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Sovereign Individuals
Great article, brief, to the point, inspirational. Excellent candidate for print-out and distribution.
The modern concept of sovereignty and of nation-states began after the Thirty Years War, and with the Peace of Westphalia that ended that war in 1648. The Thirty Years War was primarily a war of churches and religions. The Peace of Westphalia ended it by renouncing the validity of Church interference in the business of nations. (The treaty also did the usual things, such as flattering rulers and dividing the ownership of territories and peoples.) It is from that agreement that we get the modern concept of sovereign nations-territorial rulerships that are not subject to the Church. They stand alone–sovereign.
So then, since 1648 we’ve had the concept of nations that are not subservient to the authority of the church. Now, when we speak of sovereign individuals, we are taking this idea one step further, and are speaking of individual humans who are not subservient to the authority of nations.
- Sovereign Identity
- Aleister Crowley, Sovereign Individual
- The Sovereign State of Mind
- States Are Composed Of Decisions
- Tank you so much for making us a sovereign nation
- Prev: Currency Symbols
- Next: Open Pollination
October 30th, 2007 at 3:51 pm
Incorporating, ie. creating yourself a company, is called such since the original idea was to provide a commercial interest group into an entity with the same rights as a person, with a body (corps in french i think)
October 30th, 2007 at 3:57 pm
So how can that concept of incorporation be applied more broadly to guarantee that individual people have the rights and strength of corporations within our legal system?
October 30th, 2007 at 5:23 pm
I believe the intention of a corporation is to give a fictional entity the rights of a person. This means that a nation has to treat the entity as if it were a person: something with an address, that has income and bills, that participates in the legal system of the country, that has the right to not be searched, fined, or otherwise abused by governments without due process. So the Corporation is not above the law, but, like a wealthy person, has more recourse to the subtleties of law and more able to prey on the weaknesses of the enforcers of the law than the average person.
I’m not sure about this, but I believe that individuals are already on equal footing with corporations before the laws as they read. In other words corporations are not given a whole set of rights different from individuals.
The imbalance is in their control of resources, and therefore the ability to influence law-making and enforcement.
So, in Organic Farming, (my own ghetto niche) anyone can call their products Organic if they follow the rules as determined by the USDA. It doesn’t matter if you grow one tomato or 1,000,000,000. However, you must pay to be inspected and certified. Also, you are at the mercy of your particular inspector. In my state, there is no USDA inspector available for easy inspections (they are Feds, so they do not have to be in each state), so one must make additional and costly arrangements to become certified.
So in the eyes of the law, the little guy is exactly like the big guy, but the assumption is that the resources available to play the game are much greater than just a single individual.
Maybe I’m just spouting redundant crap, sorry if I am.
October 30th, 2007 at 6:04 pm
Yes, I was being rhetorical and leading…
October 30th, 2007 at 9:14 pm
Corporations can be eternal and people are assumed to die eventually. Corporations are assumed to exist for some sort of public benefit. Innovation, profit, taxes base, etc. People can be assumed to criminals for a variety of reasons and therefore subjected to abuses of power (drains of energy) that corporations aren’t usually subjected to.
October 30th, 2007 at 11:07 pm
Can you be more specific?
This is also important: the notion of a public charter which requires renewal with the community. Why did these ideas disappear from public consciousness?
October 30th, 2007 at 11:31 pm
Not to speak for Julia, but I read this question right after watching this:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8450330426243601231
Which details numerous cases of individuals detained without trial on the assumption they are criminals, but with no evidence.
A concrete day-to-day example might be that if you spend a lot of time filming the inside of a bank and otherwise investigating it, you would come under scrutiny from law enforcement. But if the bank records your transactions and investigates you, they get paid by the government for the information they attain.
October 31st, 2007 at 6:31 am
> Corporations can be eternal …
I read somewhere that this is a recent development. Originally incorporation was limited in time, sufficient to allow a particular task to be performed.
October 31st, 2007 at 12:48 pm
Right, you had to renew your charter with the community.