History has not ended. We have not reached the pinnacle of our capabilities. Our incredible potential has not been actualized, yet so many great achievements mark the story of humanity’s development. The modern era has exploded with invention and knowledge in engineering, science, technology, and communications. Great achievements in the evolution of our consciousness indicate our vastly superior knowledge and understanding of psychology and sociology. Giants of philosophy since the Renaissance have spurred the intellectual frameworks of humanism, personal rights, and rationalism. In academia and in research and development, the scientific method and the dialectic invoke innovative advances and perpetual refinement.
This will to advance and refine was exemplified by the French and American Revolutions. The Declaration of Independence and the Declaration of the Rights of Man provided values and standards based on Enlightenment ideals, and their respective constitutions provided government forms that aimed at empowering the people by defining the role of government as an arbiter of the general good. The intellectual evolution from the tenets of royalism to those of republicanism and constitutionality was an enormous milestone in the unfolding of human history.
Where is the intellectual fervor and inspiration — the will and idealism — to apply science and the dialectic to governance and social theory? This modern age will be that of the Second Enlightenment. Yet, religion has found its way into our schools and laws, our education system is crumbling, and the government that was sprouted from the revolutionary seeds of the 18th century has succumbed to ultimate corruption and hypocrisy. The inter-generational banking cartels maintain utter hegemony as puppet masters — the entrenched aristocracy behind the curtain. They pushed the economy into collapse — and then the perps collected rewards from the people, who left them to carry on as usual, only now with even more power!
Citizens of the world, remember this: you move either forward or backward. We have moved forward in so many ways, but by refusing to question the premises of the status quo of our systems and leadership, we have inevitably plummeted into a new gilded age — abundant in glittering images and illusions of prosperity through a dumbed down culture of junk media and materialism. The course of action necessary at this point is simple in kind, but epic in scale: we need a kindling of a new, intellectually buzzing Golden Age, a revolution of economics, governance and education — a socio-cultural revolution, a Second Enlightenment.
We must draw inspiration from the founding fathers of the modern era, the torch-bearers of the First Enlightenment. They used their intellect and will to devise a better system, and so should we. Our greatest advantage is the vast knowledge we’ve gained. Let us mine the plated gold of our gilded age, and apply it to our governmental foundations. It’s time to take the nuanced and finely tuned advanced knowledge of psychology, that marketers and advertisers use to manipulate perceptions, and apply it in the public sphere in order to understand our citizens, and to spark inspiration, personal improvement, and self-actualization. It’s time to use the scientific method and the dialectic when determining policy. It’s time to apply our rich understanding of mathematics, philosophy, and psychology to the last frontier of human evolution, the aspects of our civilization yet to transcend mediocrity: government, education, economics, and culture.
To be sure, we will see in the near future a congregation of the brightest Meritocratic minds in the spirit of the Constitutional Convention, who will concisely, accurately, and intelligently lay out the official law books of the first Merito-democratic Republic. Using their consciousness of dialectical advancement, they will retain the finest aspects of our current Constitutional Republican tenets, reject the outdated ones, and add new, 21st-century Meritocratic syntheses never before constitutionally enshrined. The world’s first Meritocratic founding fathers will set forth the best thesis to date, with respect to government and social structure.
The intellectual foundation for the edifice of the world’s first Merito-democratic Republic consists of a new constitution, a new voting process, a new education system, and a new culture. Most people intuit that this world is far from perfect, yet resign themselves to its condition as “just the way it is”. The Meritocracy Party is infusing the world with the idealism and sound philosophy necessary to prove once and for all that resignation to unsatisfactory conditions is unnecessary and unacceptable, and that the solution is simple and within reach.
The founding fathers built constitutional republics from the ashes of monarchy. The communists built their version of society and government. Meritocrats maintain that history is not over, humanity has not tried every type of government system yet, and we are offering what the world needs in order to ascend to the apex. We are not dogmatists, and therefore will not maintain a biased and emotional attachment to ideologies and systems. We don’t swell up with pride upon hearing words like “democracy”, “capitalism”, or “communism”. We are philosophers and freethinkers with Enlightenment values, capable of critiquing and praising all systems. We have the propensity and idealism to imagine optimal possibilities, and to devise the means for their achievment.
Part II of this series will outline more specifically the tenets of the Merito-democratic Republic as a real government form, complete with constitutionality, checks and balances, leadership roles, suffrage, and liberty. We will look at concepts that we will continue to borrow from democracy and republicanism, notions that should be discarded, and fresh, necessary ideas. It’s time that the smartest and most rational led us, and that human capital were cultivated to the maximum extent.
By Phoenix Goodman
