Canvas Foreword
The following content is a discursive “canvassing” exercise intended to: process ideas and prime them for more formal publication; foreground thought processes in the spirit of auto-discourse (see A Primer on Auto-Discourse); garner feedback from peers; establish conceptual provenance for ideonomic archiving purposes.
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It has just occurred to me that one of the tenets of Machiavelli’s political theory, namely the practical orientation around political stabilization, can be practiced in a micropolitical context as well as the standard political context. Specifically what comes to mind for me is a practice of social diplomacy geared around promoting the coherence of a given milieu or community. And while diplomacy is an important part of such an enterprise, more generally it would seem to constitute an exquisite science of relationship management, discernment of underlying social tensions and fault lines, attunement to a plurality of optical viewpoints and narrative framings, and various other fuzzy matters which implicitly undergird many of our daily social interactions.
A great many ideas come to mind here, which I will attempt to casually address in some arbitrary order, with a view toward eventually refining them into more substantive discourse. These ideas build from previous notes, such as Notes on an Ethical Hermeneutics of Machiavelli, Intimations of a Post-Machiavellian Moral-Tactical Calculus, Intimations of a Post-Machiavellian Moral-Tactical Calculus, Part 2, Malattunement before Malice, Notes on Methodology for Communities of Practice, as well as my notes on Discourses on Livy (r-NM-DL-Hub) and The English Face of Machiavelli.
Schizoanalysis & Optics
Speaking only from micropolitical experience, good diplomacy involves understanding and speaking to multiple perspectives. This ability often requires the diplomat to simultaneously entertain conflicting, or at least ostensibly conflicting, narratives and optical frameworks around the matter at hand. To be able to sensemake within and across separate world models is, in a sense, an example of applied schizoanalysis, in Deleuzo-Guattarian jargon. Or rather, such a diplomatic approach can be called schizoanalytic if it seeks to preserve the plurality or multipolarity of the political arrangement in question, rather than seeking to reduce or reconcile things into a single unified narrative.
In my experience, there have been micropolitical circumstances wherein the promotion of a single coherent narrative is advisable, and circumstances wherein the co-existence of multiple conflicting narratives is advisable. In the latter case, sometimes this disharmony is a benign and tolerable liability, and sometimes it even bears a certain utility, such as those systems of checks and balances wherein interpolar conflict can play a stabilizing role at the macro level.
In any event, the ability to hold several different worldviews in superposition can be an invaluable skill for the politician, regardless of their disposition. Whether one chooses to synthesize these worldviews and promote the synthesis, or preserve their separation and promote a multipolar regime, I would argue is a matter of circumstantial pragmatism. In this sense, the politician can cultivate a certain perspectival breadth which serves to deepen their optical insightfulness and thuswise expand their strategic affordances, be they disposed to diplomacy, supremacy, or what have you. Personally, I generally default to diplomacy.
Deep-Network Diplomacy
On the level of micropolitics, be it merely a regional subculture, a network of industry leaders, or a congress of politicians, one can discern various spectra of context-specific de facto political clout, which may or may not directly correspond to official or formal designations. One can then discern a nexus of protean political dynamics between actors in a given milieu, as well as the plurality of optical complexes informing each actor’s conduct within this milieu. This conduct can be seen as exerting a stabilizing or destabilizing influence, the discernment of which is subjective and viewpoint-dependent, resulting in a nebulous and undulating micropolitical landscape.
There is a certain degree of embodied knowledge which comes with the prolonged observations of these dynamics, which often proves ineffable. I would argue it is on this level of embodiment and attunement that one can most substantively calibrate to the micropolitical vicissitudes of a given milieu, and that the level of conscious reflection and conceptual frameworks can, at best, serve as heuristics to guide one’s cultivation of this embodied knowledge. It is also quite clear, at least from my limited micropolitical experience, that most people seem largely ignorant of these matters, and, even among those who are aware, strategically and tactically imprudent at that.
Now if one is concerned with the political stabilization of a given equilibrium deemed ethically favorable, diplomacy will likely play some role in one’s strategy. If one is highly predisposed to diplomacy, as I am, one can go quite a long way without needing to adversarial conduct. Likewise, if one is highly predisposed to transparency, as again I am, one can even go far without needing to resort to duplicitous means. That said, everyone has their limits, and I believe everyone is better off in full anticipation of these limits, i.e. the points at which one allows oneself to resort to adversarial conduct or duplicitous means. This is to say, one should be in touch with the ethical extremities of the means by which they seek to promote a certain end, and how these extremities may vary according to circumstances. Concrete precision in this awareness isn’t as important as a general awareness, I would argue.
So, given the goal of micropolitical stabilization of a given status quo, and a predisposition to diplomatic strategy and to operational transparency, one can then begin to operate in a positive-sum fashion with respect to the various interests at play in the milieu, and in doing so can accrue some reputation as a trusted and beneficent entity, without engaging in any duplicitous conduct. With this reputation may some some level of pre-eminence, as well as an expanded set micropolitical tactical affordances. For example, one’s approval may carry a stronger weight and may be sought out as an optical boon, one’s instinct may be deferred to more readily or substantively, and various simple acts begin to constitute favors and sources of additional clout, acts which cost one little and once carried only trivial political significance.
There is the question of intentionality, or at least perceived intentionality, i.e. whether others in the network trust and align with you, but there is also the question of competency, or at least perceived competency, i.e. whether others in the network are willing to operationally rely on you in some capacity. Given the appropriately proven intentionality and competency, one can amass micropolitical clout and, in doing so, tend toward the political core of the network. From this position, one is quite empowered to promote certain target equilibria across a given milieu.
Conflict & Prevention
In my considerations so far around the ethical application of realpolitik in the tactical dimension, it seems generally advisable, as a guiding axiom, to take a minimalist approach with respect to duplicitous or forceful means toward the end of political stabilization. In addition to the moral cloudiness of these means, they also tend to constitute optical liabilities, and even if one is able to put on a convincing performance in feigning moral bearings, it is considerably more difficult, if not virtually impossible, to likewise fool an entire milieu. If the task is to maintain some stable political equilibrium which enshrines a certain status quo, say a certain balance of individual and collective rights and benefits, one should have an understanding of one’s own tolerance for the usage of duplicity or force in the promotion of such an equilibrium. The self-awareness of this tolerance, and the diligence involved in operating within one’s boundaries of moral integrity, is required for any viably ethical operationalization of a given political acumen.
Something I’ve found to be micropolitically advantageous is a decidedly stoic combination of emotional composure and patience. This, coupled with some astuteness in observation, can allow one to remain more or less optically stable, while inevitably various other actors in the milieu, owing to the circumstances of life, succumb to this or that fit of passion, potentially entailing crises which constitute opportunities for change in the status quo of the social fabric. This, again, is entirely irrespective of the disposition of the politician: one can seek to mend these tears in the social fabric as they form, or exploit them to sow division.
More proactively speaking, one can seek to prevent these tears, in the interest of conflict prevention. With enough observational experience, one can develop an instinct for detecting the latent fissures in a milieu, which can sometimes be addressed before irrupting into actual conflict. Once conflict irrupts, various factors come into play which are not as consequential during the latent phase.
For example, actions taken by actors involved in the conflict, such as someone making a statement of what has thus far remained their private thought, carry certain optical implications. After all, actions are certainly harder than thoughts to walk back. Additionally, actors then have their reputation tethered to their own actions and to the optics of the scenario at large, such that diplomatic concessions which seem modest and reasonable to a neutral observer come at the subjective cost, to those involved, of losing face. This is all to say that, once a conflict manifests, it is much harder to resolve than when it is latent. Thus there is an exquisite science to be discerned in this domain of micropolitical relations, upon which, I’d argue from a perspective of realpolitik, the entirety of our legal and institutional society constitutes a superstructural complex of social constructs.
