The Paradox of American Power

The paradox of American power: in forgoing its national interest, it builds institutions that strengthen it. To do so, it relies on other countries to finance it. This weakens it. The American system is reciprocal, and creates stability in the short run, but instability over time. To offset this, it needs to maintain an ideological and technological advantage, as the basis for economic advantage. Sacrifice is the keyword to reciprocity, balanced by strength. Increasingly this strength is premised on dominance of key platform technologies within networks (not just technological, but linguistic, ideational, financial, economic, and political). American power is vested in the stable order created by these relationships; it functions as a platform power.

In contrast, the German hegemonic and Chinese hegemonic systems exhibit different core characteristics. The German hegemonic system is fundamentally extractive, as the response to the EU financial crisis has shown. The Chinese system is built on ethnic discretion, not universal ideas. The former forms the foundation of collapse, the latter the problem of incompleteness. The interesting development to watch will the influence of modernity on the Chinese capacity to promote universal forms of power, both pragmatic and ideological.

Note 102

There is path dependency in the taking of political decisions that influence inequality. In particular, the distribution of assets will determine the kind of decisions that economic agencies take that may influence the balance of inflation, growth and wages, and equality, and so on. Hence the distribution of wealth has a tendency to create feedback loops with policies that influence it.

Time 1

History is essentially a way of representing cause in terms of condition, becoming in terms of being.

Our conceptual notion of time is given in terms of the conceptual ordering of the condition stack. Time seems ordered because laws govern the conditions which express the order of time. The experience of time is neither linear or nonlinear, it is the ordering that interprets it, and gives it content. Cause is the coincidence of the forward movement of time and conditional relations.

Ordered time represents the incomplete actualization of condition stacks. If all condition stacks were given, or if the world were fully determined by given conditions, ordered time would be conceptually redundant. That is, it will play no ontological role as a platform for causal relations. It's role is then purely psychological.

Alternatively, time is a way of picking out one among many possible worlds, that is, it functions as existence, the slip between the lip (of becoming) and cup (of conditions).

Note 101

America's core competency is in global public goods, specifically, core platform technologies and the institutions that support them. Geostrategically, hard power issues regarding China will resolve themselves as US can conduct offshore balancing with Japan and India. Core platform technologies (English language, reserve currency services, ideology, pole position in internet and media governance, science and technology) need to be supplemented to offset the OBOR offensive.

China is placing large bets on emerging markets; India is a major foil. Internet and logistics companies are potential game-changers.

Multipolarity will create interesting and pragmatic alliances based on common interests. Institutional governance will become more fluid, along with more varied and syncretic cultural textures.

Note 100

Life is problem solving. How do problems relate to each other and why?

Note 99

What is cultural normalisation? An ideology which cannot incorporate an aspect of human nature de-normalises it, creating an extreme compensating excess. I am thinking of two examples: racism in Western societies, and alcoholism (the compensation to a tyranny of social norms) in Britain. I am contrasting this with normalised, institutionalised racism in East Asian societies, and integrated drinking cultures in the Mediterranean.

Objects 1

Objects are a function (in the functional, not in the input-output sense) relating properties to systems. Objects are collections of properties that function within a system, while properties are elemental facts that are brought together by systemic functioning. Objects are anchors of expression of emergent systems of meaning (by turning some properties into nouns and other properties into verbs), and function in a mutually reciprocating relation to these ways of thinking.

Note 98

It seems that the world operates as a single mind, so recognizing this, and having an awareness of the form of alignment with this, is needed.

Globalizing States

States serve as the foundational final arbiter of control over institutional networked flows, whether ideational, social, economic or cultural, that happen within and between borders. Therefore, despite being undermined in scope of action due to the autonomy of the control centers of these networked flows - key agents, nodal points - thereby leading to necessary convergence among states - states, by providing the legal framework for world order, remain crucially sovereign, as the key aspect of this order, thereby anchoring identities to geographical boundaries.

What is interesting to observe is the dynamic of gradual regionalism, it's coming together and coming apart. It seems that the state remains a nation-state; that it's function to preserve culture retains the vote. Cultures are not sacred; they come and go, but the conservatism of a people will shape (though is unlikely in the long run, to reverse) the turns that globalisation makes, as well as the inevitably cosmopolitan cultures that result.