The most crucial element to the success of a moral order (anti-political space) is that it accurately represents (or close to) the values of those who choose to live in it. That these values support human thriving is of also of vital importance – but that issue is fiendishly difficult for a political order to make judgments about. The choice of whether to live in a community or not is one that a political apparatus can unambiguously support – but the fact that we don’t have a common definition of human thriving and what values are truly important to live out is why we need a diverse ecosystem of moral orders in the first place.
While it had a very mixed record of utilizing them in practice, Western modernity clearly had developed many of the tools necessary to help people create communities that share their values. To the extent that the challenge of setting up moral orders is a lack of prosperity and logistical support, Western modernity was in fact the most advanced civilization in history at generating prosperity and solving logistical issues. Those tools should not be abandoned.
But we must likewise learn from its failures, and this is as true, or even more true, in the bastions of progressive politics as it is anywhere else. Continue reading The Apocalypse Cabaret Manifesto – Part 10: The Community Design Principles We Don’t Yet Have