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HUMAN CHOICE The Genetic
Code for Social Development by Harlan Cleveland Garry Jacobs Robert Macfarlane Robert van Harten N. Asokan Work-in-progress on a general theory of development The 1998 Published by The 130 Hubert H. Humphrey Ctr.
Copyright © 1999 Harlan Cleveland Garry Jacobs Table of
Contents We have come to believe that there are
illuminating parallels between the development of life forms and the
development of human societies.
Exploring these parallels may put the puzzlement in a useful
perspective, and perhaps provide a usable framework on which more satisfying
social theory can be constructed. The process of
physical creation has given rise to a hierarchy of material and biological
forms – from the infinitesimal atom and molecule to the living cell,
differentiated organs and multi-cellular life forms of increasing complexity
and capacity for adaptation. The process
of social creation gives rise to a similar hierarchy of forms. But society is a field of life, not matter;
of activity, not the sum of living organisms but their constantly changing
interactions. The social forms it
creates are not patterns and arrangements of material substance but patterns
and arrangements of human activity – not “architecture” but something more like chemical reactions in
a liquid solution. “Human
activity” arises from individual human acts that (like atoms that link into
chains to form molecules) combine to form more complex chains of human
activity. Combinations of human
activities join together to constitute basic social systems capable of
performing completed units of work (for
example in production, trade, transport, communication, defense, or
governance), analogous to the combinations of molecules that form living cells,
the smallest complete units of what we call “life.” In society, groups of
differentiated systems join to create organizations capable of performing
specialized types of work – commercial, scientific, educational, artistic,
social, political, etc. This may be
seen as roughly parallel to the joining of differentiated cells in biology to
form specialized organs that perform specialized functions in the human
body. At a higher level of complexity,
a wide range of specialized organizations combine to form a society which can
perform (never perfectly) the essential functions required to sustain a social
order in which human beings can live and work and play together. In a similar way, a wide range of
specialized organs in the body combine to form a living organism that can
(never perfectly) sustain the interrelated functions essential to biological
existence. There is thus a rough parallel
between the development chain in biology that leads from atoms to molecules to
cells to organs to the adaptive living organism, and the chain in social
development that leads from individual acts to human activities to systems to
organizations to the adaptive living society. Productive social activities
generate material wealth and its accompaniments. But the real product of social development
is not the organization of material forms out of material substance as in
biological processes; it is the
organization of social forms out of the substance of human activities. Underlying that social process is brainwork
-- the mental development of individuals using their information to create
knowledge and ideas, marrying their individual thinking to the individual
thoughts of other individuals and thereby creating together a complex,
functional, and therefore productive organization of human activities – which
is social development. “Development” is in its essence organization – the
organization of material processes through the ideas we call “technology;” the organization of social processes we call
systems, procedures, conventions, commerce, law, and governance; and the organization of mental phenomena –
the data-with-context we call information, the
rational processes called knowledge (sciences, practices, and
professions), which combines with nonrational intuition to produce what we call
“wisdom.” It is the thoughtful organization
of social existence, the essence of “development,” that makes possible progressively higher
levels of efficiency, quality, productivity, complexity, comprehension, choice,
creativity, mastery, enjoyment, and accomplishment. Usable Human Energy Energy,
in various forms, is the force responsible for these physical and social
processes. All creative, synthetic
processes require an investment of energy.
The physical energy for the development of biological processes is
absorbed from the environment in the form of heat, light, and chemical
compounds. Vast amounts of energy are
stored in molecular and atomic bonds; it
can be released and utilized to build larger organic structures. And this molecular energy pales into
insignificance compared to the enormous reservoir of energy pent up in the
bonds between subatomic particles. The
energy for social development is only at the margin physical energy derived
from material substances in the environment.
Most of it is what might be called subjective human energy, physical,
vital-emotional and mental energy produced by individual human beings taking
thought and interacting with other human beings, producing in turn the collective
energy of human aspirations in society. The
generation and accumulation of usable human energy is as necessary to social
development as the storing of food energy is to the development of biological
organisms. As the molecules of organic
material are a storehouse of energy that is released for development of life
forms by metabolic processes, so human beings (with their thinking caps on) are
a vast storehouse of potential physical, psychological, mental, and spiritual
energy that is released for the development of society by thought that leads to
action. Society develops when some of
the energy thus released is channeled into more complex and potentially
productive forms of human activity. Both
material and social forms consist of energy bound into fixed patterns. As the
bonds that hold together molecules and atoms contain a reservoir (for practical purposes unlimited) of potential energy formed during the
processes of their initial formation, so the learnings, opinions, attitudes,
beliefs, convictions, motives, and values that direct individual and collective
human activities constitute an immense reservoir of psychological energy. Much energy has of course gone into
the creation of social behavior patterns in the past. The release and
utilization of that energy has been heavily constrained by systems of control
and hierarchical power. With lighter
constraints, it might be released and channeled into new, more productive
patterns organized in ways designed to use rather than ration human
choice. The enormous magnitude of this
potential energy is revealed both by the unyielding resistance to change and
the explosive revolutionary forces that are sometimes released at the points
where societies break with established traditions. The human body
seems to develop only when it absorbs more energy than is required to support
the minimum needs for survival and activity measured by prior experience. This excess energy may spill over in random,
even dysfunctional, physical activity;
it may be stored as an increase in the physical mass of the body; or it may be channeled for the further healthy development of the
body’s structure. So, too, human societies develop when they accumulate more energy than
is needed for the maintenance of things as they are. The excess social energy may likewise spill
over as unproductive or even destructive human activities; it may be directed at the horizontal expansion
of productive activities at the existing level of development (a “more and more of the same” strategy to
which the term “growth” has come to be applied); or it may be used to elevate the organization
of society to a higher level of complexity, a more expansive release of the
power of individual human choice, a larger and healthier productivity – to
which we think it’s useful to apply the term “development.” * * * Excess
social energy is an essential but not a sufficient condition for development. The onset and speed of physical and
biological reaction depends on such factors as seed crystals, catalysts,
essential nutrients, the frequency and intensity of interaction between
elements, and conducive environmental conditions. In a roughly similar way, the onset and
speed of social development depends on
the seeding and spread of new ideas in society, the growing awareness of new
opportunities, social aspirations and attitudes toward change, the catalytic role
of individuals, the presence of essential resources and instruments, the
frequency and intensity of social interactions at critical moments in time, and
the social preparedness and support for new activities. In the first half
of this century, we saw a huge outpouring of human energy devoted to organized
cruelty, mutual homicide, and physical destruction -- brought about by
dedication to what were widely regarded as human purposes. In the second half of this century we have
seen, on balance, a tremendous outpouring of human energy the world over that
has been mostly released in a very different social climate. This climate has produced – on balance --
greater physical security, more widespread political freedom, broader social
opportunities for more people, more competition in increasingly global markets,
new systems (both physical and intellectual) for rapid computation,
communication, and transportation, the rapid global spread of information and
education, the encouragement of individual initiative for personal advancement,
and more active cooperation for mutual benefit. As light, heat,
pressure, enzymes, and hormones serve as conducive conditions, catalysts, and
reactants for biological processes, peace, democracy, education, markets, and
freer access to technology and information act as conducive conditions,
catalysts, and reactants for the social process. * * * The
evolution of new biological characteristics in a species is believed to begin
with minute favorable mutations in a single cell or organism. Transmitted to offspring of that individual
through the reproductive process, these mutations provide a competitive
advantage to subsequent generations. As
the mutant gene is the instrument of biological evolution, the pioneering human
initiative – doing what has not been done before – is the instrument for social
development. Development is
induced by pioneering individuals who introduce new or improved forms of
organized activity that provide an adaptive advantage over what has gone
before. These initiatives are imitated
by other individuals and their neighbors and the organizations they
influence; they spread by social
diffusion, multiplying through society until the most successful lose their
novelty and come to be accepted as conventional wisdom – soon to be supplanted
by new ideas tested by new individuals but diffusing in similar ways. The pioneering
individual is often credited by society with fresh discoveries, inventions, and
initiatives. But the knowledge,
intuition, and ultimately wisdom that guides these fresh actions are drawn from
the subconscious collective wisdom of the society of which the individual feels
a part; it is expressive of the
society’s will for progress in a particular direction. The individual is the conscious instrument
for the expression of a subconscious will;
sometimes the individual has to find a new society—as Albert Einstein
and others did earlier in this century – where the collective subconscious will
is compatible with his or her individual creative urge. The generative
process is often a product of trial and error experimentation, individual
intuition and persistence. But sometimes
it’s done by conscious implementation of a conceptual understanding. A classic example in U.S. history was the
idea that led the U.S. Congress to authorize land grants to States and
establish colleges that focused on agricultural science, and also establish an
Extension Service as a conduit for scientific innovations to reach farmers in
every county of the United States – a string of 19th Century
innovation-inducing policies that made American production of food and feed a
20th Century success of global importance. In similar fashion
organizational innovations – from the invention of money to the proliferation
of financial services to the current explosion of the Internet – may initially
spread by informal imitation, then later gain widespread recognition and be
systematically disseminated throughout society.
In analogous ways
the discoveries of scientists anywhere, once repeated and validated by an
increasingly international scientific community, come to be accepted, taught,
and learned as elements of the organized body of scientific knowledge. On the shoulders of these discoverers,
practitioners of medicine and engineering and other professions develop ways of
using the scientific insights in ways not imagined by the pioneering individual
scientists in their laboratories. In every field of
human endeavor, the actions of individuals (some isolated, some organized in research
universities and other think-organizations) are transmuted into organized
activity of their societies. After a
time, this activity may become so fully accepted as a norm that it no longer
requires the active support of government subsidies or sponsorship by private
corporations or foundations for its sustenance. It can then mature from formal organizations
to informal institutions or social conventions passed along by family or social
tradition and eventually integrated in the cultural values of a society as a
way of life – as elementary education now has in most national societies, and
technological inquisitiveness in many. *** Both biological and
social processes depend on the accumulation of knowledge. The knowledge that guides biological development
is contained in the genetic codes of the species. Unchanging genetic instructions would mandate
a multiplication of sameness, even if excess energy is available; only changes in the codes, by mutation or
otherwise, result in “development,” that
is in the evolution of new characteristics in the species. The knowledge that guides social development is contained in society’s
accumulated store of information, skills, attitudes, opinions, beliefs, and
values. It is the acquisition (always
in the first instance by individual
human beings) of more relevant information, more analytical knowledge, more
insightful intuition, and thus more usable wisdom that leads to the development
of social organizations that come closer to matching the much greater
complexity of the real social world outside our heads. Absent this “higher” knowledge-intuition-wisdom that generates fresh
creative social ideas, excess energy in a society will tend to produce not new
dimensions of human activity but at best repetition, copywork, the spreading of
already familiar activities rooted in “settled” concepts. It may even generate new excesses, new
imbalances, new forms or degrees of unfairness that unsettle settled societies. What it won’t produce is innovation,
creative new ways of doing old things better, or doing what’s never been done
before. Evolution as Organization Both material and non-material
resources are essential for biological and social processes. In biology, the knowledge encoded in DNA
molecules, genetic information, is a non-material resource. In social development, reliable information,
scientific discoveries and technological innovations, economic theories, social
systems, and wide ranges of skills, social attitudes, beliefs, and values are
also non-material resources. In both arenas, the
relevance and the productivity of the material resources crucially depend on
the quality and availability of the non-material resources. Bacteria and human beings are composed of the
same atomic elements; but differences in
the knowledge content in their respective genes bring about very different
results. The rational use of
information, the power of intuitive thinking, and the capacity to stir them
together to produce practical wisdom—that is, complex ideas you can do something with—have a profound effect
on the productivity of material resources in social development. This human ability
to think has already demonstrated
that the productivity of basic material resources such as land, water, and fuel
can be multiplied exponentially.
Various forms of technology, which is organized and replicable thinking,
enable us to convert sand into bricks, glass, fiber optic cables, and intelligent
microprocessors, and to convert petroleum into lamp oil, plastics, clothing,
and life-saving pharmaceuticals.
Imparting to physical resources some capacity to replicate human
thinking can not only make them more useful but can change their physical characteristics. A Swiss aluminum executive suggested the
close connection between materials and information technology in a memorable
short aphorism: “The smarter the metal,
the less it weighs.” Natural resources
are in some sense finite. But their use value and productivity are limited only
by the limits to the capacity of human beings to think, to relate thoughts to
each other, to build more useful thoughts on the thinking of others, and to
imagine what has never happened yet.
The human capacity to learn both from experience and from theorizing, by
which people develop attitudes, opinions, and values and other mental
resources, determines how creatively and effectively a society responds to
challenges and opportunities – such as the environmental effects of human
activity or the unprecedented potential of the Internet. In this sense the human mind and spirit
appear to be the ultimate resources that determine the usefulness and
productivity of all other resources. * * * The evolution of
larger, more complex material and biological forms depends on the prior
formation of lower levels of organization – atomic, molecular, cellular. The evolution of larger, more complex
social organizations likewise occurs on the foundation of more limited, less
complex kinds of organization, which are indeed the necessary “infrastructure”
for their emergence. There are
essentially three kinds of infrastructure, three levels of organized human
activity, each heavily depending on the others for its own functionality. One can be illustrated by the physical
organization of transportation and communication; another by the social
organization of legal, financial, commercial, and educational
institutions; yet another by the mental
organization of information, technology, scientific knowledge, and spiritual
insight. All these are needed for the
achievement of progressively more complex forms of economic activity. As the evolution of higher-order species
requires the development of increasingly complex and differentiated organs,
each further stage of social advancement requires a quantitative expansion and
qualitative improvement in the organization of the social infrastructures. * * * The evolution of biological forms has progressed from the
most primitive physical organisms to vitally animate plants and animals to the
emergence of mental and spiritual humans.
The more primitive organisms, guided by the instructions in their
genetic codes, use up most of their energy and adaptive capacities for physical
survival. In more complex organisms, the
physically acquired genetic capabilities are supplemented by instinctive and
learned reactions to environmental stimuli.
They consequently possess a greater range of adaptive and productive
responses. By now, evolution has given rise to highly adaptive organisms capable of
systematic ordering of knowledge, conscious self-awareness, and connecting with
spiritual forces that cannot be rationalized.
Genetics and built-in instincts still play an essential role. But the systematic transfer of knowledge
through family and formal education, followed by life experience that includes
not only what happens but what is dreamed and imagined, elevates the productive
and adaptive and even prophetic responses to levels inconceivable in prior life
forms. A similar evolution from predominantly physical to more vital to
increasingly mental and spiritual occurs in societies. The movement across this spectrum should not
be seen as linear, nor is it usefully described in well-marked “stages.” In “primitive” societies, people are more
bound to the land, quite limited in the range of human activities to those
essential to self-defense and survival – agriculture, hunting, craft
skills. Social structures are
typically rigid, leadership is hierarchical, and traditions tend to be rooted
in the past and resistant to change, analogous to a genetic code that endlessly
reproduces inherited instructions without alteration. Still, there is some margin for the
exercise of imagination and intuition, for changing spiritual experience, and
for the development of more complex forms of organization; in some degree,
change is the law of life in all parts of the human family. In what we like to think of as more highly-developed societies, there is
certainly more room for vital activity, more animation and mobility, and higher
productivity in more complex systems.
Less of most people’s energy is required for survival. More is available for investment in a wider
range of activities that result in trying new things, finding new places,
meeting new people, inventing what didn’t exist before, reading more widely and
writing more boldly, developing greater productivity, trying new forms of
recreation, learning arts and crafts, searching for unfathomable spirits in
nontraditional ways. In “developed” societies, social structures can become more flexible and
adaptive. There can be greater social
mobility, competition, and opportunity for individual initiative outside of
established patterns. In such
societies, some people display an increasing capacity for change, and an
increasing speed of response to external opportunities and challenges and to
the successes and failures of their own and other people’s experience. It is also typical of the more “developed” societies to grant a higher
social value to brainwork, and spread the opportunity for mental development
much more widely. Scientific research
and technological innovation come to be at a premium; formal education is more widely available,
and encouraged for longer periods of time;
laws, ideas, and ideals muscle their way into spaces earlier reserved
for strong leaders and inherited traditions.
Individuality of thought and action are more often accepted and
encouraged, even when they contradict conventional habits and beliefs. Competition tends to mature into
cooperation. The report by the “Group of Lisbon” called this “the limits to
competition.” Productivity soars, surpluses abound – partly because
information, unlike natural resources, expands as it’s used and gives rise not
to exchange transactions but to sharing arrangements in a new kind of
commons. The excess energy pours into
the development of ever newer, more complex forms of organization –
technological organization of material processes, social organization of life
processes, mental organization of information, knowledge, even intuition and
wisdom. The predominantly mental society thus displays a far wider range of
adaptive responses and creative initiative.
And yet . . . every society that calls itself “more developed” has lots of people who try to resist mobility
and change, discourage creative imagination, suppress deviations from the norm,
lead by command and control, cling to tradition, and turn aside from new
choices and chances. We are not
describing a new reality; we’re
suggesting a way of thinking about “development” that finds in the biological
analogy not only tested patterns but possibilities for which we still lack
clarity of doctrine or real-world role-models. What this way of thinking does suggest,
however, is a sense of direction, which in the 1990s is increasingly
conspicuous by its absence. Danger of Imbalance One troubling
aspect of social process is the evident tendency of social development to
generate unanticipated and unwanted excesses, side effects, and untoward
reactions: environmental damage,
overpopulation, destructive applications of technology, economic crises, and
social conflicts. Comparable backlash
– debilitating mutations, overpopulation and even extinction of species,
devastation of natural habitats, cycles of scarcity and plenty – arise in
biological systems as well. So we need
to consider whether these problems in biology and society have a common source
– and whether at least part of the difference is that biological systems have
been better than human systems at self-correcting. We have already
mentioned that, in both biology and society, an essential condition for
development is the presence of more energy than is required for repetition and
survival. The “surplus” creates an imbalance in the existing system
that can have one of three results. It
can lead to an increase in activity at the present level, it can stimulate
development to a higher level, or it can produce overload and breakdown. Development
problems arise when more energy accumulates than the existing level of
organization can absorb or support. In
biology, the exposure of genes to excessive radiation may result in fatal
defects, since the excess energy damages the organization of genetic
information. A excessive intake of food
energy, beyond what the body needs for its normal activity and development, can
overload physiological systems and lead to a wide range of health
problems. The incursion of
energy in society that is beyond the carrying capacity of the social
organization can have a similar effect.
The East Asian financial crisis resulted from a very rapid expansion of
domestic financial activity coupled with a rapid expansion of international
financial markets, without the requisite development of effective organizations
for monitoring and regulating what is
mostly a confidence game at either the national or the global level. The opening up of Russian society following
the breakup of the USSR – introduction of democratic institutions, dismantling
of centralized planning, liberalization of foreign trade and domestic prices –
released enormous energy within the society and subjected the economy to
intense competitive pressures. In the
absence of essential political, legal, administrative, financial, and
commercial organizations needed to guide an uncentralized market, the sudden
liberation of energy had devastating results.
The modification of one element in a biological system can generate
imbalances in the total organization of the system that lead to breakdown and
disintegration. As an example, the
excessive or insufficient development of one organ in the body can lead to
disease. Eliminating an animal predator
can result in a chain reaction of overpopulation and depletion among
lower-level organisms in the food chain and degradation of their natural
habitat. Something like this occurs in social development when progress in one
field is not supported by proportionate progress in related fields. In the 1950s the introduction of advanced
medical technology led to reduced mortality rates, rapid population growth, and
food shortages in many developing countries.
This occurred because advances in the organization of public health were
not balanced by proportionate advances in general education and rising
affluence, which have everywhere led to reduction in the numbers of children
per family, or by increases in food production needed to feed a larger
population. Environmental degradation
has been quite directly caused by rapid development of industrial organization
unmatched by a proportionate development of systems for monitoring and
restraining pollution. Another
near-universal story has been the introduction of powerful chemical pesticides
into countries with low levels of general education, resulting in excessive use
and unsafe handling. Both biological and social systems are thus vulnerable to the dangers of
imbalance. The real difference between
them seems to be in their response to the problems when they arise. Within modest
parameters, biological processes are extremely effective in responding to
temporary imbalances – by rapid “early warning”
(automatic feedback of information about a growing imbalance) and
“self-correction” – and restoring order to the system. But when the imbalance exceeds the adaptive
capacity of the existing level of organization, the response tends to be
inadequate – because it is self-directed by a body of genetic knowledge that
responds and adapts, at best, slowly and incrementally to environmental
opportunities and challenges. In contrast, a
human society has at least the potential of taking thought and doing something
about a disaster before it gets on what engineers call a runaway to maximum –
by acquiring conscious knowledge and starting timely action to minimize or even
design ways around the excesses and negative fallout of development plans and
projects. The recent reductions in
pollution and environmental degradation are examples both current and choice. This capacity to
foresee danger and take adaptive measures seems to increase as societies evolve
from largely “physical” toward more “mental” forms of civilization. In societies preoccupied with physical
resources and their possible scarcity, the social tendency is to respond to an
incursion of “surplus” energy by struggling to preserve its inflexible,
tradition-bound organizations, maintain things the way they were. As the mix changes and “vital” and
“mental” elements become more prominent,
a society is more likely to respond first by adapting existing organizations to
do more-of-the-same better, and then to think up new workways and forms of
organization that bring into consultation many more people and improve the odds
of absorbing all the energy in coping
with needed change. Some
social theorists claim that the law of “survival of the fittest” holds true for
social as well as biological systems.
Thinking about social development as a progression from predominantly
“physical” toward predominantly “mental” – not mutually exclusive categories,
rather a changing mix of both – helps clarify the issue. The Darwinian law does appear to hold true toward the “physical” end of
the spectrum, as the collective struggles to ensure its survival but cares
little for the individual. The
strongest become leaders, the weak are abandoned, exploited, or left to fend
for themselves. But as information is more widely spread and more people are equipped to
use it for the common good, the survival of the collective comes to be clearly
the best way for the individual to survive and prosper. The collective makes increasing efforts both
to meet the basic needs of all its members and to open opportunities for
individuals to pursue a variety of ends of their own choosing. In practice, where it has been seriously
tried, this emerging way of governance, rather than weakening the viability of
a society, has resulted in enhanced social coherence and greater productivity
at the same time.
Self-Conscious Choices One lesson from
this analysis has profound meaning for the future of “development” in every
society, and in that larger unit, global civilization, which is becoming
relevant for more and more purposes. As physical science
has discovered a virtually unlimited reservoir of energy within the molecule
and the atom, the phenomenal social creativity of the past century seems to
point to a source of energy, for practical purposes unlimited, in human society
as well. The source of that energy is
the individual human being. Under
conducive circumstances, the human individual demonstrates an astonishing
capacity for imagination and new creation – of new and improved material
inventions, of communication networks, of social organizations and ideas, and
of ways to interact with forces beyond reason and knowledge. As physicists are
trying to find appropriate material technologies to harness safely the energy
within the atom, the challenge to social science is to invent the appropriate
technology of social organization to release and constructively channel the
near-infinite potential energy and resourcefulness of the human being, and of
human beings cooperating with each other. The genetic code in
DNA molecules governs the release and utilization of energy for biological
development. Human choice is the basic
mechanism for liberating and productively harnessing the potential energy in
society. It is the mind’s decisions
that release human energy and propel it into action, for purposes and toward
ends preselected by the human mind. As long as social organization is predominantly “physical” in character,
choices about social development can and usually are made by a comparatively
few people, acting for the collective through centralized organizations, often
at the expense of many individuals outside the narrow circle of “policy-makers.” As development moves along the continuum toward the more vital, mental
society, the power of the collective is more than counterbalanced by greater
freedom and rights for the individual.
Because more and more people are able to be better informed about the
needs of the collective and about the complexity of social forces in play, it
is natural for them to expect and demand a greater role in decision-making and
for the leaders of social organizations to decentralize
authority in order to delegate more widely more and more of the work – while
trying to retain ultimate control in one way or another. But as the mix of
people and functions shades over more and more toward the “mental” part of the
continuum, and there is a growing premium on the brainwork, imagination, and
creativity of individuals, new ways of getting things done come into vogue: uncentralized organizations to cope with
tasks so complex that no sensible individual could even pretend to be in
charge, organizations in which authority is institutionalized as impersonal
standards and systems that depend on initiative and creative imagination by
many different kinds and levels of people who are able to be different, yet together. Under these conditions freedom and
responsibility necessarily shift from the collective to many individuals,
expanding exponentially the range of individual choices. This process seems
to culminate in the development of a new kind of social organization, the
nobody-in-charge system where every citizen is in some measure partly in
charge, each specialist no longer just responsible for being right about
his/her own specialty but responsible also for the general sense of direction,
the outcome as a whole. The greater the
value that society accords to the individual human being, the greater the
freedom of choice it offers to each individual.
As tradition was the technology for development of the physical society,
individual human choice is the technology for the development of the mentally
self-conscious society. In post-modern
societies, where information (analyzed as knowledge, integrated as wisdom) is
the dominant resource, the individual will enjoy unprecedented freedom of
choice. That’s no guarantee of
wisdom. The quality of multiple
individual choices is a complex function of the quality of information,
education, knowledge, ideals, opinions, attitudes, and values in the
society. Modern democratic societies rely on the power of education and the media
to get the word around about what problems we collectively face, what
opportunities are there if we pursue them together; and, since unanimity is not to be expected
on anything complicated or important, democratic societies rely also on the
free airing of alternative viewpoints to help us collectively to make up our
individual minds. Those societies whose
citizens are encouraged to engage in the fullest and most enlightened exercise
of choice will have the greatest potential for development. Single Creative ProcessThe emergence of mental self-consciousness, its wide spread around the
world spurred by the development of global information technologies, has for
the first time made it possible for a species to influence the speed and
direction of its own evolution. We are already the liveliest and most conscious actors in modifying our
physical environment, sometimes inadvertently (the ozone layer, the “greenhouse
effect”) and sometimes on purpose (weather modification, air
conditioning). Now we human beings, the mental animals, are beginning to acquire the
understanding to unravel biological processes, decipher and consciously alter
the genetic code of life forms, and thus potentially decide, to some limited
degree at least, who we want to be. In similar fashion we are edging toward acquiring a conscious knowledge
of the social processes that could vastly increase the pace and quality of
social development, and spread its benefits much more fairly to the majority of
humankind who are still disappointed spectators at the drama of
development. Certainly a deeper
understanding of the process of social development, more widely spread to more
educated peoples on every continent, will enable individuals to exercise their
human choices with more sense of their meaning for their own futures and for
the wider communities – including the widest, the global commons – of which
they will be increasingly conscious (and therefore increasingly responsible)
citizens. The parallels
between biological and social development are intellectually intriguing and may
be analytically useful. But they are
something more as well. There is now
considerable evidence that these processes are actually various expressions of
a single creative process, which applies not only to biological and social
forms but also to artistic and other nonrational human creativity. Doesn’t this point toward a truly unifying
theory of creative processes relevant to all branches of human endeavor, to
both science and art, to both practical
and spiritual experience?
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