Sphereology: Our Brains on Foreign Affairs
Entry posted by HM Solomon I
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The current paradigm of foreign affairs largely revolves around spheres. Spheres are just collections of alliances with multiple bilateral connections between them, which, to varying degrees, act according to some common interest or interests.
Sphereology is the term used here to denote the theoretical view of the world derived from this paradigm. In sphereology, the world of CN is made up of several spheres which encompass most of the major alliances.
A sphere is imprecisely defined. We prefer to think in concrete rather than vague and abstract terms so we use the term sphere in a concrete manner despite reality being much less neat. If you throw a sphere (the actual shape) into a three-dimensional treaty web, no matter where it lands you can find a sphere (a bunch of alliances connected through multiple bi-lateral connections). This is because it isn't necessary for every alliance in a sphere to be connected to every other alliance for it to act as a sphere. It's all a matter of degrees - some spheres may act more cohesively than others but they all have one thing in common: their members have many common interests and often act accordingly.
Given this less concrete but more accurate definition of a political sphere, we can begin to see how this paradigm can lead us astray. We don't look at the big picture and see all of the different spheres out there, we only see the ones that current political discourse has framed. Thus, we often miss important movements and trends because we only see the movements and trends associated with the pre-determined spheres. The reality is that there are multiple "spheres" that overlap between Polardoxia (as some who shall not be named have come to call the combination of alliances associated with both Polaris and TOP) and NPO-sphere. In fact, the most important sphere is probably the sphere at the intersection of all the major pre-determined ones: a group of alliances with multiple bi-lateral connections (some likely to the second degree, rather than direct connections) to both themselves and at least some alliances in all the major pre-determined spheres; we can call this sphere the Nexus Sphere. It probably acts the least like a sphere in practice, it being pulled in so many different directions, but when it does exhibit movements and trends, they affect everything else in the Cyberverse. It both affects and is affected by just about everything.
The major pre-determined ones, despite the above, are not meaningless, they are often the larger movers and shakers - there is at least some good reason why they are so talked about. However, by focusing too much on them, we can lose sight of more subtle trends.
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