Tela Network

" A set of traits that can guide us [when trying to define an empire]: • Territorial extension greater than one million square kilometres. • Longevity. An empire is a multi-century reality, an uncontested power - at least at a continental level - lasting more than a century. • From a central point, it produces other centres that surpass the original one or at least reach the same level. • The empire generates a machinery of cooperation and integration among different peoples, which dies with it but is irreversible. • The empire ends up collapsing from within, that is, due to internal decomposition. " - Elvira Roca Barea, “Imperiofobia y Leyenda Negra. Roma, Rusia, Estados Unidos y El Imperio Español”. Chapter 2. (2016)

This is an interesting idea mentioned recently by Balaji Srinivasan. I'll expand it here. - The shapes of current countries are partially (perhaps mostly) due to the constraints of agriculture. Single contiguous areas, in which people grew similar crops and raised similar animals, were zones in which people could move easily and share useful technologies. This often led to similar customs. - Today, in modern economies, only 1% of the population works in agriculture. Marriage customs, ethnic and cultural boundaries, and political boundaries are much less constrained by the agricultural requirements. - The hot zone of a polity is its information exchange hub. This is where all other activity is organized. - This is constrained by _timezone_. Within a single timezone, potential political / economic / cultural coordination is maximized. - It may now be much easier for a powerful polity to expand _vertically_. Source: https://youtu.be/VSVOQl-vFKk

Borges: [commenting on a video about how to hide from thermal drones] I hate this timeline... StJohn: It has some definite bad parts. Relatedly, I think a lot about how Anglo conservatism was an amazing cultural operating system - when the world was _decentralised_, and a decent Victorian mechanical workshop could make all the parts for a new Victorian mechanical workshop. Like bees splitting off to make new hives. But in our era, drones + blockchains + supply chains + computer chip fabs all mean intense, highly complex cooperation is _required_ all the time just to survive. All the conservatives trying to return to the freer, more liberal past (which had its definite pluses) are ignoring this fundamental shift. Now we all have to be significantly more collectivistic. Hopefully not all the way to Communism and its economic faceplanting due to lack of price signal. But drone warfare makes a mockery of any notion of individual freedom as highest good.

/ When you communicate because you engage in local trade and you all share economic bonds that will continue from generation to generation, you will become cohesive. This bond is broken when the federal government allows companies to relocate their foreign workforce into your neighborhood, destabilizing local cultural bonds and disrupting the intergenerational structure; the entire community becomes atomized. People stop participating in civic life because if their children will not inherit their efforts, why should they continue to put in the effort? / https://tompnoid.substack.com/p/part-2-white-people-dont-exist

Podcast summary: Dr. Dani Sulikowski argues that "wokeness" can be understood as _manipulative reproductive suppression_. Key points: - Once societies become wealthy and infant mortality falls, elite women lose their normal reproductive advantage. - To restore it, they promote cultural norms - e.g. career-first feminism, abortion rights, body positivity, gender ideology, toxic masculinity - that will lower the reproduction rate of other women. - This behavior is not necessarily conscious. - These movements are framed as progressive or compassionate but effectively make other women less fertile. - This pattern is cyclical across civilizations. Male competition is dominant until an inflection point of high wealth and success is reached. Female competition then becomes the dominant force in mating outcomes, and birth rates decline, setting the stage for societal decline and replacement. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRY_1JRRcNU

"Modern politicians and becoming a man" - New article on Tela Blog It contains two quotes that I found striking. Issues: - The effect of a constant audience on a politician - The default state of man absent the cultural imposition of masculinity "... Mature masculinity is artificially induced through culture...." https://telablog.com/modern-politicians-and-becoming-a-man

Brains (or brain regions) undergo model collapse just like AI systems. ... Urban people often behave as if they’re retarded. Socially (they’ve never been punched in the face), Geospatially (they have no idea how to navigate by the sun or shadows), Culturally (without some pop-fiction touchstone, culture doesn’t exist), etc. They’re entirely bound to a world of artificial ideas: human-produced data, and unable to accurately model from first principles anything outside their extremely limited sphere of artificial experience. The bugman’s neurological model of reality is divorced from reality. They hallucinate truths that make no sense, and they delude themselves into provably false ideas, and violently attack anyone with a model of reality more accurate than their own. They don’t understand violence, hunger, or (real) social organization because they’ve never encountered those things. https://substack.com/home/post/p-178113467

" This laying down of your life to do a difficult thing, in an act which has got integrity - is culture. And that's what the invitation always is: to do a brave thing. From the front of your property to the back, and from the start of your life to the end. To make a grand gesture. A simple, uncomplicated, grand gesture. That's culture. And the opposite of it is slavery and debt. And there's this great tilt that needs to happen. It starts on the very small scale, with this little tiny patch of land. My life. My family. That's how conquest happens. " - James Gillick, "The Grand Gesture: Reviving Sacred Art, Craft, and Culture" (~01:23:26), The New Humanum. James Gillick is an English figurative artist. Link to the full film on YouTube: https://youtu.be/96J2RIQLvC4?