“I am a time-traveler from the future, here to beg you to stop what you are doing”.

Anarchy and Chaos Bad?

We all remember that meme about Citadel: no governments, no taxation, anarchic places, corruption etc.

The situation described is what a majority of people would call “chaos”. Though, they forget that chaos and order, in fact, cannot exist without each other (was there a progress without what was considered as chaos?). They also like to say that “chaos” is “anarchy”, while in fact, anarchy does not equal chaos.

Citadel, as an opposite to system, is in many ways an “anarchic” place itself, and that is not bad. It is important to understand that anarchy is not a political movement, but a philosophical concept. If people didn't naturally band together in groups with anarchic vibes, we (probably) wouldn't experience things like Internet, 3D printing, Bitcoin, mesh networks etc.

These creations: money and communication, the main means of control, are targeted to ultimately re-balance the state of things.

Money And Communication to Settle Down

Our world is centralized and globalized, but processes in it always fluctuate (nothing is steady, even if statism makes it look that way). Simply, world is not homogenous but fractious. Fractions are everywhere, because underlying groups have their own interests and values. The idea of a separate structure is as natural as evolution. Money and communication will eventually want to evolve to a different form (even a transcendent form).

During medieval ages people lived far away from each other, separated by large areas of forests, mountains or water. Later they became countries, and now we have globalization which basically makes our interests and values unseen (minor detail in the blind eyes of the state). What is bad for the state, but good for the rest, is points of bifurcation that will always organically appear. As globalization exaggerates and manifests itself, we should start to focus on that detail.

The Ugliness of State

The state will simplify everything to keep itself alive. Just print more paper coupons(brrr), or define the world into 4 squares, which we call a political compass. However, this does not define or rule how the real world behaves.

It’s not a secret that work occupies most of people's time. With the growth of industrialization, humanity was set to a 9 to 5 schedule, having some crumbs of free time for rest. Escaping the wage slavery is impossible for the majority, people need to earn a living. But is there a way to have means for living, while being meaningfully engaged with society, and doing your own thing?

38% of people around the world think they work at meaningless jobs (check out “Bullshit Jobs”, a book by David Graeber). Those people are brave to admit their daily work activity has little meaning for them or society. How many can't?

On one side we have poverty and inflation, on the other side we have 1 in 5 persons depressed. Depression creates a significant economic burden on society, 50% of which is attributed to the workplace. Isn't it absurd that people who want to quit their jobs, being unhappy with their lives, end up unhealthy, paying for medical care which is the most inflated category of spending?

They hate it, but being vocal is tamed by homogenous structures, vectored, controlled. Critical thinkers become “enemies”. Political failure, economical failure, authoritarian life management measures happen repetitively, but those who question reality are unpopular in the world where most are asleep.

This system is cyclic and rotten.

The Way Out

Citadels are noetic sets of desired lifestyles, results of an excercise in finding better meanings of value and compensation opportunities than the current ones provided by centralization.

Frankly speaking, “citadeling” has taken roots, with gaming and Internet communities pioneering it. Globalization heralds the unitary as a virtue. The world merges into one big convenient landscape, meanwhile losing uniqueness. But we started from the text-based virtual realities like LambdaMOO, to different life simulators, and now we have moved on to VR (along with that seeing MUD like NuTokyo and MMO like OWW revivals). We already know our physical world can work better, because we got to know Bitcoin. Thinking about different worlds we can create in cyberspace, we may come to the conclusion that it can work even better giving up the homogeneous approach. Moving towards flexible clusterization of being, encouraging peculiarities in culture, improving knowledge, making employment and time-spending meaningful - in our citadels.