The Micropolitical Ecology in The Age of Data

The notion of the Political is fundamentally different from that of the Politics. 

The Political is about domination and instalment of the subjective set of the norms, that statically define the matrix of acceptable socio-political reality, claiming therefore monopoly on political imaginary by the subject possessing power. This matrix is a conscious imaginary, which provides axiomatic set of values, the fundament of the reality - such as, in the contemporary context, a nuclear family, a national state/culture, biopolitics, geopolitics, etc. 

The market of The Political is a professional discipline based on defeating adversaries and winning the ultimate prize of power. Politics, on the other hand, is an everyday human activity, that is rooted in dialogue for synergic coexistence and common action. Politics has to be exercised, cared for and thought about by all the citizens disregard profession - otherwise it is replaced, quite like in contemporary moment, by the theatre of the Political. 

The checks and balances in any political system are ought to serve the primary goal of controlling the extent of the accumulation of the Political by professional actors in Politics. The confusion of Politics and the Political leads to driving the imaginary matrix into the space of unconscious and gives the green light to populism, extremist forms of exercising power.

The big data and availability of its large chunks for the citizens create unique opportunity for self-organisation of political space. We propose the framework of the micropolitical ecology as a set of fundamental principles that protect social relations from corruption by the accumulation of political power on the level of communities. The micropolitical ecology should be a protocol of political engagement, that allows to fundamentally put the Political in the check of the protocols of Politics. The Political then, as an inevitably selfish accumulation of power, is to be limited as the disruptive to overall political ecology force. Instead of continuously distancing from citizens through process of delegation of the power to the representatives, the micropolitical ecology is focused on introducing Politics into the everyday space of healthy rituals, just exercising or brushing teeth. Politics is the area that benefits from the algorithmic, data-driven, decentralised innovations in platform-building that allow coordination of citizens’ acts of dialogue and negotiations about accepted universals protocols. It might eventually allow us to leave the vicious circle of violent events of the introduction of new norms, the win-or-lose struggles for overall domination by yet another group of the power-hungry Political space. Politics as a seen through the prism of micropolitical ecology is set to be a space for impactful common interest actions, synergised through decentralised cooperation between citizens.