Liberalism, Legal Pluralism, and the Quest for Council Legitimacy in a Post Ascension War Era

In recent months, I have been reflecting on the nature of governance in the mage community. These reflections have been sharpened by some current events, namely, the demolition of a Technocratic base. The Council of Nine met to discuss what should be done. Various proposals have included 1.) do nothing, 2.) pay for the damages, 3.) force the people who did the exploding to pay for it, and 4.) implement some code of conduct on all willworkers.

Missing from all of these conversations is any discussion about whether or not the Council of Nine has the right to make binding decisions on mages at all. Of course the Council of Nine has power to act. It should mobilize resources, offer and withhold support, act as a figure head, and coordinate efforts. But should it have the power to force people to do anything?

Or, put another way, should a Council govern?

At first brush, of course it should. Let’s say some mage or other starts murdering people. It would be great if the Council could step in and help adjudicate what the person’s fate should be. We need to defend ourselves against attacks from Technocratic threats, so the Council should be able to raise an army in defense of the Traditions. To keep that army, the Council should be able to impose a tax. People evading that tax will be subject to penalties, which the Council should decide. Rules on the proper use of magical power should be established…

Wait. I’m already predicting problems. First off, what about the crafts? Does the Council get to execute members of the crafts even if that willworker isn’t a member of the Traditions and therefore not represented by the Council?

I find this representation problem unsettling. Let's say some 16-year-old kid enlightens during a medical procedure following an injury in his high school football game. By what fucking right do we have to impose our laws, bans, or edicts on him? Zero, that’s what. Of course, we should approach that young man and offer him guidance, support, and protection. But he isn't automatically “ours,” and it is paternalistic as fuck to assume he is. He may want to quash his power. Or join the Union. Or claw backwards through the umbilical cord of his soul to invert the world. Certainly we have opinions about which path he should take, but the moment we strip people of their free will, we become no better than the other teams. And mark me, to govern without representation is to deny a person their will.

In many ways, assuming that the Council is the legitimate governing body of all magic is flawed because of the human systems we come to occupy. Here’s where this conversation gets nerdy. The idea that a group of people can come together and put behind their individual interests in order to make decisions for the betterment of all society is, actually, not that old. The idea is called “liberalism.” (And I don’t mean conservative vs. liberal, I mean the social philosophy liberalism. Look it up). It just so happens to be a cornerstone of governmental organizing in many northern democratic countries. Liberalism holds that all people can, and in fact should, be able to put aside their petty differences and come to a set of common agreements about how things should go. This idea is so ingrained in anyone growing up in the United States that it doesn’t seem like a worldview. It just seems like how society works.

Things that come from liberalism include the separation of church and state and the idea that laws should apply to all people the same. And those are good things.

Aren’t they?

Well. Proponents of liberalism say that it sure beats the alternative. We have to separate church from state, because if we don’t society won’t be tolerant. One religion will get power, and then be intolerant of everyone else. It might be alright if you happened to be the same religion as the one in power, but it’ll royally suck if you aren’t. We need liberalism, they say, in order to have a tolerant society.

But it turns out, we don’t need liberalism in order to be tolerant. There are multicultural forms of pluralistic legalism that achieve the goals of tolerance while still inviting things like religion or local traditions into the broader discourses of society. Indonesia, for instance, has a strong democracy despite having many of the same strong Islamic foundations that trouble other democracies around the world. How do they do it? Pluralistic legalism.

Here’s the way it works. In a plural legal system, individuals choose a legal system that they operate within. There isn’t one law about how marriage works in Indonesia. There are many, and those laws are decided on and acted upon at the level of religion, community, or both. Plural legal systems allow for people who want institute religion-based values in states to do so, but only for the people who ascribe to those religions. Consider: what if Evangelical Christians were, in fact, allowed to make abortion illegal… for Evangelical Christians? It’s a whole different way of thinking about society. Instead of throwing away the private aspects of ourselves as we enter the public square, we are encouraged to bring those deeply held values to bear on politics and society, but we just weren’t allowed to foist them on people who didn’t hold them.

At this point, you may be thinking, Alex, you’ve gotten off track. This has nothing to do with the Council of Nine. But, in fact, it does.

The Council of Nine represents a group of people who are more diverse than any on the planet. We have people who try to create elixirs to live forever and other people who consider death the most beautiful of transformations. We have people who have devoted every fabric of their being to God and others who have actively seek to disprove God’s existence. There are willworkers who will never do harm and others whose magic requires harm.

We are diverse. And there is a temptation to put aside those differences and come together to create a common set of rules, as well as a common governing body, to create some order from all the diversity.

But therein lays our demise.

For it is in our diversity that we are strong.

Consider. The Rule of Shade has been proposed as a common set of laws that all Tradition mages should follow. Let’s take the first rule: Respect those of greater knowledge. No offense, but that is not how we VAs do things. We literally disrespect those of greater knowledge as a road to enlightenment. Trash talk is the coin of the realm, and just because someone has been around longer doesn’t mean you owe them shit. The Rule of Shade also says we must always obey an Oracle. Fuck that. I don’t know any Oracles, and I sure as fuck not going to obey one without question. There are other rules that other willworkers will take issue with. Are all mages going to agree to always keep their word? I’ve met Cultists who literally used transgression to power their magic. Be subtle in your arts? What about mages who risk paradox to nudge the consensus away from the Technocratic paradigm.

Basically the point is this: there is no set of rules that can govern all of us. So instead of trying to craft them, aim for something that is possible.

Legal pluralism.

Have each willworker articulate what community will hold them responsible for their actions. In many cases, this would be the traditions. Hermetics are better able to punish Hermetics for Hermetical-type crimes. As a Council, we can withdraw our support from communities whose legal structures are too permissive or lax. And of course, people can always step into situations that they feel are unjust. But I don’t think those people should get to feel high and mighty or legitimized in their meddling.

Ultimately, this brings up the most important question: What the heck is the role of the Council of Nine? Many people believe it should hold court, create laws, and have an armed force. Which is basically a national government?

But I invite us to think more creatively about what our community is and what it needs. Do we need governance, per se? We aren't trying to hold contiguous land, so maybe creating an entity that has powers modeled off of contiguous landholding entities is a bad way to go. We already exist within a government, namely, the United States. Do we need a second, shadowy government to comport our affairs?

So I ask, if we are to engage in strategic isomorphism, and model ourselves off of an existing entity, what should we seek to be like? What are we? Consider a few statements about our community. We are a group of scattered individuals who have shared interests and manage needed and scarce resources (nodes). It turns out that there’s an organizational form that is used to manage that; it’s called a co-op. Co-ops organize to create the conditions of their members flourishing.

Another thing that’s true about us: we are a group of (will)workers who are often worried about how our rights and ability to practice our craft are being impinged upon by higher powers. It turns out that there’s an organizational form that is used to band together the interests of a group of (will)workers. It’s called a union.

Last statement: we are a group of thinkers and practitioners who need a way to get together and advocate for our interests. There’s a form for that, too, namely, a membership-based professional organization.

I’m not saying that we need to make a membership-based, co-op, union, professional organization, but those structures will serve us well for imagining what the powers of a Council of Nine should be. Foremost, they are voluntary associations. You don’t have to be a member if you don’t want to. And I believe that the Council of Nine should work the same way. And don’t be fooled, just because they are voluntary, doesn’t mean they aren’t profoundly powerful. Membership-based organizations are some of the strongest in the world.

Now. I’ll admit, we VA have an anti-authoritarian streak, so I'm a little dodgy about vesting nation-like powers to a set of individuals. I believe the Council of Nine will have more traction (and ethical high ground) establishing a membership-based model, where we coordinate a set of nested affiliations to achieve various mutually beneficial ends (like node protection, response to world threatening events, dissemination of knowledge, coordination of mentorship of new mages, etc).

The Council could use membership fees, donations, and earned incomes to support its initiatives, which could include education, resource management, paramilitary defense, and disaster response.

Some Traditions may decide that every member of their group will join. I suspect many will. But this leaves Traditions and various crafts able to make decisions about the totality of their support, as well as granting individuals the ability to be part or not.

In practice, I think people will join. We will deliver important forms of protection, guidance, and information. But if your worry is that people won't join, consider how happy they will be when you force them to live under your rule.

Once you shift your thinking of a Council that rules over all enlightened mages to a Council who runs an organization that supports enlightened mages, things start to make more sense.

The council above can set standards for its membership (and can strip membership if those standards are broken). Also, the Council could chose to censure certain activities, basically withdrawing its support form (or boycotting, etc) those who practice unsavory activities.

But it forces any idea of binding laws to the level of the Traditions and crafts. As they represent modes of humanness from a profoundly diverse set of times and cultures, we should not create a single, monolithic legal structure to try to govern our activities.

I believe that we have a chance to create a more beautiful, humane, and just form of organizing the enlightened community. T'he old Council died for a reason. Let's respect the work of Entropy, honor that which is dead, and let something new and beautiful grow up from it.

We can organize the people who freely choose to join. Because the freedom to choose, or the Will, as some say, is essential to our craft. So let's make it essential to the way we organize our craft.