nathan on network sovereignties
nathan schneider @ntnsndr on network sovereignties [https://globalgovernanceprogramme.eui.eu/new-network-sovereignties-the-rise-of-non-territorial-states/5/]:
Notes on Old Religion for New Network Sovereigns
The first installment of the Network State Meetup in my town occurred one early evening at a long, high table in the back of a burger-and-beer place. About a dozen people, all male-presenting, attended. I sat at a far end of the table, catching as much as I could of the conversation about how the ongoing advances in blockchain technology might enable new cultures of belonging, new modalities of governance, and new economic primitives.
As I tried to hear each turn in the discussion, and its possible answers to the question of what this group might actually do together, a sense of deja vu crept up on me. The future they were describing was already my past and present. As they imagined transnational organizations with shared commitments, which possess land and rights in multiple territorial jurisdictions, and which operate through autonomous governance and economic arrangements, the sci-fi bled into so-what. It just sounded like religion.
I am a Roman Catholic with paternal Jewish heritage, and I grew up with significant exposure to a Hindu community anchored in South India, on the other side of the world from where my family lived. In each of these community lifeworlds, I experienced different but related forms of networked sovereignty that have grown from centuries of persecution, empire, diaspora, inquisition, dominance, and decline. That evening at the high table, so much of what my religious traditions have done for centuries was under discussion as new-and-nonexistent.
I do not doubt that blockchain technologies, which I have ambivalently immersed myself in for a decade now, present possibilities for networked life that foregoing institutional infrastructures could not offer. I also recognize that there can be strategic benefits to emphasizing the newness of an idea over its oldness, especially in the context of cultures that lionize innovation above preservation (Schneider 2023). But surely the project of sovereign community-making across networks can benefit from lessons that come from earlier iterations that attempted to enact quite similar ambitions.
again.. with michel on network sovereignties‘s history ness.. becomes a cancerous distraction since that link keeps us hanging on to some form of sea world
Whereas Bauwens presents the relevance of religion in primarily historical terms, I will offer some stray reflections here on the project of network sovereignty in light of living religious institutions, par- ticularly with the purpose of contributing to the construction of network sovereignties that are actually worth having.
According to Catholic tradition, land is among those things (along with all the other things) subject to the “universal destination of goods” (Spieker 2005); although private property is a necessary arrangement in the world of the Fall, it must be practiced with a recognition that everything is ultimately God’s gift to everyone.
..Yet the acceleration of anything heightens risk as well as opportunities. Undertaking such risk obligates our attention to lessons with possible relevance..t
gershenfeld something else law
findings abstract.. story board [2008 to present].. need to try sabbatical ish transition
That is the paradox of sovereignty. On some level sovereignty must be self-recognizing, self-affirming. But it is inconsequential unless other orders bend to recognize its reality. In that respect I appreciate De Filippi et al.’s COALA framework for the legal recognition of DAOs (COALA 2021)—yes, it asks recognition of nation states, but that recognition is permissionless and automatic. It is a diplomatic protocol between two distinct orders of meaning.
we need to let go of that assumed binary ness.. and try something all souls already crave..
we need a problem deep enough to resonate w/8bn today.. a mechanism simple enough to be accessible/usable to 8bn today.. and an ecosystem open enough to set/keep 8bn legit free
ie: org around a problem deep enough (aka: org around legit needs) to resonate w/8bn today.. via a mechanism simple enough (aka: tech as it could be) to be accessible/usable to 8bn today.. and an ecosystem open enough (aka: sans any form of m\a\p) to set/keep 8bn legit free
What I long for most from network sovereignties is the unlocking of this kind of creativity. I long for exploration and experimentation with new kinds of polities..t If we can create our sovereignty on networks, maybe we can do so in wildly different ways than we have been allowed to do before.
how we gather in a space is huge.. need to try spaces of permission where people have nothing to prove to facil curiosity over decision making.. because the finite set of choices of decision making is unmooring us.. keeping us from us.. ie: whatever for a year.. a legit sabbatical ish transition
there’s a legit use of tech (nonjudgmental expo labeling).. to facil a legit global detox leap.. for (blank)’s sake.. and we’re missing it
ie: imagine if we listened to the itch-in-8b-souls 1st thing everyday & used that data to connect us (tech as it could be.. ai as augmenting interconnectedness)
When it became clear that my life would proceed outside a cloister, I found a dual calling between the sixteenth- century Jesuit order—my academic self—and the twentieth-century Catholic Worker movement—what I aspire to be in the streets. When I can, I return for visits to Benedictine monasteries, because part of me remains in that lifeworld.
Protocols are rigid, difficult-to-alter infrastructures. They need to be to function. But they can provide for innovation within their sovereignties at smaller scales, along with mechanisms for altering the metagovernance of the system as a whole. Catholics call this subsidiarity (Hasinoff and Schneider 2022).
need: infinitesimal structures approaching the limit of structureless\ness and/or vice versa .. aka: ginorm/small ness
It would seem that monasteries have a lot in common with the secular institutions that often fall under the classification of “intentional communities.” I have been drawn to both over the years (Schneider 2014). Yet it is hard not to notice that at least some monasteries and monastic orders have survived centuries, enduring periods of ascent and decline, of war and innovstion. The intentional communities seem to come and go far more frequently. Perhaps this is fine; death is a part of life, and cycles of constitution and compost may be right for these communities. Survival itself is not always a virtue, except I for one have been thankful for the survival of the monastic communities I have had the chance to inherit from across the centuries.
Why do they survive? There are a few reasons, I think. One is the matter of transcendent belief, which I will return to later. But first I want to focus on the matter of obedience. This is not necessarily a comforting topic for the libertarian and liberatory imaginations that tend to animate the quest for network sovereignties.
Obedience is not all that happens at the monasteries I am familiar with.
I love this democratic thread in Christian monastic tradition, which traces its roots to the Book of Acts in the Bible; the early disciples elected their leaders when the community grew too complex for consensus. But monastic democracy also involves a vow, generally, of obedience. In particular, this is obedience to the abbess or abbot, who is to be regarded as the presence of Christ in the community. Obedience is not just a social measure, it is a reflection of the monastic call to self-emptying, to lay down one’s will to that of God. This obedience is a more pervasive and dominant part of Christian monasticism than the democracy (de Vogue 1978). And I think it is essential to the basic coherence of monastic tradition, as well as to its survival.
and perhaps why monastery ness hasn’t yet been enough.. to see the dance
To be clear, I am not attributing monastic resilience to obedience alone, but more to its admixture with the occasional corrective of democracy. Every act of democracy occurs with the recognition that it has only a limited range of motion; there must always be some expectation of obedience. Even if in very different proportions, any sovereign community must find its proper balance. The balance will differ depending on its purpose.
any form of democratic admin.. also obedience ness.. ie: people telling other people what to do
Some sort of obedience seems necessary for any durable collective sovereignty.
only because.. we have no idea what legit free people are like.. black science of people/whales law
There is an elephant in the room here, which I have so far only alluded to: belief. Probably what makes many aspiring network sovereigns reluctant to identify with their religious precursors is that they do not believe that they believe in whatever supernatural, transcendental something you’re supposed to believe in to be actually religious.
Shared beliefs provide a framework for consensus in a community and reduce the likely terrain of conflict. (Plenty still remains.) A shared belief would seem to make it easier for diverse people to adopt a common protocol and thus a common network..t
rather.. global detox so all can hear/trust what is already on each heart.. and or around that (ie: missing pieces..as infra)
Religious histories teach that networked sovereignty is very much possible—but also that the fact of being networked is no guarantee it will be something we want in the world. How we craft that sovereignty is how we craft nothing less than our own evolution.
May we give the reigning order a good death.
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be you. 