The discontent of choice and competition

folowing on Evolving a Viable Society

by Arthur Lerner - 28.06.2011 - 3:52am

Andrew -

I share your sentiments, but not everything about your ideas for solution so far as I understand them. Evidence from pre-history and small examples of matriarchy presently points to possibility for something different, and that the universe - and certainly the biosphere - is organized and sustained on different principles. What is asserted to have changed around 6,000 years ago my be an aberration to what what transpired previously, but it coincided with the growth of human capability (in any specie's capability) since the dawn of time that transcended all but the most basic biological ones. Up until then, pretty much the only "technological" abilities consisted of making rudimentary tools, deliberate planting/harvesting or food, creating clothing and rudimentary shelter/structures, and mastery of fire and basic cooking. Whatever could be passed on in terms of understanding had to be oral or by physical demonstration. Once language for the abstact increased, and more importantly the ability to preserve ideas in writing (including chiseling) things began to change more rapidly than in all previous experience on the planet. And for much of that history most of the direct advantage - and certainly most of the ability to down or deploy it - rested with relatively small elites. Therein lies some core change to the ability to distribute influence, concentrate power, and eventually to increase the salience of certain types of power. Historical circumstance favored brawn, especially the ability by a few to exploit the types of power based on "power over" others rather than power in other contexts, e.g. control vs. empowerment, consolidation vs. sharing. This is vastly oversimplified and absent some intermediate steps and supplementary dynamics, but, I believe, more accurate than not.

While I have read neither of the books you recommend, I have long been influenced by The Chalice and the Blade written
over twenty years ago, which advances pretty much the same ideas and history as Societies of Peace. I applaud any attempt to regain a different balance, but the circumstances on planet Earth have irrevocably changed by such things as population has grown roughly 60,000% since then and the majority of individual counties (rather than tribes or family units) that are now ruled/managed/governed/maintained each have populations exceeding that of the entire planet back then. Add to that the major issues of power you speak to are created and maintained by a) the largest of those, and b) that most people on the planet are both affected by and aware of what happens thousands of miles away and some of the "irreversible" changes (short of population annihilation) become apparent. All this without mentioning jet travel, electricity, nuclear power (peaceful and not), television computers and the internet, and that the biggest concentrations of population are now urban. Changing hearts and minds in this environment is possible, and there are some dramatic examples, but so is the withering power in physical and economic domains controlled by a comparatively small elite (even they aggregately may be double the number of the word's population 6,000 years ago).

In my initial comment in this discussion I mentioned Spiral Dynamics (SDi), which is to my knowledge the most comprehensive and "maps to known facts" theory of human societal and individual evolution around. It acknowledges some of the shifts you mention, and goes back as far as 50,000 years. It is short on matriarchy issues, especially as it looks at dominant forms of social evolution more recently (starting roughly 5,000 years ago). It notes, among other things, that while the overall human condition seems to have eternal strivings, the dominant modes of expressing them and living them out shift, and shift more rapidly the more recently they occur. Moreover, there are dialectic patterns at play as each "level" on the spiral moves up to the next, and a form of more "evolved/integrated" expression of each spiral at every other level. Once "power over" became a core dynamic it has competed with "power among" as part of the dialectic set, but each power among stage still carried vestiges of the previous power over one. (e.g. akey power over cycle was establishing what we think of as kingdoms in early Egypt, China, etc. It took millenia for another dominant set of beliefs and values to co-equal or transcend that as the core set. That, over simplified, turned out to be Rule Based as expressed mostly by early legal codes and even more by religion. Note that early (and still existing) formal religion, while invoking higher powers/spirits/deities, were patterned within the power and control notions of the previous stage. That stage remained dominant until the Renaissance where individual expression and achievement began to be legitimized and had political and social consequences. I won't detail the rest except to note a) even many "contemporary" ideas circulated back then, but never with sufficient traction to spread very far and hold, and that a "Green" (all SDi levels are color coded) level has emerged relatively recently, about 150 years ago, and is growing relative to the basic one growing since the Renaissance. It is characterized by communal concern, and other things we associate with thinking Green.

This latter part seems to match well with what you sense is happening and called for. It is no accident that it emerged so recently and not in ancient Rome, but that note that the "Renaissance" stage has lasted for about 500 years already and it's not going to evaporate soon, much less even reduce its sway to the extent the Catholic Church as over the same period. We can hasten the arrival, but have less control over the rate of dissolving the influences from the past. All of them are still with us to some extent in the most modern societies, with hunter/gatherer and tribal imprints being the most faint. No matter how revolutionary change ideas seem, at a social/cultural level the seem to ultimately work out as evolutionary.

In a different vein I want to mention a framework articulated in another book from over 20 years ago, Finite and Infinite Games. I wrote a "private"/individual reply about it to Brent following his second reply to me. I did so because, as you can tell, I try to deal with some of the interacting complexities inherent in exploring this discussion by writing longer to explain arcane ideas. I did not want to bore others who might join the discussion, and - in fact - have since done so. I want to thank you, especially, for raising new points and lines of thinking that are rich, provocative, and point to something "better" in the future.

I will only here offer a tidbit of what I think is one of the ten best books I've ever read analyzing the human condition. It opens with this postulate: "There are at least two kinds of games … A finite game is played for the purpose of winning, an infinite game for the purpose of continuing the play."
If you accept this premise it then leads to at least twenty other "truths"/implications in turn. The next one states a finite game ends when somebody wins, which mean you must know when it began, which leads to such things as: you can't change the rules of a finite game during play, but you must allow for rule change if it becomes necessary or desirable to keep playing an infinite one (by agreement of the players, not because they got bored or tired). This becomes rapidly more complex and deep, and touches on EVERY form of human participation (with each other) than is informed/directed by purpose. Games aren't just sports, they include ALL wars (at least until the end of the 20th century), all businesses, all tribes and cultures that have ever existed. The book is not advocating to end finite games, but points out the deep (if sometimes subtle) effects of playing finitely or infinitely and even what happens when certain games are played "within" other ones. It reveals the fractures inherent in some of the paradigms we live within, including - for all its benefits - idealized Green in SDi terms. The book is rich and dense, and I hope you will read at leas the first 40 (of 101) sections of it (about 50 pages) to get a fuller and more useful sense of it than I can convey here.

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