{"id":1203,"date":"2026-06-06T09:28:29","date_gmt":"2026-06-06T09:28:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/valerieocallaghan.com\/?p=1203"},"modified":"2026-06-06T09:28:29","modified_gmt":"2026-06-06T09:28:29","slug":"to-regain-sovereignty-in-a-world-that-is-eroding-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/valerieocallaghan.com\/en\/recuperar-la-soberania-en-un-mundo-que-la-erosiona\/","title":{"rendered":"Regaining sovereignty in a world that is eroding it"},"content":{"rendered":"

A word worth rescuing<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sovereignty is a word that has been used so much in recent years, and from such diverse perspectives, that it has almost lost its meaning. It is invoked by opposing political traditions, in commercial discourse, electoral platforms, and coaching programs. It is worth reclaiming it. Because the idea it represents\u2014the capacity to govern one's own life and to collectively decide on the shared world\u2014is one of the few things that deserve to continue being defended in an era that simultaneously erodes them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The person writing these lines works with bodies, with nervous systems, with people trapped in physiological states from which the language of well-being cannot extricate them. From this perspective, something that most political discourse overlooks becomes clear: sovereignty doesn't begin at the ballot box, nor with laws, nor with large social movements. It begins much earlier, in something more intimate and yet more exposed. It begins with the ability to think, to inhabit one's own body, and to act alongside others. Three capacities that are under pressure today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This article unfolds in three stages: Regaining judgment, regaining control of one's own affairs, and regaining the capacity to act together. These three movements are part of the same process, each supporting the other or collapsing together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First move: regain your composure<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thinking calmly has become a rarity. Digital platforms are not neutral tools: they are designed to capture attention, fragment it, and resell it. This has an effect that goes far beyond the personal. A population that can barely sustain an idea for more than a few seconds loses the capacity for judgment that any political life requires.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The philosopher Byung-Chul Han (2022) has called this regime an infocracy. In his words, contemporary power operates through saturation, not silence. Truth is buried under an excess of indistinguishable information. Dissent is diluted, becoming just another opinion among thousands of interchangeable ones. Criticism loses its bite because no one has time to read it in its entirety anymore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sociologist Shoshana Zuboff (2019) described another facet of the same phenomenon with the concept of surveillance capitalism. The digital economy extracts data on human behavior and uses it to predict and modify conduct. Users believe they are making choices when, in many cases, they are being guided by systems that know their neurobiological weaknesses better than they do. Reclaiming judgment, in this context, means something concrete: protecting attention, sustaining complexity, and tolerating that a question remains open longer than the digital ecosystem is willing to allow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A person who cannot think slowly cannot be a citizen in the fullest sense. They can vote, they can express opinions, they can consume political information. The capacity for judgment that democracy presupposes exists beyond these actions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Second movement: to regain control of our own affairs<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here, political language falls short, and it's necessary to delve into the physical realm. A sovereign person is, first and foremost, someone capable of regulating their own physiological state. Someone who distinguishes between a real threat and a perceived threat. Someone whose nervous system isn't in a constant state of alert.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Neuroscientist Stephen Porges (2011), with his polyvagal theory, has shown that the autonomic nervous system constantly evaluates the environment and reorganizes physiology based on whether it perceives it as safe or dangerous. A nervous system trapped in a state of threat loses access to higher functions: reflection, nuance, and genuine connection with others. From this physiological perspective, politics becomes impossible. Only defense remains.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Neuroendocrinologist Bruce McEwen (1998) coined a term for the cumulative cost of living this way: allostatic load. An organism that keeps systems designed to function for hours activated for years wears down in measurable ways. Inflammation becomes chronic. Sleep is disrupted. Cognition narrows. The capacity to tolerate ambiguity declines. When enough people live in this state simultaneously, society loses more than just health: it loses the physiological basis from which any sovereignty is exercised.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reclaiming control over oneself begins with something that seems small but is profoundly political: getting enough sleep, inhabiting one's own body, noticing when the nervous system is overloaded, and respecting that overload instead of pushing oneself to produce. Setting limits on what comes in through the screen, nurturing relationships that regulate, and distancing oneself from those that deregulate. These decisions, viewed individually, seem private. Taken together, they are the condition of possibility for any broader act of sovereignty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Third movement: regaining the ability to act together<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Individual sovereignty without collective sovereignty is an illusion. A person can regulate their nervous system, protect their attention, and care for their body, and still live in a world where the decisions that matter are made far from them, without them, against them. The capacity to govern oneself is sustained when there is also the capacity to govern oneself together with others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The philosopher Hannah Arendt (1958) dedicated her work to a demanding idea: action, understood as the capacity to initiate something new together with others, is what is truly human. Not work, not consumption, not opinion. Concerted action in a public space. And this action depends on something that contemporary societies effectively weaken: the shared space where people can speak, listen to each other, deliberate, and act.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The philosopher Martha Nussbaum (2011) has formulated this from another equally useful angle. Her capabilities approach asks a very simple question: what is each person truly capable of doing and being? She identifies ten core capabilities that any society should protect, including thinking, imagination, affiliation with others, and control over one's environment. When a society erodes these capabilities, whether through economic, political, or technological means, it damages something that goes beyond individual well-being. It damages the foundation upon which a fulfilling human life is built.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Acting together today is more difficult than at any recent time. Attention has been hijacked. Public spaces have shifted to private platforms that deliberately engineer polarized disagreement, because outrage holds a better hold than deliberation. The bonds that sustained collective action\u2014unions, neighborhood associations, established communities\u2014have weakened. And, at the heart of it all, too many people are simply too exhausted to participate in anything beyond daily survival.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rebuilding that capacity requires small, persistent acts. Returning to conversations that last more than five minutes. Holding disagreements without breaking the connection. Meeting in person, face-to-face, without screens. Creating spaces where deliberation is possible and, consequently, slow. Recognizing that the other person's health is not their private problem, because nervous regulation is contagious, both above and below.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What unites the three movements<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The three movements are interconnected. Thinking requires a nervous system sufficiently regulated to tolerate uncertainty. Governing one's own body requires the capacity for judgment to recognize what deregulates us and what protects us. Acting together requires people who think and govern themselves, and at the same time, it offers the only framework where these first two forms of self-governance find their full meaning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That is why any discourse that reduces sovereignty to only one of its three dimensions falls short. Reducing it to critical judgment produces exhausted intellectuals, devoid of substance and community. Reducing it to the governance of the body produces a private well-being that ignores the conditions that make people sick. Reducing it to collective action produces unregulated activists who reproduce, within the group, the very violence they claim to combat outside.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The sovereignty that deserves to be defended today is the one that is sustained on all three levels simultaneously. It functions as a prerequisite for any political program, a condition that contemporary societies erode precisely because its erosion makes the population more manageable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The question that remains open<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anyone reading this article might wonder what to do specifically. The honest answer is that there's no manual. Each of the three movements requires patient work, and the whole demands something even more challenging: sustaining them simultaneously, without one being subordinate to the others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What can be said clearly is what sovereignty is not. True sovereignty has nothing to do with the isolation of someone who has disconnected from the world to protect themselves. It is even less like the noise of someone shouting louder than everyone else. Sovereignty is the serene capacity to think, to inhabit one's own body, and to act with others in a world that makes all three difficult. Reclaiming it, on each of these three levels, is probably the most important political act that remains within anyone's reach today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sources and references<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Arendt, H. (1958). The Human Condition<\/em>. University of Chicago Press. Political philosopher, one of the most influential thinkers of the 20th century.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Han, B. -C. (2022). Infokratie: Digitalisierung und die Krise der Demokratie<\/em>. Matthes & Seitz. Philosopher, professor at the Berlin University of the Arts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

McEwen, BS (1998). Protective and damaging effects of stress mediators<\/em>. New England Journal of Medicine, 338(3), 171-179. Neuroendocrinologist, researcher of the physiology of stress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nussbaum, MC (2011). Creating Capabilities: The Human Development Approach<\/em>. The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Philosopher, professor at the University of Chicago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Porges, SW (2011). The Polyvagal Theory: Neurophysiological Foundations of Emotions, Attachment, Communication, and Self-Regulation<\/em>. WW Norton. Neuroscientist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Zuboff, S. (2019). The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power<\/em>. Public Affairs. Sociologist, professor emerita at Harvard Business School.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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