Humans are social beings, humanity can only exist in community. A simple group is formed into a community by the cooperation of its consti...
Humans are social beings, humanity can only exist in community. A simple group is formed into a community by the cooperation of its constituting members. Society functions in a self-organizing manner, functioning like a living system. Society is a stable dynamic structure, characteristic of living systems. Human society is composed of intelligent, self-conscious individuals, and the self-organization of society is the emergent manifestation of the individual, personal intent of its members.
Human society, at various levels of it, is in practice governed by the elite, which shapes the system of society. The ways in which human society is governed can be distinguished according to the ways in which society influences the elite as the circumstances of society change.
The emergent organization of a permanently stable human society tends in two distinctly different directions, according to the way in which the elite exists. (An interesting question is whether there could be other directions of this tendency)
If, when circumstances change, the emergent social intent tends towards the sustenance of the ruling elite, then we can speak of a system of authoritarian social governance. In authoritarian regimes, the elite that remains unchanged in the presence of a change in social circumstances controls society, and develops and monitors the direction of social progress. The power of the elite may be maintained by the emotional attachments to the elite by society, by religious customs, by personal trust, by the securing of power through rules and the possession of resources by artificial manipulation (hybrid democracy), or through the forceful repression of dissent (dictatorship). In authoritarian systems, the control of society is achieved through the dominance of the will of certain individuals.
If, when circumstances change, the emergent social intent tends towards replacing the ruling elite, then we can speak of a democratic system of social governance. In a democratic system, when circumstances change, an elite of new individuals takes over the leadership, which develops and oversees the direction of progress of society. In this case, the elite usually is selected by society through majority elections from amongst the mostly self-nominated candidates. In democratic systems, society is governed through the temporarily imposed will of the various individuals who actually govern.
There can be many different transitions of the two types of governance in different societies, at different levels of society, yet elite domination seems to tend towards these two fundamentally different forms. It can be observed that the nature of the existence of elites at different levels of a cooperating society (family, school, workplace, small community, large community) is mostly similar, and it is a particularly difficult process at the social level to move from one governing system to another, which takes several generations and involves considerable shocks in the society.
When a complex, dynamic system tends towards a state, there are usually positive feedback mechanisms in the system's operation that help the state to emerge and sustain. What is the positive feedback mechanism in human society that results in and stabilizes the tendency of elite existence towards the two extreme states?
(There are many other areas of emergent functions of human society besides the way elites exist. However, the decisive factor of social organization, the positive feedback mechanism, the mechanism of anchoring the structural skeleton of the social system, is well observed through the form of elite existence.)
The structure of a society is formed through the evolutionary processes of society, which are implemented through the functioning of the systems of memes that exist in society. How does a positive feedback process occur in the functioning of memes?
Although memes are prevalent in the community, they exist in the minds of the individual people who constitute society and are manifested through the behavior of individual people. The functioning of memes is based on the psychological behavior of individual people, which produce emergent collective behavior in the group. What function of psychology results in positive feedback on social processes?
Human psychology is an extremely complex system, and it is very difficult to attribute a person's behavior to individual determinants. The main cause of this is the extreme complexity and plasticity of the human brain.
The human brain is the most sophisticated control system in the Earth's biosphere, but its dominant operating mechanisms can be traced back to ancient evolutionary origins. The brain, the system that creates human psychology and behavior, is the result of evolutionary development.
A crucial process in the initial adaptation of the malleable brain to its environment is imprinting, an initial implantation function of the brain. The brain mechanism of imprinting essentially determines the behavior of certain species of animals, the rapid adaptation of their malleable brain to its environment.
Humans have malleable brains, but the mechanism of initial imprinting is not considered to be the defining process of human behavior. Experience has shown that human behavior has the capacity to adapt flexibly to changing environmental conditions over time. Initial imprinting would be an impediment.
However, the plasticity of the human brain also has distinct limiting processes that can be linked to the function of imprinting.
For example, we know that the still-forming human brain undergoes a significant loss of synapses in the postnatal period. This process is both a cause and a consequence of imprinting, the rapid adaptation mechanism of initial implantation to the environment for humans. Although this pruning is usually characteristic of the early stages of plasticity, imprinting may be the dominant initial process of the initial further development of the still unformed plasticity of the distinctly flexible human brain later in life.
It is likely that the backfire effect is also related to the characteristic operation of the dominant mechanism of imprinting. "A backfire effect occurs when an evidence-based correction is presented to an individual and he/she reports believing even more in the very misconception the correction is aiming to rectify." The phenomenon of the backfire effect can be linked to the determining function of imprinting, the mechanism by which imprinting constrains the existing plasticity of the complex, malleable human brain.
Many other human behavioral phenomena may also have a psychological background in imprinting. And imprinting may also be the positive feedback mechanism for emergent social behavior, of which one but crucial example is the tendency of society towards the two leadership models.
The structure of the malleable brain is determined by the structure of memes actually in place in the family, in the community of friends, in the functioning of school and work, in the complex society. Imprinting evidently creates a positive feedback loop between the behavior of the individual and the meme structure of society.
Memes that function effectively (but not necessarily optimally, as is typical of natural evolution) in society through imprinting are able to become dominant through positive feedback, displacing competing memes in smaller populations, and making it difficult or even impossible for alternate memes to spread. The imprinting function ultimately creates island-like domains of memes in the entire human population.
A fundamental meme structure of how society works is the way communities at different levels are governed. The two models of social governance - authoritarian and democratic - create fundamentally different but equally functional and sustainable social organization. Each has its own specific advantages and disadvantages that can trigger social reorganization, but the transition between the two extremes is a remarkably difficult and prolonged social process.
The origin, the main cause and perpetuator of this social rigidity related to positive feedback may be the brain’s imprinting process. The social system and the imprinting in socialization are mutually determinant.
This is also the reason why a person socialized in a particular meme structure can only integrate into a different society with great difficulty, and his or her behavior and intentions remain foreign to the other community.
Although imprinting helps inherent adaptation, if it creates meme domains in a larger population of a socially organized species, it reduces diversity and becomes a barrier to the operation of evolution requiring diversity.
(This negative process is reinforced by the emergent feature of social communication serving business interests, the emergence, operation and significant influence of opinion-bubbles, which have recently become very effective. Opinion bubbles are also positive feedback reinforcers of the meme structures created by imprinting.)
Imprinting is an ancient, fundamental and inescapable function of the malleable brain. But a society of intelligent individuals can make a conscious effort to avoid the dominance of harmful memes by imprinting. Yet, the definition of harmful memes is ambiguous, often serving individual, subjective, non-common societal interests, and therefore the conscious selection of certain memes can be risky and dangerous for society.
However, the emergence of dominant memes can also be obstructed by natural social processes. Today's societies are inevitably constantly mixing. People on the move carry memes specific to the society of origin with them, as they are determined by imprinting. This mixing process causes a mixing of memes, the appearance and emergence of non-generic memes, causing coexistence of conflicting memes, inevitably causing diversity but also inevitably causing tension.
However, the process of imprinting is not specific to memes, it can universally make any meme present in society dominant. If the social complement of individual freedom, the meme of social tolerance, which generates evolutionary diversity, were to become dominant through imprinting, the evolutionary need for diversity in society could be sustained even with tolerable tensions.
The dominant presence of the meme of social tolerance by imprinting is not only conducive to a peaceful society, but also a practical means of a diverse, yet sustainable society that promotes evolutionary adaptation.
Societies with functioning tolerance are capable of efficient evolution. Currently successful societies are in practice the most tolerant countries. And the dominance of the meme of tolerance in society can be created and sustained by imprinting.
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