[An ethereal library, outside time. TOYNBEE sits at a round table with three empty chairs. He adjusts his spectacles, reviews notes.]
TOYNBEE: Twenty-one civilizations I have catalogued and traced— From genesis to breakdown, each one run its race. The pattern holds consistent: creative minorities rise, Then calcify to dominance, their vision ossified.
But here’s the crisis, friends: we’re in the gap between— Civ Twenty-One is crumbling, Twenty-Two’s not yet been seen. So I’ve convened three founders who have bridged such gulfs before— Who broke from dying orthodoxies, built on something more.
(Thunder. WASHINGTON enters, in Continental Army uniform, but moves with hip-hop swagger)
WASHINGTON: Yo, I walked away from power—twice!—they thought I’d lost my mind, Could’ve been a king, a dictator, Cincinnatus redefined. But I surrendered my commission, set a precedent in motion, Turned power into practice, made restraint into devotion.
The republic that I founded lasted centuries, it’s true— But now it’s proceduralized, commodified right through. The practices are empty, just a shell of what we made— So why’d you call me here, sir? What foundation must be laid?
TOYNBEE: Exactly why I need you. Sit. We’ve two more still to come.
(Cathedral bells. CHARLEMAGNE enters in royal regalia, moving with courtly gravitas)
CHARLEMAGNE: I forged an empire from the fragments Rome had left behind, Three hundred years of darkness, tribal chaos, undefined. The Church alone survived the fall, preserved what could be saved— I wed it to the warrior code, a synthesis engraved.
Crowned emperor by the Pope, I fused the temporal and divine, Established schools and scriptoria, standardized the Latin line. My Christendom endured a thousand years before it fell— But monasteries were the key—those communities that dwelled
In prayer and work and rhythm, forming souls and not just minds— THAT’S how practices survive when civilizations die.
WASHINGTON: Monasteries? That’s your answer? Brother, times have changed— We tried the Church and crown together, watched it rearranged. My revolution was against that very synthesis you built— Separation of the powers, or the whole thing starts to tilt!
CHARLEMAGNE: You separated what should join! You splintered the sacred whole— Made politics procedure, left formation of the soul To private choice and markets—now you wonder where meaning went? When practices need institutions that transcend mere government!
TOYNBEE: Gentlemen, gentlemen! You’re both correct, you see— Washington, you founded in continuity’s embrace, Charlemagne, you founded crossing discontinuity’s space.
The question for Civ Twenty-Two is which predicament we face— And that’s why I’ve convened one more—
(Softer light. AUGUSTINE enters, barefoot, carrying scrolls, moving with the weight of sorrow)
AUGUSTINE: I watched Rome fall. I wept. I saw the vandals at the gates, the empire that had kept The peace for centuries crumble into dust and flame— And Christians asked me: “Where is God? Who’s left for us to blame?”
I wrote The City of God while Rome burned in my heart— Not to restore the empire, that was finished from the start, But to imagine something other than mere earthly power’s reach— A city made of love, not force, a practice we could teach
Across the ruins, through the dark, beyond the nation’s fall— A way of being human that transcends the temporal sprawl. I didn’t found a government—I founded a desire, A reorientation of the soul, a purifying fire.
WASHINGTON: You gave them something to become when everything had died.
AUGUSTINE: I showed them that the empire’s fall was not where hope resides. That empires rise and fall, but something underneath remains— The question of what humans love, and what our love sustains.
ACT II: THE DIAGNOSIS
TOYNBEE: So here’s our situation, gentlemen, as clear as I can state— Civ Twenty-One, the Westphalian order, approaches terminal state:
The nation-state is obsolete for problems we now face— Climate, AI, pandemics leap across borders into space. The market has commodified resistance and critique— Even meaning-making’s sold as product of the week. The procedure has replaced all praxis and formation— We’ve bureaucratized the soul right out of every institution. The universities credential but they do not form— No shared curriculum exists, no classical norm. The churches are optional, aesthetic, consumed like brands— No formative community with existential demands.
The question isn’t WHETHER Twenty-One will fall—it’s falling now. The question is: what practices, what Semaxis, and how?
WASHINGTON: When I was founding, we had institutions that were sound— The Church, the university, the civic culture ‘round. I just needed new political forms, the rest could stay intact— But if you’re saying ALL of that is broken, cracked, and hacked?
Then I’m the wrong model for the moment that you’re in.
CHARLEMAGNE: Agreed. Your situation’s closer to the one I faced— Not reform but founding, not continuity but break. When Rome fell, nothing remained except the Church’s trace— The monasteries alone could hold formation in that space.
AUGUSTINE: But even I had the Church! It survived Rome’s fall intact— Bishops, liturgy, the sacraments, an institutional fact. The question I hear Toynbee asking is more radical still: What if no institutions from Civ Twenty-One fulfill
The role that Church and monastery played when Rome was done? What if the continuity mechanism itself is gone?
TOYNBEE: EXACTLY! That’s the crisis! Let me break it down for you—
But Modernity to… what? What institutions can survive? Universities are credentialing factories, barely alive. Churches are consumer choices, markets in belief— No shared formation, no continuity, no relief.
So we’re in a Charlemagne situation—discontinuity, collapse— But without a monastery system to preserve across the gaps!
ACT III: THE BLUEPRINT
CHARLEMAGNE: The monasteries worked because they had specific traits— Let me enumerate them, see if something resonates:
Decommodified: You couldn’t buy your way to God’s embrace— Vows of poverty ensured that markets had no place.
Embodied practice: Not just ideas but daily physical rhythm— Liturgy of hours, the labor, life lived with ’em.
Formative power: They didn’t teach, they transformed what you became— Years of practice changed your being, not just changed your name.
Universal reach: They spread across all territories and tribes— Latin liturgy connected them despite what law prescribes.
Sustainable: They lasted centuries, reproduced, survived— Through war and plague and famine, somehow stayed alive.
Transmitted practice: Scribes copied manuscripts by hand— The knowledge and the practices spread across the land.
WASHINGTON: Okay, but here’s my question: those were total institutions, right? You gave up everything to join—your property, your life. In modernity we’ve got this thing called individual freedom, see— People won’t submit to that, they want autonomy.
CHARLEMAGNE: And look where that’s gotten you! Fragmented, alone, adrift— Freedom without formation is just market-driven shift From one consumable identity to the next branded choice— Your “freedom” is exactly why your people have no voice!
WASHINGTON: Hey, I believe in freedom! I just fought a war for it! But formed by civic virtue, classical ideals and grit— The problem isn’t freedom, it’s that we stopped forming souls Into citizens who’d sacrifice for republican goals.
AUGUSTINE: You’re both describing symptoms of a deeper civilizational disease— The question isn’t monasteries versus liberty’s degrees. The question is: what practices can form Post-Westphalian souls When neither force nor markets nor procedure can make whole?
Let me ask it differently: What did each of us create That wasn’t just political structures or the church-and-state?
I created reordered love: A way to love the City of God more Than earthly kingdoms, which made empire’s fall endurable.
CHARLEMAGNE: I created synthesized identity: Warrior and monk and scholar fused— A way of being European that the tribes could use To transcend their fragmentation, build a common world.
WASHINGTON: I created voluntary limitation: Power surrendered, precedent unfurled— A practice of restraint that formed political character Where virtue mattered more than victory’s sweet nectar.
TOYNBEE: Yes! Yes! You’re getting it! It’s not the institutions per se— It’s the PRACTICES those institutions allowed to be lived each day!
The monasteries mattered not because they were total or enclosed, But because they created practices that reordered what one chose!
So for Toynbee Twenty-Two, we don’t need to recreate The monastery, the republic, or the Christianized state—
We need to ask: What practices can form Post-Westphalian humans Who can coordinate beyond nations, markets, procedures—new domains?
ACT IV: THE SEMAXIS WE NEED NEXT
WASHINGTON: Alright, so let’s get practical. What practices specifically? What can survive collapse, form people, scale universally?
CHARLEMAGNE: And what institutions—even minimal ones—hold these practices intact When everything around them falls? What’s the infrastructure fact?
AUGUSTINE: And most important: what desire, what love, what reorientation Makes people choose these practices over commodification?
TOYNBEE: And this is where our skit must end—or rather, where it starts— Because the answer to their questions isn’t written in my charts.
The practices of Twenty-Two can’t be designed by those Who founded Twenty-One, Twenty, Nineteen—how history flows Means each civilization’s practices emerge from its own challenge-and-response, Its own creative minority discovering the course.
But we can offer principles—constraints—a blueprint’s frame—
ALL TOGETHER:
Must be embodied, not just ideas—body on the line!
Must be decommodified—outside market’s bottom line!
Must form persons, not inform them—transformation’s key!
Must scale beyond the national—post-territorial, free!
Must be voluntary but demanding—chosen, not just consumed!
Must generate new meaning—existentially assumed!
Must survive without the substrate of Civ Twenty-One—
Must work when procedure, market, nation-state are done!
TOYNBEE: So what ARE these practices? I’ll tell you what I see— Not answers but directions, possibilities—
AUGUSTINE: Communities of reordered desire—where what we love is changed— Not consuming experiences but formation that’s sustained Through daily practice, over years, in physical proximity— Teaching us to love beyond the market’s false delivery.
CHARLEMAGNE: Practices of synthesis—fusing what modernity split— Mind and body, work and prayer, the local and the infinite. Not choosing either/or but holding tension in creative play— New forms of life that bridge what procedure pushed away.
WASHINGTON: Rituals of power-surrender—where we voluntarily constrain What we could take, what we could keep, what we could claim and gain. Making limitation itself into a formative act— Practicing restraint until it’s what our character enacts.
TOYNBEE: And all of this must happen in networks, not in nations— Post-territorial communities, cross-border formations. Digital and physical, the local and the global fused— New forms of coordination that can’t be nation-state-reduced.
The monasteries of Twenty-Two won’t look like those of Twenty— They might be:
Ritual communities practicing what embodiment can teach.
ALL TOGETHER (FINAL CHORUS):
We cannot found Twenty-Two—we can only point the way! The creative minority that’s needed isn’t us today! But we can tell you what we learned from founding what we founded:
That practices precede institutions, not the way you’d think— First comes the reorientation, the existential brink, Then come the people willing to be formed by what they do— And only then institutions that can hold these practices through!
So don’t start with structure, start with Semaxis— The embodied act that makes meaning, the practice that won’t fix Into procedure or commodity or nostalgic past— The existential risk that’s costly but will last!
TOYNBEE: The founders of Civ Twenty-Two are in the room right now— Not us, but YOU—if you can hear what practices allow. We’re between the civilizations, in the gap, the interregnum— The question isn’t whether you’ll found something but: will venom
Or creation win? Will dominant minorities cling and proceduralize Until complete collapse? Or will creative minorities arise To build the practices that bridge the discontinuity we face— The Semaxis that makes Toynbee Twenty-Two take place?
(All four freeze. Lights fade on them. A single spotlight on the empty center chair—meant for the audience.)
VOICE OVER: The Semaxis we need next Can’t be decreed or designed. It can only be lived By those willing to pay What meaning costs:
Everything that can be priced, For what cannot be bought.
[END OF SKIT]
Coda: What Now?
The café is closed. The founders have spoken. The blueprint is sketched.
But blueprints don’t build buildings. Practices don’t practice themselves. Civilizations don’t found themselves.
The Semaxis Society—if it is to be more than a thought experiment— Must become a lived experiment.
Not a discussion of what practices we need, But the practices themselves.
Not a theory of Post-Westphalian formation, But the formation happening.
Not waiting for institutions to emerge, But embodying what institutions might preserve.
The question is not: “What would Toynbee 22 look like?”
The question is: “What are you doing tomorrow that costs enough to mean something?”
And then: “Who else is doing it with you?”
And then: “How do you transmit what you’re learning?”
And then: “Can it survive without you?”
And then: “Can it survive the collapse?”
If the answer to all five is yes, You might be founding something.
If not, You’re still consuming.
The interregnum is now. The founders are needed. The practices are unknown.
