Return to the Land Conference speech:

Hello my friends and all attendees of the intentional communities conference. I want to begin by thanking Aarvoll for inviting me to speak. My credentials are nowhere near those of some other speakers here and I'm honored to have a chance to share my thoughts and perspectives on some of the unique challenges that intentional community-building entails. For those who don't know me, my name is Michael Huttner, I have a youtube channel named "Apollonian Germ" and my main topic of interest is what might be termed "cryptocracy". The more I delved into history, the more I came to the understanding that so much of our world has been shaped by and is currently controlled by wealthy, resourceful, ruthlessly committed groups of people, working behind and beyond the visible system of governance. Incidentally, this is the main reason I support intentional communities– if government is run by secret societies, then engaging in democratic political action will not be as effective as we might hope.

 But anyway, this presentation is basically divided into 2 sections—1. why secret societies have been crucial to almost all projects of statecraft in history, and 2. What techniques can we apply in building intentional communities. In other words, If we approach secret societies as an ancient technology of power and statecraft, what can we adopt to our advantage without compromising our core values?