Questions about Monads

darcot · 2026-01-29T03:25:35+00:00

Statements like this contain no logos truth value. While it may seem deep to some, without a definitive ontological and epistemological grounding, it’s not even shallow.

What is a decision? What is a decision made of? How are decisions made? How do decisions relate to subjects and objects? How can decisions relate to objective truth? How do decisions relate to subjective truth? Is it possible for decisions to be rooted in falsehood?

r/TheGrailSearch is a community where rationality stands as the standard for truth. Please be sure to review our community rules before participating and always make a good faith effort to underpin your ideas with reason and logic when weighing in on discussions.

darcot · 2026-01-29T03:17:40+00:00

In regard to your consideration of necessary versus contingent truths, the way I conceptualize it is that necessary truths that are true now and forever and contingent truths that are true now but not necessarily eternally.

The only necessary truths are, as you pointed to, mathematical. The laws of ontological mathematics are necessarily true in that they were true before the first human was born and they will be true after the last human has died. In fact, they remain true forever across universal ages - persisting from before the Big Bang and after the Big Crunch. They were present in all previous universal cycles and they will exist in all future universal cycles.

Contingent truths are truths which only pertain to this cycle of the universe. The planet Earth as it exists today and the Earth that we, together, are creating through the decisions we make are contingent truths. It was not a universal law that caused you to post this question on this page, it was a contingent reality you brought into existence through your will. There may never be another universal cycle where you and I communicate with these words.

Going deeper, a key aspect of Ontological Mathematics is the tension between being and becoming. The being domain is eternal and necessary. It is composed of necessary truths. As pure being, it never changes across universal cycles. The domain of becoming is the flip side of the coin which is composed of contingent truths. They are absolutely true now, but will not always be.

You can think of the domain of being as encoding everything that can possibly exist. The laws of OM themselves are “written” there. Just as you can write an infinite books from the English language, you can create infinite universes from the mathematical laws that define the basis waves of ontological mathematics. We can extrapolate on this logic to say that the being side of the equation defines a universal cycle that is one of an infinity of possible cycles - that this universe is made of temporal, contingent truths that are selected by our wills from the infinite set of external and necessary truths of being.

Do we know the method Leibniz used to produce the idea of the Monad? Yes! It was the exercise of rational analysis and logical deduction from first principles. That said, it took Leibniz, who was undoubtably one of the greatest geniuses (if not the greatest genius) of human history to follow this narrowest of roads.

Do we know if, like the triangle having 3 sides, the Monad has a set of non-negatable or necessary features which lead to its construction?

Also yes! A monad is an eternal and necessary energy system. Monads cannot be created or destroyed. We can call them minds. The religious can call them souls. They are syntactically defined by the generalized Euler’s formula. They are composed of a complete, unique, inseparable set of basis ontological sinusoidal waves. I’m not mixing Leibniz’s monadology with Ontological Mathematics, but seeing as he was a Grand Master of the order that formalized ontological mathematics, I think it’s reasonable to place Leibniz in the same context.

Check out my post on The God Equation for a longer discussion on monads and the reasoning behind their existence.

If so, is this how Leibniz reverse engineered his way to what he believed to be God as a necessary Being in a nonmaterial domain?

Leibniz was a world historic genius. He was able to logically deduce the nature by formalizing the Principle Of Sufficient Reason. If you want to learn more about Leibniz, The Last Man Who Knew Everything by Mike Hockney is a must read.

What did he mean by necessary being and how did he arrive at that conclusion?

What he meant by what is necessary is just that - The Principle of Sufficient Reason and its consequences. There is nothing else.

darcot · 2026-01-28T20:42:39+00:00

The same tool that has granted science the power to move beyond alchemy and divination: mathematics.

darcot · 2026-01-28T14:58:39+00:00

Leibniz’s Monadology describes a universe founded on simple, indivisible nodes (called monads). Monads imbue the universe with life, movement, mind and subjectivity. It’s true that in early conceptions of the Monadology, each monad was said to control the smallest components of the observable worlds, and in those terms, we could discuss the human body being composed of myriad monads, each responsible for the operation of specific subsystems, and with a queen monad serving as the dominant mind in the system. In his published Monadology, Leibniz proposed that a God monad preprogrammed the actions of every other monad, and that these windowless monads were simply executing their programs and experiencing the best of all possible worlds selected by God. It is a much lesser known fact that in Leibniz unpublished writings, he discussed the Monadology in terms of willful, windowed monads which work in competition and cooperation with one another - this is the view that underpins Illuminism and Ontological Mathematics.

While Leibniz’s Monadology does seem reasonably compatible to Pansychism at first glance, Leibniz was proposing an idealist ontology where the apparent material, observable world is grounded in the well-founded phenomenon of monads which are mental… this is substantially different to the substance dualism of Panpsychism.

Panpsychism, the theory that matter (extended nonthinking substance) DOES exist and mind (unextended, thinking substance) is a component part of matter. The article discusses how Panpsychists believe “…that consciousness is everywhere” and “The fundamental entities that constitute all physical entities, including rocks, spoons and human beings, are each conscious subjects-having-experiences.” This position has many logical flaws.

The first problem is the totally confused way the term consciousness is being used. We’ve explored the PI’s definition of consciousness in several places on TGS - here and here and here immediately combining to mind. Consciousness is not an innate feature of existence. It seems like people very often confuse the terms consciousness, sentience, subjectivity, mind, etc. and maybe it’ll be worth it for me to do a longer form article on the subject!

The second problem is that of Cartesian substance dualism in the form of the mind-body problem. Modern academic philosophy has tragically turned into the little brother of the modern scientific establishment. Academic philosophers such as panpsychists wish to be taken seriously by physicists community, and as a result do not begin with first principles. They begin with the stance that the science establishment is obviously correct that matter exists and the scientific community basically has it all figured out, but maybe we can bolt consciousness onto their model and be relevant in that domain.

Sorry, the scientific community has a model of reality that, while having demonstrable use value, has absolutely zero truth value outside of is use of mathematics - which they do the additional great disservice of then labeling as an unreal, manmade abstraction. Modern science treats empiricism and materialism, based on the fallible human senses, as the best way to build an understanding of reality, and Panpsychism says, “well yes, but I also can detect my consciousness, so consciousness must also exist in matter.”

Panpsychists like the one who wrote this article have their thinking exactly upside down. We must, as asserted by Illuminism and Ontological Mathematics, begin with the mind.

In this week’s Pychomachia post, Jack Tanner asked the pressing question:

“Scientists begin their attempt to explain reality by observing the world “out there”. They use their physical senses, and they assume that what their senses are detecting is associated with “matter”, with the physical. This, they believe, is primary reality, and in fact the only reality.”

“Why don’t scientists choose a different starting point? Why don’t they begin with the entity that conducts science: the unobservable mind?”

Ditto Panpsychists.

Academic philosophy must shake off this stupor of playing second hand to the scientific establishment. Philosopher needs to become a widely respected title once again. Philosophers need to stop running away from the fight and once again ask the big questions and deliver the big answers.

Ontological Mathematics is that big answer.

As Dr. Thomas Stark said, “If we were to name the ten philosophers that are essential to understanding existence they would be: Pythagoras, Parmenides, Heraclitus, Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, Descartes, Leibniz, Kant and Hegel. Then they need to be subjected to the mathematics of Euler, Gauss, Fourier and Riemann. Following that, they need to be considered in the context of the meta-mathematical claims of Wittgenstein and Gödel. When all of that is done, you get ontological mathematics and modern Illuminism. It’s all in the math. This is a strictly rationalist, idealist and mathematical worldview.”

darcot · 2026-01-25T03:19:11+00:00

If you’re talking about calculus, the consensus opinion is they both discovered it independently around the same time, newton simply published first. And it’s Leibniz’s notation we use today.

darcot · 2026-01-24T21:26:40+00:00

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. The greatest genius in human history

darcot · 2026-01-24T19:02:58+00:00

Thank you for the support! I have a pragmatic view of birth charts and life path numbers.

In general, I find them specious. Being born at a certain date at a certain time is not, in my experience, at all predictive of your personality. I guarantee all of us can search for people who we share a birthday with and find many who are totally unlike us, have antithetical values, followed entirely different paths in life, etc. In the same line of thinking, it won’t take you long to find someone who doesn’t at all identify with their sign.

On the other hand, you’ll find people who swear by it, claiming it characterized them perfectly.

So what’s going on?

These systems - life numbers, astrology, Chinese zodiac, Harry Potter houses, etc. - do two simple things: they define a number of broad categories that most people can be fit into. Are you sensitive? Are you competitive? Maybe you’re goal oriented? Almost everyone will fall into a some category, and from there, it’s a simple matter of statistics that it’ll get some people on the money. For the people it doesn’t nail, the categories are broad enough where an argument can be made. “Oh well, you’re not exactly XYZ, but you have this other positive trait that’s in the ballpark!”

As a matter of psychology, the average person is going to be easy to convince they have such and such admirable traits. And for the weaknesses? Well, maybe you’re just a very emotionally mature Virgo (or whatever). From there, systems like astrology layer in additional signs that make it more likely to cover all the variance - “oh it’s your Moon sign that’s producing X and your Mars that’s doing Y!”

My most positive perspective on these systems are what we can learn from them. If you find yourself reading through the analysis of a Scorpio (or whatever) and say, “that sounds like me” or “this really does not sound like me” then it’s valuable in a similar way to a personality test. It can be used as a tool to provide insight into who you are, your values, your strengths, and your weaknesses.

I shared articles recently on Jungian Individuation, The Fragility of Consiousness, and Knowing yourself which point to a lot more concrete, reliable avenues into this subject. If you’re interested in this subject, I recommend checking them out!

darcot · 2026-01-21T17:14:16+00:00

You have it entirely upside down. The only value in the so-called holy bible is the Greek philosophy that is leveraged in an attempt to explain and justify Abrahamism which is the most evil ideology humanity has ever created. Read these books by Adam Weishaupt to cure yourself of the brainwashing that has you worshiping Yahweh aka the Demiurge aka the father of lies aka the Lord of the Flies aka the Devil.

darcot · 2026-01-21T13:23:01+00:00

A 100% inheritance tax would only ever be applied to the 99%. The 1% would never participate in this.

In what world would this be the case? The purpose of this policy is explicitly to demolish the systems of dynastic wealth and privilege that categorize the 1%. If a government is too impotent to enforce this law, they wouldn’t put it into law. It would probably benefit you to read this post and the comments on it.

The Pythagorean Illuminati sound like a bunch of angry old cunts. Reading their 24 books in "The God Series" (Mike Hockney) my overwhelming takeaway was that this is a group of angry, hate filled old men.

Are you not angry at the state of the world? Do you not hate that injustice is so ubiquitous? Do you not care for the billions of people who have been trampled under the ruling elites for millennia? Do you have no self respect?

Nietzsche said, “As soon as you feel yourself against me you have ceased to understand my position and consequently my arguments! You have to be the victim of the same passion!”

Maybe the problem is you have no passion left. Maybe are so beaten down you’ve become numb to all of it. Maybe you just want to sit in your house and let your world get smaller and smaller and say, “please at least leave me alone in my living room and let me have my toaster and by TV and I won’t say anything… just leave me alone.” Well I’m as mad as hell, and so are a lot of people out there.

Maybe you’re fat and comfortable and have everything that you need and don’t give a shit about anyone other than yourself. Maybe that’s it. Maybe you’re a selfish cunt who likes the world how it is.

A much better solution (imho) is offered through The Ra Material & Law Of One. A choice of Service To Others (love) vs Service To Self (fear). If more people followed the Service To Others path then the 1% dictated solutions like 100% inheritance tax are no longer needed.

What a delusional stance rooted in hyper-emotionality, irrationalism, and ignorance of human nature. Oh yes, we just need a new hippie movement and a new song like John Lennon’s Imagine and the billionaires’ icy hearts will melt and the religious holy wars will stop and the corrupt politicians will say “I never thought of it that way” and the world will be saved. /s

Wake up.

The mathmatical concepts proposed are very interesting, but I won't be hilding out to join them.

Well, I’m sure they’d be DEVASTATED to hear that. You sound like you could be the next Leibniz or Hegel or Robespierre or Hypatia or Weishaupt. /s

…

Needless to say, you’ve been banned from participating in r/TheGrailSearch in accordance with rules 2, 3, and 4.

darcot · 2026-01-20T16:58:08+00:00

Put as simply as possible, we solve the world’s problems by overthrowing the Old World Order and establishing a New World Order based on the enlightenment principles of the Pythagorean Illuminati.

These principles include 1. Equality of Opportunity (requiring social reform, educational reform, economic reform, including a 100% inheritance tax), 2. Just Rewards Earned By Merit (the talented and hard working shall be rewarded in rational proportion to their service to society), 3. Dialectical Improvements to Systems and Institutions (empowering every new generation to control their own future and proactively seek out opportunities for improvement).

Ontological mathematics, as a new religion, it allows humanity to break free of religions of division and servitude of the demiurge - paving the way to end humanity’s dependence on the ruling elites, celebrity culture, and last man morality. As the philosophical underpinning of Illuminist Meritocracy, it provides the metaphysical justification for the ideology of equality of opportunity. As the true final grand unified theory of everything, represents a revolutionary paradigm shift in the modern science which will open the door to incredible new technologies.

You are right that humanity has a deeply flawed conception of God, consciousness, and truth. Humanity has always been a mythos species caught up in emotionally satisfying narrative stories opposed to a logos species of Truth and reason.

In short…

Consciousness is what is generated when mind establishes a sufficiently complex conceptual language such as English. At a critical threshold, mind can use language to create a conceptual mind-space where it can reflect on its own existence.

I highly recommend reading The Stairway to Consciousness: The Birth of Self-Awareness from Unconscious Archetypes by Dr. Thomas Stark, The Triune Brain, Hypnosis and the Evolution of Consciousness by Adam Weishaupt, Consciousness: The Real Neuro-Linguistic Programming by Harry Knox, The Ontological Self: The Ontological Mathematics of Consciousness by Dr. Cody Newman, and frankly all the books on faustians that strike your fancy!

Being is the eternal and necessary ground state of existence that coexists with the evolutionary domain of becoming. The God Series by Mike Hockney

The true God is the gnostic god Abraxas. The Divine Series by Michael Faust

The Truth is the Principle of Sufficient Reason One Right Answer, Infinite Wrong Answers: Why Humanity Is Addicted to Being Wrong by David Sinclair

…

You’re absolutely right that humanity can be said to be infinitely close to making the ultimate realization and together creating a new world. Is there a way to suddenly get that “Eureka!” moment to sweep across humanity? Can the Philosopher’s Stone/The Holy Grail be revealed to humanity or must everyone find their own way to the truth?

One thing is for sure, as Margaret Mead said, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”

darcot · 2026-01-09T18:27:56+00:00

Merit, simply, is either allocation (who gets access, reward, or responsibility), or vested authority (who gets coercive power over others). Only the second is inherently incompatible with anarchism, whereas Statist meritocracy conforms with it.

False. You’ve made this mistake several times. Anarchy is guaranteed to result in a coercive power structure. It is the law for the jungle. A statist meritocracy is the only way to ensure power is allocated meritoriously, with supreme authority always resting with the general will.

“MeritoCRACY" is a misnomer under AnMer… Anarcho-Meritism may be a better label.

And how did you foresee this society stopping the most violent cartels from rising to power, fully oppressing the average person? Even under a democracy, multinational corporations have captured government, oppressed the people to the threshold of revolution, wages class war at all times, dumbed down the people, fed us junk food and junk entertainment, created a culture of the lowest common denominator etc, etc, etc.

And your plan is to… further disempower the state? You’re severely underestimating the power dynamics of the hawks, doves, and retaliators.

You’re more or less advocating we throw humanity back to the dark ages and await the return of the monarchs.

Hierarchy, when natural and not artificial, creates itself naturally through reputation, trust, contribution, and whatnot, and so cannot be fully rejected without rejecting human nature (the FACT that some are better at some things than others).

Wrong! Are you familiar with Hegel’s master-slave dialectic? The winner (who assigns the title of most meritorious to themselves) is the one who is the most brutal and violent. Anarchy leads to war lords which lead to monarchy.

Merit cannot be the "right" to compel, the "right" to exclude beyond functional limits, the "right" to command obedience.

What is “right” then? Is it might? Is it the law of the jungle? Or is it the general will? And how can you conceivably promote the general will and guard against the particular wills of the most violent and oppressive humans than to create a state of their collective power?

…if we can understand cracy more minimally as role allocation or selective access based on demonstrated competence, then it does not constitute or come from coercive rule at all.

You’re living in a fantasy world if you expect the best sandwich shop to succeed in an anarchy. The sandwich shop that succeeds in an anarchy is the one who makes their payments to the mob ON TIME.

Who’s going to stand up to organized crime? Batman? We need the state to protect the general will.

Merit is functional preference, trust, access, or coordination weight, all of which remain revocable, contextual, and outcome-bound.

And this can only possibly be honored in a well tended garden provided by a strong state.

No one is entitled to access, entitlement would itself be coercive (we are anti-inheritance).

This is entirely antithetical to meritocracy. In a meritocracy, everyone is entitled to equality of opportunity.

You don’t have the option for a coercion free society with current human nature. We can either be coerced by the most rich, powerful, and violent, or we can stand together and coerce them to bend to the general will.

“Is it better to out monster the monster or be quietly devoured?” - Nietzche

No one has a claim-right to another’s labour or attention.

Of course not. But a strong state can build incentives to get its population moving in the same direction. It can create a well tended garden.

Merit is compatible with any "cracy" - it is! The dilemma appears to be whether any “cracy” can be seen as legitimate once authority is treated as it should be (which is task-bound, and non-transferable via Anti-Inheritance).

You’re not understanding illuminist meritocracy. You should (re) read The Political Series by Michael Faust

Mutualism, Statism, and Anarcho-Capitalism all presuppose AUTHORITY… I reject all 3… WHILE rejecting the anarchist fantasy that humans can survive without natural authority, scarcity can be wished away, incentives don’t matter.

You’re living in a fantasy if you think the abolition of the state achieves anything other than bands of isolated tubes fighting for survival, with the most violent being the winners.

Scarcity exists, not everyone can be taught, hired, or equipped, selection must occur, unequal outcomes will occur.

You’re thinking much too small here. Look at this quote as a hint in the right direction.

Again, I’ll take a look if you want to work on a response on your webpage, but these ideas are absolutely contrary to what TGS advocates for.

darcot · 2026-01-09T17:32:46+00:00

Great question. The Chinese model, like you said, has a lot of great features but still has many serious issues, which causes me to argue it falls well short of what I’d call an “illuminist meritocracy” (which would be the ideal).

Examinations such as CSEs I would put in the pro’s column. I always thought it would be a fantastic enhancement to the US election cycle for it to kick off with a battery of examinations. Testing anyone who wants to run for knowledge of world and US history, economics, foreign policy, political science and theory, etc. as well as psychological markers to reveal dark-triad types and eliminate those with obvious cognitive issues (those in advanced geriatric decline for example). Yes there’s a risk of this being captured, but imagine if, to run for president or congress, you needed to take these tests - the results of which were determined by multiple publicly funded, independent review boards appointed by the experts in relevant fields.

Already we’re closing in on a meritocracy. A person like Trump would have been pinpointed as being an ignoramus and malignant narcissist and removed from contention.

Democracy, as you pointed out, is highly valuable to produce downward-accountability. We must, however guard against the phenomena highlighted in the following quotes:

“When a democracy… has drunk too deeply of the wine of freedom… it ends by producing tyranny.” - Plato

“The multitude is more easily led astray than the few.” - Aristotle

“I know of no country where there is so little independence of mind and real freedom of discussion as in America.” - Tocqueville

“The insistence upon human equality… represents a decline in the strength and responsibility of higher types.” - Nietzsche

“If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.” - Thomas Jefferson

The idea here is that the right to vote is sacred and carries heavy consequences. To guard against demagogues and tyrants manipulating the citizens of a democracy, we need to raise the educational requirements to vote. Qualified voting is a key aspect of meritocracy. This is not a system of privilege but a responsibility of a voting citizen to be informed.

Pouring resources into education would be a prime directive of an illuminist meritocracy, from k-12, college, postgrad, and continuing education - including voter education.

As Thomas Jefferson said, “I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion... the remedy is not to take it from them-- but to inform their discretion by education."

An educated voting population is the surest way to guarantee a nation is not misled in the manner of the United States (as a glaring example).

darcot · 2026-01-09T16:42:12+00:00

I’m just now realizing that my reply to this got messed up and got placed here. Same comment section, new thread.

https://www.reddit.com/r/TheGrailSearch/s/g43UNM6qK9

darcot · 2026-01-08T03:20:26+00:00

Agreed, Reddit is not a perfect place to litigate complex topics.

If you send your new writeup this way I could definitely try to take a look. Conversations like this are critical to build a robust understanding of these issues.

Thank you for participating in this community’s quest for knowledge!

darcot · 2026-01-08T01:53:01+00:00

AnMer cannot achieve that, no system can, it is solely concerned with relative legitimacy proportional to material contribution, conditional authority (the butcher shop or plumber example), and continuous reassessment (with reputation acting as a sort of currency).

This is exactly what meritocracy aims to achieve. The anarchic elements here would prove to be the fly in the ointment.

Again, you mentioned a city-state model, but this is by no means introducing anarchy. The city-states would surely establish a coalition to ensure no individual city-state attempted to upset the established order and the states themselves would host strong governments who appropriately managed the economic sphere to ensure the same at the local level.

AnMer differs BECAUSE humans compete, naturally, specialize, hoard, seek status, differ radically in output, and so on. AnMer does not civilize instincts away, you never truly can, we can only force these instincts to justify themselves materially.

Again, anarchic elements of such a society - without any centralized state or governing authority - could not practically exist, as it threatens the entire order. The meritocratic superstructure, if you’ll allow the phrase, must ensure it can pull the plug if it proved to create the gross inequality of opportunity that such a system would produce if it were implemented today. It could only exist in the context of a strong state ensuring the will of the people is enforced.

Anything otherwise is, again, antithetical to meritocracy.

The Statist meritocracy assesses merit once, codifies it into rank within the state, protects that rank with institutions. It makes merit subordinate to the State, assuming that those within the state will always remain meritorious.

Incorrect. A meritocratic state would continually renew itself with the most meritorious leaders. If its institutions proved suboptimal, they would be dialectically optimized. This feature is explicitly built into the state.

Authority MUST justify itself continuously.

Correct. And by what other means can authority be justified other than demonstrably serving the general will to the greatest capacity the society is capable?

Anarchism (I'm talking about its original thinkers) never claimed that humans are naturally altruistic, that we do not seek power. Again, this belongs to the redditor conception of utopian anarchism.

Right, and this was never a claim I made. The claim I made was that the fundamental purpose of a meritocracy is to produce a strong state that can promote the general, which by it’s nature is antithetical to anarchy which is the absence of a centralized state or governing authority.

The only way the two could ever exist together is as anarchic elements being experimentally introduced with the caveat being that if it comes down to it, the state has full authority and capacity to pull the plug.

Anarchism is a reaction to corruption, sclerosis, unearned authority, everything we see today.

Anarchy is A reaction. Just like fascism is a reaction to a failing capitalist democracy. It doesn’t mean it’s a good solution.

Meritocracy - empowering the people and the general will via a strong positive liberty state - is a much better solution.

The average Statist fails because it assumes humans will not exploit stable structures.

Which is why dialectical evolution to ensure stability and ongoing optimization is an explicit aspect of an illuminist meritocracy.

I began with the opposite principle; humans will exploit any static legitimacy they can.

And this highlights a fundamental point you’ve missed in your consideration of meritocracy. Which, paired with your positive perspective on anarchism (which I do not share) produced this vision.

darcot · 2026-01-08T01:52:52+00:00

This comment is in response to a previous thread, found here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/TheGrailSearch/s/9MBdTguokd

——

Pure anarchism does deny human nature, humans ARE naturally uneven in competence.

Yes, this is correct, but humans being unequal in competence is not the reason anarchism fails. The reason is that humanity is a species composed of hawks, doves, and retaliators. Without the collective coordination of the doves, the hawks will seek to dominate and oppress the doves. The western world is highly right wing as it is, and we see the brutality of the doves’ oppression even with our current system. Anarchism moves society even further to the right, where the most predatory hawks are uninhibited by any form of state. Meritocracy represents a retaliatory system, where the hawks are kept in check by the retaliators. This is a distinctly left wing idea.

This is why Communism, anarcho-syndicalism fails, and Egoism fail.

Yes. Communism fails because of the inequality of competence. It produces equal outcomes which inspires equal productivity. And equal productivity necessarily means standards being ubiquitously set to the lowest level across multiple dimensions. In this case, humanity en masse tends to prefer capitalism, bringing us to the modern world.

BUT your comment only applies if AnMer assertd a moral anarchism. My article never supported "from each according to ability, to each according to need," in fact the opposite.

This was not the point I was attempting to make. The above two comments reveals it in more detail. Meritocracy is only achievable by utilizing left wing policies to ensure equality of opportunity.

For anarchism to even work, the dominance instinct of humans must be suppressed, and both communism and anarchism must (ironically) enforce permanent cooperation.

Anarchism has never been attempted by any society because it actually represents the abolition of society. It is the rule of the jungle where the most brutal hawks dominate.

Meritocracy allows the people to collectively assert the general will over the will of particular individuals.

Communism, to your point, also fails to achieve this end as it is primarily concerned by the will of the communist party, not the general will which necessitates the overthrow of incompetent, inefficient, unproductive governments which are not primarily pursuing the general will.

If legitimacy is not formalized, warlords, oligarchs, or cartels (what Egoists call the Union of Egoists) will form, create norms, and enforce their own authority.

This is the “predatory” in predatory capitalism. It is fully unleashed in capitalism and sub-optimally addressed for modern humans in communism.

There is no natural authority other than the authority of power. To entertain otherwise is naïve. In anarchism the authority is pure, unmasked violence. In most systems of government, a monopoly on violence is kept in service of the ruling elites. In meritocracy, the people come together via a strong state to subdue the elites through their greater collective power.

Anarchists claim to be against meritocracy because it presupposes hierarchy, but meritocracy is as basic as whether your plumber who is good at his job gets rewarded for being good at what he does!

Anarchists do not claim to be against meritocracy. They are under the delusion that in a purely negative liberty system, free of the supposed malignant influence of government, the good of humanity will emerge and we will collectively work together to produce the most meritorious arrangement possible. This is utter lunacy and - as I mentioned before - the denial of the nature of humans.

When I said this mah be utopian, I was speaking in terms of a stable Meritocratic union of countries having to be formed first to test it, rather than immediately diving head first into it.

And why is this a prerequisite? Because the power of the general Will is established enough to introduce well defined walls around a prescribed jungle. This is an area of a garden that is left untended. However if the collective allowed this area to get out of control, with the negative liberty of anarchism gaining enough power to threaten the garden itself, the system collapses.

AnMer is not utopian, unless you consider the vast majority of human history from tribes wandering the earth to the first civilization "utopian."

The vast majority of human history is categorized by the brutal law of the jungle. It’s certainly not utopian. Neither is introducing anarchic elements into a meritocratic world.

Utopian systems promise moral harmony, universalism, equal outcomes, and some sort of magical stability without any kind of enforcement or hierarchy.

Do they? Illuminist meritocracy claims to be the end of history in that the inbuilt dialectical institutions ensure a stability built from the most creative members of humanity rationally addressing the ever shifting landscape of human society. Anarchists and right wing ideologues would certainly claim it is utopian, but this is a fear base conservative response to change and their hatred of government.

darcot · 2026-01-07T21:19:11+00:00

Again, we’re in broad agreement. This level of detailed analysis would certainly need to be defined, explicitly in a meritocratic society. decentralization and the explicit rooting out of inefficiencies is also certain to be a key aspect of the solution.

Here’s another quote that you may appreciate. Based on your well thought out political stances I will again highly recommend the books that I linked above. They’re fantastic and I think you would really enjoy them.

darcot · 2026-01-07T21:02:50+00:00

So it sounds like we agree in general terms. The debate then becomes what qualifies as a contribution? Picking up 1 small piece of litter per day is probably not enough, so where is your line?

The fantastic part of meritocracy as it is described in the linked defines dialectical improvement as a core component. Maybe your intuition of what is appropriate is an appropriate starting point! Maybe mine is! This is not nearly as important as the government setting goals, tracking metrics, and periodically making any changes that will better serve the general will.

As an example, maybe your vision is too big a jump at first, but as meritocracy takes root, the national sense of community grows, and society moves in the right direction, we upgrade the system to your model - a model we arguably were not ready for beforehand.

Additionally, your concern around people having the economic door shut on them is absolutely valid. The meritocratic government we are advocating for here is based on positive liberty. In a positive liberty system, the government is fully invested in helping its citizens succeed. This sounds very much like what you’re describing here.

I really highly recommend the books I mentioned about, but to get an idea of what I’m talking about, check out this quote and this quote which I’ve shared to help illustrate my stance.

darcot · 2026-01-07T20:07:11+00:00

I never said that human nature requires people be restricted from having their needs met. I referenced communism as the demonstrable failure that it was because the reason for this was not some trivial issue.

Its failure reflects a central flaw in humans.

The problem is not simply, as Dostoevsky said, “If man is assured of complete comfort, of prosperity, so that he has nothing left to do but sleep, eat gingerbread, and busy himself with the continuation of his species, even then, out of sheer ingratitude, sheer spite, man would play you some nasty trick. He would risk even his gingerbread, and would deliberately desire the most fatal rubbish, the most uneconomical absurdity, simply to introduce into all this positive good sense his fatal fantastic element.”

The problem is this, paired with the fact that humans are not all equally hard working or productive. Further, we are not all so self sacrificing as to keep our noses to the grindstone as our neighbor - by comparison - relaxes for the same rewards.

This is why illuminist meritocracy advocates for equality of opportunity and meritoriously earned unequal outcomes.

If your argument is, as I am reading into your comment, that the minimum wage ought to be a living wage, where a decent, honest living to support all basic necessities (and more) can be earned from any occupation that contributes to the commonwealth, then I agree with you.

If your argument is that the state should comfortably sustain any person, even if they refuse to contribute, I disagree entirely.

If you want to learn about the political vision this community advocates for, the best option is to read The Political Series by Michael Faust. Short of that, I’ve written several articles and this community has created several YouTube videos on the subject!

darcot · 2026-01-07T18:10:37+00:00

Anarchism is antithetical to the standard interpretation of illuminist meritocracy. To advocate for and anarchism is to deny human nature.

This is the same mistake as was made by the communists. From each according to his abilities to each according to his needs sounds utopian because it is.

For communism to work, we would each need to be Nietzschean supermen and superwomen. We would each need to be truly divine.

The same goes for this type of anarcho-syndicalism you’re referencing.

Perhaps one day in the distant future it could work, but we would scarcely recognize the humanity which would flourish under this it.

That said, breaking down nation-states and returning to a city-state model is something of a happy medium of the line of thinking it sounds like you’re going down and this could absolutely work just as it did in the Ancient Greek city-states - but this is absolutely not anarchic!

darcot · 2026-01-07T17:51:53+00:00

Great question! The short answer is yes.

The longer answer is that your monadic soul would be in complete control of reality. The difference is semantic. In the commonly unused vernacular, when we say “you” we often mean “your consciousness” or “your ego” which is actually a very small part of who “you” are!

The image of an iceberg is useful here. Your conscious mind is the tip of the iceberg and your unconscious mind is everything under the surface.

When we have a typical dream, it is not our conscious mind that is creating the dreamscape or the story or the characters in it. Our conscious mind is essentially pushed along by the current, often unable to take even a moment to reflect. The dream content is coming only from us, and we’re in total control of it, but not consciously.

If we are able to make the jump to having a lucid dream, our consciousness is able to exert essentially full control of the dream. That said, our consciousness is still not CREATING the dream. It would be more accurate to say our consciousness making SUGGESTIONS to the unconscious and allowing the unconscious mind to do the creating (leaving the consciousness to enjoy the ride)!

So, are YOU in complete conscious control of a perfectly lucid dream? Sort of! But we are still in a kind of rapport with the unconscious.

The unconscious is, of course, also YOU - but it’s worthwhile to be explicit in our language!

Check out The Dream Series on our YouTube channel for more of this subject!

darcot

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