Hello,
this issue contains two parts:
The first part discusses what the political is and the evolution of political entities (7 min)
The second part is a tweet-storm on the possibility of a decade long up-cycle in shipping
«On the political» by Karl Smitt tries to describe the political, in it’s isolated form. That is, what questions are purely political, and when do questions become political?
The political can be approached through the abstractions used to describe it. This approach results in words like state, republic, society, class, sovereignty, nation and so on. The problem is that these words are incomprehensible without the necessary context and concreteness of reality. The political is not described in empty words but by the concrete reality which then embodies these words.
An antithesis, dual opposition, clarify the perceived contrast inherent in a domain. In aesthetics, the antithesis is between beauty and ugly, in morality, it is between good and evil, and in economics, it is between profitable and unprofitable. An antithesis can be projected onto a scale, but defining the range is essential. To illustrate this, to define the range for aesthetics we first give beauty the value “1”. As a result, ugly can be placed in relation to this reference point. If ugly simply was the absence of beauty it would be placed at “0” and the scale would be from zero to one. However, an antithesis is direct opposition, and ugly must, therefore, have the value “-1”.
The previous example makes the assumption that an antithesis is defined on one end, and then it must follow that the other end is the negation of the initial definition. Logically, this is necessary for the direct opposition to hold true. If an antithesis is defined by one person this is unproblematic, but that is not the case, and there is no guarantee that all people will define the antithesis starting from the same reference point. This culminates in a scale that is defined from both ends, which means that, qualitatively, one end is not simply the negation of the other.
As the endpoints of the scale have been defined, the next question is what is in between. On the one hand, the scale can be seen as binary, meaning that there is no in-between; either something is beautiful or it is ugly. But this can be seen as too simplistic, as things do not have to exist in absolutes, but can instead have relative strength; this thing is more beautiful than that thing.
Now, Smitt argues that the antithesis of the political is the opposition between friend and enemy, defined by the enemy. The enemy is an existential threat to one’s own way of life, and the political is a response to this where a sovereign authority can order sacrifice of life or killing by going to war.
The antithesis seems intuitive at first, but it is difficult to interpret the scale. First, the antitheses can be viewed as a reduction of the broader theme of existential threat, and the scale will be viewed this way henceforth. The scale is then defined on one end as existential threat, but what exactly is the negation of this? Simple negation can provide existential safety as an answer, but it is not intuitive what this corresponds to in reality. And is there something in between? Although aesthetics probably can appear in relative strength, existential threat seems more of an absolute. For instance, the term “a little existential threat” sounds weird. The counterpoint is that the threat, in itself, is absolute, and the scale can instead be viewed as the absolute threat multiplied with its perceived probability. In this view, the enemy-part of the scale becomes continuous, but the other part of the scale remains obscure.
The antithesis must be applied at the right level of abstraction, namely the political. To illustrate this, in the context of Christianity, the quote “Love your enemies” (Matt. 5:44; Luke 6:27) seem to strongly contradict the Christian crusades in the Middle East. And the literal interpretation, without doubt, does. To begin, the reason for the contradiction in the first place is the differing origin; the former from a religious entity and the latter from a political entity. Hence, if the former is applied at the personal level, and the latter is attributed to the political level, they can be reconciled. The point here is not to reconcile them in the present, but rather an acknowledgment that they were, in fact, reconciled at their present, and trying to explain why. For the critical reader, you might have needed to squint your eyes a bit here.
Notwithstanding, looking at the political as a response to an existential threat highlights a dynamic of growing threats and political entities. For a hunter-gatherer, this meant being part of a tribe. For a farmer, it meant protection from a feudal lord. For a citizen, the city-state was the protection. Then the city-state was expanded to the nation-state, and finally, the nation-state further expanded to the federation. In all expansions, the new political entity was legitimized by a new existential threat the current entity was not able to defend against.
From a game-theoretic point of view, it always made sense for the individual to join a larger political entity as it would provide relative strength and protection against threats. But, as this point of view would apply to all other individuals as well, the increasing strength and protection would only be in absolute terms, and relatively not change much as the enemy simultaneously grew stronger as well. Although the appeal to the individual was protection against existential threat, it is not certain that the actual outcome was any better than the base. But highlighting this contrast is only possible with the benefit of hindsight, and for the individual looking forward, the decision was instead based on uncertainty and psychological angst.
Although it might be obvious that the new and superior political entity absorbed all of the political authority, it simultaneously implies the not-so-obvious fact that the previous and inferior entity lost all of its political authority. A general example is a city-state becoming absorbed by a nation-state and thereby losing its political authority.
The trend of growing political entities points towards the next step on the ladder, one global entity. But simply adopting such a view forgets the justification for a political entity in the first place, an existential threat. Acknowledging this, a global political entity becomes contradictory because it presupposes the existence of another political entity. One global entity is, therefore, not possible for humanity, on its own. The natural extension of the previous point is that the emergence of a non-human species threatening humanity would legitimize a global entity.
But, the presupposition that another political entity must exist, is argued from the antithesis of friend and enemy, not the underlying theme of existential threat. In other words, the existential threat need not be confined to political entities but can come from technology or nature. If technology posed an existential threat to the entire humanity, why should not this be enough to legitimize a global political entity? And if it is, one needs to understand what a global political entity actually entails.
But so far, the argument has been that the existential threat is always growing and that political entities grow in response to this. What if existential threats are disappearing? To begin, the current political entity, legitimized by the disappearing existential threat, would lose its legitimacy. In a socially frictionless world, the entity would simply dissolve into smaller entities. While it is intuitive that the emergence of a new existential threat can overshadow the current one, it is not obvious that the removal of the current one will put light on the previous one. Because of this, when one climbs the political ladder, there is a big difference arriving at a step from above or below. When arriving from below, the surroundings are possible enemies, but arriving from above, the surroundings have been friends for the last time. It is, therefore, possible that existential threat either grows or collapses entirely.
Although humanity’s rise can be attributed to growing political entities and power, it is not certain that this trend will continue into the future.
Shipping: Decade long up-cycle?
As always, your thoughts and comments are highly appreciated
Erlend