Social Dynamics

by Hugh M. Lewis

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.

General Systems Essays, Vol. I