benjamin (l) on sovereignty and solidarity ness

benjamin life on sovereignty and solidarity ness

aka: the 2 missing pieces

via michel bauwens tweet [https://x.com/mbauwens/status/2059117090402148367?s=20]:

Benjamin Life is a consistent and genuine integral thinker:

* Sovereignty and solidarity are not opposites at all. They are mutually co-arising

https://omniharmonic.substack.com/p/sovereignty-is-solidarity

“There is an unspoken argument that runs beneath the surface of nearly all of our political disagreements. On one side stands the self-interested individual, the figure we tend to associate with libertarians, the one primarily concerned with liberty, choice, and freedom. On the other side stands the relational self, primarily concerned with care work and mutual aid, animated by the sense that we are responsible for one another. We have learned to treat these as opposites, as the two poles of a spectrum we are forever being asked to choose between. You are either for the sovereign self or for the solidarity of the collective. You cannot, it seems, be for both.

I want to suggest that this is not only false but backward. Sovereignty and solidarity are not opposites at all. They are mutually co-arising: two faces of a single phenomenon, each calling the other into being. We cannot have either one in any durable form without the other. The kind of sovereignty worth wanting is a sovereignty that requires solidarity to be real, and the kind of solidarity worth wanting is a solidarity that requires sovereign, healthy individuals and communities to make it possible. The tension between them is not a contradiction to be resolved. It is the structure that holds everything up.”

notes/quotes from linked substack:

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