Does the Westphalian system do more than draw lines around land and life?
What about the physical, mental and spirituality of the life?
Above is a quote taken from an article, where the specific words came from a Large Language Model (Google’s Gemini).
The use of the word “Westphalian” was a hallucination. It would have been more appropriate to say, “this adds a Time Dimension that Western individualism lacks”.
The Westphalian system is a specific Western European technology solution to a specific Western European problem. Unfortunately this Western European technology is regularly violently imposed on other regions of the world.
To borrow the language from Gemini in a different article:
The “Line” is a spatial solution to a spiritual problem.
Roman Law (Dominium): The Roman concept of private property (Dominium) was applied to entire nations. The King became the “Owner” of the dirt.
The Wars of Religion (1618–1648): Europe was tearing itself apart because different groups thought they had the “One True Way.”
The Treaty of Westphalia (1648): To stop the slaughter, they invented a “Knowledge Lock”: Exclusive Jurisdiction.
But….
This made me think: do those arbitrary lines and the imposed exclusivity (and imposed winner-takes-all competative dynamics) within those immaginary lines extend beyond governance of physical things, but also to thought and spirituality?
I have no answers to this, but it opens up questions about what I’m considered (beyond “out-group”) for me to exist physically under the jurisdiction of a Westphalian settler-colonial government (originating as parts of the French and then British Empires), and yet I am not be bound to the identity, values or culture of those governments for mental (thoughts, etc) or spirituality (I’m ex-Christian, with Christianity being core to colonialism of this hemisphere by the subjects of European Christian Monarchies).
Recent conversation with two representatives of points on the Western political spectrum
I had a conversation with someone using the name “Gavin”, and someone else using the name “Neolithic”. While they would not recognize it, their views were both built upon Western worldviews and have more in common with each other than either has with my views. I don’t know if they have ever had conversations with each other, but my guess would be that they would see each other as opposites.
The conversations felt familiar to something I’ve observed over the last 4 decades, which is that the entire political spectrum (at that time I thought it was a “Canada” issue, but now feel it is a “Western worldviews ” issue) will want me to place me into pre-existing silos. I simply didn’t fit into those silos, but had no language until very recently for what I was observing.
Those within mainstream Canadian/Western worldviews who self-identify as “liberal” or “left-wing” would want to “educate” or convert me to their way of thinking. Western worldview loyalists who self-identified as “conservative” or “right-wing” would dismiss my existence, and quickly label me as part of the “out group” within their in-group/out-group social dynamics (and no, this wasn’t strictly a Nazi thing – The Anglosphere originated quite a bit of this type of thinking as well).
Neolithic and I had an interesting series of threaded conversations, all attached to a specific post.
I consider Neolithic to be a friendly person who happens to subscribe to Western Liberalism. They expressed interest in the existence of other views, and were able to agree to disagree rather than get angry.
Gavin replied to the above comment. I assumed at first they were interested in genuine discussion, asking if I had explored my own Scottish ancestors as I’m primarily descend from celtic/gaelic people in regions now using names such as Scotland and Ireland.
I replied to that as I regularly do, which is that while I recognize the impacts the British Empire has had on many of my ancestors, I currently live on a different continent and I consider it my duty to myself (and to my ancestors) to be in solidarity with the Indigenous Nations of the land I now live on. We should have been able to act as immigrants and naturalize to the laws of this land, and not be under governance built on foreign ideologies and foreign laws.
There were several other things that Gavin posted, and each sounded like they were genuine questions: up until they clearly decided that I don’t share the same worldviews, and they came out attacking and making strawman claims that directly contradicted what I had written.
For Western liberals, the enemy is Western conservatives, and vise-versa. There is regularly an assumption that if you aren’t one, than you are the other: and since Neolithic and I weren’t in agreement, Gavin likely assumed that I must therefore align with Western conservative values.
I’m not aligned with Western worldviews. I don’t agree with “Age of Enlightenment” fixations on individualism and a very specific conceptualization of “property”, I disagree with Westphalian sovereignty, and so-on.
I do not agree with the narratives of Western governments, no matter whether the political party in power is alleged to be “left wing” or “right wing”.
I consider the USA to be a coin-flip game claiming to be a democracy, and Canada to be a 6-sided dice game claiming to be a democracy, and I’m not interested in playing those games (or any of the sides of the coin or dice). I’m not fixated on who “wins” these games, as I disagree with the games themself.
I have not been “brainwashed” by Western liberal or Western conservative ideologies or governments, and I consider it to be extremely unfortunate that Westerners remain stuck within the false binary logical fallacy of believing that politics (domestically or internationally) can fit into those narrow silos.
The level of anger expressed was sufficient for me to decide to delete the comments they added to some of my blog posts (to avoid other innocent readers from being dragged into that rabbit hole), and to add them to the small number of people I have blocked.
Below is a reposting of some of the notes from that thread. While they seemed to want to “ridicule” what I wrote, I’m actually proud of what I believe and wrote.
Thanks for reaching out in all the various comments you have made. I will watch later, but wanted to let you know “messages received”.
We may be on a similar quest — I have a background of many decades in IT, and only recently turned my Autistic hyperfocus towards anti-racism, wh. Iich lead me quickly to anti-colonialism and doing a deep dive into a more realistic understanding of the Dominion of Canada (as it was more honestly called when I was born).
I will be out for the rest of the evening, but wanted to offer an early share of where my thinking might be different than what may be expressed in your collage of videos.
I have been an IT person since my teens in the 1980’s, where I even designed and built computers (back when soldering irons were more common than today).
I separate hardware and software, and operating systems from applications. I do this when thinking about the physical, mental and spiritual health of living things.
I know this is a distinction not made often within Western worldviews and societies, which is one of the many ways in which I don’t feel that specific software bundle is compatible with me.
I don’t believe all humans were ever infected, and that the anti-malware work will be much easier than some people seem to presume. Some people, even those who I have had conversations with recently in my notes, seem to have given up and believe that full species infection is inevitable.
Quote from: https://r.flora.ca/p/nice-canadian-racism
I look at Racism and other systems/policies like I do technology.
What I am, my phenotype including my lack of melanin in my skin, is hardware. Biology is hardware.
Isms, like Capitalism, Socialism, Colonialism, Racism, Androcentrism, Anthropocentrism are software.
I personally categorize some of these systems as malware, and societies with these systems are in need of anti-virus and other anti-malware work.
I know for a FACT I’m deeply personally infected with Racism. This malware causes me to have harmed and continue to harm other people, and I have further infected other people because Racism is contagious.
I am publicly admitting I have engaged in Racist activities. For most of my life I have actively upheld Racist policies because I had not yet recognized this set of software/policies as malware.
It will take a long time, if it is even possible in my time remaining alive, to entirely rid myself of the impacts from the malware infection of Racism. That is not an excuse to do nothing, but a recognition that I must put considerable time into anti-malware work.
I will be watching the rest of your video collage later. Thanks for engaging and sharing.
Gavin,
I am providing an honest answer to what I believe was an honest question, “What are your thoughts on this video presentation?“
This response should not be interpreted as an opening for debate, or as a critique of any individual. Only my honest thoughts, based on my own lived experiences and areas of deep study. I don’t know if you are a believer in “Western objectivity” and will be upset that I don’t share the same lens as that part of the videos would be presenting. The video collage was a mixture of lenses I share, and lenses I do not.
I started through the video, but when I started to notice a pattern from the clips from the People’s Reset (aka The Greater Reset) conference. I then took a closer look at the conference website.
While I have considerable critiques of what some call the “Western Liberal World Order” (Western Liberal Democracies, Western Market Liberalization, settler-colonialism, IMF/WB/WTO/WIPO, etc), I do not see Western Conservatism (with its even stronger fixations on individualism, individual freedom from responsibility, etc) as the only alternative. I consider that to be a false-binary logical fallacy.
I had a related thread in my notes recently where I was discussing with someone who felt that Western Liberal democracies were the only viable way to govern, from what I could gather largely because they saw Western Conservatism as the alternative that they felt that society needed to be protected from.
In my mind, it is Western worldviews and the silos created by thinking that the full spectrum of political thought fits within Western worldviews that I believe we need protection from.
I’ve been an opponent of the World Economic forum since I first learned about it in the 1990’s, but for what seems to be the opposite reason than a new class of activists oppose it for. I don’t believe that special economic interests and political leaders of allegedly “democratic” governments should be having these forums, and that the fixation on business interests over human interests is what brought us to many of the real problems I’ve seen in my lifetime.
Recent examples:
The “Freedom From Responsibility” convoy that came to my hometown of Ottawa in the context of the responses to the (for decades predicted, but not planned for) COVID Pandemic. These new activists were claiming that they should have some hyper-individualistic “right” to enter everyone else’s workplaces in violation of perfectly reasonable PUBLIC health measures. There were no “Vaccine Mandates” as these movements claimed, only perfectly reasonable workplace health and safety mandates.
As an Autistic person, I am hyper-aware of the anti-Autistic (some openly call eugenicist) nature of much of the most vocal anti-vaccination movement, and it was “Autism Moms” (parents of Autistic children who consider their children to be a tragedy) that were behind Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s transition to being an anti-vaxxer. While a lawyer doing environmental related work he correctly identified the dishonesty of many corporations in generating harmful pollutants (air, water, food, pharmaceuticals, etc), but deeply stuck within the silo of Western individualistic worldviews has misidentified solutions.
These are not problems which “individual choice” can offer any solutions, as allowing this pollution to be an “individual choice” (with the hyper-Western Capitalistic notion that corporations are humans) is the actual source of the problem. European economic theories (Capitalism, Socialism, Marxism, Communism, etc) allow for far too many cost externalities.
I recently wrote a short note about the social dynamic (individualism vs collective health) that I feel is at the core of why there is such a fixation on vaccinations rather than that energy being where it needs to be on food, water and security and other areas that get largely ignored.
This is the same with some of the mythologies presented about Climate Change, something I’ve known about since I was a teen in the 1980’s. It is Western Worldviews, including individualism, Anthropocentrism, Androcentrism, Extractivism, etc that have brought us to this point.
While we don’t know the exact percentage of Climate Change that is human caused, we do know that economic theories are 100% human – so basic logic and precautionary principles dictate that when there is a conflict between ecological realities and the economic theories of a subset of humans, that it is the economic theories that need to give way.
The WEF being late to trying to do something in relation to climate change is only about conflicts between Extractivist industries in the energy sector (In Canada, the creation of Alberta and Saskatchewan as resource-extraction hubs to feed the center of Empire – first the British, then the Canadian – is one example) and the rest of the business community. Their focus is not on the health of human or more-than-human life, but only the health of their Western Capitalist businesses.
I don’t believe the WEF can actually provide solutions to these problems, as the fixation on Western Capitalist ideologies that the WEF represents is the primary source of these problems. The best that forum can offer is harm reduction, not viable long-term solutions.
Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) that were impacting the Ozone layer was comparatively easy to solve, as there were not as many narrow special economic (Western Capitalism, etc) interests that were benefitting from the harm.
I hope this was helpful. Sorry it was long, but I wanted to provide a reply to what appeared to be a genuine question.
We don’t agree on everything, but we certainly agree on the fundamentals! This was another excellent piece. Thank you.