Praxis World Congress Speech | Transcript11/6/2024PROLOGUE: THE GATHERINGWelcome to the first annual Praxis World Congress.This is the first ever Praxis World Congress – a gathering that will be remembered in history.Look around this room. Remember these faces. You are witnessing the first gathering of what will one day require rally grounds to contain, with millions watching worldwide. And that's just the beginning. Soon – sooner than many of you imagine – we will hold this congress in our own city, built by our own hands.This is the moment when our global citizenry transforms into something greater: a people forging their destiny together. Every great nation has such moments.How many of you ever imagined you would found a new nation? Perhaps you thought such moments belonged to history books, that the age of nation-building was over. And yet – here you are. Because this is exactly what our moment demands.Many of you in this room are working on building technology that will allow us to do things we never thought possible: such as reflecting light from space, or making it rain on command. Those are exciting. But technology that makes it rain on your friend's farm, that grows the food that feeds your families–that technology has even greater purpose. That’s what it means to build a nation. That's when your project, your company, your work transforms into something even more profound.There's no going back from this realization. No returning to smaller dreams. Once you've glimpsed this possibility, nothing less will ever be enough.Look again at the people in this room. You see friends. Is it possible to have a country of your friends? My friends…that is what a country is supposed to be.We’re here to show you that it is now being done. There are moments in history that mark the beginning of a new age, whether or not the participants are aware of it in the moment. Moments that split time into 'before' and 'after.' This is such an occasion. Let me explain how._________________________________I. COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGYDETERMINES HUMAN ORGANIZATIONIn the last few decades, something unprecedented has emerged in human history: a new form of consciousness born from the internet age. Each person in this room lives this transformation. Beyond our closest bonds, we now find our deepest sense of purpose in communities we've chosen rather than inherited, in identities we've built rather than received. This isn't merely social evolution – it is the complete transformation of political possibility. What follows could not be more inevitable.The pattern we witness is as old as civilization itself. When humans transform how they communicate, they transform how they govern. This isn't theory – it is iron law. For politics, at its core, is nothing more than what people believe. And humans have always understood their world through stories. When the technology of storytelling transforms, when the very architecture of belief shifts, political orders either evolve or vanish. This is the driving force of civilization itself.Let me show you this pattern carved across history. Each revolution in human communication created not just new ways to share information, but new forms of consciousness, community, and power.First came spoken language: through precise stories about how the world worked, leaders united scattered bands into the first tribes, the first chiefdoms. Then oral traditions emerged: stories that outlived their tellers, myths passed through generations. Through these enduring narratives, tribes united into the first kingdoms, bound by shared histories that legitimized rule. Then writing: thoughts preserved perfectly in stone and clay, freed from memory's decay. Through these permanent records, kingdoms grew into the first true empires, as standardized laws and records could now govern vast territories.Then came the printing press, and everything changed again. Suddenly, stories and ideas could reach millions simultaneously. Through mass-produced books and newspapers, strangers could imagine themselves as one people, one nation. The nation-state was born. Then telecommunications accelerated this power beyond imagination, with each advance making the spread of stories faster and cheaper, and reaching even larger territories. Radio and television orchestrated the consciousness of entire continents, conducting the beliefs of millions like a vast symphony, giving birth to the first true superpowers.And now? Now comes the final transformation. The wheel of history completes its turn. For the first time, the power of mass communication has reached the individual. Each person can now speak to humanity itself, instantly, freely, in any medium they choose. The monopoly on consciousness is broken forever. And with this, everything must change.When a new technology transforms how ideas spread, power flows like water finding its path down a mountain. Testing each channel, discovering every possible route, until new rivers of belief carve permanent paths through human consciousness. This isn't planned or directed - it's as inevitable as gravity itself. These new channels become the very infrastructure of human organization.The printing press proves this pattern. When the old monopolies of belief held by the crowns were broken, new ideas emerged like gold sifted from sand. Humanism, individual rights, the entire enlightenment project – these weren't merely ideas that happened to spread. They were ideas perfectly suited to a world where truth could finally reach the masses directly. And from these ideas, only one political form could emerge: the nation state.What followed was inevitable. For centuries, monarchy after monarchy fell, toppled by masses who had discovered a new identity through the printed word. People who had known only their village, their immediate community, suddenly saw themselves as part of something vastly larger. Through newspapers and books, they learned who they were, what united them, what they should value and fight for. When human identity transformed, political reality had no choice but to follow.Just as those new forms of power emerged then, they emerge now. Just as those ideas reshaped the world then, new ideas reshape it now. But this time, the scale is global, and the speed is measured not in centuries or decades, but in moments. The printing press birthed the nation state. Our digital revolution now births its successor. And you are witnessing its first breath._______________________II. FROM TRIBES TO EMPIRESLook at what's happening online. Humans, finding themselves in this vast new territory, have instinctively returned to their most ancient form of organization: the tribe. Internet tribes of internet natives, gathering around shared values, shared beliefs, and shared visions of the future.This isn't metaphor - it's the fundamental pattern of human organization reasserting itself through new means. Just as ancient tribes gathered around shared myths and sacred rituals, digital tribes gather around shared narratives and practices. The medium is new, but the human need for belonging, for meaning, for common purpose - this burns as bright as ever.And while this unfolds, look at what's collapsing. Western nations have already ceded their claim to people's deepest loyalties, reducing themselves to mere economic zones, their national identities dissolving like morning mist. Ask yourselves: How many of you feel your true identity is bound to the country on your passport? How many feel genuine pride in your current citizenship? How many of you look at your political leaders and see your own values reflected back in radiant form? In most of the West, you already know the answer. The sacred bond between leaders and the led has been shattered.This isn't just about disagreement with policies or dissatisfaction with services. It's about a fundamental break in the story that gives political authority its meaning. When you look at your political leaders and see nothing of yourself, nothing of your values, nothing of your aspirations - when the very language they use to describe reality feels alien to your experience, and the stories they tell about the world feel like lies - that's when you know a political form has lost its legitimacy. Life itself stops making sense. This is the real crisis of our age - not economic, not technological, but existential.History shows us what happens next. When empires decay, when physical exit becomes impossible, people find ways to exit in place. The Christian Church of the 5th century lights our path. As Rome crumbled, the Church created something revolutionary: a complete alternative society. It offered not just spiritual guidance, but community, purpose, and most crucially – a new way to live according to true values without leaving home. One of our Praxians called this the first network state. He saw deeper than he knew.For the Church discovered something profound: you don't need armies or territory to reshape the world - you need only to provide better answers to the fundamental questions of human existence. Who am I? What matters? What gives life meaning? When you can answer these questions, territory becomes irrelevant. The Church showed us that true power lies not in controlling land, but in shaping the stories by which humans live.But history moves faster now. You feel it, don't you? We're living through a compression of historical time unlike anything humanity has witnessed. The gap between possible and actual collapses daily. Ideas become reality at the speed of thought. What took Rome generations, we will achieve in years. This acceleration isn't just about speed - it's about possibility. The convergence of digital technology, artificial intelligence, and human aspiration has created a moment laden with destiny.Look again at the digital landscape. Tribes scatter across the virtual expanse, awaiting the power that will unite them. They yearn not for another app or platform, but for something greater - an empire of meaning in an age of chaos. They wait for a new kind of empire, built not on the conquest of territory, but on the magnetism of shared vision and values. An empire that offers not just community, but transcendence.Let me tell you something few yet understand: the age of network states is merely a prologue. What comes next is the age of network empires. And Praxis will be the first. Remember this moment. Remember where you were when you first heard these words: we will be the Rome of the digital age._______________________III. THE INTELLIGENCE AGEThe gathering of digital tribes is but the first act in a drama as old as man. For as we build the structures to unite the scattered tribes of the internet, artificial intelligence shatters the very foundation upon which all human society has been built: the necessity of labor.When steam and coal revolutionized production in the 18th century, everything changed. Millions abandoned their farms for factories. Ancient cities exploded into metropolises. The entire human landscape was rewritten. But something even more profound emerged: the Industrial Revolution created the conditions for an entirely new human identity – the working class – a class consciousness that transcended national borders, religions, and ethnicities.The power of this new identity was staggering. Through the new mechanisms of mass communication, communism built this identity of the proletariat into something so powerful that it reshaped the political map of the entire world. Half the planet reorganized itself around this new understanding of human identity and purpose. This wasn't just an economic category. It was a new way of understanding who you were, what you stood for, and who stood against you. A new economic reality created a new identity, which created a new political order.And now, as artificial intelligence transforms the very foundation of our economy by automating more and more to the point of replacing human labor entirely — this pattern will repeat – recasting the story of the Industrial Revolution as a first chapter of something much greater.We stand at the threshold of the intelligence age, where human work no longer drives the engine of civilization. This transformation births a new consciousness: a post-labor identity.To understand the magnitude of what we must escape, look at modern life. Really look at it. What we call normal today is nothing more than a cleaner version of factory work. Why does it sicken us to hear of a child in a sweatshop? It's not just about the physical conditions or the exploitation. It’s because it reduces a being of infinite potential to a mere economic unit. It crushes the human spirit beneath the wheel of production. We recognize instantly that it violates something fundamental about human nature. When we see a child in a sweatshop, we're seeing the starkest version of what our entire civilization has become - a system that reduces human beings to economic units, that measures human worth in terms of productive output. This isn't just wrong - it's a fundamental betrayal of what it means to be human.Now look at your own life. Our modern economies, while less visibly brutal, accomplish the same spiritual diminishment. We've accepted a pale shadow of the rich, full lives our ancestors lived – lives of purpose, of meaning, of genuine human flourishing. We've traded the fullness of human experience for economic efficiency.But the intelligence age offers us something extraordinary: a chance to break free from this prison of pure economic function. For the first time in human history, we have the technological capability to build a civilization not based on human labor. Think about what this means. Every previous form of human society, every political system, every economic arrangement has been built on the assumption that human beings must work to survive. This constraint has shaped everything - our values, our relationships, our conception of what life is for. But when AI removes this constraint, we can finally ask: What is human civilization for? What are human beings for? What kind of world do we want to build when we're no longer bound by the necessity of labor? Praxis will not merely adapt to the intelligence age – we will embrace it as the opportunity to restore humanity to its full stature. We have a vision of human life beyond the factory, beyond the office, beyond mere economic utility.When history grants a generation the chance to reshape civilization, it also grants them the strength to achieve it. We see our purpose in nothing less than the creation of a new empire worthy of humanity's highest potential.____________________IV. THE PIONEER SPIRITTo build anew, we must rekindle an ancient fire: the spirit of the pioneer. Where do we find this spirit? Look to our ancestors - look to that extraordinary human impulse to found new societies, to pioneer new worlds.Recall the settlers of the 15th century, who crossed deadly oceans into uncharted lands, driven by an unshakeable vision of a world that matched their highest ideals. They sought not just religious freedom or prosperity, but something even more profound: the right to shape society according to their own values, their own beliefs. Those voyages - those acts of pure conviction and courage - didn't just traverse oceans. They birthed nations. The United States itself, history's mightiest power, began as nothing more than a spark of this pioneer spirit.That same fire burns in us today - burns brighter than ever. The blood of pioneers flows in our veins. Providence has chosen us to carry this ancient spirit into new frontiers at the very moment when the future of human civilization hangs in the balance.Our ancestors crossed oceans and endless plains - we too will cross into uncharted territory. We are pioneers of equal daring, taking the same leap into history. We aren't just building another nation - we're forging a path to a new dimension of human possibility.And as surely as those first daring colonies grew into Earth's most powerful civilization, our beginning will grow into something that reshapes the human story itself.__________________V. THE NETWORK EMPIRELet me be clear: We have no interest in being just another network state. States are bureaucracies. States merely exist. States maintain. But empires? Empires dream. Empires build. Empires unite. Empires transcend. A state operates within rules - an empire writes them. A state manages territory - an empire transforms civilization itself. When we say we're building a network empire, we mean we will create entirely new forms of human civilization.GK Chesterton once wrote: "Men did not love Rome because she was great. She was great because they had loved her." I have chosen Praxis as my life's work, as have so many of you here today. And to all those seeking an empire worthy of your love, your dedication, your highest aspirations - we invite you to find your home with us.__________________________VI. DEMONSTRATION OF MANIFESTATIONWhich brings us to why we are here in the Dominican Republic today. This our first prototype. When online relationships become physical, something profound occurs. Every shared meal, every late-night conversation, every moment of recognition between people who've known each other only through screens - this is how an internet community transforms into a people.But something even more significant is happening here. As you walk these streets, as you breathe this air, consider: could this be where our vision first takes earthly form? Could this be the cradle of our first city? We see vast potential in this place, but the true test is this: can you envision building a life here? Can you see this land nurturing not just a city, but the seeds of a new civilization?Close your eyes and imagine. Visualize the bustling streets, the soaring architecture, the hum of innovation. Picture the schools where our children will learn to dream audaciously, the labs where boundary-breaking technology will be born, the forums where new philosophies will take shape. Imagine the art, the music, the literature that will spring from this soil - the culture that will define an age.This is what we're building.Not just a city, but an idea powerful enough to fulfill our rightful destiny, with the grace of God.______________________VII. DECLARATION OF ASCENTAnd now we come to the moment that will be remembered for generations. At the conclusion of this address, you will have the opportunity to sign the Declaration of Ascent - a document that marks humanity's next great leap forward.Just as the Founding Fathers signed their Declaration in Philadelphia, you too will sign. Your signatures will bridge past and future, connecting us to every great declaration in history while creating something unprecedented: a founding document that can never be destroyed, that your descendants will point to centuries from now.Our Declaration speaks of three ascensions: Into the cloud – transcending physical borders through internet connections. Into space – claiming humanity's destiny among the stars. And toward transcendence – pioneering the heights made possible by the world we will create in the new intelligence age.END
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