Reterritorialization — Part 1. The State
A Map Is Not The Territory
A map is not the territory it represents, but, if correct, it has a similar structure to the territory, which accounts for its usefulness — Alfred Korzybski, Science and Sanity.
Across the political spectrum, we have seen a “push”, or “recognition”, (depending on perspective) of/for the reterritorialization or disintegration of the current post-war arrangement, on how the West is structured.
From 1648 until the present, the Westphalian model had largely dictated how the nation-state is defined but also evolved. Initially, this applied to the European states (although arguably not their imperial territories and interests) and was used as the mechanism to balance power in Europe. Starting after WW1 and accelerating following the end of World War 2, the Westphalian system was largely held together no longer by a concert of powers and their individual bilateral treaties, but vast interconnecting treaties and trade agreements. The UN, NATO, NAFTA, WTO and so on were a product of the 20th C. This coincided with the dismantling of the Imperial domains of Europe’s great powers, and the reterritorialization of these domains into post-colonial sovereign nation states. While each state is recognized under international law as being sovereign in its territory, these larger transnational agreements have harmonized laws, brought militaries under joint command structures and governed trade.
Benjamin Bratton has alluded to this current model being strained by the rapid technological change the planet is undergoing. This pressure comes from the creation of the process he referred to as “the Stack“. We could argue based upon his research, that the post-war settlement of national sovereign states is increasingly being undermined by technology, which knows no borders.
This is a form of hyper-globalism driven by technology that is causing political unrest in the West. As jobs move overseas or are replaced by automation, jamming the break on has become a cry amongst populist politicians.
Thrown into the mix has been the recent, push and shove in the political realm between:
- Those who are for growing blocks of influence with interconnected treaties/projects
- Those who wish to unravel them into more bilateral or patchwork approaches.
Broadly speaking we can label these internationalists and nationalists in their orientation.
Either path, whether the territorialization of the interconnected blocks into something new or disintegration of said blocks with a hope of retaining some sort of Westphalian system (or perhaps a multitude of smaller sovereign states i.e. reversing the Stack and wider treaties influences), seems to be caught in an existential battle.
As the system seems to breakdown, many, especially on the Accelerationist front have looked at political, and economic philosophy, to try and understand or even supply answers for how society will move forward.
One theme that seems to transcend political allegiances and solutions, however, is this concept of “breakdown”. But what do we mean by it?
On the Left we find writers such as the philosophical anarchist Leopold Kohr writing as far back as the 1940s on the subject. His writings have been complemented by a variety of other theorists calling for the end of the nation-state as we know it, with freer movement between geographical blocks.
In the centre, we find Liberal Democrats, Neo-Liberals and others who wish to redefine trade blocks to allow freer movement of individuals, goods and services. Perhaps the most well-known project they promote is the EU and its related European agreements such as the EEA and Schengen. This collection of agreements can be called the “European Project”.
On the right, the Neo-Cameralist approach and The Sovereign Individual have found followers. Writings on Seasteading and other Libertarian approaches, such as those documented in the Jacobite magazine, have been discussed widely in the media.
It’s possibly this reason why we have seen alliances of groups, such as those who believe in the traditional sovereign capitalist nation-state of the 1950s, aligned with those who prefer the breakdown of existing megastructures such as the EU with its centralized bureaucracies, into Anarcho-capitalist city-states or their Left-wing patchwork equivalent. A cursory look at Eurosceptic groups in the UK, for example, reveals those on the Left — “Lexiteers” — along with traditional conservatives, Libertarians and the far-right all with their own arguments for leaving the EU.
It must be noted however there is some tension between these groups, as one might expect. While they may agree on the need to return to smaller sovereign units, they may not agree on the freedom of movement between said groups.
In the latter case, this can mean the right to pick up and move to a different city-state if the one of residence does not meet the individual's needs or desires. Or perhaps for those on the Left an opposition to borders.
This tension arises with those of a traditionalist bent who believe in enforcing borders, immigration quotas, welfare states, visa systems and so on.
Some have described this former state of affairs as the “Exit” approach. Effectively the ability for individuals to move freely between different political setups that are to their choosing. Or better yet to take a group of like-minded folk and start afresh. Star Slate Codex has a thought-provoking piece on this idea called Archipelago and Atomic Communitarianism which was written back in 2014. It is in this piece we glimpse the seed of a compromise that allows for a patchwork approach to sovereignty between the traditionalists and anarcho-capitalists, the communist and the Liberal.
Perhaps, therefore, the political battle of the future will not be between Left and Right. No, perhaps it will be between those who wish to centralize power and define concrete definitions of identity and borders (exclusive), and those who wish for a plurality of states, identities and political structures with free movement between them (inclusive).
This raises the question though, how can this exist and more importantly, are we already moving in that direction?
The metastructure — a bucket of balls.
In this section of the article, we are going to argue that Western society is moving towards a structure that will accommodate the micro-state entity. Or more importantly, a structure that accommodates not just micro-states, but transnational identities and online collectivism, existence and experience. This is encapsulated in a framework that governs what the individual’s rights are, what protections they have from the State (and thus how the State’s laws are implemented in relation to the individual), but importantly — not how individual states or entities within themselves are structured.
Author’s such as Scott Alexander in his previously mentioned piece have discussed similar concepts, whilst others have argued that the framework that accommodates this isn’t necessarily going in the direction they would champion. They, in turn, have proposed a different patchwork approach.
We will use the term meta-structure to describe the framework that supports “breakdown” or better yet — reterritorialization along the lines of what Alexander envisions. In essence a set of properties that describe political structures that accommodate this re-factoring of borders and identities.
Using Bratton’s concept of the Stack, the meta-structure can be thought of as a data construct that is spread right across each layer of the Stack. To a degree it is hyperstitional, but also in a state of being actualized as we speak. To some, aspects of it will resemble elements of the overlapping sovereignty and identity of pre-Westphalian times. To others, it may look like the state of many early Federal nations where the central government structure was much looser, or perhaps even resemble the EU. To many more, it will appear futuristic in nature, drawing on concepts that break the centralized modern state down into a fuzzy object.
But why?
Well, this is largely driven by the fact the online encompasses ever greater aspects of our lives. Physical borders have little impact in the cyber-realm. They are typically expensive and difficult to police (as we have seen with cases where prosecuting hackers becomes difficult if not impossible) and can rapidly undermine specific laws within countries. This will likely grow more complex to handle as AR and VR open up whole new frontiers. Of course, what happens online bleeds over into the real world, as we see all too often.
One only has to look at recent developments in the press to see an example of this with 3D printed guns. When an individual can download the plan from online and make their own weapon, export controls rapidly go out the window and become unenforceable. This happened in the past with encryption, and will likely happen again with other items deemed as weapons.
It is data that is arguably at the core of the transformation across societies then.
Therefore we argue it makes sense to start seeing states as metadata that describe combinations of laws, territory, rights, regulations and so forth. Thus meta-structures can be seen as the next step up, encapsulating states (metadata) and their actual data (wetware individuals, AI, avatars) components.
The meta-structure thus describes the combination of factors that are in place now but also governs how for example a Kohrian approach to the world might evolve within the Stack.
It is perhaps best described using the analogy of a bucket of balls.
The meta-structure describes the bucket. It defines the volume, dimensions and constraints. However, it does not define beyond these what can be held within the bucket, unless those items ultimately destroy the bucket itself (or simply don’t fit). Therefore the bucket designers will only accept items in the bucket that can be held, not those that can dissolve its very structure.
We can, therefore, think of the micro-states, transnational identities, subcultures and so forth as multicoloured balls, all stored within the bucket. Some balls may contain balls within themselves (non-euclidean hyperspheres?) or have the ability to merge partially with other balls (think Venn diagrams of concepts, or Set Theory notation to describe these ideas), but ultimately are all individual items in themselves, (whether atomic or sets which, are more than the sum of their parts), and thus contained within the physics of the bucket.
In our current setup, we can envision nation-states, countries, regions and so forth as these balls.
Those who attempt to operate in conflict with the structure i.e. the bucket are either re-factored to fit in it, blocked from entering it, or ejected from it. This is, in fact, the most important aspect of the meta-structures’ early state and how it regulates itself. A devolved Belgium can be a country, home to the capital of the EU, two linguistic sub-states and happily exist within the “European project” meta-structure (the bucket) as a collection (read Set) of balls.
Those on the outside are admitted through a process that allows for the reformatting of the entity attempting to gain access — a re-shaping if you will into a ball from say a corrosive gas. The mechanism that the meta-structure we call the “European Project” uses is borders. This is not solely limited to the borders of the nation states (maps) that make up the EU. But includes the borders of areas of agreement such as Schengen, EEA, ECJ, opposition to the death penalty and so forth, which ultimately overlap the EU but in many ways very much orbit it as well (Norway, for example, is not a part of the EU). Hence why the European Project is the meta-structure and the EU an aspect of it (a ball).
Maintaining equilibrium
The current format in the case of the “European Project” is lacking equilibrium. Much of what we see with the Brexit vote and populist movements (5 Star) on the one hand, and anti-Brexit movements, pro-EU movements etc. on the other, is the attempt by states, groups and individuals to find an equilibrium that operates within the meta-structure or leave it entirely. (Although there are of course those on the outside of the structure who might want to see it broken down and thus influence this attempt at stabilization.)
The same could be said of the US as well today, with challenges to NAFTA, free-trade and so forth by the current administration.
Elements of these problems that attack the existing order have been or could be solved with the concepts of transnational identities, and multiple identities. This has worked to a large degree in Northern Ireland, where as part of the Good Friday Agreement individuals had the option of choosing which nationality to take (or both).
However, in the case of Brexit and the EU it has challenged these stabilizers, which is likely why Brexit will ultimately fail. That’s unless the UK can create a similar metastructure which frankly seems unlikely now, especially as concepts such as a choice of identity and invisible borders between the Republic of Ireland (EU) and Northern Ireland (would be outside the EU), have become the norm.
Reterritorialization versus Disintegration
Brexit as we briefly discussed above, is an interesting case study as it poses its own conundrums.
It is supported by those on the Left and Right but attempts to break free from the metastructure that governs how these entities can operate independently. Some of its proponents seek a patchwork approach to governance and fear the centralized power of the EU stifles this.
In both the US and UK for example, supporters of the Neoreaction (NRx) movement and similar have tended to support Brexit and Trump. These groups have also supported a patchwork approach to sovereignty.
This approach to patchwork however we believe is flawed.
If the end goal is essentially stable (and one would hope prosperous) micro-states, this is arguably going in the opposite direction. This disintegrates existing structures that provide the mechanism for micro-states to operate, without the problem faced during the Imperial age. Namely smaller weaker states become vassals at best or utterly conquered by the larger predatory states. Or, of course, they are plunged into a never-ending asymmetric war utterly jamming a spoke in the wheels of their own acceleration.
An Accelerationist future, at least from the GHx perspective does not automatically guarantee that all larger states will collapse into smaller nations. Those under authoritarian rule are in a position to crush those around them when concepts such as human rights are ignored and technological supported surveillance is pervasive.
Therefore the metastructure is required for transnational identities, subcultures and micro-states to operate in largely peaceful coexistence (each of these being metadata). This peaceful state then allows for data to flow between entities.
It is a solution along the lines of Alexander’s suggestion and is being actualized as we speak. However, as noted it is under threat internally from those who see its current incarnation as being too centralized.
In order for it to succeed, therefore, it will take individuals to align with the concept of the metastructure (for example “The European Project”) and seek to make it work in a fashion that can accommodate the rapid changes taking place to the Stack.
This will take the development of tools, philosophies, organizations and policies to make this succeed.
By the nature of our rapid technological change, these policies and so forth will need to accommodate robotics, AR and VR. The tools may be built on the blockchain and in the cloud. These philosophies will also need to challenge our sense of identity and self.
In the following piece, we will discuss what that impact on the self, the individual, entails.
