Empire and the City: A Tool for Domination

There is a rather unfortunate trend regarding centralization, and that trend is very simple: centralization is necessary for domination, so centralization leads to domination.

There is a very simple reason that explains this trend. The city is always used, through its power of centralization, to create a concentration of power for the purpose of establishing a dominance hierarchy and enforcing that tyranny as far and as wide as can be had- and maintaining that power for as long as possible. Empire is the inspiration for all of this, manifest through its Thralls. We are better off without all of this.

Domination, on a mass scale, is no less reliant upon infrastructure as anything else. Domination relies on centralization, which is why it is always the way that cities--when organizes into a centralized government--are the focal points for any domination: political, cultural, economic, religious or any other. Ending Empire, therefore, means not only throwing down its domination. It means throwing down domination itself, and that means destroying all of the tools for domination. It is yet another reason to rethink what cities are, and how we can get the benefits of cities (which are byproducts, and not the intended results) without the desired results of cities, which is now quite possible through a commitment to decentralization and distribution of the beneficial aspects throughout the world.

Yes, I'm talking about the Internet, but not just the Internet. I'm talking about multiple, redundant Internets that are cooperative yet independent. I'm talking about wide-spread dispersion of all forms of information, redundant production capacities localized in small communities (themselves based on multi-generational homesteads), self-sufficiency as a primary principle for human organization, and a reorganization of the entire planet as an eternal frontier- with a particular focus of spreading Mankind's reach beyond Earth's landmass, reaching deep under the sea and far into space (including other planets).

The alternative to Empire, therefore, is to reorganize ourselves back into our smaller natural-law nations in terms of physical space usage and connect instead by way of a robust, redundant multi-form Internet system. Redundancy, resiliency, self-sufficiency, decentralization and distributed capacities are the way out of Empire's centralization, domination, fragility and control. We have a better way to live, so let Empire fall.