Thomas Crowl

How would hunter-gatherers run the world? (pssst... They Do!)

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:

• Each individual knew almost everyone he/she encountered - and then encountered them repeatedly - thoughout their lives. Strangers were not unknown but rare and never the majority.
• Each individual knew their own social status and the social status of those with whom they interacted.
• (An important corollary is that individuals DID NOT have more than one group with which they identified and hence separate statuses for separate groups.)
• The altruism drive was limited to, closely coincided with, and did not often extend beyond the boundaries of this social grouping.

Further:

• There was ubiquitous awareness that personal well-being was dependent on the group's well-being.
• There was ubiquitous awareness that whatever the group decision process was - and there was almost certainly a range - decisions on group matters had whole group effects.
• Effects of group decisions to the extent they were knowable, were known to the whole group.
• Individual concealment of assets was difficult (and had no value regardless) while intragroup distribution enhanced the status of the giver.
• Lines of communication and influence were proximate and immediate.
• Decision maker(s) could not persist in the role without consensus agreement by the group.
• The Ultimatum Game's implications made it imperative that the range of asset and power distribution within this group not exceed limits defined by that group as fair.

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:

• The loss of congruity between the social network (a hypothetical natural human community size related to Dunbar's Number) and the social organism necessitating multiple social networks within a single social organism.
• A hierarchical stratification of those networks roughly mirroring a hunter-gatherer pecking order...
• Accentuated by an inherent social inertia arising with the loss of this congruity and a break in the immediate influence feedback loops such congruity provided and...
• More importantly an additional problem relating to scalability of biological altruism and loss of related forms of proximity. (see Self-Interest vs Altruism - Problems in Scaling the Decision Process)

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 

Posted by CulturalEngineer at 8:07 AM