Eden at the End of History

Sterlin Lujan

The imagination is the goal of history. I see culture as an effort to realize our collective dreams.

― Terence McKenna

History is coming to an end. The human race faces a polycrisis of incredible scope and power, with threats like general artificial intelligence and World Wars looming. At a glance, this predicament foreshadows unprecedented existential risk and the extinction of our species. But there is hope.

We are seeking to revive prehistoric ways of cooperation. This archaic revival manifests through a primal impulse to reshape society without dominance hierarchies and authoritarian tendencies. We are on a quest to revitalize the sense of community that existed before the warlords, czars and nation-states emerged. We are vying for a return to a more enlightened, peaceful time, a return to nature ― or as told in the Book of Genesis ― the Garden of Eden.

We are galvanizing this return by injecting decentralization and governance technologies into the world in an attempt to avert the polycrisis, limit the encroachment of authoritarianism and bring humanity one step closer to its purpose. One primary method we are using to stimulate this transition is through a technology called the network state.

This essay will detail higher-order thinking about network states and how they secure freedom and prevent collapse. First, we will understand the network state and its utility as a governance solution. Then we will discuss the archaic revival and examine the idea of the eschaton, which speaks to our spiritual yearning to push network states and technologies forward that liberate humankind, returning us to that lost sense of unity and accelerating innovation toward an end goal.

What is a Network State?

Balaji Srinivasan coined the phrase network state. His depiction of the idea in The Network State (2022) has a business-like appeal and Stanfordesque aesthetic. He pitches it in a way that is vaguely threatening to established powers. He articulates the idea in an academic fashion that inspires techies and visionaries alike. The phrase “network state" stuck, generated memetic propulsion and attracted a following.

Srinivasan defines the network state in one sentence:

A network state is a highly aligned online community with a capacity for collective action that crowdfunds territory around the world and eventually gains diplomatic recognition from pre-existing states.

Srinivasan discusses network states as a vision for creating new online governance communities that other nations and states will hopefully welcome without much of a fight ― hence his use of the phrase “diplomatic recognition." His idea resonates as non-combative ― however he spends the first half of the book discussing problems of political power in history. He does not necessarily use the language of a dissident or anarchist looking to abolish corrupt systems.

Conversely, the crypto-anarchists view a network state as an autonomous political formation or Cyber Libertaria that does not seek to appease nation-states or ask for permission to exist. They see network states as antithetical to nation-states ― as a wrench jammed into the machinery of oppression. The network state is seen as a tool for reordering society toward choice, freedom and peace.

The reality is that network states were discussed before Srinivasan coined the term. The idea was expressed most emphatically by Timothy May in his article Libertaria in Cyberspace (1992) and Jerry Everard in his treatise Virtual States (2000).

May described his vision succinctly:

This is the most compelling advantage of 'Crypto Libertaria': an arbitrarily large number of separate 'nations' can simultaneously exist. This allows for rapid experimentation, self-selection, and evolution. If folks get tired of some virtual community, they can leave.

The network state involves creating voluntary governance structures that run parallel to the State, preferably abolishing it over time. Unless it adapts, the nation-state cannot compete with the governance offerings provided by flexible and autonomous network states and thus it languishes, eventually ceding power to cyber-territories.

The liberatory potential of network states goes beyond cypherpunk motifs. It has primal roots, built into us as a force multiplier for liberty, that take us back to an earlier state of being ― a prehistoric organizational style. The network state is pregnant with spiritual effervescence. It brims with the feeling that we once lived more peacefully and were free in flesh and spirit.

The State of Nature: Anarchy or Utopia?

We are clamoring to return to an original state of nature by any means, almost as if we are being pulled toward it. The network state was not something we necessarily chose to create. It is inevitable because of our ingrained desire for freedom. It will enlighten us and help transcend our egos, overcome our desire for control and return to living in harmony with nature. In this way, the idea is a philosopher's stone. The network state represents the perfection of society or is as close to perfection as a society can achieve — the idea of turning lead (coercive organizations) into gold (voluntary networks).

Thomas Hobbes famously characterized the state of nature as “nasty, brutish, and short." These words have been re-calibrated in various ways over the years to fit into the weltanschauung. When people talk about prehistory and the state of nature, they claim this was anarchy. But they define anarchy as a war of all against all, as chaos. It is a place where people constantly kill each other because there is no State or Leviathan to subdue their natural tendencies.

Therefore, the term anarchy has been equivocated with violence, which allegedly arises in the absence of control and coercion. In this regard, learning about prehistory becomes impossible because scholars have poisoned the well of reasoned discourse. Anarchy just means without rulers but modern connotations suggest mayhem emerges without the rule of law.

We have yet to learn the full scope of human activity and organizational structures of prehistory. We need more evidence. However, we do know with certainty that nation-states did not exist; that our ancient ancestors lived in small tribes; that they survived by hunting and gathering before the agricultural revolution. According to Steven Mithin, in his book After the Ice: A Global Human History, this lifestyle persisted for 200 to 300 thousand years until the emergence of agriculture, writing, metalworking, money and governments. We can confidently say that the prehistorical environment was not paradise or utopia. Life was short and rough. Tribes likely warred with each other, murdered the other and committed atrocities. Maybe they even delivered their foes as burnt offerings to the gods. However, our early ancestors' most aggravating problems were harsh living conditions and predation rather than warfare. They were often eaten by large carnivorous cats and had few resources to stave off the elements.

Luminary and psychedelic guru Terrence McKenna suggested that we lived more communally and peacefully during this time. It was a matter of survival. In a beautiful articulation of what he called “the stoned ape theory," he says that our early ancestors living in Africa consumed psychedelic mushrooms as part of their diet, which made them more adroit hunters and allowed them to develop language, a spiritual praxis and a deep connection with nature. He posits that our ancestors enjoyed a communal and interconnected lifestyle where tribal cohesion and relationships were central. He made the case that male lines of paternity that define ruling establishments did not exist because all children were the “tribe's children" rather than belonging to an alpha male. In part, the eventual decline of communal child rearing led to our “fall into history" and the rise of authoritarianism.

In his book Homeland Earth: A Manifesto for the New Millennium Edgar Morin echoes McKenna, saying: “History, pitiless toward the vanquished historical civilizations, has been relentlessly atrocious to everything prehistoric." Morin says prehistory has largely been “character assassinated" by modern civilizations and scholars. In this sense, we cannot access the full picture. We can only understand how the imagery of prehistory must be propagandized as violent and brutal to uphold the status quo, which is premised on ruler-ship and institutional control.

Nonetheless, McKenna claims we are trying to return to the archaic and primal state of nature. He calls this return an archaic revival. We can also call it a return to network communalism or the tribal network. Let's discuss this idea of the archaic revival in more detail and bring McKenna's ideas into the 21st century. We will also understand the current polycrisis and its relationship to the archaic revival.

Archaic Revival: Rebuilding Eden in a time of crisis

Our species is determined to revive idyllic conditions, whether those conditions were a paradise or a symbolic gesture. In other words, rebuilding the Garden of Eden may be metaphorical for creating a more perfect society. Real or imagined, humanity wants to rediscover and embrace this utopia.

McKenna's notion of archaic revival presupposes that we are trying to return to this prehistoric Eden. Our technological drive is somehow geared to bring us together, usher in world peace and reconnect us to the power of the archaic. To be clear, when McKenna uses the term “archaic" he refers to something ancient or lost rather than outdated or backwards.

The story of history — of us coming of age in the Garden of Eden and then being cast out of paradise — has primarily been the story of control and destruction. This is the central theme of enduring classics such as Dante's Inferno where lost souls meander through the concentric circles of hell because they opted to satisfy animalistic desires for bloodshed rather than live in peace.

Most of history is built on this edifice of violence, especially through the relationship between the ruler and the ruled. History has been the story of avarice, territoriality and politicking. As a caveat, there are histories of science, philosophy, vocations, technology, etc but humanity's prime historical foci have been around our organizational structures, kings, and conquests. This historical perspective is so entrenched that Howard Zinn wrote A People's History of the United States (1980) to provide a view anathema to the “fundamental nationalist glorification of country" i.e. the ruler-focused perspective of history.

In the same vein, McKenna argued that history is a bad dream and quoted James Joyce: “History is the nightmare from which we are trying to awaken." A nightmare that implies our fall into history was a tragedy. By some accounts, it was an unhappy accident, as history seems to have sped up, and currently, our species is dealing with many concurrent crises. We have come to a critical juncture or bifurcation point. That juncture must entail resolving our current situation and reviving the archaic.

Polycrisis, Moloch, and Institutional Failure

We are clamoring to return to the state of nature to address the polycrisis, which suggests that many emergencies beset us. They include climate change, political extremism, oceanic microplastics, North Korean cyberwarfare, bioterrorism, religious fundamentalism, artificial intelligence explosion, United States imperialism and so on.

In the face of these mounting crises, thinkers like Daniel Schmachtenberger have called for a systems approach to tackle planetary issues while appealing to governments to implement this strategy through government interventionism.

Schmachtenberger tells us that our organizations must think holistically and dynamically about solutions. He says organizations too often optimize for local benefit to sustain their businesses, appease stakeholders and enhance profitability, which has collateral downstream consequences. He invokes game theory to explain these problems, specifically via the perspective of Moloch dynamics. In this game-theoretic scenario, organizations solve their most critical local concerns but their solutions often make us worse off. An example is when a company incessantly churns out a widget but their activity causes downstream environmental harm, such as an irradiated canal or stream.

Ironically, Schmachtenberger asks for governments to assist in solving such problems but he misses the point that governments are likely the worst offenders. Governments exacerbate polycrisis. If any organization seeks to maximize local optima it is governments as their primary aim is maintaining power and control. Polycrisis is in fact just a singular crisis: most planetary problems stem from sub-optimal governance and corrupt, morally bankrupt political regimes.

Governments are not incentivised to do the right thing. They can print as much money as they like or expropriate wealth from the population via predatory tax regimes. They have the power to do what they want with impunity. Why would any government choose to think holistically about problems when the sanctity of its power is all that matters?

This predicament is why governments forever give lip service to solving problems without affecting meaningful change. It is also why — with existing governance models — environments will never get cleaned up, war will continue ad nauseum and children will languish in poverty. The incentives to undo Moloch dynamics simply do not exist in the current system and kowtowing to the establishment to rectify these issues is the height of circular logic, absurdity and delusion.

Let's follow the same argument down to corporations. Those institutions are cronies. They exist and function at the behest of the State. They capitulate to governments. They play the game of power, which means they embrace Moloch dynamics by default. Without government, these organizations become subject to market dynamics and become exposed to risk. They can no longer afford to play Moloch games because they cannot buy privilege. Instead, they must appease a demanding customer-base.

The path forward is to exit these systems and embrace the network state — or, more precisely, a proliferation of network states — to usher in a new era of freedom and change.

The Network State Solution

The vision of network states is about securing human freedom, allowing people to exit coercive and broken systems and cooperate with people who share values, visions, and dreams. It is a technologically driven idea that inspires people to create and co-create their governance networks and solve problems they care about.

Aside from realizing the cypherpunk vision of dismantling coercive governments, the network state idea also ekes out a way to begin solving the polycrisis. Heretofore, the primary method for approaching global problems is to have some central authority devise a solution or draft legislation.

Network states drive humanity to create unique governance structures that focus on solving problems while providing concrete solutions. An early example is the city of Infinita at Rotan in Honduras. There we see the emergence of a network state attached to a zone for employment and economic development (ZEDE) imbued with a desire to cure aging via bio engineering innovation.

As another example, the founder of Ethereum Vitalik Buterin started an embryonic network state community called Zuzalu, which brings engineers and crypto-anarchists together to shape a new society. Other novel implementations for bootstrapping special economic zones, smart cities and network states focused on solving niche problems are under way by the dozens.

The network state has provided a petri dish for governance experimentation, where people can solve problems while agreeing to the rules of conduct. Indeed, we are positioning ourselves to understand the most critical problems and posit solutions while keeping incentives aligned. In a way, the network state is a vessel for nation-building, culture-crafting, and governance-structuring. It is also a political formation dedicated to fulfilling planetary needs; innovating around it provides avenues for solving the polycrisis but it also unlocks an increasingly bizarre future.

McKenna said where we are headed is destined or predetermined. Specifically, he claimed that history — rather than being defined by blind deterministic forces — acted more like a strange mathematical attractor. In other words, history is not being pushed from behind but rather pulled toward something at the end of time. He dubbed this mystical thing the “transcendental object at the end of time" and called it the “eschaton."

End Times? Eschaton, Singularity, Technium

McKenna's version of an eschaton is akin to an apocalypse or culminating point, where the species, cosmos and planet approach the end of history. He included considerations for accelerating history and technological exponential growth (which Ray Kurzweil called the Singularity). Dictionary.com similarly defines the eschaton as:

The final age and the consummation of history, including the Last Judgment and the defeat of evil, the eternal blessedness of the righteous, and, in some traditions, the creation of a new heaven and earth.

The network state idea fits nicely in McKenna's specific explanation of the eschaton, as it splinters human governance across space and time and allows rising complexity to disperse among differing human governance models. These network states also bring us back to that primal drive for a deep connection with the planet, hence the “archaic revival." McKenna would call this reconnection part of our birthright. In this regard, the network state maximizes innovation by unleashing human energy, time, and emotional resources. The network state is a continual process that allows humans to work unencumbered, accelerating innovation and progress.

As Kurzweil expertly points out in his book The Singularity is Near technological growth is exponential and the end goal is to establish general artificial intelligence that will dot the universe with the stuff of mind. McKenna's vision was more spiritual but he said something similar. History is not a blind process or accident of evolution. Instead, it is a goal-directed or teleological process with a purpose and a conclusion. The “transcendental object at the end of time" is representative of a birthing crisis or spiritual emergency, perhaps to prepare the human enterprise for transformation. When someone asked Kurzweil if God exists, he replied “not yet." Both Kurzweil and McKenna believe impact with the singularity or transcendental object is inevitable.

These ideas are not irrational or purely speculative. Kevin Kelly wrote about a similar idea in his work What Technology Wants. He suggests that technology has become a living force, which he dubs “the Technium". The Technium, akin to an idea like the Gaean mind, possesses a life force with goals. He cites many facts supporting his case, including the fact that information transfer can happen without human intervention. He also references extropy, which implies that the universe is becoming more ordered rather than chaotic. It is worth noting that Kelly is not a mystic nor derives mystical conclusions within his work. Still, Kelly speaks poetically about his vision of technology and the self-directed process of life:

As we turn from the galaxies to the swarming cells of our own being, which toil for something, some entity beyond their grasp, let us remember man, the self-fabricator who came across an ice age to look into the mirrors and magic of science. Surely he did not come to see himself or his wild visage only. He came because he is at heart a listener and a searcher for some transcendent realm beyond himself.

Death by Astonishment

Nikolai Berydaev said “the human spirit is in prison." Perhaps it is more of a cocoon than a prison: we are breaking free of it and transitioning to another phase of existence. Like Kurzweil, McKenna, and Kelly, I see technology as evolution by another means. Technology manifests greater order in the universe, driving our species to its grand finale or end.

The network state idea and associated technologies were invented to subvert bottlenecks around human freedom and solve the polycrisis. But they were also created to unleash innovation in a way that unfetters the Technium and accelerates our rush toward the “transcendental object at the end of time." So, to answer the question hinted at in the title of this essay, are we returning to Eden at the end of history?

We cannot know with certainty. We only know that strangeness abounds and the urgency for freedom and novelty has reached a fever pitch. It is incumbent upon us to maintain our curiosity and optimism as we reach escape velocity. The end of history suggests we will reconnect with the planet by embracing networked governance. But how it changes our behavior and appearance will likely shock and amaze. Today's increasing complexity and weirdness remind me of what McKenna said of the full psychedelic intoxication: you go to new worlds and experience “death by astonishment." The end of history may indeed be a “death by astonishment." Based on the current trajectory, that is the true meaning of the network state.