<!DOCTYPE html><html><head><title></title><style type="text/css">p.MsoNormal,p.MsoNoSpacing{margin:0}</style></head><body><div style="font-family:Arial;">I have been thinking a lot about the <i>"public movement to disintegrate society."</i> It feels like we are in the throes of a country-wide schismogenesis - the process of defining ourselves as what our neighbors are not. We expect differences in culture in different environments/contexts, but dramatic differences within the same environment surprise us. An example would be pacific coast native american groups, neighbors, where one culture has autocratic kings and slavery while the neighbors abhor and 'outlaw' both. <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">Schismogenesis is the concept used by anthropologists (probably no the only users) to explain how adjacent cultures, or similarly characterized (e.g. nomadic herders, hunter gatherers, urban agriculturalists) can exhibit such diversity of political and social organization.<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">From this perspective, it is not "society" that is being dis-integrated, it is a particular form of hierarchical Federalist society. The roots of this dis-integration are deep and mythical.<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">davew<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">On Wed, Sep 28, 2022, at 6:43 AM, glen wrote:<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> There's an ambiguity in "institutional". Our elections (and suits and <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> rulings) are handled like a tree of locales, allowing both challenges <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> and rulings many articulation points up and down the heterarchy at <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> which to act. Immigration is more unified, more homogenous. As I <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> understand it, federal law preempts state law in all but employment <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> licensing. So "institutional" for elections is distributed and <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> heterogeneous, whereas it's more centralized and homogenous for <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> immigration.<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> One institutional change would be to distribute it. But we'd risk human <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> rights abuses in the same way we currently risk things like states <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> banning abortions or a frivolous election challenging blitzkrieg like <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> we saw in 2020. Another institutional change would be to retool federal <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> immigration law, which probably won't happen with first past the post <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> elections that guarantee 50/50 legislators. I suppose if we could <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> appoint a good faith Machiavellian secretary of homeland security, we <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> could retool the execution in such a way as to obviate many of the <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> judicial challenges. But I have no idea how that might happen.<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> On 9/28/22 06:08, David Eric Smith wrote:<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">>> <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/28/us/politics/election-activists-voter-challenges.html">https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/28/us/politics/election-activists-voter-challenges.html</a> <<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/28/us/politics/election-activists-voter-challenges.html">https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/28/us/politics/election-activists-voter-challenges.html</a>><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">>> <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">>> To moan about this may have some small role early, to try to raise awareness (to compensate for the absence of a News industry that functions as such). But after that, it ceases to be a response, and decays into an abnegation and a waste of time.<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">>> <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">>> Responses are institutional. What is the institutional response to what, by now, sort of qualifies as a public movement to disintegrate the society? “When in the Course of human events [a certain group of people decide] to dissolve the political bands which have connected them [with others]….” For things that have been around for a long time, like frivolous use of lawsuits, we have arrived at some norms for throwing out mistakes and actively penalizing abuses, a kind of detente within which we can function at some level from day to day. For more acute recent changes, like handling immigration claims, we are not doing so, and we approach jamming transitions. For this electoral contesting, I don’t know if there even is an institutional plan.<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">>> <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">>> I would like to have something in my head about this that qualifies as a thought or an idea.<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">>> <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">>> Eric<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> -- <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> ꙮ Mɥǝu ǝlǝdɥɐuʇs ɟᴉƃɥʇ' ʇɥǝ ƃɹɐss snɟɟǝɹs˙ ꙮ<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> -. --- - / ...- .- .-.. .. -.. / -- --- .-. ... . / -.-. --- -.. .<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe / Thursdays 9a-12p Zoom <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> <a href="https://bit.ly/virtualfriam">https://bit.ly/virtualfriam</a><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> to (un)subscribe <a href="http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com">http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com</a><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> FRIAM-COMIC <a href="http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/">http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/</a><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> archives: 5/2017 thru present <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> <a href="https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/">https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/</a><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> 1/2003 thru 6/2021 <a href="http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/">http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/</a><br></div></body></html>