As our conference organizers stated it early on, our main challenge is "to
offer an easily understood description of a whole new [as yet
unrecognized] category of being." I would like to spell out and refine a
bit some of the questions that seem to me implied by this very exciting
challenge. (I am greatly looking forward to the experience of exchanging
ideas via cyber-communication. As an old Univ. of Chicago College
product, I regard serious discussion as the highway to understanding. We
need all the help we can get from each other--and we might just
contribute to a sort of quantum leap in understanding what is going on!)
First, an observation. Many conference participants are intensely and
admirably political people. They are interested above all in "what is to
be done" about corporations (and other related Big Bodies). They
customarily engage in moral/political discussion. Other participants,
among them myself, may be partly political people but also "scientific"
people. They are interested above all (though NOT exclusively) in new
ways of understanding corporations and other Big Bodies. They
customarily engage in analytical discussion. Obviously the two types of
discourse overlap and interpenetrate, and cannot ultimately be
separated. Nonetheless, we will probably find that participants of the
first type wish to address questions of Good and Bad, etc., about
corporations, while participants of the second type point out that in
biology there are no good or bad species, and the primary goal must be
to understand how corporate bodies function. It will be essential in our
discussions, I think, to make clear on which level we are speaking;
otherwise confusion and needless argument will arise. Maybe we will even
need to label our utterances as "P" or "S"?
That said, here is my current list of fundamental questions on which I
seek enlightenment (I am, needless to say, curious about much else):
If we can arrive at firm answers to at least some of the above questions, it should be
clearer what needs to be done. Maybe we will even have raw material for
a Manifesto: "A spectre is haunting planet Earth . . . !"
Richard Grossman of POCLAD (Program on Corporations, Law and Democracy) offers erudite perspectives:
Nothing is more common than for men to think that because they are familiar with words, they understand the idea they stand for. ......
- -J.H. Newman
Those whose conceits are seated in popular opinions need only but to prove or dispute; but those whose conceits are beyond popular opinions have a double labour: the one to make themselves conceived, and the other to prove and demonstrate. So that it is of necessity with them to have recourse to similitudes and translations to express themselves.
- - Owen Barfield
I have found the writing unexpectedly difficult, although its ideas and intentions are simple and straightforward. But one cannot go straight forward unless the way is clear, and the way is allowed. One struggles to gain the right perspective, focus, and tone - and then, one loses it, all unawares. One must continually fight to regain it, to hold accurate awareness. I cannot better express the problems which have challenged me, and which my readers must challenge, than in the splendid words of Maynard Keynes in the preface of his General Theory:
The composition of this book has been for the author a long struggle of escape, and so must the reading of it be for most readers if the author's assault upon them is to be successful - a struggle to escape from habitual modes of thought and expression.The ideas which are here expressed so labouriously are extremely simple and should be obvious. The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones, which ramify, for those brought up as most of us have been, into every corner of our minds.
Force of habit, and resistance to change - so great in all realms of thought - reaches its maximum in medicine, in the study of our most complex suffferings and disorders of being; for we are here compelled to scrutinize the deepest, darkest, and most fearful parts of ourselves, the parts we all strive to deny or not-see. The thoughts whoughts which are most difficult to grasp or express are those which touch on this forbidden region and reawaken in us our strongest denials and our most profound intuitions.
- - O.W.S. (Dr. Olivia Jacks)
Randy Hayes, president of the Rainforest Action Network, cuts crisply to the corporate chase.
"Democracy is simple -- of the people, by the people, and for all life.
We shall stop the "of the corporation, by the corporation, and for the
corporation" death syndrome. However, humans should not forget -- nature
bats last. People power, as a humble part of the web of life, is the
combination we need to be working for ferociously."
Master of the virtual universe, Howard Rheingold (author of Virtual Reality" and "The Virtual Community") meditates on the messages and means inherent in our medium here, and its potential power in a post-corporate world.
I agree with David's conviction that there are few tasks more
important to the future of humane life on earth than the redesign
and rebuilding of the gigantic corporate bodies, state and corporate,
that emerged in the past century. Although the inhuman scale of
technological endeavors, and the disruptive impacts of globalization
are part of the big bag of problems we need to solve together, I
believe technology can play a role in the solution as well as the
problem. Group communication tools, used knowledgeably, can help us
in the process. The tool is not the task, and the tool has certain
built-in characteristics (we can't see or hear each other unless we
want to upload pix or sounds, so our communications are filtered
through the written word), but I think many-to-many communication can
play a role in brainstorming, debating, organizing, and communicating
what we learn from those processes. Assume a group of people who each
have a different chunk of knowledge that is essential to an important
task, but these people are widely separated by geography, and find it
impossible to communicate in real time. Assume they know how to
identify important issues, frame questions, find evidence, debate and
inquire together, and to use the knowledge they discover together to
plan and organize activities that take place in real time in the
physical world.
I know that many who are involved in this conference are skeptical of
claims that computer-mediated-communication have any potential as
tools for grassroots organizing, and I agree that it is always smart
to greet claims about technological capabilities with critical eyes.
However, I believe the kind of communities and civilizations we have
today are the products of a process of co-evolution with our tools
that we have only begun to understand. Before we discovered the
knowledge necessary to understand disease, only a couple of centuries
ago, people died and suffered needlessly . The ugly effects of
tool-dependence, and the beneficial effects of tool-reliance, are
both part of the same phenomenon. The crucial factor is awareness.
Perhaps toxic technology use is like a disease, and we do not yet
fully understand it. We are only beginning to become aware of how our
tool use shapes our lives.
In regard to many to many communication and the notion of virtual
communities, I believe the most important question is whether we can
learn to use this new medium as a way of exercising and hence
strengthening the public sphere -- the web of communications among
citizens that ought to be the bedrock of democracy. Mass media are
few-to-many. The Internet affords many-to-many communication. That
doesn't mean that simply using the tool will lead to anything more
democratic. But knowing that the tool can be used, learning how to
use it, evaluating how it can be used well by citizens, is an
opportunity we can't afford to ignore.
The Internet is not only e-commerce and porno. Citizens are talking,
planning, organizing, publishing, problem-solving. Perhaps there is a
literacy to be learned here.
I wrote at greater length about the notion of virtual community and
community in a recent update to my book, The Virtual Community, which
is being reissued this summer by MIT Press. The role of the Net in
the public sphere is discussed in the last part of the chapter.
I will be travelling, and I don't like to travel with a computer --
one of my small gestures toward the goal of trying to be where I am
instead of cyberspace when travelling. So my participation will be
limited. Hence, I wanted to issue this invitation to approach the use
of this medium with an open mind. Play with it. It's a different kind
of discourse than strictly face to face or epistolary forms and takes
a little practice at first.
Prophetic polymath Meg Wheatley, author of "Leadership and the New Science," contemplates emergence and counsels vigilance in our quest for corporate change.
Any study of living systems brings you face to face with the phenomenon of
Emergence. Nothing in our past analytic techniques prepared me to
understand emergence, or how to deal with its effects. Large systems
emerge from small, localized but connected activities. What emerges is
never predictable from studying the localized events, and always is not only
surprising, but stronger in influence than any individual or localized
grouping. Once a meta-system has emerged, it wields disproportionate
influence over the system members whose actions gave birth to this system.
We begin by making localized decisions, but end up trying to act within a
system that is not only new and different, but far more powerful than us.
This seems to me to be the world we're living in, called Globalism, or
Informational Capitalism, or the Global Casino -- whatever we term it, we're
in the presence of something we didn't know we were creating when we first
began this new, interconnected, global economy.
Once we truly appreciate that life emerges, I believe it leads us to
practice much greater levels of awareness and watchfulness. If we're not in
the question of "what is emerging?" we'll not notice that capitalism today
is not the same as pre-web capitalism, or that corporations today are in no
way like the corporations of ten years ago. The only way to track emergent
phenomena is to stay very present, very observant, and to be in
conversations such as this one.
I still don't know how we change an emergent system, although I've pondered
this with colleagues for several years,. That's the critical question that
I bring to this conversation, based on my understanding of biology,
politics, and change. Once something powerful has emerged, with its
disproportionate power, is there any way to change it from within the
system? Or do we have to start over, with different initial conditions? Or
do we nourish rogue systems based on different values, and hope they will
suddenly emerge into something powerful?
Evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson, co-author of "Unto Others - the
evolution and psychology of unselfish behavior,"
meditates at luminous length on "How Big Bodies Evolve and Why it is Relevant to Modern Human Affairs."
As a biologist who studies the evolution of big bodies, I am delighted that
the concept of human groups as organisms is being taken seriously by the
participants of this conference. This post will briefly describe the
evolutionary principles and how they relate to big body problems in modern
life. More detail can be found in one of the background readings for this
conference and in my recent book with Elliott Sober, Unto Others, the
evolution and psychology of unselfish behavior (Harvard University Press
1998).
1) For animals that live in groups, individuals can achieve evolutionary
success along two broad pathways; a) by outcompeting other members of the
same group (within-group selection), or b) by causing the group to
outcompete other groups (between-group selection). The word competition is
interpreted very broadly by evolutionists, including overt competition and
aggression but also any adaptation that causes some individuals or groups
to perform better than other individuals or groups.
2) The behaviors favored by within-group selection tend to undermine the
adaptive organization of groups. Thus, the evolution of the group as an
adaptive unit (a "big body") requires a process of between-group selection
that is stronger than countervailing within-group selection.
3) A consensus emerged among evolutionary biologists during the 1960's that
group selection, while theoretically possible, was so weak that it could be
ignored. The human social sciences became dominated by a position known as
methodological individualism at about the same time, although for somewhat
different reasons. The last few decades could be called "the age of
individualism" as far as scientific thinking is concerned, which has made
the study of big bodies appear disreputable and even heretical.
4) Advances in evolutionary biology since the 1960's have radically altered
the situation, although only now are they starting to attract a wide
audience. Perhaps the most dramatic realization is that individual
organisms are themselves big bodies, social groups of elements that
previously led a more independent existence. You and I are living proof
that higher-level selection can trump lower-level selection.
5) Big bodies require mechanisms that prevent evolution from within.
Genetic and developmental processes are increasingly being viewed as an
enforced social contract among our previously independent parts that
prevents various forms of cheating.
6) Group selection has probably been a strong force, but by no means the
only force, in human evolution. As the most behaviorally flexible species
on earth, we have the capacity to employ both evolutionary pathways,
exploiting our neighbor or intimately cooperating with our neighbor,
depending on the circumstances. Behavioral flexibility does not mean the
absence of instincts, however. There is probably an immensely complicated
innate psychology that orchestrates both within-group and between-group
facultative adaptive strategies.
7) Hunter-gatherer egalitarianism provides the clearest picture of the
first human big bodies, which weren't very big. Hunter-gatherers combine a
strong sense of community with an equally strong sense of personal
independence that prevents exploitation from within. Human nature may
include a willingness to participate in big bodies ONLY when there are
sufficient safeguards against cheating and freeloading. When big bodies
stop working for the common good, or even demonstrate the structural
potential to stop working for the common good, individuals lose their
commitment and join other big bodies or function as little bodies as best
they can.
8) Human cultural history can be interpreted as a series of coalescing
events producing ever larger big bodies, similar to the coalescing events
of organic evolution. Really big human big bodies require cultural
mechanisms that have an elaborate physiology of their own, but which are
not independent of the innate psychological mechanisms mentioned above.
Instead, the innate psychological mechanisms provide the building blocks
from which innumerable cultural forms can be constructed.
9) Big bodies can be attractive or threatening, depending on how we look at
them. Our longing for a sense of community and to be part of something
larger than ourselves reflects the best of big bodies, which provide some
of the greatest joys and comforts life has to offer. Corporations and
governments should want to function as big bodies for less poetic reasons.
On the other hand, big bodies do not eliminate conflict but merely elevate
it to the level of between-group interactions, where it can take place with
even more destructive force than before. In addition, the "harmony" that
exists within big bodies can take the form of coercive social control in
addition to warmth and togetherness. Idealists such as myself like to dream
about the whole earth as a big body with a non-coercive physiology. Could
such a dream come true? Nobody knows, but the only way to find out is to
understand the big bodies of today with a cold eye and a warm heart.
10) I end with a plea for the scientific study of big bodies. The age of
individualism made big bodies seem to disappear in evolutionary biology,
the social sciences, and to a large extent the popular imagination. This
conference and books such as The Lucifer Principle by Howard Bloom and
Nonzero by Robert Wright suggest that big bodies are returning to the
popular imagination (see my review of these books in the next issue of
Skeptic Magazine). However, big bodies will be nothing more than a fad
until the scientific establishment takes them seriously again. Science is
an exceptionally conservative culture (often for good reason) and it will
take time for it to recognize the advances that have already taken place
within its own ranks. In the meantime, businesses with an enlightened view
of "research and development" and private foundations looking for important
subjects currently neglected by federal agencies may well want to invest in
big body research of the highest caliber.
