Chapter 3: Foundations of Order

Chapter Three
Foundations of Order

An important scientific innovation rarely makes its way by gradually winning over and converting its opponents: it rarely happens that Saul becomes Paul. What does happen is that its opponents gradually die out and that the growing generation is familiarized with the idea from the beginning.

— Max Planck

How does the uncertain and unpredictable nature of complex systems and the diffused character of private property ownership relate to the health of a civilization? If a civilization is to remain resilient to the constancies of change, what transformations—if any—in our assumptions about organizational forms must be undertaken to accommodate the creative dynamics? In an environment of instant communication and responses spread over an entire planet, does the traditional top-down model of social order prescribed by an elite for the many have any relevance? Can a civilization expect to survive as a viable system in a world of decentralized fluctuation on the basis of the same kind of thinking with which Machiavelli advised his royal clientele? Upon what conditions is the health of a society dependent?

Consistent with Quigley’s analysis, Arnold Toynbee suggests that a civilization begins to break down when there is “a loss of creative power in the souls of creative individuals,”¹ leading to a diminished capacity of that civilization to successfully respond to challenges. As the civilization disintegrates, there is a qualitative transformation in which the “differentiation and diversity” that characterized a growing civilization is replaced by “a tendency toward standardization and uniformity.”² The final stages of disintegration are marked by increased militarism and the resort to “forcible political unification in a universal state.”³ The present preoccupation with aggressive wars by the American government, and its use of the “war on terror” to further its ambitions for world empire reflect a political system vainly struggling to shore up its crumbling foundations. By contrast, says Toynbee, “[w]hat we are looking for is a free consent of free peoples to dwell together in unity, and to make, uncoerced, the far-reaching adjustments without which this ideal cannot be realized in practice.”⁴

Historians Will and Ariel Durant reached a similar conclusion. In their view, the development or decay of a civilization depends upon whether—and how—challenges to existing practices would be met. The answer to this question turns “upon the presence or absence of initiative and of creative individuals with clarity of mind and energy of will … capable of effective responses to new situations.”⁵ As with organic systems, “civilizations begin, flourish, decline, and disappear—or linger on as stagnant pools left by once life-giving streams.”⁶ Historian Jacob Burckhardt echoed these insights, declaring that “the essence of history is change,” and “the way of annihilation is invariably prepared by inward degeneration, by decrease of life.”⁷ Civilized society, said William von Humboldt, is the expression of “human development in its richest diversity.”⁸

Such dynamics reflect an ongoing tension between the unimpeded efforts of organisms to pursue their individual self-interests—activity that is synonymous with “liberty”—and the determination of others to confine such behavior within bounds that are compatible with established interests. Herein is to be found the cradle of institutionalism, whose essential premise is that the self-interests of some are to have priority over the interests of others, and that restrictions upon the activities of the latter may be justified by the presumed superiority of purpose of the former.

The efforts of one organism to live at the expense of another is, when confined to members of the same species, a form of cannibalism. But these institutionalizing traits encounter resistance from organisms seeking their own interests. There is a life force that is both self-interest driven as well as resilient enough to respond to efforts to restrain its self-seeking nature. One sees this phenomenon in such economic behavior as so-called “black markets” and smuggling (i.e., people covertly circumventing legal restrictions on the free trade in goods and services), as well as the ineffectiveness of cartels to sustain themselves without the use of coercion to enforce them.⁹ The tendency is also seen in people emigrating from one nation to another in order to seek the comparative advantage of a less inhibiting environment. The role played by “frontiers” in the creative development of society is a topic to which I shall return in chapter four.

But when the institutionalizing restraints become so pervasive and of such intensity as to deprive life of too many options for its free expression, the fate of civilization itself is called into question. An irreconcilable conflict arises between institutional interests and those of life itself, which, unless reversed, may make inevitable the collapse of life-inhibiting structures.

The study of chaos and complexity may help us to better understand the dynamical processes that can foster both the health and the decay of societies. Complex social systems—with their labyrinthine interconnections of manifold influences— play out regularities that are far beyond our capacities to foresee, but which we ignore to our embarrassment or peril. The constant adaptations of the marketplace illustrate the unpredictable order within complexity. Even the modern practice of insurgency group warfare expresses itself in identifiable patterns. As Oxford University physicist Neil Johnson has shown, “the same basic patterns” arise. “As you increase the number of casualties, the number of clashes is much fewer,”¹⁰ confirming that even within what most would regard as the disordered nature of modern warfare, patterns of behavior will repeat themselves. As contrasted with top-down, state-run military systems, insurgency groups will pulsate in coming together for an attack, disband, and later regroup.

As with other complex systems, societies are subject to the processes of chaos. Fluctuations within subsystems may generate increased turbulence that can reach a bifurcation point, at which the system may begin to function chaotically. Should this turbulence continue unabated, the system will experience either an entropic decline (e.g., western Rome) or total collapse, or transformation into a more refined order. Both the collapse of civilizations and the emergence of creative, liberalizing periods have often been preceded and/or accompanied by extensive social upheaval and conflict. Neither course is predetermined. There is nothing inevitable in a complex world. A society may reverse its entropic course and, through spontaneous self-organization, evolve into a more sophisticated and complex system. These creative responses generated such life-enhancing periods as the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and the scientific and industrial revolutions. In spontaneous, unplanned ways—in which individuals were free to act upon and within the world—complexity and chaos have been catalysts for the development of ever more complex systems of order.

The work of Ilya Prigogine and Isabelle Stengers¹¹ has added another counterintuitive understanding to how systems, including a society or civilization, are able to reverse entropic declines. The mechanistic interpretation of the universe as a giant clockwork fated, by the second law of thermodynamics, to collapse into entropic death, is being challenged by the model of “dissipative structures”¹² that permit living systems to use entropy to renew themselves. Such systems exchange matter and energy with their environments and, in the process, use the resulting entropy to spontaneously generate more complex systems of order. From life itself, to a whirlpool, to a galaxy, systems interact with their surroundings to maintain their forms. In this way—contrary to our expectations from the second law of thermodynamics—orderly systems can arise out of disorder. The universe, in other words, may not be running down; it may just be getting started!

If our metaphysical assumptions about the world are undergoing major transformations, we must expect significant alterations to occur in the nature of our social systems. Because we seem to have a need for our philosophic opinions and behavior to become synthesized, the organizational arrangements we create will tend to reflect a desired coherence. As our thinking moves from mechanistic and fragmentary conceptions of reality to a more organic and interconnected model, we should expect the forms and practices of social organizations to undergo major changes. Our traditional thinking about systems must be revised. Contrary to what we have long presumed to be true, the study of chaos is making us aware that greater complexity in social organizations demands not that we imbue vertically-constituted institutions with greater authority, but that we begin to dismantle such structures. The pyramidal archetype under which we have been living has fostered division and social conflict because it centralizes authority in institutional entities to deal with complex matters for which they are inherently incapable. If this model is collapsing in favor of more informal systems, decision-making power can be expected to become decentralized into the hands of individuals and lessstructured groups.

A movement from vertically-imposed to horizontally selfgenerated systems is facilitated by an awareness of the principle of “self-organization.” One source defines this as “a process in which the internal organization of a system, normally an open system, increases in complexity without being guided or managed by an outside source.”¹³ This concept is at the core of the debate over whether “order” within any system is a quality to be prescribed by external forces, or is autonomously-generated from within an organism by the interplay of matter and energy working to continually renew—through “autopoeisis” (i.e., the process by which living systems self-organize through productive networks)—the internal system. Self-organization expresses the inherent—albeit often unseen—order that prevails within a system, a process that renders authoritativelyprescribed forms at best a redundant, and at worst a destructive force. The biological and physical sciences provide endless examples of both organic (e.g., the development of an organism from conception onward), and chemical (e.g., crystallization), processes of self-organization in nature. If seemingly nonconscious entities can generate such spontaneous systems, might it be possible for human beings to do so as an unintended consequence of their interconnected self-interested activities? An understanding of the dynamics of self-generated order reinforces alternative social models of decentralized authority and horizontal organization.

If “order through fluctuation”¹⁵ is essential to the continuing revitalization of a system, then we need to revise our model of societal order as well as the organizational systems through which we interact and cooperate with one another. If “interconnectedness” is to replace “subservience;” and “fluctuation” and “variety” are to be substituted for “stability” and “uniformity;” then new organizational premises must be discovered. Our present thinking, and the systems such thinking has generated, are in a state of crisis. Our present well-organized madness has proven itself too destructive and too degrading, leading to a massive failure of expectations. For the sake of our living well— perhaps of our living at all—humanity is in need of a major paradigm shift regarding the nature of order in society.

As already indicated, our world is rapidly becoming decentralized, with computerized systems and other technologies providing much of the impetus for change. The pyramidal model—born of mechanistic and reductionist premises that no longer explain the interconnected nature of complex systems— is in need of replacement. A candidate for a paradigmatic change may be found in the interplay between “chaos” theory and complexity, on the one hand, and what I shall call a “holographic” model of order, wherein vertical structures are replaced by horizontal networks.

Western civilization is in a critical, confused state. As Kuhn informs us, “[a]ll crises begin with the blurring of a paradigm.”¹⁵ That his analysis applies not only to scientific thought, but to social thinking as well, is reflected in his observation that “[p]olitical revolutions are inaugurated by a growing sense, often restricted to a segment of the political community, that existing institutions have ceased adequately to meet the problems posed by an environment that they have in part created.”¹⁶ Such revolutions, he adds, “aim to change political institutions in ways that those institutions themselves prohibit. …”¹⁷ If, as seems to be the case, modern society is experiencing a “blurring” of the prevailing authoritarian model upon which it has long been based; and if there is a “growing sense” of the failure of the existing system to resolve the problems it has helped to generate, the question arises as to the form an alternative paradigm might take.

To help envision the nature of the transformation that is occurring, resort might be had to solid geometry. The pyramid of the state-dominated society might be contrasted with that of a sphere. The pyramid is characterized by polarized relationships of authority and subservience, of power and weakness. As one sees in the structure of a traditional organization chart, relationships are vertical in nature; decision-making flows from the top downward to those who are to carry out the authoritative directive. Such dualities do not prevail in the holographic world of a sphere. There is no preferred position to be found on the surface of a sphere; no favored location from which power could either accumulate or flow. Spheres—such as a marketplace—have neither “tops” nor “bottoms,” but multilateral connections.

At the risk of over-simplification, holography is a technological process by which an object is photographed with the use of a laser beam that is split into two separate beams, the “object” beam and the “reference” beam. With use of mirrors and lenses, the object beam is used to create a diffused light pattern. The two beams interfere with one another in such a way as to create a pattern that is then recorded on the photographic film. After the film has been developed, a laser beam is directed through the backside of the holographic film. The diffracted light that emerges recreates the original three-dimensional image with which we have become familiar.

One of the more interesting features of holography is implicit in the Greek origins of the word itself. From holos (meaning “whole”) and gramma (meaning “message”), we get hologram, or the “whole message.” If you cut the original film (the “image master”) into parts, and direct the laser beam through any piece thereof, you will still be able to reproduce the entire image! Unlike an ordinary photograph taken by a camera —in which a portion of the negative will reproduce only that portion of the image—in a hologram the complete image is stored everywhere on the film. Any portion of the image master, in other words, is capable of reproducing the entire hologram. Like fractals, which repeat their simple patterns on more complex scales, holograms may be yet another manifestation of the order that lies hidden in our daily experiences. Perhaps fractals and holograms are only two different ways in which our minds have thus far been able to describe the patterns by which nature harmonizes particular events into general patterns.

A holographic model of thinking contrasts with the dualistic manner in which our minds deal with the world. Dualistic thinking is premised upon our world being subdivided into mutually-exclusive concepts, including the separation of the individual—as an individual—from the community. A holographic paradigm, on the other hand, is grounded in an awareness of the integrated wholeness of nature, whose elements and meanings are radiated throughout rather than concentrated. The whole is manifested in each part or, to be more precise, in the interactions among the parts. This model finds analogous expression in Emerson’s transcendentalist philosophy, wherein each of us is not only able to connect up with a life force in nature, but are embodiments of this force. Thoreau’s reference to “the infinite extent of our relations”¹⁸ carries the same sense of interconnectedness. In Hindu and Buddhist philosophy, the metaphor known as “Indra’s Net” describes a complex web of threads held together by numerous shiny pearls, whose respective surfaces reflect one another, as apt an image for a holographic paradigm as can be imagined. A holographic view gives real-world meaning to the “butterfly effect,” in that each of us is individually capable of acting upon the world in profound, godlike ways. In popular culture, the motion picture It’s A Wonderful Life—in which George Bailey discovers how different the world would have been had he not been born—expresses this phenomenon.

The systems with which we organize ourselves with one another are largely fashioned from the metaphysical models we embrace. In turn, the principles upon which our societal architecture is based produce consequences that may be beneficial or harmful to our well-being. Perhaps the distinction between two forms of the same chemical element can illustrate the significance of different organizational forms. Graphite (pencil lead) is one of the softest materials known. Its molecules are layered in parallel patterns that make the bonds between each layer of atoms weak and capable of easy separation. This is what allows us to transfer pencil lead to a piece of paper. Diamonds, on the other hand, are the hardest known substance in nature. Their atoms are tightly bound together in interlocking patterns that are difficult to separate. Despite such fundamental differences, each of these substances is composed of pure carbon. It is how their respective molecules are organized that gives them either weakness or strength.

Beyond the fact that our lives are also carbon-based, what relevance does this analogy have to the social implications of property? If our relationships are based upon mutual respect for our individuality and the inviolability of our respective boundaries, there will be no contradiction between individual and social interests. The organizations we develop will be tightly interconnected by trust; the bonds that hold us together will be so firm that institutional systems will find it difficult to intrude their purposes into our lives and divide us into conflicting groups. Our present social organizations are built more upon the graphite model, wherein our connections with one another are so weak as to be severed with little effort. Instead of a mutual trust and respect that gives individually-supportive social systems internal strength, we are easily mobilized by a fear of one another that generates mutual distrust. In bonding with the institutional forces that separate us from one another, we provide institutional systems with the power to dominate life.

We have a desperate need to develop social systems that obtain their strength from the interplay of individuals cooperating to achieve mutual purposes. This requires us to rethink our assumptions about the source and nature of order in our lives: is it a quality that is vertically-imposed upon us, or one that is horizontally-generated by the confluence of tens of millions of people pursuing their diverse interests? Holographic thinking may provide us the basis for such alternative systems.

A holographic paradigm is an expression of the labyrinthine interconnectedness of complex systems. Whether we are considering economies, ecosystems, plate tectonics, epidemics, planetary polar reversals, climates, or other phenomena whose behavior is influenced by an unknowable array of intervening factors, our world is far too complicated to allow us to deal with it as fragmented parts, or to any longer permit the illusion of it being manageable to foreseeable ends. The formal structures to which we have long been accustomed, are being toppled by irresistible dynamic forces. With the vertical in decline, a holographic model—with its decentralist implications—will likely prove itself the most effective system for generating social order as an unintended consequence of each of us responding to the complexities in our lives.

By its very nature, a holographic social system diffuses all authority over human action. Centralized power is replaced by decentralized networks, with decision-making residing in autonomous but interrelated men and women who respond to one another through unstructured feedback systems and processes some have referred to as “emergence.”¹⁹ Social relationships are characterized by individuals freely choosing to cooperate with one another for the accomplishment of mutually-desired purposes. Social behavior would be represented by the interconnectedness of independent persons, not the subservient obedience of subjects. The Internet provides a perfect metaphor for such systems, wherein individuals communicate directly with one another, without any need for institutional “gatekeepers”²⁰ to superintend such intercourse.

Within a holographic organization, authority flows horizontally, or laterally, with members communicating and exchanging directly with one another, rather than through formal intermediaries. The function of leaders within such a system is not to direct, control, and supervise members, but to coordinate and facilitate (e.g., to make certain that raw materials are available for work, to maintain clear channels for feedback, or, as the phrase used to be employed to describe the role of college administrators: to keep the snow off the sidewalks). Order is more spontaneously derived as a by-product of the behavior of all members of the organization, not the creature of institutional design or authoritative pronouncement.

Any comparison between vertically-structured and horizontally-networked social systems must include a focus on the question of how order originates. The vertical, “positivist” model presumes order to be the product of human intention and design; of consciously formulated rules created to impose standardized conduct upon members of society. Such thinking is grounded in a “fear of trusting uncontrolled social forces,”²¹ focusing upon systematically directed uniformity as essential to an orderly society.

The horizontal, holographic model, on the other hand, is premised on order being the unintended consequence—a side effect—of people pursuing their respective self-interests. It consists of those regularities that arise without any planning or purpose to create them. The marketplace, with the pricing system constantly adjusting—without outside direction—to the fluctuations in supplies and demands for goods and services, is the most vivid and familiar example of such spontaneouslyderived order. No one—buyer or seller—enters into economic transactions for the purpose of fostering equilibrium pricing, but such are their contributions to the informal order of the marketplace. In holographic systems, individuals, not the state, are acknowledged as the conductors of their own affairs on the basis of terms they freely negotiate with one another, and with disputes resolved on the basis of such self-negotiated rules, as well as the broadly based customs, practices, and expectations of the community. In such alternative systems, the substance of social order is found in the regularities that arise, spontaneously and without any intention to do so, from the interplay of human behavior.

The contrast between these ways of conceptualizing order can be seen in how we think about that force we call gravity. Under the traditional, pyramidal model, gravity has been thought of as a kind of regulatory force imposed upon matter through external means. We even speak of gravity as one of the numerous “natural laws” by which nature has imposed its regularities upon the universe. While few people would take this as a literal proposition, or continue to insist that nature has “created” such “laws” and “imposed” them upon us pursuant to some subject/object relationship, the words that we use continue to reflect that kind of mindset. In much the same way that our reference to “sunrises” and “sunsets” can subtly reinforce a pre-Copernican perspective, our antiquated views of gravity can provide unconscious support for a broader concept of order.

If we were to think about gravity in the language of a holographic model of order—as physicists in fact do—we would understand that it is not a quality imposed upon us from beyond, but arises out of the relationship of two or more bodies. If you and I are carrying on a conversation in a room, gravity could be thought of as just one expression of how we relate to one another; as well as how we and the chairs relate to each other, to the building in which we are located, the other people in the building, as well as to the interrelatedness of all these other people and things to one another, and so on. Everything in the universe relates to everything else in just such ways. When we think of our world in terms of such incalculable interrelationships, and comprehend the uncertainty that arises from such complexity, we begin to see the humor in our simplistic beliefs about centrally-directed systems, be they societies or the rest of the universe. So considered, gravity—like all the other regularities we discover in our world—takes on a more profound and complicated meaning than is to be explained by the metaphor of an apple falling on Newton’s head!

The marketplace is an example of a self-organizing, holographic system in which decision-making is widely diffused among persons whose self-serving behavior generates beneficial consequences to others. In contrast with state planned and regulated economies, a free market is directed by no one. The informal processes of the pricing system—which functions as an attractor for economic activity, operating independently of the interests of any given market participant—communicate information about the preferences of both buyers and sellers. On the basis of such information, individuals may modify their choices which, when combined with the responses of others, may alter the signals in the pricing structure to which further adjustments will be made, ad infinitum. The market, in other words, is a self-sustaining, self-adaptive system for producing and exchanging goods and services among strangers.

But the marketplace, as a spontaneous, self-organizing system, can function only in an environment in which private ownership is acknowledged as a fundamental social principle. Respect for the inviolability of private property is the defining characteristic of a free market system. Only when individual owners assess their own risks and bear all the costs and benefits of their actions; only as they commit their own resources toward a desired end; and only when the range of their decision-making control is defined by the boundaries of what they own, can the self-disciplining nature of the marketplace function. The self-interested motivation to act for the enhancement of what one owns diminishes in intensity when we make decisions regarding the property of others. Unlike owners, politicians and bureaucrats can engage in actions that cost them nothing, but which impose financial burdens upon affected parties. History is replete with the errors of judgment, tyrannical behavior, political fiascoes, and adverse consequences of collective delusions, brought about by the practice of some persons making decisions over the lives and property of others.

Externally undirected, self-organizing behavior is also observed in the spontaneous responses complete strangers make to a natural disaster—such as a tornado, hurricane, or earthquake—or to a major accident. Individuals quickly come together, assess the problems, agree upon a division of labor and then, when they have accomplished their group task, return to their homes. The effectiveness of such immediate reactions is contrasted with the bureaucratically sluggish, hindering, redtaped responses of governmental agencies that often delay rather than facilitate recovery. Those who haven’t discovered the advantages of self-organization over institutionally-structured behavior, are invited to compare the spontaneous efforts of tens of thousands of individuals, businesses, and churches to come to the aid of New Orleans residents following hurricane Katrina, and the non-responsive—and often impeding—actions of governmental agencies during and following this disaster.²²

Self-organizing practices are not confined to humans. Throughout the rest of nature, different life forms exhibit the same kind of reciprocally advantageous conduct, or symbiosis. The entire life process is grounded in this kind of symbiotic, holographic interconnectedness, which comprises an ecosystem. The well-being of carnivores is dependent upon the presence of a sufficient number of herbivores whose existence, in turn, depends upon an adequate supply of plant life. We humans breathe in oxygen—emitted by plants—and expel carbon dioxide, which, in turn, is consumed by the plants. What is entropy (or waste) for us is negentropy (or energy) for our plant cousins.

Various plant and animal species use one another for their respective survival and proliferation advantages. Fruit trees produce sweet-tasting, nutritious, seed-bearing fruit that animals—humans included—will carry away to eat, with the undigested seeds passing intact through the animal, to be fertilized by the feces. As Michael Pollan has observed, potatoes, apples, marijuana, and tulips have—with human help—evolved characteristics that appeal to our preferences, in order that we might cultivate them and transport them to other locations where they can thrive.²³ Have we been “exploiting” these plants for our benefit, or have they been “exploiting” us for theirs, or is the entire concept of exploitation just another expression of divisive thinking?

Examples of cooperative and symbiotic relationships among species are found throughout nature. Flowers supply insects with food, in exchange for which the insects pollinate the flowers. Some of these plant/insect exchanges have become so sophisticated that certain flowers can only be pollinated by specific insect species, a fact that reminds us of another pattern of interrelatedness: evolutionary processes can foster both greater diversity—making a species more adaptable to change—as well as greater specialization—making a species more vulnerable to the consequences of change. Over-specialization can create tendencies for non-adaptability that can weaken or destroy a species. In the emerging study of “ecological anachronisms,” we are becoming aware of how specific plants and animals have evolved mutually dependent relationships (e.g., various fruits evolving seed dispersal systems suited to particular animals that can maximize the plant’s opportunities for propagation). While cooperation, rather than conflict, has generally proven to be a viable arrangement, the partnership was oftentimes too narrowly confined. When the targeted animals became extinct, the highly specialized reproductive strategies of the plants created a botanical crisis, often leading to drastic reductions in plant populations.²⁴ Perhaps the rest of nature has an important lesson for us humans. Just as other life systems may be threatened by a resistance to multiple strategies for survival, civilizations can be destroyed by institutional structuring that inhibits resiliency to changing conditions.

Other cooperative strategies among species reflect the advantages of symbiosis. Grazing animals, through their eating habits, prevent more vigorous plants from taking over and crowding out other plant species, thus assuring a greater variety of plant life. Likewise, various plants produce toxins or thorns, which help to discourage grazing animals from eating too much of any one kind of plant, thus helping to maintain a balance in plant species. Such plants seem to have worked out their own solutions to the “tragedy of the commons” problem!²⁵ Similar animal species will hunt at different times of the day, or will have different preferences for prey, as ways of reducing interspecies competition.²⁶

Contrary to the mindset that sees the various species—particularly humanity—as being in a continual war with one another, life exhibits an amazing symbiosis. Cooperation, both within and among species, has led to the proliferation of life forms on earth, a point well developed by Peter Kropotkin in his classic work Mutual Aid.²⁷ It has been estimated that there are more trees growing in North America today than there were before Columbus’s arrival over six centuries ago.²⁸ I strongly suspect that there is more corn growing in Nebraska in any current year than existed on the entire face of the planet at that time. In fact, this major world food source didn’t even exist until early humans cultivated it from a mix of wild grasses. From London²⁹ to New Jersey, America’s most densely populated state, wildlife is prospering in urban centers. Gardens, garbage cans, and domesticated pets—food sources provided by humans—have attracted birds and mammals from the countryside. New Jersey is experiencing an increase in the black bear population, while it is estimated that there are now more wild deer living in that state than were there before European settlers arrived.³⁰ These wild animals are probably coming to the cities for the same reasons as their human counterparts: to make a living. Domesticated animals have experienced similar results: chickens, cows, pigs, goats, dogs, cats, cattle, and sheep, have greatly increased their numbers by appealing to human tastes. Henry George made the point quite well: “Both the jayhawk and man eat chickens, but the more jayhawks, the fewer chickens, while the more men, the more chickens.”³¹

But nature, including mankind, is not consistently organized along symbiotic lines. Parasitism—a phenomenon characterized by one organism (the “parasite”) deriving its negentropic energies from another organism (the “host”) without a reciprocal benefit—also exists in plant and animal life. Leeches, ticks, various bacteria and fungi, among others, survive by feeding off the energies of a host.³² Within human society, parasitism manifests itself in the form of thievery and fraudulent transactions, both of which are based upon a disrespect for the property interests of the victim. In more than metaphorical fashion, all of human interaction can be reduced to such symbiotic relationships as are found in the marketplace, or parasitic behavior such as exists in victimizing crime and political systems. In either case, the question of whether or not the property boundaries of another are to be regarded as inviolate defines the systems.

In the language of chaos theory, Western civilization in general, and its American branch in particular, are in a state of turbulence. Fundamental changes are occurring around us, but we are not inclined to see them. It is as though we were living in the eye of a hurricane, where relative calm and regularity prevail. Our immediate surroundings appear normal, our family lives and work environments are subject to no more disruption than usual, while we tend to dismiss impending storm warnings.

But at the periphery of our world, destructive forces are tearing apart the foundations of our society. As with a real hurricane that brings down trees, buildings, power lines, billboards, and transportation facilities, societal turbulence is confronting perpendicular structures whose elevated centers of gravity make them vulnerable to collapsing forces. The social hurricane moves laterally, its centrifugal energies overpowering any resistance it meets. The institutional order declares war against the turbulence, and acts desperately to reinforce the weakened footings of its antiquated structures. Persons living in hurricane regions, on the other hand, have learned the futility of fighting the storm. As the study of chaos and complexity advises us, our survival depends upon our discovering the orderly patterns within the turbulence to which we can adapt our efforts to productive, life-sustaining ends.

We may, of course, continue to accept the institutional order’s explanations for the tempest as well as its proposed remedies. But neither terrorists nor immigrants have been the cause of the decline of Western civilization any more than were the invading barbarians the cause of the fall of the western Roman Empire. Each such group was but a symptom, among many, of the vulnerability of a civilization that had become weakened by its own contradictions and lack of responsiveness to the conditions upon which life depends. Should we continue to delude ourselves that outside forces are responsible for our inner collapse, and that more powerful mechanisms of state coercion are all that is needed to correct our course, our civilization will most likely continue toward its entropic fate.

On the other hand, the creative implications of chaos and complexity remind us that turbulence need not result in social collapse, but may provide us with opportunities to develop alternative practices that allow us to transcend our present destructiveness. In the words of Erich Jantsch, “the dismantling of social control hierarchies and strengthened autonomy of the subsystems”³³ provide the means for discovering more orderly, life-enhancing social systems. Such changes are already occurring. Into the void generated by the increasingly enervated institutional order, are arising new, informal, and relatively unstructured systems that serve the interests of those who choose to associate with them. The decentralized nature of the emerging social systems has been no better stated than in the words of the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize recipient, Shirin Ebadi. She described the organizational model used by Iranian feminist groups in these words:

They are very strong. Their approach is unique because they have no leaders. They do not have a head or branch offices. … The movement is made even stronger by not having leaders. If one or two people lead it, the organization would weaken if these leaders were arrested. Because there is no leader, it is very strong and not stoppable.³⁴

Decentralization leads to a more robust, resilient organization. Centralized authority provides a jugular vein which, when attacked, can greatly damage or destroy the entire system. If you topple the head of a pyramidal organization, the structure may collapse. On the other hand, as Ebadi points out, if you eliminate a key figure in a decentralized network, the system quickly adapts. The distinction between the ease with which Nazi Germany was able to force the central governments of Holland, Poland, and France to surrender, and the impossible time the Germans had in their efforts to subdue the decentralized French underground, illustrate the contrast. Such is the emerging model in which the collectivist doctrine “in union there is strength”—which has made us vulnerable to the power ambitions of others—is being replaced by an awareness that in autonomous and decentralized systems we can maximize both our liberty and the benefits from social organization.

In 1951, John Steinbeck provided an interesting contrast between vertically-structured and horizontally-networked systems. Surmising that “perhaps our species thrives best and most creatively in a state of semi-anarchy, governed by loose rules and half-practiced mores,” he contrasted the likely social consequences that would occur from the “sudden removal of twenty-five key men” in the governments of Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union, with the United States. “A too greatly integrated system or society,” he warned, “is in danger of destruction since the removal of one unit may cripple the whole.” In America, on the other hand, “we could lose our congress, our president and our general staff and nothing much would have happened. We would go right on. In fact we might be better for it. …”³⁵

If, as seems to be the case, our traditional organizational forms are disintegrating, it will be incumbent upon us to reexamine our basic assumptions concerning how we relate to one another. Whether we are to live in a pyramidally-structured, centrally-directed society, or a holographically-modeled society in which authority is decentralized among individuals, will be reflected in how property is owned and controlled. The reason for this should be apparent: decision-making is always over human lives and property interests. Each such system tells us where the focal point of human action is to be found. Will decisions be made and conduct imposed by a few upon the many, or will individuals undertake such responsibilities for themselves in free association with others? For centuries, we have indulged ourselves in social and political illusions that presume the insignificance of private property ownership, and we are now paying the price for our delusions in the conflict, violence, warfare, genocide, and other dehumanizing practices that beset us all. In one form or another, we are at war with our fellow humans because we neither respect the inviolability of their interests nor demand that of our own.

As Sumner reminds us, property is the most fundamental of all our social concepts, and yet we have relatively little conscious understanding of either its nature or importance. In our materialistic and monetarily defined culture, most of us regard property as little more than “things” or other interests to be owned and used, and measure the success in our lives in terms of the quantity and value of the things that we have accumulated. We largely fail to understand the deeper social and spiritual meanings of property; that how property is owned and controlled tells us how, and by whom, decisionmaking authority is exercised in our lives.

A holographically-modeled system would, by definition, be incompatible with political systems that rely upon centralized force to control the lives and property of subjugated people. Social order would be thought of less as the product of central planning than of informal and spontaneous self-generation. Only a system of privately-owned property—in which authority to make decisions rests in the hands of individuals—is consistent with a diffused model of social organization.

Life functions in a material context: if they are to survive, organisms must occupy space and consume resources to the exclusion of everything and everyone else. This is not a normative proposition—a matter of ideological faith—but a statement of indisputable fact. From the simplest to the most complex life forms—be they animal or vegetable—every living thing is engaged in a continuous process of possessing and absorbing some portion of its physical environment.

At the same time, in a complex and uncertain world, for an organism to remain viable, it must be able to respond to specific conditions and events within its immediate environment with the resources available to it. Life functions at the margin. A species neither “survives” nor “dies” in some collective manner, other than as a consequence of the success or failure of individual members to sustain themselves by resisting entropy. This fact, alone, should alert us to the importance of decentralized private ownership to our survival.

In a quantum world of possibilities and “tendencies to exist,” the absolutism of Newtonian physics will be found wanting. Institutional demands for uniformity and standardization must give way to autonomy and spontaneity as the organizing principle. If we are to reverse our downward course, we ought to heed Toynbee’s warning: “[a]s differentiation is the mark of growth, so standardization is the mark of disintegration.”³⁶ Erich Jantsch has provided this succinct statement of the premise that must underlie our efforts: “[t]he more freedom in self-organization the more order.”³⁷

When we are acting for our own purposes and with our own resources—instead of presuming to act on behalf of multitudes who have never acquiesced in our decision-making over them—the range of both the options available to us and the consequences of our conduct are more narrowly circumscribed. An awareness of the indeterminate and unpredictable nature of complex systems, as well as the subjective nature of our understanding and the preferences we pursue, act as a check upon our hubris. If we err in our judgments, the resulting harm is greatly confined. In either event, whether our actions benefit or harm us, others can learn from what we have done and calculate such lessons into their own conduct.

Such thinking has underlain the philosophy of pluralism, which recognized both the individual and societal benefits of the kind of diversity that has long been submerged in the stultifying concrete of uniformity, egalitarianism, factionalism, and other expressions of institutionalized thinking. The pluralistic practices that foster the individuality and the consequences, from which all of us may learn, depend upon a decentralized system of decision-making authority in society. If we are to have the resilience to make life-enhancing responses to the world— to assess risks and other costs, and to settle upon an efficacious course of action—we must enjoy the autonomy to act upon our portion of the world without interference from others, a liberty to be found only in a system of privately owned property.

In answering the question as to how and by whom property is to be owned and controlled, we shall be telling ourselves how we regard both ourselves, and others. Are we but the producers of the material values that serve both personal and organizational ends, or is there an underlying dignity to our being that precedes such physical needs? Are we individuals entitled to pursue our own ends through the control of our own resources, or are we but the means to the ends of others, to be exploited and disposed of as befits their purposes? Are we worthy of the respect of others—as well as ourselves—as self-directed individuals?

“Authority,” one dictionary informs us, is the “power to require and receive submission: the right to expect obedience: superiority derived from a status that carries with it the right to command and give final decisions.”³⁸ Authority relates to the decision-making processes in our world, and decisions are always made about some thing by some person. By its very nature then, the concept of authority relates to how and by whom decisions are to be made over the lives and property of people. Whether such authority is exercised by each individual over his or her life and other property interests, or whether it is exercised by others over such individuals, determines whether societies will enjoy liberty and be free of conflict.

The property concept is so basic to our lives that most of us have never bothered to think about its meaning or implications. How property is to be owned and controlled is the most functionally relevant social question in any culture. It begins with that most basic inquiry: do individuals enjoy self-ownership?, a topic to which we shall return in chapter five. Property is a purely social concept, having meaning only as it relates to our relationships with other people. If, for example, I were the last person on earth, I would have no need for a property principle upon which to govern my behavior. Let us imagine that I have a toolbox in my possession. There being no other person to challenge my authority over the toolbox, I would be free to do with it as I chose. I would have no more need for an appreciation of “property” principles than I would for a lock on the doors of whatever house in which I chose to reside. Everything in the world would be a potential resource available to me in my efforts to sustain myself. The question of “who is the owner of this tool box?” would have no meaning to me whatsoever. Such was the initial condition experienced by Robinson Crusoe upon his arrival at the island.

But now introduce another human being to my world—a modern version of Friday—and the two of us must arrive at an understanding as to which of us will make decisions about what resources, as we each pursue our self-interests. A preliminary question we must ask each other—as was also implicit in the Crusoe-Friday relationship—is whether each of us will acknowledge the other as self-owning beings, or whether we shall look upon each other as but another resource to be owned and controlled for our personal ends. Whether we expressly articulate the issue this way or not, our relationship will be defined by how we resolve the property question. This matter cannot be avoided, no matter how well-intentioned each of us might be, or how well we get along with one another, or what methods we might agree upon for resolving the problem: we may even agree to share the tool box. Whatever the outcome, the problem is an unavoidable fact of our existence, as each of us endeavors to consume the energy that will keep us alive and allow us to realize our self-interested ends. What makes this a social issue is not my exercise of control over the toolbox, but the presence of a potential competitor—or even a cooperator— regarding how, and by whom decisions regarding the toolbox will be exercised. The property question, in other words, has nothing to do with my relationship to the toolbox, but with my relationship to my neighbor concerning the toolbox.

As the property concept illustrates, to think of our relationships with others in holographic terms is not to repress one’s sense of individuality in favor of a new-and-improved collective dogma. Consistent with our emerging understanding of the dynamics of complexity, it is to see ourselves and others in terms of relationships grounded in the kind of existential equality that presumes no person to have rightful authority over another. As we learn to see our individual uniqueness and selfinterested nature as the qualities we share with all others; as we begin to comprehend how a holographic model ends the divisions we have created amongst one another; we may reverse our destructive course. We may discover how to live cooperatively in society without either diminishing the importance of our sense of self, or regarding our neighbor as an exploitable resource.