Note: I divested the comparison between dictatorships and democracies into
separate article and expanded this one with more information about Leviathan era.
As 19th century progressed, Revolutions kept flipping countries from Absolutist Monarchy to its new Nation State mode of organization. Because of how gradual this process was, some countries lived like that for more than 200 years and other only around 100. Yet by 20th century most countries on earth became like that.
This era is almost our contemporary one. We only begun moving away from it and most of its ways are still in place. However, being inside, it sometimes hard to look at it from a bird's eye view and compare it with others.
I wrote extensively about this era in my many other articles. Era of Earth, of factories of ever-growing population that eventually caused overpopulation crisis. All of these are about this era. However, if I am to name it something compared to eras before and after, I would like to call it Leviathan Nation States.
Leviathan is the giant figure pictured below, if you click on the picture and look carefully, you will notice that this big man is made up from multitude of smaller men. This is a perfect metaphor of this era. While on one hand people did cease control of the state from governing elites and absolutist kings, what they created was a unique monster in its own right.
Leviathan is maybe an obscure example, but we have many more common examples of personifying nation with a person, for example ubiquitous Uncle Sam for the United States. He is instantly recognizable all over the world, not just in the US. Idea of depicting a nation as a person evolved from a curious concept in Thomas Hobbes' book into an everyday reality that so many instantly recognize.
Nations, that consist of biological people have personalities and distinct look, they interact with other nations. These are all common themes in our contemporary cartoons.
However, if nations are such personalities, then what of people themselves. Are they nothing more than parts of these leviathans or are they something more?
In totalitarian regimes they are nothing more than parts of leviathans. The whole theme of anti-Soviet dissidents is about maintaining individuality in face of the omnipresent system. It was a struggle to be yourself in the face of a system that wants to homogenize everyone and everything.
In liberal democratic societies people like to talk about individuality and self-expression. However economic and social reality is such that in school and in workplace there is a lot of uniformity and compliance. You can be yourself in your free time, maybe even choose a job more to your liking. However, people still complain about work life balance.
How Collectivism is Omnipresent in Everyday Life.
If you think about it, life in 19th and 20th century is full of standardization and homogenization. It's in military, in workplace, in school, in sport, in recitation. One might think that was always like that, but it actually was not. Standardization and homogenization of everyone and everything reached never before seen in history levels in 19th and 20th centuries.
People begin by starting and ending their school class at certain exact time. Then progress to starting and ending their work at certain exact time. Finally, even in retirement they might still stick to regimental routine of one or another type.
Even sports and other recreational activities of this era has homogenizing character about them. There are many team sports where players wear the same uniform and work together to achieve common goal.
One might think that a game as simple as soccer was with us since times immemorable, but it actually it was invented only in 19th century. So are most of the other sports that are so ubiquitous in our lives nowadays. Olympic Games like to trace their origin from Ancient Greece, but games are we know it were created on the cusp of 20th century. Whatever games ancient Greeks had or not had; they were nothing like what we have now.
Sport and physical fitness became an obsession in 20th century. Before people could not care more for such things.
Performing Art is also all about working together: movies or theater require a lot of people to work together to make it work. Even music is performed in bands of several men playing together. Gone are days of medieval troubadours, performing all alone.
Dictatorial regimes often go even further, by making people synchronically act together to form various shapes on giant stadiums.
The pinnacle of this homogenization is of course military. Look at military parades where soldiers march synchronically while maintaining exact the same facial expression and even turn their head towards the same direction.
Sure, one might argue that some of these activities would be impossible to do differently, but for every such activity there are two or three that can be done differently but they are not. Some even go as far as doing their morning jog together with others by running at the same pace wearing the same clothes.
To further exacerbate uniformity, there are uniforms. They are in almost every business and form of occupation. Those that do not have uniforms have dress codes instead. Many countries have them at school as well. Military and police of course have uniforms too. They are visible reminder that people are part of certain organization that does certain things. Sure, it is comfortable for customers and observers, but what about people in these roles? Are they not reduced to just the function they perform?
Reasons for Extreme Uniformity
Reasons for this omnipresent uniformity is of course factory. A traditional non-automated manufacturing factory of 18th-20th century does require a lot of people to work together in a synchronized pace. Everyone has to complete their part of the work in certain time and pass it on to the next worker.
Conveyer, introduced by Henry Ford in early 20th century moves product from one worker to another at a fixed pace. Each worker has a finite amount of time to complete their task before the conveyer will move the item to the next worker. If one of many employees fails to complete their task on time, the whole product would be jeopardized.
Because of reality of factory manufacturing conformity, uniformity and synchronization became essential part of 19-20th century Leviathan society. It was so essential, that they drill it into kids since earliest ages of their lives in pre-school kindergartens.
By extension every other aspect of society was molded into factory image. Education, stores, entertainment, sport, dating, family, everything. It became the most totalitarian of all eras known to men.
That does have parallels with Middle Ages, where collective effort in farming was needed to produce food. Because of that Modern times and Middle Ages do have many similarities. For example, persecution of nonconformists. Medieval Church and dictatorial regimes or 20th century were equally relentless in exterminating nonconformists. Church called them heretics and burned them on stake. Dictators held show trial for those they labelled "enemies of the people"/Reich or another equally disparaging epithet.
Next Era
No King rules forever and no era lasts forever as well. My series of articles clearly prove that. Advancement in computing lead towards creation of industrial robots. Such robots took over human jobs in factories, unlike humans robots could work 24/7 with no food and no pay. They do not make mistakes or human errors either.
With that humans are no longer needed in manufacturing and therefore all this uniformity training is no longer needed either.
Collapse of USSR, eastern bloc, closing of mines in UK in 80s by Thacher government all happened because of this change in factory manufacturing. Workers are no longer needed, so they were laid off. Thacher could just fire them. USSR, that build its entire identity on championing such workers' rights and interests, had to be abolished and split into several nations.
However old ways are slow to go away. Generation that was raised and reached adulthood before automation was possible is still alive with us. They cannot adopt to change or even understand it. Miners still blame Thatcher. People nostalgic for factory worker friendly USSR blame Yeltsin and Gaidar for destroying their life hood.
Economy have changed but society has not adopted to it yet. School still routinely produces future factory workers for factories that no longer need them. Some young people such as I understand that, but society is controlled by older generation who pushes its ways on the youth.
This unfortunate state of events produces all the chaos and mess we have now. Older generations fail to understand there are no more jobs and still push their children to find one. Most will fail to find one at all. Those who would find one would not be better as they would be "managed" by sadistic managers who knows that their labor is not needed and the whole organization only exists to waste time and energy of participants. To make it worse the worthless jobs do not pay sufficiently enough to afford decent living. Inflation runs away and salaries stay flat, making the pay ever so worthless.
This mess requires fresh radical, revolutionary thinking to solve it. Basic income is part of the solution, but more needs to be done to adjust to the new reality. In doing so we need to ignore outdated people and outdated ways of thinking, without such radically new approach society will continue to rot from within.
Epilogue
We currently live in a very beginning of the transitional period that would eventually lead towards new system. Changes in technology and resulting changes to economy and production of goods necessitate such change.
It is somewhat too soon to say what the final outcome will look like, but some trends are already visible.
It will not necessary be worse than what we had in 20th century. There is a change it will be better.
It is not the same problem as ochlocracy of the 20th century but something new entirely. It would be a mistake to treat our current events as the same thing, even if some of it looks like it.
What can be certain however that change is inevitable. If reality changes then structures has to change to adequately correspond to new reality.
I wrote about particulars about this new and coming era in my many other articles, it would be too long to repeat this here. Go and check them out.
Let's hope that brights FDR like reformers, for example Andrew Yang, would be able to implement necessary changes in face of conservative opposition.
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