The 6 Bs of Parasovereignty
Parasovereignty is not new. Long before digital protocols or decentralized ledgers, human beings built systems of order beyond the reach of states.
These weren’t lawless—they were rule-bound. But the rules emerged from ritual, kinship, consensus, belief, and necessity, not from statute or decree.
Today’s Bitcoin, Tor, nostr, and other cryptographic systems are simply engineered versions of what has always existed in some form. To map this, I’ve begun framing parasovereign orders through six fundamental patterns, which I call the 6 Bs of parasovereignty.
1. Before
Orders that predate the state: Kinship structures, ancestral codes, tribal customs, oral law, and mythic frameworks that regulated behavior long before formal institutions existed.
2. Below
Orders that operate beneath state visibility and authority: informal, underground, or subcultural systems that persist under or within sovereign structures. Think barter economies, unlicensed teaching, or black market logistics.
3. Behind
Systems that operate in secrecy or denial: smuggling, encryption, whistleblowing, samizdat publishing, underground railroads. These resist sovereign control by hiding from it.
4. Beside
Parallel systems that coexist with formal authority: diasporic networks, religious orders, mutual aid societies, or community courts. Not necessarily in opposition, but not subordinate either.
5. Between
Borderlands, liminal zones, and jurisdictional gaps. From steppe nomads to darknet nodes, these are spaces where sovereignty is blurred, layered, or absent.
6. Beyond
Aspirational, symbolic, or metaphysical orders: cosmologies, eschatologies, or ideologies that offer allegiance to something greater than the state. Often the foundation of long-term loyalty and resistance.
Why it matters:
We tend to view sovereignty as a monopoly. But humans have always built other systems when trust, legitimacy, or survival demanded it.
Parasovereignty is not about lawlessness. It’s about constraint without domination—order without permission.
In the digital age, we now encode these patterns directly into protocol. And when sovereign systems overreach or collapse, the 6 Bs become more than theory. They become strategy.