Who Goes There?

The ET Question - first considerations.

Read this; of relevance given current events, re: the UFO question.

Modern rule typically works less through sovereign coercion than through biopolitics, governing the conditions of life itself. In this liberal apparatus of security, power flows primarily from the deployment of specialized knowledges for the regularization of populations, rather than from the ability to kill. But when such regimes of governmentality are threatened, the traditional face of the state, its sovereign power, comes to the fore: the ability to determine when norms and law should be suspended— in Carl Schmitt’s terms, to “decide the exception.”

The object of government is no longer simply obedience to the king, but regulating the conditions of life for subjects. To this end biopolitics requires that the conditions of life of the population be made visible and assayed, and practical knowledge be made available to improve them. As a result, with modern governmentality we see the emergence of both panoptic surveillance and numerous specialized discourses—of education, political economy, demography, health, morality, and others—the effect of which is to make populations knowable and subject to the regularization that will make for the “happy life.”

“Sovereign is he who decides the exception.” Like the state of exception it decides, sovereignty is both outside and inside law. On the one hand, it is the ability to found and suspend a juridical order. To that extent sovereignty transcends the law, its decisions seeming to come out of nowhere, like a “miracle.” In saying this Schmitt emphasizes sovereignty’s omnipotence, if not to realize its intentions then at least to decide them. However, even Schmitt recognizes that sovereign decision is not literally a miracle, but has conditions of possibility. Among Agamben’s contributions is in showing that those conditions include the very corpus of law that is to be suspended in the decision of the exception. In this way sovereignty is also inside and limited by law.

Note the reference to “biopolitics”- a favorite EGI Notes word – as well as to the work of Carl Schmitt.  By the way, if the Far Right was a serious political actor, it would lead the way in formulating paradigms in dealing with this issue. If the ET hypothesis is actualized into reality, what should be the response?  Should there be a specifically “White” response to this, with competing racial and civilizational groups approaching the ET phenomenon from the standpoint of group self-interest, or should there be a Universalist, pan-human approach? One may fear that the “high trust” SJW Herrenvolk would follow the Universalist approach, while Jews and Asians take the road of self-interest, thus garnering a competitive advantage.

Today, the White Man is at the pinnacle of scientific and technical achievement, but he will be dethroned from that position (from a “universal,” if not human, perspective) by the reality of a more advanced alien civilization. On the other hand, Whites represent the only branch of humanity even remotely capable of (eventually) challenging ET technical dominance, so the “value” of Whites as a race to humanity can be both lowered and heightened by confirmation of technically more advanced ETs. Further, while a pan-human response to ETs may be reasonable at one level, one cannot rule out national, racial, and ethnic “jockeying for position” to leverage whatever advantages that may accrue from the situation. How will the “friend-enemy” distinction be drawn?  Will ETs be enemies?  If so, to whom? Human vs. ET?  Some humans vs. other humans allied with ET?  Will groups that view themselves as a people apart from the rest of humanity – indeed who have an innate hostility toward the rest of humanity – like the Jews, make common cause with ETs against humanity?  Or, will access to alien technology allow the White Man to colonize other worlds so as to escape the rising tide of color?  Or will the high trust SJW Herrenvolk invite the coloreds along for the ride?

There are many things to consider.