Nemocracy and the Machine
“Sir,” the commander replied, “to you, I’m simply Captain Nemo;* to me, you and your companions are simply passengers on the Nautilus.”
*Latin: nemo means “no one.” Ed.
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, F. P. Walter Translation
“I then gave him some more; three times did I fill the bowl for him, and three times did he drain it without thought or heed; then, when I saw that the wine had got into his head, I said to him as plausibly as I could: ‘Cyclops, you ask my name and I will tell it you; give me, therefore, the present you promised me; my name is Noman; this is what my father and mother and my friends have always called me.’
“But the cruel wretch said, ‘Then I will eat all Noman’s comrades before Noman himself, and will keep Noman for the last. This is the present that I will make him.’
“‘What ails you, Polyphemus,’ said they, ‘that you make such a noise, breaking the stillness of the night, and preventing us from being able to sleep? Surely no man is carrying off your sheep? Surely no man is trying to kill you either by fraud or by force?’
“But Polyphemus shouted to them from inside the cave, ‘Noman is killing me by fraud; no man is killing me by force.’
“‘Then,’ said they, ‘if no man is attacking you, you must be ill; when Jove makes people ill, there is no help for it, and you had better pray to your father Neptune.’
Odyssey, Homer, Samuel Butler Translation
As with many of my ideas for streams, the idea of Nemocracy came to me in a discussion with a good IRL friend of mine. We were brainstorming thoughts about the Machine in preparation for one of my videos I was driving home the point that nobody is in fact controlling the Machine. This is an important realization since any idea of recapturing or taking control of the Machine becomes moot. In the middle of the conversation, the idea struck me that this form of governance or, as the case maybe, lack there of can be called Nemocracy. Being a fan of the work of Jules Verne and a lover of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, having re-read it a couple of years before, I remembered that the Latin for 'no one' is Nemo. Many naming conventions for government are in the greek, but 'outis' Greek for 'no one' does not have the same ring that Nemo has; Outisocracy? Nemocracy flows off the tongue more organically.
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