Chapter Nine

Human Social Systems

Human social systems are true systems--composed of individuals, they take on properties greater than the individuals that compose them. Corporate institutions, they are by definition structurally and socially larger than the life of the individual who is a member of the system. There are different kinds of social systems and social systems themselves range from relatively egalitarian and unstratified to highly stratified, hierarchical and differentiated in terms of roles and statuses that its members occupy. Bands, groups, and tribes differ from chieftaincies, kingdoms and states. With social systems, we find associated patterns of religious, political and social symbology that is articulated to ritual practice and mythological ideology.

Whatever the level of stratification and development of a human social system, we find two basic social units, the primary and secondary social unit. The primary social unit is the family within a larger kin-group context. The secondary social unit consists of those member-ship role-statuses that serve to define secondary social institutions having to do with work, subsistence, religion, political authority, and specialized identities within the larger framework. These secondary social institutions are contextualized by a larger societal ethos, culture, and sense of civilization that serves to define people as members of a greater, centered social world, vis-a'-vis other people who are outside of that social world.

To a great extent social integration upon the secondary level depends upon and is built upon social integration at the level of the primary familial grouping. Social identity is begun and springs from the hearth, and is formed and molded at an early age in relation to one's primary familial identity. In general, secondary social institutions serve to extend symbolically and behaviorally social relational identities found and formed first in the home.

Social Dynamics

Social change is the greatest challenge to development of a collective systems based framework in the world. The pursuit of self-interest, in a field of open scramble competition, results invariably in social structures that serve to interfere with progressive development and that consistently undercut the basis of reliable social relations built upon personal and social integrity. Global stratification in an unconstrained capitalist based system, reinforced by ossified structures of social authoritarianism, is resulting in a two tiered polarization of social classes that is increasingly defined within an international context. These structures serve to promote the interests of a very small minority of people and most often at the expense of a great number of people. In such a general context, many programs of change that would fall within a larger systems-based model become consistently frustrated and subverted to the promotion of private, versus collective, interest.

Any systems based program that has a hope of getting off the ground and achieving any reasonable measure of success must be able to overcome the hurdles presented by this enormous set of challenges. Ultimately, there are only two pathways that can be pursued towards such eventual success. The first is through centralized collective organization upon an international scale that promotes a systems-based framework within an international, and "supranational context." The second is through a decentralized, global grass-roots movement and organization of people, across ethno-national boundaries and other forms of ethnocultural cleavages, for the purpose of building a better world in a collective sense. Ultimately, both sets of measures must be realized together if complete success of such systems is to be realized on a worldwide scale.

Any proposal for change, especially deep and long lasting change, is bound to be met with resistance from some quarters of the population. People have an inherent ambivalence to change--all people need some amount of change in their lives, but too much change, too rapidly and too unpredictably, is upsetting and debilitating for people. At the same time, many people have an investment in the status quo of previous structures, because they stand to profit most from such structures, however asymmetrical and unfair or destructive in the long run they may really be. The capacity for humans to rationalize whatever serves most and best their own sets of interests, regardless of the larger range of consequences of their actions, is almost unlimited and under extreme circumstances can reach absurd proportions.

The case of changing over from a fossil fuel economy to a hydrogen-based one is a case in point. It is widely recognized and acknowledged that global warming is an increasing problem with unknown risks in the long run. It is known that fossil-fuel reserves are limited, and those that are being tapped are in the monopolistic control of a very small proportion of humanity. Around this industry, there are entire national economies built on automobiles, trucks, aircraft, agriculture all dependent upon the abundant supply of high grade fossil fuel. Resistance to the suggestion that a fossil fuel economy in the long run is not only obsolete, but extinct, would be met with extreme resistance in a country like the contemporary US not only by those who control and profit most from the sale of refined oil, but from the automobile industry that has for the previous decade been promoting the sale of large, powerful fuel-hungry vehicles, and from a very large and substantial cross-section of the public who have been manipulated by advertising and by an unconstrained social ethos to the habit of having large luxury vehicles without an eye to economy or ecology. In such a context in fact, the suggestion of a wide-scale hydrogen fuel economy would be met with extreme resistance from almost every quarter of the society, and the minority advocating such a change would be alienated from the mainstream of the current framework of the society as a basic threat to their way of life.

Basic changes, especially deep changes with far-reaching consequences, seem more likely and easier to achieve in less developed circumstances, under conditions of underdevelopment, than in more developed or over-developed contexts. This would point the initiative to such systems-based changes being easier to attain in the world in underdeveloped peripheral contexts than in those core areas in which a conventional orientation has already been embedded. At the same time, because we are talking about deep structural changes that are systemic in nature, we expect everywhere a similar kind of fundamental resistance to such change that stems from the orientation of the established world system. There is no context or social setting in the larger framework of the world where such kinds of changes will be received whole-heartedly, unreservedly, without raising a protest and a fierce sense of resistance from a significant quarter or cross-section of the population.

It is to be realistically wondered whether such changes can really be achieved on any significant level without first a period of destructive loss of the previous order of things. It would probably not be necessary, from a systems standpoint, to deliberately instigate revolutionary conflict to bring about destructive consequences or to promote constructive development. There is a principle that the normal system will probably eventually reach a super-complex climax state that will lead to large-scale destructive episodes, if not to the complete global context, at least to some of the most central and significant areas and loci of control of the established framework.

The challenges that lie in front of humanity in the 21st Century are those of a growing disparity between the very rich and the very poor--the number of the latter is growing at a much faster rate than the number of the former. But the real and relative wealth controlled by fewer and fewer people is also growing exponentially, as well as what might be called the world's "gross product." These seems like a trend that will probably continue well into the middle of the next century, but at the same time, we must recognize the rising interest and needs of an increasing mass of poor people who have been largely disenfranchised and dispossessed within the context of the world system. I do not think all these people will go silently and obediently into the night without a ripple of protest or complaint about their consigned fates or the conditions of their anonymous lives. These are the key challenges that we must try to confront and resolve in some reasonable manner.

Anti-structural Systems

A very important form of alternative, applied system from a human systems standpoint are a class of such systems that we can refer to as "anti-structural" as they have social and behavioral performance value that is symbolically structured in a manner to mark transitions, maintain normal boundaries, and to successfully mediate change and manage what can be referred to as "marginalizing" experiences that tend to otherwise destabilize and undercut the normal sense of order of human systems. The neat thing about human anti-structural system are that humans were in fact doing these systems quite naturally and universally, even long before the elaboration of very sophisticated working systems of production.

Anti-structure and the need for periodic anti-structure are human universals, and are tied to the symbolic organization of the human brain and behavior. Alternative systems themselves are extensions of the same capacities towards fantasy, mythologization, and creative play. The nature of play changes as we grow--very young infants have no boundary between fantasy and reality, and can easily slip back and forth. As we mature, our play takes on more sophisticated and convoluted forms, becoming loaded with symbolic baggage and constrained by certain needs for a minimal sense of realism to keep the play interesting. When a child outgrows a fantasy or a game, that child no longer has the same interests and the child's needs for anti-structure are no longer being met in a simplistic manner as before.

The capacity and need for human play is a demonstration of the innate human need and interest for anti-structural systems or mechanisms in the course of every-day life. We are psychological dependent upon these anti-structurally systems, and without them we would all soon slip into a form of mass mania and atomistic neurosis/psychosis. The fact that psychosis and neurosis are such common features of human society, especially modernized, post-industrialized societies, is not only a measure of the alienation achieved by such systems, but a function of the failure of anti-structural systems to effectively mediate and modulate life experiences for the individuals entrapped in such societies.

Anti-Structure

Human beings have an inherent need for behavioral and symbolic anti-structure, and this need is a consequence of their transformational symbolic realities and the dual requirement to both adapt their symbolic systems to their ever-changing life worlds as well as to elaborate in an exploratory manner the alternative possibilities and search-solution spaces that are inherent to the constructive process and function of human symbolization. Dreams and dreaming can be considered "anti-structural" states, but it is evident that many mammals at least dream, and that dreams are a normal function of the brain during states of sleep. We do not normally ascribe to many animals an inherent need for anti-structural states that we associate for instance with human day-dreaming, imaginary play activities, myth, story-telling, etc. These are of course the consequence of the demand of complex symbolic apparatus of the human brain that is associated with advanced evolution of the neo-cortex and especially the frontal lobes of the cerebrum. We can see though that the requirement for symbolic anti-structure probably has its roots in the requirement of the brain for periodic dream-state activity, and we can thus define dream-state activity as proto-anti-structural behavior associated especially with the advanced brain of mammals. The fact that human beings dream in a symbolic manner, at least that they can remember enough to retell, suggests that even dream processes of the human brain have undergone higher-order symbolic transformation.

We must in this way try to understand the structure of the brain as integrated not only between centers, but also between stratified layers and regions of the brain, and that the brain always functions as a semi-integrated system such that we cannot isolate independent centers or loci that function in exclusion or in a completely isolated manner. The binding problem of the human mind is solved when we view the functional organization of the brain as an extremely complex system of neural circuitry, with differential latent activation states, giving rise to emergent properties of conscious awareness, memory association, imagination, reason, and so forth. A signal stimulus can trigger an entire cascade of highly organized neural activity, and this cascade can carry on in a train or cycle of complex activations that can be self-sustaining. In fact it seems that the active state of the brain, even in sleep, is the default and normal mode of its existence, even if it doesn't seem as if it is active. That neural networks can maintain a complex latent activation state, and achieve such states repeatedly over time, suggests, among other things, that memory content is stored in differential loads carried through networks between axonal synapses.

Anti-structure defined in a social sense refers primarily to the ritual organization of space and time in a manner to induce state alternation of identity and setting. In the classical view of anti-structure it is associated generally with "rites of passage," often marking transitions, and characterized by distinctive patterns such as liminality and communitas, the former being a state of inherent psycho-social ambiguity and uncertainty of status, and the second being a temporary social state in which normal social differences and boundaries are suspended or eliminated. It has been primarily during periods of travel abroad, as an ex-patriot or anthropologist sojourning in cross-cultural contexts, that I have experienced the greatest degree of such anti-structure, not with native populations but with other travelers or ex-pat sojourners who share a common sense of suspension of normal frames of reference and a temporary state of transition and disconnection from their own cultural orientation. I think movie houses and corner bars are other places to observe forms of anti-structure being articulated on a regular basis, as well as modern malls, especially upon weekends, amusement or theme parks, etc. Tourism seems to be a growing phenomenon, worldwide, in spite of the increasing threats of global terrorism and growing political and social insecurity in different corners of the world.

Anti-structure overall is one of the most culturally marked and controlled aspects of human reality. We may in fact most characterize different cultural orientations largely by the facets of anti-structure that such systems demonstrate, and even though on a basic structural level there are many universal human features associated with anti-structural realities. It is vitally important for societies to control and regulate anti-structure, for the failure to do so can be disruptive and result in catastrophic effects for the normal functioning of a system. This is evident in countries like the US where there is a general failure for instance to appropriately regulate or ritually sanction drug-induced state alternation of behavior, coupled with relative social freedom from coercion and open economic systems, such that there are entire segments of the working and non-working underclass that are essentially dysfunctional due to chronic and epidemic drug abuse.

I think the requirement for effective and healthy anti-structure is only increasing with rising expectations of affluence and achievement in world society. With increased choices in a modern setting and the challenges of so much choice, the need for the kind of symbolic mediation that anti-structural systems provides can only be greater than before, because such mediation effects our transition and general equilibrium as we switch between different frameworks and structures in a complex world.

We have largely received the notion of anti-structure as something that is unnecessary, superficial, something expendable and non-central to how we live our lives. We have been programmed and disciplined to put the requirement for anti-structure in the background of our lives, for the sake of maximization or optimization of our productivity in social systems. A source of this may be deeply rooted in a basic survival instinct that we have inherited from very remote times, and that we carry over into our social constructions of reality. We plan to base the organization of our systems on the grounds not the most likely outcomes, but on the grounds of the possibility of the worst case scenarios that may realistically develop. If we have to deal with the basic question of survival, the problem of play and anti-structure can seem mighty trivial by comparison. But we live now in a world in which most of humanity has in fact been taken off the knife edge of the problem of physical survival. Maintenance and equilibrium within and of the system becomes more critical to our survival than anything else, and as the system develops in its complexities and overall carrying capacity the room for the possibility of anti-structural play becomes more apparent and more necessary to the question of our survival, albeit in an indirect manner in relation to the system overall.

Human Systems

by Hugh M. Lewis