From: jimruttshow8596
Jordan Hall, a tech entrepreneur and longtime collaborator with Jim Rutt, is known for his insights into the global transition marked by technological progress and potential societal shifts [00:33:00]. He was part of the original Game B OGs in 2013 and was the first to use the terms “Game A” and “Game B” in their contemporary sense [00:48:00]. This article explores his concept of “civium,” detailed in his Medium essay “From City to Civium” [01:17:00].
Scaling Laws and the Nature of Cities
Hall’s analysis of civium is grounded in the work of Jeffrey West and Luis Bettencourt on scaling laws [02:11:00].
Biological vs. City Scaling
Biological systems, such as animals and trees, exhibit sublinear scaling [02:56:00]. This means that if an animal’s mass doubles, its metabolic rate increases by only 75%, leading to an asymptote where larger animals are relatively less energetic per pound [03:17:00]. This is a fundamental rule shaping biology, including animal size and the food chain [03:54:00].
In contrast, human systems like corporations and cities show different scaling behaviors [05:01:00]. While some aspects of human systems (e.g., revenue per person in a large organization) scale sublinearly, cities exhibit superlinear scaling [05:36:00]. Doubling a city’s population increases its GDP per capita by 15% [05:57:00]. This superlinear scaling also applies to innovation and other positive indicators [06:09:00].
The Role of Connectivity and Information
The superlinear scaling in cities is hypothesized to be related to Metcalfe’s Law and increasing connectivity [07:07:00]. This phenomenon suggests that information transfer is fundamentally different from energy transfer [08:17:00]. Once a pattern, like calculus, is invented, its transmission and copying are significantly less expensive than its initial creation [08:42:00].
Historically, face-to-face contact was crucial for mind-to-mind interaction due to the low quality of virtual communication [09:24:00]. This reliance on embodied collaboration drove the growth of cities and led to what Hall calls “cosmopolitan urbanism,” which can also manifest as imperialism [09:56:00]. Cities became attractive because they maximized the number of people in communication, leading to wealth and innovation [10:05:00]. The growth of cities, however, created new problems such as waste management and housing [10:46:00]. Solutions emerged through:
- Density technologies: Allowing more people in the same space (e.g., elevators) [12:21:00].
- Transportation technologies: Virtualizing space by increasing velocity (e.g., trains, streetcars) [13:53:00].
- Ephemerization of communication: Reducing the need for physical proximity (e.g., writing, printing press, digital media) [14:01:00].
The Rise of Digital Communication and the Tipping Point
The digital realm is unique because it can produce all forms of media, unlike previous analog forms [15:48:00]. Hall posits that a tipping point is near, if not already reached, where the quality of digital-mediated collaboration becomes sufficient to shift the center of collaboration away from embodied interaction [16:24:00]. This shift, potentially accelerated by events like the COVID-19 pandemic and technologies like Apple Vision Pro, signifies a transition as significant as the move from indigenous modes to civilization [17:06:00].
The Problems of Civilization and the Promise of Civium
While cities generated wealth and innovation, they also scaled “bad” things superlinearly, including madness, corruption, crime, and sickness [19:54:00]. Historically, cities were “net killers of people” until the late 19th century due to unhealthiness [20:21:00]. Addressing these required major institutional upgrades, such as the development of urban policing and sewage systems in Victorian London [21:24:00].
Hall argues that modern society is hitting the limits of its institutional forms, with rising crime, corruption (degradation of social institutions), and disease (like the COVID-19 pandemic) [24:07:00]. This crisis suggests a necessity for a major regime change, potentially solved by the shift towards the virtual [24:41:00].
The Civium Construct
The concept of civium envisions a future where the center of collaboration shifts to the virtual realm, enabling a massive decoupling of body and mind [25:15:00]. This virtual collaboration can involve more minds than any physical city, drawing collaborative capacity away from cosmopolitan urban environments [25:35:00].
The move to civium could unlock a capacity to re-establish human elements lost during the development of civilization [26:08:00]. Cities, despite their benefits, contribute to mental health issues like insanity and depression, and undermine cultural artifacts necessary for human well-being [26:21:00].
Hall emphasizes a return to the meso-scale, where individuals live in communities of 50 to 500 people they know well, allowing for high-dimensional, organic social support [28:51:00]. This contrasts with the anonymous and sterile relationships with the market and government that characterize modern urban life [29:32:00].
Quality over Quantity
The shift from civilization to civium can be seen as a move from quantity to quality, or “scaling heaps to growing living things” [30:36:00]. Metcalfe’s Law measures the potential value of a network, but the actual value depends on the quality of point-to-point connections [31:13:00].
The challenge lies in curating attention towards high-quality relationships rather than algorithms optimized for revenue (e.g., Facebook, TikTok) [32:32:00]. A world where attention is optimized for human well-being within planetary limits would be fundamentally different [34:13:00].
Topology of Civium
The civium model has two main dimensions:
- Downward (Physical/Embodied): Humans migrate into human-scale, humane, embodied congregations, ideally at Dunbar levels (around 150 people) [34:45:00]. This involves long-term embodiment in specific locations, fostering care for the place and adaptation to the environment [35:03:00]. This requires relearning how to be humans together and building new infrastructure and cultural artifacts [35:34:00]. These “humaning” individuals would be less emotionally volatile, more capable of dialogue, and possess deeper embodied wisdom [35:42:00].
- Upward (Virtual/Digital): Focus on the “quality dimension” of the virtual, designing algorithms and social media systems to optimize for the highest quality relationality and generative dialogue, rather than profit [36:02:00].
These two dimensions are highly compatible and mutually reinforcing [39:57:00]. Healthy, stable, and trusting groups are more creative [39:26:00]. The failure to integrate these could lead to technology consuming “the seed corn of humanity” [40:50:00], as evidenced by rising SSRI prescriptions, collapsing fertility, and suicide rates [41:12:00].
Challenges in Building Civium-like Communities
Hall notes that successfully transitioning to civium requires simultaneous personal change and institutional structure change [43:31:00]. He provides the example of “technological hygiene” (e.g., avoiding smartphones for children) being easier to maintain when supported by community norms and rules [43:57:00].
Jordan Hall’s attempts to build early-stage civium-like communities (similar to Jim Rutt’s “Proto Bees”) revealed significant difficulties [44:55:00].
The Problem of Aligned Values
One core issue is the difficulty of creating “aligned hierarchies of values” in cosmopolitan urban environments [47:11:00]. Modern urbanism often results in a “minimum viable communion” based on superficial preferences (e.g., nice cafes, good design) rather than deep, shared values [47:42:00]. This means people are often unwilling to truly commit or support each other when “the shit hits the fan” [48:33:00], unlike traditional meso-scale communities where support for family and neighbors is embedded [48:47:00].
The Challenge of Cultural Innovation
The second difficulty lies in fabricating a “whole or wholesome social environment” from scratch [50:16:00]. Unlike historical migrations where entire cultural architectures were copied, modern intentional communities attempt to innovate at the level of culture [50:49:00]. However, contemporary cultural toolkits are often dysfunctional, being the product of various “toxins” from civilization [51:26:00].
This led Hall to the realization that instead of creating entirely new “seeds” of culture, the approach should be to “pour water on plants that are already well-suited and arising in niches” [51:57:00]. His personal journey, involving physically moving his family and living with different groups, led to these hard-earned insights [52:11:00].
From Civium to Christian Faith
Hall’s challenges in community building eventually led him to reconsider the role of “religion” as the category that describes “how human beings go about cultivating communities that have strong bonds, communion, and have a shared orientation towards a hierarchy of values in a lived fashion that is durable” [53:57:00]. Initially, he approached this from an academic or design perspective, seeking to understand the design space of religion [01:03:52].
He notes that the contemporary secular understanding of terms like spirituality and religion is often impoverished or inverted [55:41:00]. Hall, who had previously been an agnostic leaning towards naturalism, began to explore these concepts more deeply [56:36:00]. This exploration involved acknowledging the real but non-physical (the “virtual”) and grappling with ideas of agency beyond strictly human beings, moving beyond an initial view that ideas like “Moloch” were merely complex, adaptive, but not agentic [59:08:00].
His journey ultimately led him to a small country church in Black Mountain, North Carolina [01:05:00]. He was struck by the palpable “aliveness, vitality, health, and wholesomeness” of the people, especially the young people, which he saw as the “gold standard” or “currency” of healthy community [01:13:00]. This experience, which he viewed as a successful “Proto-B” or civium in practice, triggered a crisis of conscience: he felt it would be immoral to participate in the community without genuinely engaging with their core beliefs [01:19:32].
This led to a deep dive into Christian theology and scripture [01:20:25]. Hall found that many of his previous intellectual objections stemmed from a misunderstanding or projection of the questions [01:41:00]. He found himself increasingly convinced by Christian doctrines, especially the Trinity, which he came to see as “compact, necessary, and sufficient components of any possible reality” [01:24:00].
This intellectual conviction, combined with the observed fruits of the community, led to his baptism [01:34:10]. He emphasizes that “faith” is not self-delusion but a “faculty” for navigating a particular relationship with reality that can be cultivated through practice [01:33:03].
His adoption of Christian beliefs, including a personal God, the divine creation of man (interpreted with nuance), and traditional gender roles (understood as a symmetrical commitment from the husband), stems from this deep engagement and observed positive outcomes in community [01:17:41]. He now views his spiritual journey as a lifelong exploration of discipleship and deepening his relationship with his church [01:54:00].