A Globe of Villages: From MicroNations to MicroCultures

(speech of Franz Nahrada at the Micro Euro Summit (MES) 2024 in Chyše, Czech Republic 20.7.2024) ˧

Schloss Chyše (deutsch Chiesch), der Sitz der Grafen Lažanský von Buggau (tschechisch Lažanští z Bukové) https://micronations.wiki/wiki/Micro_Euro_Summit_2024

https://micronations.wiki/wiki/MicroWiki:Helpsheet ˧

/research (deutsch) ˧

Inhaltsverzeichnis dieser Seite A Globe of Villages: From MicroNations to MicroCultures    Intent of this speech    The Proposal    Human freedom can only live in a multitude of coherent living cultures    The Village is the optimum shell and scale for human development    All our local structures thrive with Global Co-Operation

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Intent of this speech

In a way this speech is intended to shake up in a very friendly way the beautiful party arranged for us and request reflection on the whole concept of MicroNations in a time where we see a showdown or final battle of MACROnations - or to be more precise, of a dominating and a challenging Empire - on the horizon. ˧

Many, if not all MicroNations rely to some extent on the sovereignty of "their" macronation ^[1], they have come to some kind of agreement or modus vivendi - this is a sharp distinction to things like those 'sovereign citizens movements' that are facing crackdowns and permanent confrontation. ˧

No matter how serious and existential the claim of people here for sovereignty is - motivations for the creation of micronations include a wide spectrum from theoretical experimentation to political protest, artistic expression, deep self-realization or even just personal entertainment - I think they all are wise enough to understand that is a matter of skillful and creative disobedience while understanding the limits that make micronational endeavors survive and which Erwin Strauss has described so well in "Start Your Own Country". ^[2] ˧

Micronations are a historically recent phenomenon - which I strongly suggest is a child of the Counterculture Movement of the Sixties. Many attempts of the sixties and seventies like Sealand or Hutt River Province were what Lonely Planets Guide calls "Serious Business". But the advent of the internet changed everything ˧

Between role-playing, political laboratory and artistic intervention, more and more micronations are trying to shape their community and create a collective feeling by reaching out, creating networks etc. . Thus I think this is much more than the repeating story of "the many 'wacky' young men deciding that life is unfair and setting up a nation in their bedroom" (Jo Sargent, writing in The Geographical Magazine about the lonely Planet Guide to Micronations). ˧

And this is exactly the reason for my speech here: Micronations are IMHO an expression of cultural creativity that reflects the growing inadequacy of our existing national narratives facing the emerging global society. Still there is this paradox: they express themselves in the language and symbolism of the very forces they are confronted with - does that mean it is a kind of identification with the aggressor? Or is it rather a subversive move to mock the "Makronational Narratives" that we chose not to buy into? ˧

Maybe this questions will soon be obsolete, since we face an unprecedented and very swift transition to authoritarianism even in and especially in Western democracies and therefore the erosion of the fragile ground of civil liberties on which the micronational phenomenon could flourish, relatively undisturbed, for decades . ˧

But this is exactly the reason I decided to come here and talk to you. We have to counter the growing restrictions that on one hand come under the guise of superficially protecting all possible and impossible identities - we have seen that shift to "identity politics" wildly in recent years -, but on the other hand threaten anybody who questions the state - like Germany’s Minister of the Internal Security, Nancy Faeser, Socialist party, said that citizens must no longer be allowed to even mock the government, once a cornerstone of democracy and free speech. Anything that might endanger the "welfare of the state", even a harmless joke, could be met by the brute force of the state. And yes, we have increasingly been witnessing that this is meant seriously. ˧

I think it is just fair to meet this development - which is quite openly and boldly connected to the synchronous aim to make the respective MACROnation and its European allies "ready for war" - with an entirely different project and perspective. ˧

So I want to remind you of a dream a Swiss author - who for decades used the alias P.M., but recently lifted the veil, his real name is Hans Widmer - already had in the early eighties: that the future of this planet should not consist of nations, neither big nor small, but of millions of village-sized MicroCultures. Seriously. And that the connection of these Villages should not be based on "hard" nations, but "soft" (Bio)regions. ˧

picture copyright by Neustart Schweiz source: https://www.wbw.ch/de/online/werk-notiz/lust-auf-eine-andere-stadt.html

The Proposal

Human freedom can only live in a multitude of coherent living cultures

David Graeber and David Wengrow’s book, The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity, in which they begin to re-write the genealogy of human sociality from the Paleolithic through to the present. They found out that opposing to the dominating belief "civilization" does not gradually emerge through hierarchical stages, but there were early formations of large and complex societies that seem to be having been egalitarian and peaceful. At the core of such societies, they find a notion of freedom that we always considered utopian and non-existing: ˧

"We are not talking here about ‘freedom’ as an abstract ideal or formal principle […] [W]e [are] instead talk[ing] about basic forms of social liberty which one might actually put into practice:
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(1)the freedom to move away or relocate from one’s surroundings;
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(2)the freedom to ignore or disobey commands issued by others; and
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(3)the freedom to shape entirely new social realities, or shift back and forth between different ones." ˧

Muindi Fanuel Muindi

"...all three freedoms mutually condition one another: the freedom to (de-/re-)construct worlds is only meaningful when it enables the freedoms to disobey and to migrate; the freedom to disobey is only meaningful when it enables the freedoms to migrate and to (de-/re-)construct worlds; and the freedom to migrate is only meaningful when it enables the freedoms to disobey and to (de-/re-)construct worlds. These three freedoms will be confluent with one another, or they will not be." ˧

(4)The freedom to acquire a physical space or to find one ˧

(5)The freedom to have the means to communicate dreams about new realities and associate with others. ˧

The Village is the optimum shell and scale for human development

Robin I.M. Dunbar and Richard Sosis (2017) have suggested that there are optimal human community sizes. Community sizes of 50, 150 and 500 are found to be disproportionately more common than other sizes; they also have greater longevity and seem to function socially so much more effectively than other values, no matter if it is in hunter-gatherer societies, traditional agricultural villages, cohousing structures or online communities. Not just seems our brain to be hardwired to maintain a limited number of social relations, but also communities of these sizes seem to be better in self-management and self-determination. This may point to a fractal system of "shells" or "layers" that might be holarchically expandable. (see a little bit further below how we can imagine this)) ˧

Of course the term "village" as we use it here refers also to urban neighborhoods, as Christopher Alexander has described, organized as a "network of subcultures". In "A Pattern Language" he suggests: " ˧

Problem: The homogeneous and undifferentiated character of modern cities kills all variety of life styles and arrests the growth of individual character. ˧

Solution: Do everything possible to enrich the cultures and subcultures of the city, by breaking the city, as far as possible, into a vast mosaic of small and different subcultures, each with its own spatial territory, and each with the power to create its own distinct life style. Make sure that the subcultures are small enough, so that each person has access to the full variety of life styles in the subcultures near his own. see: patternlanguage.cc ˧

"Bolos (Villages) can’t just be neighborhoods or practical arrangements. That is only their technical, external aspect. The real motivation for ibus (individuals) to live together is a common cultural background, the nima. Every ibu has its own conviction and vision of life as it should be, but certain nimas can only be realized if like-minded ibus can be found. ... The nima contains habits, lifestyle, philosophy, values, interests, clothing styles, cuisine, manners, sexual behavior, education, religion, architecture, crafts, arts, colors, rituals, music, dance, mythology, body-painting: everything that belongs to a cultural identity or tradition. The nima defines life, as the ibu imagines it, in its practical everyday form." see bolo'bolo ˧

• Shared amenities of life by organizing community facilities (dining rooms and central kitchens, leisure and event rooms, workshops, laundry rooms, offices and libraries, internet cafés, daycare centers, fitness studios etc.) ˧
• Some kind of land base and connectedness to nature:a piece of land for the production of food (plus pastures, mountains, fishing and hunting grounds, palm tree groves, algae cultures, gathering areas etc.) Stewardship of land may be best organized as commons, even in the periphery of urban agglomerations. ˧
• So in many cases what we call a village might bear similarities with a five-star hotel, a monastery or: a palace. ˧

All our local structures thrive with Global Co-Operation

Cultures always include a productive element. They are not mere ritualistic activities. In the opposite, we know that many subsistence economies developed rituals, songs, dances and so on to foster the joy of everyday necessities of life. Having overcome the large-scale exploitation of isolated workers like in the industrial society, the villages or microcultural communities of the future mostly be based or even focused on high-tech self-providing. There never was and there never will be complete autarky, but the paradox is that the new and powerful digital connections might enable us to strengthen, not weaken, our local autonomy!! ˧

Marshal McLuhan has predicted that the realization of the full potential of global media will lead to an unprecedented renaissance of the Local. We are not only gardening, we are building sophisticated organisms consisting of myriads of circular physical flows of matter and energy. ˧

Many of our decendants one day will literally inhabit a kind of mothertree jointly created by the co-operation of human ingenuity and natural complexity. Production will be largely automated, based on locally grown materials, intelligent fabrication and a universe of freely available and shared designs. Houses will be grown or printed or woven as our garments are. ˧

So this dialectic of global creative intellectual cooperation and local material "selective realization" will be the backbone of what replaces our current economic system. It is neither capitalism nor planned economy, although at the micro-level any economic arrangement is possible. Some of those microcultures might enjoy the game of life as a kind of monopoly and even internally continue the use of some kind of currency, whilst others might do away with money altogether. It is all culture! Nevertheless, the fact that no culture is alone on this earth will be the self - understood. Like every house we build shapes the world of the village, every village and each of our MicroCultures shapes the world of others. ˧

Therefore, it is only logical that in a process of negotiations, resettlements, arrangements etc., Microcultures will tend to group themselves in constellations and act together as kinds of "hypercycles" (term by Manfred Eigen) ^[3] like in biological evolution. They will be like cells developing into tissues, form more organic structures, maybe grow like a rhizome. Furthermore, they will follow the natural conditions of watersheds and bioregions. Likewise, they will redevelop "soft" regional structures of governance aimed at truly common affairs like the management of water flows, the maintenance of all kinds of communication lines and so on. These "shells" or "spheres" of our being will then again associate to deal with the common agenda of humanity. Maybe the most important global goal (besides the short term issues of climate, pollution etc.) is to counter the possibility of human extinction by a cosmic collision with large meteors or asteroids. That is an example that some very well selected global affairs can be taken on by global endeavors of communities of trustworthy enthusiasts, like the space fleet in Star Trek.^[4] ˧

But the most essential element in this proposal is that there is no central power or monopoly of force on this planet. Rather, we trust in the checks and balances of the system itself. Where there is no possibility of excessive accumulation of wealth -simply because the workers broke away from capitalism by forming their self - sufficient villages based on global Open Everything-, robbery and organized crime does not make sense any more. On the other hand, the whole globe is working together to enable the base of successful local "high subsistence" everywhere. ˧

And yes, if there are predatory or untransparent cultures, they will face non-cooperation or even hostility. History is full of predatory cultures, but they alway relied on coercion and lack of communication. If we are able to remove this foundation by spreading and realizing this proposal, we might be afraid of them anymore. ˧

That said, lets remember there is still a lot of fun in role playing and wearing historical costumes. Maybe this will also be a kind of catharsis for future human cultures. ˧

So its time for lunch now. And to start considering the many open questions. ˧

^[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micronation

^[2] : There are a lot of other guides written especially for serious attempts, for example: https://www.wikihow.com/Start-Your-Own-Country
Also interesting is this comedy show: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Start_Your_Own_Country

^[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypercycle_(chemistry)

^[4] This idea has stirred some discussions because this means that there is a certaing group in possession of very powerful weapons. Maybe this is the number one case of "due diligence" in the future world we imagine