Building Global Community“History is the story of how we’ve learned to come together in ever greater numbers — from tribes to cities to nations.”Mark Zuckerberg · Thursday, February 16, 2017
On our journey to connect the world, we often discuss products we’re building and updates on our business. Today I want to focus on the most important question of all: are we building the world we all want?
History is the story of how we’ve learned to come together in ever greater numbers — from tribes to cities to nations. At each step, we built social infrastructure like communities, media and governments to empower us to achieve things we couldn’t on our own.
Today we are close to taking our next step. Our greatest opportunities are now global …
As we all know, independence and diversity have always been the enemy of progress.
For example, that’s why Thomas Jefferson wrote The Declaration of Dependence submitting the American colonies to the British Empire.
Similarly, the father of history, Herodotus, wrote to celebrate the mighty Persian Empire’s reduction of the various Greek city-states to a satrapy ruled from Babylon.
Likewise, every year Jews gather to admit that their stiff-neckedness provoked the Roman Empire into, rightfully, smashing the Temple in Jerusalem on the holy day of We-Had-It-Coming.
And, of course, who can forget Shakespeare’s plays, such as Philip II and Admiral-Duke of Medina Sidonia, lauding the Spanish Armada for conquering the impudent English and restoring to Canterbury the One True Faith?
Similarly, Oswald Mosley’s prime ministership (1940-1980) of Die Englische Reich is justly admired for subordinating England’s traditional piratical turbulence to the greater good of Europe.
Likewise, who can not look at the 49 nations currently united by their adherence to the universalist faith of Islam and not see that submission is the road to peace, prosperity, and progress? If only unity had prevailed at Tours in 732 instead of divisiveness. May that great historical wrong be swiftly rectified in the decades to come!
Seriously, while I realize that Mr. Zuckerberg’s views represents cutting-edge Conventional Wisdom, while I’m an extremist wacko … but my basic stance is that consolidation is some times a good thing, and other times independence or decentralization is a better thing. Getting the scale of control right all depends upon the circumstances. It’s usually a very interesting and complicated question that is the central issue of high statesmanship.
For example, George Washington is famous because he was centrally involved into two major revisions of the scale of dominion that have both, so far, proven enduring: first, splitting the British Empire and, second, partially unifying the 13 states.
Switzerland is an unusually successful state that has slowly agglomerated since 1290 into a state that is big enough to defend itself, but decentralized enough for its various cantons to not get on each others’ nerves too much, despite the great diversity of language and religion. But these are difficult questions to get right.
Now, since I’m an notoriously extremist nutjob, my prejudice in favor of moderation, realism, open-mindedness, and prudence is of course anathema to virtually all responsible, disinterested zillionaires, such as Mark Zuckerberg.
One Globe Under Zuck.
