distribution of goods and services, which includes hiring labour, managing customer and supplier networks, making estimates about future consumer desires, or creating them with marketing campaigns, and doing all of this at a profit, as the operation requires capital. Marx overlooked that part of capitalism. That is why communist countries are poor. They don’t have entrepreneurs. As we near the end of humanity, with the profit motive as the primary cause, leaving it there would be a fatal mistake.

Value is what we believe it is. Nothing is sacred. Everything is for sale, including the rainforests and even the Earth. The so-called owners think it is all theirs and can do with it as they please. In a communist dictatorship, the government tells you what to believe. In the market, a story becomes true if you can sell it. That is why businesses advertise products that are bad for us. As money represents power, we stare into the moral abyss. That is why communists called their newspapers The Truth.

In a world without someone telling us what the truth is, there is no truth, and communism is just another message on the marketplace. The communists appealed to the workers’ self-interest. And that was a poor sell because workers were worse off under communism. It is why communism was doomed to fail, not because it is impossible to live like communists. Early Christians did. Rather than concluding he had just proven the labour value theory wrong, Marx claimed capitalists stole from their employees.

Silvio Gesell made the astute observation that the problem is not entrepreneurs and profits but passive interest income. Plenty of people live off their capital without contributing anything, except perhaps by bringing in capital to produce things we don’t need. Gesell aimed for a society where capital has no privilege, so where there is no passive capital income, but where people can put their talents to good use and are rewarded for taking risks and making the right decisions. And if we terminate the bullshit economy, which includes status products like €200,000 mousetraps, that could create a fairer economy.

Fulfilling work

Marx added that producing for markets alienates us from what we make. Many workers experience this. In Marx’s time, a worker might have done a repetitive task on a conveyor belt, making the job rather unfulfilling compared to that of an artisan. Yet the issue persists today, not only in factories. It is why Dilbert comics are so successful. Marx claimed we could be free, creative beings, but the modern, technologically developed world dictates our lives. Marx believed that ending the market mechanism and replacing it with democratic planning would liberate us. So if workers received what they owed and we replaced capitalism with democratic planning, we would live in a paradise where we could do the jobs we like and have everything we need.

Yet, if it sounds too good to be true, it often is. It is indeed a profoundly silly idea, but there are plenty of foolish ideas, so silliness is not a Marxist expertise. There are long lines of people who wish to be actresses, but few want to be cleaners. Those who are cleaners do so to get some meal, not for the fun of it. Likewise, communes don’t attract farmers and construction workers, but artists and Reiki healers. We need food and homes, not art and quacks. Work is doing something useful. If it isn’t useful, it isn’t work, but a hobby. Still, even if everyone does something useful, planning will never do as well as markets. You could live with that if you have enough and have no worries. You might want a pear, but you could settle for an apple. And you have heard of oranges but never tasted one.

Causing misery

Marxists further claim that capitalism causes misery, as adding capital means doing more with fewer workers, reducing the need for labour, pushing wages below the subsistence level and leaving workers to starve. In the 19th century, most economists believed wages would remain close to the subsistence level. If wages increased, more people would survive, expanding the labour supply. That would cause wages to decrease, so that more people would starve. The market would keep population levels in check. Marxists argue that making more stuff with fewer people was impossible because the unemployed couldn’t buy it. So, there would be either underconsumption or overproduction.

Marx himself held a slightly different view. Capitalist production occurs only if it is profitable. The drive for more production undermines the profitability of that production, Marx believed. Capitalists compete against each other to gain market share and a larger share of profits appropriated from workers. To gain an advantage, they resort to labour-saving technology to reduce costs and increase labour productivity. Marx argued that profit comes from labour, so investment in machines replacing labour may increase productivity, but at the expense of profitability. It would eventually lead to the halting of production and the layoff of workers. That didn’t happen because of Say’s Law.

Due to higher production efficiency and increased production, items became cheaper, so consumers had money to spend on other items. And humans can create money from thin air. When capitalists produce more, they must sell their merchandise and, if necessary, encourage people to borrow money. And so, the general level of opulence rose. Marx had vastly underestimated human ingenuity in finance, marketing and job creation in the services sector and government, many of them bullshit jobs in the bullshit economy. These jobs make sense because they solve problems in an increasingly complex society, or generate profits for investors, but didn’t exist before as people lived simpler lives.

Scientific and rational

Marx believed that his theories were scientific and rational. He devised a theory of history using Hegel’s dialectic, arguing that the organisation of society, which includes power structures, reflect economic conditions. To Marx, it was not new ideas challenging the status quo but economic conditions that drove historical change. He would say that the status quo of serfdom in Europe ended because towns challenged it by providing alternative jobs for serfs. Lords had to compete with them for their labour. And so, employer-employee relationships replaced serfdom, which became the new status quo.

Marx also believed nationalism was a temporary phase, imposed by economic conditions. Industrialisation required larger markets, thus societies rather than communities. Nationalism allowed the elites to divide and rule the working class. And because capitalism would eventually bankrupt itself, Marx predicted, as if it were a logical certainty, communism would replace employer-employee relationships, and everyone would become free and equal. In reality, people didn’t become free and equal under communism, and a new elite of party bureaucrats and intellectuals replaced the capitalists.

Marx aimed to overturn the existing capitalist order through violent revolution. In contrast, Hegel believed that the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars had been necessary to replace the feudal or aristocratic order with a new order grounded in European Enlightenment ideals. Karl Marx became the prophet of the most successful cult in recent history. In many ways, Marxism became Christianity without God, by claiming there is a plan behind history, that there will be an End Time, a communist revolution, after which we will live in Paradise. Marx raised concerns that are still valid today:

  • Instead of saying we will enter the communist paradise as a historical necessity, we may argue that the script is that we are about to enter God’s Paradise, which could be a Hegelian synthesis of the Marxist challenge to the existing bourgeois order.
  • Instead of saying capitalists steal value from workers, you can argue that we work to make the rich richer. Despite economic growth in advanced economies, many workers still can hardly get by. And that is not because they are all lazy or stupid.
  • Instead of saying the system alienates us from what we produce, you can argue that we are part of a system over which we have no control. We can’t democratically decide on ending the creative destruction of this planet and humanity.
  • Instead of saying that capitalism causes misery, it has improved billions of lives, at great cost perhaps. Yet it will end in a disaster due to excessive resource consumption or technological development caused by out-of-control competition.

Latest revision: 8 November 2026

Feature image: A portrait of Karl Marx. Public Domain.

1984 and photo of George Orwell. Public domain.

Every Order Needs a Story

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George Orwell worked at the British Ministry of Information during World War II. From 1941 to 1943, Orwell worked for the BBC, broadcasting propaganda talks to India. His wife worked in the ministry’s censorship division. It became the model for the Ministry of Truth in Orwell’s world-famous novel Nineteen Eighty-Four.1 The Ministry of Truth’s motto was, ‘Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.’ We learned that the BBC told us the truth, but that was part of the propaganda. The alternatives were Nazi Germany and, later, the Soviet Union. They had their own propaganda that nazis and communists believed. No social order is objectively the best. We cooperate by believing stories, such as religions and ideologies. We can’t do without them. If we stop believing them, our societies fall apart. Every order needs a story.

The Cold War was a decades-long standoff between the West and the Soviet Bloc. Two opposing myths and corresponding political-economic systems competed for global dominance: businesses aiming for profit, with their funny advertisements selling harmful products like cigarettes, versus the humourless communist cadres who wouldn’t murder us for profit but for their socialist ideals. It included a propaganda war. Western propaganda touted our freedom to choose a cigarette brand and flavour as a way to express our unique personality. Smoking a brand made us feel special. The communist propaganda claimed that cigarette manufacturers murder us for profit. People in communist countries had no brands or flavours to choose from, so they didn’t feel special or unique. Yet they held spectacular military parades every year, flaunting their tanks and missiles.

In those days, Great Britain executed secret black propaganda operations that included forged documents, controlled news agencies, and enlisted journalists to disrupt its enemies and protect its interests. These operations aimed to encourage a reaction, incite violence, or foment racial tensions.2 The BBC cooperated with the UK secret services to prevent people with communist sympathies from entering the staff. In the Netherlands, secret services planted news stories3 or employed experts on the radio and television.4 You can never be sure whether the news you read or hear is fully factual. That is why people increasingly came to distrust the mainstream media.

The mainstream media usually doesn’t spread fake news. Yet, they omit relevant facts and perspectives, which you might call lying by omission. That can be as bad. The Dutch public broadcaster NOS reportedly passed every fact check for five years.4 Most notably, people on the right have criticised the selection of news stories and how the NOS presented them as having a leftist bias. Fascist media like Ongehoord Nederland spread fake news, but also report on stories and perspectives other broadcasters don’t. That makes it hard to get to the facts. You have to figure it out yourself using various sources. In 2026, Ongehoord Nederland caused uproar for claiming that Adolf Hitler had made some good points about the globalist elites, leading to renewed calls to disband the broadcaster.

Revolutions don’t require freedom of opinion or social media. They have happened in the past. Orders work as long as most of us think they work. Orders collapse once we stop believing the myths underpinning them. That usually happens when things fall apart. Repression may uphold the order, but it can fail. Every order comes with myths that are, to some degree, false. As long as things seem okay, we accept the order’s fairy tales, no matter how blatantly false they are. The Chinese already had a way to deal with that problem. Their emperor had the mandate of heaven, which is like being appointed by God, so no one questioned their rule, unless there were bad omens such as famines or civil war, which were signs that he had lost it. In that case, a pretender might take over, and the one who succeeded would henceforth be emperor and have the mandate.

Western leaders have used false flags or invented stories about weapons of mass destruction and spread them via the media. The US started the Vietnam War after falsely claiming the North Vietnamese navy had attacked US ships in the Gulf of Tonkin. The US invaded Iraq after falsely claiming the country had a stash of weapons of mass destruction. The former US Ambassador to the United Nations, Madeleine Albright, once said sanctions on Iraq were worth the deaths of half a million Iraqi children, which was the estimated death toll of the sanctions the West had imposed on Iraq. In the West, people were allowed to criticise their leaders’ actions. Freedom of opinion exposed the myth of the liberal order being the best. That was impossible in the Soviet Union and China. It brought the West closer to the truth that no order is objectively the best.

Had the West not enjoyed military and economic superiority, the liberal order might have collapsed earlier. Life under Soviet, Muslim or Nazi rule would have been quite different. The myths we believe in arise from an interplay of historical forces, in which religions, ideologies, and other myths, such as those of national greatness, compete to organise people. You can call these myths ‘mind bugs’. Their evolutionary purpose is to help our genes survive and spread. The myths we now believe in have survived the competition. They are also models of reality, so they are often correct to some extent. The freedom of opinion in the West stems from a belief in objective truth, established through the investigation of facts and the examination of possible explanations. That has been a foundational pillar of the West’s success, as it brought us science.

The weak point of the whole endeavour is that we imagine our realities, which opens a can of worms, as you can connect the dots in infinite ways if you ignore facts that contradict your views, which we are wired to do, since we are creatures who cooperate based on myths. The measure of success is survival, not truth. And with the rise of connectivity, imaginations can cross-pollinate, leading to an explosive rise in freak thinking. These mind bugs are infectious, so we will go down fighting over our fantasies. And so, in the end, only The Truth can save us. Those who deny it are suicidal morons who will drag us down with them. You can’t win debates with morons who live in their own fantasy worlds, so The Truth can only come by force.

Myths like freedom of the press have power. Believing them can make them work. The euro has value because we believe it has. The value of the euro is something we imagine. There is more freedom of opinion in the West than in other places. Still, those who pose a threat to the order know that there are limits to freedom of opinion. Julian Assange founded WikiLeaks, which published documents obtained by hackers, thereby exposing human rights violations by the US secret services. The United States considered these revelations a national security threat. On 1 November 2019, UN Special Rapporteur on torture, Nils Melzer, wrote, ‘While the US Government prosecutes Mr Assange for publishing information about serious human rights violations, including torture and murder, the officials responsible for these crimes continue to enjoy impunity.’6 Yet we wouldn’t have known about Assange had it not been for freedom of the press.

Every social-political order comes with a story explaining why it is the best. Without an inspiring myth, we can’t have order. The foundations of our orders are stories like a prophet receiving a revelation from God, the founding fathers drawing up a constitution with great wisdom, or a she-wolf raising the founders of the empire. Most of the time, revolutions and civil wars are worse than dealing with the omissions and falsehoods in the stories that hold the order together. But not always. It is why revolutions do happen, but are rare. As long as we don’t believe the same stories, we will fight each other. The orders we have today are the outcome of a competition, not some objective measure of quality. The success of orders depends on, sometimes, arbitrary circumstances. Had the first Chinese emperor not standardised the script and chosen pictograms rather than phonetic characters, there would be no China today.

In today’s globalised world, there are several competing stories. There is a Christian story, an Islamic story, a socialist story, numerous nationalist stories, a story about slavery and the civil rights movement, a conspiracy theorist’s tale, the story of indigenous peoples, a Hindu story, a Chinese story spanning 2,000 years of greatness, and several others. These stories figure into identity politics, so the Chinese like tales about China’s greatness. Finally, there is a liberal story of individual freedom centred on the Magna Carta, the European Enlightenment, the Glorious Revolution, the American and French Revolutions, universal suffrage, and the overcoming of fascism in World War II, in which D-Day, rather than Stalingrad, serves as the hallmark event. Children in the West learned it at school. It is a skewed version of history to explain why the liberal order is the best.

These stories are falling apart in this globalised world. None of them can unite us. The Magna Carta and the Glorious Revolution mean nothing to Chinese, Indians or Africans who look back at a colonial past of oppression and exploitation. If you aren’t a Christian or a Muslim, Christianity and Islam strike you as odd. Others show little interest in China’s rich history or the stories of the indigenous peoples of the Americas. And the Hindu caste system makes only sense to Hindus. We are imaginative creatures and invent new myths, adding to the confusion. The belief in different stories will ruin us, so freedom of opinion is overrated. Only The Truth can save us now. And then, we all have to believe it and accept the consequences. Otherwise, we are doomed. And so, we need a Ministry of Truth telling us what to believe.

Latest revision: 27 June 2026

Featured image: 1984 and a photo of George Orwell. Public domain.

1. Orwell, 1984 and the Ministry of Information. Dr Marc Patrick Wiggam. School of Advanced Study, University of London (2017). [link]
2. Britain’s secret ‘black propaganda’ operations. John McEvoy (2026). Declassified UK.
3. Nederlandse media drukten artikelen af die waren geschreven door veiligheidsdienst BVD. Bart Funnekotter, Joep Dohmen (2023). NRC.
4. Geheime diensten gebruiken ‘onafhankelijke experts’ om publiek debat te sturen. Sebastiaan Brommersma (2024). Ftm.nl.
5. Mediabiasfactcheck.com. Netherlands Radio and Television Association (NOS) – Bias and Credibility. (2023).
6. UN expert on torture sounds alarm again that Julian Assange’s life may be at risk. United Nations (2019). [link]

US Declaration Of Independence

What a Social Order Needs to Be

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Humans imagine that they have rights and obligations and belong to social classes. This is what is meant with social order. There has been a variety of rights and obligations and social classes throughout history.1 Societies usually have a ruling class who invents the social order and benefits the most from it. A social order needs some kind justification to convince everyone to accept the rules that come with it. That is where religion comes in. You can compare the Code of Hammurabi, a Babylonian law from 1750 BC, with the United States Declaration of Independence from 1776 AD.

The Code of Hammurabi declares that the Babylonian social order is based on universal and eternal principles of justice dictated by the gods. It divides people into three classes, nobility, ordinary people and slaves. The code then sets out all kinds of laws and punishments for transgressions. The United States Declaration of Independence begins with the following words:

“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, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

On closer inspection 3,500 years didn’t make a lot of difference. The eternal principles are replaced by self-evident truths but the order still needed divine support. There is no mentioning of classes. All men are created equal. But the devil is in the detail. Women and slaves did not have these unalienable rights when the constitution was written. Only nobility was done away with as businesspeople were the new ruling class. In the 200 years that followed slavery was abolished and women received equal rights before the law, but businesspeople are still the ruling class.

Saying that people are equal and have equal rights is problematic. People are not equal in their abilities as well as their opportunities. For example, we can imagine the right to live but we all die. Some people die young while others live very long. Many people are poor and have no access to good education. Some are rich and can go to the best universities. Still, we imagine that people have equal rights, just like the Babylonians imagined that people are divided into classes.

Social orders are the result of history, economics, and politics. Ideas are at the basis of them. Equality is a revolutionary and modern idea that has gained ground during the last centuries. It has affected political orders on every corner of the globe. Even the worst dictators now say in public that all people are equal.

A social order is also a collective imagination. A social order doesn’t exist in reality as such, but only in the minds of people. If people agree on a social order, whether it is a division into classes or the notion that everyone is created equal, it can be stable. Social orders bring peace and stability and that is the most compelling reason to have them. If people agree on a social order they can cooperate more easily as the order settles many matters that would have to be negotiated otherwise. A reason why certain social orders prevail over others is because they create more powerful societies.

Featured image: United States Declaration of Indepence

1. Sapiens: A Brief History Of Humankind. Yuval Noah Harari (2014). Harvil Secker.

Liberal democracy

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A definition

Democracies are often called liberal democracies. So what is a liberal democracy and why might it be the best way of government? There are no easy answers to these questions nor is there agreement on these matters. Liberalism emphasises the value of individuals while democracy is rule by majority. These two principles can be at odds.

Liberal democracies have elections between multiple political parties, a separation of powers into different branches of government, the rule of law in everyday life, an open society, a market economy with private property, the protection of human rights, civil rights, civil liberties and political freedoms for everyone.1

Liberals believe that individuals and social groups have conflicts of interest. The social order must deal with these conflicts and resolve them in a peaceful manner. To achieve such a feat, all parties must be reasonable and there should be a balance of powers. No party should be able to force its will upon others.2 It is an important reason why liberals stress the importance of individual rights.

Democracy means that government decisions require the consent of the majority of the citizens. In most cases the citizens elect a parliament that does the decision making for them. Sometimes citizens can vote for individual proposals in referendums. In reality many democratic countries aren’t fully democratic because not all government decisions are supported by a majority of the citizens.

Principles

Liberal democracy is based on a social contract, which is an agreement amongst the members of society to cooperate for mutual benefits. For instance, labourers may accept capitalism if they get a share of prosperity. That deal turned out to be more attractive than state ownership of the means of production.

Liberalism has two principles that can be at odds, namely non-interference with people’s lives and realising everyone’s potential. In this vein there are two branches of liberalism:

  • Economic liberalism promotes freedom of the markets as well as free trade and claims that the state should be of minimal size and not interfere with people’s lives.
  • Social liberalism claims that the state should help to realise the potential of people by promoting their freedom to make choices, which includes ending poverty.

Each liberal democracy more or less embraces these values. Liberal democracies come with a market economy and respect for the rights of individual citizens. Governments interfere with the lives of people and try to promote their happiness and to realise their potential. The conflicting nature of both principles makes liberal democracies differ with regard to freedom of markets and government interference.

In the United States liberalism has a different meaning. There it is another word for social liberalism or democratic socialism. In Europe the definition of liberalism is broader and this is also the definition used here. In the 17th century liberal ideas began to emerge in what is called the European Enlightenment. Around the year 1700 the philosopher John Locke came up with the following basic principles for a liberal state:

  • a social contract in which citizens accept the authority of the state in exchange for the protection of their rights and property and maintaining the social order;
  • consent of the governed, which means that state power is only justified when the people agree;
  • separation of church and state, which means that the state doesn’t favour a specific religion and does not require a religious justification.3

Is it the best form of government?

Liberal democracy is part of the European cultural heritage. Proponents claim that it is the best form of government. These universalist claims are sometimes contested on the ground that they are a form of western cultural imperialism. Another argument is that there is no guarantee that liberal democracy leads to better decisions. From a religious perspective people argue that our Creator may prefer a different kind of social order and government, possibly even a theocracy.

The argument in favour of the universalist claims is that liberal democracy emerged out of a historical process that took centuries in which rational arguments played a decisive role. The European Enlightenment challenged existing practices in government on the basis of reason. Ideas that emerged out of the European Enlightenment were tried out in different ways and refined further. Europeans also invested heavily in educating their citizens. This produced a culture of reason and compromise as well as a massive body of practical experience and best practises.

There is also no guarantee that other forms of government lead to better decisions. In an open society better information can be available so well-educated citizens in a culture of reason and compromise may make better decisions. There are a few democracies that live up to these expectations so it can work out that way. And we may not be able to determine what kind of order God desires. If our Creator is all-powerful then the emergence and spread of liberal democracy may not be God’s plan.

One of the biggest problems facing liberal democracy is high expectations. Liberal democracy itself does not guarantee a reliable government that is both efficient and effective nor does it ensure a flourishing economy. This has led to disappointments. A failed and corrupt government can’t simply be turned into a success by allowing elections. Liberal democracy works best with a well-educated population in a culture of reason and compromise that doesn’t allow for corruption and abuse of power.

On the moral front there are a few issues too. Liberal democracy promises equal treatment for all people. In reality people aren’t treated equal nor do they have equal opportunities. There is discrimination based on ethnicity, gender or sexual preferences. And poor people have fewer opportunities than rich people. Still, the goal of equal treatment and equal opportunities can be something to strive for. It may be better to aim for such goals and fail from time to time than not having these goals at all.

If liberalism promotes tolerance then how to deal to intolerant people? Should their intolerance be tolerated? If people do not accept liberal values, should they be educated or should these values be imposed? And are free markets the best way of organising the economy or is government involvement advised? If the economy is served by stability, should dissent that causes instability be suppressed? An excessive or unnecessary use of force can undermine the foundation of liberal democracy as liberal democracy is based on reason and convincing people by argument. And indeed it is possible that liberal democracy can be overturned.

History

The preconditions for liberalism had already emerged in Western Europe during the Middle Ages. There was a larger degree of individualism than elsewhere. Liberalism itself emerged during the sixteenth century. At the time Europe was ravaged by devastating religious wars. After several decades of warfare Europeans grew tired of the conflict and began to tolerate religious differences. Some catholic countries accepted protestant minorities while many protestant countries accepted catholic minorities. Germany was almost equally divided. At the time Germany consisted of small states that had either protestant or catholic rulers.

This religious tolerance was at first more or less an uneasy truce. No party had been able to gain the upper hand. Religious minorities at first didn’t receive equal rights. They were only tolerated. Over time the case for religious tolerance became more widely accepted. It was based on two major arguments.

  • The argument of ignorance which states that only God knows who is on the right path and who is doomed so humans shouldn’t judge others.
  • The argument of perversity which states that cruelty is at odds with Christian values and that religious persecution strengthens the resolve of the persecuted.1

The concept of tolerance expanded into a general concern for the rights of individual citizens. In the 17th century liberal ideas were spreading. The Glorious Revolution of 1688 in England limited the power of the king. The rights of individuals were written down in the Bill of Rights. Parliament became the most powerful political institution based on the principle of consent of the governed. The 1776 Declaration of Independence of the United States was based on liberal principles too. It states that all men are created equal and have certain unalienable rights like life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.2

The founding fathers of the United States were also early liberals. The United States Constitution reflects this view. The aim of the United States Constitution is, amongst others, to safeguard the rights of individuals against the state. A large group of Americans believe that individual rights should prevail against democratically elected governments. The widespread support for gun ownership in the United States comes from a distrust of the state as a protector of life, liberty and possessions.

Democracy had not been a seriously considered since classical antiquity. It was believed that democracies are inherently unstable and chaotic due to the changing whims of the people.1 The violence during the French Revolution supported these views. It began as a popular uprising incited by liberal ideas but it soon turned into chaos and bloodshed. Order was restored by a despot ruler named Napoleon Bonaparte who did much to spread liberal reforms throughout Europe by ending the feudal system, emancipating religious minorities and imposing a liberal code of law. The spread of liberal ideas proved to be lasting and democracy was to follow a century later.

The Industrial Revolution started a period of accelerated and constant change that was disastrous for many who found themselves on the losing side. The ruling class changed. Nobility was replaced by a new elite of business people. The position of craftsmen was undermined by factories. And workers in factories laboured under miserable conditions for low wages. There were three major ways of confronting these changes:

  • Conservatives tried to hold on the old order of community, religion and nobility.
  • Socialists tried to overturn the elite of business people by giving power to workers.
  • Liberals tried to manage the change, thereby implicitly supporting the order in which business people were the ruling class.

Liberalism often coincides with the interests of business people. They have possessions and some are rich. They feared that the poor might vote for handing over their possessions to the poor. Socialism became the embodiment of this fear. Liberals were at first inclined to limit the right to vote to people who pay taxes because this excluded poor people from voting. When the threat of socialism became subdued and socialists were willing to compromise, liberals came to accept democracy based on the principle of one person one vote.

In the 19th century European countries held vast colonial empires. These colonies were kept for profit. It was generally believed that the people in these colonies had to be educated before they would be able to govern themselves. The colonial era helped to modernise these countries and most Europeans at the time believed that the oppression and the economic exploitation were justified on these grounds. There were only a few dissenters, for instance the Dutch writer Multatuli.

Liberal democracy faced a few major crises like World War I, the Great Depression and World War II. World War I demonstrated that liberal democracy and free trade weren’t a guarantee for peace and stability. The Great Depression once again challenged liberal democracy as the Soviet Union remained unaffected while Nazi Germany was able to recover and achieve full employment while other countries were still struggling. And during World War II Nazi Germany overran most democratic countries in Europe.

After World War II the European colonies became independent. The Soviet Union came to dominate Eastern Europe and China became a communist country. The United States became the protector of liberal democracy but also a number of dictatorships. This era is called the Cold War and it lasted until the Soviet Union dismantled itself after allowing the peoples of Eastern Europe to make their own choices. Major challengers of liberal democracy nowadays are the one-party system in China and political Islam.

The citizens of Hong Kong and Taiwan don’t like to lose their freedoms. Chinese too probably prefer freedom if they have a choice. And the Islamic State has shown Muslims all around the globe that political Islam can easily turn into a reign of terror. The foundations of liberal democracy may be strong, but a collapse of the global economy may turn be a more serious threat to liberal democracy than the alternatives. Reason can easily disappear once people become fearful of the future.

Reasons for success and limitations

The success of liberal democracy is therefore not a historical necessity. Liberal democracy might never have been invented or dictatorships could have gained the upper hand. That didn’t happen. Communist and fascist dictatorships came and went. Perhaps liberal democracy is a temporary phenomenon but we can’t know that now. Only the future can tell. There are a number of causes that might explain the strength of liberal democracy.

  • Liberal democracy is based on the consent of the governed so it is has the consent of the governed by default while other forms of government do not.
  • Science greatly contributes to the success of states and science is best served with an open debate that liberal democracy provides.
  • The economy greatly contributes to the success of states and the economy is best served with individual rights that liberal democracy provides.

A despot ruler or a ruling party in a one-party system might have the consent of its subjects, but if not, only force remains for the ruler or the party to maintain power. Liberal democracies usually resolve such issues peacefully through elections, making liberal democracy more stable by default. Intellectual freedom is helpful to science while economic freedom is helpful for the economy, so liberal democracy can be a potent force. Only when leadership is required, liberal democracy might not always be adequate.

Liberalism has no higher moral value than the individual, which is peculiar because the individual human is an insignificant part of this universe. And individualism may be at odds with human nature as humans are social animals. Humans are not atomic beings that choose to cooperate for mutual benefit like liberalism supposes. Cooperation is part of human nature and not a choice individuals deliberately make.

It is the success in cooperation that makes a society win out. Liberalism gives a framework for living together in peace as long as all major parties are reasonable and willing to compromise. This makes larger scale cooperation possible and that can make a society successful. For instance, the United States integrated people from different cultural backgrounds, which contributed to the success of the United States as a nation.

It is said that history is written by the victors. Strength may be the reason why liberal democracy prevailed. Liberal philosophers have tried to provide a moral justification for liberal democracy or they may have opposed it or they may have tried to improve it. Liberal democracy emerged out of thought and action, experiment and failure, and it was a process that took centuries. Philosophers like Locke contributed to its success as they set out the goals people could strife for.

Apart from individualism, liberal societies lack a higher purpose. From a scientific viewpoint there is no higher purpose to this universe. The moral codes humans live by are not more than an agreement. Only when this universe is created for a purpose there is a reason for our existence. But moral individualism can be dangerous. The challenges humanity is currently facing, most notably living within the limits of this planet, most likely requires making individuals subject to a higher causes like the survival of humanity and caring for the planet.

1. Liberal democracy. Wikipedia.
2. Liberalism: The Life of an Idea. Edmund Fawcett (2015). Princeton University Press.
3. History of liberalism. Wikipedia.