Bootstrapping Fibralism
In the Fibralist Manifesto, I laid out the core ideas of a new way to think about civilization. The aim is to propose a framework that is suited for a digital age. Unlike written culture, where information is tied to physical media (such as paper), digital information can be produced, recorded, and broadcasted instantaneously at almost no marginal cost. It implies that the main societal issue to focus on becomes the management of rapid changes. Thus, the first principle of fibralism is temporal stability—cultural continuity over time—rather than spatial organization (as the word ‘city,’ from the Greek ‘polis,’ suggests). My preliminary exploration of this concept provides the necessary context for this essay.
In this piece I am exploring some practical aspects of the fibralist proposition. The question is: how can a fibralist culture be bootstrapped out of the current state of affairs? I am going to focus on strategic thinking in this piece, rather than the actual tactical considerations. They will come later and will be specific for each fiber. will remain rather generic here, though I will often borrow examples from my own fiber in order to flesh out theoretical remarks.
From a ripple to the next
The starting point of fibralism is the observation that current institutions are adapted to a written culture, but not a digital one. The “why” is addressed in the manifesto; here, I take it as a given. The logical conclusion is that current institutions will collapse under their own inefficiencies. Digital technologies will act as an acid upon these structures. This must be taken into account: it means that, by default, things are going to break down. There is no need for active revolutionary action. Unlike other ideologies, fibralism does not aspire to rise from the ashes of a “grand soir“ as Communism or Nazism did.
However, this does not mean that we should simply wait. The collapse of the written order will be chaotic, and many competing ideologies will vie for control. The advantage of fibralism is that it does not start from a purely theoretical standpoint. It does not aim to rebuild a “ideal man” who exists only in a philosopher’s dream.
Take the example of the Enlightenment. It was sparked by a reinterpretation of classical Greek and Roman traditions—a “weaponization” of Logos and skepticism (as opposed to revealed truth), civic virtues (as opposed to the divine right of kings), and codified law (as opposed to customary law). Similarly, fibralism aims to draw inspiration from the past rather than from utopia.
The question, then, is not how to destroy, but how to build. This is no simple task: on one hand, the “powers that be” will not view their rivals with a benevolent eye; on the other, competing ideologies—for there will be alternative propositions—will not simply surrender because they are (from my perspective) wrong. Thus, the challenge is to build under adversarial conditions. But first things first: what exactly are we trying to build?
The egg before the chicken
The question of how to begin building is not a ‘chicken or the egg’ dilemma. The order is clear. First come culture and education. The cornerstone of fibralism is to extend civilization across time. The cornerstone of a culture is a shared language.
In my case, as a westerner, that would be done by a return to classical studies. What I mean by that is something like teaching Latin and using this language as a cultural marker. Just like Jews unearthed Hebrew to create the official language of Israel, it is possible to reclaim Latin for the Western Civilization. There are several points to consider:
It can be done in a distributed way. Communities can gather and bootstrap this activity independently from where they are.
Latin is not a synthetic or utopian language like Esperanto. While Latin remains the official language of the Vatican—a small demographic—its influence is vast. As the ancestor of Italian, French, Spanish, and Portuguese, it serves as a linguistic foundation for over one billion people. Those languages share a large part of their vocabulary and grammatical concepts with Latin.
The LLMs are going to have a huge impact on education. It is hard to know exactly how, but most of the technical knowledge will be easier to access through AIs. Thus less time could be used in school to learn those details (they are not details but the added value of having a teacher spending time on technicalities will drop). This is not the case for Latin and classical literature. Latin has to become a living language again which means that it has to be used by humans and not just machines. In this respect it essentially differs from a programming language that is a way to interact with machines, and thus could be learned with machines without loss.
The main objective is to create a sense of community among speakers, and language is one of the most important tools to achieve this. Consider the example of France under the third republic where teachers were explicitly seen as the “Hussards noirs de la république” (black hussars of the republic) following Péguy’s word. The idea was that the state was using the school teachers as evangelists for its own secularist approach to the life in common.
Another important point is to make the link with the past and make the study of antiquity classics a major part of education. Technical skills can be learned later/elsewhere than in a classroom, at home with a computer. Fibralism requires that every fibrizen must be an active participant in their civilizational fiber. Knowing and working the classics is not optional from this point of view.
Finally, if it sounds elitist, it is because it is indeed elitist. That is kind of the point that the plumber, the electrician or the construction guy have studied Seneca in the original. There is no opposition to be seen here. Practical work is part of life as well as intellectual and artistic life. Of course some are better gifted for one or the other, but one shouldn’t be completely cut from any of those fields. This is a major role of education to introduce every fibrizen to those different dimensions. Education is one of those things whose value cannot be fully appreciated without experiencing it.
In a nutshell: the fibralist proposition is a post-liberal and even post enlightenment one. The point is not to be as open as possible or as welcoming as possible. Again it doesn’t mean that one has to be closed to any interactions. It only means that there is a societal hierarchy over which not only the living have a say. There is a tension between individual liberty and the duties that come with a fibrization. There is the recognition that some aspects of the life in common cannot be decided by a single generation. The question of what is the correct speed limit will always be discussed: this is how a culture is living and not dead. One possible mechanism could be to have generation based assemblies. Something like : generation G proposes a law that is going to be discussed by the assembly of generation G+1 and voted by generation G+2. That would ensure that no individual can hope to gain something by tinkering with the law making process because at best this individual will be dead when his proposition is enacted. Of course this is a radical modification of our ways to understand the life in common and would produce a society less flexible than our liberal democracies.
Semi open Society
If the first step to transition towards a fibralist civilization, let’s use the word fibrization, is the one of continuing the cultural fiber, it is not the only one. Education will act as a gravitational anchor. It is used to build communities sharing a worldview. The goal is to appropriate the space and ultimately to rule it. Ruling here means something close to the traditional definition –the monopoly of legitimate violence– but it is going to be different. In this instance, the rule of law is not going to be attached firstly to spatial considerations. What matters in the first place is whether or not you are a fibrizen. I will talk about the subject later, but unlike liberal societies there are explicit tiers, in terms of political rights of people, in a fiber. Another deep reason why it is this way is because it makes more sense in a digital culture where physical mobility is commonplace.
From a bootstrapping perspective the idea is to geographically concentrate in order to physically occupy space. The point is to be ready to take effective control when the outdated institutions cease to work. It implies working without pause to become physically autonomous: food, water, power, civil engineering and alternative communication grid that is not under the control of any other entity. The ultimate goal is to achieve a homogeneous culture, it means that incentives have to be found to attract fibrizen and deter non fibrizen from living in the area.
The shift is going to be gradual and the transition will be both gradual—with state functions increasingly outsourced—and abrupt, as the monopoly on violence cannot be sustained indefinitely. For instance think of the official apps that you have on your smartphone and that require the agreement of third parties like Google or Apple. And when the police/army will cease to function, for whatever reason (no more funding, collapse of legitimacy etc.) the fibrizen must be ready to fill the gap.
An important question is: how much openness can a fibrization afford to be? This is a delicate equilibrium to find and it will be an ongoing work forever. It is impossible, and I mean it technically, to decide on this issue off hand, from a purely theoretic/intellectual perspective. Some points to keep in mind though:
A fibrization is not closed: there must be ways to integrate new people to the fiber. But this should be costly and take time. For instance something like a double nationality is unthinkable from a fibralist point of view. It means that you cannot become part of the fiber if you are not raised by people who themselves have been completely raised in the fiber. It implies that it takes at least three generations to become a full fibrizen. If your grandparents had the project to integrate the fiber, their kids won’t be fully integrated, but their grand kids could be.
Fibrizen and non fibrizen can share the same space, live in the same city, but they don’t share the same place on the political spectrum. They are not subject to the same laws, taxes, obligations and also protections than the ones for fibrizen. It doesn’t mean that the fibrizen are dominating without boundaries, and that non fibrizen are slaves. It means that non fibrizen are, from a political standpoint, seen as guests. One treats guests well because they are humans. Unlike in liberal societies, in which the human and civic rights are defined in a single document, there is a clear distinction in a fibrization between the fibrizen and the non fibrizen. For instance non fibrizen don’t have a say on their level of taxation or the laws that they are subject to. Non fibrizen either accept or they are not welcome. They are not part of any bargain.
Crimes against the fiber are the most important threats to the project and therefore must be the most severely punished. Losing the fibrizenship is a very harsh sentence because it spans across several generations. Technicalities have to be worked out (e.g. if a father loses fibrizenship for whatever reason then what about the kids? Etc.) but it is not the place for such a discussion. Other fundamental sentences are also expressions of exclusion: by increasing order of severity are exile (physical exclusion) and death penalty (life exclusion). The heart of the judicial system is about the openness properties of the fibrization.
Fibralist virtues
Being able to articulate what are the fibralist virtues will be the major tool to convince people to participate. Just like the Romans who re-interpreted and augmented the four Greek civic virtues –Wisdom, Justice, Courage, Temperance– (through Plato and Aristotle) were themselves also re-interpreted through Saint Augustine’s seven cardinal virtues. A Western fiber has serious work to do to reinterpret those classical virtues in a more modern setting. Indeed the digital revolution introduces new moral issues only because modern technologies routinely render possible things that were simply unthinkable before.
This is not an easy task but it is a central one both from a theoretical and from a practical point of view.
To be continued
Those ideas are not even a roadmap. At best they are starting to look like a compass and give an idea of the directions to follow. Fibralism is an ongoing work. I will continue this work. Maybe on a new dedicated Substack.