Beyond Revolution

By Spencer, January 30, 2008

Subtle Power Transitions, part IV: About the cost-effiency of multi-national activism versus revanchist strategies

Just like human behaviour is largely unpredictable on the individual scale, it is largely predictable on the aggregate level. When acting as a unified body people respond to certain impulses in specific ways, compelled by collective instinct.

Societies are shaped and reshaped, generation by generation, by myriads of micro-decisions inside every individual, first of all about their professional role in society. In ancient societies the diversity of social functions was often secured by caste systems, where children would be born into a position for life.

Modern societies organize their labour through a vastly more complex method. It has the advantage of matching competencies and role more accurately, and of creating upward mobility through a system of graduations and rewards for accomplishments, thereby fostering more excellence.

The way by which labour role is decided seems to be highly intuitive or even predominantly intuitive, often decided by the individual in an early age, before it has intellectual faculties to overlook the consequences of the preference or even make conscious and rational decisions about other, more urgent matters.

We are primates organized like ants

Sometimes the decision must be changed during the basic education, sometimes after graduation and sometimes in the middle of a period of engangement to a particular task. In most cases people will perceive it as a decision forced upon them by circumstances, or rationally adopted from a spectrum of choices, where some offer better working conditions or higher wages or a greater promise of employment.

In some cases it is probably an act of free will, but this is not necessarily the best choice. The best choice is, logically, the choice that serves the common good the most. It will probably offend people to hear it, but in most cases a person's position in life is decided by a combination of fixed and random factors, constituting an element of fate, and a subconscious decision based on an interpretation of what the society needs at any given time.

Every individual, to the best of his ability, constantly carries out what you may call a sociometric scanning, matching it to its own primary faculties and interests and preferences. The individual chooses the best correct path according to the information at hand. This seems obvious.

What is less obvious is that even what the individual may experience as error or misfortune is, on a deeper level, a part of the intricate food chain of the community. It is not to say that a disease or a traffic accident is "meant to be" or make some kind of sense in the social calculus, taken as individual events.

But as a whole diseases and accidents form the backbones of prosperous industries, just like it is a profession to be a cop, a coroner or an undertaker. This is the dark side of society, our cannibalistic advantage from another man's misfortune. It is not like this in a the hypothetical natural condition. There the death of an individual represents a significant weakening of the group, a reduction of the collective probability for survival.

In modern society and in ancient civilizations as well, the death of an individual puts less stress on the group than a misplaced individual. Today society would be more cost-efficient if, for instance, the incurably ill and the homeless would die. Leaving the incurably ill to to die, however, puts stress on those who are emotionally attached and socially dependent on them. Eradicating non-productive members of society in general stresses our ethics.

All this to say that there are rational reasons why we organize society the way we do. It may not be the right reasons, but there is a justification for it, according to the complex calculations and codes by which we navigate. The emergence of every social phenomenon, in a sense, reflects a societal need or, at worst, an extreme counterpoint to another imbalanced element of society. We are primates organized like ants, and this accounts for much of our sense of frustration.

The social advantages of criminal impulses

It is an often repeated misunderstanding that the principle of the Malthusian Trap is an obsolete theory. The ratio between population growth and food production may have been altered by industrialism, but the juxtaposition of the figures is not flawed or proven false, and the Trap still lurks beneath every demographic analysis. It is the very rationale for industrialism: We basically invented mass production in order to beat the Trap.

When people "choose" their role in society, they respond to a collective need, rather than an individual. The choice is masked as an individual choice in order to make it bearable. But nobody wants to be an accountant. An individual may have a particular skill with numbers, but not enough to become a brilliant mathematician. So they tell themselves they wanted to become accountants, but what they really wanted was to do something at which they might excel a bit, improving their individual chances of survival and dominance in the social competition.

We take on an assignment, because society requires it. It is called subordination, accepting a huge reduction of free will in favour of... basic means of existence. Even criminals serve a social purpose. They exist, in spite of all efforts of all civilizations to eradicate them, simply because the creative spirit of mankind cannot survive without criminal intent. What I mean is: Reality is not equal to the codes we have created. Even the most intricate laws or moral codes are rough grids compared to the granularity and detailof real world events, hence the enormous complexity of trials.

To navigate in a reality this complex the most important faculty is to be able to think outside the box, meaning: To be able to discern the logical order of abstract models of reality from the reality of phenomena and events, in which everything takes place in one and the same instance all over the world, with no discernable pattern connecting them. If you think a human being cannot be killed by another human being, because you are too noble to think such a thought or lacks aggressive impulse, or if it has never crossed you mind you could take an apple or a piece of candy in the store without paying, you fail to grasp the structure of reality.

It is not just that you are unaware of criminal acts - to say it that way is to reverse the problem. Mistaking the manmade codex for the reality while considering the vast space of possibilities outside nonexistent is an inversion of perception, rather than merely a profound state of naivety. Criminal impulses must be controlled, because we need to organize society in order to maximize our probability for survival, but being unable to see past the conventions constitutes an severe intellectual limitation. As such art, science and political development is fostered by rebelliousness, by the wilful act to cross conventional boundaries in order to investigate the reality behind our conceptualizations of it.

This too, the criminal impulse, is a natural instinct preserved through our evolution and cultural evolution, because it serves the greater good. There may be individual acts of crime so gross we cannot see any redeeming features in it and would be much happier if the tendency was not in circulation, such as pedophilia or serial killing, but these probably merely constitutes extreme deviations from the norm, the average human understanding of criminal impulses through identification - even if people may be able to never act on any criminal impulse. Generally, we consider it unlike at least that any human never acts on an immoral impulse.

How Europe developed revolutionary ideals

"There is nothing so bad it is not good for something", an old saying goes. When we apply this general knowledge of human behaviour to marginal areas of society, such as organized crime or political radicalism, we can begin to perceive them less as problems in urgent need of solving and more as tendencies responding to other imbalances in society, as symptoms. For instance, it has been a trivial observation since Victor Hugo wrote Les Miserables, that poverty causes crime.

It is not a justification of crime, but simply the observation that crime rates increase as income level decreases, and vice versa. Crime is primarily adopted as a method of operation due to desperate need. This discovery was one of the main legacies of the enlightenment era and democratic revolutions in Europe and America, forming the foundation of the egalitarian ideals. There is a reason aristocrats and priests were beheaded in France, most of all that people had been starving under them, while they were living in luxury.

Having observed and experienced how excessive violence by authorities triggered violent rage in the mobs, ideals of freedom rose and the concepts of checks and balances to power, adopted in the new democratic constitutions. And seeing how pitting groups of people against one another was a key element to strategy of oppressing classes, brotherhood became the third fundamental value upon which the French revolutionaries manifested their desire for change. You may say that until then such a concept as a people - a requirement of loyalty to a group comprising all citizens of a state - had not existed, at least not outside the city state.

Before this, the loyalty may have been "to God, king and country", but it was essentially loyalty to king. God and country were extentions of the monarch, the first providing a heavenly mandate for his exclusive power and the other an abstraction merely defined by the limitations to his reign, the geographical line along which he could expect to be fiercely contested by other monarchs. A people did not exist, and certainly not a people united in "brotherhood".

The rationality of organized crime

If you look at USA and Europe today the violent responses to class issues and inequality are generally allocated into two different activities: In Europe it manifests as demonstrations turned into riots, while in USA people tend to get involved in criminal activity and often graduate to a position in organized crime. Not to say that riots do not take place in America, or there is no organized crime in Europe. The overall trend between Europe and America is probably an increasing accomodation, with USA turning to the left and Europe turning to the right.

Many Americans would say that blaming the government for their own failure to succeed is typical of socialism, of entitlement attitudes and of the pampered mentality fostered by a "nanny state". In Europe many would say that USA deals with their social problems by building more prisons. There is probably some truth to both statements.

Organized crime is traditionally the sector reserved for the most dispossessed groups, the latest batch of immigrants. For as much as people say that crime does not pay and the way to achieve equal status is to work yourself up the corporate ladder the hard way, making your own fortune by legitimate means, life can easily become so difficult that crime is the best rational option.

Furthermore, if an individual belong to a marginalized group of people, possibly threatened by others who try to take advantage of anyone vulnerable, belonging to a gang or a syndicate significantly increases your comfort and your sense of security, even if it may also involve a higher risk of getting shot. In some cases the probability of survival could even statistically grow due to safety in numbers.

But the important observation is that the overall probability of success increases. It may, to a law-abiding citizen, seem absurd to talk about the prospect of success in the context of organized crime. The problem is two different perspective. Even from the perspective of lower middle class, of working poor, organized crime may seem like a bad deal, a profoundly appalling options with too many negative side-effects.

But it is not about survival in the individualistic sense, and it is not about a bourgois lifestyle. It is about survival instincts, first of all the instinct to dominate your territory. The ability to project strength and thereby discourage rivals is a key priority, and if succesful already a gain on two levels: The ability to exercise power and personal safety.

Variations of anger and despair

For this game to make sense to the observer, he must remember that to young men in the highly sexually active age pride factors in. You can argue as much against pride as you wish, labelling it as a cardinal sin, but pride is the key to the male getting sexual reciprocity from the males. Without it he is like a peacock with no tail.
Survival is not only just one of the parameters, it is also secondary.

Furthermore, survival is not solely a matter of personal safety. The struggle encoded in the male psyche must be understood at the core level, as the drive to procreate. Even if procreation is possible, if a man becomes a father, the inability to provide means of survival and security for the children works like a psychological castration, not removing the sexual instinct but the pride in fatherhood.

Often it also infuriates the male, making him capable of or even prone to random acts of destruction. Even civilized citizens succumb to primal behaviour like this, when they are subjected to severe social trauma, such as losing their source of income and subsequently social status, their wife and children through divorce, or both at the same time. Those who do not act out their anger often experiences deep shame, some of which must be dealt with by professional therapists long after.

When you take away people's ability to manifest themselves as sexual beings, which does not refer to sexual in the profane sense of getting relief of sexual urges, they can become infuriated. In many cases they become depressed. It is no different than in the animal kingdom, where all highly evolved mammals express depression upon deprivation - rob them of freedom to roam, of natural food sources, of companionship, and you will be able to detect very particular involuntary muscle tensions, symptoms of depression, combined with self-destructive behaviour.

The organism is literally trying to destroy itself.

For humans to be subjected to similar treatment as farm animals or caged pets waiting for a buyer triggers similar responses. The anger, however, the social indignation sometimes bordering on egotistical frenzy or the other way around, is actually a healthy sign. We cannot perceive it as healthy, because the attitudes and expressions of radical loners and infuriated males and organized criminals threaten our safety as citizens. We expect them to endure, to create a way out, to wait and hope, to work to better their conditions.

But all these are rational solutions to complex problems often defying a rational analysis. The rage is better than depression, because depression essentially means the soul has given up, deciding that there is no reasonable social function for it, and in deciding so trying to destroy the vessel. Between depression and anger, anger is the better option. Between random, violent rage and targeted crime, robbery is actually the better option. Between robbery and organized crime, tragically selling drugs is the better option. There may be victims of organized crime, but at least it is... organized. It brings some promise of survival, and as such also the possibility of a change down the road, of assimilation or redemption for at least a few.

Extremes complement each other

All this is looking at the problem of the existential challenge as opposed to social barriers from a completely apolitical perspective, where we expect favours from noone and perceive government as largely a legislating and punishing entity. It is a control mechanism existing to establish a minimum of order in chaos, rather than regulating society for any specific purpose.

If, however, we expect government to be an extention of the people and, as such, serve the greater public need as best it can, the perspective completely changes. Revolution may still not be justified, unless as a last response to the combination of gross disparity, decadent leaders and violent clamp-down on dissent, but the politicalization of the destitute offers a great probability of success, individually and collectively.

In a democracy revolution ought not be necessary, because if the majority of people embrace the ideals, society will one way or another allocate ressources to provide reasonable living conditions for all. That is, provided there is some substance to the old slogan of freedom, equality and brotherhood, or in American: Justice, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Still, the revolutionary tendencies, the anti-authoritarian movements, yea even the anti-social movements, do serve a purpose, even in a democracy: They are a threat to legislators or to majorities disregarding the rights and interests of minorities. Just like organized crime units they provide some odd balance by evening out one extreme with its opposite.

It is the denial of the imbalance by the empowered part that fuels the rage of the opposite, just as it your distrust feeds mine and mine yours. Even the Somali pirates and the Islamic suicide bombers, interpreting their own actions in one manner, sociologically signify something entirely different. Again, it is not a justification of criminal or immoral actions, or an attempt to defend a moral relativistic viewpoint.

I can fully agree that criminal actions must be punished - even that society would be better of with certain criminals no longer alive. These things are so obvious to me I cannot bother to consider them in the relatively short time I have on Earth. What is crucial to me is to explain how even the most marginal event in modern society is attached to the centre, and how every extreme correlates to its opposite.

You say you want a revolution

It may sound ethereal, but it is in no manner a speculation based on principles of divine retribution or karma. It is merely an identification of social mechanism that becomes obvious, once you analyze them from the correct position, accepting the premise that men are not only animals with all the distinct features of animals - even if we may have features, characteristics, skills and abilities setting us aside from all other animals -we also act like animals.

We can mask this, because we develop the ability to ritualize our instincts, channeling primal impulses into socially acceptable and politically useful purposes. In doing so, however, we wilfully engage in a lie - a deception in which we present ourselves as more ideal beings than we are. Every life creates a blind spot, a part of reality someone is unable to see, and if you lie to yourself, you create the blind spot in your own perception.

Ever since 9/11 I have heard people say that the acts of terrorists defy all reason. They are insane, and that is the explanation. I have always disregarded this argument as either intellectual defeatism or simply... propaganda. I happen to be on the same side as the people issuing the propaganda, but that does not mean I buy into it. Terrorism can be a profoundly rational action. Given the right circumstances, like for instance a fascist regime, it may even be justifiable.

In the case of Islamic terrorism I do not find it justifiable. In some cases, on the individual level, it is probably not even rational. But on the aggregate level, as a self defense mechanism and a strategy of war, it is perfectly rational. Lots of conquerers throughout the ages - Djenghis Khan and Hernan Cortez to mention a few - conducted spectacular slaughters of innocent people in order to intimidate the enemy.

Terrorism even serves a social purpose. It is just not the social purpose of our society. It is a social purpose of another society, still undecided on how to approach modernity and which path to choose. When it comes to the choice at hand, I know what path I would choose, if I could choose for them. For all the tragic losses incurred by Western societies in its dramatic quest for enlightenment, the benefits of secularization and democratic ideals are still preferable to the static society of patriarchal, paleo-conservativetradition.

In the West we may have slipped from democratic virtues, abandoned civil and human rights in our battle against demons of our own making, and generally suffer from a lack of social equilibrium, of trust, of companionship, of solidarity and of honor. But these virtues still do exist, and for every evil that haunts our streets, there is also the potential something good. We can change direction, if we lose our way, because we are free. We get to have that choice, each one of us, and everyone collectively.

It is different in a hegemony, under a dictator or a clerical rule. These systems belong to the past, because they cannot evolve quickly enough to encompass the technological development on one side and the political imperatives rising from the major global challenges of our age on the other. Automatically, due to their insular nature, these structures will pose an increasingly bigger obstacle to global cooperation and, in their desperation, a growing threat to peace. They will be caught up in the revolutionary cycle and, somewhere in it, vanish and be transformed into something new. As they disappear, so does the ancient clan society and its virtues along with its vices.

A brave new world

It may be a tomorrow without much courtesy, without much chivalry and with scores of mindless drones manning increasingly dull operational boards, only to seek entertainment and hedonistic oblivion in whatever available pastime. But it will also be a tomorrow with much kindness and far more wisdom than any civilization on Earth has ever collected, and scores of people unselfishly working for the betterment of others in every corner of the world, just as it is beginning to show. That is, if both sides of the equasion can be persuaded to work together and stand side by side, facing the same direction.

The world community is only beginning to get organized. Our sociometric scannings are highly inaccurate. The majority of our actions, as individuals and groups and nations, are not targeted at the common good. Our centre is still the nation, created in the era of warrior dynasties, of kings and emperors. But as the centre is changing, so are our priorities and our thought patterns. We will figure out a way to align ourselves to this new reality, simply because it is the only way. The Earth will become the predominant symbol, representing our common foundation, the source of our lives and reminding us of our limitations, the vulnerability of the existence we share.

And in a short time women will play a larger role in the civilization of society. They will have more roles to choose from than that of a pleasure model, a trophy wife, an emasculating career woman or an embittered feminist. There will still be poverty, conflicts, injustices, crimes and tragedies. There may even be greater disasters than we have ever witnessed. But we will destroy less, because it will be costlier to destroy things. Conquerers and hangmen will, hopefully, become mythological characters to us, like prophets and shamans.

This was the latest installment in the series Subtle Power Transitions. There is much more to be said. I would like to offer more detailed analysis of several elements, particularly the repercussions of Westernization - particularly urbanization in China - about Orientalism in the West, about fundamentalism and other reactionary movements and about anti-globalism, but all these are topics you can read about extensively elsewhere on the web.