Preamble

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“Technology has allowed us to start new companies, new communities, and new currencies. But can we use it to create new cities, or even new countries? A key concept is to go cloud first, land last — but not land never — by starting with an online community and then materializing it into the physical world.” — Balajis Srinivasan

• We get there in seven steps 👉 </aside>

"If a startup begins by identifying an economic problem in today’s market and presenting a technologically-informed solution to that problem in the form of a new company, a startup society begins by identifying a moral issue in today’s culture and presenting a historically-informed solution to that issue in the form of a new society." — Balaji Srinivasan

Part I: Introductions

• [ ] Round table, participants introducing themselves
• [ ] The vision of Edeneum → Using tools from the Organon ‣ for ‣.
• [ ] Aristotle’s Politics Text Analysis
• [ ] Break
• [ ] Agora
• [ ] Draft your Founding Document
  • [ ] Conclusion

Part II: Text Study / Analysis — Of the State, Citizens, and Constitutions

What is the essential nature?

For the student of government, and of nature and characteristics of the various forms of constitution, almost the first question to consider is in regard to the state: what exactly is the essential nature of a state?

When studying government and different types of political systems, the first important question to ask is: What is a state, really? What makes up its basic nature?

As it is, this is a matter of dispute: a public act is spoken of by some people as the action of the state, others speak of it as the action not of the state but of the oligarchy or the tyrant in power1; and we see that the activity of the statesman and lawgiver is entirely concerned with a state as its object, and a constitution is a form of organization of the inhabitants of a state.

Currently, people disagree about this issue: some say that official actions represent the state itself, while others argue these actions actually represent the ruling oligarchy or tyrant instead1. We can see that politicians and lawmakers focus all their work on the state, and a constitution is simply how the people living in a state are organized.

But a state is a composite thing, in the same sense as any other of the things that are wholes but consist of many parts; it is therefore clear that we must first inquire into the nature of a citizen; for a state is a collection of citizens, [1275a] [1] so that we have to consider who is entitled to the name of citizen, and what the essential nature of a citizen is.

A state is made up of many different parts working together, just like other complex things. To understand what a state is, we first need to understand what makes someone a citizen. This is because a state is simply a group of citizens. So we need to figure out who should be called a citizen and what being a citizen really means.