Caterina.net: Second Superpower?

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{ Tuesday, April 1, 2003 }

Second Superpower?

I've been thinking alot lately about war being not between nations, but between those who want war and those who don't. I just found this article on The Second Superpower (via Jordon Cooper, a Saskatchewan Pastor who lives at the very interesting intersection where Christianity meets Postmodernism.)

here is an emerging second superpower, but it is not a nation. Instead, it is a new form of international player, constituted by the "will of the people" in a global social movement. The beautiful but deeply agitated face of this second superpower is the worldwide peace campaign, but the body of the movement is made up of millions of people concerned with a broad agenda that includes social development, environmentalism, health, and human rights. This movement has a surprisingly agile and muscular body of citizen activists who identify their interests with world society as a whole -- and who recognize that at a fundamental level we are all one. These are people who are attempting to take into account the needs and dreams of all 6.3 billion people in the world -- and not just the members of one or another nation.

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(a brief timeout for peeve and pedantry: Gosh I hate it when people use "dialogue" as a verb, as in the phrase "We will dialogue with our neighbors" that appears at the end of this piece.)

LINK | 9:14 PM | TB

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{ COMMENTS }

Sounds a bit like the headliner in this week's Nation.

Carlos | April 1, 2003 11:18 PM

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i am curious as to what you experienced in mexico in regards to the war. i've seen video of peace rallies in mexico city, but i'm wondering what the overall atmosphere is there and are people discussing it?

denise | April 2, 2003 5:09 AM

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Scrawled across a building near my apartment: "If America wants a war, let it be a revolution!"

The rise of the people to become a superpower is a nice thought, but I think we're still very far away from it (despite all the smartmobbing and emergent democracy talk lately). Sadly, I fear we're closer to seeing the rise of individual corporations (or industries) as superpowers. "American business interests" covers a too broad, too conflicted collection of industries. If war helps oil companies, but hurts airlines, for example, perhaps the airlines will one day revolt. And would the people who rely on them not follow? Companies play a far larger and more visible role in Americans' day-to-day lives than government does.

Michael Morrissey | April 2, 2003 11:23 AM

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I wasn't down in Mexico long enough to get their perspective on the war (I was also down there with a lot of Canadians) but I've been reading El Universal since I got back, and the tone seems to be neutral -- maybe guarded?

But I haven't been reading the paper enough to know where it falls on the political spectrum either, and my comprehension is far from perfect.

Caterina | April 2, 2003 12:22 PM

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We've heard all this talk about an emerging second superpower before. It was called the Communist International. It'll probably go the way of the International, too...

Markku Nordstrom | April 3, 2003 10:57 AM

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I hate to say it, but Marjju is probably right, at least in the sense of a movement larger than that currently opposed to the war. So long as the economic boom of recent years was in full swing, many around the world (and right here in the US) were content to simply go along for a ride fueled largely by American "military-industrial complex" technology activists so loathe (but can't live without). When things pick up again, and salaries and portfolios reflect that upswing, many angry voices will likely be silent once again.

Carlos | April 3, 2003 2:48 PM

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I like the idea that people become superpower, not just a nation.

Sally | April 4, 2003 7:43 AM

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This reminds me of the concept of "personal sovereignty" and related ideas explored by people less concerned with peace and social justice than with personal liberty. It's an odd subculture, apparently made up of equal parts spoof, con game and genuine wackoism. The basic idea is that you declare yourself a sovereign nation, then grant recognition of nationhood to other sovereign individuals when it is mutually agreeable. In the process you claim your freedom from the petty constraints of the nation-state that you'd previously belonged to -- e.g., you give yourself permission to smoke dope and stop paying taxes.

The personal sovereignity game runs into trouble, of course, the minute the self-proclaimed King of Fredonia or what have you runs into real cops or real soldiers with real guns. So is it likely to be for the "second superpower".

Unless... There's another idea, popularized by Bruce Sterling, of virtual communities whose members pool their real power in the real world and surprise everyone with the consequences. His example is the small-town teenage computer enthusiast whose computer is seized by local authorities in a ham-fisted search for porn or warez or what have you. Unknown to the cops, their pimply-faced minimum-wage suspect is a respected member of some online discussion board or open source project. Within a day or so, his face has been Slashdotted, there are several million dollars in his defense fund, and the Sheriff of Podunk County, Texas, is facing lawsuits in federal court and getting calls from his political contributors advising him to resign and leave town. (Sterling speaks from experience, this scenario being a compressed and dramatized version of the real case described in The Hacker Crackdown.) One might say that in Sterling's utopian cyberspace, nobody can treat you like a dog.

There's a good test of this concept right now: the Free Mike Hawash campaign. The second superpower doesn't seem to have been able to stop the war in Iraq, not so far anyway. If it can't even do a little thing like get the US government to follow basic habeas corpus in the case of one newly famous individual, then it's less like a superpower and more like the delusional King of Fredonia.

Prentiss Riddle | April 4, 2003 12:13 PM

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Andrew Orlowski, writing in the Register, UK, does a nice analysis of the growth of the phrase Second Superpower across the net and its rise to prominence on the net and on Google; where it is now the first three listings. But he?s wrong to consider the fact that a few A list bloggers have ?gamed? the system and ?poisoned the well.?

A few key influencers have an inordinate influence on the viral growth of trends. That?s a basic tenet of the Tipping Point, that a few people in the East Village started the wide spread popularity of hush puppies, etc. This is a fact of viral social networks and for Orlowski to label that as a perversion of the system just displays the fact that he does not understand the ways ideas disseminate.

Two CEOs and a Wall Street analyst and I were key influencers in another meme (net markets) arising through the network of the b2b e- commerce world back in 1999, and I got rich off of it. We didn?t game the system or abuse it. We saw it and rode it. Cultural waves happen. They happen faster now. Google makes it more visible more quickly.

On the other hand, his mapping of the meme?s growth is right on and his analysis of the ephemeral nature of the new power is also something I hadn?t thought of. Stalin said of Jesus, how many divisions does he have. Where is the effective force of this new second power? That should be the focus of his essay, not the way the idea reached prominence. Critique its true weakness, not its delivery mechanism.

Kevin Jones | April 4, 2003 7:59 PM

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Anti-war protesters taking over the world - uhm, OK...
As many others, I wasn't thrilled to see the coalition (yes, US is not doing this all on its own) going to war, but to oppose the war now is only to put pressure on the wrong side and pour even more gasoline on the glowing fires in the Middle-East.

Setting it up as being between "those who want war and those who don't" is an oversimplification of things. I don't think highly of the US government, but I honestly don't think it would start a war, in which US-personnel gets killed, without some good reasons.

Yes, a lot of people are active on the streets, showing their opposition to the war, but they are far outnumbered by people, who are not pro-war but don't think it's worth going against a war on Saddam "Greasy Moustache" Hussein, that is soon finished.

Naive? It's Evian spelled backwards.

THC | April 7, 2003 4:33 AM

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I really like the idea of a struggle between those who want peace (and are "naive" enough to believe in it) and those who don't. I think it may be deeper than that, of course. There is a struggle between being open to life and to pleasure, and seeing life as overcoming pain. There is a struggle between seeing all of us as one, and seeing myself as the center. There is a struggle between healing trauma, and causing it. My point in writing The Second Superpower Rears its Beautiful Head was point out that there are a large number of us struggling with these isues in ourselves and our communities--probably 30 million in the US, perhaps 40 million in Europe, etc. But we don't see each other clearly enough to know how powerful we are as a group. If we did, we might not only feel better, but be able to invent better ways to exchange ideas and to mobilize.

The really interesting play-within-a-play is that the blogger community is, in my view, the place on the web where realtime public reflection and dialogue (yup, that word--this time as a nominalization) take place. Last Monday a three bloggers decided they liked the piece, and recommended it. More and more bloggers picked up on it in the next 24 hours..and by late Tuesday we had 5000 views! By this afternoon we have had over 48,000 views. I am blown away by the response. All by web-word-of-mouth--with no mainstream media coverage. By the way, thanks for your early post!

Jim Moore | April 8, 2003 8:38 PM

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