A Dalliance Across Thought: Standalone Religion, Philosophy, and Politics Books

By Paul Haedo

This book is a collection of several essays, smaller works, and other such works that include some of my earliest writings. They range from Self-Help, all the way to Philosophical Hypothesis on theoretical government services. Many of the writings included in this book are some of my earliest, and many of them I no longer remember or believe in, however the arguments still remain, and their contribution to the purpose of this work, which is to take the reader across a journey through thought, are still valid.

The first part of the book contains several philosophical essays, from the first Essay titled On Citizen Strength, to the last, titled The Spirit of Man. The second part of the book is comprised of more essays; however these are longer ones, there are three in number, the first being The Mule's Awakening, and the last being The Virtus Manifesto.

The third and final part of the work deals with small books, that were too small to be published, but still have lessons to teach those who read them. The first of these books is titled Rub Two Coins Together to Make Some More, and the last of the books in the third part is titled The Need for Unlimited Human Growth: Why exponential Human Growth is the solution to societal problems, both in family, in community, and in country.

If the reader is looking for a collection of works, that cover wildly different topics, so that the reader may be enlightened across different subjects, or simply wishes to pass the time and read about interesting topics, and the arguments that they spawn, then this book is for you.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Solan Publishing
• Release date: Mar 7, 2021
• ISBN: 9781393112198

Paul Haedo

Paul Haedo is an author, poet, philosopher, and all-around free spirit, who enjoys the twin joys of writing and reading in his spare time. Paul believes that there is no limit to the number of genres and topics that one can read and write about. An all-around reader and author is something to aspire to according to him, not shy away from.  Such a sentiment is reflected all throughout Paul's total body of work. It is reflected in the many topics that he writes about, in the different arguments that he proposes, and in the worlds that he creates. No matter the topic, or the book, Paul tackles it just the same, with an intense passion for wisdom, and a great desire to see others share in the wisdom and joy of reading and writing.  

Book preview

On the State’s Responsibility to Feed the Citizens Under Her Care:

The citizens across many areas are fools. Such foolish that in times of famine they starve themselves to death rather than produce the food that they require. In terribly unlucky circumstances, even the rare intelligent among them are prevented from producing food by an incompetent state, and thus starve even if intelligence would deem it otherwise. Therefore, due to these factors, the state should attempt, and if not be forced to, provide for the collective good in the matter of food.

The state should guarantee as a right, one of the holiest of rights above the right of the Gods to claim legitimacy upon man, the secured, trusted, and reliable source of nourishment from the moment of conception unto the moment of transcendence. The nourishment must be provided without any charge, as a matter of holy duty, duty that if the state breaks is so sacrilegious that its immediate execution and destruction of legacy must be commenced. It must be reliably distributed, so that little to no effort on the part of the citizen is required to obtain it. It must also be nourishing, giving strength and charm to the citizens body, and thus being of exceptional quality.

The citizen that deems otherwise is in fact working for a parasitic agent of a parasitic state, and the state and citizenry is duty bound to hinder his efforts at every turn, and pursuit the means of propaganda upon him without relent until his conversion to the truth is had. This is one of the rare moments in time where the un transcended societies two great factions, the state and the citizenry, are in tandem and agreement on all cases.

The package of nourishment from the state shall be given in two forms, the form of ability and knowledge, and the form of actual foodstuffs. The form of ability is in land and in wealth, so that each citizen can produce with his knowledge given to him by the state his own food supply, so that if the duty of the state fails due to calamity, he may maintain his nourishment until the time when the state regains the ability to continue its duty.

The knowledge will be in the form of an encyclopedia on gardening, enough knowledge to grow the majority of the world’s edible botany in the respective citizens climate zone. Combined with acreage, repealment and forever banishing of laws pertaining to restrictions on chickens, and knowledge, the citizens will have enough nourishment to sustain themselves, even if the state fails in its solemn duty.

On the Weakness of State Systems in Times of Pandemic:

One can argue that only three events can rapidly destroy a state, the event of War, the event of Revolution, and the event of Pandemic. All three events are ones that manage to destroy the foundation of a state, a feat that is seldom seem in the realm of geo-politics. This work will cover the Pandemic, it will analyze the phenomenon, show the effects upon the state, and finally try to gleam an immunity for states wishing to remain intact in the face of such phenomenon.

First order of business is the analysis of a pandemic. This phenomenon occurs when a normal infectious agent manages to spread thoroughly and with rapidity among the population that a state governs. Any infectious agent may give birth to a pandemic if the infection rate reaches a critical mass. Naturally certain infectious agents are more effective at meeting the aforementioned requirements than others, viral agents are the most effective, followed by certain bacteria, yet the virus is the king among all the agents in causing pandemic, especially for modern states with access to medicine and infrastructure.

To understand why the spread is so deadly for a state, and why it occupies the kingly trinity of events that can bring a state to heel quickly, we must understand the main source of power for a state. A state is but an entity, by itself it exists only in the minds of men, on paper, and in certain institutions that it may create or co-opt. A state cannot exist without men to will it so, thus the state has to be controlled and operated by men, and furthermore, it has to be able to utilize men as a resource.

The most valuable resource that a state can ever hope to obtain is population, people is its lifeblood, its source of tax revenue, production for economic improvement, and the mass of which armies may be levied from for the usage of the state. With population, a state can obtain power in the physical realm, without it, the state loses its influence in the physical realm, thus dying. A pandemic hits the direct source of a state’s power, its population, and severely weakens its ability to do work, and in many cases destroyed many individuals.

Now that the reader understands the main source of state power, he will be able to understand just how dangerous a pandemic is for a state. The effects upon a state are swift and painful. The state first sees its populace enter a state of mass fear, suddenly all of the bonds that the populace used to have are suddenly destroyed, neighbor is the carrier of death, and the individual shall evade him whenever he may encounter him. The bonds of friendship are destroyed, of loyalties to state and community, even the most sacred and strong of bonds, that of blood, is sometimes frayed, other times tested.

The population atomizes into individuals, they isolate themselves, many by themselves, in many cases by the state, hoping to avoid further spread of the pathogen. The bonds that give the state power break, this is the first grave attack that the state faces by the pandemic, and in many cases this attack by itself is enough to kill a weak state, for many states simply cannot survive a populace that has broken down into a sea of individuals, all terrified of each other.

As the state faces the mass of individuals and the loss of countless chains of relationships, the state faces an incredibly powerful attack upon its coffers. The state wishes to preserve as many individuals among its population as it can, for the population is its lifeblood, much as one wishes to stop the bleeding from a wound, thus does a state wish to preserve its populace, for every loss among the herd is a loss of blood from the wound inflicted by the pandemic.

Yet the state requires healthy finances to survive, for the state itself in order to exist must feed off the liberty of the population, and such loss of liberty must be compensated, lest the populace grow weary of the state and invoke the second of kingly events, a revolution. Furthermore, healthy coffers and finances are needed to finance armies, navies, militias, production of arms, and logistics for a military, which is needed to stave off the first kingly event, war.

The pandemic event however hits the coffers as hard as it hits the population. Since the state wishes to preserve as many people as it can among its population, it will begin to invest vast sums in medicine, infrastructure, and assistance in kind to any major chain of relationship that is affected by the pandemic, which is all of them. Sick individuals cost money to nurture back to health, prevent from reaching death, and to prevent the sick from passing on the pandemic onto other individuals.

In addition, as the coffers are depleted fighting off the effects of the pandemic, the coffers are not being replenished through duties or revenues. States have two main ways of reliably obtaining revenue, duties, or taxes upon its populace, and revenues, whether from ownership of means of production or from invested capital that extracts profit. While there are many other ways, the two mentioned are the most stable and reliable. Conveniently, they are also the hardest hit by a pandemic.

Firstly tax; most forms of tax are imposed on individuals in the populace obtaining profits or revenues, since taxes on already owned wealth tend to be met with great hostility, and most states wish to keep the populace thinking about things as far away as revolution as possible. Since all connections among the populace are destroyed, since each individual in the population fears the other individual, most activities of wealth production and obtainment go down. Revenues from taxes on said activities go down alongside the decline in wealth.

This also affects the sources of revenues from means of production and from invested capital. As the populace atomizes itself and finds his neighbor to be a threat, rather than a friend or comrade in work, the production of wealth and commodities of a society drops drastically. None wishes to make anything alongside anyone else, none wishes to ship the commodities to where they need to go, since there are others there, and no one wishes to buy or sell commodities, for there are others nearby whenever one does such transactions.

The state now faces a grave situation, its most cherished resource, its people, is now sick and dying, which costs money, time, dedication, and resources to compensate for. In addition, the one cohesive and united mass of population has broken itself into individuals, at most small family units shut off from others remain, all other societal divisions of collectives have been broken. The strength of the state is fleeting, for its very foundation now shows significant and plentiful cracks.

The coffers with which the state exerts its main form of soft power, the ability to spend money and thus influence decisions and influence among its population, faces both a severe lack of incoming revenue, and a severe increase in depletion. As the coffers dwindle, and revenues decline, the state loses with every passing day more and more of its ability to manage, manipulate, and command its population. All other institutions that the state controls also are weakened, for they are propped up mainly by the influence and power of the state coffer.

Finally, in the list of problems facing the state, you have the concept of the grand decay. The grand decay occurs in many different circumstances, and is not exclusively begun and nourished by pandemics, but pandemics are one of the key influences to vastly increase its spread among a society and state. The atomization of the populace and the destruction of the state coffer causes the entirety of the society web to come undone. Every institution, every cultural and societal expectation, reward, custom, and process; faces a great decay.

The decay begins with the atomization of the populace into individuals. The main goal of all states is to mold its population into an image that best suits the state, for example a state wishes its populace to be loyal, to be productive, non-violent against each other, strong and united against foreign attackers, and above all fruitful, both in production of more individuals and in production of wealth. Once the society atomizes, every person regains their individuality, and their sense of thought and critique. Suddenly every past and current grievance is brought to light, and the individual experiences a sense of great anger towards the state, blaming it for all his ills.

This atomizes individual thus vastly decreases his productivity, for he feels betrayed, he has lost his collective, and the guardian who he swore loyalty and productivity too has abandoned him in his time of need. The state of pessimism that the individual now experiences begins to ripple across the population, as the glue that holds the populace together decays and breaks at an alarming rate. The decay is the final major effect, but in many cases is the last effect needed to destroy a state.

The reason why this is so is due to the vast difficulty in countering the grand decay. The grand decay can only be countered with a strong state, one that has no issue with imposing strong decisions upon its populace, without caring about infringing on civil liberties or be beholden to a moral code. Effectively the populace must do many things to counter the decay, all must be done, whether they are willing or not. Nearly all of the time, the decay occurs because they are unwilling, and forcing a populace with the whip while the population is atomized, coffers are depleted, and the grand decay has accelerated its progress, is most of the time an exercise in futility, hence the doom of many states due to pandemics.

Now that the reader understands the pandemic phenomenon and understands the effects of said phenomenon upon a state, the final part of discussion involved immunizing the state against pandemics. If sufficiently immunized, the effects will be negligible, coffers will remain stable, and the grand decay can not only be hastened, but with proper stewardship even reversed in times of crisis, especially if the state can greater unify the populace and prevent the pandemic from atomizing the population.

First step in immunization is preparation. Many pandemics go the way that they go because preparation is either negligent or non-existent. Preparation involves a reserve of money set aside from the coffers, ready to be spent immediately during the rise of a pandemic. Furthermore, in societies with high technology, encouragement of scientific institutions, funding of large and numerous university systems; funding of scientific research, primarily in the bio-mechanical, bioengineering, and bio-medical fields, and immunology should also be encouraged.

Now that the state has money set aside in a special fund, and has immense investment in scientific institutions, it should also have a civil defense program dedicated specifically for pandemics. This institution for the vast majority of the time when there is no pandemic will serve as the military style school for the biologically inspired pupils, those who show the greatest promise in entering the fields associated with pandemic research and defense. In a militarized society the institution will train the pupils after they receive their general drill and education, in a non-militarized society it will be after general schooling is completed.

The institution in general time will focus on pandemic theory, assistant research and training, and response drills, where the pupils learn to lead pandemic teams to find initial infected patients and immediately quarantine and treat them, and work quickly to narrow any possible contacts of infection. Finally, it’ll serve as a tool to encourage the public to stockpile supplies and educate themselves on pandemics, the pupils will host lectures and discussions about historical pandemics, and encourage members of the populace to purchase supplies and educate themselves in the event of a pandemic.

Finally, any excess scientists that emerge from the school system that show promise and cannot find a place among a private or public scientific laboratory should also be directed into the pandemic civil defense. They will serve as the instructors and assistant scientists that help disseminate information across the populace. With these scientists among the civil defense, innovations and interesting institutions will arise that will further strengthen the preparation of the state. 

The funds have been set aside; the state funds a constant stream of funding into scientific institutions and has established a pandemic civil defense among the nation. The state has prepared for the pandemic, yet when it arrives there is additional work to be done to counter the effects. Assuming the preparation has been done, the very first strategy in a pandemic is to immediately isolate all infected, then as they are being treated, hunt for anyone who has made contact with the infected and see if they also have the contagion.

In addition, analysis and tests should be done across the immediate population to hunt for possible infected who show light symptoms, depending on the pathogen this is a bonus or absolutely crucial in the state’s goal in stopping the pandemic. If the state does this, cases go down fast, which is the main goal whenever a state wishes to survive a pandemic.

Finally, the course of a pandemic can never be planned for or determined, the above is only for improving the initial strength of the state when pandemics hit, and success or failure is determined partially by the initial strength, majorly by a state’s adaptability. Strong states have greater success in this regard that states that purposely weaken themselves, such as democracies and republics. Yet even the weakened states can enact emergency powers to strengthen themselves.

Adaptability is the key, and the stance that countering the pandemic is the goal no matter the cost is the way forward; for not only is the state’s survival at risk, but the health of many millions of its people.

Purpose of Ideology:

Generally, one believes in a certain ideology because of perceived benefits, the ideology is a tool to improve one’s position in life and society. Believers in their respective ideologies believe because of the transaction of benefit from belief. The same transaction occurs during the worship of the Gods, you worship a God, empowering them, and then they bestow upon you gifts of power, as compensation for their empowerment.

Yet an ideology, as is a religion, is more than a mere transaction, it certainly can be said to be beyond a transaction. It is in a way a foundation, the bedrock of one’s views on things. Yet this bedrock can be different depending on the ideology, therefore how does one reconcile the differences and establish a truly great foundation?

Believers in their respective ideologies believe because of the benefits that it brings, this is established and known already to you the reader. Yet what about differing ideologies that bring in the same result, is there truly a difference? Is one ideology better than another, if one says that wisdom is crucial, while the other says that wisdom is a necessity? What about their value, are they not equal weight, and so both should be followed?

Yet by following both, you run into contradictions, an ideology may say that no other can hold a light to its majesty, especially in the case of religion. Gods do not like to have the attention of their worshipers divided, many thus forbid worship of other deities who are not themselves. And so, the question becomes who to follow.

The first answer to this dilemma in determining which ideology to follow, if both give the same reward, is to go with the ideology that gives said reward the easiest. For the determinant is no longer the weight of the value obtained, but the effort in obtaining it. One should go with the ideology that has the smoothest in the transition towards obtaining the result, the one that benefits the greatest number of individuals, with the least amount of harm. This is the logical answer to determining ideologies.

Yet the final truth to determining ideologies is to modify them in such a way that superior ideologies emerge from the previous collection. Many ideologies give different rewards, many give similar rewards, many give the same rewards, with many paths to obtain them all scattered across the ideologies. In which case assimilation of the value from all ideologies, and theory crafting a superior ideology that exceeds all the others that gave birth to it, is the best strategy. The purpose of ideologies is thus to better individuals, and the destiny of ideologies is to give birth to greater and greater ideologies.

On the Weakness of the Hermit Kingdom Ideal

For many state systems , the temptation to safeguard the state interest against the ever-encroaching influences and customs of rival states by walling off all influence is tempting. This walling off can be total or partial and can encompass all parts of a society. We will start with the two major influences and customs that are different between the states, the difference of the phenotype/race of the populations of differing states, and the difference in custom/culture.

It is always a point of contention for those who espouse the ideal of the hermit kingdom to prevent the introduction of new population and customs into the state. In many cases, such introductions are the birth of the desire to turn a state into a hermit kingdom. The differences aforementioned are ones that cannot be ignored, all can see the difference in the color of skin, the difference in the matter of speech, and the difference in behavior and custom. There is no greater and obvious form of foreigner than these three characteristics.

The ‘foreign’ element is not of the state, it is obvious that the speech of the foreigner is different, the phenotype different from the rest of the population, and the behavior of the foreigner is different. Such differences serve as an example of a rival state, a rival population, something outside of the state that is known. This argument is the foundation of the desire to make the state isolated and is the argument that will be covered first.

The first attack against the argument is historical analysis of the strongest states, versus the weaker ones. The argument of isolation is done always in conjunction with the argument of strength, if one does the argument of the hermit kingdom without the argument of strength then it will fail against any argument that espouses to bring strength, so we will assume the argument is done with strength as a reinforcer.

Historically, all strength from a state arises from the strength of the state, the institutions that make up the influence of the state, the military of said state, and its ability to expand. A state cannot expand without the aforementioned traits, a weak state by itself is prone to insurrection and defection among the ranks of its military and its subjects/citizens. A state with weak institutions cannot control or steer the populace, cannot extract as much benefit from the populace as it normally could, and cannot modify or change the state quickly or effectively.

A state with a weak military obviously is at risk of conquest and defeat in the theatre of war. A weak military also causes insurrection, and an inability to significantly expand a state’s influence into other states, whether militarily for obvious reasons, or cultural, for a weak military is almost synonymous with a weak nation. An inability to expand, for whatever of the many possible regions, serves as a catalyst for a grand decay of the state, across all of its institutions and influences. A nation in the state of decay contracts and is generally destroyed or conquered by its rivals in short order.

With all of the above said, let us go back to the argument of the hermit kingdom and the history of nation states. Many if not all, as there are always exceptions, of the states that are powerful and succeed are the opposite of the hermit kingdom, these are the reasons for it. The first is the truth about expansion and conquest. The very act of conquest of another state means that the state and everything that it owns now becomes a part of the conquering state. This is by itself a fatal hit to the ideal of the hermit kingdom, because a hermit kingdom by its very definition, cannot expand without contradicting its ethos and philosophical foundations.

While difficult to do, the proponents of the hermit kingdom ideal to try and give rebuttals to this point. The first and most effective is the argument of cleansing. While cleansing can take many forms, the general idea is that in times of expansion, yes for a very short while the state will exist in a state of contradiction. By conquering, you are no longer a hermit kingdom, since you must leave your shell to expand and grow through use of arms. Yet if you purge and remove all of the attributes that are not part of the conquering kingdom, then the hermit shell can expand, because the kingdom remains a hermit.

Generally, this is done primarily either through expulsion or extermination of the undesirable elements. Yet the main weakness of this cleansing strategy in the economic and geo-political sense is that all of the rewards from the exertions of conquest are removed. The population that otherwise would be your spoil of war is expulsed from the society or exterminated, so no value is obtained from the obtainment of more population. The institutions of the conquered state are destroyed, which means that they must be rebuilt from scratch, a very laborious and time-consuming process.

Assuming the cleansing is total, then cultural resources, of which could be used in the new society, will be destroyed, as is any technology that is not easily converted into the ideals of the hermit kingdom. With the exception of land and natural resources, every single valuable resource that can be obtained in conquest is destroyed in the process of cleansing. This means that the hermit kingdom exerts great effort in expansion if they so choose, while obtaining little reward. While this fits the hermit kingdom ideals and can serve as a ‘counter’ to the paradox of being unable to expand without breaking the ideals of the hermit kingdom ethos, this counter of cleansing is quite weak, and it is the strongest of the arguments for the hermit kingdom.

This is why states that focused exclusively on cleansing tended to either be short lived, weaker compared to other states, or otherwise poorer in quality to other expanding states. Effectively, the hermit kingdom must destroy the spoils of war that it would otherwise have obtained in order to retain its stance. And any ideology that requires self-harm for no gain does not hold well logically.

Remember that the concept of the hermit kingdom is to ‘protect’ that which comprises the state from outside influence. That is the energy that fuels the fire of the hermit kingdom philosophy. Yet if such protection is so desired, how ‘superior’ is that which is being protected? Proponents of the hermit kingdom philosophy tend to think that to guard the best against the worst is moral, sound, and logical, yet if the best needs guarding, how is it in any stretch of the definition the best? If it was the best, then surely it would not need protecting, it could be set loose and it would easily expanse into the other states, since the best always rises to the top, while the worst always sinks.

And here lies the problem with the hermit kingdom, there are many but here is another. The protection of the best against the worst implies that the best is not really the best, because it needs protection from the worst, which means that the worst is in fact the best, because only the worst needs protecting, since the best will always defeat and subdue it. It is time to cover the characteristics of the best, so that the reader may understand what a superior state is truly compared to an inferior one.

Firstly, to be a truly superior state you must always be expanding. If you do not expand, then the reason is your state is in a state of decay, if that happens you lose your superiority status, since states in decay are easily conquered by states that are not. The hermit kingdom proponent will naturally respond by accusing the proponent of superior states that the ‘inferior’ states that the superior states conquer will simply weaken and destroy it. In order to survive as a state, one must turtle up and attack any intrusions by foreign entities.

Yet there is a process by which all arguments of the hermit kingdom are destroyed. This strategy is the central focus of this work, because with this strategy the proof of the inferiority of the hermit kingdom ideal will be forever realized. This strategy is the strategy of assimilation. Through assimilation, all of the riches from conquered states can be utilized in the benefit of the conquering state, and finally, all of the so-called goals of the hermit kingdom, end up being realized. Finally, the assimilation process allows for the improvement and refinement using conquered improvements of the already strong state, making it ever better, and causing it to exceed its neighbors, who in time will be added to its majesty and in turn improve it further still.

It is known that the better nation will expand into the worse off. Whichever type of nation/culture/people that is deemed superior, they must expand into other groups that cannot withstand the superior groups influence and expansion. The strong can become weak, and the one who was being expanded into can be the expander if situations change. So, if one considers their group to be the superior group, they must show that the group expands into other groups, or else their claim to superiority will be without legitimacy.

Now the hermit kingdom proponents, seeing the futility of their arguments, may abandon all claims of superiority altogether and instead mention how the hermit kingdom has a ‘right’ to exist without being expanded into. Yet they go against the sacred laws of nature, does a rat have the right to not be consumed by the cat? Does a rabbit have the right to not be eaten by a fox? Or does the gazelle have the right to exist without being consumed by the lion? The rights given to a nation are only as strong as the ability to put weight through force into those rights, they are not guaranteed, for nature decrees that he who has the might makes the law and way of things.

Even if the hermit kingdom proponents deem that their group is not superior, and they simply wish to exist without any outside influence, then the very notion that others are superior will bring that desire to peril, as the superior group will inevitably begin to influence the inferior one, using many differing means. Effectively, if they wish to be a hermit kingdom, they will have to become the nation that they so despise, a strong expanding state. For only in the core of an expanding power will you find the hermit kingdom characteristics, a sea of homogeneity being mass produced for immigration and colonization of other powers.

Furthermore, this argument also holds when the hermit kingdom proponents argue for the destruction of stagnant or slightly expanding but still weak states in favor of smaller hermit kingdoms, a process known as balkanization. This is a mass weakening and foolish decision on the part of a group. This decision purposely destroys a state in favor of making smaller ones, these smaller states may then be turned into hermit kingdoms as per the wishes of the hermit kingdom proponents.

All that this will do is produce several weak states, ripe for conquest by a strong power. The process is so destabilizing and weakening to the region that the chances of losing the characteristics that make the people so willing to balkanize in defense of the hermit kingdom ideal is greater than if they lived under the control of the stronger state, for that state would be much less likely to have been expanded into. Not only does this balkanization weaken states, it destroys any ambition and desire to be great, the only way a state preserves its unique characteristics. Under balkanization, the little hermit kingdom is doomed to wait until a strong state plucks the little state fruit from the vine and eats it.

Therefore, the reader may ask; why are the hermit kingdom proponents so foolish? Why wouldn’t they argue in favor of strengthening the state, which in turn gives it the ability to expand into other states, and thus give them all that they want and more? The only reason why they are against this is because the hermit kingdom ideal is an admission of weakness. They start high and mighty, and when you bring up the arguments of why not simply become a strong state, they crumble and use the same arguments that those who wish to not be conquered us, we have the right to be, we have the right to exist, we have the right to be as we were before.

Much as the gazelle changes when the lion breaks its neck and consumes it, so does the weak state change when the strong state breaks its back and consumes it. If one wishes to avoid this fate, they must be the one breaking the backs of states and consuming them. For the prey does not have the ability to control fate, but the predator does, and the hermit kingdom proponents trying to appeal to sympathy for the prey states show just how weak the position is, and it shows that the weakness runs deep in them, for they appeal to sympathy rather than strengthening themselves to no longer be weak.

Discourse Between Proponents of Expansion and Proponents of Hermit Kingdom

As mentioned in the previous essay On the Weakness of the Hermit Kingdom Ideal, there is great division between those in favor of strengthening of states and their expansion into weaker states, and those who wish to make a world filled with hermit kingdoms, where no state may expand into another. These discourses will show the arguments as are commonly presented, and the reader will see the paths that the arguments always go, the proponent of the hermit kingdom becomes increasingly cornered, then ends with a ‘you are a brute we are done’ retreat. Proponents of Expansion will be marked with an E, proponents of Hermit Kingdom will be marked with an H

H: Whenever one lives in a multicultural/multiracial state, the conflict among the resultant groups is always seen. When one wishes to live in a place without conflict, the best path forward for that goal is the hermit kingdom. One feels home among his people and customs, if all nations are comprised of those with the same characteristics, then the conflict inherent in large entities will no longer be an issue.

E: You mentioned at the beginning of your argument that conflict among the resultant groups is always seen. You yourself admitted that when there are groups, there is conflict. Would it then be within the realm of logic to say that if groups existing breeds conflict among them, that the hermit kingdom utopia will fail, since your hermit kingdoms will wish to expand into each other?

H: No, the entire reason why we wish to have hermit kingdoms is to prevent that which you mentioned, everyone has their homeland, and everyone is happy. Remember that the conflict between groups occurs when groups inside a large state strive for resources.

E: You mentioned and admitted that groups strive for resources, this breeds conflict. Then what happens when hermit kingdom A sits on top of an enormous oil field and is making vast amounts of revenue from this resource. While hermit kingdom B is poor without any natural resources in their own little utopia. Why wouldn’t kingdom B