Homo Sapiens is the only species which has ever written a Declaration of Independence.
Obviously.
It's nowhere near the first foray we have made into unification around common ideals - we've been codifying laws to order our civil interactions throughout societies for millennia. Ancient cultures relied on rigid social hierarchies and strict enforcement of legal standards as the basis upon which to build a stable empire. These weren't necessarily moral and certainly weren't equitable - the strength of a method of social organization relies on individuals' beliefs in its fundamental ideals and their essential identities as members of a group rather than philosophical defensibility.
Noah Yuval Harari posits in "Sapiens: A Brief History of Humanity" that the size of pre-agricultural human societies was limited in part by the number of individuals among whom mutual trusting relationships could be maintained. Our ability to form larger collectives as we have progressed has been the result of our ability to unite around common beliefs - whether true or false - that he calls "intersubjective beliefs." Knowing that our neighbor holds these intersubjective beliefs in common with us - whether it is a belief in the Spirits of Nature, the value of currency, or in the Natural Rights of Man - serves as a proxy and a catalyst for natural social trust with much wider swathes of humanity. Consequently, the ideas that spread the widest, that gain the most traction amongst individuals, are those most useful and successful for organizing a modern society.
In the late 18th century, the founders of the United States established their method of governance at a time when nascent Enlightenment philosophy was finding its place in a culture built on ancient Judeo-Christian social and legal values. For the last 243 years, Americans have been wrestling at turns publicly and privately over whether this philosophical syncretism can be held in balance, or if it is a system doomed to failure.
Welcome to the Federalist Papers Project. This is my attempt to ask (and hopefully answer) questions about the essential values of American society by progressively reading through and analyzing the Federalist Papers - a collection of writings by Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison in the years following 1789 defending the merits of the new Constitution unifying the several states under one Federal system. This is a public journey of study and discovery with the aim of re-centering my own beliefs and values in an environment safely partitioned from the daily political chaos of another election campaign news cycle.
Feel free to follow my blog or to check in periodically. I hope you will find my work edifying.
Happy Independence Day
-- Stephen
Obviously.
It's nowhere near the first foray we have made into unification around common ideals - we've been codifying laws to order our civil interactions throughout societies for millennia. Ancient cultures relied on rigid social hierarchies and strict enforcement of legal standards as the basis upon which to build a stable empire. These weren't necessarily moral and certainly weren't equitable - the strength of a method of social organization relies on individuals' beliefs in its fundamental ideals and their essential identities as members of a group rather than philosophical defensibility.
Noah Yuval Harari posits in "Sapiens: A Brief History of Humanity" that the size of pre-agricultural human societies was limited in part by the number of individuals among whom mutual trusting relationships could be maintained. Our ability to form larger collectives as we have progressed has been the result of our ability to unite around common beliefs - whether true or false - that he calls "intersubjective beliefs." Knowing that our neighbor holds these intersubjective beliefs in common with us - whether it is a belief in the Spirits of Nature, the value of currency, or in the Natural Rights of Man - serves as a proxy and a catalyst for natural social trust with much wider swathes of humanity. Consequently, the ideas that spread the widest, that gain the most traction amongst individuals, are those most useful and successful for organizing a modern society.
In the late 18th century, the founders of the United States established their method of governance at a time when nascent Enlightenment philosophy was finding its place in a culture built on ancient Judeo-Christian social and legal values. For the last 243 years, Americans have been wrestling at turns publicly and privately over whether this philosophical syncretism can be held in balance, or if it is a system doomed to failure.
Welcome to the Federalist Papers Project. This is my attempt to ask (and hopefully answer) questions about the essential values of American society by progressively reading through and analyzing the Federalist Papers - a collection of writings by Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison in the years following 1789 defending the merits of the new Constitution unifying the several states under one Federal system. This is a public journey of study and discovery with the aim of re-centering my own beliefs and values in an environment safely partitioned from the daily political chaos of another election campaign news cycle.
Feel free to follow my blog or to check in periodically. I hope you will find my work edifying.
Happy Independence Day
-- Stephen
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