Doctrinal Commentary

To understand the Principles, one must first see what self-determination is in essence, setting aside the later statist vocabulary.

The right of peoples to self-determination was born in decolonization. A people that had been the subject of an empire - which was determined, ruled, shaped from outside - became a subject in the active sense, the author of its own development. The international covenants mention "political status," but the weight of the norm is in what follows: peoples freely ensure their economic, social and cultural development. Political status here is an instrument. The essence is authorship over one's own being. The root of self-determination lies not in politics but in the right to be the author of one's own life, rather than the object of another's determination.

Now let us apply this root to the person. In what way does the person still remain a subject determined from outside?

In the most fundamental matter. A person receives their primary belonging - which "we" they belong to, what whole they are a part of - at birth, apart from their own will, from an external power. They were not asked. They were assigned. At this, the deepest point of their existence, the person is still an object of determination, whereas the people has become a subject. The people won the right to be the author of its own being; the person does not have this right. Here is the gap that the Principles fill.

Voting does not close this gap. Voting is a choice within an assignment that the person did not choose. The ballot asks who will rule in their state, but never asks whether they consent to belong to that state at all and whether their belonging to humanity is not more primary. The ballot presupposes the assignment as a given. The self-determination of the individual is not a choice within an assignment, but the right to be the author of the assignment itself. These are different categories: one can vote one's whole life and never be a subject for an instant, because one chooses within what was chosen for one.

The reversal of primacy. From this comes the main shift that the Principles introduce. Today a person has political existence because the state granted it: the state is primary, the person is derived from it. The Principles reverse the order - what is recognized as primary and self-standing is the person's belonging to humanity and the Earth, while belonging to a state becomes a secondary, in principle reconcilable, layer. The person is primary, the polity is derived. At the same time the person becomes not the only source of their belonging - that would be an overstatement, readable as anarchism - but one of the sources, alongside the state. What ends is the state's monopoly on political belonging, not the state itself.

The person becomes a source of their own belonging, not the ultimate source of law. The Principles do not introduce a third sovereign above states - they recognize one more source of belonging alongside them.

Let us say at once: the primary belonging to humanity and the Earth here is not a biological or a mystical category, but a legal recognition of the common human condition. Law is not derived from metaphysics; it merely recognizes a condition common to all people.

Here full honesty is needed, because it is precisely here that the idea is easiest to replace with a beautiful emptiness.

In essence, the status of the person changes. They cease to be the one determined from outside in their deepest belonging, and become the one who determines themselves - an author, not the assigned. For the first time the individual person is recognized to have that dignity of authorship over one's own being which the law has so far granted only to peoples.

In everyday life, in the near term, little changes. The person still observes the laws of their country, pays taxes, carries its passport. To pretend that the mechanics of daily life will change tomorrow would be a deception. What changes is not what a person does, but what they are in law: from the assigned, into an author. The practical fruits of this lie on a distant horizon, and they ripen through history and effort, not by themselves. The self-determination of peoples too was a principle for generations before it redrew the map of the world, and even then it worked not because the norm "did" anything, but because people began to act, relying on a recognized standing.

Is this enough? The question is legitimate, and it is not smoothed over. But this is exactly the "enough" that the self-determination of peoples was at the moment of its birth: foundational, slow and real.

The Principles establish a status - the standing of a person as a bearer of primary (planetary) and secondary (self-determined) belonging. This is a status of belonging, not of power (Article 5). Self-determined belonging does not constitute public power, does not create sovereignty and does not endow a community with the right of coercion. Everything else in the Principles serves to ensure that this axis cannot be read as a claim to power.

A natural objection: "the person has self-determined - so what? what is the practical use?" The answer lies in distinguishing two layers.

The Principles form the constitutional layer. Like any founding act, they do not enumerate practical applications; they establish the status on which instruments are built afterward. A constitution does not explain "what citizenship is for" - it establishes citizenship, and the function is then extracted from it by the law in operation.

The practical effect lives in the operational layer - and in the Earthlings project this layer already exists. The SBT-based passport is a verifiable digital identity of the person. Two-loop governance (DAO) is a mechanism of participation and self-governance. The cells are voluntary cross-border cooperative structures. The function of self-determination is realized through these instruments, not through the text of the Principles. To load the practical effects into the Principles themselves would be a mistake: they would swell and would begin to be read as a claim to a parallel legal order. Such instruments are a matter for the community's internal documents; they are built on consent among members and are directed neither against states nor against those who are not part of the community.

Self-determination has historically descended through the levels of the subject.

The first rung - states (the UN): territorial sovereigns; self-determination as the political status of a state.

The second rung - unrepresented peoples (organizations such as the UNPO): collectives denied a place at the table of the state order, but still defined by territory and identity and often seeking recognition or autonomy within the system.

The third rung - the person (the present Principles, the Earthlings project): self-determination at the level of the individual - extraterritorial, voluntary and deliberately not laying claim to statehood.

The project does not compete either with the UN or with the organizations of unrepresented peoples; it occupies the next rung. It does not duplicate the cause of oppressed peoples - it has a different subject (the person) and a different kind of belonging (chosen, not tied to land).

This is not a state. The community does not own territory, does not possess coercive power, does not exercise public authority (Articles 1.5, 5).

This is not separatism. The Principles do not change borders, do not create a right to secession, do not detach territory (Article 15). Belonging is additional, not territorial.

This is not the abolition of citizenship. Citizenship is preserved as a working status for jurisdiction, taxation, diplomatic protection and participation in elections (Article 18). The Principles end its monopoly on political belonging, but not its existence.

This is not a parallel jurisdiction. The person remains fully under the jurisdiction of the state where they are located (Article 12). The community does not judge, does not coerce, does not substitute for the courts. Any internal voluntary instruments bind only the members who consented and do not override the law of the state.

This is not tax evasion. Status changes nothing in tax obligations, which follow citizenship and place of residence. The good-faith clause (Article 14) prohibits using status to evade lawful responsibility.

This is not digital anarchism. The Principles do not remove the person from under the law; they add belonging without subtracting subjection. They do not call for disobedience, do not teach evasion, do not build a parallel power. In them there is creation, not subtraction.

The principle of non-diminishment (Articles 19, 16) is not decorative. The territorial self-determination of oppressed peoples is a class of claims heavier in legal weight, hard-won and paid for in suffering. The present Principles do not appropriate it, do not equate themselves with it and do not compete with it. They add a layer for a different subject. Belonging to the Earth does not compete with a people's struggle for its own land - it exists above it and for a different bearer. This distance the project keeps deliberately.

In the same way, self-determined belonging takes nothing away from a person's cultural, national, linguistic and religious belonging and does not seek to reduce them to uniformity. Belonging to humanity does not dissolve belonging to a people, a language or a faith - it is added to them, as to everything else.

The Principles do not depend on prior recognition by states. Article 23.2 sets out a realistic path: the community takes the norm upon itself, practices it, and over time - through practice and opinio juris - the norm takes shape as custom. This is in fact how a significant part of international law came into being. Recognition is the destination, not the entry ticket. The task of the Principles today is to establish the status and to begin the practice from which law grows afterward.