The main elements of the modernity machine (European edition) are:

1. A secularly shifting balance-of-power configuration of political actors governed by negotiated contractual relationships that systematically favored previously weaker parties, rather than theological axioms


2. The beginnings of what we’d call a technocracy in the form of the culture of

... See more

“More than two millennia after the Axial Age, we may be entering another globally synchronized rethink. With no shared ideology and dwindling trust in inherited institutions, humanity is being forced back to first principles. What is justice? What deserves to endure? Questions of AI ethics, political legitimacy and governance are no longer... See more

Reactionary tendencies are at a peak now, as they were through much of the birth of modernity, 1200-1400. Many events during that period could be interpreted as attempts by incumbent powers to restore patterns of societal organization from early medieval era or antiquity. Then as now, these tendencies scored several notable victories and temporary... See more