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What has been and remains fundamental to the human condition,
is accounting. Beginning with the social bookkeeping that we see as grooming in primate groups, human social fabric is imbued with the concept of accounting. Accounting
enables a human group to establish trust through continuous exchange which also
enables the group to regulate and compensate for inclinations to, or opportunities for, individual self-seeking.
The important point that Graeber (2012) makes, is that the
purpose of accounting is not to balance the books, but rather to enable a social homeostasis
around exchanges in order to sustain social fabric. A classic example is the borrowing of a ‘cup of sugar’. Today
we would think that returning the exact amount borrowed is the required
behavior to sustain social fabric. But Graeber points out that the practice is
always to return either less or more than was borrowed, as a means to ensure the
ongoing relationship. Returning the exact amount operates as a signal that the initial
borrower does not want the relationship to continue - that in fact the borrower wants no more obligation and thus no further relationship. Thus accounting serves the
purpose of sustaining an informal ‘owing/debt’ that act as a homeostasis of trust and social fabric.
In this way, the informal system of accounting enables the
sustainability of a continual indebted/credited-ness that is the substance of
social fabric in the hunter-gather groups and early emerging agricultural societies. The primal nature this sort of social and moral accounting is easily
seen in ancient systems of ‘karma’ and ‘sin’ and even in modern relationships
were people apply a sort of love bookkeeping – “I love you more than you seem
to love me”.
In the last post I made the case that the inherent constraints
of the small groups (hunter-gatherers and small agricultural communities) were
shaped by the accounting that could be ‘held in collective memory’. In turn the accounting
system was shaped by group status, kinship, and other dimensions inherent in
social structures and processes.
Accounting was the technology that constrained individual
identity and potential for self-seeking, within the group status-role-kinship structure
– imbuing humans with a quintessentially social nature. Furthermore, this inherent social accounting also served to enable the shift to learning via 'memes' versus the instinct of 'genes'. Social-learning enabled the fostering of requisite cooperative behaviors that enhanced group culture to operate as a well of learnable knowledge – further enhancing the group’s
inter-group fitness and capacity to adapt to environmental change. Learning via memes also made the group more robust to accidental loss of high value skills/knowledge. When all knowledge was genetic, a small group was much more vulnerable to 'genetic drift' the loss of key individual genes. Learning via meme - helped to displace undue reliance on 'selfish genes'.
Thus, it’s not
selfishness or cooperation that constitutes essential human nature as much as it’s
social accounting – a continual dynamic bookkeeping of relationships and exchanges
that constrains individual identity within group ‘moral’ dynamics – that is the
more essential core of human nature.
Gregory Bateson noted – that the fundamental
foundation of mammalian communication was ‘contingencies of relationship’ – in essence
the eternal question in every interaction was ‘what does this mean about our
relationship?’ This is also the same foundation for Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments as the invisible hand of social regulation.
The threshold enabling a phase transition to the larger
population, greater densities, increased divisions of labor and higher diversity of exchangeables inherent in agricultural societies, depended on the technologies of a more abstract and yet concrete accounting
systems. These systems of accounting were also the pre-cursors of writing. Once the phase transition was underway the attractor of efficiency for both social structure and social
governance began to shift in significant ways.
The new attractor of efficiency favored hierarchy, as the most
efficient means of organizating large collective efforts. The ‘hierarchy in
forest’ (Boehm, 2001) a social fabric sustained and sustaining anarchist
self-governance was not able to scale to incorporate larger levels of population
and social complexity. The key constraint shaping hierarchy as the attractor of
efficiency was the increase in transaction costs that corresponded with increased
population and density. The old media of ‘pecking-order’ and social status
structure became the content of the new media/attractor of hierarchy - e.g. class structures (pecking order).
The constraints of hierarchy also depended on extending personal networks as a means of establishing trust in the ever increasing new
forms of complicated social exchange occurring over longer time periods. Complementing
personal networks were new forms of establishing trusted methods of exchange that
were better at enabling exchange when social fabric could not be relied on to
provide trust.
Agricultural societies created civilizations that were able
to develop large urban centers which drove the onset of large scale warfare.
With the onset of warfare, currency was an innovation (Graeber 2012) that
enabled scaleable form of exchange to happen without a context of social fabric.
Graeber argues that currency arose when 'military' efforts brought
'foreign/alien' groups into unfamiliar social environments. This posed the
problem of trying to acquire the necessary goods needed in situations where the
means of exchange had to be independent of systems of accounting dependent on social fabric. The
invention of a concept of currency (as a form of circulating debt) enables a
'stripping of social fabric as the context that enabled an accounting mechanism
for exchanges.' In many ways currency introduces the possibility of anonymity
(comfort with it or at least tolerance of it) becomes necessary as a constraint
on identity. Graeber gives the example of giving the soldiers 'coins' with which to acquire (exchange) food. The invading force could then 'tax' the coin back later.
As agricultural societies came to dominance, they continued
to develop incrementally into the middle-ages, and eventually approached a
point of complexity that not only heralded the onset of the industrial
revolution but established new constraints on the concept of identity and
governance.
Modern Ground-Figure
Relationship
The rise of new forms of governance involved in both the
market system and the more democratic state, represent the next a giant shift
in the ground of economic, social, technological and demographic conditions.
The prelude, to the rise of these new forms of governance,
involved the work of philosophers such as Thomas Hobbes and Jean-Jacque
Rousseau (among many others). For example, Hobbes developed some foundational ideas including: the
right of the individual, the natural equality of all people, the social
constructed nature of political order of civil society and later the state and
fundamentally that legitimate political power must be based on the consent of
the people. His interpretation of law held that people should free to do
anything not explicitly forbidden by the law.
I would argue that, in essence Hobbes was positing the need
for responsible autonomy within a social contract. However, he also believed
that outside of a social-political agreement human nature was ultimately a war
of all against all and thus human nature to sustain a civil society required a
strong undivided government. Below is a famous quote that summarizes his view.
In such condition there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain, and consequently, not culture of the earth, no navigation, nor the use of commodities that may be imported by sea, no commodious building, no instruments of moving and removing such things as require much force, no knowledge of the face of the earth, no account of time, no arts, no letters, no society, and which is worst of all, continual fear and danger of violent death, and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.
If the reasoning I have been developing in the previous posts is
sound enough – we can continue to reason that increasing population and
communication density created conditions of ‘social turbulence’ – as a
transformation of the ‘ground’ that had shaped the ancient constraints of
identity. The tribal social structures that had produced a sort-of fixed tribal-identity
constrained as roles, characters, statuses, etc. became increasingly
the source of friction and resistances to emerging socio-cultural-technological
changes.
What was necessary was a new ‘story’ about personhood as individuality.
Thus while Hobbes’s ideas of human nature, as constituted by isolated,
atomistic individuals engaged in a war of all against all is extreme to the
point of being almost pathologically wrong – it may have been a necessary myth
to enable the transformation of the ancient ground of constraints on identity,
in order to enable the types of work (e.g. increasing diversity of impersonal exchange) required for the emerging industrial society.
Douglass North, an institutional economist (Nobel Laureate)
argued that the rise of the market system and the state were interdependent.
The state produced and sustained the necessary institutions that enabled
wide-spread ‘impartial’ exchange – the primary strength of a market system.
These institutions included a justice system that ensure a contract could be
upheld by either party (rich or poor), institutions for upholding standards so
that a pound was a pound and a dollar was a dollar, and more.
Fernand Braudel through his seminal work in economic history
has established a very sound argument that ‘capitalism’ long preceded Adam
Smith’s proposal of a market system – and that in fact capitalism is distinct
from a market system. A true market system is more like a well governed and flourishing
sports league, rather than a war of all against all. While competition is the
figure of a sports league – the ground that makes a league interesting,
profitable and sustainable, is the set of rules and regulations that ensure a
‘level enough’ playing field. The sports league must fundamentally be concerned
with a sort of democratic ground, in order to be social entertaining and thus
economically successful. This is a fundamental difference between capitalism
and efforts to implement and sustain a state-dependent-market-system.
Just as the isolated, atomistic, individual was a required
narrative – so was the shifting of tribal-identification to identification with
a new constraint – a meta-tribe, the overarching ‘nation-state’. There are
several other key points to make in describing the shift of ‘ground’ that helped
to form the foundation of the industrial revolution and the corresponding
political and economic systems.
The obvious ‘figure’-to-‘ground’ during this shift, was the
increasing social complexity, innovations, technology and diversity of types of
work and exchange. The old ground of social fabric, constituted only by close
ties and stable status, roles and character, could not accommodate this
increasing complexity. A complexity that involved an exponential increase in
encounters with those outside of the boundary of close ties (creating and
extending a network of loose ties), and having to become accustomed to daily
encounters with unknown strangers. As a result the traditional moral/social
accounting that had sustained tribal social fabric began to be eroded through
the friction of constant exchange with strangers and extended complexity of
exchange accounting.
The narrative that people were naturally isolated, atomistic
and primarily selfish, provided the basis for the new ground of identity, more
suitable to the work (of impersonal diversified exchange) required by the emerging political and economic systems. It could be argued that the movement to greater emancipation, democratic approaches and the assumption
of mobility and self-interest also worked to strip the person from the ancient
conditions of social fabric.
Psychologically this shift represented the birthing of a
concept of individuality beyond the tribal constraints of status, role, and
character. The daily encounter strangers were opportunities to explore &
incorporate new behaviors. The experience of wider networks of loose ties and
an overarching context of larger numbers of unknown (perhaps unknowable)
strangers drove the development of a public and private self. New type of work also
became opportunities to explore new modes of life and knowledge.
In relation to trust, currency eliminated the need for a
personal network to confirm identity and formed a different foundation for
social fabric. Cash enables impersonal, impartial, anonymous exchange. Correspondingly,
along with the emerging institutions of a state (the meta-tribe), came
mechanisms of identity verification and validation. It became possible to ‘steal a person's identity’.
Thus, when authentication of identity was required, it was
ensured by larger supporting social institutions providing: certificates, licenses,
credentials, verifications, ‘papers’, etc. In most cases, personal endorsements
of identity became the exception rather than the rule. The new ground took for
granted that a person was fundamentally independent or capable of independence
of the ancient ground of embeddedness in the social fabric of exclusively close
ties.
Psychological independence, the private self, and institutional
methods of authentication (of who one is) became a modern constraint on
identity. This constraint has enabled the necessary work to support and sustain
the needs of an economy based impartial exchange, market-approaches to
allocating resources and a social fabric founded on concepts of equality,
independence and a freedom to self-actualize in the pursuit of happiness.
For example, the reliance on concepts of equality and
independence implicitly strip the individual from previous tribal embeddedness
– they also implicitly assume a sort of atomistic, isolated self, engaged in a
social contract (of independent individuals equally accountable to upholding
the contract). As a constraint it prevents social approaches privileging the
social embeddedness of our previous tribal community experiences.
For the last 200 years industrial/modern societies have
embraced a paradox. One one hand an increasing reliance on anonymity as a constraint on
individual identity for the functional of our political-economies. On the other hand, an
increasingly awareness of the necessity of social fabric as a source of trust,
capital and well-being. What we see is a paradox of yearning efforts to sustain
community (e.g. Putman's 'Bowling Alone' or Turkle's 'Alone together') and a
naturalized concept of the private self – enshroudable in anonymity - the desire/need to encrypt our personal information.
I haven't touched on the anonymity inherent in the concept of an industrial labor force, inherent in being a cog in the machine - previous posts have covered some of this ground (pun intended). The stripping of social fabric also enabled a faceless worker, as a new type of currency in itself. This too is part of what was required for accomplishing the 'work' of an industrial society. I will deal more with this in future posts.
It was Durkheim who wrote on social anomie - the alienation
resulting from the mass urbanization and dislocation of large number of people
from their 'small town' transparent belonging. And yet we see that anonymity has
been transformed from experiences of danger and social breakdown to a comfortable
necessity and increasingly to a fundamental right (e.g. the right to be
forgotten – in gatherer society such forgetting would be equivalent to
banishment and death).
It seems that when we focus on the figure of anonymity we make invisible the ground of social fabric that has to be sustained and consistent with our real social nature. When we focus on the figure of our social nature, the ground of our political-economy which assumes the operational requirement of anonymity becomes invisible.
Thus the industrial environment was shaped by an attractor
of efficiency favouring hierarchy (e.g. due to transaction costs) and a
constraint on individual identity that produced an enshrouding anonymity – that
was a requisite form of stripping social fabric in order to enable impersonal exchange.
There is of course much more that could and should be said – but I hope this is
enough to make the essential point.
When the ground of modern social systems becomes the figure
of our attention– the ‘monsters’ we become conscious of are: the Psychopath,
the serial killer, the zombie apocalypse and on national levels the sort of
global cultural colonization of secular and scientific standards.
In my next post I want to begin exploring the next attractor
– the change in the conditions of change that the digital environment is
enacting.
References
Boehm, Christopher. 2001. Hierarchy in the Forest: The Evolution of Egalitarian Behavior.
Harvard University Press. http://www.amazon.com/Hierarchy-Forest-Evolution-Egalitarian-Behavior/dp/0674006917/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1420701789&sr=1-1&keywords=hierarchy+in+the+forest
Braudel, Fernand. 1992. Civilization
and Capitalism, 15th-18th Century. University of California Press..
Coase, Ronald, 1990. The
Firm, the Market, and the Law. University Of Chicago Press; Reprint edition.
http://www.amazon.com/Firm-Market-Law-R-Coase/dp/0226111016/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1422945063&sr=8-2&keywords=ronald+coase
Deacon, Terrance, W. 2011. Incomplete Nature: How Mind Emerged From Matter. WW Norton. http://www.amazon.com/Incomplete-Nature-Emerged-Terrence-Hardcover/dp/B00C7F1AYG/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1420701672&sr=1-2&keywords=incomplete+nature+how+mind+emerged+from+matter
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