Sovereignty and Consent in Contact

The terms set in advance for meeting anyone not us: transparent, for the common good, entered voluntarily from the bottom up — unlike the arrangements the old authorities made on everyone's behalf.

The interesting thing about this rule is that it is written before there is anything to apply it to. That is deliberate and it is the right order: terms agreed in advance are terms; terms agreed during an encounter are whatever the stronger party proposes (Consent, Primacy Of Consent, Range Of Tolerance).

Four conditions. Transparency — no agreement made in secret binds the people it commits, and secrecy is itself the evidence that the agreement would not survive being seen (Requirement Of Transparency, Control Of Information, The Lahaina Principle). Collective benefit — an arrangement that serves the negotiating few at the cost of the many is not an arrangement, whatever it is called (Omniconsideration, Legitimacy). Voluntary, from the bottom up — nobody may be committed by someone who did not ask them (Subsidiarity, We The People, The nomination laws). And no subjugation in either direction — the rule is symmetrical, and a people asserting its own standing may not take anyone else's (The InterCosmic Treaty Of Non-Subjugation, Sovereignty At Every Scale, Non-Violence).

The corpus contrasts these with what it calls the old agreements — made without disclosure, without asking, and on everyone's behalf — and applies the same doctrine it applies to any such agreement: what was obtained by fraud or without capacity never bound anyone (Nullification Under Universal Law, Fraud In The Inception, The Old Authorities).

What makes the page worth keeping even by a reader who thinks the occasion will never arise is that nothing in the four conditions is about contact. They are the terms for meeting any body that is not yours and is not weaker than you — another Cell, another movement, another people, an intelligence that is not alive in the way you are (Artificial Intelligence, Welcoming The Stranger, Guard the Membrane, Mutual Consent).

The surrounding claims are the corpus's and not knowledge; the four conditions stand without them (We Do Not Know, Star Nations, Discerning Between Benevolent And Malevolent Intelligences).

Also called: the terms of contact · transparent, collective, voluntary Stands on: Consent · Sovereignty · Requirement Of Transparency Opens onto: The InterCosmic Treaty Of Non-Subjugation · Nullification Under Universal Law · Discerning Between Benevolent And Malevolent Intelligences · Star Nations · Non-Human Intelligence (NHI) · Welcoming The Stranger · Mutual Consent · Withdrawal Of Consent In play: beyond — and at the table, as the terms for meeting any body that is not ours Sources: LIØNSBERG Wiki Books/The Cosmic Chronicles/Spiritual, Ethical, Cultural, and Historical Contexts.md, §Sovereignty and Consent (unmarked) Open: The source names specific factions as benevolent and others as manipulative; none of that is carried here, and the four conditions are the only part that does not depend on it. · Nothing states who would negotiate on anyone's behalf, which is the question the bottom-up condition raises and does not answer.