Thinking the Commons as a Question
Extended Reflections on the Timenergy and the Commons workshop as part of the Theory Underground EU Tour
Theory Underground is leading an “American Idiots EU Tour” from April 27th through May 25th. To find out more, or to get involved, check: EU Tour 2024.
This month Philosophy Portal is launching its fifth solo course on Hegel’s Philosophy of Right. Class starts May 18th, you can learn more or sign up here: Philosophy of Right.
This month in The Portal we are focused on the concepts of Home and Origin, and welcome three special guests,
of The Artemisian, Daniel L. Garner of and of . You can find out more or get involved here: The Portal.Last week I co-led two workshops on “Timenergy and the Commons” with David McKerracher of
in collaboration of Joris de Kelver of Multiversity, who hosted us at De Plek (Dutch for “The Spot” or “The Place”). You can find a video of the entire first event here:1I took my contributions to opening the event in approaching the problem of how to frame the commons, not as a final solution, but as an open question.
For this task I relied mostly on the foundations of my doctoral thesis, Global Brain Singularity, in outlining the concept of the metasystem transition.2 The metasystem transition represents events of evolutionary emergence, where a higher level of organization is established via integration of diverse subsystems.3 One can even think of the metasystem transition as the evolutionary-cybernetic equivalent of sublation, in terms of cancelling and lifting to a higher level. In a metasystem transition a diverse network of unintegrated elements are cancelled and lifted to a higher-order form or organisation which opens new conditions of possibility. Common examples of metasystem transitions in the literature include emergence of: prokaryotes, eukaryotes, multicellularity, sexuality, societies, and superorganisms.4
I used the concept of the metasystem transition in the first sections of Global Brain Singularity to help establish a narrative framing of human evolution and civilisation that may help us navigate a transition in the midst of constitutively global or common political problems or negativities. When we are dealing with the dynamic of a metasystem transition, diverse elements only realise a form opening new possibilities in relation to a common negativity or negativities. In the history of our species, I suggest that this has happened three times, with our present moment, being constituted by a fourth metasystem:
The first time was when our human ancestors were opened to the domain of language as an information processing medium which introduced all new conditions of possibility (coordinating in hunting), but also all new negativities (coordination of large groups), which required a new social hierarchy (what anthropologists call bands and tribes).
The second time was when our human ancestors were opened to the domain of writing as an information processing medium, which introduced all new conditions of possibility (coordinating agricultural processes), but also new negativities (collecting taxes, mediating long-term exchange of resources), which required new social hierarchy (what anthropologists call kingdoms, chiefdoms, city-states).
And the third time was when our human ancestors were opened to the domain of the printing press as an information medium, which introduced all new conditions of possibility (coordinating industrial processes), but also new negativities (excessive over-production, undermining natural foundations), which required new social hierarchy (what we today call states).
This narrative is not meant to be overly-identified with, but simply used as a pragmatic tool to contextualise our present moment, where we find the metasystem of the printing press (information), industry (energy), and state (control), in flux and transition. Not only is the information foundation of the printing press becoming progressively undermined by the internet, but industrial foundations themselves are being undermined by the need for more sustainable resources, and the international entities that are undermining a common space in this regard are escaping state control. While the 19th century saw the spread of the state as a primary organising entity to all corners of the Earth (in the process undermining kingdoms/monarchies), in the 20th century (and specifically as a response to the negativity of World War I) we already saw the need for the creation of higher-order controls in various forms of international organisation. Even if these organisations have not formally usurped the power of the state as nation, there are forces now acting above and beyond the reach of the state (most notably international corporations), which do point towards the need to thinking about whether or not a higher level is in the process of emerging and establishing itself in relation to a new information medium (the internet), and a new energy source (to be determined).
Here is where I would situate the commons as a question within the frame of metasystem transition theory: with global information processing, comes the formation of the conditions of possibility for global coordination.5 But the difficult thing to think is what negativities will require us to coordinate on a higher order? And what orders will be produced as a result? One global state? Or a diversity of a different type of organisation or organisations? My intuition as well as my observations of contemporary political ecology point in the direction of the latter (diversity of a different type of organisation) and away from the former (global state). In order for a global state to form, or a global entity of a higher order, the negativity would not only have to include the entire human species, but also be interpreted in the same way. Whereas the emergence of a diversity of higher order organisations would simply require the recognising of a global negativity or negativities that are responded to in way unique to the local region transcending the state as nation.
We can already start to answer this question if we think to entities like the United Nations or the European Union. These are both very different types of organisations but they both transcend the state as nation in an interesting way, and are certainly not reducible to state as nation. In the case of the United Nations, we are dealing with an international organisation, and we are dealing with an entity that is primarily political and diplomatic in its structure. Whereas, in the case of the European Union, we are dealing with a sub-category of international organisation called a “supra-national-state” that is both a political and an economic union. The overall point here is that when we are looking to entities that transcend the state as nation what we find is a diversity of forms that are responding to problems that emerge on the level of the interrelation between states, but that neither seems to be capable of approaching anything like a global state. What we are instead dealing with is an in-between zone of a new multiplicity of entities.
When we use terms like “global state”, I think we miss the point of what is at stake in the process of the realisation of a metasystem transition as a qualitatively different type of entity that opens a new layer of diversities.6 In the context of the history of our species, bands/tribes are not the same as chiefdoms and kingdoms or city-states, which are not the same as states often expressed on a national level, which are not the same as what are likely to become supra-national entities, or classifications that do not yet exist. While each layer gives birth to one type of entity, this one type of entity is always expressed as a multiplicity, and that should happen again beyond the level of the state as nation.
To get a clearer view of what entities may emerge and how they may interact, I try to frame the emergence of this space in relation to the following negativities, or what I call the “commons gap”:7
Ecology: global warming, mass extinction, resource exploitation/depletion
Economy: income/wealth inequality, privatisation of public/social goods, monopoly control of production, unemployment, unsustainable energy
Social: new apartheids/state divisions, refugee crises, human rights, health and educational infrastructure/access, food and water infrastructure/access, demographic divides
Political: centralisation of power, disintegration of representative democracy, state war, lone-wolf terrorism, rise of multi-local radicalism, and state-corporate relations (corporate ownership of state activity)
Technological: automation from general-purpose robotics, artificial intelligence (AI), big data applications, disproportionate access to advanced technology, and socio-economic unpredictability due to emergent technology
Biological: novel and quickly spreading epidemics/pandemics, active exploration of transhumanism (genetics, nanotechnology, robotics) and its impact on our individual and collective biological substrate
This commons “gap”, while shared by the whole planet, will likely not be resolved in a shared way, but likely in a way that is unique to different state constellations. In the same way that Europe currently exists under a supra-national Euro-zone, we may have the emergence of supra-national Russian-zones, Chinese-zones, African-zones, all that emerge in response to negativities that occur internal to the political, economic, and diplomatic relations between currently existing states. The key point is that it will be a “series of integrations/unities” that may themselves represent a new level of diversity as entities in the same way the 19th century was characterised by the emergence of a series of new integrations and unites in the form of the state on a national level.
In the context of the Timenergy and the Commons workshop, I simply wanted to offer a perspective on the evolution of political entities that may help us to think why our contemporary political discourse is breaking and fragmenting. It could be that we are using language unique to old metasystem (the state as nation metasystem) to discuss problems that are increasingly requiring the working of new concepts. Here McKerracher’s notion of timenergy may be an important proposition to consider as a first principle for politics, which may be why McKerracher is increasingly dissatisfied with the conventional coordinates of left-right on the level of the state. The negativity such a first principle would be responding to is specifically timenergy lack,8 namely that the socialist state can no longer guarantee its citizens timenergy in the context of the emergence of international corporations that erode its control capacities. This was in fact the foundational argument of Thomas Piketty’s Capitalism in the 21st Century, where he proposes the formation of some type of global state to regulate global capital.9
Perhaps instead of a global state to regulate global capital, the question of the commons will appear in a multiplicity of different supra-national entities (perhaps not unlike the European Union), tackling the question of how they can socialise their relation to global capital in a way that makes sense for the 21st century on the level of the aforementioned problems of the commons gap. When I was growing into my political orientation, I thought it was reasonable to suspect that liberal capitalism could become increasingly socialised through democracy on the level of the state. Perhaps that is no longer possible. Perhaps what we need are supra-national entities that are capable of re-articulating politics on the level of first principles (like the defence and maintenance of a timenergy on the level of a new socialist order). These are open threads, and also threads that I try to keep alive in thought at The Portal.10 If you are someone who is interested in thinking the commons as an open question in this direction, The Portal could be the right space and the right community for you.11
Below you will find some condensed reflections from our guests at the Timenergy and the Commons workshop that I appreciated and will be trying to think further, including from David McKerracher, Joris de Kelver, Bryce Nance,
of , , Owen Cox of , of , Gael van Weyenbergh, of , and .Re-questioning the nature of necessary labour/utility; the possibility that we exist in a post-class fractured mass; the fact that we inhabit an age of exhaustion without timenergy; we need to rethink the relation between scholè and necessary labour to reproduce society as a commons (David McKerracher)
In capitalism there is the axiom of profit maximisation (simplistic, homogenising), but in an actual commons organisation, we are dealing with goal maximisation in relation to different desires that require discursive processing; as a result, the timenergy required of persons for processing antagonistic desire is higher in a commons than in capitalism (how to talk about desire?) (Joris de Kelver)
What is the goal of philosophy? From Aristotle to Kant this has been the question of philosophy, but for Hegel, he claims that philosophy cannot do this, cannot help us with this; for Hegel, the goal of philosophy is to reconcile us with what is/the present, which allows us or opens us to thinking (privileging thinking over acting); from here we see the emergence of three different Hegel’s: the conservative, reformist and revolutionary relation to what is/the present (
of )How to reconcile oneself with being thirsty for the apocalypse; recognising that one is thirsty of the apocalypse (radical transformation of what is); but also thinking through what it would mean to conceive the conditions of possibility for reconciliation with what is (Bryce Nance)
Is Islamic immigration the key contradiction of European civilisation today? Is Islamic immigration forcing European civilisation to reconsider its own universality or introducing a conflict of universalities? Is the Left retreating from action, or refusing to stab a flag in the ground? What is the relation of contemporary political coordinates of right-left as it relates to the principles of borders, babies, and brilliance? Are we at a moment where Europeans must make decisions/concrete policies about “borders, babies, brilliance” that determine whether or not we are capable of reproducing families today? At the same time how are we to reconcile with a Christian culture after the counter-cultural revolution of sexual energies? Do we need to consider a relationship between Protestant cultural energies and Hindu cultural energies? (Owen Cox of
)Can we use artificial intelligence to establish new student-teacher relationships with personalised AI tutors? In a world where capitalism has become sacred and central, how do we de-sacralise and de-centre capital so that other realms of life can flourish? What is the problem of the global state as a mechanism to regulate global capital? (
)United Nations has multiple stake holders but community is at the centre of all their initiatives, and how communities interface with groups in a network age; in networks strength depends on diversity and personal connection, but the problem is that trust is lost at size/scale (i.e. only small-scale communities can establish trust) (Gael van Weyenberg)
Rethinking the modern pair bond as the model for a trust based civic society, reconciling with the undermining of this institution in taking for granted the foundations of the West as a Christian society that romanticised and idealised the monogamous pair bond; the question of the commons as a question about the destiny of the noosphere (the planetary layer of thinking), and how are we to conceive of intergenerational dynasties/intergenerational networks in the context of the noosphere; is this a foundation for technosocialism? What about the role of technology as it relates to transhumanism/reproduction? And the possibility of different singularities, whether technologically driven (artificial intelligence) or biologically driven (genetic engineering) etc. (
of )Future society/community depends on how we mediate “mother/father wounds”; we can only scale at the speed of trust (e.g. couples, family, community, state); how do we reconcile with the death of democracy and the hegemony of the corporate sector? How do we deal with the social quadrant of shadow hierarchies, boundary formation, conflict avoidance, power games, etc. (
of )
Theory Underground is leading an “American Idiots EU Tour” from April 27th through May 25th. To find out more, or to get involved, check: EU Tour 2024.
This month Philosophy Portal is launching its fifth solo course on Hegel’s Philosophy of Right. Class starts May 18th, you can learn more or sign up here: Philosophy of Right.
This month in The Portal we are focused on the concepts of Home and Origin, and welcome three special guests,
of The Artemisian, Daniel L. Garner of and of . You can find out more or get involved here: The Portal.Note that the audios for both my opening presentation, as well as McKerracher’s opening presentation had to be re-recorded due to audio issues that were subsequently fixed for the rest of the event.
Last, C. 2020. Global Brain Singularity: Universal History, Future Evolution, and Humanity’s Dialectical Horizon. Springer.
Last, C. 2020. Human Metasystem Transitions. In: Global Brain Singularity: University History, Future Evolution, and Humanity’s Dialectical Horizon. Springer. p. 67-81.
Smith, J.M. and Szathmáry, E. 1995. The Major Transitions in Evolution. Oxford University Press: Oxford.
Last, C. 2020. Global Commons in the Global Brain. In: Global Brain Singularity: University History, Future Evolution, and Humanity’s Dialectical Horizon. Springer. p. 107-147.
Ibid. p. 110.
Last, C. 2020. Global Commons in the Global Brain. In: Global Brain Singularity: University History, Future Evolution, and Humanity’s Dialectical Horizon. Springer. p. 120.
Piketty, T. 2014. Capitalism in the 21st Century. Harvard University Press. p. 515.
See: The Portal.