0234 What does it mean for sovereign power_3b to be confounded with a situation-level definition_3b of the spoken term, “state”_2b?

0235 A pair of two-level interscopes stand before me.

The first corresponds to the first two levels of the society_C tier.

The second corresponds to the situation-level definition of the term, “state”, derived from Graeber and Wengrow’s theory, plus a content-level definition of the term, “domination”.

0236 Normal contexts₃ exhibit the logics of exclusion, complement or alignment.

Once again, I ask, “Do the situation-level normal contexts exclude one another, complement one another, or align with one another?”

The first option is sovereign action without the state.  Or, is it a state without sovereign acts?

I suspect that this option describes the conditions where situation-level sovereign power_3b has not differentiated from other institutions_3a.  Every institution_3a exercises disciplinary power, which is similar to sovereign action without the state.  Every institution enforces its disciplinary powers, which are similar to domination.

The second option may correspond to the first and second-order regimes illustrated by Graeber and Wengrow.

The third option is the civilizational state (you know, like the one that the indigenous people of the Eastern Woodlands of North America criticize before their utter ruin).

0237 It makes me wonder whether the fashionable terms of “liberty, equality and fraternity”, used by the so-called “left”, in favor of state intervention for every social organization, might be a form of righteousness_1a that manifests as the potentials_1a underlying the term, domination”_2a.

0238 Consider the Ubaid period of southern Mesopotamia, ranging from 5800 to 4000 B.C.

The administration of information seems to be devoted to mitigating social domination as an unintended consequence of labor specialization.  Some Ubaid labor specializations are more rewarding than others.  So, a sovereign bureaucracy strives to prevent the more affluent from lording over the less affluent.  Was this bureaucracy itself a form of domination?  Well, yes, it dominated in order to mitigate… um… domination due to spontaneous social inequality.

0239 Indeed, the history of coincidences between order_1b and controlling coercion_1a, administering information_1a and championing charismatic power_1a, is mixed, suggesting that the state_2b has no origin.

Instead, the term, “state”_2b, stands as a sign of contradiction to the term, “outlaw”_2b.  The “domination”_2a that supports the “state”_2b is precisely opposed to the “domination”_2a that supports the “outlaw”_2b.

It is no wonder that, over time, Mesopotamian, Egyptian and Chinese rulers proclaim themselves to be protectors of the weak, feeders of the hungry, and solace for widows and orphans.

What better way to distinguish the “domination”_2a underlying the “state”_2b from the one_2a underlying the “outlaw”_2b?

0240 What goes unseen in this discussion?

The meaning, presence and message_1a underlying the term, “domination”_2a, does not coincide with the potential of the content-level of the society tier: righteousness_1a.

0241 Yes, a strange contradiction can no longer hide.