Communion of Worlds
Rose (Communion of Worlds)
Image from Steve Bowers
Communion of Worlds Symbol- The Rose


The Communion of Worlds - Data Panel

DefinitionEmpath empire
SymbolA highly stylized rose
FoundedThe arrival of the first settlers at Heartland in 4261 AT is commonly regarded as the founding of the Communion of Worlds.
Psyche, Art, CultureMetapsychology: Mixture of standard biont derived individual consciousness, group minds, artificial minds of various architectures and some metasystem consciousnesses. Empathic enhancements and social cognition heavily emphasized in most clades.

Religion/Ideology: Empath philosophies, cladistic syncretism, family, clade and metaclade-oriented altruism, with metaclade unity and conflict avoidance as central tenets.

Culture and Art: Postshaper bioaesthetics, cognitive sculpture, facing moodscapes with emphasis on social dramas and collective/individual emergence.

Language: The official language is the Communion Protocol, derived from the ComEmp protocol. Many different languages used by different clades, often as badges of membership.
Territory and PopulationCurrent Territory: An 800 light year diameter region of the upper part of the Orion Arm and extending indefinitely above it.

Important Natural Objects (stars and nebulae): nebula S245

Capital: Heartland

Representative Systems: Heartland, Elderman's Star, Rergenar, Labeyrie, Vistaa, Vangelis, Third Def8, Blenke Cluster, Nengs, Webistics

Current Core Population: 178 billion entities

Population Breakdown:69% superior; 12% cyborgs; 10% AI; 4% vec; 2% aliens; 2% baseline; 2% other. Of these, with empathy enhancement: 57%
Government and AdministrationGovernment: Representative AI-augmented democracy, with a general assembly at Heartland. Each sector elects two representatives for the assembly according to a rotating schedule.

Administrative Divisions: Federation. Clades and regions fulfilling the Communion Orthogonality Requirements Agreement are regarded as sectors of the federation.

National Holidays: None; these are left to different clades. The Vista is commonly celebrated by traditionalist clades in commemoration of the founding of the Vista and the subsequent closure of foundation.

Constitution: Communion of Worlds Manifesto Minarchic federative structure with emphasis on mutual foreign policy and internal development. Classic empath philosophy is the official metaethic.

Legal System: ComEmp-style total neutral investigation and local social code.
Economics and InfrastructureCurrency: The Communion Federal Credit is the official standard, but different sectors, clades and corporations release their own currencies. And extensive gift economy makes conventional currency of relatively low importance.

Major Industries: Terraforming, hedonic systems, contract arbitration, social dynamics, metamanagement, nanofacture.

Dysons: None. Webistics Band is a Banks Orbital

Major Stargate Nexi: Heartland and Webistics.

Military Expenditures: 0.01% of GDP
Trade and Treaty RelationsImports - Commodities: Exotic matter, amat, biogenes, cultural products, hedonic systems, nanotronics, ISO parts.

Imports - Partners: Non-Coercive Zone 15%, Metasoft 11%, Solar Dominion9%, Independent Inner Sphere worlds 7%, Sagittarius Transcultural Cooperation 6%, Orion Federation 6%, Formalhaut Acquisition Society 5%, Terran Federation 4%, Zoeific Biopolity 4%, Mutual Progress Alliance 4%, Independent Cygexba volume 4%, Sophic League 4%, Negentropy Alliance 2%, Technorapture Hypernation 2%, other 16%.

Exports - Commodities: Software, persona compoids, memetic templates, virches, personality constructs, cultural databases, experience services, diplomatics, management services, hedonic systems, meme design.

Exports - Partners: Non-Coercive Zone 14%, Metasoft 10%, Solar Dominion 9%, Sagittarius Transcultural Cooperation 8%, Independent Inner Sphere worlds 8%, Orion Federation 8%, Formalhaut Acquisition Society 7%, Independent Cygexba volume 5%, Zoeific Biopolity 4%, Terran Federation 3%, Mutual Progress Alliance 3%, Sophic League 3%, Technorapture Hypernation 2%, Cyberian Network 1%, Keter Domain 1%, other 14%

Treaty Participation: 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, Good Hacking Agreement (with Cyberian Network), Upper Orion Administrative Agreement (with Metasoft, Orion Federation, Solar Dominion and Sophic League), Bonitsa Baseline Protection Treaty, Tipaza Ethics Agreement, Strangelet Ban, Memetic Warfare Limitation Treaty, Mekelon Astrogation Information Exchange Agreement.

Longrunning Interstellar Disputes: None.


The Empaths

One of the most important steps in the development of superiors was the introduction of humanlike social cognition so that they could relate to humans and behave as were expected of them. The same results were also applied to genetically enhanced humans. It was found that by adding suitable "empathy genes" people with enhanced social and emotional cognition could be created. This was mainly used to enhance sympathy and obedience — splices and subordinate tweaks would spontaneously do whatever they thought made their owners happiest.

During the dark ages another use of empaths was found. It was absolutely necessary to retain group cohesion in face of the often harsh and dangerous situation, and strong empathy and sympathy helped create people who would work together better, more often behave in an altruistic way and obey the guidance of the governing AI-protectors. While these enhancements helped many communities survive, they became a liability when the isolated habitats joined into the first federation around 900 to 1000 a.t. The empaths found themselves far too trusting and emotional to deal with the often alien and aggressive other groups.

Some empath societies went bankrupt, and others reverted to the normal non-empath form. Several empath societies emigrated outwards, hoping to avoid the harsh competition. Others stayed behind, searching for a solution that did not involve giving up their way of life. Just removing the sympathy that made them too eager to please others created sociopaths, and while individual sociopaths were somewhat acceptable or even useful as cut-throat businessmen or politicians, it was not possible to create a society of sociopaths. Several empath habitats tried, and perished. One solution was to limit the range of the empathy: the empath felt sympathy for its own family/clan/corporation but not for others, while retaining the empath edge without cumbersome sympathy when dealing with outsiders. Another was to create more conscious control over one's emotions and reactions. As these developments occurred, many empath groups developed various philosophies and psychologies to help manage their emotions; this was the start of became the basis for the big field of Empath Philosophy.

In 1200 a.t. the empath groups had developed useful forms of emotional manipulation combined with internal cohesion, which made them very successful diplomats, managers, marketers and infiltrators. They were hired as consultants by many organisations. The empath societies developed into megacorps exploiting their talents while at the same time remaining warmly empathic internally.

As the megacorps began to expand to the stars empath consultants were onboard. During the 1300 recolonisation era empaths were often among the contact or diplomatic personnel sent to interact with the original settlers. They came into contact with their remote relatives, the empaths who fled outwards. While often sent to find ways of subverting their societies so that the megacorp could use the planet, they discovered that they experienced at least some empathy with the less developed empaths. Over the 1300's and 1400's, the empath megacorps bought up the rights to the areas where the primitive empaths lived, often keeping them as a kind of "pets" or nice old relatives.

The Communion of Worlds

By 1500 a.t. it had become increasingly clear that the empaths had developed their own culture within the larger federation culture. While there were often fierce competition between the consultancies, the empaths in general liked each other but manipulated others. The culture, heavily influenced by the mental philosophies developed in the solar system, became known as Communion Culture, or the Empathic Memesis. This developed in various ways, especially on more isolated communities where the empaths had established enclaves and were not minorities. For some five centuries the Empath Memesis developed as a rich underculture, aesthetic, and metaethic across the increasingly fragmented and cladized remnants of the old Federation, but they were always strongest in the Sol System, where they had the greatest population centers.

In 1989-2001 a.t. a major revival occurred, led by a number of charismatics. These charismatics claimed that the Communion would be wiped out if it could not become independent of the Blind (the empaths' term for non-empaths); now they were a mistrusted minority dependent on the economic needs of the majority; if that ever changed they could be wiped out. In order to prevent this a large number of empaths emigrated to worlds in the Orion direction, where they set up the Communion of Worlds. Through treaties with NoCoZo and Metasoft they gained enough safety to set up their own empire.

Within a short period of time, the Communion of Worlds expanded outwards from Heartland, the first frontier empath colony (a G star close to Lambda 2 Sculptoris). In general it expanded above the galactic plane, keeping out of the way of the emerging Empires. As the NoCoZo, Conver Ambi and Taurus Nexus expanded, the Communion kept out of their way and remained the "private" zone of the empath networks. The region was largely peaceful, dominated by empaths and sympathetic clades that both had effective domestic and interstellar diplomacy, a low tolerance for conflicts and strong sympathies for each other.

In order to keep out of trouble Communion took a proactive position, declaring itself totally neutral, ensuring that it had strong economic ties to all major powers and quietly making it very unprofitable politically, economically or socially to even consider attacking it and its interests. During the Consolidation Wars Communion benefited from this, acting as a neutral part in peace negotiations and also becoming the home of many refugees from the Conver Ambi cleansings.

The Communion developed into a subtle empire, with very few directly controlled planets (mostly some old colonies in the Inner Sphere or even parts of colonies where empaths lived) but an extensive business network. It was partially involved in the formation of the NoCoZo and to some extent the Solar Dominion, but retained its own independence. For over 400 years the Communion mainly existed in the Inner Sphere.

The Imperial Era

During the Empires era many Communion groups were developing empath AIs and vecs in order to deal with Metasoft and the emerging AI-gods as well as give Communion the backing in the AI sphere they felt it lacked. These development caused serious disagreements between the Communion worlds, as some thought it would lead to empathkind being subjugated by its creations, other empires regarding the Communion as a threat (by now staying out of trouble had become a major ideological tenet) or the replacement of true emotion with memetic engineering. The fears proved relatively unfounded, as the new "empai" proved to integrate well with the Communion structure. The empai aioids gave the empaths an edge in dealing with Metasoft in the aftermath of the second consolidation war, but did not endear the Communion to the Solar Dominion, where such means were regarded as a pale and sinister imitation of the light of the Divine Order. The empai development process led to the emergence of higher toposophic AI that could be viewed as the counterpart of the other imperial AI gods, although these held a noticeably closer relation to their subsingularity "family", not unlike the AIs of the Utopia Sphere.

The ComEmp Period

The Version War was a period of relative isolation and perhaps the high point of the unified Communion culture. As the ComEmp emerged the synergy between the strong Communion, the reunited empath clades of the Inner Sphere and the strong need felt by trillions of peace and restoration gave the empaths tremendous influence in forming the ComEmp (as many pointed out, the popular short form of the Commonwealth's name hinted more at empaths than empires). At the same time this was also the end of the Communion "golden ages", as the now extremely divergent empaths found themselves spread out across a vast political, cladistic and astrographical landscape. The old internal cohesion, despite massive support from empai, mental disciplines, social gengineering and automemetics was slowly being diluted. This was most noticeable in relation to the divergent empath clades that had emerged elsewhere, but even within the Communion the limitations of cohesion were beginning to be noticed by empathy analysts. This subtle crisis contributed to the decay of the ComEmp, as the Communion influence began to wane.

The Communion of Worlds Today

In the present era Communion remains an active political player, still excellent at staying out of trouble and always acting the peacemaker and coordinator. The internal problems have slowly grown. Clades tend to stick together and most empath-derived clades still have an aversion against outright conflicts, but they have less inhibitions against manipulation or even hiring third parties as proxies. Fractions with ties to Metasoft, the Dominion, various Sophic religions or their own agendas such as expansionism, Sopazism or Restorationism quietly move against each other, giving other factions the chance to jump in and negotiate.

As in the past, the Communion today tries to stay on friendly terms with everyone. Empaths of various kinds exist in most empires, and the Inner Sphere remains the core for their activity (they are the largest genotypic minority on Eden). Many distrust their emotional manipulations, but when meeting one in person the distrust usually evaporates quickly.

There are persistent rumors about the nature of the Communion AIs and that their gestalt is the real manipulator behind the Cyberian Foundation and NoCoZo. Some neohermeticists call it Netzach, the Lady of Beauty, and suggest that a more fitting symbol for the Communion would be a golden apple.

Communion Society

There are many misconceptions about the Communion. The most common is that the inhabitants are all total sensual hedonists or clever manipulators (the archetype of the hedonist-manipulator is well rooted in most primate brains). In reality empaths make up just 50% of the total population, other groups living within the Communion political system making up the rest. While several autotopias exist, much of Communion works very similarly to other advanced empires. The long peace and relative cohesion has helped create an efficient and stable infrastructure, often heavily encrusted with obscure history and reference making outsiders feel helpless. The closely-knit "family" society also helps make the Communion impenetrable to outsiders, as they find themselves deflected or manipulated away from what the inhabitants consider their domestic affairs. Being above the galactic plane, somewhat isolated but able to reach out if needed, is viewed as just the right location by the vast majority. Also, since most inhabitants have enhanced social cognition extremely complex rituals, transactions and social networks can be maintained that are beyond the capacity for non-enhanced bionts and even many aioids.

The ancient Genetekker body aesthetic is still retained in some conservative clades, especially those rare clades directly descended from the original total empathy clades. These "totals" make up an important component of the population as they are seen as the epitome of what the Communion is about. According to the prevalent philosophy in the Communion the fact that they would be unable to fend for themselves without their descendants is a sign that mindkind has not yet autoevolved far enough; hence the empaths have a duty/need/destiny to show other the way toward true community, and the totals are constant reminders of this duty.
 
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Development Notes
Text by Anders Sandberg

Initially published on 07 July 2000.