From a Grain of Sand
34: Our own terrarium
Hello friends!
Welcome to the new subscribers who’ve joined since the last post. Happy to have you here! This week we are traveling again and talking about building from the ground up.
Worlds can be as big as we want them, whether as small as a vulnerable moment or vast and expansive as the universe.
I can’t stop thinking about Ithaka1.
It is a town on the planet Minos which was colonized by Earth’s billionaires in secret. Only, it didn’t stay that way. The people who paid, were swindled, or clamored to get to the planet rebelled against the ruling class and demolished the systems they built, which looked a lot like ours. Their formation of government and society underwent multiple iterations of breakdown until they came upon a system that took the best of what served the people.
It is not simply about non-competition or large scale behavioral health intervention or no circulating currency, but a community that finally decided what elements would help members thrive. We are always so tied to the categorization of a system into something we recognize. Social democracy, democratic republic, communist… on Minos, the government is simply Community. Rule of law and businesses support and uplift the interests of the people, so there is need to adjust policy, but no room to hold on to what doesn’t work.
It occurs to me that the planet I imaged sounds like a utopia, but inside, I understand that no place can be. The Minoans already know this and have decided to make peace with their history and strive for better. They continually choose each other and center efforts on balance between creation and consumption.
Around the time I had started building the planet Minos itself as background to the short story,
of The Novelleist began her exploration of utopias in the progress writing her second book, Oblivion. It felt a bit like simultaneous inspiration, as I’d just finished Island by Aldous Huxley. Island informed some of the society’s bedrock historical context which was woven into the story as scaffolding in small and large ways.Island is structured in long monologues detailing the people and practices on the island Pala. The residents espouse a public consciousness centered on being present, mentally clear, and free to explore. They are deeply philosophical, but also knowledgeable about psychology, using these schools of thought to recognize issues in the community and work toward resolution.
Digesting what I learned of Pala made me consider aspects of monarchy that remained but also use of currency to assist in trade, not to exchange goods among people. A self-sustained planet was hard to visualize since it would need all the materials to create what we recognize. We cannot make everything we like or need, so there must be a robust shipping industry.
Expanding the details of the Ithaka timeline means organizing a lot of elements while doing more research on formed societies. It means taking aspects of near present day, where the story begins until Anaella marches through those tall blades of silver green grass. While I have enjoyed stream of consciousness writing for short stints, an outline was critical to composing the 15k story. For constructing the planet from dirt to doctrine, I need stronger tools.
I started using the program Campfire2 to organize my world. I think back on some of the immersive video games of my childhood and the fact that every book on a shelf had a title and text. That level of detail speaks to me, so the towns or doctrines mentioned have spaces to enrich those seemingly inconsequential elements. It also answers a why. I worked with an amazing editor for my first short story and she questioned the presence of objects in scenes. What was their purpose? Why was the character handling it? So when I think of the objects in a home, they must have a purpose and connection to the character and are informed by that background information.
To be sure, the building is fun, but the details do not make the plot or the characters. I still have to ask who these people really are and portray that as genuinely as I can. Character details that tell the story of the individual is what I’m toying with now.
I recently finished Utopia by Sir Thomas More, first on audiobook, then again on paper with notes in the margins. The Utopians and Palanese of Island are societies that have taken positive aspects of society and applied them in support of the whole.
It doesn’t seem an accident that these utopias are on islands. I think we realize the impossibility of consensus on swaths of land as large as the continental United States. We also know that some of the happiest places on Earth, are similarly isolated or homogenous in some respects.
Where Utopia differs is in their use of slavery, capital punishment, and employment of mercenaries in wartime. Coping with punishment and conflict is where the so-called ideal society falters. There are other aspects I quarrel with as well. It is still patriarchal and holds a monarchy, though the people are represented by officials. It is not the free love paradise of Pala, either. There is no sex before the age of 18 and the sexes sit separately at functions.
I have also read The New Atlantis by Sir Francis Bacon and have been given pause. It’s another island, another vaguely Asian culture devout and chaste, this time living in secret while still centering European education. They are also Christians too, by way of delivery of the word straight from heaven. I wondered how many more times I would read the same things in classic literature. But also, in modern studies, did I want to engage in validating the very systems that continue to exclude swaths of individuals who are neither depicted consistently in images of the past or the future?
We impart our own ideas about what constitutes an ideal society. I want to take walkable cities a step further and make them accessible cities. Disabled people will exist in the future. I want policy to address underlying issues that focus on intervention and reform instead of punishment. Conflict will exist in the future. I want the elimination of local money exchange so that careers are chosen instead of made compulsory. I want a society devoid of scarcity where everyone is fed because it is easy since we have enough today but place barriers in people’s way. Abundance is the future.
I have engaged with the future and the concept of utopias differently thus far. The rigid monuments of Earth will be broken down on Minos as the people model their society based in deep connections to the planet itself, its resources, and each other. They are isolated to be sure, which I imagine applies pressure to come together. Their only connection is Waystation, an industrialized planet Minoans have to travel through an asteroid belt to reach. An uncharted world is dangerous alone and forging forward together is what I hope to see.
A central question to the formation of Minos is: What if?
Vocation
Our jobs are not often who we are and in some cultures, it’s impolite to ask. To talk of a person’s work is to know what they intentionally or by command, doing to support themselves. This is why the advice to “do what you love” is often received with disdain since those who are able to truly follow their hearts are supported by systems and have ready access to resources others don’t. It may not even be money, either, but a friend of a friend with power.
Without the pressures of earning a living, people get to chose how they spend their time or be in service of the community. What I would find interesting is to see what people choose. We imagine construction jobs are backbreaking but some may like the feel of physical work to accomplish extraordinary ends. Some may want to work in healthcare or cook warm meals for schoolchildren. We would make a more content society of people free to explore their true interests. We would also see who people really are because isn’t the height of a liberated society one where people can be themselves?
Currency
Our capitalist society thrives on competition and scarcity. What if we operated out of abundance? What if all the surplus we displayed as a show of opulence actually fed people instead? What if we didn’t need to steal because there was enough?
This is addressed in Utopia and expresses just that: there is enough. Both the Palanese and Utopians engage in trade for what they don’t make so there is a need for currency at the highest levels to fulfill community wants and needs. Revenue could be generated on exports of food, textiles, minerals, and even art.
Does this sound suspicious? The government controls the money and the people have nothing. Not so. The government is the people and it is in their interest to maintain the balance of the community. Minoans understand that there is no victory in betrayal. People are truly free and it is money, status, and control that binds. This is not to say they cannot be betrayed by one of their own. A plot against the Palanese brews from their own leadership, so no community is immune from being stripped for its riches. But I intend a central tenet of trust (of many forms) among Minoans.
Ideals and Philosophy
Whether collective sentiments and morality rest in performing the highest good for the benefit of all or levying swift punishment at minor infractions, who we are and the social contracts we form mold us a people. We continually reinforce or can choose to shift who we are as the population changes, but there are central tenets we hold true that form our community identity.
I liked more of the Palanese way. They seemed to have all tapped into some psychological techniques of managing stress and overcoming obstacles. A ten-year old coaches the main character through a traumatic event in the beginning of the book. It’s a great mental tool to work through challenges. It takes many of us decades of burying, unearthing, and coping with trauma to achieve some equilibrium in our emotional states. The Palanese are contemplative and intentional. They believe in the centering effects of meditation and focus. The embody a society that lovingly and carefully prunes the natural development of their people and shifts to support that growth in all aspects without treating them as agents of indoctrination.
Family
Utopians are still patriarchal, separating the men and women during functions and forbidding premarital sex. Residents of Bensalem in The New Atlantis have a wealth of ceremony surrounding the male head of the family on a feast day.
The Palanese are truly a community of caring where paternity is hardly relevant, there is free access to reproductive care, and children have a community of adoptive parents who they can go to. Children are autonomous beings who are afforded space from their birth parents which is seen as healthy. There is free love among older teenagers who have the very mature perspective of not possessing a partner but understanding that each person belongs to themselves.
In “Ithaka”, Anaella comes from a family of historians and values her matriarchal lineage, but she also has a close relationship with her partner Kane, who is like a brother to her. I think of the fluidity of both chosen and blood family and who is permitted legal protections. Honor the father who respects and accepts his child, not because he occupies a throne.
Governance
I want to see what happens when we take the best methods of care to structure a society. I want to see what happens when we dismantle the systems that are built for oppression and commit to a new way.
By now we know that kings and queens do not govern a country, governing bodies like parliaments do. Meanwhile, royals languish in perpetuity as figureheads of an extravagant and unnecessary tribute paid to a title that is in name and no longer in function. Why bother maintaining that?
While I could delve into the many types of existing governments before even constructing what’s on Minos, I am more interested in how we build a new template. In the story, Anaella recounts how a pyramid puts few at the top. Destroying that structure over and over until the shape fundamentally changed was the path on Minos. Freedom is active and must continue pushing against people and the development of systems that will use the liberated as fuel.
Constructing places beyond the voids of space calls to my desire for a better world. It also presses me to examine this timeline, where we have been, and the possibilities of the near future. We understand the natural world better when we take it into our hands, piece by piece, turning over each grain of sand.
What worlds have you built?
What’s next?
A new log line on the welcome page!
Special thanks to
for their contribution
Stories from the planet Minos
This is beautiful!
Also, I too am struggling with the hierarchical structure but have yet to find something that is better. Have you found any good examples there? Can there be a leaderless society?
Thank you for the glimpse of a world thoughtfully unfolding.