The Original Protocol Was Love: Building a Networked Civilization from the Ground Up

Introduction: A Protocol for Belonging in an Age of Disconnection

The idea for this mini-essay came from a wonderful conversation with my friend and colleague Bill Melton, who I mention in my book Birthing the Symbiotic Age. Bill helped us with the development of our technology platform, OneSphera. He has a deep history in building the internet’s early protocols through his pioneering roles in Verifone, PayPal, AOL, and other foundational tech platforms.

In that conversation, Bill reflected on how the spread of early Christianity and the architecture of the internet both succeeded through simple, decentralized protocols—and how this insight can help us build a new, trustworthy network of communities today.

In a world fractured by tribalism, institutional decay, and spiritual alienation, many of us sense that something deeper must emerge—something that can weave humanity back into coherence without demanding uniformity.

My work, and my book Birthing the Symbiotic Age, is rooted in this conviction: that a new civilization is already emerging, not through centralized design, but through grassroots reweaving—where the relational fabric of communities is being restored through love, virtue, and shared purpose.

This essay explores how such a civilization can grow—and why the key lies not in ideology or control, but in a shared relational protocol rooted in Love.

In asking how this emergence could scale, I’ve returned repeatedly to a question:

What kind of invisible infrastructure could allow diverse communities—religious and secular, urban and rural, left and right—to cohere, collaborate, and coordinate across silos?

The answer didn’t come from the Internet—it came through it.

Surprisingly, the architecture of the Internet revealed a living analogy to something far older: the sacred design embedded in creation itself. Just as the web required a universal protocol—HTTP—to enable decentralized communication, what I call the Symbiotic Culture DNA offers a kind of spiritual and civic protocol for a new, relational society.

In the sections that follow, I explore this analogy in six parts—moving from the logic of HTTP to the legacy of the early Church, and from emerging local networks to the future role of AI.

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Part 1: The Hidden Power of HTTP—How the Internet Learned to Speak

Before websites, social media, or even email became ubiquitous, there was a problem: computers couldn’t talk to one another. They used different formats, systems, and rules.

The solution? A shared protocol—a kind of agreement that didn’t care about content but made communication possible across all platforms.

This was HTTP—the HyperText Transfer Protocol. Simple, elegant, and universal, it enabled a client (like a web browser) to make requests to a server in a standardized way. In return, the server would respond with content the browser could understand.

But HTTP didn’t emerge from ideology. It emerged from a deeper layer of agreement, a shared network operating system known as the TCP/IP stack—that made such interaction possible in the first place.

In the same way, Symbiotic Culture doesn’t require people to share an ideology. But it does depend on a shared relational worldview, a kind of spiritual operating system rooted in connection, mutuality, and dignity.

From that worldview emerges a common protocol—what we call the Symbiotic Culture DNA: a simple set of shared understandings, Virtues, and relational practices that allow communities to build trust, meet needs, and grow from the ground up.

Let’s pause to examine why this new operating system is essential today.

We now live in a globally networked age, yet we're still using primitive 19th and 20th century organizational structures—hierarchical, siloed, and command-based. These structures are obsolete—unable to hold the complexity, diversity, and accelerated pace of change of our contemporary world.

What we need is a new operating system rooted in relationality—and a protocol to activate it.

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Part 2: The Protocol for a New Civilization

Now imagine a protocol—not for machines, but for communities.

This is what I call Symbiotic Culture DNA: a simple, universal relational protocol—a kind of moral handshake and invisible scaffolding of trust—that enables individuals, families, churches, organizations, businesses, local governments, and movements to communicate, coordinate, and cooperate—not through coercion or ideology, but through a shared relational foundation.

Just as a digital handshake verifies identity online, a moral handshake confirms alignment through character, trustworthiness, and shared values.

Rooted in trust, this shared relational foundation reflects what I describe in my book as the Ancient Blueprint—a sacred pattern woven into creation itself.

And at the heart of this pattern is a relational worldview. We are not isolated beings, but nodes in a vast web of belonging.

This worldview is not a new ideology or “one ring to rule them all.” It is a living system of connection—a kind of moral architecture that enables people, communities, and organizations to connect across the silos of what I call the Culture of Separation. It invites us into a shared field of relationship, where diverse expressions of purpose and practice can still communicate, collaborate, and grow in mutual respect.

This understanding echoes the wisdom of the 7th-century Eastern Orthodox saint, Maximus the Confessor, who wrote that the aim of spiritual life is to “unite the cosmos with love” and “bring together that which has become separate.”

That vision describes not just personal salvation, but the transformation of the world through relationships ordered by Divine Love.

This yearning—to live in alignment with the Ancient Blueprint—naturally gives rise to a relational worldview, and ultimately to Symbiotic Culture DNA as its working protocol.

Before any protocol can take root, something must shift within us—what ancient wisdom calls metanoia: a turning of heart and mind toward a greater love. It is this inward transformation that gives rise to the outward architecture of trust.

I’ve witnessed this DNA emerging in local food systems, faith-based community groups, regenerative farms, neighborhood initiatives, bridge-building movements, and purpose-driven businesses.

Despite their differences, many of them operate on similar principles:

• Shared Purpose: A clear reason for coming together that transcends politics, religion, economic class, profit, partisanship, or ego—rooted in what I have termed a Transcendent power that’s bigger than any one of us.

• Shared principles of mutual Care and Trust: Relationships rooted in dignity, not transaction.

• Virtue and Vocational Fidelity: A commitment to inner formation and doing one’s part with excellence and humility.

• Common Community Needs: Local community needs guide action. Inner formation leads to outer action in face-to-face relations.

• Distributed Hubs: Leadership is shared, not hoarded. Circles form around shared Virtues and ripple outward.

These are agile systems of relational flow—not governed by control, but animated by trust, connection, and collaborative momentum moving through nodes of intersection in a community—not through command, but through shared DNA.

These are not abstract ideals. They are already at work in what I call “islands of coherence”—local, living systems of mutual aid and rootedness, each grounded in trust, relationship, and shared purpose, waiting to be relationally connected.

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Part 3: The Anatomy of a Symbiotic Protocol

Let’s return to the HTTP metaphor.

HTTP sends requests using headers—fields like Content-Type, Authorization, User-Agent—that tell the server how to respond. These headers don’t dictate the content itself, but they make communication possible.

In a similar way, a Symbiotic Circle Protocol might carry its own “headers”:

What HTTP did for distributed information, the Symbiotic Protocol does for distributed belonging.

It provides the relational and moral infrastructure needed for a decentralized cultural change movement—one built not by force, but by trust and shared intention.

It doesn’t require central control. It assumes diversity. And like the internet, it grows stronger with use and network effects—because each act of trust strengthens and multiplies the network.

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Part 4: This is Already Happening

This isn’t a future fantasy. It’s already emerging in the quiet, connective spaces of our lives.

We see glimpses of the Symbiotic Protocol in:

• Faith-based networks that build food systems, family mentoring programs, and justice ministries rooted in self-giving love.

• Regenerative communities organizing around permaculture, bioregional economics, and local resilience.

• Civic bridge-building initiatives connecting red and blue (in the American context) in local deliberation and shared service.

• Localist and cosmolocal efforts weaving decentralized economies based on need, not extraction.

• Mission-driven businesses operating by a triple bottom line—people, planet, purpose.

What could unite these is not a new ideology or philosophy, but a relational worldview—a kind of Ancient Blueprint expressed through the lives of ordinary people who act from a place of moral clarity, instead of institutional loyalty.

I’ve seen entire communities begin to transform when one person chooses to live by this protocol of Love. When someone is willing to hold space—for others and the networks they already belong to—with presence, dignity, and spiritual clarity, the effects ripple outward.

Love becomes contagious—not as sentiment, but as structure—because Love is not just a feeling. It is the underlying design of reality itself: the Logos through which all things hold together.

Part 5: The First Protocol of Love

There’s a deeper analogy worth naming—one far older than HTTP. As my conversation with Bill Melton continued, we came back to first principles.

We were discussing how, in the centuries following Jesus’s earthly ministry, Christianity spread rapidly across continents—in the shadow of the brutal Roman Empire, facing waves of persecution, with no budget, no institutional backing, and no central command.

What made that possible was not institutional strategy but relational protocol.

So while the term “spiritual handshake” is metaphorical, it accurately expresses the trust-building tools early Christians used to survive and thrive within a hostile empire.

These practices functioned like a relational protocol—the Christian equivalent of HTTP—allowing believers to recognize one another, establish safety, and build decentralized communities rooted in love and virtue.

These included:

• Coded language and symbols — such as the ichthys (fish) symbol drawn in the sand
• Code phrases — like “The Way” or “Maranatha,” signaling shared faith
• Hospitality rituals — where Christian homes became house churches, and trust was discerned over time
• The Kiss of Peace — a gesture reserved for those recognized as part of the Body
• Recognition of virtue and moral character — over social status or credentials
• Discernment and relational trust — developed slowly through mutual service and witness

These weren’t enforced from above. Like today’s Symbiotic Circles, they were discovered, practiced, and refined from the ground up—emerging organically as part of a culture of Love, sacrifice, and shared spiritual identity.

This vision echoes what Václav Benda and Czech dissidents later called the Parallel Polis—an underground network of culture, conscience, and solidarity that offered an alternative to totalitarian control.

Like the early Church, it relied on personal trust, moral clarity, and shared purpose—not centralized power. It reminds us that sacred communities can become sanctuaries of renewal within broken systems, growing quietly, relationally, from the bottom up.

In his insightful new Substack series on church renewal, Patrick O’Connell cites Romans 16 as “a snapshot of a Spirit-formed network”—a glimpse into the living web of relationships that sustained the early Church. Drawing from both the books of Romans and Acts, he shows how this decentralized movement grew through co-laboring households, cities, and churches—rooted not in dominance hierarchies, but in trust, spiritual kinship, and shared mission.

His reflections affirm that what we now call Symbiotic Culture DNA echoes this original design: a sacred web of belonging shaped by the Divine Pattern of Love.

The early Christian movement, at its core, was a countercultural protocol: a way of living based on the Logos—the Divine Pattern of Love revealed in Christ. “Love God. Love Others.” That was the organizing principle, the relational format. It shaped how people formed community, practiced economics, cared for the vulnerable, and resisted empire.

Jesus and the disciples didn’t try to change the Roman Empire through tax reform or policy advocacy. They embodied an alternative—a parallel society and economy grounded in trust, love, and shared purpose.

They remind us that transformation doesn’t begin with control. It begins with vision. The early Christians saw Jesus Christ—the Divine—in one another, and this changed how they lived, shared, and loved.

Just as HTTP provided a neutral space for data to flow, this divine protocol provided sacred space for community to form.

So must we.

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Part 6: The Role of AI and Technology

As we move into an age shaped by artificial intelligence, this protocol will need to be digitally interoperable as well. OneSphera, a platform I helped develop (and described in Birthing the Symbiotic Age), aims to support this vision by helping communities:

• Identify shared purpose

• Map local needs, gifts, and assets

• Connect across silos and geography

• Track relational trust, not just transactions

This calls forth the deeper question:

Who or what will "govern" AI? And where do humans fit in this new architecture of intelligence?

The answer, I believe, is this: at the heart of everything – including AI -- is the call to establish and practice these protocols of Love as our true operating system.

In doing so, AI becomes a tool and servant of Divine Love—not its replacement in a techno-utopian, transhumanist dream of “outgrowing” our humanity rather than redeeming it.

Bill Melton notes that autonomous AI agents may become the next critical protocol—especially in an era when massive centralized systems seek control. These agents must be designed to establish trust levels, authenticity, and provenance—mirroring the sacred handshake of early Christianity or the integrity checks of HTTP.

But let me be clear: technology must serve the relational. Not the other way around.

While platforms and AI agents may help us scale Symbiotic Circles and Networks, the real work happens face to face—in families, neighborhoods, churches, businesses, gardens, schools, and cafés.

The protocol lives in people. Not code.

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Conclusion: From Resistance to Cultural Revival and Renewal

In a world dominated by what I call the Culture of Separation, we don’t need another ideology or power grab from the Left or the Right. We need a relational protocol that allows life to flourish across boundaries.

HTTP gave rise to the Internet not by dictating what people should say, but by allowing them to speak—and be heard—across the globe. Symbiotic Culture DNA offers something similar for our time: it gives communities a way to see each other, trust each other, and build together—without requiring them to agree on everything.

It’s how we move from fragmentation to federation, from despair to dignity, from silos to circles—and from circles to networks that meet the real needs of local communities, especially as national and global governance systems grow increasingly obsolete.

This Protocol of Love doesn’t require new institutions to begin. It can take root right where you are—within existing networks: churches, charities, businesses, local governments, regenerative initiatives, and neighborhood groups.

The Symbiotic Circle is a flexible container that can be adapted to your unique context, whether that’s a parish, a purpose-driven business, or a civic movement. You can start small—with people you already trust—co-creating circles of shared purpose, spiritual clarity, and mutual care. From there, these circles ripple outward, forming networks grounded in relationship rather than control.

The future won’t be engineered from the top down. It will be cultivated from the ground up—through trust, virtue, and shared purpose.

That’s the only way to scale belonging. And it starts, not with systems, but with souls who remember the truth:

THE ORIGINAL PROTOCOL WAS LOVE

And Love still spreads naturally, as this protocol is already alive in the world, moving through each one of us—even as new technologies and AI come online.

Let’s build from there.

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Background

The first is about the origins of the Parallel Polis (society). The second and third posts are FAQs, and the final two posts are from the Preface and the Introduction from my upcoming book, Birthing the Symbiotic Age.

Building a Parallel Society

Living in Truth: Building a Parallel Polis Within a Spiritually Hostile Regime, Chapter 12, Part 5

Frequently Asked Questions:

The Symbiotic Age Has Begun—What If Love Was the Blueprint for Society?

The Symbiotic Age Is Taking Root—Who’s Already Living It Without Knowing?

Book Preface:

Living Between Worlds: with Audio

Book Introduction:

The Turning Point We’ve Been Waiting For

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