The Big Picture

A social organism is comprised of people forming associations for the purpose of conducting the necessary business of life in, one would suppose, the most salubrious fashion possible. Somehow, though, things always seem to get fouled up by a variety of noxious enterprises. Predatory banking practices, for example, and politicians who pander to moneyed interests while posing as champions of the people and who keep promising solutions for the problems caused by the “solutions” they had installed in the past. Corporations price gouging, price fixing, buying legislators, cooking the books, etc. I could go on. But whatever suspicions one may have regarding the machinations of the powers-that-be and their intentions toward the society at large, one must allow that, under the pres¬ent system, the possibility for the proper coordination of social/political/economic dynamics required to conduct our affairs in the most salubrious fashion possible is sorely missing. That is, we lack a proper cybernetic network with which to synergize a confluence of all the organs of a social body so there is more symbiosis between them with less conflict and exploitation.

As it is now, the prevalent social dynamic is one in which members of particular associations tend to regard their group’s survival as paramount over recognizing and maintaining their proper role within the overall scheme of things. Examples of such behavior are rampant and indulged in by whatever kind of association one can think of be it a government agency, a business, a political party, a street gang, a religious organization, etc. We have, for instance, quasi-religious groups, either godly or secular, tearing at each other’s throats to secure some illusive high moral ground as their exclusive territory; right-to-life v pro-choice, for instance. Also, there are the political par-ties who contend that their ideology provides the only worthwhile perception to the absolute exclusion of all others and, thus, we forego the possibility of forging the super-vision necessary for more effective governance. We have bureaucracies like Health and Human Services, better known as Welfare, which exacerbate the very conditions they were formed to alleviate so as to ensure their own survival at the expense of those they were supposed to serve. We have street gangs like the Crips and Bloods, which are, perhaps, the most brutal manifestations of this pathologically insular mind set but they are merely conforming to the behavior of the society at large, i.e., their associations are the only ones that matter. And we have the media providing the asylum where all this pathology becomes institutionalized.

Competing factions, such as Right-to-life vs Pro-choice, the Crips vs the Bloods and such, can serve to check one another so that neither side will become all powerful but what cannot be checked is the continuing deterioration of the social fabric these contentious groups cause.

It seems like all of our institutions lack a sense of propriety in managing themselves in relation to other institutions and to the overall social organism to which they all belong. Without this holistic sense of things it is, of course, impossible to create and maintain a wholesome social/political system wherein all organs can achieve their proper goals while at the same time contributing to the health and well being of the whole society as they go about their business. With a sense of social propriety, a symbiotic confluence of all participating entities can be created that promotes particular and overall conditions of synergistic vitality. This is what all groups and individuals need to be interested in promoting in spite of their differences. This would make it possible for everyone to contribute to the integrity of the whole social organism while at the same time serving their own self-interests as well.

Is this an unrealistic ideal? All ideals are by definition unrealistic. They are unreachable goals worth striving to approximate. The ideal is to keep trying to get as close to the ideal as possible.

The merging of self-interest and common interest, however, is not some abstract alien idea that needs to be artificially imposed upon people; it is in our natures to be so oriented. The individual members of primitive tribes work for the welfare of the tribe because it is vitally connected to their own self-interest. In our more advanced societies we have individuals working for the common interest of various associations, or “tribes”, which are extensions of their self-interest, be it a business, a political party, a religious sect, etc. And, though, one may also believe that one is working for the betterment of the whole society through one’s associations, this does not always prove to be the case. A business can provide products and jobs but be harmful to the environment. Political parties in seeking their own advantage can interfere with establishing and promoting optimum social conditions. Religious leaders who insist that their beliefs should be the law of the land create conflicts in society that threaten the ongoing cohesion of the overall community to which they belong and which is based upon religious freedom. We can lose sight of the larger picture as we become overly obsessed with our own peephole view of the world. The question for society is how to manage and contain all its various groups in a coherent form.

Soviet communism attempted this through coercion from the top. The State had absolute power to create the perfect society and it botched the job. Attempting to micromanage a society from the top down is a flagrant violation of the nature of things. A macrocosm cannot create the microcosm. The microcosm creates the macrocosm. This is the natural condition of things and applicable to social organisms as well as any other structure. Trying to form a society the other way, from the top down, makes for unwieldy top-heavy structures that are impossible to balance and eventually must fall apart for that very reason. The social structure of the United States is also much too top heavy and seems to be losing the battle in its continual struggle to maintain a pragmatic balance. There is a lot of checking and finger pointing going on but nothing much to promote balance.

Proportion and symmetry are part and parcel of the concept of balance and these three elements might serve us better as societal goals than do the concepts of justice, equality and liberty. Of course, balance, proportion and symmetry do not have the seductive power as the concepts of justice, equality and liberty do, but without the former principles in view the latter ones are mere mirages that torment us with continual disillusionment. But, again, balance, proportion and symmetry can only be achieved by allowing the microcosm to form the macrocosm as in the balance, proportion and symmetry achieved through anatomical organization.

Comparing the dynamics of the human anatomy to a social organism can serve to shed some light on the subject. In imagining the body politic of the United States as a human body the federal government would be its brain. As such, it is presently seen as an enormous monstrosity, grotesquely out of proportion to the social body that struggles to support it. It is a brain riddled with tumorous bureaucracies, all swollen out in cancerous profusion that consider themselves to be the whole purpose of the society they feed upon. They consider their existence to be vitally important. More so than the vitality of the whole organism. Nothing should happen unless it is first processed through their corridors. This would be comparable to an individual, who, through some weird genetic program, designed a brain to micromanage every detail of bodily function while interfering with much of the body’s necessary autonomous activity in the process.

The role of the brain in one’s body is to coordinate, synchronize and modify certain bodily conditions by being constantly alert and immediately and accurately responsive to them via the body’s nervous system. The messages to, from and within the brain must be handled swiftly and efficiently in order to maintain a healthy condition throughout the body. If, however, as it is with the federal government, communications are forced to slither around cancerous labyrinths oozing out ineffectual, contradictory, counterproductive signals then the condition is one of ill health. The brain is at odds with itself and is unable to function as a coordinated coordinating unit.

Now, this is not a prelude to a conservative harangue about the need for less government. No. Arguments for more or less government tend to obscure and distract from the rationale of establishing and maintaining a government proportionate to the body it is part of - which must now and always be the desired objective.

For this objective to be realized the government, of course, must change. Not just in the perennial transition of power, which is a meaningless exercise for entrenched bureaucracies. Not just in terms of cosmetic change but in terms of a complete dismantling and re-creation of all the organs of the body politic on an on going basis. That is, continually, periodically taking our institutions apart and putting them back together again, forming and reforming them constantly in ways best suited to deal with the ever changing social configurations that have been consistently outmaneuvering our misshapen, overweight body politic for decades.

For this to happen, changes need to be made in government similar to those that have been and are being made in business. Namely, the transformation of linear, hierarchical bureaucratic dinosaurs into spatial arrangements of small, discrete, fleet of foot components able to respond and transform themselves as volatile social, economic and environmental conditions require.

As we have seen, it is the natural order of things to develop out from the microcosm to the macrocosm. The microcosm forms the macrocosm. Indeed, everything is created in like manner. The complex intricacy of the human body is formed and maintained through the autonomous networking of individual cells. And, in turn, a system of small integrated components is what we should be looking at for the re creation of the social organism.