In the previous section, taxation and resource extraction are the fuel/energy that the “power system” organism feeds on and sustains itself with; compulsory education (which necessarily includes ideological narrative) is the way it replicates itself. Now, the organism feeds on narrative? How do you reconcile that?
Previously, the various power structures in existence are described as phenotypic variants of a common species, loosely called the “state.” But if ideology is just food, and shifting from democracy to autocracy is just changing a diet, then what is your evolutionary organism here?
That's a very helpful challenge. I think you've identified two places where I'm mixing levels of abstraction.
You're right that physical resource extraction and narrative cannot both literally be the organism's "food." A more precise formulation is that material resources provide the energy, while narratives make those resources politically extractable by generating legitimacy. In that sense, narrative functions more like part of the organism's metabolic system than its calories.
Your second question goes even deeper: if ideologies are merely diets, then what exactly is evolving?
My current answer is that the evolutionary organism is not any particular state or ideology, but the underlying power organization that maintains coordinated coercive capacity (what I'm increasingly describing through the concept of Violence Immunity). States, empires, republics, and future network polities may all be different phenotypic expressions of that broader species.
I appreciate the question because it exposes exactly where the conceptual boundaries still need sharpening.
In the previous section, taxation and resource extraction are the fuel/energy that the “power system” organism feeds on and sustains itself with; compulsory education (which necessarily includes ideological narrative) is the way it replicates itself. Now, the organism feeds on narrative? How do you reconcile that?
Previously, the various power structures in existence are described as phenotypic variants of a common species, loosely called the “state.” But if ideology is just food, and shifting from democracy to autocracy is just changing a diet, then what is your evolutionary organism here?
That's a very helpful challenge. I think you've identified two places where I'm mixing levels of abstraction.
You're right that physical resource extraction and narrative cannot both literally be the organism's "food." A more precise formulation is that material resources provide the energy, while narratives make those resources politically extractable by generating legitimacy. In that sense, narrative functions more like part of the organism's metabolic system than its calories.
Your second question goes even deeper: if ideologies are merely diets, then what exactly is evolving?
My current answer is that the evolutionary organism is not any particular state or ideology, but the underlying power organization that maintains coordinated coercive capacity (what I'm increasingly describing through the concept of Violence Immunity). States, empires, republics, and future network polities may all be different phenotypic expressions of that broader species.
I appreciate the question because it exposes exactly where the conceptual boundaries still need sharpening.