Alan Sullivan of Fresh Bilge offers some passing thoughts:

Yes, I know that weblog precursors had existed years before the attack, but the blogosphere birthed at the instant that first plane hit glass and steel. Discourse will defeat jihad, as the clamor of life defeats the silence of the grave. I believe that historians of the far future will date the beginning of genuine globalism to Al Qaeda’s sectarian assault. And that those historians will appreciate the irony in the physical defense of passive humanists by American sectarians like George W. Bush. ‘Genuine globalism’ will not arise from the ideals or self-deceits of transnational progressives. It will evolve from the omnipresence of an electronic marketplace, and the unstoppable empowerment of individuals by technology.

That the “empowerment of individuals” should lead to “globalism” suggests a paradox that may be quite profound. The question I have — or that we should all have — is the choice between two scenarios, or between two ways of interpreting this paradox:

1. Do global structures and increased connectivity form to combat or at least counter the threat of the general empowerment of individuals?

I.e., does an increased connectivity represent an order that is imposed over the general chaos of increased levels of individual empowerment? (This is the anarchist’s and anti-globalist’s fear.)

2. Does an increased connectivity actually lead to greater empowerment (and freedom) of the individual?

For instance, I may now reach hundreds, thousands, millions, perhaps billions of people via my weblog, and influence those. Alternatively, I can find information from the global network — the ultimate Wikipedia — which I can use for my own empowerment. I can also release a dangerous, contagious virus in my hometown and expect it to spread quickly throughout the world — not that I’d want to.

I suppose that globalism will follow both tracks — while also wondering if one track will come to dominate the system. This is the question facing us. I remember an idea posed by Chirol of Coming Anarchy who pondered a domestic use of Thomas Barnett’s PNM theory:

I find it interesting that on a domestic level, his theory would tend to recommend policies essentially socialist in nature.

There are times, as with recent discussions concerning the fight against 4GW opponents at ZenPundit, when I think that Thomas Barnett is some new incarnation of Alexander the Great, who also dreamed of connecting the world, expanding Macedonian freedom and prosperity to the Barbarians — according to some; according to others, Alexander only wanted control of the world.

Using my own increased connectivity, I can look up the generic term “system administrator” at Wikipedia and find this note:

System administrators also tend not to be system architects/system engineers/system designers, although these duties are sometimes given to them, too.

It is that “sometimes” that has people worried about globalization. But even if we were to assume that system administrators were never given the power to be grand architects — say, if we called them “system facilitators” — we would still be forced to acknowledge that, yes, a deterministic system (pre-existing) must be in place for the SysAdmin to administer it or minister to it. Thus, states which are not members of the so-called Core, like individuals who are not a part of the so-called mainstream, fear and resist assimilation even if Core states tell them in so many ways that resistance is futile: whether a body of architects have designed or seek to design the system, or the system is an unmanned vortex of technological and economical forces threatening to incorporate the fringe elements, it is inexorable. The SysAdmin maintains it, or it is maintained by billions of people interacting together for economic and technological advancement, or both.

If neo-Alexanders exist, they might be resisted, fought to defeat or success. Other Alexanders might appear to combat them.

If the vortex of globalism is the natural result of increased technology and economic interdependence, it will be much harder to resist, particularly the larger it grows.

But the question that we pose concerns both the body and the attractors of the system, in either case. As empowered individuals form their own swirls within the vortex — or perturbations within the architecture of the system — they threaten to alter the body of the system. I remember an idea posed by Alan Sullivan in response to 5GW theories here at Phatic Communion:

Insofar as I can follow 5GW theory, the 9/11 attack could be called a 5GW operation.

To my mind, the right response for this mode of attack would be to allow arms-bearing by qualified air passengers. With thousands of impromptu enforcers in the system at all times, no follow-up would have stood a chance of success. Cost: a few million for registration program. Advantage: US.

Instead we created a colossal air security bureaucracy. Cost: tens of billions. Advantage: jihad. Followups were prevented by direct action of air passengers and crew (the Reid incident, for example). But by imposing these costs and identifying the bureaucratic response as an enemy weakness, al Qaeda retains long-term motivation to mount other attacks, by other methods.

At the time, I agreed that 9/11 had one aspect in common with some theories of 5GW: before 9/11, most Americans didn’t know we were fighting jihadists; but afterward, all our actions for these several years have been in response to the attack — or, our actions have been reactive. Thomas Barnett suggests an allied idea:

System perturbations - A system-level definition of crisis and instability in the age of globalization; a new ordering principle that has already begun to transform the military and U.S. security policy; also a particular event that forces us to rethink everything. The terrorist attacks of 9/11 served as the first great “existence proof” for this concept, but Barnett guarantees there will be others. 9/11, as a system perturbation, placed the world’s security rule set in flux and created a demand for new rules. Preemption is the big new rule. By creating that new rule, 9/11 changed America forever and through that process altered global history.

Now, did America alter global history, by the introduction of the doctrine of American preemption; or, did al Qaeda alter global history? From a 5GW perspective, it would indeed appear that al Qaeda has succeeded in altering the system (whether architecture or vortex), even if the change required America’s so-called preemptive reaction. [—>the paradox here should be palpable.]

With these thoughts in mind, I wonder at the utility of the idea of System Administration. Sure, the SysAdmin can seek to correct for perturbations or attacks on the system, but unless the SysAdmin is also the System Architect, perturbations which actually succeed in altering the system are going to be beyond the SysAdmin’s abilities and job description to contain them. Hence, the gnawing fear that PNM theory is extravagant socialism, or Alexandrianism: globalism of a dangerous sort.

Alternatively, dangerous vortices should be altered, or redirected. Bad architecture can be repaired, or must be destroyed to allow room for better structures. Smaller eddies or swirls will do no good in countering large vortices, in the way a Phillips screwdriver will be of little use in the repair of fallen or falling skyscrapers. The fear that anti-globalists^* have is this: that the system architecture (or the vortex) is leading to ever new levels of complexity and scope in order to negate the influence of the individual or small groups of individuals. The Founders of America recognized this possibility, and so sought measures to weaken the federal government — measures which have largely been circumscribed by events just preceding, during, and following the American Civil War. Independent agencies were seen to be a threat to national integrity, and the nation won. It is my belief that Thomas Barnett’s PNM theory also operates on the theory that complex and broad system integrity will eliminate the dangerous eddies; and, it might, if such a thing as complex integrity can be had. Insofar as a system operates via a few strong attractors — fixed point or limit cycle attractors — it will not only present a few key targets, but it will inspire attacks against those targets. Such a system does not account for the complexity and cosmopolitan nature of a human population. The Founders of America placed their hope in a strong, shifting set of attractors, which would:

1. Not only limit the limit cycle or fixed point attractors of the branches of government, but also
2. Would ensure that new systems could form as a result of whatever perturbations beset the system, without destroying the whole.

The last point is important: The whole would be constantly in flux; it would assume new shapes by flowing into them from old shapes, while incorporating the objects which caused perturbation (although those objects might not assume a fixed point position themselves); and through all this change, this process of flux and state of flux would unite the various members of the system. That is the American creed, if any unifying creed exists. It ensures the just relevance of the individual within the system.

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* Correction 11-5-05: Originally written “globalists”.