- Manifesto of the Netocratic Society
- I. Society as living and rational system
- Introduction
- Society is a living system, which has mind, reason or social consciousness and could be defined as rational system. The living (biological) systems generate, proceed and verified information. The rational systems generate, proceed and verified knowledge. The biological systems operate with genes; the rational systems operate with memes (units of knowledge).
- The knowledge is conscious information, which could be truth (proven or positive) of false or unproven believes. Hence the process of verification of knowledge is the real engine of social evolution.[1] As a rational system society is composed by two sub-systems - social being and social consciousness, which have very complicated strictures of additional sub-sub-systems. Society originates and more precisely upgrade living systems with reason.
- As a living and rational system society is rule by a subjective factor (human mind) and periodically self-regulate by objective laws. So, social evolution is dialectics of both factors.[2] Accumulation of knowledge makes society more complex, which insist changes in existed social structure in both sub-systems - social being (economy) and social consciousness (culture). The human factor represents “governing body” of society on all levels. It is small elite of decision-makers called governing elite, which tends to create a hierarchy. Objective factors means – inevitable changes in existed social structure, due to accumulated knowledge, which is self-regulating process and tend to reorganise society periodically in heterarchical structure. Therefore the social evolution is a result of dramatic clash between the objective tendency to heterarchy and subjective tendency of hierarchy. The human factor creates quantitative changes, objective factor lead to qualitative leaps to new and more adequate social structure. In human history has only two such fundamental leaps to new social structure – transition from Hunting and Gathering society to Agrarian society, or so called Agrarian revolution 10 000 years ago and transition from Agrarian to Industrial society, or so called Industrial revolution, about 200 years ago. Now modern society is on the brink of transition from Industrial to “Post-industrial” society, which could be considered as third such crucial transition in entire history of mankind.
- So, with time evolving society becomes more and more complex and man-created hierarchical structure - les sustainable and out-of-date. At certain point of development this situation inevitably leads to qualitative leap replacing both social structure and decision-making mechanism of society with more adequate to new realities.
- Culture and Civilisation
- The social evolution is a process of generation and verification of positive knowledge; process for transforming “belief systems” into validated by the practice knowledge. Society evolves trough creation of cultures and civilizations. Some people accept the terms “culture” and “civilization” as synonyms. In fact they are very different. In short Culture is the content of accumulated knowledge, both beliefs and proven. Civilization is a level of verification of knowledge achieved by mankind as a whole.
- Culture is the content of social consciousness of one particular social group of society, which include – religion believes, moral norms, myths, aesthetic views, positive knowledge, ideas, laws, philosophy etc. The civilization is level of development of humanity as a whole due to achieved method for generation and verification of knowledge. Hundreds cultures are “melted” to create single civilization. Hence the cultures could be considered as a “social species”, they originate, straggle to survive, evolve and some of them perish, in case they are not able to process knowledge, generate memes and civilization do not need them anymore. Any culture is an engine for verification of knowledge.
- Thousand cultures have verified the knowledge of mankind forming only three civilisations with increased complexity – Empirical, Technological and Humanitarian. Empirical civilization verifies the knowledge trough “test and error”. This is Agrarian society. Technological civilisation verifies knowledge trough experiments and discovered laws of natural sciences. This is typical for Industrial society. Forthcoming Humanitarian civilization will verify knowledge trough laws of social and human sciences. Consequently, civilisation is a level of evolved thinking and social consciousness. (See Appendix 1 - Evolution at Glance)
- Dialectics of Economy and Culture
- Economy is a mode of production and distribution of gods, respectively redistribution of wealth. Culture is a degree of development of social consciousness, which determinate decision-making mechanism. The amalgam of economy and culture is structure-determinating factor. Historically societies are organised around three structure-determinating material values: slavery (Roman Empire), land (Feudal societies) and money (Industrial societies) and two ideological values - religion (Caliphate) and political power (Communism and Fascism). Forthcoming "post-industrial" society supposes to be based on moral, which is a spiritual (cultural) value.
- As a rational system society generates and verifies knowledge. Therefore the knowledge is the real engine of social evolution, so -- slaves, land, money, religion and politics are transitional values of social development. From point of view of economics the fundamental values: slavery, land, money, politics and knowledge are also stricture-determinating factors for several politico-economical stages in the course of social evolution – Slavery, Feudalism, Capitalism, failed Communism, disastrous Fascism and forthcoming Epistemism (post-capitalism). [3] Transitions from Hunting and Gathering to Agrarian society and from Agrarian to Industrial society are two major revolutions in human history.
- So, approaching transition from Industrial or Technological society to “Post-technological” society is transition from money-driven to knowledge-based society and could be considered as third major revolution, facing humanity today.
- From point of view of society as an evolving rational system, accumulations of technical and social innovations gradually change society. At certain point of complexity, existing structure becomes obstacle for further development and qualitative leap lead to establishing of new structure and new governing elite. These qualitative leaps in social development are known as revolutions. So the qualitative leaps in social being (economics) and social consciousness (cultural) sub-systems leads to structural changes in society and terminate in two types of revolutions – economic and spiritual (in sense of cultural).
- The economic revolutions reflect increased complexity of society due to accumulated knowledge. The spiritual (cultural) revolutions reflect changes in social consciousness. Most important spiritual revolutions are: transition from polytheism to monotheism, transition from religious to political consciousness. Forthcoming spiritual revolution is approaching transition from domination of political to domination of moral social consciousness, which in fact is emergence of social self-consciousness. However because of interconnections between both sub-systems changes are made simultaneously and affect profoundly entire system.
- Both economic and spiritual evolution and revolutions are due to Social Creativity. The social creativity is an engine for generation of knowledge. Therefore both economical and cultural revolutions are final result of accumulated relevant innovations. Transition from Agrarian to Industrial society is an example of economic revolution expired by technical innovations. It started as Industrial revolution and ended whit changes in political structure of society. It also replaces dominance form of social consciousness from religion to politics, which is spiritual or Cultural Revolution. Cultural revolutions are expired by ideas. They relate primary to changes in social consciousness and secondary affect social being or economy. Example of ideological revolutions among many others is accepting Christianity as an official religion for Roman Empire, which promotes religious idea of one God, and lead to replacement of polytheism and dominance of monotheism as form of social consciousness. More recently - transition from religious to political social consciousness, presented by Renaissance and Enlightenment is also such example.
- Social evolution “repeats” itself in exponentially speeded cycles. Any revolution shifted out existed social structure; create new one and new governing elite. The governing elite creates a new hierarchy, which at certain point of development become destructive and new revolution is inevitable to replace existed social structure with more adequate structure and new elite. The key factors in interaction between economic and cultural sub-systems are the people who made decisions. This is so because society is a rational system and social evolution go in parallel with development of culture in general and mindset of decision-makers in particular.
- According to Marx “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles”.[4] This is not a mistake. It is level of understanding of society, based exclusively on economy, therefore just part of the story. For the time being, due to lack of knowledge for society Marx’s paradigm is more political and ideological rather than philosophical.
- This paradigm seems to explain society satisfactory on earlier stages of capitalism, but fails to create classless society and cannot explain current very complex society, political situation and offer a vision for future development.
- However society is not only economy, it is also culture, which is equally, perhaps even more important component at the present days of social evolution. The current view of society is still dominated by economy although it is focused on profit and redistribution of wealth instead of classes and class struggles. Now, in the remoteness of one and half century, we have more complex knowledge and understanding of society as evolving system. Therefore society needs a new paradigm of social development, describing society as a rational system composed by two equally important major sub-systems – economy and culture or economy and decision-making mechanism.
- The course of History and the course of Social Evolution
- As rational system objective and subjective factors determine social being. In other words – clash between objective laws and human nature is engine of social evolution. The social evolution could be influenced enormously by decision-makers, ruling class, or so-called governing elite, because of various reasons. During the times of “one god - one king” rulers firmly believe that their power originates by God. Unsurprisingly the political power is inherited.
- Accumulated knowledge leads to heterarchical structure. The reason (human factor or governing elite) of all times creates hierarchical structures, narrowing the circle of decision-makers. Hierarchical development is quantitative process of accumulation of knowledge. The accumulated knowledge or increased complexity of society creates heterarchical structure - network or set of sub-systems of newly emerged sub-systems and expands the circle of decision-makers. For instance transition from Agrarian society to Industrial society is transition from strictly hierarchical society like absolute monarchy to democracy and free-market economy, which are heterarchical by nature – political parties and elected politicians make decisions collectively and economy is self-regulated.
- In hierarchical social structure the governing elite see stability and sustainability. In fact hierarchy create proportionate instability. This is so, because hierarchical structure increases social injustice, destruct the moral and social temperate inside the social pyramid arises. To keep thing in place, the governing elite of all times create special institutions to secure its power and hierarchy. This is the most dramatic clash between human nature and objective course of social evolution. As first sophisticated hierarchy Catholic Church has created Saint Inquisition, Communism and Fascism – political police and nowadays corporatocracy try to set up a Big brother type of control. All are doomed or already failed to keep stability. Eventually the hierarchical systems inevitably collapse, because they need new and more adequate structure.
- All existing forms of governing of society could be classified in three fundamental forms – autocracy, democracy and netocracy.[5] Autocracy is form of governing by one ruler – pharaoh, khan, tsar, king, sultan, emperor and so on, i.e. one person is decision-maker and responsible for all consequences. Decisions are made in favour of tiny minority of society. Democracy is collective form of making decisions and taking responsibilities. It involves political parties with competed ideas and voting system in favour of majority makes the final decisions. Forthcoming Netocratic society is collaborative decisions making and responsibilities taking mechanism; decisions are made by experts, verified in social practice and works in favour of society as a whole. Therefore netocracy is a qualitative new level of evolving democracy.
- Ongoing social changes could be very slow, (quantitative accumulations) or dramatically speeded (qualitative) leaps. Quantitative changes elaborate the hierarchy in social system and governing elite; quantitative leaps change its structure, and replace existed elite with new one. Quantitative changes are evolutionary, qualitative changes are truly revolutionary. Transition from a hierarchy to heterarchy is a qualitative leap to new social stricture and governing elite.
- Therefore the Course of History is a process of subjective influence or component of social evolution. The Course of Social Evolution itself is a transition from hierarchical to heterarchical social structure or from simple manmade hierarchy to sophisticated self-organised heterarchy. This is objective process. So, people create chain of events or history, objective laws periodically correct this creation; this is the course of Social evolution. For instance WWI, which was provoked by the mindset of ruling monarchs at the time, is a course of history, disappearance of monarchy as institution from political landscape in Europe thereafter is a course of social evolution. In general empire building is manmade course of history; the collapses of all known empires are examples of course of social evolution. Eventually both subjective and objective factors lead to self-organisation of society as a living and rational system. This is natural or objective law and obviously nobody could change this course. So people could change the form of society creating events (course of history), but cannot change the course of social evolution itself.
- In most general terms the course of social evolution is from man-created (governing elite) hierarchy to objective-created heterarchy; from autocracy to democracy; from democracy to netocracy; or from Agrarian to Technological and nowadays from Technological to Humanitarian civilization. (See Appendix 5
- - Evolution of Social Consciousness, Decision-making mechanism, Economy & Civilizations)
- Notes
1. Social evolution closely relate to Anthropology and Philosophy of history. The Anthropology is a human science dedicated to origin and behaviour of Homo Sapience. It studies evolutionary of Homo Sapience, (Archaeology), Culture ("Social anthropology), linguistic etc. The Philosophy of history is philosophical interpretation of history from point of view of one particular school of thought – Idealism, Materialism, Dualism, Hegelianism, Dialectical materialism, Humanism, Positivism, Phenomenology, Structuralism, among many others. Social evolution is new systematic approach to society, which has significant heuristic potential compare with very speculative philosophical interpretation. It is a key discipline in the cluster of Human sciences. Keep in mind that modern Industrial society is based on natural sciences, respectively technology. Future Humanitarian society will be based on the achievements of Human science and collaborative intelligence.
