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Levels of Living System Control
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Governance control operates downward, across levels of living system. If a living system were not an aggregate object made up of actionable component objects under constraining relations, there would be nothing to control. If a living system did not require continuous interaction with its environment to maintain its homoestasis, there would be no reason for control.
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Governance is the mechanism by which a living system exercises control. At each level, the higher-level living system controls the lower-level living systems that are its components. A superorganism controls its component organisms, which control their cells, which control their biomolecules. At each level, this control is implemented through their respective organizations, organs, and organelles.
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The existence of a higher-level living system emerges from a natural force of attraction that causes lower-level living systems to join together for mutual benefit. As the lower-level living systems solidify their relationships and specialize their behavior, they become highly interdependent. What was initially a "voluntary" sharing of responsibilities and benefits evolves into an obligation that becomes enforced (governed) by the emerging higher-level living system.
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| Control is Based on a Contractual Relationship. |
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Control between two levels of living system can be thought of as a contractual relationship. This relationship may be consciously acknowledged, but usually it is implicit. At the lower levels of living system the contractual constraints are usually hard-wired and changeable only through evolution and natural selection across generations. At higher levels, the contract may be more deliberate.
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In this contractual relationship, components agree to behave in specified, constrained ways that collectively perform the life functions of the higher-level living system. In return, the higher-level living system agrees to provide protection and nourishment to meet the needs of its components. If the higher-level living system fails to meet the life function needs of its components, they may all perish, or the components may dis-aggregate and go their own ways. Governance is often viewed as a powerful top-down constraining force, but it's capabilities are limited by the health, capabilities, and sometimes willingness, of its components.
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In the case of nation-states and their citizens, the contractual relationship is somewhat voluntary. Most citizens must have a job, working for money to buy the things they need to live. If they fail to uphold their end of the contract or to resort to criminal activity, they will be disciplined or incarcerated. Correspondingly, for a nation's government to survive, it must meet the overall needs of its citizens. Even a dictatorship cannot maintain its hold on power unless it provides sufficient safety, order, and a consistent set of rules of behavior.
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Multiple Sets of Rules
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Citizens are Controlled by Two Sets of Rules
Citizens make decisions under the control of two kinds of organization with different sets of rules. In work-mode, they come under an employment contract with organizations that establish and enforce their work-environment rules of behavior and the pay they receive. In self-maintenance mode, they come under a citizenship contract with their superorganism that establishes their non-work rules of behavior. Enforcement of non-work rules is usually performed by government organizations, such as police, public safety, etc.
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Organizations are Controlled by Two Sets of Rules
Organizations take their direction from government in two ways: direct and indirect. The government establishes firm legal rules of non-profit and business enterprise behaviors that are directly enforced by government agencies. Although regulated, "free" markets are self-organizing with flexible business rules, many of which are indirectly enforced by collective market member actions (supply and demand).
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Self-Control
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To be alive and survive, each individual living system must govern its own actions to sustain its health and homeostatic equilibrium within its environment. Everything beyond its perimeter is part of its environment, including other living systems. Although a living system's interactions with its environment may be driven by specific external influences and conditions, the underlying foundation for its governance mechanism is the achievement of two goals: survival and reproduction.
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These two goals and their associated actions are present in every living system at every level of complexity. In simple living systems that are not components of a higher-level living system, these strivings for individual survival and reproduction are straightforward and easily recognizable. In more complex multi-level living systems, contractual relationships may shift the focus from individual survival to that of groups or species. An independent living system may focus entirely on its own wellbeing, while a subordinate component living system must also serve the needs of its higher-level living system.
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A nation-state superorganism imposes a set of rules of behavior on its component citizens and the way they conduct their lives. A citizen human organism is expected to internalize these rules within his own internal governance mechanism, i.e., his brain. A citizen is then expected to exercise self-control by acting in accordance with these rules.
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Conscious Control
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As humans, we see ourselves having the freedom to determine much of what we do and how we do it. We train our children in "self-control" and teach them to make choices and decisions for themselves. We consciously agree to follow established laws and rules by which our government exercises control over much of own behavior. How can such self-initiated, deliberate control be reconciled with the "blind" natural forces of nature?
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| Humans are Designed to Exercise Freedom of Choice. |
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From the viewpoint of nature, there is nothing special about human self-control or the establishment of government. These are simply labels that we use for the governance mechanisms that naturally come into existence at all levels of living system. What we experience as freedom of choice is a competitive natural selection mechanism that takes place as our superorganism adjusts and improves the behaviors of its components. In this respect, we are unwitting contestants in our superorganism's ongoing adaptation to its changing environment.
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In contrast, we as individuals are very conscious of our decision processes, and the results of our own actions. It is as though consciousness has been inserted into our living system governance structure in some kind of Cartesian mind-body adventure. Our own conscious comprehension indicates that a high level of deliberate self-governance exists. We do make choices about our behavior, based on what we know about ourselves and our environment. But it is superorganism governance that controls our behavior and reinforces our "good" choices so that we contribute to the health and well-being of the nation-state superorganism, of which we are but components.
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Human Organism Behavior
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A sense of confusion over who or what is in control of our lives is not surprising The forces that exercise control over our individual behaviors are very complex, and their exposition lies at the heart of what life is all about. The view from a human organism's perspective illustrates part of the structural complexity.
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Genes Provide the Capabilities for Behavior;
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Memes Place the Constraints on that Behavior.
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The structure of our cells and the genes they contain exercise great control over our innate physiology, our capabilities, needs and limitations. These include not only the hard-wired structures of our organs, but also the mental propensities within our brains that allow learning and bias us toward certain behaviors.
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For modeling purposes, our brains may be thought of as complex structures of scenarios that enable us to interact with our environments and internal conditions. Some of these scenarios are hard-wired by our genes, as in the autonomic nervous system. Other scenarios are learned through our senses and trial-and-error actions, first in childhood and later in the world of work. These learned scenarios that define and constrain our behaviors can be equated to memes that have been internalized within our own unique cranial governance structures.
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Freedom and Indirect Governance
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Superorganism governance of its human organism components allows freedom of choice in many of their actions. The superorganism-organism contractual relationship still applies, but it is enforced indirectly, through intermediate structures.
A familiar example of this controlling intermediate structure is the self-organizing and self-regulating "free market." Here, business organizations are envisioned as being free to voluntarily choose what product or service they will deliver. Citizens and organizations are then free to voluntarily decide what product to buy at what price. The result is an efficient, indirectly controlled, intermediate governance mechanism, where citizens' freedom of choice allows more flexible adaptation by their superorganism to its changing environmental conditions.
Within this "free market," the products and services being traded are all related to provisioning of the superorganism's life functions, in the form of component work or self-maintenance. This kind of voluntarism enables the superorganism to benefit from an ongoing trial-and-error, adaptive evolution of many parts of its internal structure within its own life-span.
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World Governance
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Throughout history, there has been an evolutionary trend toward growth in the scope of human superorganisms into ever larger and more encompassing geographical control structures. This growth involves a progression from family to band, to tribe, to chiefdom, to nation-state, and finally to a single world-wide superorganism entity. The transition from tribe to nation-state is nearly complete, but the transition to a single world-wide entity is still in its early stages.
Major efforts are currently underway to achieve further consolidation from independent nations toward world governance. These include the European Union, inter-nation agreements, NATO, and the United Nations. Sporadic upheaval and painful adjustment can be expected, but the overall trend toward eventual world governance is clear. Although world governance looms on the horizon, this living system modeling effort will focus mainly on autonomous individual nation-states such as the United States.
Control Structure Shows how the multiple sources of influence and control of living system behavior fit together into a comprehensive model.
©1995-2008 Ackley Associates Last revised: 6/29/08
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