WHY GEOPOLITICS?

Dear friends, we are only couple of weeks away from publishing my THE FORCE IN BITCOIN book. Its description on the Amazon KDP platform will be like:

“666+ pages of pure Bitcoin magic. Over 200 images, illustrations, graphs, drawings, tables and charts inside. Nearly 400 of highly relevant quotes. More than 2100 source references on neat display for free preview on https://behest.io/#resources . Ample forewords by several blockchain founding father titans. Perhaps the most comprehensive Bitcoin almanac, compendium or treatise.., so far. Happy Third Halving to everyone and enjoy the ride!”

The global covid-19 pandemic, the economical and geopolitical situation and all current circumstances, make a perfect storm for Bitcoin, for publishing research on it, and makes the ideal time to share with you a content written by me back in the distant 2004 and put together in a never published article on 20th of April 2005. Here you are this writing of mine, regard it as an hors d’oeuvre to my upcoming book:

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“POWER

Power is ‘action-upon-actions’, as per the definition of Michel Foucault. This is maybe the cold most and clean definition which we have — devote of any conjunctural ideological tint. Starting here we can deploy a simple and effective model.

The power as summa of all human actions over the actions of humans, constitutes the glue of society. Power makes the society. The power concentration, in focuses, which we call most often states or nations or governments, is what fragments the humankind into distinct societies, too.

In maths and physics, a “field” comprises assigning of a quantitative value to each point of a spacetime. If we assume that the political force field of a Sovereign represents the quantitative measure of its ability to act-upon-actions for each spacetime point, than from this model we can deduct the ‘postulates’ of geopolitics. Here, the gauge of foreign politics would be the capability of a power center to act upon the actions beyond its borderlines of formal territorial supremacy monopoly.

In the beginning of XXth century the power relief map, if we assign the power concentration as altitude, resembles a mountain with several steep summits, corresponding to the empires of Europe, in which capitals are taken decisions affecting the activity of almost the whole planet, and around this mountain spreading the vast lowlands, marking the status of the dependent subject territories.

It is apparent, that under this model about half a century later, our world obtains the power configuration of a magnet — with its two poles: USA and USSR, as somehow naturally — 中国, China plus few other lesser powers fell in the middle of the power lines where the two poles influence equilibrated. Lets call this historical situation of joint domination of USA-USSR “global power duopoly”. The middle is the third*.

The “geopolitical equation” consists of the balance of control by the double-power USA-USSR over the aggregation of all human and natural resources , situated into the one space. Hitherto, in the “geopolitical equation” in all the times are present two “constants”:

SPACE

The space containing all the played available resources is limited in size. It is defined in the two dimensions by the closed curvature of the planetary surface. The third* dimension — in height, with the radius of, say, the lunar orbit, the intensity of presence of the Powers exponentially decreases in that outward direction, as well as, even faster it dwindles into the by far more difficult technologically inward direction to the bowels of Earth.

Forasmuch as, in geometric sense, the global power field saturates into factual control by the Powers over only the surface of the planet, the total spatial power activity naturally gets connotated with the term ‘geopolitics’.

HOMO

Our biological species. Three* tens of thousands of genes. -ish, made out of about three* billion nucleotides. Omnivorous eusocial mammal. Homo Sapiens.

Everything what comprises the so called Human Condition, with its evolutionary defined boundaries of physical and psychological parameters, distributed into all-embracing domain of normality, as the deviations in body or mental functioning in the distinct individuals comprise a statistically insignificant share.

In whole-mankind context, the individual humans, could be really regarded as “social atoms”, due to their relative uniformity and invariability within the framework of the historical time, when the “geopolitics” implements.

Those two constants of the “geopolitical equation”, the Earth and the Man — are accepted as both essential and immutable even in the most ancient politial doctrines that have reached us. The same way, even the most modern examples of attempting societal modeling, could be rendered down to “earthly-play-of-humans”. The first signals for breaking off this political mentality — taking into account the fact that, some technologies emerging into our toolbox, but yet not mainstreamed into full-fledged market dominance, possess the capacity to profoundly change the social-political picture — manifest only as warnings about the menace of their implementation. Unarguably, technologies that enable exporting significant part of our activity off-planet and such that allow exhaustive manipulation of the human body and psyche, via their modification or replacement, shall break the “geopolitical balance”.

TECHNOLOGIES

Since deepest antiquity on mankind’s disposal are the two most fateful technological lines. They comprise, most generally stated, the capacities to overcome space and to command modifications of the human essentialia. The first group have always been based on physical pushing off another relatively static medium via rowing, walking, rolling, and utilization of natural currenrs in the planetary fluids — wing, ocean fluxes, rivers… The second tech group — excluding the social games for control like marriage, morals … aimed towards regulation of reproduction activities — until very recently, exhausted down to consumption of contained into plants, fungi and animals chemical substances with certain effect on mind. In both key areas — kinetics and mentality, mankind acquired cardinally newer understanding in the last century. These means obtained signification in the political discourse of XXth century. Words with definitely negative connotation, due to the way the geopolitical ‘logic’ imposed on us to use their underlying objectivities. These are:

ROCKETS

They allow us to move objects in three* dimensions, without inertial foothold into the planetary relatively static media — the three* elements — land, air or water. With them we can leave the home planet and to overcome its scarcity of material and energy resources. Direct harnessing of the third* Newton’s law. Rockets make possible the access to immensely more material and energy wealth than the Earth alone can give us. They also add full 3rd dimension to the “geopolitical equation” — thus making the formula of power geo- no more, and expanding it into full inequality and non-linearity. Even without algorithmic improvement the mere spatial and dimensional expansions dominates the extensive component of growth. Rockets are the first** thing which gives us the OUTER SPACE.

PSYCHEDELICS

Chemical compounds, that adduce the mind beyond the usual triune* biorhythm of wakefulness-REM-quiescent sleep. All psychoactive chemicals like DMT or LSD contain tryptamine* “backbone” in their molecule. Tryptamine is the structural kernel in at least three basic for the human body and mind, as: tryptophan*-one of the 20 codon aminoacids, on its turn a metabolomic precursor of the neurotransmitter serotonin and of the neurohormone melatonin. Psychedelics are the ancientmost and roughest means for perception modification and reinterptretation of the input data and its modes of processing into the human central nervous system. Their usage marks the beginning of the attempts to manipulate the mental activity and they point the growth intensivity way. With new algorithms we extract more utility out of the same or lesser quantity of available material and data. Psychedelics are the first** thing to open up for us the INNER SPACE.

*All these trinities that spontaneously and arbitrary occured in the construct of these examples should not be taken in spirit of kinda mystic revelation :)

**Rockets and Psychedelics are of course not the only means to conquer Space or modify Mind. They are just the first in chronological aspect. Other means for these purposes are plentiful, and capped in variety only by the shear entropy of their subject matter specimens:

Space: orbital elevators, space fountains, launch loops, orbital rings and other kinetic structures, geomagnetic levitation, self-replicating automata…

Mind: genetic engineering, synthetic-theoretical biology, nanotech, internet, direct neural interface, AI and other electric means of cognition and communication augmentation…

to name a few.

PROHIBITIONS

The imperial aspect of the geopolitical activity of the duopoly USA-USSR was aimed towards preserving the planetary power status quo, via elimination of the possibilities to be inclided new dimensions and variables in the working during the relevant period geopolitical equation. It is not about some conspiracy between interested humans, but about “objective” feature of the established order of the duopoly dynamic power structure.

In order this balance to persist, the double power — aside from the obvious interest the other side or a third party to not furnishg itself with some decisive advantage — they also have the interest of a tacit consensus on the rules of the game excluding the opportunity of changing the equation.

The factual military control over the lives of each and every human being, achieved by the nuclear overkill capacity, would’ve been enough to guarantee persevering bipolarity of this absolute power. The new technological means though, in paradigmally new ways transcending the closeness of the “human earthliness” and of the “earthly humanity”, undermine the very foundation of the established global regime of power.

The duopoly, in order to keep on existing, should not allow the poles of power, neither anybody down the force field power lines to let emergence of conditions which turn any of the constants into variable and the equation into inequality — decisive supremacy of one of the poles would lead to immediate collapse and ‘’imperial death” of the surviving duopolist. In that sense paradoxically the two poles should kinda life support each other. Because each of the historical poles have used economies of different efficacy and effectivity, it was inevitable — the one having better, or lets put it outright — REAL and complete economy to outlive the duopoly.

Nevertheless, during the existence of the duopoly, we can’t deny that there were some “strange synchronocities” in certain measures to keep the global balance of power from de-equilibration. The homeostasis of power is technolgical, the menace to balance bears the name newer technology and the logical way to maintain this balance had the name prohibition.

In 1960-es the duopoly domination reached its maximum. Back then the only tech on disposal to threaten the balance were yet rockets and psychedelics. Their alternatives and further developments are still in conceptual embryo phase — object of obscure academic and scientific interest alone.

ROCKETS

In 1957 Dwight D. Eisenhower introduces the concept of Space Law in what relates to the negotiations for disarmament and launching of the first artifical satelite. In short the Space Law consists chronologically in the enactment of the following normative documents:

• The treaty for prohibition of the nuclear testing in space from 1963 (this effectively blocks and forbids transportation systems for peaceful use of nuclear explosions like the Orion Project, possessing thousands of times higher specific impulse and shear capacity than the traditional chemical combustion rocketry.)
• The Outer Space treaty of 1967, regulating the activities of the nations in space exploration — that forbids to the participant states to establish sovereignty over astronomical bodies and declaring them common heritage of mankind, thus effectivelly pushing Outer space extralegal for persons bellow the status of nations. (The lack of sovereignty, means also legal impossibility for ownership by private persons and entities, which blocks any meaningful human economic activity. In contrast of Antarctica and the High seas seabed there is complete lack of an international authority which to deal with property and use rights in Outer space.)
• Series of several other treaties of the 1960es and 1970es regulating the rules about rescue operations in the Outer space and about return of astronauts and objects, on the liability of nations for damages from their space objects, as well as on rules about national registration for space apparata and the Moon treary of 1974.

The effect of assigning guaranteed ‘no man’s land’ status to the celestial bodies is of a prohibition via this relevant international legislation and prevention of use of rocketry as the transportation to export the general human activity off Earth.

PSYCHEDELICS

Several UN conventions:

• The Single UN Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961
• The 1971 UN Convention on Psychotropic substances
• 1988 UN Convention against the illicit proliferation of narcotic and psychotropic substances.

By delegation of these ratified conventions in almost all nations has been enacted internal legislation positing unsystematic from scientific and medical point of view putting under common denominator of the narcotis proper and the psychedelics.

In January 1967 in USA has been prohibited the ownership and use of psychoactive substances, more sprecifically LSD, again including them in one group with narcotics.

The formation of multiple countercultures by persons accessing altered states of consciousness, via primitive chemical methods; and the characteristic for them exit from the norms of the consensual reality and the official views on culture of power and relation individual-society, led to the logical outcome of prohibitional control over the substances inducing such mind alternation states, via incrimination of the private activities with them.

It must be duly noted here, that narcotic substances which are traditional and very common like alcohol, tobacco and array of other alcaloids — which are with very strong addictiveness, but with mild to none psychoactivity remain legal. Chemical means with clinically proven effectiveness in treating wide range of psychiatric disorders incl. addiction, get prohibited. Most probably the prohibition of psychedelics deprives the human medicine and society from powerful mind tools.

COST

The suppression of the advent and the mainlining in the economy of implementation ready technologies (same is the case with nuclear fission energy), always acts as amplifier of unregulated violence, which comes from emerging from the imposition of prohibition, necessity of work in conditions of secret. Secrecy is the common denominator of all coercive structures and the self-catalyst of more violence — as well in the state apparatus — army, police, intel…, as in the society — secret societies, organized crime, paramilitary formations. The effect of the prohibition manifests so:

ROCKETS

The rocketry remained almost full state monopoly and as such is predominantly used for destructive purposes as weaponry. The commersial use for orbiting of comsats is only a by-product of the development of inter-continental balistic missiles tech. The gross military product of mankind exceeds a $1T (2004) p.a. The defense, security and intel being only expenses operator possesses the internal incentive to maximise their expenditures without generating effectively product.

PSYCHEDELICS

The “drugs” illegality leads to formation of expansive global organized crime network staffed with dozens of millions of human beings, to run the enormous manufacture and placement industry. The gross turnover of prohibited substances is estimated to way over a $1T (2004) p.a. In the hands of the mob, instead of pharmacists and doctors, sadly is also the commerce with any psychoactive substances.

The volume of each of those two ‘industries’ — defense-security complex and the international organized crime — is comparable with the annual oil turnover, i.e. with most of the energy sector of the planet, comprising 3–4% or the gross world product.

The negative effects of displacement of the discussed productive expansions with non-productive systems that generate violence, multiplies social illths and bears compound loss in form of global instability against the well being of our species.

We must at the end note that the very notion of geo-politics — interaction of standard units over small and poor scene — is a retrograde refrain not unlike any occult ideology.”

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This was a snapshot of the spirit of the early 2000es. A train of thoughts with cars loaded with mostly 1970es to 1990es stuff. The hard and rough edges of the freshly scrapped (first) Cold war definitely transpire through.

Now regardless of the hard journey we are living in much more blessed epoch. The advent of Bitcoin does not belong strictly to the tech lines of distance elimination or mind alteration, or maybe belongs simultaneously to both. The bottomline is:

Some problems are political, but there are only technological solutions.

I hope that you’ll enjoy reading my THE FORCE IN BITCOIN upcoming book as much as (and much more) than I enjoyed writing it.