Vaestopolitics

The idea of politics (High Secote: ⰓⰖⰍⰑⰂⰑⰄⰠⰔⰕⰂⰑ, rukovodĭstvo) in Vaestism is relatively recent, originating in the 18th-century Radiance and only subsequently acquiring many of its modern implications. It bears a more specific connotation than the Ellish term, referring to the management of the social structures through which Knowledge is disseminated, as distinct from the management of Knowledge itself.

The Vaestic understanding of politics does not revolve around discussion or struggle between any sort of organised, opposing political forces. The universal ban on factions imposed by the Eternal Treaty of Nardash, as well as a long tradition of disparagement by Vaestic Scholars, has rendered any such understanding of politics entirely illegitimate in the East. The idea of rukovodĭstvo is, instead, understood as the accumulation of Knowledge regarding the modes of Knowledge itself, emerging from the so-called "self-internalising modality of Knowledge" that was first debated by 17th-century Scholars, and had been responsible for other ideological innovations such as Strong Externalism and internalism. The political actor in Vaestism is, properly speaking, society itself: political leaders act as the agents of society's attempts to regulate itself. Competition between organized factions of Scholars can only be a sickness: the highest ideal of Vaestic politics is correct unanimity.

More recently, however, with the development of the idea of personation and the collective Knowledge of the Banner, a form of mass politics known as "inversionism" has emerged. Broadly speaking, inversionist political practice reverses the traditional flow of authority from elite Scholars to a broad and passive population of cultists, instead affirming the supremacy of the collective authority of Knowledge of the Banner as a personated whole. While inversionism has been taken to extremes by heretical movements such as the Robulites and Hejrozines, it has also become entrenched in established forms of Vaestic governance. It is present both in regularised ritual—in the Terophatic Empire, for instance, the Emperor is elected through a ritual of "universal affirmation"—and in particular instances of political mobilisation, where Vaestic figures have increasingly come to appeal to the population as a whole as a base of legitimacy. The device of the pragmatic circular, where the Standard-Bearer effectively seeks a political census of the Banner's Scholars, acts as a limited, respublican form of inversionism, nominally allowing the Standard-Bearer to receive necessary advice from qualified individuals.

Traditional Vaestic opinion has consistently frowned upon inversionism: the term itself originated as a derogatory epithet. Prominent avant-garde intellectuals, most famously the Yerethonists, have however held more receptive views to the idea of mass mobilisation, and since the Long War it has become increasingly common in establishment political practice.