Suprapolitics [1] — Avenir Institute

It is 1st of August 2045. The polis of Helios, one of the largest lower stratospheric flying stations with more than 150 000 residents, is about to depart into a vertical ascend to float above the Earth at an altitude of approximately 10 km from the bed of Indian Ocean, just several hundreds of miles from the coast of Great Indian Republic. The polis of Ganymede descended here two days ago to replenish supplies of salt water, that will be convert into drinking one onboard. It is also on a mission to exchanging delegations with the polis of Selene.

The idea of a floating city was science fiction just a couple of decades ago, but as it often turns out fiction was much more accurate in predicting the technological future than politics or science. The world, or as kosmoarcheans refer to it, the “oecumene of post-human supracivilisation”, expanded into the sky, oceans and planetary orbits circa 10 years ago. The first poleis — flying, float- ing or orbiting stations — were launched by groups of nolandians in the pursuit of freedom from geopolitical oppression of the nation states and their intergovernmental organisations. The pursuit was fuelled by the failure of the last powerful bastions of the transnationalism on the land, which fell under the pressure of electoral change or revolutions. The battle for a universal redefinition of politics had been lost earlier, although many of those who departed with the first poleis didn’t want to admit it until the critical moment. The “agree to disagree” style of truce was signed by the United Nations and the majority of the nation states with the rhizomatic political network under the common protocol of suprapolitics — Kosmoarchea [2].

Kosmoarchea, the political community of citizens and identities that reject the forced identification and organisation by the national cultures, states and norms, was slowly growing over the decades before formalising itself in 2036. The non-governmental actors from all over the planet — think tanks, research institutes, laboratories and experimental political projects — were working on a common agenda for alternative aethers [3] of imaginary under the protocol of suprapolitics, united by the context of a common protocolled public space in an attempted dialogue with national and international actors to meet the subjectivities of emerging plurality of imaginaries with millennia- old monopolistic tradition of geopolitics. The wide coalition was active in different nation states for years before achieving episodic, localised successes. However, even acquiring the positions of leadership in the institutionally crisis-struck systems didn’t allow them to pass through the fundamental reforms and claim paradigmatic shift in the political thinking.

The political party Avenir Europa took the majority in the European Parliament in 2028 with an ambitious strategy of pushing the redefinition of politics at the heart and the core of its activity. But the European Commission and the Council, led by member states, didn’t share the optimism of this “political avant-garde”. “It is simply dangerous, unacceptable; they question the foundation of human civilisation!” — the President of France exclaimed at the first Council meeting after the elections. The following years passed in muddy battle of the Parliament with other institutions, which was hopeless as the consensus or at least a compromise was more than essential for implementing the first steps towards abandoning the prevalence of geopolitical imaginary.

The rejection of motionless or stability of any kind was a guiding principle for the creation of these multipolitical structures.

It is uneasy, for those who firmly believed in achieving common ground, to remember the “2033–2034: two years of tremble”, when the progressive parties around the world announced the foundation of Post-National Front Avenir (PNFA). PNFA was a coalition of European and non-European political parties and movements, which all shared the same conviction of essentiality to abandon the monopoly of geopolitics. This was taken by the United Nations, international organisations and especially nation states as an act of aggression on “normal” order, in which geopolitics was meant to prevail over any other forms of contextualisation of the political power. PNFA triggered a reaction similar to The Communist International. The various nationalist political groups around the world started labelling the Front as a form of “terrorism”, an existential threat to a civilised society as they know and understand it. It was officially assigned the status of a terrorist organisation in several countries and more followed later on, effectively excluding PNFA parties from the political landscape and driving them underground.

In 2035, after several conflicts between the non-geopolitical state actors and state organisations and agencies, the United Nations and nation states have indefinitely cut all the negotiations with the PNFA and other non-governmental actors such as SpaceX, The Seasteading Institute, Aerocene Foundation, that had been involved in the dialogue on political reforms for years before. This was the ‘alea iacta est’ moment towards critical, survivalist self-organisation for many of them and the moment of realisation that the suprapolitical agenda had to be further evolved independently from traditional geopolitical actors. In exchange for access to the technological advancements, developed by some of the members of the forming Kosmoarchea, the United Nations and nation states agreed on not extending the sovereignty of the land in the neutral ocean waters, troposphere and Earth’s orbit. Kosmoarchea bought time to develop its own independent political agency and presence.

In early spring 2036 the first polis departed from the Namib desert into the lower troposphere. The city of Argos, populated at the moment of launch by just 250 nolandians (as the citizens of poleis were related to then), became a milestone for the Kosmoarchea. The geopolitical actors were openly wishing the project to collapse. However, despite that, Argos successfully tested most of the features of autonomous sustainability and resilience. By 2040, there were 20 poleis with a total population of 36 000 nolandians. The first aquapolitical polis, radical feminist polis of Nereids, started to float in the midst of the Indian ocean in 2037. By 2045 its population expanded to reach 120 000 nolandians. The first kenopolitical polis, Musk, was launched from the Kazakh steppe into Earth’s orbit in 2038. It is now populated by 3 500 permanent residents.

As of 2045, Kosmoarchea unites, under suprapolitical protocol of aethers’ equality, 121 poleis in the oceans, troposphere and the Earth’s orbit with a total population of 3.5 million nolandians. The new poleis are launched monthly under aeropolitical, aquapolitial and kenopolitical protocols. Kosmoarchean Council is negotiating trade and other relations with geopolitical actors, who nonetheless don’t recognise the equal stance of the suprapolitics in relation to mandate of the United Nations geopolitical ideology. The UN and Kosmoarchea agreed on common understanding of the limits of geopolitical sovereignty in the neutral ocean waters, troposphere and Earth’s orbit with major concessions from kosmoarchean side. In fact, the UN doesn’t hide its inferior view on political autonomy of Kosmoarchea, relating to it as ‘continuous experiment’ in official documentation. This approach certainly fuels anti-geopolitical sentiment among growing kosmoarchean citizenry. More and more often the media channels report on the possibility of military conflict between paradigms of the political in the future. However, both sides vehemently deny it, highlighting a symbiotic coexistence and cross-pollination for the sake of the future chances for the humanity survival and advancement.

The size of kosmoarchean citizenry is statistically irrelevant to the geopolitical population; the latter surpassing 13 billion this year. Nevertheless, the desirability and interest in kosmoarchean citizenship is beyond record high: there are hundreds of millions of people who have applied to join the future poleis.

It will be 12 November 2045 when the first summit of Kosmoarchea and the United Nations in New York happens. The summit will signify a symbolic milestone in the recognition of a dialogue between the paradigms of politics. The official agenda of the summit is focused on technicalities of the updates in freedom and restrictions of suprapolitics in relation to geopolitics in the UN’s understanding. The First Kosmoarche will chair the meeting with the Secretary General of the United Nations in the General Assembly over two intense weeks of debates. The summit is expected to bring rapturous and critical cleavages, which many suggest are not reconcilable. Both parties insist on the determination to achieve the compromise, although the differences in their understanding of this term will have a potential to break out into a new era of the political struggle for reforming fundamental political imaginary.

[1] Suprapolitics [Latin supra, “above”, and Greek πολιτικά, “affairs of the cities”] - the protocol of universal equality of all viable aethers as platforms for the political relations between poleis and other political entities, including land (geopolitics), water (aquapolitics), air (aeropolitics) and vacuum (kenopolitics).

[2] Kosmoarchea [Greek κόσμος, “world, universe”, and Greek ἀρχή, “beginning, origin”] - the political infrastructure and operational system, which is based on several protocols of political relations, among which are suprapolitics, the political vs. politics and micro political ecology.

[3] Aether [Ancient Greek αἰθήρ, “upper air”] - the substance of specific physical properties, which can be used for platforming operational political systems and protocols of relations between poleis and other political entities.