The Radical New Reality of Systems Science

Society versus Civilization

 

 

What is a 'Social System' -- From Agents through Customs to Social System Networks

The word society derives from the Latin socius, translated as 'companion.' ​Society is defined as 'the sum total of relationships among the constituent members of people living together in an ordered community, having shared customs, culture, and organizations.' A society is a 'relational network' among human agents which emerges from  shared practices, concepts, patterns of organization and behavior -- in which they are 'companions.' Yet, society is an agent-based system that is 'more than' the 'sum of its parts,' or, is an emergent complex adaptive system that has its own self-asserting network agency. It emerges from the interactions and feedback interdependencies of its agents, but becomes 'an entity' with impulses that are not necessarily those of its agents. 

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The coherence of a social system, the basis of its self-regulation, involve 'network biases' deriving from those shared customs and culture. A social custom is an agreed, stipulated or generally accepted rule, norm, standard or criteria, that acts as a 'conventional rule' -- or, in systems science terms, a 'bias' in how influence flows across a system network. A social system self-organizes around 'customary behaviors' that influence the flow of interactions and resulting interdependencies of a social network's member agents. Diverse and variable individual agents are 'conditioned' to express their self-assertion in these 'customary' ways. That conditioning includes 'ways of thinking,' concepts, and references for interpreting phenomena.  This conditioning, along with many particular expressions of 'customary thinking', such as philosophical, religious, and political concepts, contributes to what is generally termed "culture." So, we can think of a society as the 'enculturated' networking emerging from all such factors -- making its agents 'companions' by way of their participation in, or subordination to, that emergent system network. Obviously, all social systems and cultures are not the same. But, all do emerge from agent interactions conditioned by normative customs that 'bias' the flows of those interactions and the resulting interdependencies that influence the particular behaviors of particular social systems.

 

Given the inherent variability of human agents, with their considerable selective agency, it can seem rather surprising that they can be organized into distinctive social systems that persist in a relatively similar network configuration across succeeding generations and over very long periods of time. The point is, that the social systems that emerge from agent interactions take on a 'life of their own.' Their self-assertion, as complex adaptive systems, has profound influence over the self-assertion of their constituting agents -- so much so, that those agents typically assume that their identity and intentions are 'the same as' those of the social system. And yet, these systems can be disrupted such that their agents undergo profound changes in their sense of self and purposes for their self-assertion. The complex adaptive systems of agents can become significantly re-self-organized, resulting in significant changes in the forms and behaviors of social systems.

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From Horizontally Networked Communal Societies to Hierarchically Stratified Civilizations

For most of the existence of modern humans, until somewhere around 12,000 years ago, people lived in small communal groups of 30 to perhaps 200 individuals. Examples of these small scale social systems have survived into modern times where hunter-gatherer cultures continued to exist. These social systems are typically networked in a horizontal manner with relatively equal social status and a high degree of cooperative interdependency.  That network connectivity mirrors the relationships of other species in ecosystems.

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Agent self-assertion benefits the whole and the self assertion of whole benefits the  agents

 

With the advent of agricultural-based societies and related technologies, a distinctively different configuration of social system networks emerged. These are characterized by the term civilization. This word derives from the Latin civitas, translated as city. Civilization is considered to be a social system involving urbanized living that includes the formation of an institutionalized political state, heirarchally stratified social status, taxation, enforcement subsystems, emphasizing 'command and control' operations that manipulate both ecosystems and individual human agents to sustain the self-assertion of this network structure. These so-called "complex societies" tend to create social network relationships in which individuals are not communally connected with the majority of other agents around them in the society, making them more dependent upon the social system than other agents close to them.

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In comparison to their ecologically embedded hunter-gather predecessor social systems, civilizations are 'control obsessed' self-asserting systems. They constitute the initiation of an intrinsic conflict between social systems and ecological ones, which is expressed in the notion of 'the wild versus the tame,' or 'domesticated.' 

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​from mutualistic distributed networking, reflecting natural ecosystems, to centralized hierarchical control systems: or, from a 'Wild World' to the oppositional status of 'The Wild versus The Tame' of domesticating civilization. From living 'for each other,' to 'living for the hierarcical super organism.'

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deemphasizing mutualism, favoring authoritatiansism, systems of opposition and binary distinctions

prompting impulse of individuals to promote ethical cultural values as compensation

transforming animism to theism of abstract agency, leading to monotheism and modernity's de facto monodynamnical materialistic causation

authoritarian, maximalist, tyrannical,

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Society as Super Organism 'Juggernaut'

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From Social Networks to Super Organism Systems

Many complex adaptive system networks are composed of individual agents, from ant colonies to human societies. The collective interactions of these agents synergistically enable the emergence of an additional self-organizing, complex adaptive system network -- the colony or society. That 'higher level' of system organization manifests its the purposeful agency. Such systems have been termed "super organisms" because they behave like self-organizing organisms, or creatures -- even though they have no brain.  And, these systems can persist or survive beyond the life spans of the agent populations from which the system emerges. The  super organism is, in a sense, potentially immortal.

 

As human agent-based systems, super organism social networks have vastly greater collective intelligence and power to manipulate their environments than those of other animals -- most importantly, the power of industrialized technology. In some sense, even specific institutions, governments, and corporations are a form of super organism. These are often the subsystems or a larger, inclusive society system. Though such super organism social networks emerge from the interdependent interactions of human agents, none are human systems per se. They are not constituted as biological bodies with central nervous systems or brains. Thus these systems are incapable of empathic feeling or genuine ethical motivation. Indeed, their self-asserting impetus can work against the very values that humans create them to promote, such as equity, justice, and freedom.  Their self-organizing, self-promoting 'drive' can readily manipulate the humans that compose them, as in encouraging them to assume that the systems are synonymous with the purposes for which humans created them.

 

It is not that super organism systems 'lie,' but that their only impetus is self-preserving self-assertion. They have no capacity for differentiating 'right from wrong' or 'true from false.' Thus, it is to be expected that human social systems are not only 'beyond direct control' but, unconstrained by the individual human agents from whose interactions they emerge, will inevitably generate unexpected, even disastrous behaviors. -- from socio-economic inequity to imperial wars and ecological collapse.  From a mythological perspective, such systems are prone to becoming 'monstrous' -- to seek power and influence by exploiting other systems without regard to any consequences. To be realistic about human systems is to "live by the law of unintended consequences" and remain constantly suspicious of our own system's behaviors. The old saying "you cant trust the system" has a new, systems science basis.

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​From Agents to Super Organisms and Back

Most importantly, social systems and the super organisms they can enable, form a recursive flow of influences. Agents interact through customary criteria, forming interdependent flows of self-asserting agency, from which emerge social systems, which interact, from which emerge super organism systems (with their own agency and purposefulness) -- and all emergent 'layers' feedback into the initial one of interacting agents. Thus, the ordering of social systems and super organisms emerges unpredictably from agent interactions, but then recursively exert influence upon those agents. The emergence of these self-ordering systems is 'from the bottom up,' yet there is also influence 'flowing downward' as well. It is in this way that we agents become manipulated by the systems our interactions 'give rise to.'

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Civilized Super Organism Social Systems are 'Control Obsessed'

Manipulative control of self and aspects of an external environment are fundamental to the adaptive capacity of complex adaptive systems. It is most obvious in animals which use both mental and physical 'acts' to exert manipulative influence on ​objects and other animals. But it is also an emergent effect of system agency in collective social systems. The social system actually feeds back into agent systems in ways that manipulate their behaviors, and, thereby, physical environments. In super organism social systems with more overt hierarchical network structure, this manipulation of agents and environments becomes a more distinctly 'command and control' behavior. Civilization systems must 'manage' the agency of their agents to effectively conduct large scale agriculture, urbanized construction, divisions of labor, distributions of foods and goods, and military organizations. These systems tend toward bureaucratic managerial networks with hierarchical authority. These traits necessarily enhance the impulse of the super organism system to exert manipulative control of nearly everything. 'Command and control' becomes a kind of raison d'être, or defining purpose for such systems.

 

When extensive technological developments occur, their extension of manipulative capacity can vastly enhance the feedback of controlling manipulation into the super organism's self-assertion. A kind of 'runaway' positive amplification can then occur in which the purposefulness of the super organism becomes preoccupied or effectively obsessed with exerting ever more manipulative control. This system behavior is particularly pronounced within modern societies that have incorporated industrialized technology. The more capacity for manipulative control, them more impetus to increase that capacity. The pervasive growth of a 'surveillance society' is an obvious example: because the system can monitor nearly everything it automatically seeks to do so -- for the purpose of extending its self-assertion.

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Civilized Super Organisms are Inherently Dissociating

Civilizations express a distinctive 'move away from' the ecologically embedded life styles and societies of archaic human hunter-gatherers. With larger scale agriculture, urbanized living, and hierarchically institutionalized social systems, personal life becomes centered on a 'tame' domain identified in contrast to the of 'wild nature.' That shift effectively disconnects, or 'dissociates,' the relational networks of both individuals and society from naturally evolved ecosystems. In addition, it has the effect of fragmenting social networks into the less personally interconnected relationships of individuals as 'mass societies ,' which are further separated into hierarchically ranked, economically inequal, stratifications. That dissociates individual agents into 'superior and inferior' categories and diminishes the flow of influence between individuals in different strata of class and caste.

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This triple dissociation of humans from ecosystems, individuals from each other, and agents into distinctive, disproportionally influential social categories, reorients individual self-assertion both toward an agent's more narrowly defined status and that of the super organism. Agents become more dependent upon the institutionalize super organism than intimate communal relationships and empathic participation in natural ecosystems.

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Perceiving a Social System's Flows and Combinations of Collectively Interacting Agency Characteristically

System self-assertion can be adaptive because it emerges from disorderly, diverse intra-system impulses. There is both impetus to 'act' and contrasting potential for how a system network might reconfigure itself to generate various modes of 'action.' This variable dynamical potential underlies the emergence of agency in both agents and collective social systems emerging from agent interactions Consequently, as agents interact and interdependent feedback loops form in the networking of their interactions, the social system that emerge is inherently turbulent with diverse and often conflicting 'actions.' There is not distinct, directly progressive, sequences of causes and effects. That is part of what makes social systems ultimately uncontrollable. Yet it is the source of their emergent self-organization and purposeful self-assertion. The best material example might be the complex flows of turbulent currents, eddies, and stratifications in the water of a river or ocean -- all interacting simultaneously. However, the recursive flows of a complex adaptive social system that result in its purposeful self-assertion are vastly more complex than these more explicitly physical systems. Such interdependent complexity simply cannot be understood mechanically. Thus, we can only track then in relation to a system's overall behaviors and try to understand these 'characteristically' -- as expressing 'behavioral tendencies' in some 'psychological manner.' Thus is where an archetypal spiritual imagination becomes necesasary.

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The 'Dynamical Momentum' of Social System Self-Assertion

​As the various 'flows' of agent interaction in a social system become self-organizing, then self-directing, a kind of 'dynamical momentum' develops that 'guides' the ongoing emergence of that self-direction. The system is subject to novel network formations at any given time due to its intrinsic turbulence. But somehow it can continue networking in self-similar ways over extended periods of time and often in spite of seemingly large disruptions. This is partly related to the persistence of 'history' in such systems. Their past configurations somehow leave an 'impression' that can influence their ongoing emergent patterns. Nonetheless, social systems can abruptly reconfigure in profound ways. Their dynamical momentum can suddenly depart from even long standing patterns. Thus, the configurations of political systems can shift from autocratic or fascist to democratic, then later shift back to preceding historical configuration.

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How Individual Autonomy is Enabled or Subverted by the Self-Assertion of the Super Organism System

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The Conundrum of 'Belonging' as 'Social Companions' while Being Self-Asserting Competitive Individuals

Social system networks are crucial to the survival of many species. Cooperative and competitive biases in inter-agent relationships combine to facilitate the overall sustainable adaptivity of each such species. Some are more uniformly cooperative, like termites and ants, others more competitive in establishing their social networks, like wolves and many heard animals. Both types of relational dynamics assist in individuals finding a 'functional' role in the social network that promotes the survival of the collective, thus the individuals. Cooperation and competition are aspects of interactions from which emerge the self-organization of the overall system. But humans are perhaps the most extreme in both modalities -- intensively individualistic and competitive, yet utterly dependent upon intensity networked cooperation for survival.  There is a kind of 'schzophrenia' or 'bi-polarity' to humans as diversified individual agent systems that are acutely aware of 'being a self' and 'having autonomy,' yet are dependent upon cooperative social networks.

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This contrast creates considerable turbulence in human relations that enables the emergence of more complex combinations of 'cooperative competition' in the collective social system network. It is the 'disorder' within both the individual and collective systems that enables more variable adaptive formations of self-ordering. This essential interplay in humans has been characterized as manifesting "prosocial behavior," in which individuals act 'in the interest of others' partly as a means of promoting their individual status and advantages within society.  They self-assert 'for others' as a means of enhancing their self-assertion within the social network and thus their chances of survival, perhaps procreation. In contrast, human social behaviors are often considered to arise from empathic identification with others, through affinity. Then there is the view that humans are fundamentally competitive and seek as much dominance over others as possible. Obviously, all these factors are 'at play' in the self-organization of both individuals and social networks. It sounds paradoxically conflicted, and it is. If a bias toward any one aspect of interactions becomes too dominant, then the adaptive capacity of the entire system can collapse.

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Human social systems depend upon the vitality of these contrasting impulses in 'driving' the overall system's emergetn self-sustaining, collectively adaptive self-assertion. There is an inherent 'tension of opposites' in complex adaptive systems between agent self-assertion as cooperative versus competitive. That is part of the necessary underlying disorderly network activity from which emerges the system's overall self-ordering.  But, because this tension is volatile, it must be regulated by diverse social customs and conventions (or normative rules) to prevent the potential disruptions of competitive self-assertion. Nonetheless, these 'rules' are not deterministic, like the 'laws of physics.' Rather, they are often conflicting and conditionally applied, often allowing for 'exceptions to the rule,' making social interactions fantastically complex. That is part of what makes human 'belonging together as self-asserting agents' so variously and effectively adaptive.

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The Problem of Identity within the Super Organism -- Am "I" Me, We, or It?

Individual personal identity appears as necessarily amorphous, from the perspective of systems science. As a complex adaptive system, every person is a variable, yet self-similar, ongoing emergence of self-ordering, arising from the turbulence of internal diversity and conflict. Somehow, this complex system must 'identify' its 'sense of self' in relation to its environment. Every creature has to differentiate its 'self' from 'others' and its environments, but also 'in relation to' those, social animals most particularly. Human agents appear to be confronted with the most complex version of this 'self identification.' Identity means 'the same as.' What, then, is 'the same as me' and what is not? What 'belongs to me' and to what does this 'I' then 'belong to?' Social animals must 'find their self' in relation to a social system. That involves both an internal sense of a 'relational network field' and to an extended one.

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For the highly autonomous and 'self aware' systems of human agents, who are also intensely social creatures, this 'I-dentification' is fantastically complex. To operate as 'an individual' thus requires much 'reduction' of that complexity. 'I' tends to become 'me' as my body, thoughts, and feelings -- sense of identity as an internal relational network field. Beyond that, 'I' am also 'this person' identified by 'these contexts, activities, and associations' -- by 'belonging' in respect to physical place and social context. This is identification in terms of extended relational networks. Here, identity begins to become the extend relational field of a 'we.' In archaic, ecologically embedded societies, that 'we' can incorporate the non-human aspects of an ecosystem. 'I' am 'I' because I exist in and of a society that is in and of a place that is composed of the 'others' of non-human species, even aspects of landscapes.

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For human agents incorporated into a civilization-scale society, the focus of identity can shift from immediate environmental and social connections toward the super organism system 'its self.' Here, the 'i' becomes 'one with' how that system 'identifies itself' thus its agents. 'I' am 'Egyptian,' or 'American.' That identification is a kind of 'becoming one with' the 'it' of the super organism. In this trajectory of identification from 'me' versus others, or 'in relationship to' others and environment,' toward 'i as/of' large scale social systems, there appears some diminution of 'individuality.' Similarly, personal agency seems to become associated with, perhaps dependent upon that reference for identity. Individual agent self-assertion thus becomes more entangled with that of the super organism's. 'My acting' to assert my system's agency can become acting 'for, or as' the self-assertion of the larger social system.

 

In monarchical social systems, a king might speak as if he were actually the totality of state and society, using the  plural 'we' in place of the singular 'I.' That phrasing is known as the "royal we." Here, the ruler subsumes all agents into his 'pluralistic self identity.' The king effectively becomes society and the state. This 'fusion' of collective identity is mirrored in agents who identify as 'the king's men,' or his 'children,' and live as if their agency exits to 'serve the monarchy.' Similar fusion of individual an collective identity occurs in other forms of authoritarian social systems, such as the supposetly "communist" Soviet Union.

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'I' have, in some sense, 'become it.' However, in so identifying, 'I' am likely not overtly aware of having so identified. 'It' is 'just me.' At least, perhaps, until it 'acts in ways' that seem to threaten 'my' personal existence.

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The concept of individual rights, of society as needing to be based on the freedom of individuals to think and act without social constraints, is effectively an anti-social notion.

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A counter to identification with the super organism that promotes an agent's subservience to its self-assertion is  identification with other agents that promotes empathic connection. When a super organism asserts itself 'psychopathically,' or without empathy, agents can respond by withdrawing their 'sense of self' from it and act in opposition to it. That can trigger significant disruptions of the social network, resulting in events such as civil wars and revolutions.
 

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Social Super Organisms must 'Justify' Their Existence to Their Agents

So, Inter-agent social networks are intrinsic to the adaptive survival of humans. We cannot live without these. But, as system feedback networks, these emerge in a variety of configurations. The small scale, egalitarian social systems of hunter-gatherers or subsistence farmers tend to be configured in a more 'horizontal' manner, so that influence flows among agents in ways that create minimal hierarchies of status and 'power over others.' The benefits of collective assertion are generally shared in an egalitarian manner. In these contexts, the value of interactive interdependence to each individual agent might appear obvious, as an essential 'adaptive communal alliance.' As the autonomous agents collectively self-assert, so the social system does. The feedback of  'investments and returns' of individual efforts on behalf of the collective social system are recursively circulated across the social network in a relatively reciprocal manner.

 

In the more stratified social networks of larger scale civilized societies, typical of elaborated super organism social systems, a few agents tend to have much greater status and power than most, often forming 'elite' subsystems. Here, feedback flows form that promote and reinforce hierarchical inter-agent relationships. More elite individuals form their own social networks that act to promote and sustain their relative privilege. In such conditions, the inequality of privilege and power require some more overt 'social justification' that validates the inequities among individual agents as necessary or inevitable. That requires either a persuasive 'argument' or enforcement through violence -- if not both.   Those agents 'at the bottom,' usually the majority, must be persuaded, or forced, to subordinate their self-assertion to the inequitable hierarchy. Without their deference to the network biases that create hierarchical privilege and power, these simply cease to exist.

 

Civilized super organism systems are distinguished by formalized institutional systems that regulate interpersonal relationships for the purpose of sustaining and even expanding the hierarchical configuration. These include legalistic institutions like law courts, political state regimes, religious institutions allied with the state, and militaries. Civilizational systems often declare what is known as a "monopoly on violence" -- meaning violence against agents can only be enacted 'by authority of' the super organism. Agents are prohibited from using violence for their own personal purposes or against the super organism.  In its most extreme form, the justification for such hierarchy is simply: 'might makes right.'  But there are many other ways in which the super organism seeks to subordinate its agents to its 'dominion.'

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Super Organism Agent Manipulation Tactics

Fear Mongering, Divide and Conquer, Ideological Conformity, Repression,

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Manipulating Agent Self-Assertion is Fundamental to Configuring Super Organism Social Hierarchies

Inequitable hierarchies in social system networks involve feedback relationships that concentrate the competitive self-assertion of individual agents into subsystem networks within a larger social system (as in social casts or classes). Social hierarchies require the amplification of difference and conflict among agents and social subsystems. Superior and inferior status are inherent in social hierarchies. These indicate the biases in feedback flows 'up and down' a vertically configured social network. In this way, the self-assertion of higher status individuals and more elite subsystsems is enhanced, while that of the lower status agents, typically the majority, are subordinated to that of the elites. Elites only exist because network biases direct collective agency toward 'the top.' Lower status agents must, in effect, forfeit their potential influence over the flows of influence across the social network by 'transferring' it to elites.

 

This effect is evident in  modern corporate and financial institutions, where a few make most decisions and reap most benefits. But it is also found in representational democracies where individual agents 'transfer' their potential agency to an elected representative, who then becomes a member of a relatively elite class whose interests are enmeshed in a privileged subsystem that seeks to enhance its dominance over those who 'elected' it.  The elected 'representation agent' becomes an 'operative' of the super organism, which can reward that agent with increased benefits if the agent furthers the agency of the super organism. Political office, whether in authoritarian or democratic systems, creates "apparatchiks" of the super organism --agents who tend to 'identify' as 'operatives of the system.' Only a strong sense of personal connection to a more horizontally composed communal network of agents 'outside' the hierarchy can enable such agents to resist promoting the enhancement of their individual status through promoting the dominance of the super organism.

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These factors promote obstructive competition between relatively elite subsystems groups, either among corporations or government departments, that leads to loss of adaptive flows of interaction among them that would enhance the efficiency of the super organism. Their self-assertion can resist horizontal connectivity, as each seeks to achieve greater status and advantages over others. That activity in a system tends to divide the 'allegience' of low status agents among various hierarhically configured subsystems, further defusing their capacity for collective action 'in resistance to' the manipulations of those systems, thus the overarching domination of the super organism. The more 'top heavy' a super organism becomes by the concentration of self-asserting capacity in a small set of elite agents, the more detached and personally identified with the dominance of the system they become. Subsequently, the longer a hierarchical social order is maintained, the less efficient and more 'brittle' it tends to become.

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hierarchies need opposition to sustain their configuration

divide and conquer

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Super Organism as 'Divine Right,'  'Protection Racket,' ​or  'Drug Dealer'

 

​Super Organisms are Inherently 'Amoral'-- Socially and Ecologically

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Human Adaptation Depends on Manipulative Control -- and Control is Addictive

from tool making to agriculture to industrial technology

wild vs tame orientation

 

 

A Long History of Abusive Super Organism Social Systems

​Oppressive social hierarchies, authoritarian tyrannies, ​and imperial dominations have been prominent in human history for a very long while -- at least since the adoption of agriculture-based, urbanized civilization. There are examples of such civilized societies that resisted the emergence of heirarchically configured social system networks. But these seem rather few and of smaller scale. Of course, if your neighbor behaves in an aggressive, exploiting manner, it might be wise to adopt similar behaviors to protect yourself. That tactic, however, seems to lead to 'becoming what you oppose.' There is a similarly long history of rebellions against hierarchically tyrannical social networks. Many were crushed, a few led to "revolutions" intended to create a more equitable and just super organism. But somehow the hierarchies and abusive dominance seem ever to emerge yet again from the interactions of agents. Is this pattern inevitable, or are we moderns in a position finally to out-maneuver it?

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Historical Attempts to Impose Ethical Behavior by Super Organism Authority

the Axial Age as attempt to constrain sociopathic and psychopathic agent behaviors fostered by super organism mass society that become 'commandments' or legal codes imposed by social norms or legalistic codes.

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​Are Empathically Ethical Social Systems Possible?

Can human agents design social systems that effectively enforce ethical inter-agent behavior? Evidently not. Can super organism systems be configured that restrain their psychopathic self-assertion? Evidently not. What then is the actual source of pervasive interpersonal empathy and ethical behavior?

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Presumeably there will always be some percentage of individual human agents who are somehow intrinsically sociopathic or even psychopathic.

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Can we 'blame' governments and corporations for their abusive behaviors -- or even the agents that are their ir  embedded operatives? Or are these behaviors necessarily an expression of our collective failure to interact with respect and ethical regard for each other despite what our super organism systems encourage us to do for their self-assertion? If we cannot directly control our social systems, what can we do that constrains there psychopathy?

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What can Constrain Individual Agent and Super Organism Self-Assertion if not Social Customs and Law?

ethical conventions, axial age, legal constraints/consequences

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Culture as the basis for Social Systems and the Constraint of Their Abusive Self-Assertion

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