Band theory gives us a surprisingly clean way to think about how societies hold together in ordinary times. In physics, the valence band is where electrons normally sit, while the conduction band is where they move freely to create current. The band gap between the two determines whether a material is an insulator, a semiconductor, or a conductor. Map this onto society, and the metaphor falls neatly into place.
The “filled levels” are families—localized, tightly bound, not easily mobilized beyond themselves. The “valence band” is the layer of communities, where obligations and shared norms extend outward but are still bounded. The “conduction band” is the realm of collective myth and narrative, where individuals are mobilized into something bigger: nations, religions, ideologies, global causes. The band gap models the difficulty of moving people from daily life into that larger narrative.
Steady-State Politics — Conduction
Different societies can be described in terms of their effective band gap. Authoritarian systems behave like insulators: the gap between community life and grand narrative is wide, so ordinary people cannot easily participate in the larger myth unless forced. They may chant the slogans and attend the rallies, but only with heavy input energy from the state. Liberal democracies behave more like semiconductors. They have small gaps, so with the right input—propaganda, education, culture, or crisis—people can cross into the mythic domain relatively easily. Revolutions, wars, or national projects excite them into the conduction band. Visions of utopias and anarchist communes look more like conductors (and may temporarily approximate them), with everyday life and collective narrative overlapping. In those rare and short-lived cases, living itself is already participating in the grand myth; no excitation energy is required.
Sloptraptions is an AI-assisted opt-in section of the Contraptions Newsletter. Recipe at end. If you only want my hand-crafted writing, you can unsubscribe from this section.
We’re reading Montaigne’s essays this month in the Contraptions book club.
This metaphor becomes richer when we introduce the idea of doping. A pure semiconductor has uncertain properties: it sometimes conducts, sometimes doesn’t. Societies without institutional doping are like this—mobilization is unpredictable and irregular, depending on chance events or charismatic leaders. Doping stabilizes the behavior.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Contraptions to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.