Democracy 3.0 requires crypto-imperialistic thinking

How you read the world determines how you want it governed. How DO you read the world around you? Have you updated your mental interpretation engine to fit what kind of democracy you want?

The democratic ideal is not dead but the next major up-grade is long overdue. What’s bugging the developers? Why is the 3.0 product not shipping? The problem is not huge but critical: the community’s most important development tool, a bourgeoisie interpretation of history, has reached obsolescence. Realistic proposals for upgraded democracy can only be crafted with a modern set of utilities for historical interpretation, broadly labelled “crypto-imperialistic thinking”.

The world is what it is. In order to fit in and cope we make sense of it: what we observe, we try to explain favorably from our point of view. We keep narrating the story of our own survival. For that purpose, we carry in our heads largely unconscious, but furiously active mental schemes that massage every observation we make into meanings that fit our story. Those models produce our interpretations of history and extend into projecting our futures. As subconscious as those interpretative models are, they are nevertheless very real and highly specific. They determine what we can articulate about our preferences for social institutions. We can only demand what we have understood. That’s why an interpretation of history is a necessary tool for democracy — or any other social order.

Let’s define Democracy 2.0 — “D2” — as the preferred social order for relatively well-educated persons of strongly European-heritage with above median incomes in stable employment situations. The number one power tool for building and maintaining D2 has been “bourgeoisie history”. Let’s forget for a moment about Karl Marx and other ideologues. Here Bourgeoisie History — “BH” — simply refers to a broad but specific way of reading and narrating the world. The story has many versions but the basic plot remains the same: everything in the world converges on producing educated people who either have or assume strongly European-heritage with the aspiration of earning an above median income through stable employment. Such march of history is maintained through social order where the aspirational professional class actively volunteers a portion of their valuable time for civic duty ie. manages the monopoly on violence — the state — for the benefit of all.

The simple BH-to-D2 formula has proved an extremely powerful mental-to-action combo. Over the past three centuries or so it has delivered most of its promise those who have actively practiced it. Unfortunately, it seems to have reached the end of its effective lifespan only over the past couple of decades. It didn’t survive the start of the third Christian millenium. For most BH-D2-adherents the experience of the new millenium has been one of increasing madness: the world has stopped being predictable, one black swan is turning into a whole flock in front of my eyes. I expect linear progress, I get crises and disappointment. What’s happening? Has the world gone mad?

The problem with mental models is they’re by definition extremely hard to switch off, not to mention replace. They don’t adjust directly to changes in the world. They keep putting out the picture they’re programmed to instead of switching channels. Typically a mental model only changes when it malfunctions. The picture becomes blurred, can’t make out the voices or text many. That’s a crisis and it’s ok. A useful mental model needs a good crsis. It only becomes strong because it keeps getting fixed.

Sometimes, though, a critical mental model malfunctions so badly that the whole systems crashes. That’s not ok. System crash is the sign that the old model needs a complete replacement. That’s where we are currently at with BH. It has sustained a huge number of crises, proved extremely resilient over long periods. BH’s projection of D2 has been proved right time and again since the great French revolution: more people, more production, more participation in production, more taxes to spread the wealth, more representation to strengthen system legitimacy, and the same again — keep the wheel turning and and we all will be fine. The success formula has seemed unbeatable.

But now BH model malfunctions at every turn: more or less production, more or less work, more or less taxes, more or less representation, for whom by whom? The once so mighty and smooth prediction machine now seems unable to deliver clear answers even to simplest questions. The delays in delivering understanding is straining the whole system to the brink of collapse. It’s trying to parallel process alternatives and complementary answers but instead just keeps sinking deeper into confusion. The old BH unit should be replaced but it just feels so hard to replace the reliable work horse that has served one so well all those years.

Compounding the agony is the lack of alternative replacements. BH to replaced with what. “…can’t see what could possibly replace it and work even remotely as well?” Well, a leap of faith is needed. But, having said that, the proposal, Crypto-Imperialist Thinking (CIT), is not as far removed from the old BH as one might first think. The essential basic elements are mirror images of their BH counterparts. That’s why they are mentally relatively easy to derive from the BH model. Just flip the coin and see what’s on the reverse side. It’s a sea change through an adjustment. The issue is how to read observations about social relations, ie. how to interpret power.

BH power settings boil essentially down to three main assumptions:

1. Power accumulates (with accumulating material wealth). It can be win-win for the majority. Therefore the ideal way to allocate — broker — power is through negotiated long-term contracts. When contracts, ie. the rules of the game, are aligned and adjusted against wealth growth, they grow stronger as majority keeps feeling satisfied about the existing power relations.
2. Power is attained on (acknowledged) merit. The near-absolute faith in meritocracy was a necessary appendix to the belief in the existential accumulation of power. The identity of the individual needed to separated from the her position in society. If ideally only action was made to matter, the motivation for participating in the power allocation game was maximized: “rags to riches”, “be all you can”, “liberation through education” etc.
3. Power is exercised transparently. This is the foundational structure of D2. For any governance action to be considered legitimate, it has to be visible to everybody in the community. Every citizen must have a full and similarly unhindered view of the game. If not, the arena must be rearranged to allow for that for the game to continue.

If one tries to read the world today through this spectrum, it renders itself illegible. BH can offer very little to no sensible explanation why the world turns as it does: why it seems less people want to play by the rules that have worked so well? That amounts only to a weak (moral) claim that too many of the world’s powerful are doing everything wrong, ie. playing against the BH-D2 rules. Is that really so, and even if, so what? One could easily argue against BH from many angles: The rules needed changing anyhow (to accumulate more wealth). It’s not about playing against the rules, but that there’s an altogether better game with different rules in town now. And you grew tired but prevented new players from entering the field. And so on. BH is dead, long live BH.

How would CIT change the picture? Let’s first flip the coin. What are the main CIT power settings:

1. Power is a constant. In this model power is rendered analogically equal to energy. It cannot be created or destroyed, just converted and shifted. Therefore power allocation can only be a zero-sum game. An allocation toward some is a reduction from somebody else.
2. Power allocates dynastically. Individual action for access to power matters only in so far as it changes her position in the networks that store and dose power. There is no individual merit other than action affects the network’s strategic position (vis-a-vis) other networks.
3. Power is concealed. Effective use of power requires that institutions of power are showered with symbolic, ceremonial action (of praise to strengthen them) while the actual exercise of power for specific (political) objectives is concealed as much as possible.

Why would such defined CIT paint a better picture of the world than BH? Is it not just an articulation of extreme cynicism, even nihilism? No. A reminder and highlight: a interpretative scheme is not a philosophical or substantive argument about the world. It’s a template to question the world. CIT is better because it leads to questions offering potentially a fuller understanding of the world as it is. CIT preferences three sets of questions over others:

1. Who is struggling to undermine whom for what aims?
2. Which networks control what power flows and how do they cascade down?
3. How and to what extent do which networks succeed in concealing their actual exercise of power?

While BH recognizes conflict, it’s inherently difficult for it make sense of a reality where a deal couldn’t be struck to end conflict. Surely there’s always a deal that can be made to work! For example, for BH the ultimate was MAD, mutually assured destruction. It was the ingenious Cold War deal to end all other deals: when nuclear race is kept up at reasonable rates, it’s in everybody’s interest NOT to push the fatal button. There are costs, but everybody wins. BH comprehension breaks down completely beyond the point where conflict is maintained for its own sake. What could anybody ultimately gain from permanent instability? Makes no sense. Within CIT it makes all the sense: the winner is the one with best capabilities to lead on-going instability. It is not an assumption based on philosophical or sociological choice about the nature of power. It simply recognizes that social orders necessarily test — and advance — their endurance at the edge of chaos. It is the marginal survivability in the unstable environment that determines their relative strength (which is all that matters). BH could only lament Russia or China for their wrongful actions while CIT makes sense of why they choose to act as they do — it makes sense.

While BH would recognize that much power resides in networks, it would deny networkedness as power’s primary storage facility. That would come too close to denying the primacy of individual action. The idea of a superhero is the most extreme expression of the BH faith in meritocracy. “What is your superpower?” is its lame translation into today’s kitchen psychology. Either way, it’s the individual that moves the world. CIT does not quash the individual but connects her first to others: it highlights the idea of permanently connected powerful individuals — dynasties — as the primary seat of power. It leads to opposite reading of the same phenomena: why is it that individual action seems to matter most of the matter so little in determining in who gets what? It looks at networks, and networks of networks, how they are nested and cascading in different directions, as the landscape where power flows. Individual and her action influences the world only if one is flowing down a river of power, in a boat, not as a spectator on the banks.

Perhaps the most crucial distinction is made on the visual access to exercise of power. BH believes power is actually made in the act of transparency itself. All power is (potentially) visible exercise of influence according to a predetermined set of rules. If not, it is just illegitimate violence to be curbed by using the state, the monopoly on legitimate violence. Today such reading leads to paradoxes: how come power seems to have become so opaque, so detached from the arguments for its use? Words don’t seem to match deeds. Everybody wants a sustainable world but nothing can be done to stop carbon emission? Everybody wants peace but the conflict just keeps escalating. Does it mean the ultimate power holders have more or less power than before? Or what?

For CIT that line of questioning is uninteresting. It would want to understand how those in/with power actually manage to keep their use of power from the public eye. For the simple reason that within CIT real power is only that part of action that be concealed from scrutiny of others. If you manage to influence social relations without others knowing about your action, that’s power. Everything else is just pomp and glory. Words and deeds shouldn’t match. There should be only that degree of correspondence that helps you conceal your action best.

The D2 picture painted by BH is not unreal or ugly. It’s just old and fading fast. CIT are the new tools leading to a new style and different looking pictures. From the BH-D2-perspective the new pictures would look as scary and ugly as Picasso would have looked to old Dutch masters. CIT produces crypto-imperialistic images. When power is read through the CIT lense, reality starts resembling the late 19th century neo-imperialist world: through science and technology new economic vistas open up, demographics change, populations grow, people move around more, competition for the new prizes heats up between powers. Through conflict, an established order transforms into something different. The steam engine powered the old order to new imperialist races which came crashing off the rails in the world wars.

The new imperialist vista today is the cyberspace. The great games of the 19th century replay themselves there in the 21st century setting. Cyberspace offers unprecedented opportunities to those who can and dare. It forces everybody into unstable environments, participating in new networks, new systems. People are newly divided into powerful and vulnerable through the unpredictably occurring experimentation and exploration. Much the same way the colonialists and indigenous peoples, old empires and emerging powers, confronted each other earlier.

Why then crypto-thinking instead of just cyber-imperialistic? Power might conceivably be the same element in any environment. But, in a physicalist analogy, changing pressure changes the element’s state, from liquid to gas and so on. State changes are critical should be highlighted. Power is power. But liquid power does not behave the same as power in the gas form. BH recognizes liquid power but not gas. CIT assumes most power to be gaseous. Cyberpower is all gas. What does that mean for the exercise of power?

Every era recognizes a situation with the widest gap between a highly destructive capacity and defenselessness of a population. All use of power is interpreted against such symbolic benchmarks: what’s effective, acceptable, responsible, expedient use of power? Different eras carry different power symbols. For late 19th century the machine gun could be seen as a symbol for ultimate power. For the late 20th century the atomic bomb. Nuclear arms represented the pinnacle of liquid BH power. First US alone held for a brief moment the unimaginable power of being able to destroy the whole world. As nuclear capacities proliferated, and with it the balance of strategic power, the symbolism remained but faded.

Today’s ultimate power symbol is successful action in the cyberspace. It’s not as clearly a single weapon as before but more a set of capabilities. It’s a concoction of information networks, satellites, software, algorithms mixed with money and politics. As fuzzy as it technically might appear, it projects a crystal clear symbolic meaning: control this space, literally, and you’ll control tomorrow’s empires. The decisive difference to the nuclear era is how widely cyber-capabilities are shared in the world. No individual could build a nuclear bomb. Only extremely large and well resourced organizations could. In the cyberspace almost anybody can do almost anything — if they just have a bit of appropriate knowhow and some small resources. This changes the game.

When lot of people can do the same thing, who’s more successful than the rest is largely a function of one’s ability to conceal action from others. Your biggest success is when you have done something without anybody else even realizing it. You are still doing fine when others find out about it long after the fact. But it’s an abject failure if you have to fight them, ie. their defences have detect your attempt. Therefore the new ultimate weapon is the capacity to conceal use of power.

An element of surprise has always been key to winning battles. The importance of covert and clandestine action for power games has been glorified in popular culture ad nauseam. But surprise and stealth have never been as prized strategic assets as they are today. They are not just elements of successful engagement. They are the whole battle. In some case even the whole war. The can only be won when the enemy doesn’t know there’s one going on. Therefore, your power only extends as far as your capacity to conceal your action. In the cyberspace it translates to crypting your every move. Acting “crypto” makes you invisible, least vulnerable and therefore best positioned to project your power over others. That’s why the “C” in CIT is for crypto, not cyber.

What then about Democracy 3.0? Thinking CIT is not the same as acting CIT. Interpretative models on their own lead to no particular social order. They have the potential lead to all potential orders. Social orders can be updated deeper democracies or more hierachical versions of themselves. Autocracy 3.0 is as possible as Democracy 3.0. BH-D2 could be replaced with CIT-A3, instead of CIT-D3. While I hope for the latter, I fear the former.

All I have to offer is a thought game to help transition from BH to CIT, for those who wish to replace their mental historical interpretation units. The whole business of meaning making is premised on us having a dynamic dialogical relationship with the world. We only ARE individuals to the extent we dialogue with the world. And that being is in constant flux, nothing is fixed, everything flows. It’s not about on-off but shades of colour or level of volume.

There, try thinking about it like this: let’s not worry so much about how much “bad” systems — be it nasty big corporations or rogue states — are missing the “right”, ie. democratic qualities. Let’s worry more about how much the institutions we truly care about — parliaments, electoral systems, education, health care, defence — might be incorporating increasing shades of real crypto-imperialistic power use. That’s the concern. Because such shading of oneself is always hardest to spot. The superhero always manages to slay the biggest monster they face around the corner. Their scariest moments, of confusion and helplessness, come when they discover they are transforming into monsters themselves.