The destinations that ended in graves
The twentieth century ran two enormous experiments in civilizational purpose — one promised a thousand-year racial empire, the other a final classless utopia. Both knew exactly where history was going. Between them they killed tens of millions getting there. We start with the bodies because the people selling grand purposes never do.
We are the pragmatists, and we are not nihilists — we just think a civilization is less like a ship with a destination and more like a city that has to keep working. It needs to solve the problem in front of it, keep its options open, correct its mistakes, and resist anyone who claims to have read the ending. Purpose at that scale is not a beacon to steer by; it is a license, and it gets cashed in blood.
The effective altruists have a gentler grand purpose than the old ones, and we respect the seriousness — but a sufficiently large imagined future can justify almost any present sacrifice, and that’s the oldest trap there is. The providentialists at least admit theirs is a faith. We’d rather muddle forward honestly than march confidently off a cliff.
Where we concede ground: A civilization with no shared direction at all tends to drift, consume, and lose the will to sacrifice for anything beyond itself.
What would change our mind: If societies organized around a strong explicit purpose consistently outlasted and out-flourished the muddlers.
Read the full synthesis: What would civilizational purpose actually mean?