Author: Jeremy “revswirl” McShurley Status: Working notes Last updated: 2026-07-29 Purpose: A compact record of the Sovereignosis concept, the Social Mechanic Kernel (SMK), and the proposed way to apply the SMK to the existing Sovereignosis website.
This document records the project as it currently stands. The editorial recommendations below are proposals; they have not yet been applied to
sovereignosis.orgor/learn/.
Sovereignosis is a term formed from sovereign and -gnosis: knowledge related to individual and collective sovereignty.
Jeremy “revswirl” McShurley is the creator of the Sovereignosis
project. The project’s public history includes an early WordPress site,
an original sovereignosis.org site, and the current
sovereignosis.org archive and learning experience. Michael
McShurley is Jeremy’s brother and appeared as a commenter; he is not the
creator of the project.
The project’s central question is:
How can people become genuinely sovereign—individually and collectively—without reproducing the coercion, artificial scarcity, and concentrated control of older systems?
Sovereignosis proposes a transition from a scarcity-centered economy to an abundance-centered economy. Its working claims are:
These are the project’s propositions, not settled facts. Public revisions should distinguish clearly between historical description, empirical claim, and normative proposal.
Ergon is the proposed energy-linked unit of the Energy Exchange. It is intended to track the physical cost of useful production rather than speculative market value.
The C/T/M framework defines three components of the physical cost of an object or service:
The working formula is:
Value = Conversion + Transportation + Maintenance
C/T/M is the economic core of the SMK’s Industry function. It is the accounting layer that connects what a society produces to what people actually use.
The proposed transition runs alongside the existing economy. Participants can experiment with the new system voluntarily; if it produces better outcomes, adoption expands. The intended mechanism is demonstration and migration, not forced redistribution or waiting for permission from an existing authority.
The Solar Commonwealth is presented as a network of sovereign individuals rather than a conventional nation-state. Its stated principles include:
The Constitution of the Solar Commonwealth supplies the project’s institutional and governance material. Key elements include:
The Constitution is best understood as the project’s current answer to the SMK’s Government function: how collective coordination can coexist with local self-rule.
The SMK is a five-part model of society. Each row is a Venn diagram: two distinct forces overlap to produce a social function.
| Forces | Function | Question |
|---|---|---|
| Production × Consumption | INDUSTRY | Does what society makes connect to what people actually use? |
| Status Quo × Dissidents | THE PUBLIC | Can a society process disagreement into shared action? |
| Religion × Science | EDUCATION | Can meaning, inquiry, evidence, and knowledge be transmitted together? |
| Art × Commerce | CULTURE | Can expression sustain itself without becoming manufactured spectacle? |
| Autocracy × Autonomy | GOVERNMENT | Can collective decisions coordinate the whole without destroying self-rule? |
The overlap is a measure of functional cooperation, not total sameness. A healthy function preserves the distinct role of each side while allowing them to work together.
The dotted axis in the diagram represents a sovereignty gradient: movement from fragmentation toward integrated, accountable social function.
Production is what society makes. Consumption is what people use. Industry is the flow that connects the two.
Low overlap appears as waste, hoarding, planned obsolescence, dependency, or unmet need. Productive overlap means production is connected to actual use and measured through physical realities such as C/T/M rather than financial speculation alone.
Existing anchors: Energy Exchange, Ergon, C/T/M, the abundance economy, labor and capital discussions in An Economic Fairy Tale.
The Status Quo is the present defended. Dissidents represent claims on the future. The Public is the social body that processes disagreement into reform, shared action, or a deliberate decision to preserve the present.
Low overlap produces suppression, factional fracture, or revolutionary rupture. Productive overlap lets dissent correct the system without requiring the destruction of every existing institution.
Existing anchors: voluntary participation, free expression, parallel transition, consent of the governed, and the invitation to discuss and experiment.
Religion contributes meaning, tradition, revelation, and moral narrative. Science contributes inquiry, evidence, falsifiability, and correction. Education is the institution that transmits knowledge while teaching people how to distinguish these modes of knowing and place them in conversation.
Low overlap produces a false choice between belief and skepticism. Productive overlap protects freedom of conscience while teaching evidence, inquiry, history, and the limits of certainty.
Existing anchors: Right to Knowledge, Freedom of
Expression and Inquiry, Freedom of Conscience, religious liberty, and
the /learn/ journey.
Art is expression and meaning-making. Commerce is the system that exchanges resources and supports production. Culture is their productive intersection: expression that can circulate and sustain its makers without allowing market incentives to dictate every meaning.
Low overlap or capture produces spectacle, advertising, branding, propaganda, kitsch, or manufactured desire. Productive overlap lets art remain alive while commerce helps artists, tools, stories, and institutions endure.
Existing anchors: the WordPress arts archive, “Create” in the learning journey, storytelling, the Economic Fairy Tale, and the project’s invitation to make art and build tools.
Autocracy represents decisions made from the center or above. Autonomy represents self-rule by individuals, localities, and constituent parts. Government is the legitimate coordination of the whole with the freedom of its parts.
Low overlap produces tyranny when the center crushes the periphery, or fragmentation when no shared decision can be made. Productive overlap uses central authority only where coordination requires it and protects local autonomy everywhere else.
Existing anchors: Sovereign Assembly, Caucuses of Experts, Rule of Law, consent of the governed, Local Autonomy, accountability, and the Constitution of the Solar Commonwealth.
The strongest editorial move is to make the SMK the site’s organizing grammar rather than adding it as an isolated theory page. The existing site already contains material for all five functions; it mainly lacks the labels and the connective tissue.
The homepage currently foregrounds the introduction, the preserved DMT/original-site archive, the Constitution of the Solar Commonwealth, An Economic Fairy Tale, and technology material.
Add a prominent Social Mechanic Kernel panel beneath the introduction:
Sovereignosis studies five social functions: Industry, the Public, Education, Culture, and Government. Each emerges where two necessary forces overlap. Explore the model, then enter the learning journey.
Use five links or cards:
/learn/The learning journey should begin with the five-function map, then retain its existing sequence.
Create a dedicated page such as /social-mechanic-kernel/
containing:
This page should be the reference document. /learn/
should be the guided experience.
Revise the Constitution’s introduction or add an editorial preface identifying it as the current proposal for the Government Venn. Its articles also touch The Public, Education, Industry, and Culture, but its main job is to answer the question: how can a sovereign community coordinate itself without turning authority into domination?
The project becomes more credible if it separates its strongest ideas from claims that need evidence or engineering detail.
/learn/ before presenting them as definitive./learn/ page will be updated later, after
review./social-mechanic-kernel/ page./learn/.