Cosmo-local identities: We need a scalable, networked form of social cohesion
How entredonneurs and Everywheres may be constructing a new type of narrative glue, based on the joint construction of the commons
The context for this article:
John Robb once argued on Facebook, that our new globalized humanity needed a scalable, networked form of social cohesion:
"Crude forms of identity are emerging to provide social cohesion as national identity melts away. We need a scalable, networked form of social cohesion to replace those crude forms. That requires finding and reinforcing networks of consensus."
So this is the issue we want to address today: what kind of glue can hold humanity together during this ongoing ‘chaotic transition’. Think of it this way: since our human subjectivity participatory co-constructs the world we live in, the form that our consciousness takes is itself a crucial ingredient. So we are living in a material world (climate, ecology, resource, territory), respond to it collectively through the organization of our human societies and our collective culture, but that response itself is a function of how we see the world, i.e. on our particular ‘form of consciousness’, prevalent at any given time as the dominant paradigm. How is the institution of the commons, or the practice of commoning, related to this topic ?
Here is the article we wrote to respond to that question, written for the excellent special issue of Weconomy (p. 103), available in pdf format here at
Michel Bauwens:
‘Public intellectuals’ appear decreasingly influential. One reason could be the fragmentation of our communication fields because of the role of social media, which has evolved from affinity-based meeting places to filter bubbles and even ‘fortresses’. Before the Internet, intellectuals didn’t have to deal with an explosion of sources. Every minute spent on the web or YouTube to keep up with a rapidly changing cultural landscape is a minute not spent in reading or intellectual practice.
The toxicity of social media then compounds the difficulty of conducting research. If we are really ‘forced’ to spend a lot more time online, then it is essential for our well-being that the environment is less toxic than it is today. But is the problem solvable?
One theory is that private ownership of social media exacerbates the toxic effect, as the owners decide what attracts and holds our attention, trying to get us hooked while pushing us towards certain behaviours that are in their interest and not ours. Another explanation arises from Réne Girard’s theory of mimetic desire: status differences preserve order in our communication, and the lack of such obvious distinctions leads to permanent competition that results in a periodic hunt for a ‘scapegoat’. This would explain the cancel culture explosion that emerged simultaneously with social media. From the point of view of Girard, social media are a neutron bomb for our sociality: you cannot connect five billion people and hope everything will turn out well.
It doesn’t help that our societies face a meta-crisis and require transition. This factor creates generalised anxiety in the ‘real world’ and is inevitably reflected online. The latter explanation suggests that social media is not so much the cause as the amplifier of existing social crises.
The role of the commons
The solution could be the same as in the real world: the development of civilisation. Civilisation does not resolve the underlying conflicts but ensures their expression in ways that don’t exacerbate them. If we cannot change the situation on a macro level, this should not prevent us from creating healthy communities on a smaller scale, where the rules of civilisation can be maintained and expanded once established. This is where the practice of ‘commoning’ can be helpful, if not a vital necessity. What are the commons? We can see them as the third human institution, alongside markets and states, which has always played a regenerative and protective role, a counterbalance to the extractive dynamics of markets and states. While the latter are geared towards competition and growth, even conquest, the commons are cooperative arrangements seeking to cultivate and protect a shared resource. Thus, a common is a ‘thing’, possibly immaterial, a resource to be shared but also a human community (which can be extended to other beings in the web of life) that has decided to share and protect, but above all is characterised by self-regulation. The original commons were physical resources. Later, they were social, such as the mutualisation of life’s risks undertaken by the labour movement that led to the institutions of the welfare state. However, the commons can be intangible: they can be knowledge goods. These knowledge commons are the new collective agents, which can act as the backbone for collective intelligence and, through their self-regulation, create the civilisation necessary for exchanging knowledge.
One of the characteristics of civilisational transition periods is that, because of society’s loss of resources or because a new technology introduces a higher level of differentiation, the old institutions can no longer hold society together. There is a fragmentation and, consequently, polarisation of social groups, which currently takes the form of a sociological split between the ‘physical’ and the ‘virtual’, the somewheres (locally rooted) and the anywheres (globally rooted), as documented by social scientists such as David Goodhart, Eric Kaufmann and Matthew Goodwin. When major institutions lose people’s trust and the ideological glue that holds our societies together weakens, people ‘regress’ to less complex identities and smaller trust scales. A physical/somewhere person, unable to move and directly affected by de-industrialisation, will probably crave the reinforcement of traditional identities: religion, nation, ethnicity. A virtual/anywhere person, better able to navigate through globalised de-territorialisation, will be more likely to be affected by new intersectional identities. Both reactions fuel polarisation but show a search for new identities and communities that can ‘protect’ against the uncertainties of the current crisis.
Cosmo-local identities. A new type of glue, based on the commons
I believe that cosmo-local identities based on the commons can help construct a new glue. What does contributing to a common mean? Take permaculture as an example: you stand with your feet in the mud, a metaphor for reconnecting with the land and the earth, without whose cultivation no one can survive. The permaculturists’ heart is in their local community, but their brain and the other part of their heart are in the commons of global permaculture. They have extended their identity beyond the local, acquiring a trans-local and trans-national identity. They haven’t done so through an alienating concept of corporate globalisation, like an uprooted elite individual, but through deep participation in a true constructive community, which is helping to solve the metacrisis that alienates most of us. Cosmolocalism is synonymous with deep-rooted but extremely rapid global innovation.
If you are an anywhere, we suggest you become an everywhere, using your virtuosity as a digital nomad to serve relocalised production, pollinating local communities with the knowledge of other local communities.
If you are an entrepreneur, etymologically ‘taking in the middle’, we suggest you become an entredonneur, ‘giving in the middle’.
The pulse of the commons
This revival of the commons is not a historical accident but a recurring phenomenon I call the ‘pulse of the commons’. We know from academics like Peter Turchin that societies evolve cyclically, in ascending and descending phases. Markets and states, powerful historical institutions that have existed for thousands of years, are essentially growth- or conquest-oriented and always, without exception, end up outgrowing the regional level of resources globally. The commons also follow an ebb and flow countercyclical to the other two institutions. When people’s lives are challenged in the downturns of market and state systems, they revive the commons, institutions that mutualise risk and regenerate and preserve resources. Global capitalism has made the depletion of resources translocal, planetary. This means that today, as our socio-political system is disintegrating in a new chaotic transition (Peter Pogany), our response must be local, translocal and planetary.
So what can we do?
First, extend the social contract to the entire world, guaranteeing the life of all humanity. Second, create strong protective institutions capable of defending human and non-human communities, which I suggest calling ‘Magisteria of the commons’. Finally, following the suggestions of Bruno Latour and others, we need a social contract between humanity and the vital network on which it depends. This task is unprecedented for our civilisational model, based on the opposite principle of considering nature as a mere object of human management and enjoyment. Today, in the Anthropocene, non-human beings cannot live without us, and we cannot live without them. The means is neither the market nor state domination but an understanding between our three historical institutions, which must, therefore, also include the commons.