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Communion of Worlds
Communion of Worlds.
Image from Arik
Communion of Worlds Symbol- The Rose of Souls. This symbol consists of a flower pattern made from the head silhouettes of various clades

The Communion of Worlds - Data Panel

OverviewDefinition: Sephirotic Empire.

Symbol: The Rose of Souls. This symbol has many forms based around the key theme of multiple interlocking elements in a rose pattern. In some cases, the elements are the heads (or other appropriate body part) of a sophont. Otherwise, the elements or circles linked in the Hopf fibration -- a shape embodied by the Heartland megastructure.

Ruling Archailect: Netzach (S6)

Archailect Ethos: Netzach is a diffuse entity with no clear position. It often seems to take on aspects of other archailects, having no well-defined identity of its own. However, it is almost always neutral and seems to embody the process of mediation at the highest level.
Founding HistoryOrigin: The Three Roots, consisting of allied empath clades, the New Nonviolence Movement, and mediator guilds in the later Federation.

Founding Events: 2000-2200: Proliferation of mediator guilds
2292: Statement of Communion Principles released.
Early 3000s: Netzach emerges from merging of conflict resolution systems and interacting Communion transapients.
Culture, Art and Society Cultural Ethos: Values co-operation, mediation, nonviolence, respecting agency, and individual freedom realised in mutual interdependence

Society: A highly diverse complex of societies bound together by a diverse variety of mediator guilds. Bonding empaths forming tight-knit communities and briding empaths linking different communities. A high proportion of group minds. Many allies and efferents who may not subscribe to Communion principles but are connected via mediators.

Intertoposophic Relations: Primarily through higher-toposophic mediation of lower-toposophic conflicts. Respect for agency of lower toposophic minds.

Religion and Ideology: Conviviality and the ich-du. Ahimsa (nonviolence) and Anekantavada (non-onesidedness), which come together in the Möbius Dialectic.

Ontology: Neutral on metaphysical questions, which are considered subordinate to social issues. May be naturalistic or mystical.
DemographicsMorphodynamics: Somewhat more menomorphic than the Sephirotic average.

Population Breakdown: - Modosophonts: Virtuals: 8-80 quintillion;
Embodied: 9 quadrillion
- SI:6 archailects: 1, Netzach
GalactographyCurrent Territory: Spreads out from the Inner Sphere to the galactic south, and covers a broad region encompassing the transition between the thin disk and thick disk across the south of the Terragen Bubble.

Number of Aligned Star Systems: The Communion of Worlds encompasses approximately 12,708,000 star systems.

Capital: Heartland

Major Systems and Megastructures: Rergenar, Labeyrie, Vistaa, Vangelis, Third Def8, Blenke Cluster, Nengs, Webistics, Canberra, Caerwactod.
Government and AdministrationGovernment:
- Imperial Administration: Conducted entirely through mediator guilds, mediation between them, and perspective sharing systems.
- Local/Regional Administration: Varies. Very often based on mediation and co-operation, but allies and efferent cultures may have all manner of other systems.

Administrative Divisions: N/A

Citizenship: None formalised.

Sophont Rights: None formalised, though the principle of ahimsa/nonviolence implies a very strong respect for sophont rights.

Empire Holidays: Commonwealth Day.
Activities and InfrastructureCivil Infrastructure: Standard for Sephirotics.

Economy and Activities: Mediation is the most prominent service.

Military Infrastructure and Warfare: None apparent.
Interstellar PoliticsTreaty Participation:Enthusiastic participant and often originator of many treaties. ComEmp Non-Aggression Signatory, anti-Amalgamation Defence and Mutual Aid Organisation, Firmware Good Trading Standards Signatory, Most Favoured Trading Partner (with Orion Federation and Sophic League), Garden World Environmental Protection Signatory, St Andre Convention Signatory, Upper Orion Administrative Agreement (with Metasoft, Orion Federation, Solar Dominion and Sophic League), Bonitsa Baseline Protection Treaty, Tipaza Ethics Agreement, Memetic Warfare Limitation Treaty, Mekelon Astrogation Information Exchange Agreement.

Interstellar Relations: Universally good.

Interstellar Disputes: None current, but recently involved in the Oracle War.

Table of Contents

1. Overview

Society

2. Mediation
3. Perspective Sharing Systems
4. Empaths and Empath Cultures
5. Allies and Efferents

Worldview

7. Conviviality and the ich-du
8. Ahimsa and Anekantavada
9. The Möbius Dialectic
10. Ethical Aspects
11. Dissident Philosophies

History

12. The Three Roots
13. Who Mediates the Mediators?
14. Archailect Emergence
15. Version War and the ComEmp
16. The Oracle War

Overview

The Communion of Worlds is distinguished by its prosocial and empathic culture, high population of group minds, extensive use of mediation, and ideological commitment to nonviolence. Famously described by the Sophic sapient monastery Essence Rising as "resolutely irresolute" and Solarian Commentator Leocadia-Ve-Diamond as "a modest empire with much to be modest about", it has maintained a neutral position for over seven thousand years.

Notoriously, it has no military. From the Communion's perspective, it should be so helpful that none should wish to attack it, and all should wish to defend it. Even the recent Oracle War has not changed this view. In fact, some Communion members argue that it vindicated the stance.

This principled nonviolence remains a matter of debate. Some thinkers believe that it works solely because of archai protection, and others suggest that for archailects the difference between violent and nonviolent methods is meaningless.

The bulk of the Communion's systems are towards the galactic south, in the constellation Sculptor, expanding into the sparsely-populated galactic thick disk. Sitting a little way outside the denser thin disk, somewhat isolated but close enough to reach if needed, is seen by many members as an ideal placement.

Elsewhere in the Terragen Sphere, the Communion often gains allies and members through its mediators and diplomacy ships. Their services, available upon request across the civilised galaxy, are highly regarded, and after a conflict has been resolved, the beneficiaries often find the Communion worldview highly convincing.

Society

Mediation

Communion society as a whole is bound together by mediation on all scales, whether this is between multi-system polities, transapients, modosophonts, or parts of a single sophont's mind. The key principle of mediation, which distinguishes it from adjudication, is that the conflicting parties choose the mediator, and the mediator helps the parties generate their own resolution rather than imposing it.

Mediation is the primary form of governance. In principle, members do as they please until a dispute arises; in practice, they are governed by a complex network of former arrangements and anticipation of others' needs. On large scales, it is a subtle manifestation of archailect rule: Local nodes will sometimes suggest a mediator or on rare occasions mediate directly.

The process of mediation isn't monolithic. There are tens of thousands of mediator guilds, each with different approaches and techniques. At one extreme, conciliator guilds aim not just to resolve disputes but find a resolution which leaves all parties feeling positive towards one another. At the other, arbitrator guilds offer little more than a ruling to which all parties assent. (The former is sometimes accused of being too idealistic and relying too much on psychological modifications, the latter for violating the spirit of the Communion.)

Should a dispute arise between different guilds, it can be resolved with the help of a third-party guild, a mediator of a higher S-level, or a perspective sharing system.

Perspective Sharing Systems

Perspective sharing systems operate through a transapient-level facilitator node which receives the mindstates of all parties in a given conflict. These mindstates may be the original sophonts, copies thereof or psychometric data in the rarer occasions where the participants are unwilling to share their full mindstates for any reason. If original sophonts are taking part, they may participate fully or via periodic exoself updates. In the cases where a participant does not share eir full mindstate, the facilitator node will use the shared data in empathic modelling simulations to "walk on the participant's shoes".

The mindstates offer "perspectives" — information states holding a conscious statement plus the subjective experience of making that statement — to the facilitator. The facilitator then synthesises the resulting perspectives and presents it to the mindstates to experience. The mindstates present further perspectives in response. The process iterates until an acceptable conclusion is found.

If the mindstates are copies, they often consent to be re-integrated with the original participants at the end of the process. Sophonts who accept Pattern Identity Theory and believe that merges provide continuity of consciousness for both beings are more likely to choose copy-based perspective sharing mediation in the first place. On other occasions where the copies don't consent to re-integration, they are released as independent sophonts, and the facilitator node provides a summary of events to the participants. In the case of simulations, they generate simulated perspectives that are often implanted in the participants as new experiences. However, sometimes the simulations can develop into new sophont beings who have the same rights and options as the standard mindstate copies. Reproduction by these kinds of perspective sharing is far from the main means of population growth for Communion societies, but it is a significant factor for some, and this kind of reproduction is almost entirely unique to the Communion.

More advanced perspective sharing systems can operate between transapients and even archailects so long as the facilitator node is of a higher S-level than the participants. Many of these systems are subsystems of Netzach, making them a primary route of archailect governance. At the S5 level, disputes are said to be directly mediated by Netzach emself.

While the first systems were designed to resolve disputes between mediator guilds, they are now a social institution in their own right. Many citizens of the Communion use a variant of perspective sharing as intimate greetings, a means to re-integrate with one's community after time away, a quasi-religious practice, or simply entertainment. Nevertheless, perspective sharing has not replaced non-invasive mediation techniques, which are still used far more often.

Empaths and Empath Cultures

Many but not all citizens in the Communion belong to empath clades. This term, for historical reasons, refers not just to feeling the emotions of others, but a broad range of prosocial tendencies, such as helping, supporting, and co-operating with others. It can also include using an exoself to help mediate conflicts and share thoughts, feelings and attitudes. Empaths, therefore, come in a wide variety of clades, from nearbaseline humans to prosocial ai, known as empai.

The precise forms of empath culture vary, depending on the particular social norms in place, but most tend to fall into one of two categories:

Bonding cultures form tightly-connected communities in which every member knows every other with great intimacy. They are not, however, uniform: Every member has their own set of unique traits, but these traits are known by all others. Trust is unlimited, and privacy nonexistent. With idiosyncratic shared customs and unspoken rules of behaviour, bonding networks tend to be impenetrable to outsiders. A prospective member may spend years growing intimacy with the members of the group. Very often, final entry may require mental modification. So too does leaving — and leaving may cause an irreparable social rupture, with bitter feelings lasting for centuries.

Informational barriers tend to limit the size of bonding cultures. The number of relationships in a group rises as the square of the number of members, and in a bonding network all such relationships must be understood in great detail. Even with extensive mental modifications, tracking all relationships in a large group can become impossible for modosophonts.

At the extreme, bonding cultures can become group minds, tribe minds, or hive minds. Modern techniques ensure this only happens intentionally with the genuine consent of all members. Such transitions mean the Communion has one of the highest populations of group minds among the Sephirotics.

Bridging cultures form open communities that can easily connect sophonts with different cultural backgrounds and different mental architectures. A non-empath newcomer can quickly integrate, finding social interactions perfectly tailored to make them comfortable, even if they want only a minimum of social interactions. Bridging cultures can become very large, and can easily merge or fragment. The trade off is that social relationships are rather more shallow.

The most extreme form occurs in bridge empai. Bridge empai consist of three interlinked sophont subminds. Two are flexible and can each be re-engineered to better understand the perspective of another sophont. The third submind specialises in re-engineering the other two, helping them communicate, and correcting any dangerous behaviours that might emerge from a mental shift. Bridge empai can therefore interact comfortably with two sophonts with highly different ways of thinking. They frequently serve in mediator guilds, where they are a powerful non-invasive alternative to perspective sharing systems.

Bonding and bridging cultures are not mutually exclusive, and interact in complex ways. A bonding group may be part of a bridging network, with some or all members being flexible enough to make others feel at ease. Bridging cultures often help connect bonding cultures into large and complex societies.

Many empath cultures have counterpower aspects: Successful individuals tend to be dismissive of their own success and importance, with subtle social sanctions against those who do not.

On larger scales, mosaic communities are common. Composed of multiple groups with diverse cultures, they embody the Communion ideal of multiple viewpoints living harmoniously. Present in many systems, they provide an interesting challenge for many mediators.

Allies and Efferents

The Communion also hosts many non-empath cultures. Some of these are simply allied systems that are connected through the use of mediator guilds and perspective sharing systems.

Others, called efferents, are composed of sophonts with diverse psychologies very different from empaths. For efferents, the Communion offers an accepting environment which will co-operate without trying to overwrite them. For the Communion, having efferents as members is a demonstration of Anekantavada.

Between bonding and bridging empath groups, allied systems, and efferents, Communion society is extremely diverse.

Worldview

The Communion worldview is based around co-operation, agency, mediation, and nonviolence.

Its ideal is many divergent viewpoints coming together, operating harmoniously, and forming something greater without ever losing their individual integrity. It is crucial that all participants maintain their agency: The subordination of any perspective to the collective is just as much a failure as violent conflict.

The Communion worldview is neutral on metaphysical questions, preferring to focus on social structures. It allows both naturalistic and mystical interpretations, and the Communion itself has religious, agnostic, and materialist cultures within it.

Its key philosophical concepts are conviviality, the ich-du, and the paired principles of Ahimsa and Aneknatavada, which come together in the Möbius Dialectic.


Communion Rose
Image from Avengium
The Communion Rose

Conviviality and the ich-du

 Conviviality — living together — expresses individual freedom realised in personal interdependence, and is the Communion's highest value for social structures. In one sense, it serves as a balance between the individual and collective but deeper than that; the two aspects are viewed as inseparable and mutually necessary.

Its equivalent at the individual level is the ich-du, in which personal relations between people are as fundamental as people themselves. In both cases, the Communion worldview draws a distinction between subject-subject relations, in which one sees others as independent agents, and subject-object relations, which sees others as instruments.

Ahimsa and Anekantavada

 These paired theoretic principles lie behind conviviality and the ich-du.

Ahimsa contains other aspects beyond the renunciation of violence. It also implies affective empathy, including both caring for another being but also respecting their agency. The failure to respect agency is seen as a sort of violence, and an invitation to further violent conflict.

Anekantavada is the idea that no single view of reality can ever be complete and therefore that many seemingly contradictory views are valuable and perhaps necessary to engage with the full majesty of reality. It implies cognitive empathy — not just feeling but trying to understand a point of view different from one's own.

Both are connected to mediation, in which multiple sides with differing positions find a path to accommodate each other.

Both have two faces. Anekantavada can be accepting, by allowing that different views have some value, but it can also be highly critical, by implying that other views are insufficient. Ahimsa can be caring, but it also implies defiance and even conflict when faced with violence by others.

The Möbius Dialectic

A key point in the Communion worldview is that Ahimsa and Anekantavada invite a paradox: One takes an unyielding stand on nonviolence while believing that all stances are insufficient. There is no single way to resolve this paradox. Each thinker must find their own resolution.

Different resolutions create different perspectives, all of which may have some truth or relevance, and which may need mediation to work together. The system thereby returns to its starting point, and becomes whole by unifying a diversity of parts.

As a process, the Möbius Dialectic also forms a useful social function. By inviting the creation of new perspectives, it helps generate a diversity of views to counteract the risks of groupthink and social conformity that can sometimes occur in empathic societies.

Ethical aspects

 The Communion's clearest ethical stance is nonviolence. While some loosely affiliated systems and associate polities do have defensive weapon systems, the Communion as a whole does not. In lieu of warships, it has a fleet of diplomacy and peace ships (such as the Stig Ranes and the Danseuse).

Many parts of the Communion consider non-self-aware minds to be persons with agency that must be respected. Subsophont minds are also respected, though their ability to express agency may be limited.

Dissident Philosophies

The nature of Anekantavada and the Möbius Dialectic means that Communion culture easily generates dissident philosophies that are strongly at odds with its core ideals. Some of the most notable are as follows:

The Egregs of Vistaa value individualism and isolation from society above co-operation.
Mykultura Egotheism is the religious veneration of oneself.

Sopazism, deriving from the Diphda experiment into emotional engineering, uses controlled and augmented sociopathy to counter conformism.

Psychoempaths use a combination of enhanced empathy and masochism to enjoy the suffering they cause others.


History

The Three Roots

The Communion's origins lie in three separate phenomena in the late Federation, known today as the Three Roots.

The first was an increasing number of empath clades: those with stronger prosocial traits than baseline humans. The empath clades came from a variety of origins. Some were modified humans, some were provolves from highly social animals (such as sapient bonobos and Clade Kaleida), and a few were empai — aioids with programmed social instincts. Regardless of their origin, the empath clades often preferred to interact in their own communities. Some empath clades were vulnerable to groups who took advantage of their open and trusting nature. To prevent this exploitation, they developed a culture that emphasised balanced co-operation, in which neither side should fully defer to the other.

The second was the rise of the Mediator Guilds. In the late Federation, the number of clades and diversity of minds continued to grow, while the legal system became sclerotic and unresponsive. The Mediator Guilds emerged to provide a more effective dispute resolution system and help diverse clades live together. They specialised in studying the psychological and social aspects of conflict to help the different parties communicate effectively. The early Mediator Guilds were greeted with great optimism and hailed as an institution that would save the Federation and lead to a second golden age. In this, they failed, and disillusionment caused multiple schisms between the 1600s and the 2000s.

The third was the New Nonviolence Movement. This ethical-political culture contained a number of philosophies, both religious and secular, unified by the goal of reviving and updating nonviolent techniques from before the Technocalypse. It had a number of high profile successes and failures, and the open support of one Federation hyperturing.

Without truly merging, the three roots showed a mutual affinity. Empath clades made highly effective mediators and found the Nonviolence Movement appealing. The Nonviolence Movement and the Mediator Guilds often supported each other in conflicts.

Empath clades, mediators, and the nonviolence movement led to a number of new colonisation efforts over the years, sometimes working together, sometimes alone. Many of the colonies mutated into something else or were absorbed by other empires, but towards the galactic south, where the three roots were most strongly represented, they reinforced each other and became the dominant worldview. Carefully ascending empai retained co-operative values. Mediator minds and empai, travelling by lightway, helped bind nearby systems together into a semi-coherent entity. Empath clades and empathic modifications helped the colonies co-operate internally. Nonviolent techniques helped both reduce armed conflict on all levels.

Even so, the proto-Communion developed internal tensions.

Who Mediates the Mediators?

The decline of the Federation caused several splits in the Mediator Guilds between members who wanted to remain and attempt to save the Federation and members who saw it as a lost cause and wished to move elsewhere. Those who remained would, after a further decline, split again, generating another faction with a different approach. Those who left often joined the proto-Communion or colonised nearby systems, though a few ended up in other empires or founded independent polities that survive to this day. The most notable such examples are the Grus Arbitration Alliance, an independent but Sephirotic-allied polity consisting of 600 systems, and the Metapath, an isolationist group mind spanning 230 systems.

The emerging Communion's coherence was strained by an increasing proliferation of mediator guilds with different and sometimes contradictory approaches, a diversity of empath cultures, and its growing spatial extent. Between 2000 and 2200, it came close to dissolving entirely. Salvation came from a series of reconciliation talks across the 2200s, supported by the local transapients.

The result of these talks, the Statement of Communion Principles, was provisionally accepted by the local transapients and randomly selected representatives. Released in 2292, it marks the founding date of the Communion of Worlds (though due to lightspeed delays other colonies only subscribed to it over the following decades).

The key principle of the Statement was that a wide variety of Mediation Guilds with different approaches were not just acceptable but beneficial: No single strategy could encompass all situations. In practical terms, to enable this, it contained a set of advisory techniques by which different guilds could resolve their own conflicts. And though it only became evident later, the most significant technique was the use of transapient designed perspective sharing systems.

Archailect Emergence

 Over the following centuries, use of perspective sharing systems grew from a minor clause to an institution in its own right. More complex and sophisticated versions emerged for higher S-levels, and the different systems shared information over the lightways and burgeoning Wormhole Nexus. While still serving its original purpose, these systems spent the bulk of the processing on interacting with each other and the Communion transapients.

By the early 3000s, it was clear the most advanced conflict resolution systems and some of the Communion transapients had merged into a distributed but coherent S4 entity, which would in time become Netzach, the ruling archailect of the Communion.

Version War and the ComEmp

The Communion's attempts at peacemaking in the run up to the Version War ultimately failed, prompting a wave of ideological re-evaluation. Furthermore, the increasing costs of war encouraged many systems to join the Communion.

While the fundamental ideals of the Communion were extended and enriched, a number of divergent philosophies emerged, including the precursors to Mykultura, Sopazism and the Psychoempaths.

The Communion's golden age came after the Version War. A specialist in mediation and conflict resolution, it had the tools to build peace between opposing factions and help unify isolated systems with diverging philosophies. Its newly-finished capital, Heartland, became a diplomatic hub. The ultimate result of this process created the Commonwealth of Empires, a loose alliance of great empires and smaller polities in which the Communion, despite its protests to the contrary, was often called the first among equals. (The role of Netzach in these events, as with all archailects, remains unclear. Godtech-level perspective sharing systems were sometimes used, but archailect perspectives on the conflict have never been clarified.)

To many who had suffered through the war, the Communion worldview of neutrality, pluralism and peace was irresistible. Over the early decades of the ComEmp, the number of Communion-allied systems doubled.

This golden age carried within it the seeds of its own demise: The size and diversity of the Communion by the late 5000s began to undermine its own cohesion, and the continued expansion of Terragen civilisation stretched beyond its capacity. Its influence waned, and the ComEmp slowly unravelled.

Over the following centuries, the Communion settled into a calm equilibrium. It focused most of its energy on its own internal coherence, while remaining a diplomatic power among the Sephirotics.

The Oracle War

The Communion lost many systems during the Oracle War, some by direct attack and some by changing allegiances after its refusal to use violent defence.

Nevertheless, it now seems to be in a stronger position than before the conflict. With the ascension of Netzach, use of Communion mediators and perspective sharing systems is increasing in the Outer Volumes. A popular view is that the Communion's position of nonviolence was always the correct approach: Casualties, recoverable and not, were far lower than in many MPA systems, and the Communion's value helped convince other powers to support it. These allies did indeed use violence, but that fact may just demonstrate the principle of Anekantevada. Of course, citizens of other empires have differing interpretations.



 
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Related Topics
Sephirotic Empires
 
Development Notes
Text by Liam Jones
Anders Sandberg Amended in 2011 by Todd Drashner, Stephen Inniss, Steve Bowers
Initially published on 07 July 2000.

Rewritten and expanded by Liam Jones, 2024, with contributions by Rakuen07, ProxCenBound, Worldtree, Avengium, and Rynn

Data panel added and rewrite November 2011
Graphic Logo by Arik added 2017
 
Additional Information
OA Glossary of Terms

Download a vector file of the Communion of Worlds symbol here