Colin Horgan just wrote an interesting piece on the Nietzschean aspects of human nature - the drive for adventure, dominance, meaning through striving, etc... - and how it has been rearing its ugly head against what people imagine to be the "restrictive" nature of democracy.

(Horgan believes, as I do, that democracy doesn't really restrict the Nietzschean impulse. But he pointed out that lately angry people have been lying to themselves about its restrictiveness because they're anxious to lash out at a system they think is holding them back).

I responded to that a couple days ago and then woke up to this. And now I'm horrified. Genuinely horrified.

Because you just pointed out that thanks to the internet people have a way of going and indulging that impulse that is extraordinarily difficult for the government to restrict.

I know from a couple offhanded mentions you've made that you're a fan of Dan Carlin's Hardcore History. I'm not sure if this was in his Blueprint for Armageddon or Supernova in th East series, but he pointed out that the outset of war there is a period of time where the participants in a war have to feel out the possibility-space that is allowed by their new technologies. War starts by doing things the old way and then the combatants create the new way.

The 'new way' you've proposed is utterly horrifying, because it suggests a citizenry that is capable of auto-organizing themselves and also attacking outside of the confines of the government, and using the internet for forms of fine-grained coordination that weren't possible before.

We've seen preludes to this before. The use of social media to organize ISIS comes to mind.

It's a frightening prospect. It also suggests a new and somewhat horrifying twist on Mutually Assured Destruction.

I'm not sure what to think about this but I can clearly recognize the idea you're writing about here as an extraordinarily important one. I hope you unpack it further.