how it is that empires mean we cannot have good things

Christoph Antweiler, Our Common Denominator: Human Universal Revisited. New York: Berghahn, 2016. ISBN 9781785330933

After the introduction to this interdisciplinary work on human universal, Christoph Antweiler looks at the ins and outs of universal human rights.

In reading this I’ve realised… —or noted two things to work on. Rights are a type of mega-value. [They are a doubling down of effort.]

① Rights as a universal idea…

—or indeed any idea at all, is an outcome of why we should evolutionary contexts for social learners, plus idiosyncratic local contexts.

Universal human rights’ context is a perspective that worlds our entire world of worlds.

The universalism is the result of a shouldist projection, which is based on ongoing meetings between peeps on an increasing greater scale, where moral circles also expand across geography, and which finally notice that the “real” world is greater than the local, i.e. to know (wissen) that the world we should into existence is also done by people we do not know (kennen), but we are connected to because we are aware of them in the world (insert third word that means to know, in the sense, also to world — not yet neologised).

Thus the conflict between universal human rights as for-the-individual thing versus them as some sort of group thing (we are all-each-ourselves versus we are all-us-who-we-know).

So, if universalism is the result of greater communication between moral circles and their members where they expand and overlap. Thus accusations of imperialism are the result of previous expanding communications. War is a type of communication.

(see Putin’s current use of supply-side meat waves supposedly having a quality all of their own… —The point of Russia's meat wave tactics), of course, if you kill the messenger before they can take the message anywhere, your success will be problematic, even if you do it as a narcissistic chaos surfer like Putin)

Of course, empires do not really care about human rights for the group or the individual, they care about loyalty to the emperor, even if they are insane incumbents.

However, one outcome of the imperial vector is to smash differences based on localities and ethnicities/religion with the whole one leader-one people(ethnicity or religion)-one relationship to one god thang. (See Christopher I. Beckwith's The Scythian Empire: Central Eurasia and the Birth of the Classical Age from Persia to China)

One offshoot of that imperial vector is the late Roman vision outlined by the imperially appointed and established cult of Christianity in which the localness of life and loyalty and world, is replaced by the Empire but as described by Augustine of Hippo’s City of God (not your local city anymore) (I follow up this idea here).

I.E. there is you, the individual soul before God, as interceded locally by the Emperor’s parish priests, and nothing else. Everything else is a heresy or choice, a demon called disloyalty. Psychopaths crap on about disloyalty all day long. Go figure.

Because recent global empires have been informed by this Christian example (a quirk of history) the idea of Universal human rights being accorded on individual basis can be regarded as imperialism in itself. Apparently then, more group based universal human rights are anti-imperialistic.

Of course this is a nonsense. Neither apportioning of rights, to individual or group, is imperial, neither is not-imperial, neither is anti-imperialistic. Both can used any way , depending on local conditions. And whatever a capriciouos psychopath chooses.

And we can do that because we can should the world into existence.

That’s a possible universal I guess.

Values are like vowels, they have constrains which inform universals as potentials, but local accents have different schwas, differing places for what is perceived as neutral.

The accent of the emperor is an accident, it’s not the best, nor worst, but it may become a useful convention that allows great communication, at least compared to communication methods that use waves of human meat, whose individual value is close to nothing.

② the… gap is a possible area of study into universals

Or at least a methodology or arena (holding in suspension rather than for holding ontological contests), especially for interdisciplinary/transdisciplinary studies. I.E. moving beyond compare and contrast (however useful these are as part of the modes in neo-Pyrrhonistic discussions).

If gaps and incompleteness and undecideability are everywhere and unavoidable why not start there as a base, not to throw stuff into it, but to live as we should.

Re-posted from a 2023 post on substack.com. Written before I had decided that WEIRD societies have a social institutin of the individual. So not so sure about ② any more, but maybe that is how I got to "social institution of the individual".