Hypatia

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Hypatia is a plan for developing a cognitopia that includes modified liquid democracy, cooperative business structure, possible locations, demographics, funding, architecture, infrastructure, culture, social philosophy, secularism, and society built on critical thinking, environmentalism, and humanism.

It has been in development since 2016 when the author, Phi Hypatia (pseudonym), became convinced that the current western society was not sustainable or desirable. Phi Hypatia is not academic or urban planning professional.


Hypatia, The Cognitopia

Cognitopia: Cognitopia is a new contribution to the arena of imagined societies. Cogni — as a prefix is taken from the word “cognition,” which means thinking or reasoning. There are three pillars of what I call "Full Cognition" or "The Complete Mind."

  • Mindfulness - the ability to focus one's awareness of the present moment, while calmly acknowledging and accepting one's feelings, thoughts, and bodily sensations. Mindfulness is absolutely key to the success of Hypatian society and is intertwined with the other two pillars of Full Cognition.
  • Emotional Intelligence - is the capacity to be aware of, control, and express one's emotions. Self-awareness is key to mindfulness as well. But emotional intelligence includes the awareness of others' emotions and motivations and the ability to handle interpersonal relationships judiciously and empathetically
  • Critical Thinking - is the ability to objectively analyze and evaluate an issue in order to form a judgment. Objectivity is key to mindfulness. Critical Thinking provides a philosophy that guides the pursuit of truth in issues under debate. To deliberate and find solutions that are logical and, in some cases, empirically valid.


A cognitopia is a society where mindfulness, emotional intelligence, critical thinking are central to the functioning and philosophy of the state.

Conceptually, Hypatia is governed as a secular democracy. It’s founded on social and economic equality and civic responsibility.

Aspects Hypatia governance includes secularity, constitutional social democracy, delegated democracy, evidence-based policy, open government, scientifically based, focused on economic equality, and civic responsibility.

The purpose of Hypatia is to build on the best qualities of humanity while dispensing with the rest. Everything is designed to mitigate the worst of human nature — ignorance, greed, corruption, sexism, racism, classism, and violence — from impacting society as a whole. It’s a place where knowledge of the universe expands without fear or superstition, where transparency makes corruption all but impossible, where all genders are equal, where racial distinctions are of no importance. It's a society where no one is grossly wealthy or poor and desolate. It's a society where violence is rare, and people live in harmony with purpose and perspective.

Citizens of Hypatia consider themselves custodians of Earth and philosophers. The mission of Hypatia is to establish and maintain ecological balance and promote a more humane society while seeking knowledge and self improvement.

Hypatia: A Collection of Exclaves

Exclave
An exclave is a piece of land that is politically attached to a larger piece but not physically conterminous (having the same borders) with it because of surrounding foreign territory.

Instead of establishing a micronation the founders of Hypatia legally organize as a federation of cooperatives within the jurisdiction of one or more nations. A corporation can own its own land, set its own rules — as long as they respect the laws of the host nation — and pick and choose their employees which, in the case of Hypatia, would make up the body politic.

Hypatia would be geographically organized into a federation of cities on private lands within existing, healthy nations. These lands, legally corporate campuses, would be fully owned and operated by cooperatives including housing, health care, infrastructure, and all other necessities. Each exclave is located in a different country with its own populations and in accordance with the laws of the host nations. The first exclave of Hypatia is New Alexandria located in the United States.

An Exclave would consist of a land and services cooperative that would house both employees and businesses. They would effectively be city-states. The Exclave would obtain income, not from its citizen-employees, but in shares of employee-owned cooperatives both within the Exclave and re-distributed by the Hypatia corporation. The Exclaves would be non-profit enterprises all of which are part of the much larger non-profit Hypatia Corporation.

The income distributed to Exclaves and the Hypatia Corporation would be similar to taxes. Cooperatives within an Exclave would distribute some income to the Exclave, which the Exclave uses to maintain services and provide land for both employee-owner housing and business. The Hypatia Corporporation would distribute its income to the Exclaves. The redistribution of Hypatia Corporations' profits to Exclaves would help to balance the disparities among the Exclaves.

Why Not A Micronation, Seastead, Or Space Settlement?

Micronation
A micronation is a political entity whose members claim that they belong to an independent nation or sovereign state lacking legal recognition by world governments or major international organizations.

It would be enormously difficult, if not impossible, to establish Hypatia as an independent sovereign micronation. To date, not a single micronation created in the last 150 years has successfully petitioned for international recognition. Every attempt to claim independence by micronations has failed from lack of funds, popularity, or destruction by neighboring countries.

When people talk about establishing a micronation, the first consideration is location. Where should the micronation be established? You can’t just build it anywhere because nearly all of Earth's landmass is claimed by one country or another. No country is going to tolerate a substantial micronation established on their sovereign territory. History is full of examples of people attempting to turn private property within an existing sovereign nation into an independent micronation. In nearly every case the government refuses to acknowledge the independence of the nation and eventually prosecutes its inhabitants for tax evasion or some other crime.

In rare cases where territory is not claimed, such as in disputed borderlands, the adjacent countries refuse to support, recognize or even acknowledge fledgling micronations.

While there are lands and islands here and there that are disputed or unclaimed by any nation they are exceedingly rare, have existing populations, are susceptible to invasion, or are simply too difficult to establish logistically. History has shown that micronations declared in international waters, such as abandoned industrial or war-time platforms, man-made islands, or ships are susceptible to invasion.

Logistics and the enormous capital required to establish settlements on islands, planets, or space stations make them equally as difficult if not more so for at least 50 to 100 years.

Hypatia: A Federation of Cooperatives

Cooperative
an autonomous association of persons united voluntarily to meet their common economic, social, and cultural needs and aspirations through a jointly-owned and democratically-controlled enterprise.

Hypatia Corporation is a federation of hundreds of cooperatives. Constituent cooperatives are employee-owned corporations that span Hypatia’s Exclaves. Each cooperative has either a commercial focus or infrastructure function.

An example of a very successful federation of cooperatives today is the Mondragon Corporation in Spain. Mondragon is the parent corporation for over one hundred other cooperatives with over eighty thousand employee-owners. Mondragon provides commercial products and services across the globe as well as health services and higher education to its employee-owners.

There will be many cooperatives under the auspicious of the Hypatia Corporation, which provide products or services to the exclaves or as exports to others societies.

Infrastructure cooperatives, such as housings, transportation, or medical cooperatives, will be based in specific exclaves and are responsible for providing services (e.g. health care) and products (e.g. housing) to employee-owners of a specific exclave.

Hypatian Virtues

The Hypatian Virtues is the basic philosophy of the Hypatian society. It is a general code of conduct based, in large part, on qualities called the Cardinal Virtues as described by Plato in Republic, namely: Wisdom, Courage, Temperance, Justice. The Hypatian Virtues are Knowledge, wisdom, courage, restraint, and justice.

  • Knowledge: understanding based on facts, information, descriptions, or skills, acquired through experience or education by perceiving, discovering, and learning.
  • Compassion: concern for the suffering and misfortune of others.
  • Wisdom: the ability to think rationally and act mindfully with emotional intelligence.
  • Restraint: the practice of self-control, discretion, and moderation.
  • Courage: the ability to confront fear, uncertainty, and intimidation.
  • Justice: the application of ethics, rationality, law, equity, and fairness.

These six virtues are a common substrate of many philosophies and religions, including Chinese Confucianism, Indian Sattva, the Nine Qualities of the Buddha, the Christian Seven Virtues, and the Japanese Bushidō code of the Samurai. Hypatian Virtues are the foundation of all personal and social thought and action of Hypatia's people and the state.