Update Capitalism, Communism, and the Extitutional Stakes of our Politics.md

This commit is contained in:
exeunt 2025-03-10 02:16:10 -07:00
parent 313f37d955
commit 1f3de7c7c6
1 changed files with 5 additions and 5 deletions

View File

@ -21,11 +21,11 @@ Three such practices (among several others) are:
- **Field Ontology** [2]: Whereas administrative institutions bring categorical hierarchies to their systems - hierarchies which they tend to inherent from the state and which the two, through mutual reinforcement, conceal and naturalize - extitutional space is made up of *field ontologies*, shifting assumptions about what dimensions of the real deserve attention or operative preeminence adequate (again) to the contingency of the encounter. (The fact that practical knowledge often points in the direction of interrelation, intersubjectivity, codeterminacy, etc. is a convenient nod to the technical sense of the term *field*.)
- **Open Protocolization**: Institutional protocols share (to varying degrees) the two features of being antimimetic (containing some dimension which discourages its reproduction, think military classification, NDAs, industrial secrets) and anti-empirical (resistant to inconvenient truths, interpretations or revisions that may have empirical veracity but be contrary to the interests of the organization or its authorities - see David Graeber's [*Bullshit Jobs*](https://www.are.na/block/3782579) for a wide-spanning index of this tendency.) [*Open protocols*](https://www.extitutional.space/Articles/An-Introduction-to-Open-Protocols), conversely, are maximally memetic and empirically defined - when they reach a status as a stable entity, they have done so by being battle-tested and extremely versatile, structured with minimal uniformity needed to maximally expand the possibility space of its users. (Ex. under the pressure of legal prohibition, the development of the phrase for LSD: *Turn on, Tune in, Drop out*. [3])
- **Open Protocolization**: Institutional protocols share (to varying degrees) the two features of being antimimetic (containing some dimension which discourages its reproduction, think military classification, NDAs, industrial secrets) and anti-empirical (resistant to inconvenient truths, interpretations or revisions that may have empirical veracity but be contrary to the interests of the organization or its authorities - see David Graeber's [*Bullshit Jobs*](https://www.are.na/block/3782579) for a wide-spanning index of this tendency.) [*Open protocols*](https://www.extitutional.space/Articles/An-Introduction-to-Open-Protocols), conversely, are maximally memetic and empirically defined - when they reach a status as a stable entity, they have done so by being battle-tested and extremely versatile, structured with minimal uniformity needed to maximally expand the possibility space of its users. (Ex. under the pressure of legal prohibition, the development of the phrase for LSD: *Turn on, Tune in, Drop out*. [3])
Over the past few months in the Ethereum community, the "specter of communism" has reared its head, as visions of [gitcoin communists](https://x.com/ameensol/status/1889758396166926527) or [soyboy-figureheads-with-marxist-affiliations-who-hate-to-win](https://x.com/singularityhack/status/18867812704551897110) have been said to be tarnishing the reputation and cypherpunk ethos of Ethereum. Most recently, I had a discussion with a member of the community who was troubled by what they perceived to be "techno-communist ideas" circulated at the GFEL conference in Boulder. They were even troubled that the Ethereum Foundation associated itself with the conference, given the perception of those themes being validated.
Over the past few months in the Ethereum community, the "specter of communism" has reared its head, as visions of [gitcoin communists](https://x.com/ameensol/status/1889758396166926527) or [soyboy-figureheads-with-marxist-affiliations-who-hate-to-win](https://x.com/singularityhack/status/18867812704551897110) have been said to be tarnishing the reputation and cypherpunk ethos of Ethereum. Most recently, I had a discussion with a member of the community who was troubled by what they perceived to be "techno-communist ideas" circulated at the [GFEL conference](https://www.ethereumlocalism.xyz/Ethereum-Localism-Goes-Cosmolocal---GFEL-Announcement-Boulder-2025) in Boulder. They were even troubled that the Ethereum Foundation associated itself with the conference, given the perception of those themes being validated.
I'm writing this short treatment because a) as a thinker who's concerned with preserving and expanding the extitutional field, I abhor communism and wish to distinguish the discourse at GFEL from that label; b) it is my longheld belief that the Ethereum community need not involve itself in the vagaries of traditional politics *so long as it maintains a healthy sense of the extitutional stakes of its enterprise*.
I'm writing this short treatment because a) as a contributor who's concerned with preserving and expanding the extitutional field, I abhor communism and wish to distinguish the discourse at GFEL from that label; b) it is my longheld belief that the Ethereum community need not involve itself in the vagaries of traditional politics *so long as it maintains a healthy sense of the extitutional stakes of its enterprise*.
----
@ -86,10 +86,10 @@ This binary, these accusations, are counterproductive, and Ethereum as an extitu
[2] This phrase was adopted from the phrase "[field causality](https://archiv.hkw.de/en/programm/projekte/2014/anthropozaenprojekt_ein_bericht/enzyklopaedie/feldkausalitaet.php)" as it appears in the work of [Forensic Architecture](https://forensic-architecture.org) and [affiliated projects](https://www.hkw.de/en).
[3] Was this a psy-op? Was Timothy Leary a member of the intelligence community? Does it matter? The '67 March attempt to levitate the Pentagon was as much as a psy-op as the Macy Conferences were an infiltration by Buddhist pacifists into the utmost ranks of the military intellgentsia: the plane of nature has it's own momentum, and it is *open.*
[3] Was this a psy-op? Was Timothy Leary a member of the intelligence community? Does it matter? The '67 March attempt to levitate the Pentagon was as much of a psy-op as the Macy Conferences were an infiltration by Buddhist pacifists into the utmost ranks of the military intellgentsia: the plane of nature has it's own momentum, and it is *open.*
[4] Simulation drift, brain drain, yes men, etc.
[5] Most instructive to an extitutional politics that ignores legacy political narratives are those cases where state violence suppressed small businesses to preserve corporate monopolies under the banner of free market ideology (ditto to Soviet and Maoist suppression of alternative collectivist projects).
[6] Consider the role of the early 20th century carnival and B-movie market of the 1950's and 60's in the states as a generative haven for queer and disabled expression - depending on pockets of market demand and renegade entrepreneurship - in generating a global cultural imaginary.
[6] Consider the role of the early 20th century carnival and the B-movie market of the 1950's and 60's in the states as a generative haven for queer and disabled expression that was dependent on pockets of market demand and renegade, sometimes ham-fisted entrepreneurship - in developing the global cultural imaginary of horror and sci-fi.