Superempowered Individuals and 5GW
Isolation and the alienation, anomie and rage that proceed from it fuel both lone gunmen and a broad sense of detachment from the state. Why give loyalty to the state if the society if governs offers nothing but alienation? In turn, alternatives to the state, such as gangs, offer alternatives to isolation as well.
Lind’s analysis here is rooted in a philosophical tradition for which Russell Kirk’s The Conservative Mind provides a concise overview and one that probably does not resonate with everyone reading here. One alternative would involve a clinical psychological perspective but in the end, I agree that profound isolation, alienation and disconnection from a larger social network would likely be a common denominator in destructive SEI’s, much like school shooters and lone wolf terrorists like Ted Kacyznski.
John Robb offered a rebuttal of to Lind at Global Guerillas:
however I do disagree strongly with Bill’s definition of a superempowered individual. Superempowerment is a much richer and more complex phenomenon than a mere reduction in scale (down to a single attacker). Instead, superempowerment describes the process by which individuals and small groups are using;
- rapidly improving tools (the doubling rate of Moore’s law applied to technologies accessible to the average individual),
- connectivity to a global community and its resources (how to use those tools from MIT courseware to Jihadi “how to” sites),
- and newly accessible forms of economic activity that transcend state control,
to radically improve their productivity in warfare. This is definitely a qualitative change in the conduct of warfare, although it is still early. It will become transformational as the technologies of self-replication begin to reach their full potential.
Insofar as SEI’s could be 5GW warriors, I’m pretty comfortable with John’s exposition on the characteristics of superempowerment ( a separate issue from motivation). You can’t be “superempowered” without some kind of a platform(s) to leverage, adaptively and creatively, against the very complex system of advanced Western society that is providing you with your tools of destruction and decent grasp of what targets could best maximize your leverage. My comment would be that the scalar effect is greater than it seems – as the actor scale is reducing down toward a single individual even as the potential effect of the actor is scaling upward in orders of magnitude to initiate national, regional or even global system perturbations. This too represents a qualitative change.
Addendum:
WHO WOULD DECLARE WAR ON THE WORLD?: THE NATURE OF SUPER EMPOWERED INDIVIDUALS
THE SUPER EMPOWERED INDIVIDUAL
Empowered individuals – and super-empowered ones!
What Should Superempowered Individuals Do?
Super-Empowered Individuals and 5GW: Heads or Tails
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judasnoose:
February 22nd, 2008 at 11:20 am
Several commenters have previously raised the possibility of nonviolent, constructive rather than destructive, SEI’s.Yes. For example, Will Wright is a paradigm-shifting genius, but he doesn’t kill people.