Or...
What happened when the Social Organism outgrew the Social Network?
And can it be fixed?
Social Organism: A self-recognized and
internally governed economic/political grouping
organized for basic survival
Social Network: Related to Dunbar's
Number and a hypothetical natural-human-community
size
From my post
Social
Networks & The Social Organism - Healing the Breach
on characteristics of our early hunter/gatherer
social networks:
Further:
I suggest in
The
Foundations of Authoritarianism
that:
Authoritarianism's rise, which developed along with
the move to organized agriculture from a
hunter-gatherer existence thousands of years ago and
persists in many places today, was due to:
Authoritarianism was a very imperfect solution for
the disconnection between the social network and the
social organism that arose with the birth of
agriculture and a need for methods for human
organization which had not been needed as
hunter-gatherers.
Democracy (and the many forms of scaled
representation whether via election,
sortition
or other method) arose as a response to
authoritarianism and its unsuitability to human
creativity and development… i.e., its inevitable
failure.
Representative systems involve the introduction of
horizontal distributed networks to counter-balance
those hierarchical networks.
Force as a basis for a social contract, while
sometimes functional temporarily for clarity and
decisiveness will inevitably concentrate power while
insulating it from consequences of its decisions and
promote stagnation(oligarchy). This tendency
inevitably destroys any non-consensual social
contract and has very violent consequences.
Technology’s limits allowed opacity
(non-transparency) and social network (class)
isolation to sustain authoritarianism’s
otherwise unsustainable model (its inability to
restore the proximity concurrent with the Dunbar’s
Number sized social network we had as
hunter-gatherers… and its relationship to the
individual’s position, status, wealth and role in
the group decision process).
The point here is that technology is now
revolutionizing proximity... but is still
lagging in enhancing meaningful influence
capability for the individual!
This is perilous!
In
On the
Birth of the Global Social Organism
I stated that:
"Only when the gap in wealth and status approaches that level which would be considered fair within a Dunbar’s number-sized social network in daily contact… only then can we consider the possibility of a healthy, scaled social organism."
Moreover, it may be that the rapid expansion of ICT
and the nature of the Ultimatum Game makes this
first assertion no longer just a nice ideal but a
survival necessity."
...A rather daring statement (and it's difficult to
specify the terms) that however I believe is
fundamentally valid.
The unfortunately unavoidable
disconnection between the social network and the
social organism which arose with the birth of
agriculture (unavoidable at the time due to scale
and technological limitations) remains the most
unrecognized problem civilization faces.
Possibly even a fatal one. And we have a rather
brief window to fix it.
I'm optimistic about the capabilities of reason and
technology to handle just about any problem we face…
whether global warming, ocean pollution or the
disaster of our food monoculture and the loss of
biological diversity.
But these solutions ALL rely upon a Social
Contract that holds the social organism together for
decision and action.
The welcome advancement of global communication
increases demand for human rights and opportunity (a
natural product of ICT dispersal and increasing
transparency)... but also a more urgent recognition
of imbalances. And hence a demand to be part of
the process in decisions regarding solutions.
However, this also increases the necessity for
dispersal of influence capability whether via
stable associations or, more importantly... ad hoc
formations encouraging the individuality of the
decision-maker so important for sourcing crowd
wisdom... all under a structure encouraging
Enlightenment principles and minority rights.
This has applications in corporate law and
governance (see my post
Compensation & the Social Network
and
Ayn
Rand & Alan Greenspan: The Altruism Fly in the
Objectivist Ointment
for a bit more on this) as well as many other areas
of our lives as social creatures… still at least
partially bound by our long history as
hunter-gatherers.
For further info see relevant posts at the
Chagora
& Civlization Systems
blog and the 5-minute Fixing Big! PowerPoint found
there, as well as the
Chagora
demo which is focused on what I believe is a vital
assist to better governance and building a
responsible and involved citizenry… the
Individually-controlled/Commons-dedicated Account