Another way to think about this is as being a good guest.

For example. I am a stranger and a guest in Indonesia, the country where I live, so I am obliged to respect the boundaries of a guest. It is not (it can’t be) my business to go shouting in streets, making trouble, about Indonesian governance. I’m not a citizen, I cannot (expect the right to) vote. It’s not my work here to castigate people or their customs. (I would be an asshole if I did. And end up in prison.) If I really don’t like it, what I can do is leave.

Consider. The internet would be a much better “place” if everybody treated it as not-their-own-house. If we acted like guests. (Many “here” already sense this, I think, and follow the custom.) The fact of the matter is that nobody knows whose house they are in, in a literal way. The written words you type into your keyboard, in your own house, will appear in unknown countries and unknown houses. Maintaining awareness of that is the basic etiquette of a guest.

However. This is not about “being genteel” or saying “tut-tut”. This is not about avoiding politics. Far from it, this is itself a political stance, and reflects a serious political need. It’s the basis of diplomacy. As a sacred observance, it guarantees sanctuary in a temple or church. To be a good guest is to acknowledge the limits of one’s own knowledge and reputation. It is careful comportment with respect to the unknown. Practically speaking, it’s the basis for traveling and meeting people outside city walls (or national borders). For visiting foreign countries, and hosting foreigners at home. These are the ancient rules of ξενία (xenia), or guest-friendship.

I propose. A hospitable social media platform shouldn’t be governed, in the sense of a neighborhood jurisdiction, as an attempt at community. It should model itself on a guesthouse, at an internet crossroads. Like an inn or a caravanserai. To be sure, the atmosphere can be friendly and welcoming. It will have its longterm or familiar denizens. It may be a convivial place to share news, political views, feelings, artworks, or other ideas, to catch up on gossip, or just to say hi, and yet it remains as a hub of the ungovernable. Not all guests share the same creed or commitments. They may convene in clubs or cliques, or keep to themselves in the shadows. Some things are confined to more “private quarters”, like private notes, emails, or the blog.

Of course, not everything is permitted. When “the law of the land” and the etiquette (or inhibitions) of guests aren’t enough to enable sanctuary, a guesthouse needs to enforce its own rules, in violation of which users may be blocked or kicked out. Even so, unlike those of a political jurisdiction, the rules of a guesthouse are not written to exclude the unknown, the stranger, or the refugee. They cannot demand political allegiance without defeating their purpose. This is so especially in times of civil conflict, when misinformation is rife, and all are on paranoid lookout for mere signs (which are inherently fallible, and not the substance) of enmity.

The purpose of guesthouse rules is to preserve a limited and special kind of peace. Peace maintains the viability of the guesthouse, as a business, the provision of its guests, and the very possibility of (the “open web” as) travel.

Travel is essential to Xenia, who takes on spiritual countenance as host of the politically homeless. She is the honesty of outlaws, the unspoken agreement of (quality) pirates and thieves, and the pious duty of every anarchist. (She also transgresses the limits of deified gender, appearing both as Zeus and Athena.) Then, there is her enemy. The outlawing of travel, in all of its psycheic (intellectual, political, and poetic) senses, (including translation), is the essence of illiberality. It is the attempt to expunge Life. This is fascism, at its very core.

Xenia, therefore, is an organizing element of antifascism. It would be valuable as a principle of the “open web”. It can be a business model, a public good, or a piety, depending on perspective and motivation. No matter the political commitments of its keeper or guests, longterm or transient, the internet guesthouse has a higher duty to guest-friendship. It can host neither fascism, nor the war.

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