1 Introduction
Constructivism interprets global relations through an identity political standpoint. The different connection forms between the “agent” and the “structure” together with distinguished “common knowledge” or “shared ideas” will lead anarchy situations into different “Hobbesian, Lockean, or Kantian” cultures. 1 To Wendt’s description, these different cultures depend upon which political roles - enemy, rival, or friend - play the dominant position in the international system. He also elaborates four master variables or causal mechanisms - interdependence, common fate, homogeneity, and self-restraint - to construct a new defined and necessary in-group identity to go from the Lockean culture into the Kantian culture. However, even though Wendt gives an alternative and relevant notional pathway for human’s peaceful future, but he also recognizes there still doesn’t have the real example of Kantian culture and the implementation methods still need further study.2
This work agrees with Wendt’s “rump materialism” viewpoint to technology, one precondition of his theory. Indeed, as a constructivist, Wendt is labeled by emphasizing ideas, but he also stresses technologies' power of social change3 . Therefore, this paper will follow this logic and discuss the possible influence of Metaverse, one of the most presented tech words in 2021, in international relations area. From my perspective, this technological breakthrough, the ultimate combination of AI, Blockchain, XR (Extended Reality), and Future Networks will radically reconstruct the pattern of our society and bring about one potential pathway to the Kantian culture.
2 Constructivism and Kantian culture
In this section, this paper firstly goes through Wendt’s theory of constructivism, especially talking about his theoretical discussion of the implementation conditions of Kantian culture. Then, I review predecessors’ research about their suggestions of how to move forward Kantian culture. However, most of such solutions are vague and unlikely to be achieved.
2.1 The features of Wendt’s theory
After the publication of “Theory of International Politics”, Waltz boosted realism theory into neorealism, which abandons Morgenthau’s “human nature” and condenses the international relations into how the international structure will influence states’ behaviors4 . In Waltz’s theory, anarchy is the research substrate and objective existence in this area. As its longtime counterpart, liberalism accepts the prerequisite of anarchy but asserts the international institutions play a more vital role to impact international politics. This most influential liberalism today is called neoliberal Institutionalism and signed by the publication of “After hegemony”. 5 However, because of the consensus of avoiding research on the state and the individual level, neorealism and neoliberalism both relatively ignore the effect of ideas, like identity, ideology, and culture, in IR area.6 Additionally, since setting rationalism and anarchy as the precondition7 , no matter neorealistic or neoliberal methods might not be able to establish the thorough global cooperation. Contrastively, although accepting the concept of anarchy, Wendt also inherits the “culture” from English School8 as the “common knowledge” or “shared ideas,” which emerges from the interaction of members of society. He categorizes the international system into three different cultures: Hobbesian, Lockean, or Kantian. There have varying behavior patterns and role orientations when entities are placed in different cultural structures.
The Hobbesian culture 9 is characterized by mutual hostility and killing, which means the relation of the interacting parties is “enemy.” It is a direct reflection of the zero-sum game and security dilemma. Under this culture, the only purpose of international actions is to destroy and annex each other. Therefore, each party takes a tough approach to change the status quo: war is the primary way to solve problems. In conclusion, international participants do not recognize the rights of others and limit their violence when seeking their own survival and interests. In the Lockean culture, participants neither see each other as enemies nor have the essential demand to destroy each other anymore because they recognize the rights to life, property, and sovereignty. In this relation, they cooperate and confront each other as the role of “rivals.” The constraints of international law, international organizations, and institutions guarantee security and survival and have made today's international relations an anarchic but orderly scenario. In short, the shared logic of “kill or be killed” has been replaced by “survive and let survive.” 10 The last Kantian culture 11 is featured by friendship, in which participants do not use violence to resolve conflicts of interest. Moreover, the relation even surpasses states' interests and form a “pluralistic security community” that if a third party threatens a friend, the other sides will help, regardless of their own gains or losses. The fundamental bases of this culture are nonviolence, mutual aid, and Kant's idea of perpetual peace.12
2.2 The mechanisms of forwarding to Kantian culture
“Anarchy is what states make of it” 13 can be explained as which culture will be dominant depending on the cultural consensus accepted and the mutual practices adopted by the interacting parties. Like his analysis of Hobbesian and Lockean culture, Wendt also claims there have three internalizing degrees (or pathways) of Kantian style cooperation, and four master variables14 determining the possibility and stability of the realization of this culture.
2.2.1 Three degrees of Kantian culture. The elementary degree is triggered by external and extremely emergency threats, like the destruction of the earth caused by extreme environmental deterioration or nuclear wars .15 Although participants will cooperate regardless of their interests because of security issues, this degree is exceedingly unstable. The second degree is operated through self-interest strategy, that participants can obtain more profit from the friendship than rival or war, hence will maintain to be friends. The most obvious difference to distinguish the second degree from the first one is there has no compelled force enforces participants to cooperate. 16 However, self-interest strategy cannot guarantee to cultivate a “pluralistic security community” or “common identity” which is based on altruism to entire the third level of Kantian culture. Scholars from the game theory perspective have proofed that it’s not a zero-sum when consider the relations between altruism and helping oneself actions. 17 Actually, altruistic strategy can help a group to grasp more benefits during the evolution than its self-interested competitors.18 But in Wendt’s argument, a “common identity” is not just an instrumental method, but more about the legitimacy or is the result of “identification with others.”19
2.2.2 Four variables of Kantian culture. In order to achieve the ultimate degree of Kantian culture, Wendt proposes four causal mechanisms, which he calls “master variables” to assume how the society will format the “common identity” and forward the final Kantian culture.20 Wendt categorizes these variables into two classifications. The first type includes interdependence, common fate, and homogeneity is called active or efficient causes, which can construct cooperation and friendship. The second type is named enabling causes and included only one variable, self-restraint. In a particular scenario, all four variables may be present, and their degrees are vital to forming the common identity. Additionally, only if there have the presence of enabling variable combining any one of the active, can lead to the Kantian culture.21
Self-restraint can be concisely comprehended as “Trust.” 22 constructivism argues that the most fundamental obstacle of forming a collective identity in anarchy is the fear of exploitation and annexation since surrounded by rational and selfish others. The core of building a high level of mutual trust is for each participant to regulate its behavior and remain space for others to identify with it. Trust is also an essential concept for realism and liberalism to maintain the global system, like the significance of restrictions by nuclear weapons 23 or the international law and organizations 24. However, only having such extrinsic trust cannot form a common identity due to the lack of the aspiration to help others 25 even though it’s the permissive element.
Interdependence, it means the others' decisions will thoroughly impact one's interactive outcome, commonly like economic interdependence 26. But the possibility of war always increases together with the development of trade interdependence due to the expectation of future uncertainty and fears of exploitation 27. Therefore, constructivist emphasizes that interdependence should not just be regarded as an objective situation but the subjective orientation of value and cognition 28. A constructivist interdependence might look like having the positive expectation of interdependence fostering a collective identity and ultimately creating a dependable and peaceful change.
Common fate means each participant's health, security, and well-being based on the whole community's condition. Interestingly, many Chinese scholars assert that a similar concept of common fate, “Community of Shared Future,” is the solution of global governance 29 or even is the evolution of Kantian culture 30. But at least in Wendt’s theory, common fate can only arouse participants’ cooperative actions and advance the transformation from self-interests to altruism. It doesn’t necessarily lead to collective identity.31
Homogeneity mainly concerns the cultural aspect, including ethnicity, language, religion, political form, and ideology, etc. The formative mechanism of homogeneity to a common identity is that reducing the cultural difference will weaken self-interested identification and conflicts caused by the distinction. The counterexample like the increasing linguistic and ethnic difference between Serbs and Croats cause the identity crisis and the disintegration of the former Yugoslavia.32
2.3 Present approaches to Kantian culture
Wendt mostly only gives philosophical and theoretical discussions of how these four variables might form Kantian culture. Indeed, in his letter with Professor Qin Yaqing, he frankly acknowledged that the practical pathway still needs further research 33. In other words, the theory of constructivism is more like an inquiry of the international society but not a substantive proposal. 34 However, since Wendt affords another systematic and innovative perspective to think about international relations and the idealistic attractiveness of Kantian culture, numerous scholars have gathered under the flag of constructivism to do their research.
Even though Wendt’s proponents mainly are interested in debating distinctions between constructivism and other schools 35, some Constructivists’ studies develop the theory in IR area by discussing its features and theoretical influences 36. Moreover, some works have attempted to seek the implementation approach to Kantian culture. Some of them study why and how specific adjacent counties or regions have dropped some realistic or liberalistic strategies during their foreign affairs and practice Kantian culture in their policies. Such as the European Union, the similar historical origins 37, and peaceful appeal due to the experience of WWII 38 afforded the cultural basement to construct the collective EU identity. In postwar Europe, the establishment of some financial orientated organizations, like the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC,1951) and European Economic Community (EEC,1957) initially changed European countries’ view of sovereignty. 39 They finally facilitated a deeper and wider regional cooperation in the monetary and political area. 40 Moreover, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the emerging crisis like refugee issue label the change from the traditional security frame 41 to the mechanism operating by supernational institutions. 42 In short, the regional logic in the EU is replacing from rivalry to friendship, 43 which might be the pioneer of Kantian culture. Represented by Acharya 44, constructivists conduct studies of their cooperation and integration among other regions like the ASEAN 45, post-soviet area 46, African countries 47, and the Belt and Road region 48. However, almost all are more or less following the EU’s study mode.
Scholars also are interested in whether Kantian culture could be formed in bilateral relations between states. In this direction, the mainstream research approach is to examine the historical stages and possible causes of the change in the different anarchic cultures through textual analysis of official documents and archives, such as legal treaties and policies, trade agreements, and speeches of leaders. 49 Another smaller strand research how substructure relations, like the unofficial friendship between state headers 50 and between domestic societies 51 will influence the constructivist culture. The last cluster is concerned about mechanisms and tools that will affect the process of the global world forward from a Lockean to a Kantian one. Halabi 52 and Hemmer 53 studies how collective identity gives another way for balance and peace and weakens the dominant role of using hard power. Similarly, soft aspects like the national image 54, transnational identity 55, and subculture 56 play an increasingly vital role in forming the common identity. For Chinese constructivists, they principally through a linguistic perspective to discuss topics such as the war in Iraq, China's relationship with international organizations, China's interaction in Central Asia, and norms of human rights.57
However, all these above are not very comprehensive. 1. Most of them can be criticized as state-centralism. 58 Scholars still mainly care about states, traditional participants of international systems, which restricts their discussion scope and ignores the potential to approach Kantian culture from some uncommon pathways. 2. Many of them trend to use a constructivist perspective to analyze which elements of the existing international order are conducive to the realization of Kantian culture. Thus, their solutions for forming Kantian culture often seem like incrementalism explanations 59 of the present situation, which are vague and have a long distance to travel. 3. Like Buzan’s criticism ‘You can throw anything in the (constructivism) trash’,60 many constructivists do not follow Wendt’s logical system in their research. Instead, we see some scholars appropriating the concept and mechanism. Hence, more empirical studies for realizing Kantian culture still be required.
3 Metaverse and Kantian culture
The recent news of Facebook's announcement to change the company's name has further increased the buzz around Metaverse. Although it’s the most popular tech word of 2021, there still doesn’t have a clear definition of the novel technology, not to mention the analysis of its impact on the international system. This work attempts to separate Metaverse into four supporting technologies - XR, AI, Blockchain, and the Future Networks - according to it has shown features. Then, this work considers how Metaverse fits with two variables of Kantian culture.
3.1 Technology and international relations
Most people today will agree with Thomas Kuhn’s description of the impact of science and technology: we live in a technology-driven world 61. Barry Buzan and Richard Little even assert that technology almost determine the history after the establishment of the Westphalian System and shape the modern IR theory 62. Ogilvie 63, Parrott 64, and Strachan 65 have studied how the technologies that emerged during the first industrial revolution, like telegram and widely switching from the cold weapon to the firearm create the frame of modern war and global society. For the same reason, it’s hard to imagine that Waltz and Keohane could produce their theories without the second industrial revolution and a world system transformed by related technologies.
Actually, there have some political scholars have studied the IR influence of emerging technologies in the past decade. Like McCarthy 66, Madeline 67, Shawn and Jablonski 68, many scholars have followed the wave of information technology arousing since 2000 and conducted in-depth studies on the impact of the Internet on international relations. However, on the one hand, they have mostly ignored many innovative technologies emerging in the past few years. On the other hand, they tend to be anchored in advising specific countries or regions on their policies, thus limiting the scope of the topics they discuss. Indeed, there already have many studies for those more novel technologies, like Artificial Intelligence, 5G, Big Data, Blockchain, Extended Reality, etc. But as we learn from the history of industrial revolutions, some isolated technological breakthroughs are not the same as epochal change and are less likely to bring about a new shaping of society. 69 Therefore, we still don’t see some exciting and comprehensive social transformations. However, this work argues that metaverse might be the opportunity to the revolutionary change and a potential approach to realize Kantian culture.
3.2 What is Metaverse
Metaverse is derived from the combination of the prefix “meta-” (transcend or beyond) and “-verse” (universe), meaning this is a world beyond the real universe 70. This concept was first created by SF author in 1992 71 and was portrayed as a fantastic cyber-world where people could interact with AI and other people geographically all over the world through 3D avatars. Since last year, there have appeared many applications showing the development trend of Metaverse. (Figure 1)In April 2020, Travis Scott and Epic company hosted a 15-minute virtual concert, with a total of 27.7 million participants and 45.8 million visits worldwide. Similar virtual events have also attracted celebrities such as Joe Biden, Michelle Obama, and more. 72 In May 2020, UC Berkeley hosted an online graduation ceremony at a virtual campus, where graduates could connect to the server for an immersive experience. 73 In August 2021, Facebook launched the Horizon Workrooms application, providing VR conference scenarios for offices.
3.2.1 The Features of Metaverse. Some pioneers attempt to afford their definition of Metaverse. According to the description by Roblox, which is now one top-active companies involved in the development of Metaverse, this virtual world has eight characteristics. 74 Identity, it is the vital concept of Metaverse, which means this technology intends to give its participants another identity or second life. Friendship, indicates that users can make friends easier with others through this technology and reflects the philosophical connotation of this technology. 75 Immersive, is the pivot trait which is the reflection of all understructures like low friction, variety and anywhere, and also is the bearer of friendship, identity and even civility. Psychologists like Slater and Wilbur define a system with high degree immersion means it can offer Hi-Fi simulations of the real world through almost all sensory means, and precisely map clients’ virtual actions to counterparts in the real world. 76 In other words, high immersion can cause psychological sense of presence and “cut off” the physical reality. 77 This effect actually needs the support from underlying technologies. Hence, Low Friction, Variety, and Anywhere are three middle layer standards placed on the technologies and are described by the CEO of Roblox as “clients can go anywhere instantly.” 78 A more precise understanding is that, unlike requiring a separate registration for every software or opening a new account in every bank, our information and assets should be able to be carried directly from one service into any others without any loss or change. 79 The final Economy and Civilization traits reveal the ambition and utopian purpose of Metaverse. When talking about Metaverse, Elon Musk from Tesla and Jensen Huang from Nvidia said that the ultimate purpose of science and technology development should be creating a reality-connected, and indistinguishable civilization. 80 Initiators of this technology attempt to create a digital economic system and finally spawn related rule and civilization.
Therefore, through the description of characteristics, we can at least be sure that although most of the current application forms of Metaverse have the features of electrical games, it is not simply equal to games. In addition, Metaverse is not equivalent to the description and definition of cyberspace or virtual world in the current Internet era. Even though some scholars describe it as the “future of the internet,” 81 Metaverse should be closer to the product of the combination of real world and virtual one. In this world, the virtual part enriches human perception and experience, extending human creativity and possibilities. Human behavior in the virtual part can also have an impact on the physical world. The boundaries between the virtual world and the real world become blurred. In short, Metaverse is a combined technology and a positive vision of the future way of human life. (Figure 2)
3.2.2 The underlying technologies of Metaverse. Based on its characteristics, it can be inferred that a large number of existing hardware and software technologies must be innovated and integrated to realize Metaverse. Lee and colleagues have comprehensively sorted the development status and prospects of all enabling technologies related to Metaverse and categorized them into eight aspects: Extended Reality (XR), Human-Computer Interaction, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Blockchain, Computer Vision, Edge and Cloud computing, and Future Networks 82. However, according to Ockham's Razo principle, this work argues that XR, AI, Blockchain, and Future Networks are the four essential aspects of Metaverse.
XR is the part of Metaverse that is directly connected to the clients, and it is responsible for providing a field that allows the clients to share the sense of presence in a real-time interaction of all biological elements (sight, touch, smell, taste, etc.). 83 Hence, XR most related to the feature of immersive. XR is the collective term for Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), and Mixed Reality (MR). VR is the virtual part that replaces reality, AR is the virtual superimposes on reality, MR is the virtual and real part mixed with each other. VR, whose ultimate form should resemble the Matrix, the most current example is the Oculus Quest 2 glasses 84 from Facebook (now Meta). The anticipation of AR in science fiction movies is the holographic projection in Star Wars. In reality, Microsoft's HoloLens has been used in the U.S. military on a large scale. 85 MR is a comprehensive use of VR and AR, and the relationship between the three is shown in Figure 3.86 According to the XR development report, 87 for about ten years, the XR technologies might fulfill the basic requirement of Metaverse.
AI is the algorithm program that mimics human-like cognition and response behavior after machine learning (ML) a lot of data. 88 AI is now used in various scenes, from processing the natural language (NLP) 89, recognizing images and human actions 90, providing decision support 91, to autonomously creating content 92, even creating another AI program. 93 The global AI industry entered a period of rapid development after the epidemic and is expected to break through the tipping point in the next 5-8 years. 94 For Metaverse, AI directly supports the features of low friction, variety and anywhere. In order to create a virtual world that can seamlessly integrate with reality, Metaverse needs to rely on AI to continuously generate corresponding content and process the massive amount of data, 95 which is impossible for any human creator or administrative group.96 Additionally, when considering the Avatar, the combination utility of XR and AI paves the way for clients to have a new identity in Metaverse. 97 Since clients can almost adjust every detail of their virtual avatars, like skin color, gender, and race, these avatars give a “second life” 98 for people to recreate and represent their identity. (Figure.4)
Blockchain is the technology that connects every virtual and real element in Metaverse. Fig.5 shows its feature of distributed storage of data and unchangeable after the block is created.99 It not only the core of the economy in Metaverse but also satisfied for middle layer. Blockchain established a decentralized credit mechanism by relying on technology and has changed the traditional mode of interaction which requires an authority to ensure trust. 100 Bitcoin might be the most well-known application of blockchain.101
When further considering blockchain applications in Metaverse, the Blot (BlockchainIoT) 102 resulting from the combination of blockchain technology and the Internet of Things (IoT) might be very beneficial to achieve three mid features. IoT is the technology surging in the recent decade that using various network technologies to connect objects in the real world. 103 When combined with Blockchain, we can record reliable information about physical objects and reflect them into the virtual world. 104 Additionally, our virtual behaviors relevant to these virtual aspects can map to their physical aspects through digital twins technologies. 105 During these cycled procedures, Blockchain can establish a trustworthy vehicle to guarantee the effectiveness and accuracy of interactions between the virtual and real world. (Figure.6)
Future network technology is the underlying foundation for all the functional features of the Metaverse. It is estimated that each person currently generates about 1.5 GB of data per day in the Web 2.0 era. 106 But with the gradual advancement of Metaverse applications, the various virtual reality interaction channels established to ensure Immersive, Low friction, and other characteristics will bring an astronomical amount of data needing transmission and processing. However, according to China's 5G construction plan, a service network with one million access points per square kilometer and 1Gb/s speed per access point has been achieved in 2020. 107 By 2025, China plans to complete a network system with 10Gb/s that can thoroughly support artificial intelligence, big data, and cloud computing industries. 108 Meanwhile, with the development of IoT, edge computing, and other related network application, the underlying foundation of Metaverse is gradually being realized.
In general, the underlying technologies of Metaverse are in a phase of high development and gradually meeting the need to combine the virtual and the reality. Figure. 7 shows the relationship between technologies and features in the context of the Metaverse.
3.3 The technology-driven opportunity to Kantian culture
Analyzing all “Metaverse” related literature and their citations since 1992-2021 in the “Web of Science” database by CiteSpace software reveals that 109 : 1. important nodes of research on this area have mainly appeared since 2010; 2. present works are focused on psychology (Theory of mind, Avatar therapy, and Affordance), digital technology (Virtual reality, Virtual world), and identity issue (Identification, Avatars, Second life). (Fig 8) From the existing studies, it can be found that the possible impact of Metaverse on international relations has been less studied.
The Reform Club, a nearly 200-year-old British political club, predicted that Metaverse would be very different from other social technologies in terms of “friendship” and “trust”.110 Indeed, it is natural to associate these features with the description of the variables in Wendt's constructivism. As described above, this work argues Metaverse might be one opportunity to realize Kantian culture. The following part will analyze the relationship between them through one efficient cause, homogeneity, and the enabling cause, trust.
3.3.1 Metaverse affords a platform to establish the homogeneity. Metaverse offers homogeneity far beyond the existing cyberspace on two levels: individual and collective group. Through these two levels’ changes, Metaverse provides a new platform to increase the homogeneity of people’s identity.
At the individual level, since the development of the Internet, users have been able to set their own usernames and profile to describe their identity when they register. Some interdisciplinary scholars like Sherry Turkle 111 and Howard Rheingold 112 had predicted the possibility of providing people with a second-self different from the real one through computers and networks. They also pointed out from a psychological perspective that, compared to the more uncontrollable real world, people's virtual second identities will, on the one hand, continue some of their real characteristics (like the description of educational experience), but at the same time, due to the controllability and orderliness of the process, people will be happy to idealize and reshape the second identity. The lure of reconfiguration and mobility of the second self has been one primary motivation for people to participate in virtual worlds. 113 For example, more than 10% of clients on Habitat, an open-world online community in the early 2D image era, had tried switching the gender of their avatar, and nearly 30% of clients had chosen an avatar with nonhuman-looking. 114 From a simple string of usernames in the early days of the Internet to today's widely used avatar images, both hide the clients' gender, race, and other information. While such a second self provides a “text-only” rediscovery of identity, it also results in a lack of “primordial tactility” during interactions. 115 This decoupling of identity and perception makes it difficult for clients further to project their empathy onto the avatar and second identity 116 while also failing to satisfy people's desire for self-performance 117. So, as technology develops, various software offers increasingly rich and realistic avatar creation options, and there are even professional makers who help others create avatars to fulfill clients' requirements of second self.118
However, the avatars currently available to clients are still structured combinations of 3D elements, so while the virtual avatar has reached an unprecedented level for self-expression and second identity, there are still severe limitations. 119 Scholars have also found that expressions and appearance details are directly and significantly positively correlated with social perceptions such as similarity, familiarity, attractiveness, liking, and engagement. 120 In other words, the full-body, real-time, highly detailed avatar brought by Metaverse will bring about a revolution in the way people construct and recognize their second identity. Moreover, as a response and difference to the critique that the current cyberspace-based construction of "electronic identity" 121 is a cheap game of escapism that will not produce critical changes in the real world, 122 the identity constructed by Metaverse is not a virtual existence in opposition to the real one. Since Metaverse has the capability to dissolve the border between the real and the virtual, the change it brings should be an extension of people's real identity based on a high level of recognition at the individual level.
At the collective group level, homogeneity generally refers to whether people share the same culture or consider themselves one race and ethnicity. For cultural identification, Kluckhohn defines the situation as the patterns of thinking and perception. 123 Social psychologist Hofstede goes further and proposes the concept of “common mental programming” and analyzes it at three elements of symbols, rituals, and icons. 124 Symbols mean objects bearing special meanings like words, languages, and pictures. Rituals refer to the way people are employed to pay intense emotions, such as festivals. And icons represent the leader, celebrity among the group. From this perspective, Metaverse is essentially no different from cyberspace. It simply offers more opportunities to generate group homogeneity on a broader scale and to a deeper degree. However, in his subsequent studies of Eastern and Western societies, he found that with the spread of the Internet and globalization, there is a clear convergence between Eastern and Western cultures in four areas: Power Distance, Individualism/Collectivism, Masculinity/ Femininity, and Uncertainty Avoidance. Interestingly, there is still a significant difference in the Long-term/Short-term Orientation aspect. 125 This aspect is defined by the influence of religion, like Confucianism in the east and Christianity in the west. 126 In other words, the current development of the internet doesn’t make an apparent religious combination among different cultural groups.127
According to Yuval Noah Harari, the author of A Brief History of Mankind, religion is “a big virtual reality game played by millions of people together”. 128 Indeed, in some current applications of Metaverse, there are some distinct changes in many traditional religions. In the wake of the epidemic, some Christian churches are beginning to build VR churches using Metaverse-related technology. 129 Unlike current digital churches built on existing web-based technology, Christian theologians believe the technological features of Metaverse enable rituals to be done in a virtual world 130. And Metaverse churches are more in line with Christian doctrine as no boundary Kingdom 131, allowing believers to encounter God as in a real church 132 while strongly linking virtual and real communities. 133 Another unignorable project is the Jewish Cloud Nation.134 It is a decentralized autonomous religious organization based on blockchain. Its purpose is to create a cloud nation of Judaism that crosses geographical, political, and ethnic boundaries. Unlike traditional Judaism, which only accepts Jews, this project welcomes “anyone who wishes to partake in Jewish life.” Additionally, all other major religions such as Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism have the project to develop a spiritual utopia in Metaverse. 135 Some of them even in one virtual platform and share the same clients. Generally, religions possibly will show more openness and integrations in Metaverse.
For the racial and ethnic aspect, it’s consistent the main reason of conflicts after the National Liberation Movement. The features of different race and ethnicity are used to rationalize the superiority of certain one over others. 136 For this, at the individual level, we have already explored the potential of the high degree of freedom avatar brought by Metaverse, offering each client the possibility to change the “physical” characteristics of the body. It is not known what the ultimate impact of easily changing one's features will have on group interactions, but at least it offers more possibilities. Reeves discusses the possibility and process to use Metaverse to educate and end racism. 137 Mohammed studies the different behavioral patterns of other groups on whether the virtual female avatar wears a hijab. While he calls for the inclusion of Muslims, his research also shows that Metaverse opens up possibilities for Islamic women to change their Muslim identity. 138 Furthermore, as Weber criticized, ethnic belonging is based more on beliefs than on blood. 139 With current Internet technology, many cross-racial and -ethnic subcultural communities have been generated, such as a global fervor for the EDG game team. 140 Metaverse, being an evolution of the existing Internet, is bound to generate more collective homogeneity in the future as well.
3.3.2 Metaverse affords an environment to establish the trust. Francis Fukuyama asserts that identity concept has become the dominant point to understand the global affairs.141 However, he also critiques the current Left in Western society, which only emphasizes the spiritual consistency of identity (like distinguishing the race) but avoids addressing the material incomes and political rights of immigrants, minorities, workers in developing countries, etc. And it makes populism and conservativism more attractive at present. 142 According to Wendt’s theory, this kind of identity politics is only symbolically emphasizing efficient causes. As mentioned above, blockchain is essentially a trusted network that enables the transfer of value based on procedural code rather than law. Hence, Metaverse provides a trusting environment and resolves the problems of the Left’s empty identity politics.
In general, people need authority as a third-party constraint to build trust when dealing with others. 143 But in this way, a global government becomes the only solution. So, researchers are continually seeking an alternative that would eliminate differences and build trust. Habermas discusses how public sphere such as 18th-century cafes allowed traditional aristocrats, the emerging bourgeoisie, intellectuals, and industrial workers to come together to discuss literature and current affairs openly. 144 While such public spaces afforded a trusting environment crossed identity and classe differences to a certain extent, they were generally a fragile structure that was difficult to sustain, especially after the rise of capital- or state-controlled mass media. 145 Then people put their hopes on television, internet, and other emerging media. But in the end, most of these methods have been reduced to the same failed fate. Some of them became part of authority, and others were filled with false and confusing information. 146 However, Metaverse offers some possible ways to span disparities and establish a broad trust.
The mechanism and process aspect, due to the development of technology, many governance ideas and assumptions have gained the possibility to be realized. This work lists two relative mature methods of Metaverse promoting trust. First, before handling an issue, some rules have ensured trust. When the tenure voting, 147 which the market has abandoned for technical reasons, is combined with blockchain and AI tech, those shares or tokens that are held longer will receive more weighting given by the algorithm. In other words, those long-term holders (or participants who bet more opportunity cost on the project, the company, and the community) will get more voting rights. 148 Another mechanism is Quadratic Payments, which works on the principle that for every additional unit of voting right obtained by a participant, the price will increase by one unit. Thus, if a person wants to cast N votes on a project, it costs approximately a quadratic multiple of the number of votes. Under this mechanism, the dilemmas of one-personone-vote and one-dollar-one-vote are overcome to some extent. 149 Second, after handling an issue, accountability is another important mechanism to promote trust. Accountability is the method that accompanies the transparency nature of the blockchain. Because each step of the operation can be retraced, the actions of any participant can be rewarded or penalized accordingly after the issue.150 It also facilitates the generation of trust.
The organization aspect, the Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) is one kind of management system that people in it will cooperate and govern themselves by some blockchainand AI-based automatic rules or contracts. 151 According to recent research in some industrial applications, this kind of organization doesn’t need a centralized authority to govern its individual participants and significantly afford more efficiency into the operation process and reduces the decision-making cost 152 but can also excellently ensure security and stability at the same time.153 If the BIoT is blurring the boundary between reality and virtual at the object level, DAO provides a way to transform and innovate real organizational entities such as companies, communities, and even governments. Recently, the most famous public event involving Metaverse is Constitution DAO, a DAO founded on November 11 of this year by several netizens on Discord, a well-known but straightforward Metaverse platform. Their goal was to raise funds to bid on a copy of the U.S. Constitution. In this way, they hope to achieve an ideological goal: to take back the constitution that should belong to the people themselves. Based on the trust provided by technologies, this DAO raised a total of $45 million to participate in the bidding eight days later. Although Constitution DAO lost out in the bidding and announced its dissolution at the end of November, all those who participated in the fundraising could retrieve their funds without any problems.154 From this example, it can be inferred that DAO is very efficient and agile as an organizational form. It is reasonable to assume that Constitution DAO provides a demonstration effect, and we may soon see a variety of DAOs appearing in traditional geopolitical events.
The scope aspect, this technology-based trust is highly effective in many places that traditional authority cannot reach. In the absence of governmental power, technology-based trust empowers local people, reduces power asymmetries, and enhances their incomes and livelihoods by reducing the cost of trust in transactions. 155 Especially in Africa, the world's most remote region of the Internet but also one of the most approving zones of blockchain, 156 the establishment of technology-based trust has resulted in significant economic benefits due to its lesser political and regulatory baggage. 157 It also helps refugees from Syrian to obtain a legal identity. 158 Regard further applications, the cities of Miami and Reno are both experimenting with new governmental systems of city taxation, land use, and voting based on blockchain and crypto tokens. 159 In addition, there are three most radical projects which show us the potential influence of Metaverse in international relations.
3.3.3 CityDAO, Meta-Seoul, and e-Residency. CityDAO, Meta-Seoul, and e-Residency are three of the most radical projects currently. In a sense, they are also the closest to the above definition of Metaverse: a combination of virtual and reality. CityDAO is a blockchain-based virtual organization whose participants, adhering to a consensus of democracy and autonomy. They crowdfunded a 40-acre parcel of wilderness land in Wyoming, USA, with 2021. The project then divided the purchased land into 10,000 shares and mapped each share to the blockchain to form a virtual object. Anyone who endorsed the organization's concept can purchase the blockchain land. After that, the project will rely on the decentralized management method and let the clients vote entirely on the construction of the new city. According to their plan, they’ll continue to purchase land all over the world, and build other DAO cities. 160 Interestingly, the government shows a relatively friendly attitude, and the project is currently in compliance with the laws of the country of location.161
Meta-Seoul is a municipal Metaverse plan operated by Seoul government. 162 The Seoul government has announced that it will invest 3.9 billion to create a digital twin of the entire real Seoul city. By 2026, the Meta-Seoul will allow its residents access the same legal governmental functions in the virtual world as in the real. In addition, the government plans to establish a citywide IoT and robot service system to connect public services such as transportation, logistics, and water supply in the virtual and real worlds. So that what happens in the real world can be presented in the virtual world promptly, and what people do in the virtual world can be influenced back to the real world through robots and the IoT. Experts judge that Meta-Seoul is significant for Korean 163 since it will set a Korea standard and rules for other countries in the post-COVID-19 era and will profoundly impact the future.164
And e-Residency is the world’s first cloud citizenship project led entirely by the Estonian government. After examination by the Estonian Police and Border Guard Board, applicants will receive an e-ID identical to that of Estonian citizens. All these application processes are operated remotely and on Blockchain. After being an e-Resident, people can enjoy almost all the rights of Estonian citizens except for travel visas, such as opening a company and enjoying the same 0% tax on retained profits as Estonian citizens, opening bank accounts, paying taxes, etc.165 Previously, all these rights could only be obtained after being an EU permanent resident. The project seeks to create a “new digital nation” and a new kind of sub-citizenship. Currently, about 10 million people worldwide have applied, and about 85000 of them have been awarded the Estonian e-resident identity. More than 1/3 of these e-residents apply to be part of this project simply because they admire the notion of this identity.166
Admittedly, these three cases are still quite far from the real Metaverse. CityDAO is dominated by virtual non-governmental groups and from the virtual to influence the real. MetaSeoul is dominated by local governments and brings the real into the virtual. And e-resident is a global project led by the nation. Although the three projects are led by different kinds of groups and through different ways of implementation, all of them show cultural homogeneity and algorithm-based trust. And they show the possibility of bringing about a broader and deeper scope of cooperation and peace by Metaverse in the future. From the previous discussion and cases, this work predicts that Metaverse has the potential to satisfy the cause of homogeneity and trust. And according to Wendt's theory, this will lead clients to form a collective identity and eventually go into Kantian culture.
4 Limitation and Conclusion
While this paper argues that Metaverse can bring friendship and peace, it is undeniable that there is no solid evidence yet of what impact this technological combination will have on society at this time. And, at least for the present internet, many scholars have explored the conflicts and dangers it may cause to the international order. Large and small countries use hackers, algorithms, trolls, bots, and other technical means to computationally propagandize on the Internet to discredit their "enemies" domestically and internationally. 167 All noble virtues and humanity can be transformed into weapons to achieve their goals by regimes, organizations, and individuals with ulterior motives on the Internet. 168 Moreover, outside the network, states and organizations can physically restrict and destroy people and devices, the network's carriers directly. 169 Inside the web, occupying the vast amount of information, technology, and resources, technology companies have instead created an even greater digital divide. 170 All of these issues are selectively ignored in this paper. On the one hand, Metaverse is not exactly equivalent to the traditional internet, so the problems that the internet cannot overcome may not be reproduced in the future Metaverse. On the other hand, continuing to explore the possible evils of technology does not fit my personality.
Constructivism offers an alternative perspective to consider international relations. This paper first reviews the three degrees and four variables needed to enable the realization of Kantian culture in Wendt's theory. The work then combs previous research on the approach to Kantian culture. Since most of them are imperfect, the paper suggests that Metaverse may be a technological opportunity. As a recent emerging tech term, the paper sorts out the basics of Metaverse and clarifies many related concepts. Consequently, the work analyzes the possibility that Metaverse can contribute to the realization of Kantian culture in terms of homogeneity and trust. Finally, this article cites some current cases.
Constructivism and identity are indeed both theories about “idea” and “thinking,” so they seem very abstract and vague. But scholars like Ted Hopf uses quantitative methods to corroborate that identity can play a crucial role even in the constitution of hegemonic order. 171 There is no doubt about the importance of “idea” in the IR area, but I can only make some rough qualitative discussion in this article due to my limited ability. And Metaverse is frankly still relatively far away from its ultimate form and impacts, leading to a lack of concrete examples in my work. This is another major shortcoming that is difficult to overcome. Finally, this paper argues that Metaverse may bring about peaceful friendship and Kantian culture to human beings. However, it cannot be denied that many scholars are pessimistic about technologies and positive about sovereignty's ability and influence. However, from my perspective, friendship and peace are so fascinating just like the starry heaven described by Kant. So, this article is more like my idealistic attempt in the uncertain post-pandemic era. Moreover, we live in a rapidly changing and more and more digital world, at least this work provides a wider discussion within the social impact of Metaverse.
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