Before we begin, let's address the mode of communication for this particular discussion, that being the English Language, and its features and limitations.
This will feature heavily later.
Language is a peculiar organism. Constructed using an ever increasing number of parts (words) and parts of parts (prefixes, suffixes, etc), with an ever increasing number of relationships between said parts, based on an ever increasing number of situations.
It can be affected both contextually and tonally, further increasing the overall complexity of the language. A word, does not have a single definition, but rather, what can more accurately be described as a spectrum of potential meanings, based on it’s relationship to the other components, words, context, tone, etc. My previous sentence serving as adequate example.
The word spectrum by itself, for example, might begin as a recognizable and hence definable shade, but the more it interacts with other components, the greater the number of possible meanings. This can cause a stratification effect with further differentiation of terminology, or in other cases it can harmoniously weave together disparate ideas into a single effective message.
In other words the cumulative effect of all the variables involved lead us to a point where I can say that language is a “spectrum”, without spending additional sentences explaining precisely what I mean, and the person reading this will understand precisely what I mean anyway.
Ignoring that outcome I have nevertheless explained in somewhat more detail, more for future reference, rather than immediate clarity. In any case, an innovation has occurred, a fusion of circumstances leading to an increase in the efficacy of communication, undoubtedly constituting the further differentiation and complexification of the language simultaneously.
Odd that we should consider language to be so useful at communicating concrete information, when uncertainty and differentiation is ingrained into its very use.
Were I to close my eyes and ask someone to describe to me an ordinary everyday object, and were they to use a thousand adjectives to do so, my understanding of that object would be incomplete. The image residing in my mind would still be unavoidably different from the reality of the thing. Language is a mode of communication, embedded in the use of still other modes of communication - sight, movement, etc. These being some of the means by which we exchange information with our environment and each other, while also being inter-augmentative.
The development of language as a feature of our species, did not occur in a vacuum of communication, but rather as an evolutionary extension of existing modes. To put it simply, there is differentiation, then modes of communication between differentiated parts, then further differentiation.
But that is to put it far too simply perhaps. Let me explain in more detail.
Foundations: Evolutionary Stratification
The universe wasn’t always quite so complicated. We can, however, be well glad that it has since become so. We owe our very existence to that fact. But at least in terms of our observable reality, there is a very clear and evident procession from the uniform, and the simple, to the diverse and the complex, punctuated by moments of apparent simplicity which are representative of momentarily and contextually appropriate configurations of complex parts (see ‘selection’, ‘aesthetics’, ‘quality’, ‘structure’, etc).
Hydrogen atoms, in their expanding relationships with an expanding number of other atoms, were able to exchange information, in this case subatomic particles, and as a result, form the physical beginnings of what appears to be a grand cosmological process of evolutionary stratification.
The complexity and differentiation of atoms and molecules and subatomic particles grows; remembering that even atoms are evolutionary outputs of the interactions between subatomic particles.
As the number of parts increases, the number of relationships between parts does as well, as does the cumulative impact of those relationships and again, in turn, the number of differentiated parts.
There are, imbedded in this process, structural changes to the way in which information is communicated, forming reciprocally augmentative parts of this complex system. The strong and weak nuclear force, gravity, electromagnetism, etc.
It is important here to state, that every differentiated part of a complex system constitutes the environment of every other.
Then, unexpectedly, as things generally are when no one is around to expect them, the cumulative effects of billions of years of differentiation and communication, of physical evolution, allow for progressively more effective relationships to be formed between molecules, and for more complex molecules to be formed as a result. Again, reciprocal.
It is at this point that we usually find it useful to apply linguistic differentiation again and call this ‘Biology’, but what it is in practice, is no more than an improvement in the modes of communication between parts, as a result of cumulative changes. An evolutionary stratification. The image below might provide some additional clarity.
I can look at something ‘biological’ and quite satisfactorily explain that this thing is indeed biological, and I can similarly look at a rock and say to general agreement that it is not. However, it is remarkably difficult to work out precisely where the non-biological became the biological, just as it is frustratingly difficult to work out where precisely green becomes blue, or where in point of fact, the components of that rock, in their interactions with other components of other things, would become ‘not a rock’.
In addition to this, it can also be said that green is at its ‘most green’, the moment before it starts becoming blue. This will be more relevant later on.
Biology, which we shall now accept as a differentiated term and as a differentiated stratum of evolution, due to the modes of communication available to it, proceeded to evolve more rapidly than ever before, with an ever-increasing number of relationships and further differentiated parts, which we can now, given the context, legitimately call ‘mutations’.
However, biology itself is but a frame on a spectrum, and whilst it is one which empowers more complex relationships and features to develop, it is simultaneously wasteful and reductive. Differentiated parts don’t always survive the cosmos. Sometimes, the relationship between the part and the environment (all the other parts), is just not particularly forgiving.
In the very physical strata, this level of innovation was barely tested. A Unununium atom will not form unless the component relationships with its environment explicitly allow it, so too will a complex molecule not form unless the same provisos allow it. Here in the biological, the modes of communication have themselves stratified including something we call reproduction. Selection is still applied, but because the organism is so complex and the rate of change to both parts and the environment so much more rapid, the qualifications for survival are not simply based on nuclear or gravitational forces, but on more complex interactions with other similarly organic parts.
Everything is given slightly more of a chance to test the water essentially.
But again, biology is reductive. Not as reductive as physics, but reductive nonetheless. If, within a colony of bacteria, for example, a single solitary bacterium happens to, as a result of its environment and components, develop a biological mutation which positively benefits its ability to survive its ever-changing environment, then the communication of this mutation or its potential catalyzation of other mutations is limited by the mode of communication for said mutations. It is likely that this particular organism will breed favourably and that its progeny will go on to have many more wonderful progeny each differentiated from each other and their ancestors, and each capable of further mutations more relatively survivable to the species.
However, what will also happen, is that the remaining population of the colony will breed less favourably and all other potentially innovative impacts of organisms and the progeny of those organisms will be lost.
There is a die-off, and as a result, the adaptability of the evolutionary process remains limited. Species die, generations are lost, and entire realms of possibility are left unexplored. Whilst biology is more adaptive and innovative than physical evolution, capable of greater information density, more complex molecules and enzymes and so forth, interacting in more complex ways, all in the context of the previous physical strata, it is hardly ideal. A change to that might occur if there was further cumulative changes to the modes of communication, a further stratification perhaps. A greater level of interaction between a greater number of biological and physical parts, biological parts with the physical environment, and the physical parts with the biological environment; enzyme communication, viral anomalies, electrical transmission, etc.
Mutations are limited in their effect by the mode of communication, but they also, to varying degrees, physically alter the mode of communication and cumulatively innovate new ones. Cognition stands out as an example of this prolonged process, as does, vicariously, the realm of society.
Social Stratification
To understand those most complicated of questions, regarding human society, its phenomena, behaviour and structures, posed by humans for as long as our modes of communication have allowed us to do so, from the ancients, through Compte, Weber, Marx and so on, we must first identify what differentiates society from every other part of our perceivable universe, or more specifically, previous strata of evolution.
The answer could well be very little. Whilst not being able to identify precisely where society begins on the evolutionary spectrum, we do however recognize that the unit in society is an individual ‘person’ and that the modes of communication between people are distinct. These include, in no particular order, sensory perception, physical interaction, language, emotion, economics, power and a host of other micro or macro-level processes, which we could deliberate on endlessly.
We can also observe that the reciprocal relations between these modes of communication, the parts of the system and their environment, allow for a level of mutation a full order of magnitude more complex than previous strata.
The reductionism of the biological is greatly diminished as the more highly exploratory and adaptive modes of communication between social parts, shift the emphasis for survivability away from a relationship between biology and environment and towards a relationship between society and environment.
This is analogous to Durkheim's analysis of organic versus mechanical solidarity. Here, as a result of the increase and proliferation of modes of communication, potential generations of mutations are kept alive, despite their perhaps inappropriate, or contextually unfeasible relationship with the environment in which they emerged. So we can see that ideas emerging millennia ago, such as those of Plato, continue to have active relationships with the complex parts of modern society, and continue to catalyze further mutation and differentiation, ad infinitum.
Social mutations, like those differentiations in previous strata, also have, through the similarly evolving modes of communication, a cumulative effect on what we can describe as the ‘structure’ of their existence.
Broadly speaking, this structure is society itself, but in more detail, we see that it has micro and macro-level structures, including but not limited to, culture, politics, family, economics, the state, bureaucracy, labour and so forth. These structures exist as emergent properties of social evolution in the same way that atoms and molecules exist as emergent properties of physical evolution and cells or human bodies exist as emergent properties of biological evolution. One could even go so far as to say that the physical laws themselves are part of the same process, but that would be surplus to the discussion at hand and outside the bounds of modern science to inform even inductive reasoning.
These structures are responsible for implementing degrees of falsifiability on the universe and the expanding means of differentiation it has at its disposal. In so doing, they maintain relative stability in the system as a whole and ensure relative adherence to existing norms, so that differentiation does not arbitrarily fabricate new structures incompatible with existing ones.
Within society, the falsification mechanisms - the structures - are however, far more receptive to adaptation and change by their very nature. The social system itself has emerged out of decreasingly stringent falsification mechanisms and reductionism. But this does not mean that falsification is no longer required. Far from it. Society indeed depends on structures to facilitate evolution as much as it does on every other component. It simply depends on increasingly malleable structures, as it has also done in previous strata. The relationship between differentiation/mutation, modes of communication and structure can be analogized thusly.
Pictured above, is a fish tank, in which sand lies at the bottom, underneath a significant amount of water which in turn has a constantly shifting surface.
Let us imagine that the bottom of the fish tank represents structure. It is not static per se, only more static than the other components. It is manipulated constantly by the flow of water (communication) and the impact of ripples and waves on the surface (mutation/differentiation).
The nature of waves and ripples on the surface is in turn influenced by the minute, but cumulative changes to the structure at the bottom. Again, the relationship is reciprocal.
Initially, the structure is very simple, flat if you will, but with prolonged reciprocal interaction between the phenomena on the surface, the structure becomes more complex, marked, cratered and shaped, facilitating more complex phenomena through more complex modes of communication, and vice versa.
With this, the reductionism slowly dissipates, the adaptive evolutionary process accelerates and the falsification of phenomena is more prolific, but less restrictive, as it is embedded in more complex structure.
Centralization and Decentralization
But where does the process of social, political and cultural centralization fit into all of this talk of evolving structures? To discuss this subject, I will look at the development of modes of information communication between human beings, beginning with the centralization of sedentary societies and the advent of writing and bureaucracy, which Weber views as the means by which specialization and the division of labour achieve optimum efficacy.
It should be noted however, that this bureaucratization reaches a point of diminishing efficacy as the society reaches higher levels of complexity, at which point the centre collapses in on itself again and the focal point shifts. There are further analogies to be made here with regards to the emergence of currency from the gift economy in economics amidst an increasingly complex economic environment and the division of labour, alienation and social change in the means of production, however, we will delve into those again at a later point.
Suffice it to say that structural centralization, in every case is asymptotic in its efficacy and precipitates decentralization and the development of proceeding structures, or as the case would be, evolutionary strata.
A Bit of Information
When man first started scratching cuneiform marks into stone tablets six thousand years ago in ancient Sumeria, recording for, at first economic purposes, information in a concrete fashion, the benefits of this new practice were not immediately recognizable for what we now know they represent.
Additionally, the practice took many years before it became common in the region and indeed, around the world. Sumeria was the first of what we now call Civilizations. A geographic and structural center of information. It was not the center specifically because it was the most advanced, technologically or even culturally, but rather because of the benefits which written communication, from this point on, began to render. One of the earliest communication technologies had been invented, a mutation and a profound change to the mode of communication between individuals. This was a technology which allowed records to be kept, of people, money, resources, trade, and an ever increasing amount of other ‘bits of information’. Word of mouth, which had functioned in the same capacity for thousands of years prior, to pass on information through storytelling, myth or legend, was a key component in allowing the development of culture, empowering survival and further increasing the complexity of the society in question. However verbal communication alone, particularly across generations has the unfortunate weakness of allowing information to be subject of arbitrary modification, rendering it unfalsifiable. It is unreliable, allows storytellers to smudge the facts, apply their own personal biases and turn apparent truth or genuine knowledge, into contrived and sometimes destructive fiction. By itself, it was a mechanism for communication, but also the fabrication of information structures based on increasingly precarious foundations. Thus, for the same reason that vocal sounds required the structure of grammar and syntax, human communication necessitated greater levels of structuralization and centralization in order to readily build upon itself. The main difference that emerged with written modes of communication was the fact that, instead of being affected by arbitrary interference and questionable reliability, it formed a structure which could be much more effectively built upon. When Aristophanes calculated with incredible precision the circumference of the earth and put it down on papyrus, he was preserving the knowledge in a form allowing countless others to directly benefit from and build upon that knowledge. Human society, now had a solid falsifiable basis on which to construct narratives, build understanding and exchange information. So too, did scientific discovery now have a firm basis. When the library of Alexandria was destroyed thousands of years later, the accumulated knowledge of generations, through Civilizations was taken with it. Knowledge which had been used by the Egyptians, the Romans, the Greeks and others to build and develop more and more. It was a center of information. Centers of information were for most of human history a reality, inseparable from the mode of communication itself. Even though writing had revolutionized the way in which information was exchanged, it still contained many of the limitations of its predecessors. It was limited in it’s capacity to inform in two central ways. Firstly, by distance and time. When Archimedes lept out of his bathtub shouting “Eureka”, what he had learnt was written down and no doubt distributed slowly to those around him, saving it from immediate loss. However, it was only distributed within the limited geographic area that was feasible with the technology of the time and even within that area, only to those with the existing means and knowledge to access it. Secondly, when it came to distribution, if the information were to be replicated, copies needed to made one by one. The result is that pertinent discoveries or information of any kind cover ground and people at what we would regard today as an excruciatingly slow pace. This lack of symmetry in the mode of communication is what obstructed it’s use and what necessitated structuralization. It is the same reason why politicians emerged in early sedentary societies. The social organism was forced to centralize as a means of propagating information adequately between complex parts. Historically, centers of information have always been present because of this simple reality. Information distribution. But with centralization and structuralization came more effective and cumulative relations between the parts of those social systems. This effect of this was to accelerate differentiation and the development of modes of communication, all the way through to the advent of the printing press in the 19th century, which allowed people to exchange news, research and information of all kinds with much greater efficacy. That information could be duplicated far more rapidly (going part of the way to solving one major issue) and certainly went along way to creating a more symmetrical mode of communication in which all parts of the society could participate. It diminished the exclusivity of information which had plagued most human societies for thousands of years, however the issue of distribution still remained. Over the last 6000 years of human history, we have seen evidence for this slow development of human information systems, in the shift of what has generally been considered the center of scientific, cultural and philosophical development across massive geographic areas. This has paralleled the shift in historical centrism, generally regarded as an obfuscation by historians, in terms of the reliability of information on specific events, but one which nevertheless in this case serves as a useful illustration. Since the 4th millenium BCE, we have seen centers of power (sometimes concurrently) in West Asia, the Indus Valley, China, Egypt, Persia, Greece, Central America, East and West Africa, Rome, Arabia, South America, China again, Europe again and North America. To a greater or lesser extent, the fall of one center has precipitated the rise of the next, as the modes of communication used by one area fall victim to the complexity of the society and the environment, through either war, attrition, economic hardship, conflict with a more effective rival center, or a host of other reasons, again echoing Weber’s remarks on bureaucracy. The unfortunately ineffective modes of communication have caused civilizations to blink in and out of existence and feed on each other like drops of water rippling on the surface of a pond. However, over the last few decades, the problem of distribution has began to be addressed more effectively. Through modern technology and modes of communication, for the first time in human history, we have the ability to address both obstacles confronting the propagation and distribution of information. All kinds of information; cultural, social, political, scientific; can now be replicated infinitely and distributed instantly anywhere in the world. The progressive centralization and structuralization of the process of differentiation has bore us the means to truly benefit from that same differentiation. Though, to look at this as the internet solving all our problems, would be a failure to see the big picture, and matter of factly, plain wrong. The internet is after all simply another frame, something that looks like a definite thing from a particular reference point, but which is in fact just the current face of another cumulative evolutionary process. What it has done, is remove obstructions to the symmetry of our dominant modes of communication and improved the general welfare of information, the lack of which has plagued societies to greater and lesser degrees for all of human history. The obstructions now lie in the propagation of technology, language and other modes through which the technological reality can be taken advantage of. Perhaps less arduous, but no less important tasks. With that, we arrive at the present and its complexity of social goings on.
The Wave
When the concept of structure and centralization was discussed earlier, it referred explicitly to the previously observed evolutionary trend of structuralization and falsifiability and was intrinsically linked to the issues plaguing communication across other strata and paradigms. But what happens if many of the factors which catalyze this centrism are swept away by a wave of technology, or other outputs of this same centralization? What if the structure of society, is the evolutionary mechanism by which that same structure is overcome and transitions into a still higher strata of evolution. Centralization birthing decentralization. If we look again at the image of the spectrum, we see again that green is at its most green, right before becoming more blue. Marx would say that Capitalism is perfected right before it becomes Socialism. And to delve into the more abstract, when physicists conceptualize the beginning of the universe, they imagine it as a quantum wave, expanding and contracting, the center bubbling out and then collapsing again.
The Global Structure
So what happens to the structure of human society as a whole, as we slowly acquire the means to distribute information more effectively and the modes of communication through which modern society is conducted proliferate, destabilizing the dominant structural narrative of human history, that of the state? There are numerous elements to consider here. First of all, as mentioned earlier, modes of communication are the processes which drive evolution further and faster, but they do so, by establishing structures and symmetry across the organism, solidifying themselves as differentiated strata of evolution. In biology, reproduction was the key mode of communication. In traditional society, it was language. In this sense, there is centralisation and structuralisation, through which the next order of evolutionary differentiation and complexity is precipitated. This in turn, creates a feedback loop on the modes of communication, which are differentiated further and decentralized. It should be made clear at this stage that evolution is not in the business of making objective judgements over what mutations and changes are more or less beneficial for survival. Evolution is instead retrospective, simply looking back and exclaiming that whatever survived must have indeed been fittest. However there is one crucial exception to this rule, and that is with regards to the mode of communication between component parts of the system; increased adaptability being necessary to survive an increasingly complex system. This is almost axiomatic however, as it simply says that, given the reciprocal relationship between environment and organism, a complex thing, must be more effectively complex to survive its own complexity. With this in mind, comparative cultural and value based arguments become largely meaningless with regards to establishing the viability of social structure, except when it comes to the efficacy with which that society facilitates communication between parts. It also means that terms such as ‘advanced’ or ‘developed’ are relevant only when addressing the degree to which a specific social organism is capable of dealing with its own reality. Just as it is unwarranted to take a term like evolution, which deals with adaptability, and use it to say that a bacterium is less ‘advanced’ evolutionarily than a primate with high cognitive capacity, when both are simply appropriately adapted to their environment, so too would it be unwarranted to say that a technologically ‘advanced’ society is more evolved than a tribe of hunter gatherers. There is no need for hunter gatherers to have the internet and similarly the level of complexity necessary to develop it does not exist. There is no specific end game and no ideal outcome when it comes to social evolution. However, one pertinent reality that confronts global society today is that individual societies, are less and less isolated, to the point where what once may have been justifiably called individual societies, or individual organisms surviving their respective environments, are now very much a culturally differentiated global society, surviving a singular environment. It is not possible to isolate a closed social system, except if one were to simply refer to it as ‘Earth’, or perhaps venture into the more remote jungles of New Guinea. This is of course, a result of the historical change in modes of communication outlined earlier, which has seen the establishment of greater levels of symmetry and the convergence of differentiated societies in more numerous ways. One of the reasons for the United States having achieved diminished relative power as opposed to raw power (which is surely the best outcome any hegemonic power can hope for) is the success in propagating modes of communication to such a wide area, creating an emerging and even potentially sustainable balance of power, based on the idea that up until now, the means to unify evolutionary processes across social systems has been unavailable. However this is not without its own issues, including but not limited to, the profound lack of symmetry in economics. So, we can infact make strong arguments about the efficacy of specific social structures. One of which is the importance of further symmetry and falsification. Remember also that symmetry in modes of communication, is not equality in the conventional sense. There is no evolutionary argument for why everyone should be equal. Quite the opposite in fact. Evolution thrives on diversity. What it does mean is that symmetrical access to, and participation in, the dominant modes of communication is objectively more conducive to adaptability. Additionally, maximising adaptability in this way, maximises the chance that the social organism will be able to innovate its way out of potential conflicts or problems that arise. There are, after all, far more evolutionary dead ends than success stories. Failed states, fallen empires and even poverty are all examples of a failure to adequately propagate dominant modes of communication within a social system. Using this theory, it is therefore possible to formulate a comparative framework, which looks at policy and social structure based on the relative degree of impact on the symmetry of communication in given societies. Examples of this with varying degrees of impact would include, suffrage, economic rights, health care, education, a social safety net and even democracy.
Democracy?
Yes, Democracy. Democracy is unique among political systems in that, by its very definition, there are a limitless number of potential configurations of relationships. Democracy is not a specific political structure or a specific set of institutions, but rather a core input; collective decision making/deliberation by the ‘people’; and a core output; legitimate governance. As a result of this, and the fact that the ‘people, is a collective noun, the potential number of relationships and the complexity of the system increases exponentially with each additional ‘person’. Legitimate power relations can be established in a linear or non linear fashion, creating a structure that is every bit as evolutionary and adaptive as the society which it governs. Theorists have often tried to qualify democracy by providing ‘procedural minimum’, or broad ‘institutional’ definitions, however they all amount to an unfortunate developmental impediment, when we consider what democracy actually represents, which is a symmetrical mode of communication towards establishing political structure. In this sense, democracy is the zenith of political complexity, as we understand politics in our dominant evolutionary strata. Democracy also contributes to its own evolution in the context of complex society by facilitating decentralization through centralization. Collective decision making, or democratic behaviour at the macro level, has the same effect observed in other phenomena. It causes increased symmetry in the modes of communication, including in this case power/authority, which in turn allows the center to collapse and the focus to shift. We can see this today, in the enormous increase of grassroots political and social structures around the world, empowered by the dissemination of power from the center. Democracy is an evolutionary political system, which is quite simply the political manifestation of everything which has been discussed; the fundamental need for adaptability. In addition to that, it also functions as a developmental mechanism, as it facilitates, by it’s very nature, increased communication and interaction between disparate ideas as well as a means of falsification.
Final Thoughts: Development and the Division of Labor
Marx was right about a lot of things. The importance of the materialist outlook can not be ignored and class struggle is perhaps the most important of social struggles, encompassing all others. Quite simply because it represents what has earlier been described as a lack of symmetry in access to modes of communication. Marx just ran with materialism and linear evolutionism, missing the big picture. He was also right about the division of labor and alienation, but only to a point. Only to the crest of the wave, as it were. In fact, Khaldun, Smith, Durkheim and Hume all have important observations on the nature of differentiation and the division of labor within society as well. Hume, Khaldun and Smith all lauded the developmental role of division, allowing more complex solutions to more complex problems in a more complex reality. Perhaps the most poignant commentary however came from Emile Durkheim in ‘The Division of Labor and Society’ in which division was viewed as a ‘natural law’. Emerging from the division of labor, Durkheim saw the existence of ‘social solidarity’, both ‘mechanical’ and ‘organic’. The mechanical and organic solidarity correlated to relationships formed between differentiated parts (humans) and the collective conscience, or social structures. Organic solidarity on the other hand is the emergent relationships empowered by those same structures, which according to Durkheim, slowly supersede their systemic forebears. It is easy to see how this narrative fits into the larger evolutionary picture discussed in this essay. What Durkheim was missing was reciprocity of the organic and the mechanical, and the role of differentiation and symmetry in modes of communication, stratifying evolutionary paradigms. Marx on the other hand, warned of the dangers of conflating division of labor with development or division with differentiation (division of labor, being a controlled form of differentiation which suppresses diversity rather than promoting it), stating that man becomes boring and unfulfilled with the division of labor. But here Marx was ignoring the larger organic processes. He was not taking into account the emergent properties of a complex system in the way that we now understand them. One short example of this would be the emergence of 3d printing from within the context of the mechanical/organic reciprocal social arrangement that we have thus far illustrated. One might ask how the ability of individuals to become modes of production impacts Marxist ideas about centralized communism as the answer to the ‘problem’. In biology this fusion of time and circumstance, or seemingly independently evolving strands of evolution into a new reality, has a name, ‘convergent evolution’. It happens when simplicity is created from complexity, when emergent properties from apparently differentiated systems coalesce into something new as a result of their unavoidable reciprocal relations with their environments (each other). A brief example of this which would suit the economic swing of Marxist discussion (aside from the aforementioned 3d printing, or the Internet) would be something like the ‘iPhone’. Put quite simply, no one set out 30 years ago to make an iPhone, nor did it occur as the result of division and development in solely one paradigm of human endeavour. Instead, there were numerous companies and researchers and universities and social norms and market realities and cultural practices, that were all evolving and dividing independently. But nothing evolves independently does it? So, what seemed to be a divisive and stagnated process, enabled a true innovation to occur. Pieces were drawn from all over and threads were tied together. A new thing was created, a ‘synapse’ if you will. This is not atypical of evolution either. It is infact the norm, and is the economic and technological manifestation of the same process that has created everything from DNA to Democracy. It allows us to describe these cosmological systems as both increasingly complex and remarkably simple at the same time, and gives a level of authority to the old philosophical adage that we are both many and one. As mentioned at the beginning at the beginning of the essay, there is differentiation, then there are relationships or modes of communication between differentiated parts, then differentiation again. Initially I said that it was perhaps too simple. But simplicity is not a problem, it is infact the point of this essay to provide simple understanding of complex phenomena. The problem is simply that the implications of this simplicity are ignored. A differentiated part of a complex system, is not just in a relationship with those other differentiated parts in communicates or forms relationships with directly, but with the entire system itself. The fundamental principle here is no different now, than it was at the beginning of the universe. It doesn’t matter whether there are 2 atoms or 2x10(100). Differentiation does not mean going into a smaller and smaller box. If we wish to stimulate development through the division of labor and differentiation, then what is required is to stimulate communication and the formation of more complex relationships. In the social paradigms of technology, science, economics, culture, philosophy, religion, politics and so forth, these relationships can be innovative, augmentative, cross pollinations, or even negative and reactionary. Just because a piece of information or differentiated part is seen as negative, does not mean it should be hidden away and uncommunicative. Quite the opposite again. Awareness of a thing is the first step towards reacting to it. Societies which have developed ‘organic’ solidarity and have greater levels of communication between component parts, are more reactive to a greater plethora of perceived social ills. This can create greater conflict as well as greater harmony, both of which are reciprocally related and developmental. Often in these societies, people tend to have a more morose view of the world as well. Awareness of a greater number of things tends to make people think that the world is becoming a worse place, when in actual fact their awareness signifies that it is constantly in the process of becoming better. This too, is an inbuilt mode of falsification, but it all depends on communication. Society is a complex and difficult thing, perhaps one of the most complex and difficult, but regardless of how complicated it all gets, regardless of how overwhelmingly complex everything seems, as long as we are communicating, we can survive.