Anacyclosis is a Framework not a Prophecy
An unplanned follow-up to my piece on the Founders' relationship to democracy.
"Such is the cycle of political revolution, the course appointed by nature in which constitutions change, disappear, and finally return to the point from which they started. Anyone who clearly perceives this may indeed in speaking of the future of any state be wrong in his estimate of the time the process will take, but if his judgement is not tainted by animosity or jealousy, he will very seldom be mistaken as to the stage of growth or decline it has reached, and as to the form into which it will change." — Polybius
“Perhaps the reason we were so surprised in 2016 was because it was the opening act of the story, not the final one. That Donald Trump was not Julius Caesar, he was Sulla. The harbinger of what was to come in another ten, twenty, thirty — maybe even a hundred years.” — Krugius
I am a big fan of the Ancient Greece Declassified podcast hosted by Jack Visinjic, and a recent episode on Polybius’ Grand Unified Theory of History really caught my ear, as it related closely to what I discussed in my post If We Save Democracy, Will It Save Us? Much of the episode centered around a theory known as anacyclosis:
The word anacyclosis has been variously translated as “the cycle of political revolution” and “the cycle of the constitutions” [the word “constitution” means “government” in this context]. In short, the theory states that the six regime archetypes that the Greeks identified and which we still use today (monarchy, tyranny, aristocracy, oligarchy, democracy, and ochlocracy or mob-rule) each represent different stages of one long process of political evolution.
There’s many variations to how this ancient theory of cyclical history gets explained, but they all fit a framework similar to anacyclosis. In my piece for instance, I stated that the Founders based our government on the “three pillars” of government from the classical texts: the one, the few, and the many. I also noted that each of these three pillars could have a positive iteration (monarchy, aristocracy, democracy) or a negative iteration (tyranny, oligarchy, ochlocracy).
Note that in this scenario, “aristocracy” does not have the negative connotations it carries today. Yes, it is elite rule, but here it represents a noble, educated elite who are the most fit for the job and actually care about the good of society. Today, “aristocracy” merely conjures up images of rich assholes concerned with holding onto their privilege and wealth by any means necessary — which would actually be a description of “oligarchy.”
There were two items that really stood out to me when reading Jack Visinjic’s blogs on anacyclosis (links to which are in the show notes for the Polybius podcast). One was the notion that there is a lot of resistance among both scholars and regular-ass people in the West to the idea of “cyclical history,” even though it is far more accepted by societies of the East.
I too have noticed this skepticism against cyclical history by Americans, but I did not realize that there were many scholars that rejected these ideas as well. Visinjic even recalled a moment when anacyclosis was brought up in one of his classes, and the professor flippantly mocked the idea and got his students to join him in laughing about it.
What surprises me most about this is that there was one group of Americans that took this notion of cyclical history seriously, and they were the Founding Fathers. They were steeped in the classics and specifically (though not solely) put a lot of stock in Polybius. Not that they were all in total agreement on the validity of these ideas, or which writers to admire and which to ignore, but they still took this history very seriously. So why would the Founders heed these lessons, while subsequent generations of Americans ignored them? Especially since it is common practice for most Americans to fall all over themselves trying to prove that they revere the Founding Fathers more than the next guy?
The second item Visinjic mentioned is something I never really considered, probably because I tend to focus on “modern” history (from the Enlightenment era of the 1700s up to today). I certainly have dipped my toe in things like the Reformation, Crusades, and Ottoman Empire; but I really prefer to live in the era of “modern” history because of its relevance to my present-day. The one exception to this is my increasing obsession with the ancient Greeks and Romans — which I’m now realizing may have a lot to do with the fact that it is the only thoroughly studied and well-documented society that resembles our modern world.
While this paradigm shift [from monarchies to constitutional governments] may have happened in many places since time immemorial, there are only three instances in history where it happened on a large scale and for which extensive written evidence survives.
Those three instances are 1) the ancient Mediterranean, which saw over a thousand city-states (not only Greek but also Phoenician, Etruscan, and Italic) move away from monarchical rule, 2) northern Italy in the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance, where a handful of republics emerged, and 3) the modern wave of republics that started with the American and French Revolutions and has now spread to much of the globe.1
Based on our research, the first postulate we would like to propose is that constitutional regimes come and go in groups or “waves.” In other words, with few possible exceptions, one does not find isolated democracies or republics popping up here and there across history. Rather, when they appear, they appear in clusters of interconnected societies that all transition away from monarchy within a relatively short historical period.
Our research suggests that the very same forces which drive the shift from one-man-rule [the one] to a republic [the few] will eventually cause a further diffusion of power resulting in a democracy [the many] if they continue over an extended period of time… Most states do not make it that far in the cycle before some crisis or stress factor causes a reset. [See the following footnote for a deeper explanation of what these "forces" consist of.]2
Democracy in the strict sense has only ever emerged in two waves—one in the ancient Mediterranean ecosystem of republics [ancient Greece and its adjacent states] and the other during the modern wave of republics currently unfolding today (the much smaller wave of medieval Italian republics was evidently too short-lived to produce democracy).
When a state first makes the leap from autocracy to republic, it rarely ever exhibits the features of a full democracy right away… When considering how “democratic” a republic is, it is important to keep in mind that there is no universal metric by which democracy is measured… There has never been a democracy in history whose government did not also include non-democratic features.
There are some cases where an autocracy suddenly becomes a democracy [skipping aristocracy], but this usually happens through the help or intervention of a foreign (usually democratic) power, as happened with South Korea and Japan after WWII.
I actually think that South Korea is an bad example to use here because it was initially characterized by decades of autocratic government under Syngman Rhee and Park Chung-Hee, and then took another decade to truly democratize after Park Chung-Hee’s assassination. I would also argue that the American presence in South Korea did very little to facilitate its transition to democracy (unlike Japan and Germany), although admittedly it has been a while since I initially studied the two Koreas.
Furthermore, I think it is important to note that in the case of Japan, it required an unconditional surrender in order for an outside power to successfully impose democracy. Examples like Iraq have tended to make me believe that you cannot successfully do what we did with Japan (and Germany) without the acquiescence of the populace — and you cannot achieve that acquiescence without a complete (and preferably voluntary) subjugation of the people by the occupying power. This is simply not something modern democracies have the stomach for any longer, as the idea of “benevolent conquerors” has become an antiquated notion. After all, the only figures comfortable with the act of conquest are not likely to be very benevolent.
And just to be clear, I do think that is a good thing — but it does also mean that we have a very, very limited capacity to move foreign nations away from autocracy and towards democracy. This has created a problem for modern democracies who must constantly determine the cost-benefit analysis between having a foreign policy that is moral but ineffectual, versus one that is influential but destructive.
A friend and I were recently discussing a post in Adam Tooze’s Chartbook on fascism, where Tooze wondered if the use (or overuse) of the f-word to describe current political trends was becoming problematic:
If the aim of the game in talking about fascism in the 21st century is actually to suggest real similarities with the movements of a century ago and to draw practical political conclusions from such inferred similarities, the exercise is likely to prove misleading and unhelpful. The conditions of the 21st century in both Europe and the United States are radically different from those prevailing in Italy in 1922 and so too are the movements that emerge in response to those conditions.
My friend felt that Tooze was correct in this assessment and I agreed. However, I did add a bit of a caveat to my agreement:
I do think the comparison to today can have some illumination. With fascism, I do think the mentality of the people who support Trump is very similar to the people who supported fascism. But the regimes are not the same, and that's worth thinking about.
For instance, most Nazi supporters didn't think voting for the Nazi Party was a vote for WWII or the Holocaust. They never saw that coming and that's not what made them support the Nazis. I’ve even seen testimonials from Germans in the ‘30s who said the Nazi rhetoric on Jews was just political theater. Those Germans admitted to disliking such rhetoric, but they never believed it would lead to anything vicious.
Similarly, most people didn't vote for Trump because they were thinking, “Man, I hope this guy instigates a riot on the Capitol one day.” So sometimes the regime is not actually the point — the point is figuring out what makes regular-ass people support such a regime. The left always had a problem there in that they were constantly reacting to Trump himself, while the right was actually reacting to their fellow Trump supporters.
Likewise, it is equally silly when modern conservatives compare modern progressivism to the regimes of Stalin and Mao. As if “socialism” inevitably leads to Siberian Gulags. Even the far-left movements of today are still very different than the sans-culottes of the French Revolution, or the Red Guards of Mao’s Cultural Revolution. But at the same time, I do believe you can illuminate your understanding of the people who follow modern left movements by analyzing those historical movements. You get closer to understanding the mentality and motivations that make people go down that kind of a path (and whether or not they could go down that path again today).
This is why I’m so fascinated with ancient Greece & Rome. It’s obviously a very different world than today, and yet I feel like I learn so much about today when I’m studying it.
[I then recited how our current era and ancient Greece were the only two well-documented periods in history where people actually ruled themselves.]
That’s so interesting to me. Because if it was only our era, I’d be inclined to say, “Wow, everything has changed now. So why worry about the past?” But the fact that this world that was some 2,000 years before ours, had the same state of affairs as we do is fucking fascinating. And it’s a little concerning that it all collapsed in on itself and in a way that really resembles what is happening today. And it’s not just democracy – issues like capitalism, communism, welfare, income inequality, disinformation, conspiracies, cancel culture – that was all there too.
I do want to single out income inequality in that list as a very important part of anacyclosis. Stable republics / democracies tend to become very prosperous, but this prosperity always gets distributed unequally. So, even though everyone in the society benefits in some way, the ones at the top benefit at an exponentially greater rate. Thus, over time the gap between the top and the bottom (and even between the top and the middle classes) gets wider and wider — and this inequality eventually erodes the stability of said government.
Another important feature of anacyclosis was the phenomenon of “elite overproduction,” which Visinjic describes as being when “the number of elites in any given society tends to grow so large that it destabilizes the state.” This also leads to “the number of ‘elite aspirants’—people clamoring for elite status—in any society continuing to grow, even when the population overall stabilizes… Thus, a growing number of elites start vying with one another for the short supply of high-status positions. This in turn usually leads to elite infighting, the formation of factions, and eventually civil war.”
Now, the citations from the classical texts seem to infer that this phenomenon is caused by the rich having the most children. They note how the elites “continue to procreate as before because they can afford to,” which “creates an increasingly large group at the top who want to enjoy as much wealth and prestige as their parents had.” However, I did not like the notion that this was all about baby-making, because that doesn’t feel applicable to today. It would make sense in the olden times when infant mortality was extremely high, and therefore only children of the rich would survive in great numbers. However, I don’t think that is what todays’s “elite overproduction” is based on.
A women named Judith Stove commented on Visinjic’s blog (she appears to be a classics scholar herself) and I think she broke it down better than I could:
Does the expression ‘elite overproduction’ refer to elites having more offspring than other classes, or tending to ‘reproduce’ by recruiting similar types of people into their enterprises? If the former, it wouldn’t seem to have been borne out in history: remarkably many elite families in England in the 17th-19th centuries failed to produce legit heirs… ‘The rich get richer, and the poor get children’ is a saying with some foundation in historical fact. If the latter, then we can certainly see such a pattern playing out today, I would say, as corporations and institutions recruit in their own (elite) images. Perhaps it doesn’t matter – the main point being the increase in elites, overall.
I think this actually states it better. People competing in institutions like academia, journalism, government, business, media, entertainment, politics, etc. clamor for positions of prominence and those institutions continue to recruit in their own images: “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.”
The new generation of elites have also not “earned” it the way their predecessors had to. Not dissimilar to how the first generation of immigrants to this country are made of tougher stuff than their children, or their children’s children (which is why I tend to think most immigrants are more “American” than most Americans are). Meanwhile, an increasing number of those “elite aspirants” grow jealous and expect more spots for themselves since their society is prospering: “If the country is getting so goddamn rich, than why aren’t we?”
I think the problem today is really more about the narrative of “elite overproduction” combined with the reality of an excess of “elite aspirants.” Everyone wants to be a star in America. Everyone wants to live the good life. America is a nation that loves to produce an excessive number of overly-ambitious ladder-climbers regardless of how many spots for the over-achievers there actually are.
I also think this phenomenon ties into a lot of the frustration we hear from today’s youth (particularly of the younger middle-class). We raised them with the narrative that America is the land of plenty, and “you can be whatever you set your mind to.” We told them everyone can get rich in America, and any kid can grow up to become president. Then those kids got older and realized that they were not going to having nearly as many opportunities as their parents had; and when they dared to point out that fact out to us, we simply told them to stop whining and get to work.
A society has to be able to deliver on what it promises (or over-promises), because there will be turmoil and uprisings if the expectations of your citizens are not met. This is why the over-promising of the far-left types tends to make me uncomfortable with their vision of government. It is the ultimate example of “over-promising,” and the consequences of it feel pretty easy to predict to me.
Visinjic also spilled a fair amount of ink breaking down the story of America through the lens of anacyclosis, and it was fairly congruent with my own. “The Framers deliberately designed the U.S. constitution as a mixed form of government so that it would resist the effects of anacyclosis,” he writes. “As one can see in this essay by John Adams, they were inspired by Polybius, who had eloquently argued that the reason the Roman republican constitution had proved so robust and long-lasting was that it combined elements of all three ‘good’ archetypes (viz. monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy).”
The American Revolution was the moment when we felt our monarchy had descended into tyranny (although I tend to think we vastly overreacted to just how “tyrannical” King George III had become), so we overthrew it and established an aristocracy. Because without a doubt, our initial government after the Constitution was definitely rule by the “meritocratic” elite (perpetuated by limiting the right to vote to white, property-owning males) and not a democracy yet.
Many scholars (myself included) have argued that the reason these elites got together to form the Constitution was to create a stronger, national government because they believed the nation was suffering from “too much democracy,” and they worried it was leading to ochlocracy (chaos and mob-rule).
Visinjic was able to put this same notion in classical terms: “According to Aristotle, Polybius, and other ancient thinkers, an aristocracy is a constitutional state which is ruled by the few and where—this is key—the few are not merely the rich. There is some other standard(s) by which rulers are selected. America resembled an aristocracy early on because it was a constitutional republic ruled by men who had distinguished themselves in learning and/or in service to their country.”
The 19th century soon saw the rise of political party bosses and pay-to-play politics which led to something that looked far more like an oligarchy. This trend was accelerated by the crony capitalism, monopolies, and “robber barons” of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era.
This trend toward oligarchy coincided with a rise in democracy, first during the Andrew Jackson era, followed by another sharp democratic turn after the Civil War, and finally in the New Deal / post-WWII era. It is not uncommon for these two trends (oligarchy and democracy) to happen concurrently with one another, as the rise of the oligarchy is often what makes the people want to abandon aristocratic-elite rule and start to govern themselves in the first place. As the Anacyclosis Institute noted, “When a middle class obtains political rights for its military or fiscal contributions, alongside oligarchy emerges democracy.”3
The period between 1860 and 1920 [Gilded Age & Progressive Era] was not only highly unequal but also quite violent, according to data analyzed by historian Peter Turchin. Besides the Civil War, there were many riots, labor strikes, massacres (such as the Ludlow massacre), and political violence (e.g. the assassinations of presidents Lincoln and McKinley [he forgot to mention James Garfield too]).
During the second half of the 19th century, America continually experienced two of the three factors that, we said, lead to democracy, viz. economic growth [coupled with growing inequality] and colonization (of the West). The one key factor it did not experience was intense competition with the other rich and powerful states. That all changed with WWI and WWII.
I would correct something here: I feel that 19th century America did in fact have intense competition with other states, but it was the conflict between America’s own states (mainly North vs South but also East vs West). And it’s worth remembering that each state in America was comparable to a nation in Europe, with each one having their own government, economy, and culture.
A friend of mine once asked me, “Do you ever think that when the South seceded from the Union, we should have just let them go?” My answer was that by doing so, we would have only condemned ourselves to fight the Civil War primarily in the West rather than primarily in the East. The North and the South were both expanding nations, and neither was about to quietly give up territory to the other. I truly believe the wars of expansion in Europe that eventually culminated in World War I would have happened here in America if the Civil War had not settled the issue.
That being said, I do think the World Wars were a turning point that brought America to the pinnacle of world hegemony. Particularly after WWII, when we officially become the king of the hill in a new world order. As Visinjic notes, “The democratic element within America’s mixed government became more prominent during the post-WW2 era. That is when inequality dropped dramatically, the middle class boomed, and political equality and voting rights were expanded more than ever before.” In other words, the post-WWII era was the high-point of American democracy.
However, as it was with Athens, this wonderful and prosperous democratic world did not mean much to those who were on the outside looking in. If you were not considered a “citizen” (as the Athenians did with women and slaves), or if you were treated as a “second-class citizen” (as the United States did to blacks), then democracy does not carry the same reverence for you that it does for others — and that will inevitably lead to some serious cracks in your democratic foundation.
Today, the middle class has been hollowed out, inequality is rapidly reaching Gilded Age levels, and our elites are more divided than they have been since the Civil War. Thus, one could say that our government is degenerating into democracy’s vicious twin: ochlocracy. What are the visible features of an ochlocracy? According to Polybius they are the subversion of free speech, the formation of political mobs, and the emergence of demagogues who pander to their mobs. (Histories 6.9.5)
I should note that in the podcast version, they pointed out that Polybius had also stated that in a democracy the people “set a high value on equality and freedom of speech.” Visinjic then elaborated on this thought:
Here, we’re right back in Plato’s territory. Because Plato says that in a democracy, equality and freedom of speech become the religion. And while this is fantastic and divinely sweet in the short run, Plato (and Polybius) think that when you optimize for those two ideals at the expense of everything else, you have an unsustainable system.4
The U.S. is showing an interesting (and competitive) example of this in our current political divide. One side seems to have an overly zealous love of freedom of speech, while openly disdaining equality (particularly attempts by the government to try and affect equality). On the other side, equality is revered, and policies meant to affect equality are pursued zealously, while freedom of speech is openly scorned as an outmoded ideal. Perhaps it is exactly this bitter competition between these two “religions” that creates the unsustainable society Plato and Polybius warned about?
If there is a moment when our society really starts to show signs of a tilt from democracy to ochlocracy, I would say it’s the late ‘60s and ‘70s (which, not coincidentally, reminds me a lot of our current era). Not only is it when people gain an even greater say in who holds power, but it is the moment when faith in our elite institutions is completely shattered.
The strife around the Civil Rights movement (and later race riots) creates a stark divide between those bravely attempting to end the vile practice of second-class citizenry for blacks, and those who think the turmoil of the protest movements went too far and created just as many problems as they alleviated. I personally believe it also intertwined ideological politics with issues of race, which has been extremely detrimental to our society.
The Vietnam War is another major turning point. In studies of anacyclosis, wars can actually be beneficial to creating democracies because “the elites will give concessions to the commoners in an attempt to raise troops, boost morale, or reward troops who have made great sacrifices for the state. One can see this even in recent American history in the case of the GI Bill, which rewarded Americans who fought in WWII [unless they were black] and helped create the largest middle class in history.”
This is not what happened in Vietnam. There was a draft which forced young men to fight with little to no rewards in return. The image of WWII vets consists of families that got a free ticket to suburban prosperity; while the image of Vietnam vets is that of the traumatized, the drug-addicted, the homeless, etc. Some of this may be more narrative than reality, but as I continually say — the narrative often has a far greater influence on society than the reality does.
The Vietnam War was also extremely controversial and thus did not create a “rally around the flag” effect. The Cold War had given Americans something to unite behind, but Vietnam ended that solidarity while also showing Americans that the emperor had no clothes when it came to “the best and the brightest” in American foreign policy. (And of course, the Iraq War would do the exact same thing to our brief, unifying moment after 9/11.)
In addition, you have a growing trend of unsubstantiated conspiracies linked to things like the Kennedy assassination and Hoffa disappearance; but you also have the revelation of real conspiracies via the Pentagon Papers, Watergate, the Church Committee — the revelation of CIA coups and assassinations in foreign countries, bribery and perjury at the highest levels of government, FBI wiretapping, COINTELPRO, MK-Ultra, and on and on. Our elites and their institutions had been thoroughly discredited and would continue to be discredited in the years to come. These institutions were now being called into question not just by the “tinfoil hat” crowd, but by Americans from all walks of life.
The country may not have formed up into concrete political mobs at that moment, but we absolutely started segregating into political tribes; and you best believe that wannabe-demagogues started to take notice. Like in the final days of Roman Republic, we are finding people rallying behind various different factions, while “designing men” fiercely compete for the right to command those factions in the coming political war.
All of this being said, I do think it’s important to emphasize that anacyclosis is a framework, not a prophecy. As I often mention: nothing in history is inevitable. Taking this framework seriously does not mean we have to feel defeated and hopeless, nor panicked and anxious. We all have agency here, but we have to at least know what we’re up against. I want people to take an interest in the ancient democracies because it is my hope that by a better understanding of their history, it will give us a greater opportunity to write our own.
RELATED LINKS:
If you’re interested in this topic, I am reprinting the links for these episodes and definitely encourage you giving them a listen:
Polybius’ Grand Unified Theory of History — Ancient Greece Declassified
Plato’s Republic Book VIII — Ancient Greece Declassified
If you want to go even deeper, here are some other links (not mentioned above) which are also worth checking out.
Short Excerpts From Key Historical Texts — Anacyclosis Institute
“America’s Greco-Roman Legacies” with Caroline Winterer — Ancient Greece Declassifed
“A History of Inequality” with Walter Scheidel — Ancient Greece Declassified
Jack Visinjic’s Three-Part Blog on Anacyclosis: Part I, Part II, Part III
Visinjic does note other examples from smaller, less-understood (even indigenous) societies where archaeological discoveries point to evidence of “republics” and “democracies” existing there in some form as well. However, we obviously know far less about them than we do about the three examples he gave.
He also noted that (in reference to those three examples he gave) “as far as we know, there is no major study comparing these three waves of republics in an effort to figure out what common factors may be at work. We find this surprising. If there is such a comparative work that we are unaware of, please let us know in the comments below.”
These three factors are described in this passage: “Most republics, we said, emerge within clusters of wealthy states that experience 1) rapid and prolonged economic growth, 2) intense inter-competition between the states of the cluster [e.g., the various nations of Europe or the not-so-united states of America], and 3) some form of colonization [which he differentiates from “colonialism”] that acts as a pressure-release valve to ease the tensions caused by overpopulation and elite overproduction… We argued that republics are rare in history because these three factors rarely coincide over extended periods of time.”
For those wondering, this is how Visinjic differentiates between colonization and colonialism: “[Colonization] should not be confused with colonialism. While medieval Venice and many modern European powers engaged in predatory and extortionary practices associated with the latter term, the ancient Greeks and Phoenicians engaged in colonization—i.e. the founding of new colonies—in ways that did not involve the subjugation of local peoples. They did this by settling areas of sea-coast that were of little value to local tribes, who often welcomed the founding of a new trading hub that offered access to international goods.”
I would also note that point (1) on “rapid and prolonged economic growth” references a problem I have thought a lot about: How do you sustain a society that is reliant on endless growth? Our economy is always considered to be doing well when it is growing, and to be failing when growth stagnates. But for some reason, none of the commentators and academics I admire seem to agree with me that a society reliant on “endless growth” is not going to be endlessly sustainable. Not sure why that thought is considered so controversial, yet it appears to be the case.
Visinjic also noted at another point that “when the middle class goes away, so does democracy, as observed already by Aristotle (Politics 1295a-1297a).”
Warning — this footnote is for nerds only: I feel like I should point out that Plato was not as revered by the Founding Fathers as Polybius was (nor is he as revered by many modern classics scholars either). Thomas Jefferson once wrote, “I amused myself with reading seriously Plato’s republic. I am wrong however in calling it amusement, for it was the heaviest task-work I ever went through… While wading through the whimsies, the puerilities, and unintelligible jargon of this work, I laid it down often to ask myself how it could have been that the world should have so long consented to give reputation to such nonsense as this?”
To which John Adams responded, “I am very glad you have seriously read Plato; and still more rejoiced to find that your reflections upon him so perfectly harmonize with mine. Some thirty years ago I took upon me the severe task of going through all his works… I laboured through the tedious toil. My disappointment was very great, my astonishment was greater, and my disgust was shocking… His Laws and his Republic from which I expected most, disappointed me most. I could scarcely exclude the suspicion that he intended the latter as a bitter satire upon all republican government… These philosophers have shown themselves as incapable of governing mankind as the Bourbons or the Guelphs… In short, philosophers ancient and modern appear to me as mad as Hindoos, Mahomitans [Muslims] and Christians. No doubt they would all think me mad, and for [all] I know this globe may be the bedlam, Le Bicatre of the Universe.”
I believe that last bit is a reference to Bicetre Hospital which around this time was an asylum for treating the mentally ill. So, Adams was essentially saying (paraphrased), “For all I know, our planet is merely an insane asylum, with all us humans as its inmates.”