New post out. Sovereign corporations, then and next.

Discourse concerning technology lacks precisions & I'll attempt applying my schema onto common discussions showing how failure to distinguish between various ontological levels leads to incoherent arguments for example. My next essay will be on this probably.

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Couldn't sleep last night & I've been reading about technology & origins of wealth/industrial revolution, so was playing conceptual legos and trying to map out technology & all its subcomponents & various relations. Most "technology" conceptualization is excessively vague.

It sounds like a romantic affliction but really it makes you hate life in those moments.

Insomnia strikes again.

Slowly turning into a cardiocel. I hated it at first but I've been doing stairclimber 3-4 x a week at moderate or high intensity and I'm starting to enjoy it. Did running for a bit but could never get into it.

No matter how “based” a figure is, the desire to be “liked” and updooted by the masses triumphs all.

Millennialisms are nauseating. I wish he would keep a pathos of distance. Mysterious prince reigning over his domain.

Also states emerged within certain ethnic bounds, and despite the diversity within geographical regions differences across regions are greater if traits are taken as bundles. The global citizen only works for certain classes.

Changes since industrial revolution maximized these beyond what agrarian states could dream of but haven't rendered them limitless.

So there isn't necessarily a path towards greater centralization -- I think only a badly selective reading of history sees this. I think states also reach a maximal territorial extent based on cost of administration exceeding returns on territorial size.

Funny experience I had working through the same logic to reach the same conclusions. However I think something like technology recombines and creates pockets of differentiation through selection effects, but cuts across traditional lines.

Modern states consolidated power over territory, smashed or integrated local organizations, leveled regional distinctions, imposed universal administrative rules. Why not a world state ? I guess this is the Hegelian/Kojeveian contention.

RT @forgottenpleth:

Not entirely sure where my skepticism derives from but it probably has to do with those explanations being simple, and having a simple policy wonk fix “ban the phones” “regulate social media” “protect da children with age verification laws”. Cynical motives or not, bad path.

In general I am very skeptical of technology first explanations for changes in behavior. I try to look at alternative hidden variables that get channelled in specific ways through technology.

Not convinced by the idea that fear of the digital panopticon is causal mechanism explaining Zoomer Derangement™. Sounds like cope rationalization to me; I think basic structures of civil life being dead, neurotic nanny state culture, & possibly dysgenics are more convincing.

I've seen this thesis reoccur many times, the idea that early and modern states had to “cage” people in. Quality of life probably dipped for most before the advent of modernity (if we compare to hunter gatherers lifestyles). I mean both could be brutal there is something to this.

There's probably a good analysis to do here by contrasting Hobbes and Clastres. For Hobbes there is no society possible without the state, whereas Clastres points out primitive societies deliberately created political structures against the coercive, hierarchical state power.

From this lecture, it's quite good. I was hoping for a more sociological/historical analysis rather than theorycel but interesting nonetheless.

If you read Hobbes through the medieval “king’s two bodies” tradition of Kantorowicz you notice that Hobbes keeps the people-as-unified-body as a separate conceptual entity in his schema. Hobbes inverts the medieval arrangement -- “the people” don't exist without the sovereign.