These six statements, each with supporting sub-statements may help us to understand how society works
1. AMBITION
2. PRIORITISATION
3. NATURAL SELECTION
4. THE GOLDEN RULE
5. ASSEMBLY
6. PERFORMANCE
The human world can be thought of as a myriad of nested groups; nations, political parties, criminal gangs, and so on, each having a purpose. They overlap kaleidoscopically but, each can be thought of as a society in its own right. Unless their purposes conflict they readily fit together within an overall authority. The human world comprises millions of these societies. Some are large like nations, others small like village councils and fallen-tree clearing gangs.
They all seem to have the same features. For example each has a purpose, consensus-finding methods, and a defined membership. And, to repeat, human mini-societies, using language always look up to a higher authority, for example; the market, head office, parliament, popular opinion, or God, Apart from humans, many less developed creatures like orcas, ants, slime-moulds and similar colonial microbes also form societies which operate consensus-finding procedures, etc. Human societies readily fit together in hierarchy These features are so obvious that we usually take them for granted.
Great schools of sociology, active since well before Socrates/Plato, have tried to understand our behaviour; to explain how society works. It is commonly accepted that cooperating groups have quasi-minds of their own which are independent of any one member or leader or even of a majority of members It would be a huge benefit to society if we could only devise a fool-proof way to interrogate these quasi-minds; to establish what the quasi-mind of the group is really thinking, but we still can’t do that. We still can’t control warfare or genocide. It’s a complex question, full of conflicting scholarship.
Below I hint at a possible way forward in the search for ways to interrogate the quasi-mind of the group. [crowd-sourcing the rule of three, Gustave le Bon, Wilfred Bion, Victor Framkel]
In his ‘Tractatus …’ Ludwig Wittgenstein, with help from Bertrand Russell and others, brilliantly failed in the attempt to reduce the spoken word down to a universal logic of seven statements and 352 sub-statements about language, logic, and the world [see book 240 p20, p30, p31]. Wittgenstein and Bertrand Russell didn’t deal with the interactions of groups; only of individuals in society; a common oversight but a very big one if your research covers society.
A LGHT-BULB MOMENT: It was an exciting moment for me when at university I learnt how to control and examine ideas The professor showed us how to herd swarms of inter-related thoughts and facts, propositions, dilemmas, opinions, arguments, folklore and scholarship into a common-sense workable structure The lightbulb moment for me, a callow student, came when I understood that this is a ‘one method fits all’ trick.
First using pen and paper you set the ideas swarming by by stating the problem. For example ‘HOW DOES SOCIETY WORK?’
Next you boil it all down to a small set of about five or six main statements about society.
Finally, one after the other you catch each idea in the swarm, there may be 100 or more of them, and slot it into one of your main statements. These will be your sub-sets, they comprise all the swarming ideas which seem pertinent to the problem.
The purpose of this exercise is twofold; first to arrange a random swarm of inter-related ideas, into sets which make up a sensible pattern, and while doing so to search hopefully for useful answers. I think of a butterfly collector arranging his display case.
So my question here is HOW DOES SOCIETY WORK? It now seems simple but it has taken me years to boil it down to these four words; “how does society work?”. I have finally identified the following six sub-sets of fact, opinion, guesswork, folklore, and science which I believe will cover the whole swarm. They are listed in order from the abstract (ambition) to the practical (performance). They go from ‘what is life’? to ‘how do living creatures `get things done’
So I’m hoping that the following six sets of clauses or statements together with their hundred or so sub-statements may tell us how society works.
1. AMBITION
2. PRIORITISATION
3. NATURAL SELECTION
4. THE RULE OF THREE
5. ASSEMBLY
6. PERFORMANCE
Each of these statements has a number of supporting sub-statements. Here at random are some examples of what I mean by sub-statements.
Minds of their own [book 240 p23 AND p24]
My credo [also book 240 p23]
God is …
Morality is …
Things and non-things …
Sets 1 to 4 describe the behaviour of solitary individuals acting alone whereas 5 and 6 deal with the behaviour of cooperating groups. I refer to these six statements as “Assembly and performance thinking” The reality of God is comprehensively confirmed here as every society’s ‘Mind of its own’.
So I’m saying, and this is the whole point, that there may be useful nuggets of insight waiting to be unearthed about ourselves if we can examine society as the interactions of cooperating groups rather than of cooperating individuals [book 240 p18]. It’s a simple idea.
Here are some explanatory notes on each of these six statements.
1. AMBITION
The ambition to survive and prosper is the defining essence of life. It distinguishes living matter from non-living matter. If the matter in question, even a seed, wants to survive and prosper as an individual, it is alive, otherwise it is not. The opposite of ‘alive’ is ‘not alive’. So death here is not the opposite of life; it’s an event, not a state of being.\
Ambition; the survival instinct is purely selfish, It is totally self-seeking and completely devoid of altruism. Any kindness to others has been evolved for the ultimate benefit of `the individual.
2. PRIORITISATION
For a living thing to survive and prosper it must decide between three imperatives;
(A) it must metabolise; which means acquiring and using energy (oxygen, water, food,etc) and eliminating waste.
(B) It must protect its-self against the dangers in its surroundings.
(C) It must breed.
Now the fascinating problem here, which sparks off the evolution of so many of nature’s wonderful tricks, is that every single creature must be able to prioritise between these three often conflicting imperatives; solving the most important one at the right time. Split-seconds or decades may be needed to determine the decision to (A), (B), or (C)
3. NATURAL SELECTION
Darwin’s atural selection speaks for its self. It runs right through the six sets of statements about society. The only reason for including it here is to convince doubters that the human is indeed just one animal among a million others, and that there is a natural continuum between for example the bacteria and `the human. So I won’t go on about it here. Those who already accept this zoology should skip this set of clauses.
God’s ‘existence’as the personification of a society’s ‘mind of it’s own’ is entirely compatible with the doctrine of natural selection.
4. THE GOLDEN RULE
We readily accept the idea of ‘Trial and error’. But the truth of it is that getting something done has to be a three-phase process. If you err it makes no sense to act again without first reviewing what you did wrong. Typically the three phases are act > review > plan > act> repeat >>>. These functions are mutually trumping as in the game ‘Scissors, Paper, and Stone’ Each function informs or constrains the next. I refer to this as ‘The Golden Rule’. Logically there cannot be more or less than three mutually trumping functions; four or more introduces ambiguity and two or less introduces ‘hunting’. So it seems right to look for three mutually trumping functions when studying the principle of action anywhere in nature, from microbes to humans.
‘How does society work?’ It’s a double-question. In the first place it’s about the incorporation or assembly of a working group despite the total selfishness of each individual member. Then, once incorporated, how do these groups perform? By trial and error or what?
5. ASSEMBLY
This is about assembling a purposeful working group. It requires 1, that individuals have evolved a propensity for self-restraint this being similar to our evolved propensity for language. 2 that individuals are able to sense of whether or not there may be enough other individuals willing to work together on the problem in hand. This Is referred to as ‘quorum sensing’. And 3 that individuals can recognise the other members of the group they are in.
Assembly into a purposeful group creates a group ‘mind of its own’ which is independent of any majority or leader. The biggest prize of all would be a universally accepted fool-proof method to interrogate any group mind. That would be huge. It would resolve the perpetual arguments between left and right-wing politicians; between autocracy, democracy, oligarchy, dictatorship, theocracy and feudalism the three phases of ‘do > review > plan > and repeat’ may be a promising first step towards this interrogation.
6. PERFORMANCE
Performance here is about how the working group, once assembled performs the task it has set its self. I am proposing that the group must iterate the ‘review, plan, act’ golden rule, 4 above. I’m saying that logically there is no other possible way by which it can achieve group performance.
(References here are to tonyacbwilson’s set of 240 illustrated sketchbook diaries)
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