New Athens: The backstory
Bureaucratic holy war, hysterical communist lunatics, what the Amish know, the youths and their pitchforks, and San Francsico falling into the ocean (maybe). Also, Paul Kingsnorth.
I recently updated the About page on the New Athens website. There are a couple sections now, one called Backstory, which I’m sharing here too. In a past life I made webpages for large corporations. That experience left a sour taste in my mouth. Doing my best to make ammends here, folks...
Backstory
New Athens was instigated by me, Jackson Solway. Unlike most About pages, used by companies to paper over the chaos and associated felonies of their early days, I’d like to share the honest backstory on this whole endeavor. It’s somewhat interesting, and transparency is also valuable for its own sake: For anyone who’s drawn to the city, you deserve to know who’ll be pulling a lot of the strings, and for better or worse that’s me.
Five of my personal interests merged into New Athens.
Education reform
First, a few years ago I fell into the world of education reform. My oldest son had reached school age, and to avoid sending him to the local public school I dropped out of the tech industry and helped found a Classical charter school associated with Hillsdale College. A local activist called us “Trump’s new ultra-MAGA Christian Nationalist school,” and I caught eyebrows from some old coworkers. Whatever.
Importantly, I led school operations and waged an 18-month bureaucratic holy war to rid the school of screens. It basically worked, reading scores went through the roof, and I got to watch hundreds of old-school friendships blossom. Still makes me tear up.
On the other hand, outside school property I watched as the world grew—and grows—increasingly mad.
One day the thought crossed my mind: What does it mean for a school to cultivate students of high character, if the world they graduate into does not value people of high character? I know that’s hyperbole, but versions of this fear are shared widely in education circles. I’d seen school reform work—I was living it—so I started to think, very practically, about fixing whatever the thing is that’s bigger than a school. I eventually figured that’s what cities are.
(For clarity, the school I helped start was and is secular and non-partisan. If anything, it resembles the public school I attended in Seattle in the 90’s: books, math, pencils, paper, glue sticks, passing notes, screwing around at recess, etc. And not a screen in sight.)
The grandkids factor
Second, I want grandkids. If my wife and I can raise our boys to be anything besides cruel actual-racist lunatics, and they marry women who are anything besides hysterical communist lunatics, and we get some grandkids out of the equation, we win. The problem is that childhood in modern America pushes boys and girls to exactly those lunatic fringes.
If we’re going to get to grandkids, I realized I needed, somehow, to help repair the soil of childhood.
Humans vs. Machines (yea, we’re there)
Third, I came up with a theory we discuss a lot behind the scenes. I’m not sure how original this is (probably isn’t), but the theory is that disputes over the proper use of technology are accelerating just as fast as the AI industry, if not faster, and may spark a major social schism in the US, if not globally. One side will adopt the digital world as the real world, and the other side will step back from life online and recommit to physical reality. Not full-meal-deal Amish, but with a fundamental skepticism, in lieu of fundamental excitement, for new tech.
This schism will scramble politics—again. This is a big prediction that may not come true, but it’s been useful to ponder in fleshing out the basic contours of New Athens.
Steering human capital
Forth, I’ve long been intrigued by what America does with its “best and brightest,” as the saying goes.
In my lifetime there have been four destinations, always a blend of something cool and national strategy.
Before I was born, kids got funneled into the space race and winning the Cold War. Think: “I want to be an astronaut when I grow up!” When I was little, leaders of both political parties went all-in on financializing the economy, so the smart kids got funneled into finance and consulting jobs, notably on Wall Street. By the time I left home, with tech companies positioned to dominate the global economy, the destination was Silicon Valley. New mission: Start a company and change the world (in line with American interests).
Which takes us to today, and a big problem: The U.S. economy is all-on on AI, but AI companies do not hire young people.
When financialization led to millions of blue-collar jobs getting shipped overseas, at least smart kids in small towns had an out: go into private equity and get in on the game yourself…or if you weren’t that smart, join the “services economy.”
But the AI industry truly, fully broke the deal. Not only do AI companies not hire young people—they are building AI agents to replace entry-level workers. This tells me two things: 1) Young people are rightfully pissed, and 2) If they don’t see a path out soon, they’re going to turn to the thing all hopeless young people have turned to throughout history: political violence.
I have a better idea: before the youths finish sharpening their pitchforks and burn down the country, how about we set them to work rebuilding the America dream for themselves? Maybe build a city, or cities, in physical reality, recommitted to America’s founding values? Socially useful. Deeply rewarding. Hardest challenge there’s ever been, or ever will be. And maybe we won’t go extinct.
Have a sandwich (and don’t shoot me)
Finally, back in 2014 when I was living in San Francisco, I got scared the San Andreas fault would pop and the entire West Coast would fall into the ocean. It wasn’t just me—a bunch of scientists were saying it’s happened before and will happen again.
I Googled “prepper” and got a bunch of gun ads. The deeper you go down that rabbit hole, the more people you find with shipping containers full of ammo, fridges full of ill-gotten antibiotics, and overwhelming fear and paranoia. I made me feel bad.
But I like people, I reminded myself, so I came up with another idea: why not build a resilient community here in the good times, so when the bad times come the people with more guns than days of food will rather join the community than shoot everyone and take all our stuff? I got sidetracked with young kids for a decade, but in some respects New Athens is a revival of my desire to be helpful and thus joined, rather than useless and looted.
Bonus: Writers who inspire me
Along the way I’ve been inspired by…almost everything and everyone. Recently, I’ve been enjoying the writing and speaking of Mary Harrington, Paul Kingsnorth, Jonathan Haidt, Walter Kirn, Louise Perry, Rob Henderson, Charles Marohn, Eric Weinstein, Bret Weinstein, and Heather Heying.
Bonus #2: Communism sucks
At a later date I’ll write more about my brush with communism as a teenager, where, traveling alone in propaganda-plastered China, in the aftermath of man-made famine, I did not see a single adult man over 50 years old who rose above my shoulders. I was no giant at 5’9”—but they maxed around 5’3”. I recall searching an entire shopping mall in a regional city and not finding a single shirt large enough to fit me.
A few months later I visited the S-21 prison and Killing Fields in Cambodia, where I stood in front of a 25-foot pile of human skulls as the grandchildren of the dead tugged my pant leg, begging for money.
I’ve been asked, tongue-in-cheek, if I’m “excited to be in charge of a whole city.” I don’t love the word “excited” for any of this. I fear revolution in my bones and view government, in the first place, as a magnet for psychopaths. I’d live in the woods if I didn’t have children with their whole lives ahead of them.