By Michael Krieger: I spent much of Sunday in complete awe of the extraordinary strength and fortitude of the Catalan people in the face of totalitarian violence from the Spanish state against citizens attempting to vote in a peaceful referendum. Before you start telling me about how the vote is illegal and goes against the Spanish constitution, let me be perfectly clear. That line of thinking is entirely irrelevant to the point of this post.
Specifically, I believe humanity is reaching a point in its evolution, both from a consciousness perspective as well as a technological one, where we’ll begin to increasingly question many of our silly contemporary assumptions about how governance should work. The primary one is this absurd notion that a nation-state should be seen as a permanent structure of political governance which only becomes dissolvable in the event of violent revolution or war.
When it comes to great leaps in human progress, a crucial component to lasting change is convincing enough people that a particular way of organizing human affairs is outdated and harmful.
I think if we take a step back and look at how people are governed across the world, there are very few places where “the people” feel they live in societies in which they exert any sort of genuine political self-determination. When we look at the last few decades of political governance in the Western world, a march toward more and more centralized political power has been a facet of life in both the U.S and Europe. I believe this trend is being pushed to its breaking point, and groups of humans with common culture, language and interests will increasingly question whether massive nation-states (or wannabe super states like the EU) make sense. In the past five years alone, Scotland held a referendum on UK membership, Great Britain voted to leave the EU, and most recently, Catalonia took a major step toward independence with yesterday’s banned referendum.
Those who favor centralized power see these events and movements toward decentralized political power as inconvenient, intransigent outbursts from the ungrateful, unwashed masses. Movements which would best put down one way or the other in order to carry on with the business of further centralizing power. They view such burgeoning drives for political self-determination as temporary storms which the wise elders of centralization must merely ride out. Unfortunately for them, this is not the case.
If anything, we can expect many more movements for decentralized power in the decades ahead for two main reasons. First, the current system is simply not working for most people. Second, as we become more connected and conscious, we will invariably conclude that all human beings deserve to have a real choice in the type of governments they live under. The prevailing assumption that we’re simply born into a particular nation-state and must accept this situation for the rest of our days irrespective of how brutal, oppressive and dysfunctional it may be, is an irrational, inhumane and outdated perspective.
As things stand today, humans essentially have two choices when it comes to political life. We either accept the nation-state we’re born into and play the game to the best of our advantage, or we try to become citizens of another country with values that more align with our own. The only way to really shatter existing political power structures and form new ones is through violent revolution or war, which is an insane way of reorganizing matters of human governance. One of Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy’s key arguments in casting the Catalan referendum as illegal is that Spain is an indivisible nation under the 1978 constitution. Let’s think about what this means in practice.
Anyone who’s spent any time in Spain understands how culturally and linguistically distinct many of the regions are when compared to Madrid. These are differences that go back centuries and can’t be brushed off by a constitution created a few decades ago. The idea that these various regions must be part of a centralized Spain even if the people within the regions want political autonomy is ethically preposterous, as well as authoritarian and evil in every sense of the word. If done properly, human governance should always be a voluntary arrangement. If an overwhelming majority of culturally distinct people within any nation-state decide the super state is no longer working for them, they should have every right to leave. Anything else is bondage.
As the U.S. Declaration of Independence so eloquently states:
If we look at the world’s nation-states, they generally consist of large, centralized political entities comprised of a union of culturally distinct provinces, states or regions. In some cases these regions voluntarily came together over time, while in other cases they were forced together during a war or revolution. It’s crucial that we not view such nation-states as Rajoy views them, as eternal structures that can never be altered, but rather as voluntary political associations. Again, the only way to know such associations are truly voluntary is to periodically subject them to referendums. It seems to me that this should be an integral part of any nation-state. In contrast, we have a name for power relationships that aren’t voluntary. Slavery.
Indeed, the fact that we put up with this at all is downright perplexing. For example, although we accept children should be under the care of parents from birth up to a certain point, at a certain age we pretty much all agree that an adult should be free to make autonomous decisions. While a human becomes free at this micro level upon reaching a certain age, at the macro level most human beings never get to choose what sort of government they live under. Most of us are not at all governed by consent, and this feels very wrong to me.
Beyond the ethical implications of imposed political governance, we should also discuss the way our current system ends up functioning in practice. If power hungry authoritarians understand that the bond which unites the various regions of a nation-state can never be questioned, power dynamics become very lopsided and increasingly centralized over time. In contrast, lets imagine that every 25 years, every defined region of every nation-state gets to vote on whether they want to stay part of the current governing structure or create a new one. Power might be much more distributed in the interim period under such a system, since there’s always a threat that one or many of the various states or provinces might choose to sever ties in a few short years. Such a system would be much more akin to a free market for political governance versus what we have today, which appears more in-line with a “divine right of kings,” feudal type system. I think we can do much better than this.
That being said, I don’t want anyone to assume that the hypothetical system I described above is what I think should happen. I’m just providing an extremely simplistic example to get people thinking. The key point is human beings should not be forced to live their entire lives under systems of involuntary political governance which they never agreed to in the first place.
We must figure out a way for human beings to peacefully and periodically alter the forms of government they live under in a major way should they choose to. Right now, the main options for achieving this sort of change tends to involve violence, which often leads to situations that are worse than they were before.
We need to agree that political associations should always be voluntary, and that most such associations worldwide right now are not. Rather, they are most often maintained via state violence, as we just witnessed in Spain. Our goal should be to live in a world defined by peaceful voluntary political associations, but getting from here to there won’t be easy or quick.
I hope I live long enough to see such a world.
In Liberty,
Michael Krieger
Source
By Michael Krieger: If you’ve read my work over the past several weeks, you’ve probably noticed an increased fascination with secession/independence movements around the world. I think we’re at the very early stages of this developing trend, which will see nation-states across the world fracture for a variety of reasons. The historical significance of the political changes we’re about to live through cannot be overstated. As I wrote in last month’s piece, The Future Will Be Decentralized:
Bloomberg reports:
The second point relates to the fact that Brazil, like Spain, apparently provide no “exit option” for any province or region which decides it no longer wishes to be part of the nation-state. As such, this is by definition an oppressive and involuntary political relationship completely inappropriate to conscious human beings. As I explained in Monday’s post, all political associations should be voluntary and it’s absurd that people are simply born into nation-states that are assumed to be forever entities with no escape latch.
Nation-states aren’t eternal, nor should they be. The problem with nation-states is they refuse to accept this fundamental reality. As such, political dealings with the state get transformed into oppressive centralized relationships, as opposed to voluntary decentralized arrangements. It’s no surprise then that oppressive relationships work out less positively for the average person than voluntary ones where the citizen and local communities are sovereign and empowered.
In response to the Spanish King’s extraordinarily thuggish comments regarding Catalonia yesterday, I composed several tweets relevant to today’s discussion.
Any nation-state constitution that claims there’s no way to separate from the centralized government is an unethical and anti-human constitution. You can’t hide behind unjust laws to defend political bondage. The sooner we recognize this truth and increasingly move toward voluntary political relationships, the better.
In Liberty,
Michael Krieger
Source
Specifically, I believe humanity is reaching a point in its evolution, both from a consciousness perspective as well as a technological one, where we’ll begin to increasingly question many of our silly contemporary assumptions about how governance should work. The primary one is this absurd notion that a nation-state should be seen as a permanent structure of political governance which only becomes dissolvable in the event of violent revolution or war.When it comes to great leaps in human progress, a crucial component to lasting change is convincing enough people that a particular way of organizing human affairs is outdated and harmful.
I think if we take a step back and look at how people are governed across the world, there are very few places where “the people” feel they live in societies in which they exert any sort of genuine political self-determination. When we look at the last few decades of political governance in the Western world, a march toward more and more centralized political power has been a facet of life in both the U.S and Europe. I believe this trend is being pushed to its breaking point, and groups of humans with common culture, language and interests will increasingly question whether massive nation-states (or wannabe super states like the EU) make sense. In the past five years alone, Scotland held a referendum on UK membership, Great Britain voted to leave the EU, and most recently, Catalonia took a major step toward independence with yesterday’s banned referendum.
Those who favor centralized power see these events and movements toward decentralized political power as inconvenient, intransigent outbursts from the ungrateful, unwashed masses. Movements which would best put down one way or the other in order to carry on with the business of further centralizing power. They view such burgeoning drives for political self-determination as temporary storms which the wise elders of centralization must merely ride out. Unfortunately for them, this is not the case.
If anything, we can expect many more movements for decentralized power in the decades ahead for two main reasons. First, the current system is simply not working for most people. Second, as we become more connected and conscious, we will invariably conclude that all human beings deserve to have a real choice in the type of governments they live under. The prevailing assumption that we’re simply born into a particular nation-state and must accept this situation for the rest of our days irrespective of how brutal, oppressive and dysfunctional it may be, is an irrational, inhumane and outdated perspective.
As things stand today, humans essentially have two choices when it comes to political life. We either accept the nation-state we’re born into and play the game to the best of our advantage, or we try to become citizens of another country with values that more align with our own. The only way to really shatter existing political power structures and form new ones is through violent revolution or war, which is an insane way of reorganizing matters of human governance. One of Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy’s key arguments in casting the Catalan referendum as illegal is that Spain is an indivisible nation under the 1978 constitution. Let’s think about what this means in practice.
Anyone who’s spent any time in Spain understands how culturally and linguistically distinct many of the regions are when compared to Madrid. These are differences that go back centuries and can’t be brushed off by a constitution created a few decades ago. The idea that these various regions must be part of a centralized Spain even if the people within the regions want political autonomy is ethically preposterous, as well as authoritarian and evil in every sense of the word. If done properly, human governance should always be a voluntary arrangement. If an overwhelming majority of culturally distinct people within any nation-state decide the super state is no longer working for them, they should have every right to leave. Anything else is bondage.
As the U.S. Declaration of Independence so eloquently states:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.The key aspect of the above declaration is that governments instituted among humans derive their powers from the consent of the governed. If we take the U.S. as an example, how do we know that the people of Texas and California believe centralized power in Washington D.C. as it stands today is an appropriate form of governance unless there’s a periodic vote confirming it? Did any of the 50 states ever actually consent to an out of control centralized deep state-run oligarchy running things as they please? Likewise, how do we know that the people of Catalonia consent to being part of Spain unless you ask them? The truth is you don’t, and this presents a major dilemma we must confront going forward.
That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
If we look at the world’s nation-states, they generally consist of large, centralized political entities comprised of a union of culturally distinct provinces, states or regions. In some cases these regions voluntarily came together over time, while in other cases they were forced together during a war or revolution. It’s crucial that we not view such nation-states as Rajoy views them, as eternal structures that can never be altered, but rather as voluntary political associations. Again, the only way to know such associations are truly voluntary is to periodically subject them to referendums. It seems to me that this should be an integral part of any nation-state. In contrast, we have a name for power relationships that aren’t voluntary. Slavery.
Indeed, the fact that we put up with this at all is downright perplexing. For example, although we accept children should be under the care of parents from birth up to a certain point, at a certain age we pretty much all agree that an adult should be free to make autonomous decisions. While a human becomes free at this micro level upon reaching a certain age, at the macro level most human beings never get to choose what sort of government they live under. Most of us are not at all governed by consent, and this feels very wrong to me.
Beyond the ethical implications of imposed political governance, we should also discuss the way our current system ends up functioning in practice. If power hungry authoritarians understand that the bond which unites the various regions of a nation-state can never be questioned, power dynamics become very lopsided and increasingly centralized over time. In contrast, lets imagine that every 25 years, every defined region of every nation-state gets to vote on whether they want to stay part of the current governing structure or create a new one. Power might be much more distributed in the interim period under such a system, since there’s always a threat that one or many of the various states or provinces might choose to sever ties in a few short years. Such a system would be much more akin to a free market for political governance versus what we have today, which appears more in-line with a “divine right of kings,” feudal type system. I think we can do much better than this.
That being said, I don’t want anyone to assume that the hypothetical system I described above is what I think should happen. I’m just providing an extremely simplistic example to get people thinking. The key point is human beings should not be forced to live their entire lives under systems of involuntary political governance which they never agreed to in the first place.
We must figure out a way for human beings to peacefully and periodically alter the forms of government they live under in a major way should they choose to. Right now, the main options for achieving this sort of change tends to involve violence, which often leads to situations that are worse than they were before.
We need to agree that political associations should always be voluntary, and that most such associations worldwide right now are not. Rather, they are most often maintained via state violence, as we just witnessed in Spain. Our goal should be to live in a world defined by peaceful voluntary political associations, but getting from here to there won’t be easy or quick.
I hope I live long enough to see such a world.
In Liberty,
Michael Krieger
Source
_____
Will Brazil Be the Next Hotspot for Independence Movements?
To conclude, I recognize that I’m making a huge call here. I think the way human beings organize their affairs will experience the most significant paradigm level shift we’ve seen in the Western world since the end of the European feudal system hundreds of years ago. That’s how significant I think this shift will be. There are two key things that need to happen for this to occur. The first is technological innovation, and that’s already happening. The second is increased human consciousness. As Thoreau noted, in order for us to have greater self-determination we need to be ready for it. Are we ready? I think we’re getting there.While extremely significant, the Catalan independence movement is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to a global drive toward political decentralization. For example, just today I came across another potential secessionist hotspot in an unexpected place, Brazil.
Bloomberg reports:
Inspired by the separatist vote in Catalonia, secessionists in three wealthy southern Brazilian states are redoubling their efforts to break away from the crisis-battered nation.There are two aspects of the above story I’d like to address. First, is that, like Catalonia, the regions thinking about secession from Brazil are relatively wealthy. This is not insignificant and certainly worth thinking about when it comes to wondering what sorts of responsibility these regions should have to the former union should a peaceful breakup go forward. It’s also worth remembering that the leaders of the American revolution were also extremely wealthy. An Independence movement driven by wealthy factions doesn’t necessarily preclude the creation of a superior governing structure.
Residents of Rio Grande do Sul, Santa Catarina and Parana states are being called to vote in an informal plebiscite on Oct. 7 on whether they want independence. Organizers are also urging residents of the three states to sign a legislative proposal for each of their regional assemblies that would call for a formal, binding referendum. The non-profit group “The South is My Country” aims to mobilize a million voters in 900 out of the region’s 1,191 cities.
Cooler, whiter and richer than the rest of Brazil, these southern states have long nursed separatist ambitions. Rio Grande do Sul even briefly claimed independence 180 years ago. Few Brazilians expect the current movement to succeed any time soon, not least because it is prohibited by the Constitution. But the country’s deepest recession on record and a massive corruption scandal have exacerbated the region’s longstanding resentment towards the federal government in Brasilia. With just one year to go until general elections, the rekindling of separatist sentiment in the south is another indicator of the unsettled state of Brazilian politics.
Celso Deucher, the leader of The South is My Country, says the region contributes four times as much tax as it receives and suffers from a below-average level of political representation. He argues that such an unjust situation outweighs any legal concerns.
“Whenever the subject of separatism comes up, they ban it because the federal Constitution does not allow it,” he said. “But the law is not immutable.”
Rio Grande do Sul is currently immersed in a financial crisis and has lost much of its economic clout, according to Fernando Schuler, a professor of political science at Insper University in Sao Paulo.
“There’s a huge cultural detachment between the Tropicalia Brazil and the South,” he said. “The reasons for separation are solid, justifiable, but I don’t think they are viable.”
The second point relates to the fact that Brazil, like Spain, apparently provide no “exit option” for any province or region which decides it no longer wishes to be part of the nation-state. As such, this is by definition an oppressive and involuntary political relationship completely inappropriate to conscious human beings. As I explained in Monday’s post, all political associations should be voluntary and it’s absurd that people are simply born into nation-states that are assumed to be forever entities with no escape latch.
Nation-states aren’t eternal, nor should they be. The problem with nation-states is they refuse to accept this fundamental reality. As such, political dealings with the state get transformed into oppressive centralized relationships, as opposed to voluntary decentralized arrangements. It’s no surprise then that oppressive relationships work out less positively for the average person than voluntary ones where the citizen and local communities are sovereign and empowered.
In response to the Spanish King’s extraordinarily thuggish comments regarding Catalonia yesterday, I composed several tweets relevant to today’s discussion.
Any nation-state constitution that claims there’s no way to separate from the centralized government is an unethical and anti-human constitution. You can’t hide behind unjust laws to defend political bondage. The sooner we recognize this truth and increasingly move toward voluntary political relationships, the better.
In Liberty,
Michael Krieger
Source
No comments:
Post a Comment