Society

As previously discussed, a utopia is a perfect society. The ideas behind what may constitute perfection were explored but little reference was made to what this perfection may be applied to other than “society”. It is necessary therefore to discuss the concept of society a little in order that we may proceed with any social engineering (I have a dislike of the term 'social engineering' as it sounds rather ominous however it is the correct term to ascribe to my meaning and so I should just like to assure the reader I use it always with the best of intentions).

We understand what is meant by the word 'society' when used based largely on the context. When devoid of context we can only give very ambiguous definitions such as; a group of individuals linked by culture, geography or belief. Most humans now belong to multiple different societies of varying significance and importance to the individual. Our family is a kind of society although one of the smallest to which we tend to belong, religions and nationality vary greatly in their relevance to people but are among the largest societies. There are numerous different types of society between these polar examples such as fraternities, companies, political persuasions, sports teams – both supporting and playing for, the street you live on, the town you live in and so forth.

There are two societies that anyone reading this will belong to, along with me and over six billion others. Those societies are the links we share by being human and the links we share by participating in the world economy to which only a few isolated humans can claim they escape. We live in a world which contains societies within societies, all overlapping and merging into other societies. It is a patchwork quilt from which we define much of our selves.

The larger a society gets the more it's members will act in their own interests rather than the societies however this effect may be dampened by rivalry. People tend to look out for their friends, family and neighbours as they know them personally and can easily empathise with them. This is harder to do for people we can ascribe fewer characteristics to, especially when there are so many more unknown people than known ones in such societies. Religions and nations have maintained an impressive degree of loyalty over the years given their large size.

Humanity has no real threat or alternative, we cannot defect from being human and are in no present danger from another species. If you compare this state of the “human society” to the state of either a religious or national societies which do have competition it is more clear why the British media seem to think the life of a Brit is more relevant than the life of a non-Brit or that some people do not respect the lives of those with other religions to them. A society under some threat, whether it is perceived, potential or actual, will have more highly evolved defence mechanisms whereby the individuals are more induced to look out for strangers within their society.

Humanity as a species and the global economy have no real threats, competition

or alternatives and so there is no incentive for the individuals of those societies to look out for others in the same way they might, for example, for a fellow Canadian or Muslim. It is also quite observable that the greater the potential threat to a society the tighter they will bond together such as ghettoes forming in urban areas due to larger numbers of natives. The minority groups will feel the pressure of the larger society so will form tighter social bonds to compensate. It is an unfortunate irony that ensures a society needs to feel threatened in some way in order that they may act most altruistically to each other. The recipe for altruistic behaviour within society is to add rival societies and make them threatening.

I see no way to avoid a loss of altruism with the loss of competition, it is the logical and natural conclusion given the mechanisms of evolution and those of human nature. The only manner remaining in which altruism can be ensured in a “monopoly society”, such as humanity or the global economy, is by making altruistic principles a fundamental part of the system. These ends are hard to achieve as there is no such thing as a system for humanity or even a system for the global economy. Both of these monopoly societies exist as composite systems, the laws and economic practices of the various nations are different to one another and so the overall “system” is the interaction between these smaller systems. One must engineer altruism into the systems of each nation in order that the whole society of humanity may function in it's own best interests which is presently an impossible task.

That being said it is still prudent to consider the manner in which we may attempt to make a monopoly society altruistic. Without knowledge of the aim we cannot attempt to find ways of getting there. To find an answer to these considerations I find it best to trace things back to their origins. This way we may get a clearer understanding of the reasons for their coming into being. Peter Berger succinctly defines society as “referring to a system of interaction” and so we may ask when did humans begin to interact with each other? Clearly the answer is long before they may have been considered human, indeed as long a sexual reproduction has been occurring however I wish to jump rather a large chunk of evolution and move to when our mammalian ancestors first became pack animals. Sexual reproduction is a mechanism which is advantageous to the species, and therefore the genes, and not a direct advantage to the individual, in fact quite often the difficulty of sexual reproduction is fatal to individuals within species. Existing as a pack animal however does confer advantage to the individuals of that pack (which in turn confers a secondary advantage to the genes) and it is these interactions that I consider to be the first societies.

A society therefore exists in order to create advantages to the individuals that belong to it. This may seem like tautology as there is no incentive to join a society which offers no benefits however we are often just born into societies and removing ourselves from them may be more disadvantageous than simply remaining but more on this later. The advantages we observe that are gained by pack animals are primarily survival based where as those we see in humanity are often pleasure and leisure based. Regardless of what kinds of advantages a society may offer its members we must consider the mechanisms of how a society can offer these advantages.

To answer these questions we can turn to Adam Smith who first coined the term “the division of labour”. By combining work and utilizing individuals best skills a far greater degree of return can be found overall for the input work. It is only by cooperation and mutually beneficial trades of work and skills that these advantages may be gained. Mechanisms are needed within such societies, such as a pack of wolves, to organise the work so that it may be efficient and to distribute the gains. In smaller animal societies these mechanisms are very simple. A single individual can be in a reasonable position to lead the society as they will personally know each other member. This is not the case with many of the societies which have evolved in humanity and so more complex and defined systems and rules are required. Often we try to place an individual at the head of a large society but this can only succeed where a hierarchy exists. A hierarchy allows leaders to be responsible for only those they personally know, those leaders will then be lead by others who know them until finally there is just one leader at the very top with indirect command over many more people than they could possible know.

Hobbes describes living in a society as like having agreed to a contract. The terms of this contract are that the society will confer advantages to you provided you adhere to the rules of the society. I have asserted that societies naturally evolved as they can create situations of overall greater advantage but that this is not always how they remain. When a society fails to honour it's side of the bargain towards an individual it ceases to be a society that would naturally evolve. Those that would not receive a benefit would not “sign” a contract which restricted them to adhering to certain rules. Given enough time under these conditions I would argue that dissension within the society will ultimately cause it to collapse or reform. A more scientific way of putting this would be that a society which does not confer some advantage to all of it's members is not in equilibrium and must therefore experience some rate of change towards a state of equilibrium assuming no other countering forces.

Society is therefore a collection of rules/laws and systems in place to coordinate the interactions of individuals so that they may each gain greater advantage than they otherwise might outside of that (type of) society. My intended meaning in use of the brackets and their contents in the last sentence is that an individual may gain more advantage in another country or family than they do in their own but would get less if they had no family or country at all. To be a society does not require being better than other societies of the same kind only than no society at all. The aim of utopians is to design societies that are better than others of the same kind, in that they confer more advantages than them. The manner in which utopians can engineer “more advantages” is by careful design of the rules and systems that coordinate the interactions of the individuals. There are no other tools available as I have defined society and so any other attempts using different tools would fall outside the realm of utopianism. Your route to perfection might be to try and make perfect people but then this would be in the field of genetics or psychology.

Some utopians aim at tribes, some at city states, some at nations and some at the global level. Only the latter is a monopoly society but if a utopia is the most advantageous form of society it must surely be the most advantageous if it includes all the people. It is often easier to describe, or easier to hear about a utopia of smaller sizes but the description should aim at having the ability to operate on a global scale and this means altruistic systems. I defined systems such as these using game theory in my essay 'Utopian Design', which is effectively the other half of this essay. An altruistic system is one in which the Nash equilibrium always coincides with the highest overall gain in utils. I do not know if this will come up in a future essay and so the interested reader may find more on game theory in “A brief introduction to Game Theory” by Ken Binmore, or in this age of new wonders by typing “Nash equilibria” into a thing called Google...