Seething agency everywhere

Conspiracy theories believe one group controls the world. The opposite of conspiracy theories is seeing agency everywhere.

Those who believe in conspiracy theories typically believe that there is a small group of people who control the outcomes of history. And often, the conspiracy theories exist outside of time and space. For instance, some people believe that Jews control the world. In reality, Jews have never had much money or power, and like every group embedded inside of history the Jews have had some good centuries and some terrible centuries, but for those who believe in the conspiracy theories about the Jews, then the power of the Jews is eternal, it seems to exist at the same level at all times, and more so, it seems to exist even in nations where the Jews have had no historical presense.

The complete opposite of the conspiracy theories is a model of human history that can be summarized as "seething agency everywhere." That is, everyone is playing a role in shaping history, and in shaping our society: lawyers, doctors, engineers, coal miners, journalists, truck drivers, prostitutes, school teachers, police, waitresses, soldiers, priests, nurses, social workers, drug dealers, bankers, the terminally ill, podcasters, actors and actresses, politicians, stay at home moms, children, oil rig workers, lumbermen, veterinarians, and so many more. Everyone has a different level of power, but everyone is playing the game. Everyone shapes tomorrow.

By their individual actions, people constitute an incipient civil society, but when they come together in groups is when they create a true civil society. Those groups might focus on politics or religion or ethnicity or the groups might be for some professional specialty, or the group might be for children or for health or for some artistic purpose. The list of possible groups is long. But the groups do help structure the way the needs of the public are expressed. Millions of voices, shouting simultaneously, might only amount to a cacophony, but groups help funnel those voices towards something more like a symphony. Some liberal dictators (and monarchs) allow civil society to bloom, within some limits, but civil society typically only reaches its maximum flourishing in a liberal democracy.

Even when groups have an aggressive intent, their existence can help lead to greater civil harmony. The groups help structure the way conflicts are resolved among the different factions in a society. When the groups are free to step forward as representatives of some block or faction or tendency then it is easier for the political leadership to resolve a conflict, as the leaders of the groups gives the leadership (of the nation) someone to negotiate with.

In any human society, there will be multiple levels of conflict. A nation may have conflict with another nation, and within the nation the various social classes might hate each other. The working class might be divided among Protestants and Catholics or, in a different country, the working class might be divided among Malays and Chinese. And the working class might hate the upper class. And within the upper class, there might be a few hundred families, all of whom hate one another. And yet somehow this seething mass of conflicts still continues onwards as a recognizable society, or a recognizable system of societies. And though the groups are constituted by individuals, once the group exists, outside actors can treat the group itself as an entity. And likewise, once trade patterns develop, though they consist only of individual merchants selling goods, still the trade pattern itself becomes an object, once people recognize it as such, and as an object people can fight over it, or work to enhance it.

Here is how the French historian Fernand Braudel describes Venice in the early modern period:

For long periods in the past, the European world-economy appears to have rested on the slender basis of a single city-state, one with perfect or near-perfect freedom of movement, but with few resources outside of itself. In order to compensate for its weaknesses , such a city would frequently play off one region or community against another, taking advantage of the differences between them, and relying heavily on the few dozen towns, or states, or economies which served it, for serve it they did, either in their own interest or because they had no choice.

One cannot help wondering how such far-ranging supremacy can possibly have been established and maintained on such a narrow foundation — particularly since power inside a city-state was always being challenged from within, viewed as it was from the close quarters by a strictly-governed population, often one which had been 'proletarianized'. And all this for the benefit of the handful of families (easily identifiable and thus an obvious target of resentment) who held — but might one day very well lose — the reins of power. These families moreover fought bitter feuds among themselves.

It is true that the world-economy by which such cities were surrounded was itself still a fragile network — though by the same token, if its fabric was torn, the damage could be made good without too much trouble. It was merely a matter of vigilance and the judicious application of force. (Could not the same be said of British policy under Palmerston and Disraeli in a later age?) In order to control the large expanses in question, it was sufficient to hold a few strategic points (Candia, captured by Venice in 1204; Corfu, 1383; Cyprus 1489 — or indeed Gibraltar, which the British took by surprise in 1704, and Malta, which they captured in 1800) and to establish a few convenient monopolies, which then had to be maintained in good working order — as we do machines today. Such monopolies often continued to operate out of a kind of force of inertia, although they were naturally challenged by rivals who could sometimes cause serious problems.

...The merchant cities of the Middle Ages all strained to make profits and were shaped by the strain. Paul Grousset had them in mind when he claimed that "contemporary capitalism has invented nothing." Armando Sapori is even more explicit: "Even today, it is impossible to find anything — income tax for instance — which did not have some precedent in the genius of one of the Italian republics". And it is true that everything seems to have been there in embryo: bills of exchange, credit, minted coins, banks, forward selling, public finance, loans, capitalism, colonialism -- as well as social disturbances, a sophisticated labour force, class struggles, social oppression, political atrocities. By at least the twelfth century in Genoa and Venice, as well as in the towns of the Netherlands, extremely large payments were being made in cash. But credit was quick to follow.

The Perspective Of The World, page 89.

It is impossible to understand democracy unless you first understand history in this way: of individuals in conflicts, and individuals forming groups, and the groups are in conflict, and the individuals have religions, and the religions are in conflict, and the individuals have ethnicities, and the ethnicities are in conflict, and the individuals have nations, and the nations are in conflict, and so on, and so on, there is conflict at every level, at the top and at the bottom, and in-between the top and bottom, and the outcome of history is best understood as the outcome of all of these simultaneous conflicts. Not every conflict has equal importance but every conflict does contribute to the final tally.

Each conflict threatens destroy the participants and the entities they have built. If human government is difficult, it is difficult because the centrifugal forces are tearing apart any large group, tearing it apart into smaller and smaller groups, tearing it apart till all that is left is the individual, with all of their selfishness and ego, unable to organize the resources that could lift up and improve the larger group. Perhaps that’s why most parts of the world did not have strong governments till the 20th Century, when advancing technology made it easier.

The crucial fact is this: no one has a monopoly on agency. In the long-term, everyone is a participant in history. The prostitute who quarrels with a customer who refuses to pay her may not be as important as the general who wins a major battle, but both of them are having some impact on events, and shape the eventual world that results.

You either understand that everyone has agency, and everyone is shaping the world, or you get lost in conspiracy theories. Or, to put that differently, you either understand the world truly, or you get lost in your own delusional reality.