I have been trying to give the European Union some more thought. It has come to my realisation, that the European Union has some of the same problems as the Eastern Roman empire, the Byzantine realm.

Excessive Bureaucracy, opaque powerhandling and a much too liberal view of the world.

The neoplatonist writer Michael Psellus writes and analyses the faults of the Byzantine empire, and we can use his ideas and reflections in the understanding of today.

Essentially Michael Psellus points to the fact, that Zoe, the empress and nemesis of the Byzantine empire was too liberal.

It reflects the idea of Plato, that the backside of Democratic coin is too much liberalism. When things get so free, that everything gets annoying, even the animals gets annoying.

In other words, the balance between law and freedom, responsibility and freedom order and freedom tilts too much in the favour of freedom, and this brings ruin.

The remedy of cause will be to bring in order in the right places.

One place I would start, would be to reform the administration as such, cut down on all the liberal practises of money squandering. Reel in the costs, make a simple but realistic budget. Stop all the corruption there.

Secondly, and this is where i believe that Michael Psellus really has some wisdom to share. He says, that the philosopher say, that superficiality and vainness is abhorred by the philosophers, what philosophers respect is when one think about the needs of the nature of things. It goes like this.

“Philosophers will tell you that the vain and superfluous are of all things on earth the most despicable. For them the object of life is to understand those things that are necessary to their nature. All else is regarded as merely so many external attributes.”

― from “Fourteen Byzantine Rulers: The Chronographia of Michael Psellus (Classics)”

In other words, what we need is Eudaimonia, or rather good spirit. The central idea of the Aristotelian work the Nichomacean Ethics.

What is Eudaimonia? It is the right values to support the nature of each nation in Europe.

In other words, we need to figure out the nature of each nation, and then the values that that nature requires.

In the US it is pretty obvious, it is essentially a protestant democratic country, and therefor the virtues of that country are the virtues of democracy and protestantism.

But with the rest of Europe, it is not so clean cut.

But instead of integration that the EU has used as its guiding motor, it should use Eudaimonia as its guiding idea. Trying to figure out, how it can support the virtues of each country that is in its system.

Then the process of destruction can be reversed, and each country can be happy in itself.

The first step should be pretty obvious for the EU, you have to figure out a way to remigrate all the migrants that have no business in Europe, in a nice and humane way off course, but it needs to be done, because the security of the European countries is not working.

Then you need to accept borders. Because that works as a detriment to the migrants.

Europe is not about borders or control, it is about a continent that needs to bloom and be happy. Eudaominia.

Go for that goal, and you will survive.

G-d bless the humility of a civil servant.