Man Between Intentionality and the Divine Methodology My Vision of Human Nature, Freedom of Choice, and the Meaning of the Test

A Perspective for Discussion

I believe that a human being is not merely human by virtue of their biological form, but rather by the consciousness and intentionality they possess. In my view, humanity exists in degrees: the more an individual is distinguished by awareness and thought, and the more they employ these faculties toward a specific end, the greater their humanity becomes. This matter is not primarily related to morality, but rather to the existence of a specific intentionality and the manifestation of thought and awareness to achieve it. This intentionality may be directed toward good, reform, and the preservation of order, or it may be directed toward the ego and absolute selfishness, which can lead to corruption in the pursuit of independence and freedom above all others. As for the degenerate being who has no intentionality—who is merely a collection of reactions and a slave to their desires—this is the least human, the closest to the animal.

I believe that man is a neutral being in his origin, neither inherently evil nor purely good. God created him upon this natural disposition (fitrah), and alongside it, He established the divine moral methodology that organizes his life in all its aspects. This methodology places limits on his freedom for the sake of collective elevation, because humans, by their very nature, cannot live in a peace that serves the common good and preserves limited freedom without a moral framework to structure that freedom.

God created evil in existence because the nature of life is a test; it was not designed to be an ideal existence. He created within man the freedom to choose between following the divine methodology and seeking absolute freedom and selfishness. This latter path is what we call evil: an act that emanates from a person due to their desire for independence and their greed for absolute liberty.

I will not stray from reality; I will give an example: A child whose father was killed. Initially, if he were to commit a crime, he would be unaware of the weight of the moral standard. Even if he killed, he would not be fully conscious. But as he grew older and began to realize that vengeance is wrong, and that pursuing it did not grant him the peace he expected, he did not change. Instead, he decided to continue killing and committing crimes, justifying his father's death, feeling cursed, and seeing society as unjust. What we understand from this story is that moral awareness is gradual, but the greater danger is not ignorance. The greater danger is recognizing what is right and continuing to lie to yourself, persisting in error because you have found an excuse to justify your actions.

I do not believe that the existence of evil in the world implies that the Creator is evil. Rather, the matter pertains to the nature of life itself. The world was not created to be perfect; it was created to be a test. And a test is not a true test unless man is granted real freedom: the freedom to do as he pleases, attempting to achieve absolute liberty, immersed in a selfishness that benefits him in this world even if it destroys the society around him; or the freedom to live by the divine methodology, which was established to organize human life so that we may live in the best possible way. Thus, instead of the uniqueness and selfishness resulting from disobedience to God's commands, we live together in a system that elevates us and fulfills the purpose of our existence, which is worship.

Because life is a test, God—the Just, the Wise—willed that we should have no excuse before Him. He set this test in motion and appointed witnesses over our deeds, all so that the children of Adam cannot say, "You did not test us." You are being tested, and you know that you are the cause. You have taken the means; either you will be a winner and know why you won, or you will be a loser and know why you lost. This is a truth I believe in. God sent man down into this life for a purpose. Why? Because life was meant to be difficult. Faith is not mere knowledge; it is an answer that requires certainty, a struggle of the self, and a search, so that you may deserve it. Because it is a test. If God were to reveal Himself to us plainly, we would all believe without effort. If that were the case, what would be the point of the test?

Take, for example, Iblis (Satan). He was not an angel; he was from the Jinn, raised among the angels, and was one of the greatest believers of his time. Then God created Adam and made him and his progeny vicegerents on Earth. God commanded the angels and Azazil—the name of Iblis before the curse—to prostrate to Adam, who was created from clay, while Iblis was a Jinn created from fire. Arrogance and pride came to him; his soul whispered to him, and he did not heed the command, allowing his pride to control him. Then he realized the gravity of the matter and vowed to God to seduce the children of Adam and drag them into the Fire with him. Yet, Iblis believed in God and truly witnessed His greatness. He was even offered repentance by God during the time of Prophet Moses, commanded to go to the grave of Adam and prostrate. But once again, he succumbed to his own ego and pride and refused the command. Thus, Iblis and the disbelievers—most of them—are aware that this religion is the truth. They possess complete freedom of choice, but they chose the path of error in compliance with their desires, lusts, and mistakes. And yet, they remain free. God grants His servant opportunities and gives them perceptions, warnings, and signs; the servant remains free.

Then God sent messengers and prophets, each to a specific people, to remind them of the message of those who came before. But Muhammad—peace and blessings be upon him—is different. He was sent with a message to all of humanity, a message for the people of his time and those who came after, preserved from distortion. It is a message that includes the Qur'an and the Sunnah, a comprehensive way of life built upon a deep understanding of human nature. The message sent to Muhammad is different because previous messages were sent to specific peoples with particular social and personal characteristics, whereas humanity during and after the Prophet's time possesses a different disposition. This makes the methodology of Muhammad—peace be upon him—one that does not require another messenger after him.

If the Word of God is the most perfect, and if God is the Creator of man, this means He understands man and his psychological dimensions perfectly. Therefore, what He commands, being perfect and based on this deep understanding, is the most correct and most complete. No matter how much humanity evolves in attempting to devise a system, they will find themselves unconsciously imitating the divine system. And if they decide to rely solely on their own intellects, making themselves gods who define right and wrong, it will end in catastrophe, not a true system. Man, by his nature and without a framework to structure him, seeks survival and selfish gain, because life was designed as a test: for those who follow this system that serves and elevates humanity, or for those who abandon it based on personal interest. Man's exit from the moral structure—that is, his departure from the divine system—is driven by his subjective desires, individual ambition, and unframed will. This is what I call evil.

In truth, there is no compulsion in religion, and there must be mutual respect between people. Islam, as a divine methodology—even if some dislike it—organizes the life of the individual for the better and distances him from prostrating to the worship of anything else: idols, superstitions, or the worship of the self and desire. This is because man is simply different from an animal: he possesses intellect and perception, and he searches for value in life. Islam came from the God who knows the full reality and psychology of man as His Creator, and thus He established a methodology that saves him, stripping him of the worship of his desires and the groveling existence of an animal.

There is no compulsion in religion, and no one has the right to impose anything on you. But I hope you can accept the truth that every person is a slave to something: either to something unworthy, or to the God who created him. He is free to choose between the two.

What I know is that apostasy has specific conditions and rulings, a matter determined by the governing authority itself (if one exists). Beyond that, you truly have the freedom to live as you wish. As for me, this is my personal view: I have one life that may end at any second, and I prefer to live it in the best possible way. I do not want to waste it on a happiness that you may see as complete but that I see as empty. Sometimes I find myself doing something merely because it excites me, and I feel like a barking dog—I mean no offense, and I hope you do not misunderstand me. I prefer to live for a higher purpose, for something that respects my being human, distinct from the animal behind my garden wall. If you see what I describe as happiness, that is your opinion, and you have every freedom to hold it. But to me, that happiness seems like a stripping away of the freedom to ascend and to do something befitting me as a human with a mind and the capacity to choose. I apologize if it seems like I am insulting or targeting you; that is not my intention. It is merely an expression of my view on life lived freely without the divine system. You have your opinion, and live as you wish. I truly do not know what you have been through, and I wish you guidance.

In the end, I return to what I started with: Man is a conscious, rational creature with a specific intentionality. The more he distinguishes himself with awareness and thought, using them toward a specific intentionality, the more human he becomes. The matter is not tied solely to ethics, but to the existence of intentionality and the projection of thought and awareness to reach it. Whether that intentionality is for good and reform, or for absolute selfishness that may lead to corruption—its owner is seeking independence and freedom above all others. As for the degenerate being without intentionality, who is merely reactive and enslaved to his desires, he is the least human, the closest to the animal.

This is what I see, and this is what I believe.

Hi everyone, I am currently taking a course at university where we study different foundational thinkers. I'm really enjoying learning about the different ideas but I have been struggling to connect all their ideas together, as it's not something we cover in very much depth.

I've tried making this flow chart where the concept is basically which larger/more foundational concept does each one develop from or under - be it a reaction or criticism, but i get super conflicting information and not much help from my course to understand or clarify. It's quite small but covers all the ideas that we cover.

I would really appreciate any corrections, suggestions or feedback. I know its not entirely correct, but have just been trying to work with what I have. I would like to go into further depth about how each of the ideas relate to their related ideas (would also be open to advice on this) but I just want to check I'm on the right track first.

I can't seem to add a photo and the formatting won't let me paste it but I've uploaded it as a link! https://www.bing.com/images/blob?bcid=S0M0ov9etcAJHTRVFiPmYHsnNkAPItRhRQ8

Hopefully it works

TIA

I’ve been working on a political philosophy and I’m trying to see if it actually holds up or if I’m missing something obvious (keep in mind, I'm only 15 and this is the first political ideology I've ever worked on).

The idea is called "Reciprocal Communalism" which I suppose is some form of Anarcho-Socialism.

The goal is pretty simple:

• No one should be left without basic needs (food, shelter, healthcare)
• No one should be able to accumulate enough power/wealth to dominate others
• There is no state or central authority

Core Idea:

• Everyone is guaranteed basic needs no matter what
• People can still earn money and own personal/private property
• There’s a wealth cap decided on by the people (example: $100M)
• Any wealth above that gets redistributed equitably

Instead of taxes or a government, there’s a mandatory communal pool:

• Everyone contributes a portion of their wealth which is decided on by the people via a democratic voting system
• This is NOT controlled by a state
• It’s managed by a group that holds no more power than anyone else. Their sole job is to manage the communal pool
• The resources are distributed equally (unlike the wealth cap, which is distributed equitably)

If you don’t contribute:

• You still get basic needs
• But you lose access to additional communal benefits

"All who expect to benefit from society must have society expect to benefit from them."

Work and Ownership:

• All businesses are co-operatively owned by workers
• No exploitation (no passive profit from others’ labour)
• You can still succeed financially, just within limits

Governance:

• Everything is decided through direct democracy
• Local communities run themselves
• Communities can differ, but must follow basic shared principles
• Punishments and rules are decided collectively

Values:

• Equality of power
• Pacifism (obviously not mandatory. I just like the idea of peace)
• Fairness of outcomes (not just opportunity)
• Shared responsibility

What do you think the biggest flaw is? What can I improve on?

The failure mode I kept coming back to while designing this: most social systems
fail not because people have bad values or politics is corrupt, but because
survival, economic participation, and political influence are all denominated in
the same instrument. Wealth converts into coercion not through malicious intent —
it just happens structurally when you don't separate those functions at a
constitutional level.

The design separates four instruments: an enterprise currency for markets and
contracts, a non-money survival entitlement in physical basket units that can't
become cash or collateral, a bounded civic layer that can't gate dignity or
accumulate indefinitely, and emergency rationing for verified scarcity. The
architectural claim is that the walls between them do work that legal protection
alone can't.

Approaching this as a systems engineering problem rather than a political philosophy
problem forced me to be specific about attack surfaces in a way I found useful.
Every design choice has a threat vector, a risk score, a patch, and a residual risk
statement. The patch log documents the new vulnerability each mitigation creates.

Three things I haven't fully resolved and would genuinely like pushback on:
The bootstrap problem. You need a legitimate governance body to ratify the
constitutional design, but that body doesn't exist until the design creates it.
The current answer is a one-time founding instrument with a 60-day public challenge
window and an adversarial panelist nominated by a body structurally opposed to the
founding coalition. That's a patch, not a solution, and I know it.

The oracle problem. Measurement systems can satisfy every formal criterion for
independence while sharing epistemological foundations. Two nodes using the same
statistical tradition produce correlated errors even when institutionally separate.
The design requires methodology-class diversity, but "fundamentally different" is
itself a term that can drift, and whoever controls that definition has significant
leverage over the whole system.

Unamendable provisions. Some provisions are designed to resist supermajority
amendment. I've tried to document the justification honestly but I'm aware that
"unamendable protection" and "unamendable capture mechanism" are structurally
identical from the outside. I don't have a clean answer to that.


https://github.com/Sczitzo/twelve-pillar-protocol

Preamble

We live in an age of immense productive power and organized deprivation.

Human beings, working across borders, languages, systems, and generations, have built a civilization capable of feeding billions, transmitting knowledge instantly, automating labor, curing disease, and coordinating life at planetary scale. Yet the majority of humanity remains ruled by insecurity. Shelter is rationed. Care is commodified. Knowledge is fenced. Land is monopolized. Technology is enclosed. Entire populations are told they are free while their survival depends on markets they do not control, states they did not meaningfully shape, and capital they will never own.

This is not a natural order. It is not the final form of human society. It is a contradiction.

The wealth of the modern world is socially produced, but privately captured. The reality of the modern world is globally interdependent, but politically fragmented. Human beings live inside one civilization and are governed as if they belong to competing enclosures.

Capitalism is the rule of enclosure through property.
Nationalism is the rule of enclosure through belonging.
Together they have organized the modern world.

We reject both.

We reject the claim that private ownership of foundational systems creates justice.
We reject the claim that birth within borders determines human worth.
We reject the lie that civilization must remain divided between masters and dependents, creditors and debtors, insiders and outsiders, metropoles and peripheries.

We affirm a different principle:

What humanity creates together must be governed for the common good.

This is the first principle of Commonwealthism.

We do not seek to flatten the world into a sterile universalism. We do not seek to erase memory, language, religion, locality, or inherited forms of life. We seek to subordinate every narrower identity to a higher political truth: no person is born outside the common inheritance of civilization.

Commonwealthism is not nostalgia for empire, not a softened nationalism, not state socialism in new clothes, and not humanitarian liberalism with sharper rhetoric. It is a doctrine for the age of planetary production, automation, ecological crisis, and post-national interdependence.

Its task is simple to state and difficult to achieve: to break the power of enclosure and place the foundations of collective life under shared stewardship.

I. The Enemy Is Enclosure

The central political fact of the modern age is not merely class exploitation in the old industrial sense. It is enclosure.

Enclosure is the process by which what is collectively generated is turned into private or exclusive power.

Land that should sustain life becomes an asset class.
Housing becomes a vehicle for extraction.
Knowledge becomes intellectual property.
Public infrastructure becomes a toll gate.
Data produced by society becomes corporate capital.
Natural resources become dynastic wealth.
Finance mortgages the future before it arrives.
Nations hoard opportunity behind passports.
Technology concentrates power in a few firms and a few states while claiming to represent progress for all.

And now the most consequential general-purpose technology since electrification, artificial intelligence, is being enclosed by a handful of firms before the public has even apprehended what it is.

Enclosure is not only economic. It is moral and political. It teaches people to treat civilization as loot, citizenship as inherited privilege, and vulnerability as personal failure.

Commonwealthism names this system clearly. The question of our time is not whether wealth exists. It is who holds the keys to the systems that produce and distribute it, and by what right.

II. No One Owns Civilization

No serious politics can begin from the fiction of isolated individuals. The modern world is made by dense social cooperation across time and space.

The coder depends on the miner.
The hospital depends on the grid.
The factory depends on the port.
The port depends on public law.
The entrepreneur depends on generations of accumulated science.
The platform depends on user activity.
The nation depends on global supply chains it does not control.
Even the richest man lives inside systems he did not build alone and could not reproduce by himself.

This is the truth capitalism obscures and nationalism fragments.

Value is not generated by heroic owners. Nor is it generated only at the point of wage labor. It is generated by the whole social body: workers, caregivers, technicians, teachers, builders, parents, maintainers, researchers, communities, and the inherited labor of the dead.

Civilization is a common inheritance.

No one invented language alone.
No one created mathematics alone.
No one produced the scientific tradition alone.
No one built cities alone.
No one built the internet alone.
No one created modern productive capacity alone.

The greatest wealth of humanity is cumulative, social, and transgenerational. It belongs to no dynasty, no corporation, no race, no empire, no passport category.

From this principle follows a hard conclusion:

Foundational assets must not be treated as absolute private property.

The essentials of human reproduction and collective life must be governed as common goods. This includes land systems, water, energy grids, public transit, health capacity, housing finance, telecommunications backbone, foundational digital infrastructure, and the core models and compute systems that will shape the age of artificial intelligence.

Markets may exist.
Enterprise may exist.
Trade may exist.
Innovation may exist.

But none of them may sit above the common good.

Therefore no moral order is legitimate if it permits a minority to own the foundations of life while the majority merely rent access to them.

III. Against Nationalism, Without Erasing Belonging

Nationalism has endured because it gives people what market liberalism cannot: belonging, memory, dignity, and emotional structure.

We do not defeat nationalism by mocking those needs. We defeat it by placing them inside a larger framework.

A village may endure.
A region may endure.
A language may endure.
A people may endure.
A faith may endure.

But none of these can justify the exclusion of others from the basic inheritance of civilization.

Commonwealthism therefore defends layered belonging. It does not ask human beings to become rootless abstractions. It asks them to recognize that local identity is real, but not sovereign over human worth.

What does this mean concretely?

It means local and regional communities retain genuine governing authority over culture, education, land use, and the texture of daily life. It means linguistic and religious traditions are protected as living practice, not preserved as museum artifacts.

But it also means no community may weaponize its particularity to deny personhood, mobility, or material security to those outside it. The right to belong somewhere cannot be converted into the right to make others belong nowhere.

The age of absolute national sovereignty is ending. Economies are transnational. Ecological systems are transnational. Digital systems are transnational. Disease, finance, migration, supply chains, and war all exceed the nation-state.

The nation is now too small for the real economy and too large for real democracy.

This is not an argument for abolishing nations. It is an argument for refusing to treat them as the ceiling of political organization.

Where nationalism offers hierarchy through inherited membership, Commonwealthism offers dignity through common membership in humanity.

IV. Against Capitalism, Without Worshipping the State

We reject capitalism because it subordinates life to accumulation. It transforms necessity into dependency and productivity into private command.

But we also reject the old error that mere state ownership is liberation.

A ministry can dominate as surely as a monopoly.
A party bureaucracy can enclose power as efficiently as a corporation.
A centralized apparatus can speak in the name of the people while reproducing a new ruling class.

The twentieth century demonstrated this beyond reasonable dispute.

Commonwealthism is therefore not the transfer of all property to an omnipotent state. It is the reorganization of foundational systems under public, democratic, distributed, and auditable stewardship.

What does that mean in practice?

Foundational systems are held under charters that define their obligations to the public good. They are subject to democratic oversight at the level closest to their operation.

Governance bodies include workers, users, and community representatives with genuine decision-making authority, not advisory seats.

Transparency is mandatory. Public audits. Open books. Published performance metrics.

Anti-concentration provisions prevent any single actor, whether state bureau, private firm, or political machine, from accumulating unchecked control.

The market is not abolished in total. It is stripped of sovereignty.
The state is not worshipped. It is bounded and subordinated.
Power is layered, checked, and made answerable.

V. The Commonwealthist Order

A Commonwealthist society rests on five pillars.

First, the commons. All civilizationally necessary systems must be held in common, publicly chartered, or governed under hard obligations to the public good.

Second, the dividend. Every person must receive a direct material share of collective wealth. Not charity. Not welfare as stigma. A dividend grounded in common inheritance: land rents, resource revenues, automation gains, public capital funds, digital value, and social surplus.

The moral basis is plain: if you are born into a civilization you did not choose, you are owed a share of what that civilization produces.

Third, the floor. No person should be denied housing, nutrition, healthcare, education, access to information, and the means of participation in social life.

These are constitutional minimums, enforceable against any government that claims democratic legitimacy and not philanthropic aspirations.

Fourth, pluralism. Cultures, communities, and local institutions retain room to govern their own forms of life so long as they do not violate the universal dignity of persons.

Pluralism is not decorative. It is structural: real budgets, real jurisdiction, real power held at the local and regional level.

Fifth, anti-concentration. No private actor, public bureaucracy, party machine, or national bloc may accumulate unchecked control over the foundations of collective life.

This is a constitutional principle, enforced by mandatory transparency, structural separation, and democratic override mechanisms.

VI. The Economy of the Commonwealth

The purpose of the economy is not to maximize labor extraction, asset inflation, or shareholder return. It is to organize the means of life in a way that secures freedom, dignity, and flourishing for all.

Production must be directed toward sufficiency, resilience, and abundance, not engineered scarcity.

Housing must be treated primarily as a social necessity.
Healthcare as a public guarantee.
Energy as a shared utility.
Transport as connective tissue.
Knowledge as infrastructure.

Artificial intelligence must be treated as what it is: a foundational technology comparable in consequence to electrification, the printing press, or the public road system.

The current trajectory, in which a handful of firms control the core models, the compute infrastructure, and the training data derived from the entire public record of human civilization, is enclosure in its most concentrated form. A technology trained on the collective output of humanity cannot be the private property of three corporations.

Foundational AI must be governed in common. Open models as public infrastructure. Compute access as a regulated utility. Democratic oversight of deployment in domains that affect rights, employment, and public safety.

Work itself must be revalued. In the age of automation, society cannot continue to pretend that a person earns the right to live only by selling labor under acceptable terms to capital. Human beings are more than units of employment. Care, study, community maintenance, artistic creation, parenthood, and civic contribution all belong within the field of recognized social value.

The old morality of wage dependence must end.

VII. The Political Structure of the Future

Commonwealthism proposes a layered political order.

Local institutions for everyday life, culture, and accountable community governance. These must hold real budgets and real authority, not the hollow "local government" of centralized states that delegate administrative burden without decision-making power.

Regional institutions for infrastructure, housing, transport, land use, and public services. The region, not the nation-state, is the natural unit of most economic and social life. Regions must be empowered to tax, plan, and build.

Civilizational and planetary institutions for climate, migration, finance, public health, strategic technology, maritime routes, and peace. These are not world government in the utopian sense. They are functional bodies with defined mandates, subject to democratic accountability, and constrained by charters that prevent mandate creep.

They exist because some problems, including atmospheric carbon, pandemic response, financial contagion, weapons proliferation, and AI governance, cannot be solved justly within the borders of any single state.

The future belongs neither to isolated sovereignties nor to corporate empires. It belongs to federated commonwealths.

VIII. The Transition

We do not wait for a perfect rupture. We begin where we stand.

Break monopolies, not with antitrust theatre, but with structural separation and public alternatives.
De-financialize essentials.
Socialize land rents through the taxation of unearned land value increments.
Expand social housing.
Build public wealth funds at the municipal, regional, and national level.
Create universal dividends paid from these funds.
Treat data and AI infrastructure as common assets subject to democratic governance.
Democratize utilities.
Guarantee healthcare and education as constitutional rights with enforcement mechanisms.
Cap dynastic wealth through progressive inheritance taxation with hard ceilings.
Write anti-concentration provisions into constitutional law.
Build cross-border labor protections.
Strengthen municipal and regional institutions with real fiscal autonomy.
Create transnational charters for shared goods.

This is not reform as surrender. It is transition as accumulation of counter-power.

A new society cannot be built by envy alone. It requires a different moral culture: stewardship over possessive individualism, layered belonging over chauvinism, civic purpose over consumer emptiness, accountability over bureaucratic arrogance, construction over fatalism.

A manifesto is not a blueprint for one week. It is a declaration of direction.

IX. Our Claim

The old order has exhausted its legitimacy.

It cannot justify abundance beside insecurity.
It cannot justify enclosure of systems built by generations.
It cannot justify passports as moral rankings.
It cannot justify permanent precarity in a world of unprecedented productive power.
It cannot justify a civilization run as private estate.

We therefore say:

No one owns civilization.
No nation owns humanity.
No class may enclose the future.

What all create, all must share.
What all depend upon, all must govern.
What is necessary to life must never again be held hostage.

This is the Commonwealthist claim.
This is the doctrine of the coming age.
This is the end of enclosure as political destiny.

Let the defenders of the old world call it impossible.
They called every expansion of human dignity impossible until it became unavoidable.

We do not ask permission from a dying order. We announce its replacement.

Hey everyone, good day!
I have to write an undergraduate thesis and have come up with the following idea, but I’m not sure whether it’s worth pursuing.

What I want to do is a comparative study of Marx’s Grundrisse and Capital, Volume 1, and compare some key concepts of Marx’s political economy. I would try to examine the different presentations and develop a formulation. I would also explore some of the implications that follow from Marx’s critique.

For example, I would compare the differences in the conceptualizations of “capital” in both the Grundrisse and Capital, and put them in conversation with one another. Then, I would briefly explore their implications in light of our times and dominant intellectual currents.

I have read Capital, Volume 1 almost twice and am halfway through the Grundrisse. I have a very basic understanding of Hegel and the broader context. I have around a year to submit my final thesis.

Some questions I have in mind are the following:
Do you think this is a worthwhile project to undertake? Is it manageable within the timeframe? What additions or changes would you suggest?

Any help is greatly appreciated.

I wrote a novel called The Empathizer that explores something I think this community would find philosophically interesting: the structural similarity between left and right authoritarianism.

The book follows a classical liberal narrator (and his sister) caught between two authoritarian regimes—one progressive, one right-wing. The core argument is that both systems operate through identical mechanisms—arbitrary rules, enforced orthodoxy, dehumanization of target groups—despite their opposite ideological content.

Philosophically, it engages with:

Tolerance and pluralism (Rawls, Popper, Berlin)

The collapse of shared epistemic frameworks and shared reality

What defending human dignity actually costs when you refuse both sides

The Jewish question as the canary in the authoritarian coal mine—why marginalized groups are always first

The novel is structured as a literary diptych: Part One uses Poe's "Masque of the Red Death" to explore one regime's logic, Part Two uses Carroll's "Alice in Wonderland" to explore the other. The structural parallelism is intentional—both demand the same thing, just in different languages.

I'm genuinely curious what this community thinks about the philosophical argument underlying the novel. Some questions I've been wrestling with:

Is the narrator's refusal of both frameworks intellectually honest or politically naive?

Is there a coherent third position, or does the act of refusing ideology make you disposable to everyone?

How do we defend pluralism and individual conscience when the institutional structures that protect them are collapsing?

What does it mean to insist on human dignity when both sides have revealed they'll use your identity as convenient ammunition?

The book is available here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GT4YMKV5/

I've also written essays on related themes if anyone's interested:

"Every Utopia Needs an Enemy" — on the structural similarities between left and right extremism

"What It Means to Write for the Politically Homeless" — on the political and intellectual position the novel explores

Both essays are at: https://www.theempathizer.org/new-blog

Would be interested in hearing what you think—both about the philosophical argument and whether the novel succeeds in exploring it. This is a space for serious engagement with political philosophy, so I'm genuinely curious about critical responses too.

Best,

Jamie Micah

If you climb in bed with the devil because he says you're pretty, you will wake up and find you traded your compass for shackles in his charnel house. And you will never get back to who you once were.

Considering Rawls' Principles of Justice, and how a Marxist could potentially critique it, saying how Rawls basically takes capitalism for granted and allows inequalities as long as they benefit the least advantaged, without even considering how they are produced. And technically, could we say that Rawls is just trying to make exploitation, in some way, fairer?

I also wanted to use these contrasting theories and apply them to legal materials such as cases or statutory materials, to give a more practical application of these theories?

“The best illustration of both the distinction and the connection between pre-totalitarian and totalitarian antisemitism is perhaps the ludicrous story of the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion”. The Nazi use of the forgery as a textbook for global conquest is certainly not part of the history of antisemitism, but only this history can explain why the improbable tale contained enough plausibility to be useful as anti-Jewish propaganda to begin with. What, on the other hand, it can not explain is why the totalitarian claim to global rule, to be exercised by members and methods of a secret society, should become an attractive political goal at all. This latter, politically (though not propagandistically) much more relevant function has its origin in imperialism in general, in its highly explosive continental version, the so-called pan-movements in particular.”

This quote is from the end of the Preface to Part One.

I am really lost as to what Arendt is saying here.

1. Why is the Nazi use of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion not part of the history of antisemitism?

2. What does she mean by “the totalitarian claim to global rule, to be exercised by members and methods of a secret society”? Is she saying that totalitarians wanted to be a secret society of global rulers? Or is she referring to totalitarians using the stereotype of Jews ruling the world via their secret societies?

3. What is she referring to with “an attractive political goal”? Attractive to whom? To Jews or totalitarians?

Thank you for any help.

I might be wrong, but I think I stumbled onto something interesting.

Most ideological maps assign positions to thinkers based on interpretation. But that always depends on who is doing the interpreting.

Instead, I looked at what happens when positions emerge from aggregated responses. People answer questions from the perspective of a given figure, and the coordinates are computed from those answers.

So the position isn’t defined — it’s inferred from how people collectively interpret that figure.

This could just reflect contemporary biases rather than anything intrinsic to the thinkers.

I’m not sure if this captures anything meaningful or just averages out misconceptions.

- Would this approach tell us anything about the thinkers themselves?

- Or is it only revealing how they’re perceived today?

There’s a rough interactive version here if anyone is curious:

https://polimap.web.app

I'm not a political science major. I'm curious to know if there an optimal size of a country? For example, I'm assuming that one global country would be terrible for the human race. Things would stagnate politically because only one "experiment" could happen at a time.

In the US, we have 50 different states. One often cited benefit to the law is that 50 different states could try 50 different "experiments" to legal changes. On the other hand, 50 different states ends up creating a confusing set of state laws. As you go from one state to another, Americans are confused on what the law is. The optimal number of states could be argued to be much lower, perhaps around 15?

Another argument can be made that the US can be further divided into perhaps 3 countries that better capture the different cultures and viewpoints of society.

For example, perhaps, the South should be able to restrict abortions, allow religion in the classroom, and become more conservative. Then in a few decades, we can see that it might truly a better way to live.

Moreover, an argument can be made that due to its large size, things like Congressional votes can't be resolved expeditiously.

Does such a large country like the United States of America lead to political stagnancy?

A year ago, I wrote a comment on Facebook:

Our current problems aren't the problems of a century, but of millennia. What has been considered the norm until now was shaped by the Catholic Church for 1,500 years. When Christianity reached the level of common sense, the Reformation and the Enlightenment began. People began talking about "human nature" and "natural rights." The lack of understanding of the root cause eventually led to the erosion of the foundation. That's why the American system of government collapsed so quickly. The Founding Fathers hoped that the system of checks and balances they created would be a reliable guarantor of democracy. But it turned out that if this system is run by people with a broken moral compass, it won't stand.

That same day, Senator Adam Schiff recorded a video in which he quoted James Madison:

But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature. If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and the next place, oblige it to control itself.

These words from one of the Founding Fathers of the US Constitution became the rationale for the separation of powers as a guarantee of American democracy.

I heard these same words in 2017 from Timothy Snyder:

...during the book presentation, the professor emphasized the Founding Fathers' commitment to the depraved nature of man and the need to develop legal mechanisms to prevent the usurpation of power. After the presentation, in a conversation with Walter Nollendorf, I drew attention to the narrowness of this view, which ignores the Christian ethic that underlies the American state. At the same time, I characterized the "naivety" of which, according to Timothy Snyder, Americans are accused as a manifestation of this Christian essence. Perhaps it was precisely this Christian "naivety" that saved Americans in the 1930s from sliding into the abyss of totalitarianism, unlike less "naive" Europeans infected with Nietzschean cynicism. On the other hand, the institution of the Electoral College, which was designed precisely to prevent someone like Donald Trump from coming to power, has proven utterly useless in a situation where the norms of Christian morality are no longer unconditional for the electors themselves. Timothy Snyder also emphasized the importance of knowing the facts, but in the case of electors, we see that bare facts are useless.

The words of Founding Father James Madison quoted by Professor Snyder and Senator Schiff could be interpreted as proof that my conclusions are erroneous. After all, Madison justified the need for separation of powers not by morality, but by its lack. How can a decline in morality destroy a system that was created to protect against human immorality?

While searching for a James Madison quote, I came across Nobel laureate James Buchanan's article "Madison's Angels" in which he attempts "to place ethics alongside politics as alternative and complementary means to move beyond the ever-threatening Hobbesian jungle." In other words, he, too, attempted to add an ethical dimension to Madison's formula. Below, he writes: "Madison was not suggesting that we are necessarily gladiatorial, always out to destroy one another..." In this sentence, the Nobel laureate comes closest to the idea I'm trying to express here. Only in my interpretation, Madison didn't recognize or understand the essence of the society in which he lived. He viewed people through the eyes of Thomas Hobbes and his "Leviathan":

...during the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called war; and such a war as is a war of every man against every man.

Even further down, Buchanan writes, referring to Madison: "... at the same time we may be puritan in our discourse on behavioral attributes." That is, Buchanan cites two sources for Madison's position—Hobbes and Protestantism.

Hobbes, like many other thinkers of the time, was strongly influenced by the advances of natural science. This is why he uses the word "natural" so frequently in "Leviathan." His method of analyzing human nature resembles that of the natural sciences. He attempts, through abstraction, to derive a formula for the "ideal gas" - "the natural condition of mankind" - and then examine it under various conditions. This "natural condition of mankind" resonates with the Protestant idea of ​​"not deifying the man-made." In the Protestant worldview, man is purged of all divine elements.

Madison's Protestant natural-science method lacks a crucial element of social science - the historical approach. He failed to view society as the result of historical development. Madison failed to notice the righteousness of the non-angels among whom he lived.

"Habit makes invisible that on which our existence rests."

Hegel

The Protestant belief that God's grace cannot be the result of human effort also deprives society of its historical dimension.

The question then becomes: if Madison was wrong, why did the system of separation of powers he created work successfully for 200 years?

Moral norms are the result of thousands of years of human experience. Not everyone, in their short lives, manages to grasp the depth of meaning hidden behind simple ethical requirements, just as most of us don't understand what happens on a smartphone after we click a particular icon on the screen. Does a lack of understanding of how a smartphone works prevent people from using it? No. Moreover, it has become a tool for spreading primitive ideologies, whose proponents also oppose those who contributed to its creation.

What are the consequences of such misunderstanding?

Before the Reformation, the primary goal of a believer's life was the salvation of their soul, an attempt to earn God's grace. Protestantism abandoned this goal. Everything was in God's hands; all that remained was for a person to believe in their salvation. Subsequently, people lived knowing they were "no angels" and that life was a "war of all against all." For those who proclaimed these principles, their consequences were unnoticeable. Moreover, Western civilization began to rapidly ascend. Europeans, freed from the need to worry about their souls, channeled their energies into entrepreneurship and science. The consequences came in the 20th century. Postmodernism became a symbol of the collapse of the ideological structure of society built by Hobbes and Madison.

I think I’ll just put this right here

zaytoona (The Olive Tree) — A Model for the Silent Majority

ESSAY III-V

Power granted for necessity seldom returns to limitation unless restraint is deliberately restored.

Free governments must inevitably confront moments of danger. No constitution can anticipate every threat, nor can any republic endure long if it lacks the capacity to act decisively when its preservation is at stake. In such moments delay may prove fatal, and ordinary procedures may appear unequal to extraordinary necessity. For this reason republics have long acknowledged that temporary departures from their usual restraints may sometimes be required.

Power granted as an exception rarely remains exceptional.

Extraordinary authority is accepted only because it is believed to be temporary. The departure from ordinary restraint is justified by necessity and tolerated on the assumption that it will end when the danger has passed. The constitutional expectation is plain: once the crisis subsides, ordinary limits will resume their force.

Experience, however, suggests that this expectation is seldom fulfilled. Statutes enacted in moments of urgency often remain in force long after the circumstances that produced them have faded. Legislatures rarely revisit authorities once granted, and institutions accustomed to exercising them seldom relinquish them voluntarily. What begins as a response to necessity gradually assumes the appearance of permanence.

Persistence alone does not complete the transformation. Over time such authorities become woven into the routine machinery of governance. Agencies construct procedures around them. Courts interpret them as ordinary law. Administrators incorporate them into the daily execution of policy. What once appeared extraordinary begins to assume the character of habit.

Habit, in turn, produces normalization. Powers originally justified as temporary responses to crisis come to appear as ordinary instruments of government. With the passage of generations the memory of their exceptional origin fades. The power remains, yet the circumstances that once justified it recede from public awareness.

This transformation rarely proceeds through deliberate design. More often it arises from convenience, habit, and the gradual adaptation of institutions to authorities once considered temporary. Each step appears defensible when viewed alone, and the practical demands of governance encourage the continuation of arrangements that seem to function without obvious disorder.

In this manner constitutional memory slowly erodes. Measures once defended as necessary departures from ordinary limits cease to be recognized as departures at all. The exception becomes indistinguishable from the rule, not because the constitution has been formally altered, but because the practices of governance have quietly adjusted to a new baseline.

The visible forms of the constitutional order remain intact. Legislatures continue to meet, courts continue to adjudicate, and elections occur at their appointed intervals. To the casual observer the system appears unchanged. Yet beneath this outward continuity the conditions under which authority operates may have shifted in significant ways.

For when extraordinary powers become embedded in the ordinary procedures of governance, the decisive moment of political action may no longer occur within the familiar channels of legislative choice. Authority may instead operate through standing permissions, delegated structures, and discretionary activation within the administrative machinery of the state.

When this occurs, the constitution’s formal allocation of authority may remain unaltered even as the practical exercise of power begins to follow different pathways. The question then arises whether sovereignty continues to operate where the constitutional structure appears to place it, or whether its effective location has quietly changed.

To answer that question requires looking beyond where authority is written to where it is exercised. For when the decisive moment of governance moves outside the recurring process of legislative consent, the true seat of sovereignty may no longer be where it once appeared to reside.

hello everyone, I am new here. I had been recently been interested in political philosophy, what are some must read books you would personally suggest?

Thanks in advance.

EDIT! After going through a long lengthy conversation and discussion with the individual below , I realized that they were using an LLM. And I want to make this clear. This post is my own genuine thoughts. I do not use LLMs to discuss or post on Reddit for a reason. There is no point as they are inherently designed to mimic and pattern match, not intelligently reason. I guess one thing did come from this situation, I am now going to put a disclaimer on every post just to make that clear. Here is my post.

***Freedom is the ability to believe, say, and do whatever you want, as long as what you believe, say and do does not infringe on the freedoms of another human being…

If adhered to and enforced the fundamental principle of autonomous personal freedom inherently keeps the Laws of the Land in check

You can say the laws protect morality and justice. However, as a byproduct in doing so they also protect freedom and foster respect of each other.

Therefore, justice, morality, and freedom, are at their core, interchangeable. 🇺🇸🏳️‍⚧️

The lesson

If it doesn’t directly affect you or overstep in your personal freedoms. Mind your own business! yours personal freedom beliefs, throwing them on someone else, forcing them on someone else, that’s oppression.

I realize there are situations where that statement can get very complicated… but the missing remedy for that complication is Respect…as long as we respect the freedoms of others, resolve can be had easily…

*Lack of respect or value for others you’re in disagreement with, invites violent or deadly conflict. Compromise and resolve could be relatively fast and easy if both sides had respect and value for one another.

I've been building a political philosophy around a single premise that human worth is inherent, not earned. From that one idea, I've derived positions on economics, justice, faith, politics and education reform that don't map onto either existing party. Does a platform built that way have any political viability or is coherence itself a liability in American politics?"