This is a really nice thought experiment and I particularly like the idea that nothing is settled, just a stage on the way to a better framing. This seems to be part of that philosophical idea that that the Truth is something we constantly get closer to but never reach.
The only problem I foresee is that not everyone will see 'better' in the same, way partly because people are just different and partly because some people enjoy power and don't want to give it up. That is 'true' (!) for the limited experimentation time of course but also perhaps in reversion. There needs to be a fallback governance state in which these experiments can be assessed in a way that does not allocate power to individuals or permanent groups. Sortition, maybe....
I think that part of the challenge here is to go about the imagining without falling into binaries like good and bad, better and worse. We're talking about deeply complex social dynamics, and reducing them to "better" or "worse" metrics, runs the risk of flattening the complexity. Instead, considering that most social dynamics are kyriarchal, with most people experiencing both benefits and drawbacks from any given decision or set of decisions.
The fallback governance idea has some merit, but I also maybe wasn't clear with this. I am suggesting that these experiments be tested out in controlled scenarios, with a given community already having decided the pass or fail conditions and setting the time constraints, etc.
As for people seeking power over others blocking any experimentation... that's kind of the point of all this. Those people already have their global sandbox that they control, and I don't think communities should tolerate restriction of the ability to play in a brand new sandbox.
It can mean to rule over. Or it can mean guidance. Or it can mean limit. It literally depends on the specific pattern of coordination that gets implemented. If the pattern is hierarchical, then you get rule over. If it is more horizontal, then you get closer to guidance.
Many systems are selfhgoverning. And this doesn't mean they rule over themselves, it means they decide their own limits, and decide their own directions, and regulate their own internal processes...
This is why I want to avoid strict binaries when we imagine new forms of governance for experimenting
The word govern needs to die. A lot of words do. Literacy was really bad for our species and the rest of life on Earth. Ants don't have governments. Elephants don't. Chimpanzees don't. Bees don't. Lions don't. No other species is destroying our only habitat intentionally either.
I certainly understand where you are coming from... though I'm not sure I would take the conclusion quite as far as blaming literacy itself, or even specific words.
Differential access to information is certainly a huge driver in power inequality, and as Murray Bookchin so eloquently pointed out, all ecological problems are rooted in social problems... fix the social, and we fix the ecological. So if anything, literacy is one potential solution to the vast number of problems that face us. As is having a deep and nuanced understanding of Governance that doesn't fall into the binary trap of Power Over and Powerlessness.
You don't have to apologize if you disagree, difference is where we gain new strengths.
Are you saying literacy has been used to manipulate us? I don't agree, but I want to understand your perspective. It was literacy that led to my depth of understanding on a variety of subjects, including anti-authoritarianism. So I need to better understand what you mean.
Kk, for examples; anti vaxxers. Manufacturing consent for wars. Dehumanization campaigns against the "others." Marketing. Consumerism. Calling environmental destruction "development." And the number one mythology that's destroying our habitat, capitalism.
This is true. The Jacksonians and the party they created, and the broader political economic system they led to, sought horizontal coordination, nit top-down vertical coordination, until the post WW2 transformation decades, you can find several instances of people making it work incredibly well, better than any mass scale centralized vertical system there has ever been
We shouldn’t allow this discussion to devolve into semantics. There are decentralized forms of governance that can be power with the people instead of power over them which Anarcasper has written about many times. We can have voluntary societies with rules and order, where any form of governance answers directly to the people and works with them, or for them, instead of over them.
Jasmine has read pretty much everything I've written on substack, so I absolutely encourage the discussion to evolve around semantics... since semantics is literally the study of meaning, and one of the many problems we face in this day and age is a lack of shared meaning.
Yeah totally agree definitions matter - we had this discussion last week on one of your threads about capitalism.
But here we are talking about many different kinds of something - governance - so there isn’t a one size fits all definition until you list the kind. And government doesn’t always mean power over.
Yeah it actually is. Either a word means the same thing to EVERYONE or it's meaningless. Remember all of the world we live in is MADE UP. Words don't actually mean anything at all. Life is chaos. Chaos only means CONSTANT CHANGE. Order isn't a thing either.
Then all words are meaningless by this definition. Just poll people and see.
We wrote an article last year titled “Without Clear Definitions, Laws Are Meaningless.” So we agree. But it seems that your definition of government and Anarcasper’s and ours is very different.
Here is a fun exercise. Poll people and have them define these 40 words:
This is a silly exercise. Language is polysemic at it's core. So rather than trying to work with individual definitions, the task for establishing meaning is about finding common reference frames and interpretation of each other's language through understanding of each other's reference frames.
Meaning is something we coordinate together, not challenge each other to define and set in stone.
If you can govern with and not just govern over, then it seems we have two different meanings under one word. The solution is to make up a new word or term. Or just use the term Anarcasper already uses : govern with or govern over.
The easiest way to experiment with governance is to build digital nations called “network states”. - Sapien made a video about how we can accomplish this
This essay resonates deeply with has analogue with the USA's Old Republic, where political-economic life was built on policy variability, legal and regulatory plurality, federated authority, and intensely local retainment of resources. Before the centralized technocracy was constructed over a few decades following WW2, the United States operated in some ways like the experimental ecology this essay imagines, states and municipalities prototyped different banking systems, corporate forms, school governance models, labor institutions, municipal utilities, infrastructure authorities, tax regimes, and party mechanisms, with none of these forms treated as permanent or universal
Perhaps it gives one a feeling of godlike power to reimagine the polisphere.
My guess is that the survivors of the present global catastrophe will live in scattered polities where some will try to build something better than catastophic capitalism.
Given the nature of the talking primate some form of feudalism will quickly emerge in various centres because it's a simplistic pattern that has proven its power over millennia.
But eventually some people will reflect on our current descent into chaos and scattered groups will try new ways of organizing power. Then they will join forces and the 26th century may see the rise of powerful federations based on something new.
My view is that this will not happen until large numbers come to realize the fundamental toxicity of human language, a toxicity that was recognized by the first schools of zen, building on the distinction between conventional language and the language of enlightenment, as powerfully presented by Nagarjuna.
Basically conventional language is a shell of names and associated memes (whatever they are), concepts etc. that obscure the cosmic suchness of immediate participation in the present which is the only living tense of reality.
So I understand Jasmine Wolfe's dislike of literacy because it is almost universally practiced and controlled by merchants, money monsters, kings and their hired intellectuals who benefit from keeping people locked in the virtual reality of language.
Having said that, I obviously believe there is an enlightened way of using words, but that way is only possible for those who have found various ways to experience being as it is, outside of the prison of names, concepts and the delusional perceptions they create.
This is a really nice thought experiment and I particularly like the idea that nothing is settled, just a stage on the way to a better framing. This seems to be part of that philosophical idea that that the Truth is something we constantly get closer to but never reach.
The only problem I foresee is that not everyone will see 'better' in the same, way partly because people are just different and partly because some people enjoy power and don't want to give it up. That is 'true' (!) for the limited experimentation time of course but also perhaps in reversion. There needs to be a fallback governance state in which these experiments can be assessed in a way that does not allocate power to individuals or permanent groups. Sortition, maybe....
I think that part of the challenge here is to go about the imagining without falling into binaries like good and bad, better and worse. We're talking about deeply complex social dynamics, and reducing them to "better" or "worse" metrics, runs the risk of flattening the complexity. Instead, considering that most social dynamics are kyriarchal, with most people experiencing both benefits and drawbacks from any given decision or set of decisions.
The fallback governance idea has some merit, but I also maybe wasn't clear with this. I am suggesting that these experiments be tested out in controlled scenarios, with a given community already having decided the pass or fail conditions and setting the time constraints, etc.
As for people seeking power over others blocking any experimentation... that's kind of the point of all this. Those people already have their global sandbox that they control, and I don't think communities should tolerate restriction of the ability to play in a brand new sandbox.
Organizing isn't governing. There are distinct differences. To govern means to rule over.
It can mean to rule over. Or it can mean guidance. Or it can mean limit. It literally depends on the specific pattern of coordination that gets implemented. If the pattern is hierarchical, then you get rule over. If it is more horizontal, then you get closer to guidance.
Many systems are selfhgoverning. And this doesn't mean they rule over themselves, it means they decide their own limits, and decide their own directions, and regulate their own internal processes...
This is why I want to avoid strict binaries when we imagine new forms of governance for experimenting
The word govern needs to die. A lot of words do. Literacy was really bad for our species and the rest of life on Earth. Ants don't have governments. Elephants don't. Chimpanzees don't. Bees don't. Lions don't. No other species is destroying our only habitat intentionally either.
I certainly understand where you are coming from... though I'm not sure I would take the conclusion quite as far as blaming literacy itself, or even specific words.
Differential access to information is certainly a huge driver in power inequality, and as Murray Bookchin so eloquently pointed out, all ecological problems are rooted in social problems... fix the social, and we fix the ecological. So if anything, literacy is one potential solution to the vast number of problems that face us. As is having a deep and nuanced understanding of Governance that doesn't fall into the binary trap of Power Over and Powerlessness.
Sorry, it really isn't. It's been used to psychologically manipulate us into our own imprisonment and destruction.
You don't have to apologize if you disagree, difference is where we gain new strengths.
Are you saying literacy has been used to manipulate us? I don't agree, but I want to understand your perspective. It was literacy that led to my depth of understanding on a variety of subjects, including anti-authoritarianism. So I need to better understand what you mean.
Kk, for examples; anti vaxxers. Manufacturing consent for wars. Dehumanization campaigns against the "others." Marketing. Consumerism. Calling environmental destruction "development." And the number one mythology that's destroying our habitat, capitalism.
This is true. The Jacksonians and the party they created, and the broader political economic system they led to, sought horizontal coordination, nit top-down vertical coordination, until the post WW2 transformation decades, you can find several instances of people making it work incredibly well, better than any mass scale centralized vertical system there has ever been
We shouldn’t allow this discussion to devolve into semantics. There are decentralized forms of governance that can be power with the people instead of power over them which Anarcasper has written about many times. We can have voluntary societies with rules and order, where any form of governance answers directly to the people and works with them, or for them, instead of over them.
Jasmine has read pretty much everything I've written on substack, so I absolutely encourage the discussion to evolve around semantics... since semantics is literally the study of meaning, and one of the many problems we face in this day and age is a lack of shared meaning.
Yeah totally agree definitions matter - we had this discussion last week on one of your threads about capitalism.
But here we are talking about many different kinds of something - governance - so there isn’t a one size fits all definition until you list the kind. And government doesn’t always mean power over.
Yeah it actually is. Either a word means the same thing to EVERYONE or it's meaningless. Remember all of the world we live in is MADE UP. Words don't actually mean anything at all. Life is chaos. Chaos only means CONSTANT CHANGE. Order isn't a thing either.
Then all words are meaningless by this definition. Just poll people and see.
We wrote an article last year titled “Without Clear Definitions, Laws Are Meaningless.” So we agree. But it seems that your definition of government and Anarcasper’s and ours is very different.
Here is a fun exercise. Poll people and have them define these 40 words:
1) capitalism
2) democracy
3) fascism
4) Nazi
5) assault rifle
6) human right
7) life
8) woman
9) science
10) Freedom
11) Equity
12) equality
13) equality of opportunity
14) racism
15) comedy
16) stereotypes
17) justice
18) socialism
19) violence
20) genocide
21) patriotism
22) insurrection
23) peaceful protest
24) violent protest
25) vaccine
26) fake news
27) diversity, equity and inclusion
28 Propaganda
29) Woke
30) Grooming
31) Censorship
32) Misinformation
33) Elitism
34) Rights
35) Privilege
36) Anarchy
37) Communism
38) Authoritarian
39) immigrant
40) illegal immigrant
This is a silly exercise. Language is polysemic at it's core. So rather than trying to work with individual definitions, the task for establishing meaning is about finding common reference frames and interpretation of each other's language through understanding of each other's reference frames.
Meaning is something we coordinate together, not challenge each other to define and set in stone.
If you can govern with and not just govern over, then it seems we have two different meanings under one word. The solution is to make up a new word or term. Or just use the term Anarcasper already uses : govern with or govern over.
That can't be done.
Great thought experiment, that can be a reality.
The easiest way to experiment with governance is to build digital nations called “network states”. - Sapien made a video about how we can accomplish this
https://youtu.be/9XX4yl4Zv2E?si=FOsVS5iSCf4YceG6
This essay resonates deeply with has analogue with the USA's Old Republic, where political-economic life was built on policy variability, legal and regulatory plurality, federated authority, and intensely local retainment of resources. Before the centralized technocracy was constructed over a few decades following WW2, the United States operated in some ways like the experimental ecology this essay imagines, states and municipalities prototyped different banking systems, corporate forms, school governance models, labor institutions, municipal utilities, infrastructure authorities, tax regimes, and party mechanisms, with none of these forms treated as permanent or universal
A lot of high caffeine word power in this essay.
Perhaps it gives one a feeling of godlike power to reimagine the polisphere.
My guess is that the survivors of the present global catastrophe will live in scattered polities where some will try to build something better than catastophic capitalism.
Given the nature of the talking primate some form of feudalism will quickly emerge in various centres because it's a simplistic pattern that has proven its power over millennia.
But eventually some people will reflect on our current descent into chaos and scattered groups will try new ways of organizing power. Then they will join forces and the 26th century may see the rise of powerful federations based on something new.
My view is that this will not happen until large numbers come to realize the fundamental toxicity of human language, a toxicity that was recognized by the first schools of zen, building on the distinction between conventional language and the language of enlightenment, as powerfully presented by Nagarjuna.
Basically conventional language is a shell of names and associated memes (whatever they are), concepts etc. that obscure the cosmic suchness of immediate participation in the present which is the only living tense of reality.
So I understand Jasmine Wolfe's dislike of literacy because it is almost universally practiced and controlled by merchants, money monsters, kings and their hired intellectuals who benefit from keeping people locked in the virtual reality of language.
Having said that, I obviously believe there is an enlightened way of using words, but that way is only possible for those who have found various ways to experience being as it is, outside of the prison of names, concepts and the delusional perceptions they create.