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00:00:20.060All human institutions, customs, traditions, and ways of being
00:00:24.240originate to serve the needs of specific peoples.
00:00:27.120The collective experience, struggles, and beliefs of a tribe create a pattern of being or a code that organically rises to meet their specific challenges and perpetuate their way of life.
00:00:39.200These institutions and systems are territorialized, meaning that they are deeply embedded in the specific cultural context of the tribe and serve its unique needs.
00:00:49.860The seafaring civilization centers cultural values of exploration and trade.
00:00:55.060The agricultural civilization centers consistent rhythms of sowing and reaping.
00:01:00.380The conquering society centers martial prowess and honor.
00:01:04.140Every system emerges with the concrete goals and well-being of a particular people as it's in.
00:01:11.460Territorialization is critical because it ties the goals and operations of a system
00:01:16.520to the needs of the people who are embodying a way of life.
00:01:20.020The idea of metrics which evaluate the efficiency of any given system are foreign to a territorialized institution.
00:01:29.000Systems don't exist for their own sake, but are only valuable insofar as they serve the ends of the tribe.
00:01:35.380Those ends are determined by the specific way the people live their lives and the telus to which their culture is oriented.
00:01:42.540There's a hard limit to how and for what purpose a system can operate.
00:01:46.980The limit is the day-to-day continuance of a particular flesh-and-blood people.
00:01:53.480Systems which are properly territorialized will be governed by the particular folkways of the people they serve.
00:01:59.940Trade may be governed by the market, but marriage is governed by the power of the tribal patriarchs,
00:02:05.440worship is governed by the priesthood, warfare is governed by the aristocrats,
00:02:09.600and the power of the state is wielded by the king.
00:02:12.140Each of these domains has its own sacred place in the order,
00:02:15.740But importantly, they also draw their power in very different ways.
00:02:20.660An outsider might be confused by the purpose of each system,
00:02:24.240finding its origins perplexing or its operations inefficient.
00:02:28.180But no one needs to explain the purpose of these systems to the tribes that gave birth to them.
00:02:33.420This is the way things are, a natural outgrowth from the traditions of the people and the challenges they face.
00:02:39.920The territorialized code arose from the people and serves the people.
00:02:43.740No one else needs to understand or validate it.
00:02:47.080In traditional societies, the entire system is designed to maintain the tribe as it is,
00:03:28.020One of the easily observable patterns of history is that successful organisms seek to expand,
00:03:33.580and this is just as true of the biological humans who carry the code as it is for the code itself.
00:03:39.320As the tribe becomes successful, it needs more territory and resources to expand its population.
00:03:45.380But the need for expansion is not just material, it's also spiritual.
00:03:49.760To expand the tribe must acquire territory and resources by conquest, whether it be military, diplomatic, cultural, or economic.
00:03:57.800Glory, status, and wealth call to the ambitious members who recognize the opportunity for greatness as the civilization breaks out of homeostasis.
00:04:06.480The code may provide barriers to this expansion, attempting to limit the production of wealth, the acquisition of territory, and the influx of outsiders that will inevitably change the tribe it was created to maintain.
00:04:18.800But there's no denying that the great civilizations remembered by history are the ones that slip the bonds of the code and are overcome by the desire for greatness.
00:04:27.500Is mere existence enough, or is the point of life to do more than maintain that which you were born to?
00:04:33.400Like the uncontacted tribes of the Amazon, a people might exist in the same way for thousands of years if they maintain stasis, but is that truly the desirable end?
00:04:43.920Either way, that's not a question civilizations ever really ask themselves or one which they make a definitive decision on.
00:04:51.420If greatness calls, men follow, some to their doom and some to their glory, but the call is one of nature and not one that is chosen through deliberations.
00:05:00.560As the society expands, it finds that the code is no longer sufficient.
00:05:04.660Those systems arose from the specific circumstances, challenges, and beliefs of the tribe.
00:05:10.260Conquest means that the tribe now has to face very different challenges,
00:05:13.940but it also must learn to incorporate the population living in the territory it now controls.
00:05:19.260Some conquerors exterminate the conquered, some enslave them, some make them subjects,
00:05:23.360and a few even integrate them into the whole.
00:05:25.420With the exception of extermination, these methods require that the systems the tribe initially developed for itself
00:05:31.660must be adapted to govern or assimilate the new additions to the population.
00:05:36.360Homeostasis has been broken, and a very different process is underway.
00:05:39.920To scale up their civilizational systems, the conquering tribe must alter their nature
00:05:44.580so they're not exclusively rooted in the way of being of the original population.
00:05:49.020The process of deterritorialization begins.
00:05:51.960territorialized systems come with natural limitations that check their power different
00:05:57.820powers and functions in society exist within the context of the social institutions or classes
00:06:03.560that gave birth to them and they create specific spheres of social influence for those institutions
00:06:09.660or classes the social spheres that govern the function of the systems operate in very different
00:06:15.520ways the priest aristocrat merchant and farmer all have very different ways of life attitudes
00:06:21.740and approaches to social organization. The spheres of influence they operate reflect this
00:06:27.220natural diversity. This means that the spheres of power create natural checks and balances for each
00:06:33.180other, not only because they are jealously guarding their own power, but because the nature
00:06:38.100of the organization itself is particular to each sphere. Priests would be terrible at running the
00:06:44.020army because they don't understand how those systems operate. Warriors would be bad at running
00:06:48.840the church for the same reason. The particularity of these territorialized systems does not scale
00:06:55.600when it's time to adapt them to entirely foreign peoples. Suddenly, the army, church, market,
00:07:01.120and state that grew slowly and organically from a particular people all must simultaneously be
00:07:06.880thrust upon an alien people for whom it was not designed. The lack of interchangeability in the
00:07:12.760territorialized system is now a liability because the time and effort necessary to slowly expand
00:07:18.680the organic nature of the social spheres just doesn't exist. If the social systems of the
00:07:24.180conquerors are to scale, they must break these systems out of the social constraints that once
00:07:29.800bound them. They must be deterritorialized. In the modern liberal order, the most
00:07:35.360universalizable medium for civilizational expansion has proven to be economic exchange.
00:07:41.760As I explained in my previous book, The Total State, How Liberal Democracies Become Tyrannies,
00:07:46.260what is often called classical liberalism attempted to remove existential questions of
00:07:51.740identity territorialized in the good of specific people and instead created a minimum universal
00:07:57.960morality or code which could enable economic exchange. By maximizing the amount of cooperation
00:08:04.980possible between civilizations, liberalism reaped vast economic benefits, but those benefits came
00:08:11.300at a cost. The scale required by this new system could only be achieved by creating mass bureaucratic
00:08:17.660organizations designed to create homogenous operations across all participants. By ensuring
00:08:23.880machine-like precision from human organizations, the liberal order was able to maximize the
00:08:29.140efficiency of the system, but in the process it also had to transform the individual human and
00:08:34.420the code they once lived under. Modernity is defined by the process of deterritorializing
00:08:40.260functions of human civilizations that once existed in sacred or traditional spaces and
00:08:45.540re-territorializing them in the marketplace. The elevation of a ruler was once a function
00:08:51.300of a hereditary or aristocratic selection. In a mass democracy, it becomes a contest over who
00:08:57.360can raise and spend the most money while selling the candidate like a product. Finding a young
00:09:02.540person, a spouse, was traditionally a duty performed by families in churches. Now, most
00:09:07.240romantic partnerships are selected as a product on a paid dating app. Music, literature, and art
00:09:13.160were previously created by those receiving support from sacred spheres like the church or aristocratic
00:09:19.040patrons. Now it's made at scale to be sold on Amazon or streamed on Netflix. Modern churches
00:09:25.200often function more like corporations where the pastor provides a TED talk that can be streamed
00:09:30.740on your smartphone than a place of sacred worship. The phenomenon can be seen most clearly in the way
00:09:36.560that the function of the family has been broken down and re-territorialized piece by piece
00:09:41.980into the marketplace. The mother is one of, if not the, key role on which a civilization is built,
00:09:48.420but her job is not easy to quantify in an economic sense. Traditionally, mothers cared
00:09:53.780for children and maintained the household, but there were so much more involved. Mothers were
00:09:58.560responsible for being the primary educators of their children. The constant presence of mothers
00:10:03.480in their neighborhoods during the day allowed them to know everyone and enforce a community
00:10:08.360standard of behavior. This de facto neighborhood watch allowed for a high-trust society where
00:10:13.340children could roam without fear because an adult was always close, watching out for threats and
00:10:18.580correcting bad behavior. The homemaker didn't just stay at home watching television, she organized
00:10:24.000social functions, community meetings, church functions, and cultural events. A mother volunteered
00:10:29.140at the local thrift store that funds the Mutual Aid Society, ran the Vacation Bible School,
00:10:34.640and helped to make sure her neighbor, who was overwhelmed by several children,
00:10:39.360had an extra hand when things got tough. None of these duties show up directly in GDP numbers or
00:10:44.900economic spreadsheets, but they serve an invaluable function in society. Most importantly,
00:10:49.760those tasks are performed with a human and caring touch that can't be replaced by market forces.
00:10:55.780Moving those critical roles into the market creates a larger labor pool, lowers wages,
00:11:00.220increases economic activity, and financializes every aspect so it can be taxed.
00:11:04.720The mother now works a job so she can pay several other people to do the work of raising her
00:11:09.780children. Previously, it was one woman laboring outside the market providing education, supervision,
00:11:15.940counseling, nutrition, and security. Now an entire team of employees provides the same service at a
00:11:22.000much lower quality and at a much higher price, but every interaction is now financialized,
00:11:27.520quantifiable, and taxable. This deterritorialization of motherhood doesn't just boost gross domestic
00:11:34.180product. It helps the overcode to scale by further separating the individual from a collective way
00:11:39.760of life. A mother carries with her a whole set of expectations surrounding the rearing of her
00:11:45.020children. She doesn't just want her son to be a functional widget in a broader society, she cares
00:11:50.160about his specific well-being. Her daughter's not just an employee or a student, but a precious
00:11:55.320vessel that carries the identity of her people into the future. A mother will insist on a moral
00:12:00.660education based on specific religious beliefs, will expect a particular quality of food to be
00:12:06.040provided, and will be discerning about who her child spends time with. The particularity associated
00:12:11.380with the direct motherly care creates friction for a system seeking to maximize cooperation
00:12:16.980because it insists that too much of the social process remain heavily territorialized.
00:12:22.880The attempt to create a scalable facsimile of the family is the natural process of expanding the overcode,
00:12:29.720and it's also a feature of most totalitarian governments.
00:12:32.760This doesn't need to occur via some form of market capitalism.
00:12:36.020Communist countries prize their ability to turn children against their parents, as did some fascist regimes.
00:12:41.880This is not solely the consequence of any economic or government system.
00:12:45.760It's the inevitable result of scaling overcodes, and while the project can provide basics like supervision, education, and nutrition, it does so at great cost.
00:12:56.000Humans are not the same. Some need more structure in education, some need less.
00:13:00.780Some need constant challenges, while others require constant affirmation.
00:13:04.680The more homogenous the process becomes, the further it can scale, but the worse the quality becomes for each individual.
00:13:10.480The family constructed by the overcoat also lacks very important qualities which were previously provided by the mother.
00:13:17.360Obviously, the mother provides real love and compassion that simply cannot be delivered by any employee,
00:13:23.180leaving the child lacking a real, primal sense of belonging and well-being.
00:13:27.720But the shortcomings manifest well beyond this dynamic.
00:13:30.940Food, clothing, and shelter are basic needs.
00:13:33.360But the mother was providing a whole host of intangible social goods that don't get translated into the market during de-territorialization.
00:13:41.860Yes, the mother now hires someone to watch and make food for their child.
00:13:46.240But who watches the streets and learns every car so they know if a stranger is stopping to pick up one of the neighborhood kids?
00:13:52.440Who plans vacation Bible school or organizes the bake sale to raise money for the family that had their house burned down?
00:13:58.580Who has the time to volunteer at the Kiwanis Club or arrange the community mixer where young people meet potential spouses?
00:14:05.160The answer is no one does these things.
00:14:07.500They fall away, and everyone in the community becomes poor in a way that they can't measure.
00:14:12.680Every interaction also becomes less human.
00:14:15.420The mother had only the welfare of her own children to manage directly.
00:14:19.240The system must care for a wide variety of children at scale.
00:14:22.820Instead of the care being tailored to the needs of the individual child,
00:14:26.200the children must be shaped into something that the system can handle.
00:14:29.820Employees may be perfectly nice to the child, but they can only provide supervision.
00:14:34.320Hugging the child as a reward for good behavior would create legal liability.
00:14:38.580The teacher might be allowed to provide discipline when the student behaves badly,
00:14:42.240but they must follow strict guidelines.
00:14:44.600They can never reduce or increase the severity of the punishment
00:14:47.480due to their personal knowledge of the individual child.
00:14:50.080Every decision is designed to serve and protect the system, not the individual humans who live under its operation.
00:14:56.280The overcode stops serving people, and people begin to serve the overcode.
00:15:00.820As we discussed previously, territorialization acts as a limiting factor that ties the system, the code, to the specific people it's supposed to serve.
00:15:09.820The logic of the system might encourage it to sacrifice the well-being of the people for its own sake,
00:15:14.820but the grounding of the code in a particular culture prevents that logic from being taken
00:15:19.280to its conclusion. The homeostasis provided by territorialization protects the tribe,
00:15:24.680but it also limits the scaling of the code. Once those limitations have been removed by
00:15:29.320deterritorialization so that the system can scale, there's nothing stopping the overcoat
00:15:34.140from sacrificing the people it once served in order to achieve its own goals.
00:15:39.260The philosopher Nick Land is largely responsible for popularizing the term
00:15:43.600accelerationism in relation to this process. Traditional societies once acted as a limiting
00:15:49.060factor against deterritorialization, but the destruction of these human limitations has
00:15:54.580created a closed, self-exciting feedback loop. As an illustration, consider the function of an
00:15:59.940air conditioner. The process of heating a home is simple, and once it's begun, the air conditioner
00:16:04.720wants to continue that process indefinitely. If the system is allowed to continue to do what it
00:16:10.160was designed to do, it will increase the temperature in the home from a frosty 30 degrees to a
00:16:14.800comfortable 60 degrees to a sweltering 90 degrees before killing the family inside at 140 degrees.
00:16:21.960The key factor that allows the air conditioner to work for the sake of the humans inside the home
00:16:26.420is the thermostat. The thermostat interrupts the heating process by providing negative feedback
00:16:31.800and switching off the system once the home reaches the optimum temperature for humans.
00:16:36.240The system itself does not care about the humans and would cook them alive while doing its job without any negative feedback.
00:16:43.680It's the thermostat that territorializes the process, allowing it to operate freely until it reaches the limits of what's good for the family inside.
00:16:52.380Without that negative feedback, the process will kill the people it was designed to serve.
00:16:57.160The code was originally designed to serve a particular people, but it was deterritorialized so that it could expand along with the civilization.
00:17:04.820First, the code was altered in small ways,
00:17:06.880but as it became the overcode to govern a wide variety of peoples,
00:17:12.640By moving the sacred into the realm of the market,
00:17:15.160the overcode was able to create a vast network of people it could govern,
00:17:18.720but in the process it had to homogenize those peoples,
00:17:22.340stripping them of individuality and making them less human.
00:17:25.680The negative feedback that once limited the overcode to a specific people
00:17:29.360has been eliminated, and now the system operates only in its own interests.
00:17:33.180This closed loop only experiences positive feedback, creating a runaway cycle that accelerates with each turn.
00:17:40.540Many people think of intelligence as a purely human trait, something produced by a brain serving the needs and desires of a person who possesses it.
00:17:49.960For land, intelligence exists in an organism, system, or process that continuously corrects for feedback to produce an outcome that's different from that which would otherwise naturally occur.
00:18:00.840When the word cybernetics is used, it conjures images of science fiction robots, but that's not its original meaning.
00:18:07.220Cybernetics is the science of studying control and communication in both animals and machines.
00:18:12.200It's the investigation of feedback loops and how they allow both machines and biological organisms to self-regulate, correct for errors, and reach goals.
00:18:20.960As a man in a boat travels down the river, he is constantly making small adjustments with the rudder to keep the boat from crashing into the shore.
00:18:27.840The sailor is responding to feedback and is constantly learning how to better pilot his vessel.
00:18:32.960This is a cybernetic process in action, and for land, any entity, be it man, machine, or system engaged in this process, is gaining intelligence.
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00:19:02.620This conception of intelligence allows us to understand the behavior of non-human systems
00:19:07.360that seem to take on lives of their own. We all have seen this phenomenon before as we watch a
00:19:12.820bureaucratic organization sacrifice the well-being of the people who work for it and the people it
00:19:18.180was supposed to serve to increase its own size and power. The problem is one of incentives.
00:19:22.560Everyone who is being served by the public school system knows that an increase in managers and administrators doesn't benefit children in the classroom in the same way an increase in teachers would.
00:19:32.280Even most of the people working inside the school system know this.
00:19:35.880But since the 1950s, the number of principals and administrative staff in public schools has grown by 10 times the number of new teachers.
00:19:42.700The structure of the bureaucratic organization itself creates a feedback loop which trains the entity to grow its base of managers, even if every individual involved believes that the increase in teachers would be more beneficial.
00:19:56.060The organization has taken on a life and a logic all its own.
00:19:59.860The organization no longer serves the people.
00:20:01.860The people are simply fodder for the goals of the organization itself.
00:20:05.660This dynamic served as the central theme of the total state,
00:20:08.840where I explained why our government works in a radically different way
00:20:12.600than is described in the Constitution or in popular education.
00:20:16.460That phenomenon is not restricted to governments.
00:20:18.880It's simply an example of a process that's altering every aspect of our society.
00:20:24.600Everywhere we look, self-interested systems are tearing apart
00:20:28.060and rearranging human social structures to create an increasingly inhuman society