From Cosme to Civitas to a Re-Cosmolocalized Civilization
= inspired by a remark by Boris Sirbey in his book Point Zero, p. 174
Discussion
Cosme vs Civitas
The distinction between “cosme” and “civitas,” as articulated in Point Zero by Boris Sirbey, offers a powerful civilizational lens for understanding the long arc from Indigenous relational worlds to modern state-market systems.
This distinction is not merely historical. It concerns two fundamentally different ontologies — two different ways of experiencing reality, organizing society, and situating the human within the larger order of existence.
At stake is the relationship between humanity and the living world.
The Cosme: Living Within the Whole
The term “cosme” derives from the Greek kosmos, meaning ordered totality — a harmonious, living whole. In this sense, the cosme does not simply refer to the physical universe. It refers to a participatory world of relationships.
Within the cosme:
- Humans are embedded in ecological cycles.
- Nature is not external but kin.
- Knowledge is experiential and relational.
- Land is lineage, not commodity.
- The sacred and the ecological are inseparable.
- Society is not separate from the world; it is a modulation within it.
Many First Peoples’ cosmologies exemplify this orientation. Rivers, forests, animals, ancestors — all participate in a shared field of being. The human role is custodial, reciprocal, and embedded. Governance emerges through kinship, ritual, and lived reciprocity rather than abstract institutional design.
The cosme is not managed. It is inhabited.
The Civitas: Constructing the Human Order
“Civitas” is Latin for the political community — the root of “civilization,” “citizen,” and “civil.” Historically associated with the city (urbs) and the polis, civitas represents a decisive structural shift.
With civitas, society becomes:
- Bounded territorially.
- Governed by written law.
- Structured by institutional hierarchy.
- Organized through formal citizenship.
- Separated from the non-human world.
- Nature becomes territory. Territory becomes property. Property becomes administrable.
The civitas establishes distinctions:
- Citizen / non-citizen
- Civilized / barbarian
- Culture / nature
- Inside / outside
Where the cosme operates through immediacy of relation, the civitas operates through mediation — law, institutions, bureaucracy, representation.
It does not eliminate relationality. It reorganizes it under abstraction.
Modernity represents the intensification of civitas logic
It adds the following intensification of separation:
- Sovereign states
- Property absolutism
- Industrial extraction
- Urban concentration
- Scientific objectification
The separation deepens:
- Nature becomes “environment.”
- Cosmos becomes “outer space.”
- Relationship becomes “externality.”
Cosmo-Localization represents the Possibility of Re-Integration
Cosmo-local theory — in its various contemporary articulations — attempts to think beyond the civilizational split. It asks whether a complex society can be re-embedded within planetary and cosmic relationality without abandoning institutional sophistication.
The challenge is not to return to pre-civilizational life.
The challenge is to re-cosmologize civilization.
This requires:
- Recognizing planetary interdependence.
- Re-embedding economic systems in ecological limits.
- Moving from domination to stewardship.
- Expanding identity beyond nation-state containment.
In this sense, the planetary crisis is not only ecological. It is ontological.
Cosmolocalism as Transitional Form
Cosmolocalism — a key concept within the P2P Foundation — can be interpreted as a structural attempt to mediate between cosme and civitas.
Cosmolocal logic proposes:
- Global knowledge commons.
- Localized production.
- Shared designs, distributed stewardship.
- Planetary coordination with local autonomy.
Cosmolocalism does not dissolve civitas. It re-scales it.
- It attempts to preserve:
- Institutional complexity
- Technological sophistication
- Global coordination
While reintroducing:
- Ecological embeddedness
- Relational governance
- Commons-based stewardship
In this sense, cosmolocalism can be seen as a transitional civilizational form — an attempt to restore cosmological belonging within networked modernity.
Toward a Re-Cosmologized Civilization
The distinction between cosme and civitas reveals that the ecological crisis is rooted in a long ontological trajectory of separation.
The question facing the 21st century is whether humanity can:
- Expand coordination without expanding domination.
- Achieve planetary identity without erasing local belonging.
- Re-embed institutions within living systems.
If civitas represented the differentiation necessary for complexity, then the emerging planetary phase may require integration at a higher level of complexity.
Not regression. Not romanticism. But synthesis.
The task is not to abandon civilization. It is to remember the cosme within it.
Comparative Table
The difference between cosme and civitas can be summarized structurally:
| Cosme | Civitas |
|---|---|
| Embedded within a living cosmos | Separate political and administrative order |
| Relational ontology (being-in-relation) | Institutional ontology (being-as-governed subject) |
| Kinship-based belonging | Legal citizenship |
| Sacred ecology | Managed territory |
| Reciprocity-centered | Regulation-centered |
| Participation | Administration |
2️⃣ Consciousness and Knowledge
| Cosme Consciousness | Civitas Consciousness |
|---|---|
| Participatory | Abstract |
| Mythic-symbolic | Legal-rational |
| Place-based | Universalizing |
| Ecologically embedded | Territorial-administrative |
| Relational identity | Individualized citizenship |
3️⃣ Civilizational Genealogy
| Phase | Dominant Logic | Human–Nature Relation |
|---|---|---|
| Indigenous lifeworlds | Cosme (embedded relationality) | Participatory belonging |
| Classical & Imperial civilizations | Early Civitas | Managed differentiation |
| Nation-state modernity | Mature Civitas | Extractive separation |
| Industrial-capitalist phase | Market-State Civitas | Instrumental exploitation |
| Emerging planetary phase? | Re-integrative? | Potential re-embedding |
4️⃣ Cosmolocal Civilizational Comparison
| Cosme | Civitas | Cosmolocal Potential |
|---|---|---|
| Embedded belonging | Territorial sovereignty | Planetary coordination with local stewardship |
| Relational identity | Legal citizenship | Networked participation |
| Ecological reciprocity | Extractive economics | Regenerative production |
| Sacred totality | Administrative abstraction | Commons-based governance |
More information
* Book: Sirbey, Boris. Le Point Zéro : Livre I – Fonder une nouvelle civilisation. Éditions Edysseus, 19 mars 2025. ISBN 978-2-9523058-5-3.
URL = https://www.edysseus.com/produit/boris-sirbey-le-point-zero-livre-i/
"Le Point Zéro is a visionary, long-scale civilizational diagnosis and proposal that seeks to interpret the current global crisis as a pivotal moment — a zero point — where the old paradigms are collapsing and new ones are beginning to emerge.
Sirbey’s core argument is that the profound turbulence experienced by humanity — ecological breakdown, social fragmentation, technological acceleration, and political instability — is not just a crisis among many, but a meta-crisis signaling the end of an old civilization and the threshold of a new one. The “point zéro” is thus both a breakdown of existing narratives and a generative opportunity to found a more conscious, integrated civilisation."