Politics
The two established ideologies dominating the political landscape, capitalism and socialism, have recently started to be challenged by a third, unexpected contestant: anti-authoritarianism (AA). On this page I will discuss the fascinating issues related to this paradigm shift in modern political theory. Organizations which implement AA principles have become almost ubiquitous, and I discuss several of these on the Non-hierarchical organizations page. These bottom up, grass roots organizations are instances of systems which science has studied extensively over the last half century: they are self-organized systems.
The fundamental rift between the existing visions of human society and economy and the alternative one which is now emerging comes down to a different understanding of order and disorder.
One of the basic features of the human psyche is the instinctive fear of an environment presumed to be hostile. The environment may include other humans or groups of humans in addition to the rest of the animate and inanimate world. This fear is a useful adaptation for a hunter-gatherer living in a dangerous environment. It is also closely related to the innate expectation of disorder, save for human intervention. Huts, wells (for water) and weapons (spears and bows) do not make themselves. Whenever something orderly or useful appears spontaneously, humans are instinctively surprised. Spontaneous order goes against our biological programming, so to speak. We find it odd and unsettling and often posit imaginary agents such as Gods or Spirits in order to explain it to ourselves.
Consequently, we naturally see disorder as the natural state of things, and order as something which is imposed from the outside on any given system. To us, order is synonymous with authority and hierarchy.
However, this is only a narrow view of the way that human society can function because in fact there are two different forces that can lead to organization, and authority is only one of them. The other is cooperation.
Game theory is a branch of applied mathematics which studies how different strategies fare in populations of players or agents playing repeated games against each other. Players have the possibility to change their strategies, and depending on the way the game is set up and on the starting configuration of the playing population, certain strategies spread, others disappear, and sometimes an equilibrium is reached between competing strategies. Results in game theory are conjectured using computer simulations which guide the intuitions of mathematicians, and some of them can even be proved analytically. In more complex cases (such as the ones approximating real world situations), however, computer simulations are indispensable.
In the language of game theory, one may say that human beings have been living for most of their history in a context generally favorable to competitive strategies. Cooperative strategies are employed only when genetically sanctioned: close relatives instinctively cooperate due to the fact that they share some of the same genes, and that by cooperating they contribute to their propagation. This leads to the behavior and instincts known as clannish or tribal. But each individual shares genes with only a small number of other individuals, usually in his or her immediate proximity. All others are potential adversaries, and the logic of the situation is one which is conducive to violence because in encountering a stranger one often has a train of thought such as “I don’t know what his intentions are but there is a risk he might be hostile, in which case I better shoot first and kill him before he kills me. Besides, he’s probably thinking the same thing as I am right now, so he’s probably about to attack any second now. I better attack first.” Indeed, as Steven Pinker points out, this is very close to the logic which many people living in contemporary hunter-gatherer societies go through in their minds on a regular basis. Instances have been recorded of a village preemptively attacking a neighboring village for no other reason than to avoid being attacked first. [Incidentally, this strategy and logic is strikingly similar to some features of the current National Security Strategy of the United States of America]
It is clear that in the absence of both a higher authority, and of any clear incentive to cooperate, human behavior lapses into violence and destruction. Therefore, according to this view, there are two different forces leading to order, authority and cooperation. The first half of the argument, relating to authority, is formulated most notably in Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan, and is supported by the observation that violence flares especially in times following the collapse of empires or other political regimes. Our awareness of the role and mechanisms of cooperation, however, is much more recent. It has only gradually crystallized during the last several decades, with the study of solid state physics, complex systems, theoretical and mathematical biology, chaos theory and game theory. For some examples of recent advances in the game theory of cooperation, see Fowler’s work and references therein. For a captivating summary of some classic results see Robert Axelrod’s landmark work “The Evolution of Cooperation.” For a discussion of auto-organization in physics (particularly solid state physics) see Robert Laughlin’s “A different Universe – reinventing physics from the bottom down.”
The popular perception that freedom from authority is a mechanism for chaos is therefore misguided because it ignores the powerful role and benefits of cooperation. The rise of anti-authoritarianism therefore relies fundamentally on the rise of cooperation in the modern society.
And indeed, as we look out to the modern advanced societies, it is clear that cooperative strategies have received a boost. There are several reasons for this: the free market forces, memetic theory, and the longterm influence of universal monotheisms. But two of these have been around for a while and have had ample time to make themselves felt: the market forces and monotheism. The recent explosion of anti-authoritarian feeling and activity can only be explained through a better understanding of the memetic dynamics of the modern world.
I said above that in the traditional hunter-gatherer society cooperation depended on people sharing genes. Today, however, there is a new actor on the stage; individuals are starting to cooperate not because they share genes, but because they share memes. This is, in my opinion, the deep reason why the mechanism of order by spontaneous, bottom-up, self-organization is gaining ground without the need for authority, hierarchy, or other coercive measures.
In light of established theories this mechanism is highly paradoxical, because it relies on freedom to create order, whereas the traditional view of the authoritarian establishment was that freedom must be limited in order to avert chaos and the violence it brings with it. By contrast, recent experience has shown that the bonds that are formed between people that share certain memes create a connection which greatly increases the chances of cooperation.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.
