I have written before on what I call "abstraction." I have remarked the human capacity to form general observations, e.g. that all of the same kind of thing have common properties, and then to treat those properties as independent elements for thought. As an example, the Egyptians knew the common properties of the right triangle. They used it to reallocate land to the appropriate owners after the annual flooding of the Nile. However it was a Greek, Pythagoras, who formulated the abstraction that in the right triangle the square of the long side (hypotenuse) equaled the sum of the squares of the other two sides.
Humans have applied this capacity in a variety of ways ranging from religion to science. In sociopolitical fields it is, for example, rampant in the fictions of law. In terms of our immediate situation it is what permitted the economic debacle which we are living through. Alan Greenspan, who was hired to watch over this process admitted he did not understand the process of securitizing mortgages, but idiotically and ideologically he assumed the "market" would control any such process: this meant he believed investors and sellers would understand even if he did not. The Indian government did not invest in these securities because, as they said, they did not understand them.
I have been reading recently of what I take to be another dimension of this human capability, namely, complexity. I have been reading The Collapse of Complex Societies by Joseph Tainter. We have had a number of works of late on societal collapse, perhaps because of concerns about our own future, that attribute such events to exhaustion of resources by disastrous agricultural practices or other processes or by overpopulation, war, climate shifts, etc. Tainter sees sociopolitical complexity as another reason for societal collapse. The underlying thesis is that primitive societies, e.g. hunter gatherers, direct all their resources to survival. As societies become more complex, i.e. functions other than hunting and gathering are adopted, such as social organization, religion, etc. they impose a greater energy demand upon the society. As long as the increased complexity pays off in added benefits everything works. However, when the burden of this continually increasing sociopolitical complexity outstrips the energy available to support it the society begins to decline at an increasing rate until a tipping point is reached and collapse takes place.
Using, as so many have in the past, the Roman Empire as a primary, although not the only, example of this process, Tainter asks why should the most dominant, powerful, empire of its time collapse, and in comparatively short order? It did not exhaust its immense and diverse resources. Rather it became so complex it was no longer governable. If you will recall, in this process of decline and disintegration the Empire had to be split into the Western and Eastern Roman Empires.
Let us look at some of the steps along the path to decline and collapse:
• The time came when the Roman army could no longer be supplied with manpower from Roman citizenry alone. "Barbarians" were recruited and could earn Roman citizenship and a retirement farm through military service. We did away with the draft after Vietnam and are now giving citizenship to those who serve in our volunteer (paid) military.
• The early success of Rome's military operations and the economic benefits it brought to Rome through loot, tribute and taxes sustained a vastly improved standard of living in Rome thereby addicting Romans to militarism.
• As complexity continued to rise with the increasing vastness of the empire the gains relative to the cost of this militarism began to decline. Eventually further expansion was halted and imperial policy shifted to maintenance of the Empire, especially against the increasing pressure of the barbarians.
• In defense of the Empire's perimeter the Romans began to recruit barbarians in their home areas rather than move them from one point to another as pressures required. This identity of soldiers and their home contributed to the rise of local power, which eventually contributed to the fragmentation of the Empire. Rome had been sensitive to this issue under the Republic, which forbade an army commander to bring his army any closer to Rome than the Rubicon river. As you know, Julius Caesar disregarded this rule and Rome became a despotic imperium as a result. Maxim: A standing army is a two edged sword. It inevitably breeds militarism and thereby distorts democracy's goals, it inevitably creates an elite focused on controlling that army's power, it devours resources with little societal benefit and it is not focused on human wellbeing. I admit that is a little long for a maxim, but the consequences of militarism, which our society increasingly suffers from cannot be overemphasized.
To continue with sociopolitical complexity; Tainter offers four concepts fundamental to understanding sociopolitical collapse
Four concepts discussed to this point can lead to an understanding of why complex societies collapse. These concepts are:
1. human societies are problem-solving organizations;
2. sociopolitical systems require energy for their maintenance;
3. increased complexity carries with it increased costs per capita; and
4. investment in sociopolitical complexity as a problem-solving response often reaches a point of declining marginal returns.
Let me see if I can illustrate some of this process using a fundamental sociopolitical component - communication. This activity is at its simplest when one human being we'll call "A", communicates with another we'll call "B", although, as a retired public librarian I know that his situation is anything but simple. Now bring a third human being "C" into this process. Not only do A and B have to figure out what the other is communicating, including all those variables such as intention, frame of reference, etc. they now have to figure out the same variables regarding C. Most importantly A and B now have to figure out how C's communication modifies that between them with regard to all the variables of human discourse. This is where the exponential increase in complexity begins. C of course is presented with this more complex problem for starters. It is easy to see how rapidly complexity with regard to this component of society can progress exponentially to criticality. This is not to say that complexity in itself is always the problem. We put men on the moon and built the Large Hadron Collider using complexity. We also created our current financial debacle, the near destruction of New Orleans and the Deepwaater Horizon oil well explosion relying on complexity. One of the major differences between these two results of communication complexity is the extent to which a passionate and determined effort to understand underlay these efforts, or did not. If understanding is the goal the resulting complexities, while not free from mistakes are decidedly less prone to them. Complexity of communication because it so rapidly increases the problems of communication is a refuge for scoundrels and can create monstrous results for mankind. Perhaps the most notable example is war. The G. W. Bush administration deliberately polluted society's communication complexity by lying about the motives of Saddam Hussein and by disguising their motive to control middle eastern oil and declaring that the enterprise would be a "cakewalk."
Another consequence of sociopolitical complexity and one that initially stimulated my interest in it, is complexity's effect on democracy. From what we have said above it is easy to see how rapidly the ordinary citizen of any sizable democracy can be and is aced out of the effective participation democracy presupposes. This is why I think it is extremely important for citizens to understand societal complexity, to demand the transparency necessary for that understanding, to receive training in how to deal with it, and to have the experience of evaluating with others a proposed course of social action. The latter is important because participation in such groups enhances the awareness of this complexity and can reveal methods for dealing with it. Not least of the benefits can be an improved understanding of when to trust complexity and to what degree and when not to trust it.
We have politicians promising "transparency" without, in my judgment, understanding the enormity of introducing transparency to any appreciable degree into the complexity of our enormous governmental environment. It is questionable whether in the long run this country, not to mention this state can maintain its current structure. Long ago the magazine The Futurist carried an article arguing that the North American continent would politically realign itself into economically similar "countries." The author suggested that economic identities would eventually outweigh the current political configurations. The common economic concerns of the Pacific Coast, Rocky Mountain, Great Plains and Eastern Seaboard would be the "countries" of the future. As he put it, the farmers of our Midwest have far more in common with the Canadian Prairie Provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba than they do with either seaboard of the North American continent. Among other things, commonality of interest goes a long way toward reducing the burden of sociopolitical complexity.
The length of this post may prompt readers to consider it an example of its subject.
Bob Newhard
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment