Bouvard on Sovereignty Property versus Tribal Loyalty

Sovereignty as property and tribal/racial loyalty are rival right-wing projects, both at odds with the US constitutional order. But sovereignty as property might get there with a few modifications; tribal/racial loyalty involves tearing it all down.

@Imperius__13 Because I don't think tribes are real and I don't know whether Houses are. And I think this model would anyway lead to constant squabbling and eventually the dissolution of the federation.

@Imperius__13 These kinds of groups, and ethnic ones as well, are less important than corporations and similar institutions, which are also less likely to constantly threaten civil war. The purpose of a constitution is to keep conflict within bounds, not to institutionalize war.

@Imperius__13 I don't know if there are places where corporations, professional associations, educational institutions, etc., are genetically impossible. If there are, maybe those places won't move beyond tribal organizations.

@Imperius__13 Maybe Africa needs another kind of governance--but that also won't be a federation of Houses.

@Imperius__13 Oral cultures will be limited in that way. If the limitations are more intrinsic, that will clearly have implications for governance.

@Imperius__13 I don't know what concepts they had. Whatever we know of them now is going to be post-literacy. I also don't know how exposure to the Romans impacted the Germanic tribes.

@Imperius__13 Guilt is a complex concept--it may have been a late arrival in all cultures.

@Imperius__13 My point is that we know very little about what a particular group knew if we don't have access to their writing, which we don't have if they didn't write. They transmitted knowledge orally, but not to us. I mention the Romans because they were a literate culture.

@Imperius__13 There are individuals who don't feel guilt within cultures that have assimilated the concept (we call them "psychopaths"), and there can be civilized people who strip themselves of guilt, since guilt can get in the way of criminal activity and committing atrocities.

@Imperius__13 Not to us because we don't have records of whatever prayers, rituals, knowledge of nature, etc., tribes in an oral culture had 2,000 years ago. Traditions don't come down to us undiluted and with full knowledge of their provenance--we've inherited lots of things we wouldn't be

@Imperius__13 able to attribute to those who transmitted it--we have no way of tracing chains of custody past written record keeping.

@Imperius__13 We have lots of texts from the Greeks and Romans, so we know a lot about their laws, history, poetry, oratory, science and technology, etc. What do we know about the Germanic tribes before the Romans encountered them, and how do we know it?

@Imperius__13 All the things you mention have changed significantly even recently. Maybe not genetics, but you can’t read the rest off of genetics. Writing doesn’t capture everything, but I don’t think you can make claims about modes of cognition of ancient cultures without written evidence.

@Imperius__13 You don’t have to prove anything and I don’t have to believe anything. It seems we’re not going to be on the same page here.

@Imperius__13 It's not arbitrary because it's for specific purposes. If I'm judging a case I want to see a written contract--I don't care about a handshake, even if, in its own way, a handshake can be an equally valid way of sealing an agreement.

@Imperius__13 Of course not--that's certainly a basis for an argument about the concepts available to ancient cultures. Of course, those reconstructions are based on written texts. If there are concepts available in proto-IE that Africans couldn't grasp, that's telling us something.