Fuzzy Concepts

Fuzzy Concepts:

Human society is organic.  Human biology and culture form a unified system.   

 

My aim is to suggest a highest level of collective purpose grounded not in material science or religious myth but in the science of biological development and evolution.

The evolution of social structure is biological in the sense that we are social animals and the cultures and institutions that we create emerge out of our human nature and are made up of us living beings. Myth has been exploded by science as lacking in verity and proven wanting in unifying us all to common purpose. And science, insofar as it is materialistic, has proven incapable of fully understanding human creativity and spirit. By contrast, the process of biological complexification, of which the evolution of social structure is a part, is there for all to see, intuitively. Is societal complexification, whatever that means, our collective human purpose? It could be if we made it so. In biological systems at every level from bacterial through plant and animal, where individual beings cooperate they tend to thrive over rivals that are not so organized. We’ll need to work cooperatively if we’re to address the problems of extreme income inequality or environmental degradation, but these are just the salient examples of tasks in need of collective attention in our times. An awareness of this broadest level of societal evolution towards symbiotic/cooperative coherence, in which we all play tiny roles, might offer us perspective from which to better understand how to attribute meaning to our individual lives and find contentment.

 

 

When concepts are unambiguously described by words then little disagreement arises regarding their meaning.  But when an exact definition or a careful explanation is needed there arises a broad variation in the understanding of the term, both as to its meaning and as to its emotional tone.  

If in some cases the hypothesis rings true and thereby inspires and guides individual or collective purpose then advancing that hypothesis has heuristic value. 

Where we define the boundaries of a system is arbitrary and speculative and fuzzy.  Ghia proposes the entire earth.  Beck proposes sociology.  I propose Humanity with its artifacts and institutions.  Science, too, abstracts to define models and hypotheses.  In the end it depends on one’s purpose and where the empirical data support the thesis.  

Science makes obviously unrealistic assumptions, but tests them vigorously.  Speculation may take plausibly realistic models, but tests them subjectively.

Growth, Progress, Complexification, Maturation, Metamorphosis and Emergence 

Metamorphosis is characterized by an abrupt change in form or structure, significant morphological and physiological changes, often involving a complete reorganization of body structures, a shift in ecological niche or habitat between life stages, changes in feeding mode or diet between pre- and post-metamorphic forms, and a transition between distinct life stages, typically from a juvenile form to an adult form. (Perplexity).  Metamorphosis is an inherently integrative concept, with relevance to developmental biology, ecology, life history evolution, physiology, cell biology, and even conservation biology. Although most people are in agreement about a general conception that metamorphosis represents a transformation of some sort (think caterpillar to butterfly), there is little agreement on the specifics. (https://academic.oup.com/icb/article/46/6/655/702188?login=false). The meaning of the term should be defined before using it.  

Metamorphosis is a life-cycle transition which has evolved repeatedly in the history of multi-cellular life, mostly insects and amphibians.  Many biologists would not accept the term as applicable to life stage transitions in mammals or plants, but some would.  Etymologically it refers to a change in form.  It is in this sense I see it as applicable to human society on earth.  And as hints to what it might entail, it helps to consider the characteristics that biologists attribute to it, though not all biologists agree that all the following characteristics are necessary.  But for many, metamorphosis involves a habitat shift and change in feeding mode, a major morphological change, and is post-embryonic and a transition from pre-reproductive to reproductive stage.      

versus change: Such a pivot from material expansion and development to structural reform and integration represents a true metamorphosis, as opposed to a mere discontinuous extension along an unchanged developmental axis, as might be the case with a political revolution or a war.  What we’re going through, is deeper and more extensive than that.Cgpt: No, not all livi)ng systems undergo metamorphosis. Metamorphosis refers to a process of dramatic change in form and structure during an organism’s development. It is commonly observed in certain animal groups, particularly insects such as butterflies, moths, and beetles.

In these insects, metamorphosis involves distinct stages, including egg, larva (caterpillar), pupa (chrysalis or cocoon), and adult. The transformation from larva to adult involves significant changes in body shape, physiology, and behavior.

However, many other organisms do not undergo such a dramatic metamorphosis. For example, humans and most mammals exhibit a gradual development and growth process without undergoing a complete metamorphosis. Similarly, many plants, fungi, and microorganisms do not undergo metamorphosis in the same way insects do.

It’s important to note that different species and groups of organisms have unique life cycles and developmental patterns, and metamorphosis is just one of the many strategies employed by certain organisms for their growth and development.

How would we recognize that we’re experiencing a societal metamorphosis?  We’d be looking for disintegration of existing societal structure and appearance of an entirely new structure, with entirely different organizing principles.   

Adolescence

Many animals pass through an intermediate developmental phase, a distinct adolescence in which they gradually metamorphose out of childhood on the way to full maturity.  Most animals are reproductively immature when born, and only become reproductively mature at the beginning or during this phase, when they reach full size and can compete for mates.  In the case of humans, maturity involves more than just the ability to reproduce and leave a genetic legacy through their offspring.  For humans, maturity also opens the possibility to contribute to the world’s pool of knowledge, arts, culture, its stock of human knowledge and artifacts, to thus procreate and leave a legacy in the noosphere. 

But defining adolescence precisely is difficult because it doesn’t come all at once but arises incrementally over some span of time.  Identifying beginning and end points is therefore problematic, just as it is to precisely mark when water freezes or boils because even these physical phase changes occur gradually at freeze and boil points as heat is removed or added and water gradually freezes or turns to steam.  Metamorphosis is a process.

According to Wikipedia, “adolescence (from Latin adolescere, meaning ‘to grow up’)is a transitional stage of physical and psychological development that generally occurs during the period from puberty to legal adulthood (age of majority).  Age provides only a rough marker of adolescence, and scholars have found it difficult to agree upon a precise definition.  Within all of these perspectives [psychology, biology, history, sociology, education, and anthropology], adolescence is viewed as a transitional period between childhood and adulthood, whose cultural purpose is the preparation of children for adult roles. It is a period of multiple transitions involving education, training, employment, and unemployment, as well as transitions from one living circumstance to another…  Adolescence brings with it certain privileges and responsibilities and is usually accompanied by an increased independence. “[A]dolescence can be defined biologically, as the physical transition marked by the onset of puberty and the termination of physical growth; cognitively, as changes in the ability to think abstractly and multi-dimensionally; or socially, as a period of preparation for adult roles… Some scientists have questioned the universality of adolescence as a developmental phase, arguing that traits often considered typical of adolescents are not in fact inherent to the teenage years. ” 

Adolescence is a fuzzy concept, but intuitively we know it when we see it. What is of interest here are its general characteristics and qualities which differ from those of childhood and adult maturity.  Physical growth terminates in adolescence.  Education, training, and learning to think abstractly and multi-dimensionally in adolescence involve an internal restructuring of the being’s operating system, so to speak.  And socially, the transition from one living circumstance to another, leaving the nuclear family, moving out into the larger community and preparing for an adult role, is a transition from essentially nurturing surroundings to essentially indifferent and competitive ones.      

If adolescence is a distinct phase between childhood and adulthood, which some argue it is not, then the metamorphoses occur at its beginning and end, between childhood and adolescence, between adolescence and adulthood, rather than during adolescence.  Thus it’s puberty rather than adolescence that describes the metamorphosis and in adolescence the being has already metamorphosed out of childhood.  Regardless, adolescence represents a period of fundamental change between childhood and adulthood, and is metamorphic in that sense.   

With respect to my hypothesis, either society’s information age adolescence is itself a phase of metamorphosis between childhood and adulthood, between the industrial age and a solar age, or society has already metamorphosed out of its industrial age childhood as is now fully living in its information age.  Metamorphosis can be used as a term to describe either or both the adolescent life-cycle phase itself, or the transition between phases, into and out of adolescence.  From physics, we can think of the phase changes between solid, liquid and gas as similar to living system metamorphoses, but it is perhaps less intuitive to conceive of the liquid phase as a metamorphosis from solid to gas.  Regardless of how the term “metamorphosis” is used, whether we imagine that society has already metamorphosed out of the industrial age and is now fully living in its information age adolescence, or its information age is itself a metamorphic phase between industrial and solar ages, in either case, the business of our adolescent information age is to restructure and reorient with respect to our surroundings. 

The problem is that society is still largely operating by and clinging to industrial age values, objectives and operating principles more appropriate to its childhood.  We operate as if consumption is still our collective objective, that material growth can and should proceed as it did in the past, that we can still exploit rather than nurture our natural environment, and that the governance structures and relational arrangements among humans, i.e. transportation, communication, and social networks, that were suitable for the industrial age are still appropriate for our adolescent information age, a time of restructuring and reorientation on the way to adulthood.  It is this problem and this task that my hypothesis seeks to highlight.  

Cgpt:

The stages of human development, as commonly described in developmental psychology, are as follows:

1. Prenatal Stage: This stage begins with conception and ends with birth. It includes the development of the fetus in the womb.

2. Infancy: Infancy spans from birth to around 2 years of age. It is characterized by rapid growth and development, as infants learn to crawl, walk, talk, and explore the world around them.

3. Early Childhood: Early childhood typically covers the period from 2 to 6 years of age. During this stage, children experience significant physical, cognitive, and social development. They refine their motor skills, engage in imaginative play, and begin to develop a sense of self.

4. Middle Childhood: Middle childhood extends from around 6 to 11 years of age. At this stage, children continue to develop their physical abilities and cognitive skills. They enter school, acquire academic knowledge, build friendships, and develop a greater understanding of social norms.

5. Adolescence: Adolescence generally encompasses the teenage years, from around 12 to 18 years old. This stage involves major physical, psychological, and emotional changes. Adolescents strive for independence, establish their identity, experience puberty, and undergo significant brain development.

6. Early Adulthood: Early adulthood spans from around 18 to 40 years of age. It is a time of transition, where individuals often complete their education, establish careers, and form long-term relationships. They navigate personal and professional responsibilities while undergoing further cognitive and emotional maturation.

7. Middle Adulthood: Middle adulthood typically ranges from approximately 40 to 65 years old. Individuals in this stage often experience stability in their careers and personal lives. They may focus on raising children, maintaining relationships, and pursuing personal fulfillment. Physical changes associated with aging may also become noticeable during this stage.

8. Late Adulthood: Late adulthood, often considered from around 65 years of age until the end of life, involves further physical, cognitive, and emotional changes. Individuals may retire, experience changes in health and mobility, and reflect on their lives. Social connections, family relationships, and maintaining a sense of purpose and meaning become important aspects of this stage.

It’s worth noting that these stages are not rigidly defined, and individuals may progress through them at different rates or experience them in varying ways. Additionally, cultural and individual differences can influence the specific characteristics and transitions within each stage.

The Industrial and Information Ages

If global human society is a living system, why imagine it as having begun with the industrial age, sometime in the mid-18th Century, versus having started at the dawn of civilizations?  If human society was reborn with the American, French and Industrial Revolutions, did it cycle through previous incarnations of childhood, adolescence and maturity?   That argument can in fact be made, but I will do no more than suggest it.  From Braudel’s xxxx, one may characterize early European civilizations, in the period from middle ages through 18th Century, as passing through phases characterized by physical expansion, structural transformation, and then spiritual flowering into decadence.  I am not prepared to defend this characterization here, but pose it as a mere possibility.  I instead focus on the transformation from industrial to information age and the developmental task of our information age adolescence. 

In this view, human society, as a living collective global whole, was reincarnated in the late 18th century but emerged in the 19th.  Machines appeared, the steam engine and electricity were invented and discovered and industry arose.  An integrated and unified global economy came into existence with the extension of colonialism across the world.  Democratic revolutions in the US and France gave birth to a new social order elevating individual rights and toppling royal privilege.  The authority of science came to replace that of religion.  The most salient dimension of societal development was materialistic and economic.  For sure Western culture blossomed and democratic governance evolved as civic institutions came into being, but it was economic growth, expansion and progress that characterized the period commonly called the industrial age.

For present purposes, the “industrial age” can be considered to have begun sometime in the mid- to late-18th Century, with the near simultaneous bourgeoning of industrial capitalism and democracy.  America and France broke away from colonial and royal overseers and became self-directed and empowered.  Simultaneously the availability of factory jobs across western countries liberated individuals from hard and less remunerative work in agriculture.  A great flourishing of culture in music, literature and the visuals arts appeared.  Enlightenment values came to be seen as rightfully deserved by all, and the rallying cry of the French Revolution, “liberte, egalite, fraternite” epitomized them.  The confluence of movements and developments across much of the world marked a discontinuous break with the past in many ways and signaled a new beginning for global human society.  Historians and other social science academics similarly often date a new era as having begun with the 18th C. industrial and democratic revolutions.  Another wave of democratic revolutions swept through Europe in 1848, but these just deepened and broadened the transformations already begun.   

The salient feature of the industrial age was its physicality, in my view, characterized by the strength and accelerating growth of basic resource industries: coal, metals and then gold mining, lumber, steel and then oil drilling.  And rising material living standards resulted.  Factories churned out consumer goods and industrial machinery to make more factories and more goods.  With the Chrystal Palace Great Exhibition of 1851 in London, consumerism was born.  The material intensity of living standards grew dramatically and middle-class dwellings became larger to accommodate the new range of consumer durables and other goods, adding garages and cars and then leisure goods without end.   

 

By contrast, in the information age, the material intensity of living standards is leveling off, while the technology embedded in that materiality is growing dramatically.  The information age is usually thought to have begun sometime in the mid-20th Century, with businesses-wide adoption of main-frame computers, but the dates do not really matter for my argument.  The important point is that I see the information age as extending far into the future, perhaps centuries, because there is so much work to be done to restructure the web of formal and informal institutions that connect people and societies around the globe.    Industrial and consumer durables and other goods have simultaneously become more technologically sophisticated and lighter in weight, offering improved services in less physical material.  Their information content is growing as is the information intensity of man-made material goods more generally. The substitution of technology for mass pervades every aspect of the material support system of goods on which our lives are based, from factories to housing, industrial and consumer durables to transportation and communications infrastructure. 

Starting around the 1960s a new anti-consumerist trend emerged, marked by the publication of Schumacher’s “Small is Beautiful” and the Club of Rome’s “Limits to Growth”.  An anti-consumerist culture arose, and reverse snobbery and status attached to, for example, small VWs, whereas previously among American cars, the larger the more prestigious.  World oil and food crises in 1971 and 1973 highlighted economy’s resource and environmental dependency and precarity.  A culture of environmental conservation and protection emerged and “pollution” entered the popular vocabulary.  Prominent economist Kenneth Boulding suggested that we retitle Gross National Product as Gross National Waste, the amount of materiality used up in a year, and Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen published “The Entropy Law and the Economic Process” in 1971.   Ever since, industrial and product designers have been looking to substitute lighter weight materials for heavier, smaller for larger, while yielding better, faster, more pleasing services.  Rather than make things bigger and heavier, adding to their materiality, we are altering the structure of those things, incorporating technology via everything from materials design to semi-conductors.  Even aesthetic design, making things more pleasing to behold, incorporates design knowledge while adding no weight or material intensity.  In recent years many companies and some individuals have begun to watch and then strive to minimize their carbon footprints.   

But the restructuring possibilities of the “information age” are far broader than in just our material goods.  The same benefit of improved service at little or no material cost is being found in improving those social institutions and structures which connect us with others and bind us together into a coherent society.  These systems by which we are connected are relational, structural and informational as opposed to material, in the sense that the improvements can be described in informational terms by for example an organizational diagram, policy change or mission statement, and are not material in themselves.  And the institutional reforms include more than incorporating latest technologies for communications, transportation, buildings and equipment.  Human resource departments now incorporate psychological research and emotional understanding, improving worker’s lives through respect, affirmation and empowerment, at minimal material cost.  To the extent such reforms boost morale they can boost productivity, saving time, energy, and resources, achieving better organizational design and reduced material cost.   Since such reforms come with material savings, they will proceed and continue as long as opportunities abound.  Legal systems could be redesigned to be less costly.  Were it not for political considerations, politics and governments could theoretically be redesigned to be less beholden to fundraising and economic forces.  To the extent that violence, cultural polarization, and general anti-social behavior can be attributed to ignorance, fear, economic inequality, alienation, hopelessness or other such manifestation of institutional failure or emotional suffering, and to the extent that such suffering can be addressed either through education or institutional reforms, to that extent these are all opportunities for social restructuring and societal progress. 

If we believe in progress, as assumed for purposes of my hypothesis, then we can anticipate that such developments will continue forthcoming, albeit haltingly and with backsliding, until eventually the opportunities for such progress begin to be exhausted, when diminishing returns from institutional reform set in.  Because I assume and believe in progress, it follows that it is society’s collective task, in this its global information age adolescence, to reduce our carbon footprint, not always to consume more and grow GNP.  And it is our task to restructure our informal and formal institutional structures to more efficiently and better serve humanity’s needs.  And because I believe in progress, I expect such institutional reforms for the future.  Information age restructuring will continue until the opportunities taper off, and goods and institutions approach stable best practices, at which time society will proceed into a solar age maturity.    

 

Notes to self:

That would include law and governance institutions, transportation, communications, social media, the general level of emotional and social skills and sophistication, all of which systems enable people to fulfill their potential and without which people suffer alienation, ennui, and diminished vitality.   

[Manifesting throughout society, because computers revolutionized how the entire economy worked.  

Women en masse entered the workforce, became empowered and gained freedom from strict patriarchal hierarchies. 

Racial and social stratifications began to break down.  

[how we are connected with our planet’s natural environment, our relationship with our environment and with future generations. 

Until diminish returns set in regarding the enabling of more and more people to find spiritual fulfillment, through work, civic and cultural life, minimizing alienation and maximizing human spiritual vitality. 

It will not be necessary to precisely define objective criteria for society’s progress through the adolescence of the information age, but presumably it will be recognizable when society’s relational structure widely enables spiritual fulfillment and alienation wanes.  

 

Human Society, the Noosphere, Culture and Civilization

Global human society, in my view of the concept, refers to the entirety of all that which would be missing had humans never inhabited the earth — the people and all they’ve built, their consumer and industrial goods, collectively owned infrastructure, the institutions they’ve built and conventions they’ve adopted, as well as their culture, including science, arts, and religions. James Lovelock’s Gaia concept includes all this plus the Earth itself, its natural and mineral worlds. 

Lovelock imagined the entirety of planet earth as a living system, which may someday become applicable when humankind reestablishes, as once was, a sustainable relationship with planet earth and together the two will be joined as one.  But at the moment, humankind has an antagonistic relationship with its planetary environment, and achieving that sustainable relationship is one of the central tasks of societal adolescence, adopting a structure of relationships with the natural physical and living world surrounding us.  Human society builds artifacts, goods, institutions, cultures, but impacts the planet’s physical and natural world only indirectly.  The natural world is not humanity’s creation.  Humankind is evolving with feedback from its surroundings, and the two are unified in this sense.  We built human society on a basis of nature’s resources, but we did not create that nature. Someday when we’ve achieved a sustainable relationship with nature, that balance will be our creation and a responsibility we’ve embraced.  But in my view nature will still be the other to global human society.    

One might distinguish the totality of human society as above described from just its cultural aspects, and conceive of that culture as a closed, coherent system evolving on its own terms.  Or one might use the term “civilization” to describe a leading cohort of that society, and use “culture” to refer to those qualities of a civilization concerned with what is excellent with regards to its arts, letters, scholarly pursuits, beliefs, values, morals, behaviors, science, or the sum total of ways of living built up by human beings and transmitted from one generation to another.  Civilization is refined, as when one returns to civilization from having been in the wild.  Civilization is self-regulating in its institutions, implying control of its basest urges.  But the world’s cultures and civilizations are becoming largely integrated, to where they evolve interconnectedly as one. 

But what I see evolving, metamorphosing, adolescing, includes the totality of humanity on earth, together with all its material possessions and cultural institutions, both formal and informal, public and private. Boulding [Reference] and others distinguish humanity’s “noosphere” from its “genosphere”, its noosphere being the sum total of accumulated artifacts, institutions, and culture, everything numan made, from its genosphere, the sum total of human beings as living beings.  The distinction is useful in noting that while many leave their legacy through their offspring, in the genosphere, those who make lasting coHntributions to culture and civilization leave their legacies in the noosphere.  And while offspring in the genosphere arise from two parents, contributions in the noosphere may arise from multiple influences.  It is this noosphere, stripped of the human beings, that closely matches my concept of global human society.  But I include human beings, the genosphere, in my concept because I see human consciousness and values as an essential element in what is evolving and metamorphosing.

How can one conceive of a unified global society in which some parts are more evolved than others, some are actively leading society in new directions while others are lagging behind.  One might ask what segment of evolving global society the hypohesis refers to, since cultures, nations, cities, sub-groups, and individuals simultaneously live at varying standards of living and levels of connectivity with human society.  And a person’s or group’s behavior varies through time, depending on the time of day, season of the year, or the activity engaged in.  Perhaps like human adolescence, metamorphosis is a rolling phenomenon, manifesting in some ways and places before others, and yet it is the entire being which is adolescing.  The concept of global human society may be clear enough, inasmuch as it includes everything manmade, but its development and adolescence remain fuzzy concepts.  Again, the precise definition is less important for my purposes than the phenomena being observed therein.  There may be progress and metamorphosis at the leading edge of that society, which then gradually manifests across a wider swath of that society as it becomes wiser and wealthier, if it ever does, or gains access to the fruits of that leading edge.  But how different is this from asking what part of a human being adolescence refers to?  It refers to the entire being, although it manifests differently from time to time and place to place.  Similarly, information age restructuring pervades global society but manifests differently in time, place and level.  It can be observed through these multiple manifestations, and multiple proxies can be used to monitor its progress. 

 

 

Matter and Spirit in the Context of Adolescence. 

Spirit is the flow of creative juices.  Is that flow healthy or anemic?  Can it be measured through the number of arts graduates or patents granted, both of which are environmentally influenced.  

What is wellbeing?  Is this like utility, or something like actualization and something we can measure and maximize?

If in adolescence we are merely looking for sustainability, what does that entail: environment, equity and well-being.  

The polarity of matter and energy holistically underlies everything from physics to philosophy.  Einstein’s special relativity formula of mass-energy equivalence, e = Mc², expresses their equivalence and interchangeability and simultaneously distinguishes between them.  What intermediates them is information, in this case the speed of light in a vacuum, a fundamental constant of the universe.  Life on earth exists within the force fields of the sun’s light and the earth’s gravity, reaching upward for primarily energy and down for primarily material nourishment.  Being holistic, where every part contains a reflection of the whole, energy is also drawn from the soil and nutrients from the air.  The sun’s energy and the earth’s gravity are mediated by the rhythmic day and night alternations of solar energy, while gravity remains a constant force.  And rhythm can be expressed in informational terms, without mass or energy components.

The polarity of mind and body has been recognized by religion and philosophy from their beginnings.  Mind, spirit, soul — these are confusing terms.  Think of spirit as that which is opposite to the material in the realm of human life, that dynamic aspect of life which lies counter-posed to its material dimension.  Good and bad, spiritual aspirations and base urges, freedom and slavery, and so forth.  Much of animal life, from insects to animals, have polar metabolic and sense systems, the former operating essentially chemically through a digestive track and centered in the abdomen and the latter centered in the head and operating essentially electrically, although being holistic the distinction is blurred because every cell employs both electrical and chemical processes. 

In human society the same polarity of forces applies.  The human need to put food on the table and a roof over one’s head is a constant demand on one’s time, while occasionally during the day, the year or a lifetime, we can devote our time aspiring toward something outside and greater than ourselves, perhaps an unpaid spiritual passion or civic participation. Some material consumption and time allocated to selfless ends goes toward jockeying for social status, our place in the hierarchical structure.  Limited time and money are ours to deploy, selfishly, for the collective good, or toward some higher calling, be it art, science, god, religion or other.  How we allocate them takes on a rhythm, during the day and across the year, and results in a balance struck between efforts devoted to the material and the spiritual, the selfish and selfless.  Society collectively achieves a balance between time and resources expended supporting material survival and striving spiritually for something beyond the material.  How are such balances struck, in individual or society, consciously or unconsciously?  When the adolescent human comes to direct their own life, they make choices that result in such balance.  Similarly, an adolescent society gets to make such choices.

Abstracting further, the time and money which society collectively has at its disposal, is pulled in these two directions, toward profit and the accumulation of capital and toward spiritual striving, cultural achievements, and investment in the future, material or cultural, toward God or Mammon.  In the economy, financial capital naturally gravitates toward profit and its own accumulation (Pikkety).  In the cultural sphere, capital gravitates toward spiritual striving and cultural achievement.  Governance intermediates, in charge of either channeling the indirect allocation of resources by individuals to the cultural/spiritual realm, or directly reallocating the resources itself, through taxes and spending.  And so these human and material resources exist within the force field of opposing influences, capital accumulation and spiritual striving.  Humanity needs them both for its health.  Governance determines the allocation and balance, consciously or unconsciously. 

 

Notes to self (Matter&Spirit): 

Capital seeks its own growth and has a natural tendency to accumulate, much as gravity pulls celestial bodies to centers of mass which then accumulate additional mass and gravitational pull.  This is essentially the mechanism inherent in unfettered capitalism, which Pickety has written about. It is up to governance to fetter this tendency for capital to accumulate, so as not to let it draw everything into the black hole of consumerism. 

What is it that opposes this attraction of profit, god as opposed to mammon?  That’s harder to identify.  Modern society seems gripped by consumerism at present, and part of the problem is that it is so difficult to identify what it is that stands in opposition to consumerism and raise that to consciousness.  People looking for meaning are presented with consumerism as one candidate to build their lives around, but they don’t see an alternative and in many cases embrace consumerism by default, even though that soon proves hollow as a core around which to build a life of meaning and purpose.  Profit can be defined in numbers, measured and then maximized, at both micro and macro levels, and so it is embraced as a metric of progress and readily pursued as life’s sole purpose.  Spirit can not be so measured.  Many thus become consumerist, not so much by conscious choice, but rather by default, not seeing religion as a credible alternative or seeing a life devoted to artistic expression or scientific or scholarly research as simply unimaginable without a background, training and talent in such activities.  Spirit, in the sense of human vitality and sense of well being, while hard to identify and measure, can be fostered indirectly, however, by creating environments in which we believe it will thrive, unmeasured.  This is the approach of the positive psychology movement, focusing on the conditions that might enable and foster psychological health, rather than on treating pathologies and observable mental illnesses.  It is society’s adolescent task to make conscious whatever it is that stands in opposition to consumerism, recognizing the force of spirit, whatever that may be and whatever forms it may take for the mass of humanity, be it religion, music, Gaia or other.  In between, lies civic participation and political activism, participation in governance.  It is available to all, as a purpose around which to build lives of meaning, and requires little specialized training.  Look for increasing participation in civic affairs and governance, most obviously in defense of Gaia, to replace consumerism and religion as core purposes as society proceeds through its adolescence.  If unfettered capitalism enslaves the human spirit in alienation and consumerism, one of the tasks of societal adolescence will be to find ways to restructure our economies and society more broadly in ways that free us in spirit, individually and collectively. 

Capital needs to employ and thereby enslave human beings and their spirit in order to profit and accumulate.  The human spirit needs material sustenance in order to survive and thrive.  Each holistically incorporates and requires an element of the other.  They are not separate, and yet the balance between them manifests differently, from activity to activity, person to person, society to society, time to time. 

The human spirit seeks freedom, through expression.  Capital seeks to employ humans for its own purpose.  Spirit seeks capital through which to unleash its expression.  The factory needs people.  The artist needs to at first achieve material survival, and then coral whatever capital may be needed for his or her expression.

I think of the terms “spirit” and “spiritual” in the sense of vitality, life force and dynamism, as in a spirited horse or a person in high spirits, but in other senses as well.  Spirit describes the most strictly alive and free from material constraint aspects of life, as opposed to physical aspects of survival.  Spirit may manifest in the accum`ulation of material goods.  Capital may enable the expression of human spirit.  But the two have orthogonal agendas, and people and institutions serve them both in various degrees and ways.  Societal metamorphosis affects the trajectories of them both.

Spiritual phenomena manifest as dynamic and in flux and hard to quantify, other than indirectly or instrumentally or in the negative, as in the share of GNP devoted to arts and sciences, or incidence of crime or suicide.  A prevailing sense of alienation across a society, of oppression lack of meaning in life, or by contrast feelings of engagement, peace, optimism and well-being across societies, describe the immaterial values that society’s collective spirit feels and expresses.  The human spirit in each individual seeks to improve these values, to feel better about oneself in relation to the world.  These individual feelings of freedom or oppression aggregate to a collective society’s multi-dimensional spiritual sense of optimism or pessimism, a cultural value.   GNP accounting doesn’t capture this aggregate spiritual value as felt by people, and therefore does not especially value it, except indirectly to the extent that factors such as crime, drug abuse, apathy and unemployment appear as detractors to economic output, i.e. financial capital’s object of interest. 

A flowering of intellectual, scientific, artistic, religious or other passions and creativity, whose material aspects are secondary, incidental or largely absent, would manifest societal progress beyond the material.   But I’m less interested in measurement than in a general sense that values may be extending beyond consumerism. Bureaucracies and institutions that empowered rather than stultified their employees would be raising their spirits.  Financial capital certainly tries, mostly successfully, to harness this human spirit for its own purpose of accumulation, but the human spirit itself finds expression because it needs to, and the financial dimension comes along afterwards.  A singer sings, and secondarily builds a career out of that spiritual expression.

 

To serve the greater society’s needs and progress, greed and the profit motive need to be regulated, controlled, and directed to constructive purpose.  While profit seeking may lead to discovery of market clearing prices, matching supply with demand, a constructive purpose, it may also be directed through governance structures to serve additional constructive purposes beyond price discovery, for example environmental protection.  The gravitation of financial capital toward profit seeking enterprise is a powerful force.  It leads to capital accumulation and opens possibilities for investment.  Checked or unchecked by governments, an accumulated store of financial capital is society’s potentiality for investment.  opens up possibilities for society that an accumulation of capital may provide.  , to be appreciated and valued but also made conscious, regulated, and directed toward constructive purpose greater than its own accumulation.  may be a natural but base instinct in society, certainly nothing to disparage, but like food and sex for an adolescent, part of the job of growing up is learning how to regulate such urges.  Governance also regulates the higher aspiration of a society, the boundaries in which the society’s highest cultural dimension operates, its free speech, science, and all that is most refined in society, promoting some aspects or regulating others.  An adolescent comes to take control of their own education and cultural expression, be it in the arts, sciences, religion, civic life, or wherever self-expression manifests, for its own sake and motivated other than by profit and material urges.  One might argue that for an adolescent, both material and cultural pursuits are directed toward procreation, in the sense that …, but the point is self-control, self-direction, and governance.  Distinguishing the different types of self-regulation is the next level.    ,

 

[2] Wikipedia contributors. “Fuzzy concept.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 21 Sep. 2019. Web. 27 Sep. 2019.