Incidentals (3rd of 5): apropos the future of conflict (and TIMN)

Some comments that fit in this five-part scrapbook pertain to the evolving nature of conflict. These comments include a couple of swipes at the “4GW” notion, followed by a reprise of John Arquilla’s and my view about the four ways of war associated with military history and social evolution à la TIMN — and I've inserted some additional remarks about the fourth way, our concept of swarming. I then tack on two comments about organizing for cybersecurity that reflect my view of the +N part of TIMN. In all this, there are a few — but only a few — observations that I’ve not made before.

* * *

I have long bridled at the notion of “Fourth Generation warfare” (4GW) and finally dropped a couple comments to that effect.

The first was at Adam Elkus’s keen blog Rethinking Security in September 2009, for a post he did in August doubting that conflict was becoming ever more fraught with “complexity” and likely to induce “state failure” here and there:

I quite agree that notions about state failure -- notably about states being eroded by tribal, market, and new network actors, as well as by internal corruption and incompetence -- have acquired excessive memetic momentum these past few years. My view remains that the state is far from finito. It’ll go through adaptations and reformulations, remaining essential for the construction and governance of complex societies.

Speculations about the decline of the state get tied to the rise of 4GW. It’s a concept I find attractive, but I’m continuing to have a problem with it: 4GW is presumably a postmodern kind of warfare. But I’ve yet to identify a wholly postmodern bunch engaging in 4GW in a violent manner. Instead, the ablest postmodern practitioners appear to be lobbyists, public-relation firms, and activist NGOs. Plus some cyber gangs dedicated to malevolent hacking.

But as for violent conflict, most (all?) of 4GW’s perpetrators so far -- to the extent that Al Qaeda, the Taliban, la Familia Michoacana, etc., reflect 4GW -- are laden with antique tribal and clan dynamics and engage in old modes of violence. In that sense, many of today’s exemplars of 4GW are primarily practitioners of PGW (pre-generation warfare, if I may?). The 1GW, 2W, 3GW, 4GW spectrum, as I understand it, leaves out this earlier mode, and recategorizes it under 4GW.

I wish I could find some clarification about this. I’m not asking for it here, but I thought I’d mention it because it relates to your able points: Many of these actors aim to reinstitute the state in some form.

I reiterated much of the preceding at Peter Hodge’s worthwhile blog The Strategist in November 2009 for a post he did criticizing the “generations of war” notion. But by then I could also add:

Recently, I came across an interesting timeline about 4GW that starts with the notion of a pre-formal generation of war: 0GW. It corresponds to my concern. To take a look, go here: http://timeline.dreaming5gw.com/XvX.php

Even so, I still find the whole 0-4GW spectrum problematic, and prefer other options.

* * *

I summarized the option I most prefer at the Chicagoboyz blog after learning about a post by Lexington Green in October 2009 that invited advice for a presentation on military history:

In a view that John Arquilla and I have elaborated before, the history of military organization and doctrine is largely a history of the progressive development of four fundamental forms of engagement: the melee, massing, maneuver, and swarming. Briefly, warfare has evolved from chaotic melees in which every man fought on his own, to the design of massed but often rigidly shaped formations, and then to the adoption of maneuver. Swarming appears at times in this history, but its major advances as a doctrine will occur in the coming years

If this formulation looks helpful and interesting, go here to download our old Rand study (it's free) on Swarming and the Future of Conflict. Chapter Two (pp. 7-23) is about the evolution of military organization and doctrine: melee, massing, maneuver, and swarming, with particular reference to the roles of information and information technology in the evolution of these four forms.

What that write-up does not show, except in a passing footnote, is that this formulation derives from a view of social evolution — a pet theory of mine (called TIMN) — which holds that, across the ages, societies have come up with only four major forms of organization: tribes, hierarchical institutions (as in states and their militaries), markets, and networks. Thus, early tribes are associated with melees, hierarchical institutions with the rise of massed formations, the rise of market-oriented societies with the turn to maneuver doctrines, and now the age of networks with swarming.

I did not elaborate there, but I’d note here that two other current notions of military swarming are deficient in our view: One has evolved around observations about “swarm intelligence” in nature (e.g., birds, bees, ants). It’s interesting, but it is more about decentralized flocking without any central command and control, rather than coordinated swarming as we understand it. Another view has grown around the notion of “network-centric warfare” (not to be confused with our notion of “netwar”). This view has taken swarming in a high-tech command-and-control direction having mainly to do with UAVs, leading to lots of corporate funding by the Pentagon. UAVs are important, but we'd rather see advances made at the soldiers’ operational level (e.g., in connection with Gant’s proposals for a tribal engagement strategy in Afghanistan). In any case, these two other schools of thought about swarming keep evolving in our direction.

For additional analysis of military swarming, see two spin-off writings by former Rand graduate student and colleague, Sean Edwards: Swarming on the Battlefield: Past Present and Future (Rand, 2000), and Swarming and the Future of Warfare (Rand, 2005). For an update on Arquilla’s thinking, see his article on “The New Rules of War,” Foreign Policy, March/April 2010, available online. Also try to get hold of his booklet Aspects of Netwar & the Conflict with Al Qaeda (Monterey, CA: Information Operations Center, Naval Postgraduate School, 2009; contact: infoioc@nps.edu). Insofar as social rather than military swarming is of interest, Arquilla's and my volume on Networks and Netwars: The Future of Terror, Crime, and Militancy (Rand, 2001) remains timely.

* * *

I’ve set cybersecurity aside as a focus since my July post here on “Toward a collaborative community for cyber defense?” Nonetheless, I dropped two tentative comments that reflect the rising importance of the +N in TIMN.

One was at the at IntelFusion blog, for a post by Jeffrey Carr in August 2009 about his forthcoming book Inside Cyber Warfare. He noted he “changed the focus of my final chapter from ‘A Public Private Partnership’ to something that I think is much more vital: ‘Advice For Policy Makers From The Field.’” And he invited formal submissions for compiling that last chapter.

I didn’t aim to participate, but I sensed an opportunity to reiterate a point I like to make, even though I never seem to be effective at making it:

Part of the problem may be the very term you emphasized in the former title of your final chapter: “public-private partnership.” This concept sounds so sensible, and it slides into place so easily in recommendations everywhere these days. But perhaps it’s an aging legacy concept, more suited to the passing industrial era than to the emerging information age, even though the latter’s proponents keep embracing it (which I’ve done at times too).

Consider its meaning(s): It divides matters into public (i.e., governmental) and private (i.e., business), as though they’re the only two sectors that exist. Good governance then mostly means finding the right mix of public and private measures to enable government and business, plus sometimes an occasional nonprofit civil-society actor, to work hand in hand. And this usually ends up meaning key/big government agencies allying with key/big business corporations, often through subcontracting and outsourcing.

I doubt (and I hope others doubt) that this is the wisest direction to keep trying to go in. For one thing, the two-sector/public-private model is headed for obsolescence. An additional sector has been emerging for years now, though its nature remains unclear and it still lacks a good name (Peter Drucker called it the social sector — I like that name best so far — but others call it the third sector, the citizen sector, or the social benefit sector). Whatever, it seems to consist mostly of relatively small, agile, non-profit organizations that pertain more to civil society than to government or business, and that are suited to operating in sprawling networks with each other, as well as with traditional public and private actors.

While this deep re-organizational trend bears mainly on the future of social issues (e.g., health reform?), it may also be significant for cybersecurity, especially cyber defense. Indeed, the way I see matters, your Grey Goose project is in this new sector.

I’m not disputing that the big government and industry actors have crucial roles to play. They do, and they must improve at operating in partnerships. But we Americans are going to need a multi-tiered, multi-sectoral cyber defense system (or set of systems) that is not adequately denoted or properly motivated by the prevailing notion of public-private partnership.

The trite simulation of a “cyber shockwave” that CNN presented this month, with an array of big government and industry players on stage, gives me no heart that my point is likely to resonate any time soon.

* * *

Finally, I left a string of comments at Matt Armstrong’s MountainRunner blog in September 2009 for his post on “preparing to lose the information war.” My comments ramble, but I reiterate them here anyway, much abbreviated and combined from across the string, because I still think there may be a good idea embedded in them somewhere.

. . . [A] lot of concerns that plague public diplomacy/strategic communication also plague cyber security. The difficulties faced in both issue areas — e.g., definition of terms and aims, search for able top leadership, key agency location, inter-agency responsibility, public-private coordination, even the role of NGOs — exhibit lots of curious parallels.

To some extent, these parallels reflect broader problems of government in our times. But at a deeper level, the parallels may owe to facts that both issue areas are about “information” and that much is still up in the air about the significance of this concept/dynamic. . . .

Your comment above about data vs. information reflects the so-called information pyramid. as your remark implies, it has a broad base of raw “data” and “facts,” atop which sits a middle stratum of “information.” The next, still narrower, higher stratum corresponds to information refined into “knowledge.” Atop all, at the peak, sits the most distilled stratum, “wisdom” — the highest level of information. The pyramid implies that the higher levels rest on the lower, but that is true only to a degree. Each layer has some independence — more data do not necessarily mean more information, nor more information more knowledge (or wisdom). Also, it should not be presumed that the hierarchy is driven from the bottom by data; values and value judgements may intrude at all levels. Moreover, critics object sensibly that “information” should not be mistaken for “ideas.” [Read more at http://www.rand.org/pubs/monograph_reports/MR880/MR880.ch6.pdf]

This looks like a good way (or one part of finding a way) to frame my point that the cybersec and stratcomm areas have a lot of parallels and linkages, and your keen point that cybersec is often mostly about ops at the lower levels and pubdip (info engagement) about ops at the higher levels of this pyramid. . . .

Under current circumstances, I suppose that officials who deal with public diplomacy and strategic communication rarely if ever talk to officials who deal with cyber security. Moreover, current proposals in both issue areas for new czars, coordinators, offices, whatever, would continue to keep them quite separate. . . .

Now, if our musings about the tie-ins between the two issue areas are more sensible than people have considered, then maybe those two sets of officials should be relating a lot more to each other. . . .

This does not mean that the same person(s) should be in charge of both issue areas. But a range of implications may be advisable. At a minimum, perhaps there should be occasional joint meeting to figure out and act upon the synergies. At a maximum, perhaps a National Information Council (or put cyber in the name somehow) should be established, and both issue areas (plus others, like media policy, as you raised?) should be associated with it.

. . . I’m not taken with the notion that a new cybersecurity advisor should report mainly to the OMB and the National Economic Council; that’s too business-oriented for my sense of what’s at stake. And you are not happy (nor am I) with what’s been going on with the treatment of public diplomacy and strategic communications. The maximum implication I posited above may well be too much, but maybe there’s an interesting range yet to be identified.

[CORRECTED — October 16, 2011:  This post originally referred twice to "the +I part of TIMN" when it should have referred to "the +N part of TIMN".  Correction made.]

Incidentals (2nd of 5): apropos tribes vis à vis the other TIMN forms

The prior post concerned definitions of tribes as such. This post — serving, like all the posts in this five-part series, as a kind of scrapbook for bringing together comments I’d scattered elsewhere — conveys remarks about tribes in relation to the other TIMN forms. These remarks contain no new TIMN propositions, but they serve as reminders: that the TIMN forms have deep histories; that it is easy to conflate tribes and networks, but in TIMN they are distinct; and that societies benefit most from developing the forms in ways that keep their realms largely separate from and in balance with each other. This post also recalls the positive influence of Alvin Toffler’s writings.

* * *

A set of interesting posts appeared at the P2P Foundation blog — one of my favorite blogs — in August 2009 comparing the histories of Maghrebi and Genovese traders in the Middle Ages. The posts concerned a view, raised at another blog, that the Maghrebis exhibited an early kind of P2P/network approach to organization, the Genoveses a more market-like approach — and that this might explain why the latter proved more durable and successful as traders.

To quote P2P blog author Michel Bauwens: “Ignacio de Castro has written a fine trilogy on medieval p2p-like practices, that is somehow framed as a challenge to our p2p approach. It describes the practices of jewish maghrebi traders in the Middle Ages and their international support network, and wonders why they ultimately lost against their Genovese more ‘capitalist’ competitors. Ignacio asks: could the same defeat happen to contemporary P2P practices and communities?”

Bauwens voiced his doubts, and so did I. My point was that the Maghrebis were less an expression of the p2p/network form than of the tribal form — and that’s what explained the differing outcomes:

The Maghrebis do exhibit some P2P relationships. But it’s one thing to exhibit some relationships, quite another for those relationships to add up to a full, distinct system of thought and action. The key systems of organization that have developed across the ages so far — tribes, hierarchical institutions (like states), and markets — all contain some P2P relationships in varying respects and degrees. But we have yet to see a full-fledged, distinct P2P /network system emerge to take its place alongside those systems. That still lies ahead.

The Maghrebis appear to correspond far more to an innovative tribal system than to a P2P system. This is particularly so given the exclusionary behavior that accompanied their ethnic orientations. And it’s this tribal nature that ultimately limits them. The Genovese appear to have been less tribal. Thus, perhaps it remains an open question as to whether and how much it’s the tribal, the market, or the P2P orientations that explain the differing outcomes.

* * *

Plenty else is going on these days that warrants commentary about modern expressions of the tribal form and its mixture with the other TIMN forms. But in comments left elsewhere, I only got exercised about the rise of the “tippie” movement (my term for referring to the tea-party and town-hall activism, along with associated Truthers, Tenthers, Nine-Twelvers, and anti-tax activists — so many words starting with the letter T).

This occurred at the Spinuzzi blog — another favorite — in an October 2009 post titled “Some tentative thoughts about a networked rhetoric.” Clay Spinuzzi is an expert on rhetoric, and in this post he wonders whether TIMN “has given us a starter framework for understanding types of rationality in different societies, and by extension, a way to conceive of effective logic within each.” With references to everything from Stephen Toulmin to the town-hall protests, Spinuzzi proposes, among other ideas about the evolving nature of rhetoric, that “institutions expect a woven argument; networks deliver spliced arguments.”

My comment:

I quite agree that each of the four TIMN forms may be associated with a different type of rationality and thus logic and rhetoric. It’s a point worth continued development. . . .

What I’ve seen at the town-hall meetings looks more like a pro-tribal than a pro-network (or pro-institutional or pro-market) rhetoric, as I use those terms. The people I’ve seen speak out seem to be longing more for tribal than for information-age network answers. Nonetheless, at the same time I think you are quite right, and are saying something interesting, to observe that the town-hall participants, in voicing their tribalism, reflect a “networked rhetoric,” as distinguished from a classical, more linear, logic-oriented rhetoric that stems from its institutional origins.

What I would suggest you consider is the following: relate the underlying structure of this kind of rhetoric to the kinds of concepts found in social network analysis. Maybe the rhetoric and its ingredients could be depicted in terms of a network map showing nodes and links, with some hubs. This would result in quite a different depiction from a classical, more linear, even pyramidal logical layout, I’m supposing.

A couple of possible insights from going in this direction: It may help explain why, if counter-arguments seem to take out a few nodes and links in a raging rant, it doesn’t matter much to the ranter. He/she just shifts to another node/link in his wide-ranging rhetoric. Whatever sticks, works. Better to spray than to take narrow aim.

For additional commentary, see Spinuzzi’s reply at his blog, as well as our exchanges in the comments section of my October post here on implications of TIMN for political philosophy and ideology (which I have yet to finish).

* * *

Clay Spinuzzi has also posted a series of worthwhile book reviews at his blog. A review in November 2009 was about a favorite book of mine, Alvin Toffler’s The Third Wave. Spinuzzi noted the overlap with TIMN. So I remarked that:

It’s good to be reminded of Toffler’s inspiring early work. He’s partly the reason why, staring at the wall in my office in the late 1970s and wondering what I really should be doing, I decided I should work on implications of the information revolution. It took me another ten years to get moving, but I kept reading Toffler the whole way.

As for my TIMN efforts, along the way I found no academic literature on social evolution that anticipated the future rise of a network-based realm. But such anticipation was widespread in other literatures. TIMN coincides with ideas like Peter Drucker’s (1993) and Jeremy Rifkin’s (1995) that a third, “social” sector is emerging alongside the established public and private sectors. Futurist Alvin Toffler’s (1970, 1990) “waves” — a First Wave when hunter-gatherer societies gave way to agrarian societies, a Second Wave that led next to industrial societies, and now a Third Wave of information-based societies — fit like transitional phases in the TIMN progression. Similarly, Japanese futurist Shumpei Kumon’s (1992) analysis posits that modern society has evolved from first creating a state and then a market system, to now creating a system of network organizations. In addition, some complexity theorists, like Yaneer Bar-yam (2000), offered interesting studies on the historical evolution of hierarchies, the prospects for networks, and the emergence of a current transitional phase of organizational hybrids.

So, yes, I’m an admirer of Toffler and pleased that his work can be fit into my own. Yet, as I recall, he hardly if ever used the term “network” in his writings about waves? He preferred “adhocracy” as I recall.

Later, in a January 2010, Spinuzzi posted about books he would review next, including two others by Alvin Toffler and his wife Heidi. So I added, with another take on the tippie movement, that:

Your series on the Tofflers' writings keeps reminding me how much of their work I liked. One point they made, as you note, was that the growing divide in America was not between Left and Right, but between Second and Third Wavers. Perhaps this applies to the "tippies" (tea-party, town-hall, etc. folks).

* * *

Meanwhile, Joseph Fouche’s blog The Committee of Public Safety offered an insightful post titled “Scope and the Tribal Mind” in December 2009 that ranged across all the TIMN forms. In his essay-like analysis — drawing on ideas from Friedrich von Hayek, Jared Diamond, and Nassim Nicholas Taleb — Fouche observes, to my delight, that: “Many of the contortions produced in modern life in the West [are] caused when one TIMN form is imposed upon another. Marxism produced a massive imposition of the Institution on Market and Tribe (and nascent Networks). Neo-liberalism compounded this imposition by extending the reach of the Market back into the Institution and Tribe. The result has been a compounded weakening of both Institutions and Markets, leading to the rise of a revaunchist Tribalism of the most negative sort. . . . Defining the proper scope of each TIMN form is becoming ever more necessary.”

My observation — only the final part is excerpted here — was as follows:

Good job, throughout your post, of considering the interactions among the TIMN forms, and the needs to separate and balance them so that they reinforce each other in positive ways. To add a couple points, I’d note that professionalization is/was supposed to reduce the role of tribes inside institutions. Markets may seem less prone to tribalism than institutions; but markets do turn tribal when corporations push for brand identity and people fall for consumer fads.

I laud your conclusions that “Many of the contortions produced in modern life in the West is caused when one TIMN form is imposed upon another. . . It may be that stricter demarcations should be drawn between the different TIMN forms. . . Defining the proper scope of each TIMN form is becoming ever more necessary.” I keep wondering how best to clarify this myself, though I’ve tried a bit -- and will continue trying -- in some postings at my own experiment with blogging.

Fouche’s points about tribalism pertain to comments above regarding the tippie movement and next about the market form.

[UPDATE — February 27, 2009: In a new blogpost, titled “Death by tactics,” Fouche warns today, with reference to TIMN, about tame and wicked social problems leading to “Institutional collapse, often accompanied by decreasing exposure and even wholesale withdrawal from Markets and Networks. Complex Institutions collapse into simpler Institutions and even Tribes. The wait is then on for a political formula that will produce a new Institution that can successfully meet the current combination of internal and external demand.”]

* * *

I’ve yet to write much about the market form from a TIMN perspective. But my sense is that its application has deteriorated in America in part because of excessive penetration by and fusion with deleterious, self-aggrandizing tribal forces — e.g., crony capitalists, compromised politicians, hyperlibertarians. And I blurted as much at Mark Safranski’s ZenPundit blog — another favorite — when it posted an enthusiastic guest review in November 2009 of Howard Bloom’s new book The Genius of the Beast: A Radical Revision of Capitalism:

. . . Bloom’s take on capitalism seems quite millenarian, in keeping with the original nature of the concept of progress.

But I’d like to ask whether Bloom distinguishes between the market system on the one hand, and its expression through capitalism on the other hand. My own view is that the market system rocks, but capitalism often sucks. This is especially the case where capitalism is rigged to favor particular elites and practices in ways that depart from the ideals (or at least best practices) of the market system.

That Bloom may not make such a distinction is indicated by his point that “Meanness is punished in the long run by the capitalist system.” I’d say that isn't right. Meanness gets punished not by the capitalist system per se, but by efforts to return it toward a market system.

Unfortunately, I was told, the book contains no such distinction. I continue to seek writings that do.

Incidentals (1st of 5): apropos definitions of “tribes” (and TIMN)

While I’ve been remiss at advancing TIMN and STA here for several months, I was more active than usual posting incidental comments elsewhere. This “incidental” post begins a belated set of five semi-organized catch-up posts — reprises — to log some of those comments left elsewhere, in case I want to re-use them for advancing STA or TIMN here in the future, and/or in case they can help others think better about TIMN and STA.

A few of the comments — like the first one below — reflect new reading or other research on my part. Most just reiterate points I’ve made before, mainly in other posts here, but sometimes a new angle is added.

* * *

I remain a fan of Steve Pressfield’s blog “It’s the Tribes, Stupid!”, and of Jim Gant’s paper posted there on “One Tribe at a Time.” Pressfield’s blog and Gant’s paper comprise a singularly significant effort to urge attention to the enduring, strategic significance of the tribal form of organization — in their case, regarding the conflict in Afghanistan. I’m pleased and proud that my past writings have assisted their efforts.

Gant’s paper (not to mention Pressfield’s blog) has been controversial. It advocates a bottom-up, pro-tribal strategy in Afghanistan, whereas many mainstream analysts prefer a top-down or a middle-out strategy, or else a different kind of bottom-up strategy. A large part of the controversy has revolved around competing views about the definition and significance of “tribes” in the region.

Renown for Gant’s vision has spread through write-ups in the New York Times and Washington Post. Pros and cons have been debated in various posts and comments at the Small Wars Journal (SWJ) blog, as well as in scattered posts at other blogs, e.g., Combined Arms Center, Free Range International, Captains Journal, Blackfive, and Al Sahwa. Relentless criticisms have arisen at such blogs as Registan.net, Ghosts of Alexander, and The Security Crank. Gant has fielded effective, thoughtful replies to many issues in comments he has fielded in posts at Pressfield’s blog as well as at the Small Wars Journal blog.

Interesting as all this is from a TIMN perspective, I have kept my distance. However, a Small Wars Journal post praising Gant’s paper prompted a critic to recommend an interesting counterpoint paper — “My Cousin’s Enemy Is My Friend: A Study of Pashtun Tribes” — issued by an Army-related research center in the Human Terrain System (HTS) at Fort Leavenworth. That and other matters eventually led me to leave the following TIMN-related points in a December 2009 comment in the SWJ post noted above:

By now, I’ve read both Major Gant’s paper and the Leavenworth/HTS paper noted above. As one who has tried to learn a lot about tribal forms of organization, ancient and modern, I think Gant’s paper is on the right track, aiming in the right direction.

The HTS paper makes useful points too. But do they truly contradict or counter Gant’s?

The HTS paper finds that “‘tribal engagement’ should not be pursued in Afghanistan like it was in Iraq, mainly because tribes in Afghanistan are quite different from those in Iraq.” That’s surely true, but to my knowledge no one (Gant included) is perceiving or calling for an exact replication.

The HTS paper also finds that “tribe” is an inadequate concept for analyzing Afghanistan, and that terms that emphasize what’s “local” would be better. This may be true to an extent in some areas. But exclusion of the term “tribe” and its complete replacement by “local” is entirely inadvisable.

The seeming disparity between the two papers derives partly from the fact that the HTS paper uses a narrower definition of “tribe” than does Gant’s. In the HTS paper, the term refers to a group of kinfolk who espouse a shared identity, have a chief, act as a unified group, and have informal but reliable modes of governance, as in Iraq. As the HTS authors point out, much of this does not apply in Afghanistan. But that shouldn’t be the key point.

There are many tribal areas around the world, including in Afghanistan, that do not exhibit such tight, structured solidarity. Yet, they are still rife with tribal dynamics. Kinship bonds, codes of honor, ancient narratives, ties to the land, respect for elders, and collective longings and identities still matter to a significant degree. And people caught up in such dynamics often shift their ties flexibly and pragmatically, alternating between fusion and fission. This may mean that, compared to Iraq, Afghanistan is loosely, qualifiedly tribal -- but it’s still rife with tribal kinds of patterns and dynamics. The HTS paper repeatedly substantiates this, even as it denies that Afghanistan reflects an idealized tribalism.

The HTS paper identifies alternative terms that it deems more appropriate than “tribe”: e.g., “qawm” (an Afghan term), “faction,” “solidarity group,” and “patronage network.” Yet, these are still tribe-like concepts. And the discussion about these alternatives still shows that large parts of Afghanistan remain fraught with classic tribal dynamics, albeit of a rather fractured, tempestuous sort that may not be unusual in high-conflict zones.

Gant may have been fortunate as to the specific tribe and chief that he got to work with. But even so, his paper is keenly attuned to the nature of tribal patterns and dynamics, in terms of both theory and practice.

With this in mind, I remain convinced that selectively, sensibly working with and through “tribes” should be made into a strength of U.S. strategy there. Seeking to repair and restore positive tribal patterns should be helpful.

(As an aside, I note, apropos the two sentences on p. 5 relating to fns. 3 and 4 of the HTS paper, that the authors misread my 2007 Rand paper on tribes. It does observe that tribes precede states in the long sweep of social evolution, but I never claim that tribes per se are primitive. The authors also appear to prefer a questionable view that tribes arise historically often only after states intrude into a region. Thus the HTS report seems to reflect a bias in current anthropology to disavow tribes as a general concept.)

* * *

While wondering about such matters earlier in November 2009, I spotted a post at an unfamiliar blog, Strategic Social, that aspired to define a “tribe” as “any group of people united by their recognition of organizational hierarchy within their group, who share a cultural identity and make up a unique speech community.” At least this blog was trying to raise attention to the significance of tribes in various areas of society. But this definition of the concept seemed misguided, and I blurted as much:

As one who’s interested in concepts about tribes, occasionally scouts the Net to see what others are saying, and finds myself here for a change, I’d like to offer a quick passing comment:

I like the fact you recognize that tribes are a modern as well as ancient form of organization. But in my view, it’s not wise to start a definition of tribes with a reference to organizational hierarchy. That’s not what’s most important about tribes. Tribes may or may not have much hierarchy; hierarchical institutions are a later form to arise from social evolution. I’d suggest moving the other parts of your definition up front. I’d also suggest broadening the “speech” part, maybe make it “symbolic” instead.

After this led to a defensive rejoinder, indicating my comment would have little to no effect, I tried to elaborate:

It often makes a difference what is placed up front in a definition, especially when there is no statement about the weights of different components. But even if you fix that, I’d still propose that it’s inadvisable to define tribes in a way that leads the eye first to hierarchy. The consideration you gave to another pattern — consensus — may apply better to the nature of classic tribes.

According to your definition, with its lead-off emphasis on “organizational hierarchy,” wouldn’t the Catholic Church or a Special Forces unit qualify as a “tribe”? Do you mean for that to be the case? Also, one of your examples of a tribe with a hierarchy — Survival International — isn’t really a tribe; it’s an NGO that represents tribes, not a tribe itself. Its own web pages offer a definition of “tribes” that says nothing about requiring a hierarchy. I would suggest opting for a definition that can identify the tribal qualities that may persist in such organizations . . . but that does not allow for turning all such organizations into examples of tribes.

The “power structure” of a tribe resides less in a hierarchy it may have than in the codes of honor and other codes of conduct that are embedded in the tribe. A tribe’s people are not primarily “united by their recognition of organizational hierarchy” but rather by their sense of identity, kinship and solidarity (as in the second, far-more-essential part of your definition). Furthermore, your definition of hierarchy posits “a decision making apparatus that creates rules members must adhere to in order to remain in good standing with their tribe.” But that’s more like a definition of an administrative, judicial, or bureaucratic hierarchy than a tribal hierarchy. For everyday matters, classic tribes have a cultural apparatus (the best term?) that sets codes and rules, more than a political decision-making apparatus. If issues arise that require a tribal council, then some hierarchy may well come into play — but so do norms for consensus.

Apropos this, you note that you “would be interested in any examples you or anyone else had of people organizing independent of leadership/hierarchy.” I presume you mean in reference to tribes. But is that really a key question? Instances of leadership or hierarchy normally crop up sometime somewhere in most all forms of organization, tribes included. and it’s conventional for modern analysts and strategists to go looking for leaders and hierarchies in all organizations. But according to the literatures I’ve scoured, classic tribes may not even have full-time chiefs, just the episodic “big man” depending on the matter at hand. And chiefs, when present, may not wield much hierarchical power. Where tribal chiefs do exist, it’s crucial to recognize them (as in conflict zones in Iraq and Afghanistan); but it’s also crucial to recognize what lies behind them (e.g., Pashtunwali codes). Beyond that, the more a hierarchical chiefdom is present and enforced atop a tribe, the more that society lies somewhere between being a tribe and becoming a state or element of a state.

I’m reminded of a documentary about a bad-ass low-life motorcycle gang in a city back East that was organized as a club and had an elected president who ran meetings and organized club activities. True to classic tribal dynamics persisting into the modern era, the president noted that he really didn’t run anything and couldn’t enforce anything on his own; anybody could do pretty much as he or she pleased, as long as they remained true to the club. So much for the importance of organizational hierarchy; it’s there, but not in the way or to the degree your definition presently poses. Tribes tend to be anti-hierarchical as much as, if not more than, pro-hierarchical. Indeed, your definition may fit a warlord and his clan better than a classic tribe.

I hope this helps clarify aspects of the tribal form for other possible readers.

- - - - -

In this post and others in this series, I have corrected capitalization and other orthographic errors that exist in my comments as originally posted elsewhere. Also, in many instances I abridge or excerpt only part of my comment.

TIMN: some implications for thinking about political philosophy and ideology, cont. (2nd of 3 parts)

Two weeks ago, I posted a foreword and Part I on TIMN’s implications for political philosophy and ideology. Since then, I’ve amended Part I a bit, by editing a few words, adding a new paragraph to end the subsection on democracy, and another paragraph after the material about anarchism and libertarianism. If interested, you may click here to go there, or just scroll down to the October 3, 2009, post at the blog.


Now, here is Part II:

* * *

Part II. Looking around: American liberalism and conservativism from a TIMN perspective

Can TIMN help assess what seems to be ideologically amiss with liberalism and conservatism in the United States? Have both moved too far from being soundly triformist? Is one of them turning too tribalist (even monoformist) for its own and the country’s good? And what about a current policy issue — healthcare — that has liberals and conservatives all riled up, at odds over whether to go for a public (+I) or private (+M) option? Does TIMN imply developing the so-far least favored (+N?) option: networked non-profit cooperatives?

When I posed those questions after the end of Part I as an indication of what this Part II would be about, I wasn’t fully aware of how little I knew about liberalism and conservativism. Now that I’ve heard and read a bit more, I see that each involves so many varieties, nuances, and sensitivities, and so much unsettled history, that the gloss I provide here is barely that — a gloss.

Yet, I’m not trying to say anything new about either philosophy/ideology. I’m just trying to show, via all parts of this three-part post, that TIMN may be useful for analyzing political philosophies and ideologies — past, present, and future. I’m also trying to find — and to let others know — where TIMN directs the analytical eye, what it says to focus on. And I’m trying to do so without touting my own personal views.

What I think TIMN implies, and thus what this part is about, is the following:

• Liberalism and conservatism used to be sensibly triformist.
• They are no longer so — neither is the American system as a whole.
• Conservativism in particular has veered into tribalism.
• While the healthcare debate substantiates this, resolving it may also afford an opportunity to move in a new, more quadriformist direction.

Once in balance: Years ago, both liberalism and conservativism, despite their differences, used to be sensibly triformist, in fairly balanced ways.

The liberalism I’m familiar with, mostly associated with the Democratic Party, emphasized promoting government (+I) programs for lofty reasons that at times meant a large welfare state. But liberals also favored a good (+M) business climate, as well as health, education, welfare, and cultural (pro-T) programs that benefitted families and communities, especially the less-well-off ones.

By comparison, the conservativism I’m familiar with, mostly associated with the Republican Party, was primarily (+M) pro-business, mainly to benefit better-off people. At the same time, it called for small or limited (+I) government (but not for small corporations, another kind of +I entity), and few regulations. It also believed in family, culture, tradition, and patriotism — all fine (pro-T) values.

Neither philosophy/ideology was particularly imbued with religion. But both were loaded with values. While both were pro-democracy, liberals liked to talk mainly about justice, equality, and progress, conservatives about freedom, order, and prosperity. Liberalism seemed tilted toward promoting community and civil rights, conservativism toward individualism and states rights.

Those are gross characterizations. But hopefully they suffice to substantiate the following TIMN analysis: In America’s heyday as a triform (T+I+M) system, both liberalism and conservativism used to be thoroughly, sensibly triformist. Each had a distinctive emphasis — for Democratic liberals the +I form in government, for Republican conservatives the +M form in business — but each embraced all the forms. Moreover, each philosophy implied that the activities associated with each TIMN form should be kept in balance, and that their realms should be kept fairly separate. In addition, the politician-practitioners of both philosophies normally preferred bipartisanship over partisanship.

Thus, as triformist ideologies, both liberalism and conservativism used to be consistent with TIMN’s orientation to social evolution. TIMN does not — indeed, cannot and should not — imply which ism may be better. But TIMN would seem to imply that both were suitable for a liberal democratic system like America’s, since a broad spectrum of views, with plenty of civil to-and-fro, may well be desirable from an evolutionary standpoint. Neither was an extreme ideology that was maladaptive for America’s prospects for future progress.

Now out of balance: Today, both liberalism and conservativism — and the American system as a whole — look out of balance in TIMN terms. I’m not sure yet how best to do a TIMN analysis of the current state of these two ideologies, or of our system as a whole. But here are some tentative observations:

The former relative separation of the state and market realms — a good condition from a TIMN perspective — has given way to an increasing fusion and intermingling of government and business, and both isms seem to have become overly agreeable to that. Trends in campaign financing, corporate contributions, congressional lobbying, government contracting, and other manifestations of public-private coziness, along with an evident lack of regulatory supervision and oversight (esp. in financial matters), attest to this. At the same time — ironically, in light of this increased fusion — there is increased pressure to take sides politically in favor of either the public or the private sector, without much recognition anymore that both are essential and that their combination ought to be preserved in a balanced manner.

Thus the structural reality seems distorted toward +M more than ever, while the rhetorical reality is turning more tribal (pro-T) than ever, especially among conservatives. Both liberalism and conservativism have moved so far from being soundly triformist that both now look dysfunctional, in need of rethinking. But the nature of the latter ism distresses me more these days, so I focus my remarks on it.

Too much mean-spirited tribalism: Conservativism — not all of it, but a vast swath — has fallen under the spell of a fuming medley of libertarians, evangelicals, populists, independents, opportunists, and revanchists. It can still offer good points about favoring limited government, but many of its proponents sound increasingly anti-government, fraught with exaggerated fears of government control and expansion (and this is after a Republican administration wrought an enormous expansion in state surveillance and monitoring).

While conservativism’s stance on limited government thus looks somewhat out of balance, its economic and cultural dispositions look more so. Again, I’m still feeling my way on how best to do TIMN analysis, but it seems to me that conservativism has turned excessively libertarian in its approach to the market form. What’s happening to the tribal form seems of greater concern.

Many T-level aspects of American society are currently out of balance, if not out of whack. Most “culture war” issues — e.g., family values, abortion, immigration, guns, same-sex marriage, identity politics, affirmative action, school prayer, indeed perhaps everything that makes up the “culture war” — pertains to the tribal form. Add to this other kinds of news about urban and ethnic gang conflicts, teenage angst, broken families, religious cults run as charismatic chiefdoms, fixations on celebrities, cronyism in government and business, and the shrinking of the middle class; and it is easy to see that tribal (T-level) issues are not only rife in American society, but also that they have risen in prominence relative to issues that pertain more to the other TIMN forms, such as poverty.

Conservatives have tried to create and capitalize on “culture war” issues, far more than liberals. As a result, conservativism may be turning too tribalist for its own and the country’s good. This gets summed up, in my experience, by a remark I heard several years ago, when a talk-radio host yearned to “drive another nail into the coffin of liberalism.” What the hell? He seeks the death of a major American ism? He wants to bury a large part of the American political spectrum? Criticism is okay; so is having fun with hyperbole. But this struck me as an insensible plunge into a demonic kind of tribalism. And if America ever went that far to the right, even this leader would surely be among those whose pro-freedom, pro-individual ideals got demolished next. America cannot be truly American without having a broad political spectrum.

If I seem to pick excessively on conservativism, it’s because it offers the better examples of unbalanced tribalism. Curiously, many conservatives take pride in the success of their radio and television talk shows, and chide liberals for not being as good at this. Conservatives claim it’s because their views resonate better with mainstream American values. TIMN suggests a different analysis: It has little to do with the appeal of values; it’s because liberals are evidently not as adept at tribalizing, nor as intent on it.

And here’s another imbalance that TIMN leads me to detect and wonder about: Many policies that conservatives (and liberals?) would like to see enacted in connection with the “cuture war” — say regarding marriage, or immigration, or stem-cell research — mean imposing new government regulations on the tribal form. Yet, many conservatives, especially libertarian conservatives, remain opposed to regulations over the market form, even over a key culprit in the financial crisis: derivatives. If TIMN implies system dynamics as I’ve argued previously, then it probably implies that the regulatory interfaces between forms should be roughly equivalent, at least in degree. If so, then isn’t something amiss in calling for radical deregulation regarding one form, but revanchist reregulation regarding another? In the final analysis, it may well be that the focus should be less on too-much versus too-little, and more on what are the right and wrong kinds of regulation.

Healthcare as a +N challenge: Why is so much turmoil occurring in the United States? One key reason — I continue to believe, as I wrote years ago (2007, p. 5; earlier, 2005, p. 92)— is that:

“The United States, along with countries in Western Europe and Scandinavia, long ago developed triform T+I+M societies and are now on the cutting edge for creating quadriform T+I+M+N societies. This evolutionary shift explains some of the turbulence America has been experiencing at home and abroad.”

That still sounds right to me, and I’d harp on it even more today: China’s recent rise owes to its successes in finally adopting the market (+M) form. In contrast, America’s disarray, if not decline, owes to its troubles adapting to the rise of the network (+I) form. To use a term coined by my former co-author colleague John Arquilla in another context, the United States and its chief competitor, China, are in an “organizational race” — but each of a different kind. And we Americans better get cracking, at home as well as abroad.

One crucial proving ground at home may well be healthcare. The current policy debate has liberals and conservatives riled up, at odds over whether to go for public (+I) or private (+M) options. But each side’s proponents seem stuck in their aging ideological frames, while the populist mobilizations at town-hall and so-called tea-party gatherings confirm that conservative rightists are turning more virulently tribal (T-bound) than ever.

Can TIMN offer any guidance regarding our healthcare options? I think it can, though my thoughts are tentative. First, I think TIMN means that both public (+I) and private (+M) options are needed. But I can’t prove this. I can see why liberals favor a public option, conservatives a private option. I can see that the healthcare and insurance markets may need reforms in order to fit better with TIMN. I can see that every conservative aspersion against the idea of a public option — e.g., government “death panels” — could be flipped around and cast back against industry. And I can say that it would be more American to have all kinds of options available — multiple choices — partly to help protect the less-advantaged. But I can’t be entirely sure, not even by looking at experiences in other triform liberal democracies, that TIMN means we definitely should have both public- and private-sector options, as they are normally conceived.

But I am sure about this: TIMN implies that a new (+N) sector is emerging — what Peter Drucker called the “social sector” and which I have written about in prior postings. I continue to sense that healthcare is one of the issues that will (and should) migrate into this nascent sector. If so, then it may be very important to include the so-far least-favored option: networked non-profit cooperatives. Despite current objections that such organizations have rarely succeeded in the past, and that they require larger memberships and resource pools than presently seem likely to arise, they may well turn out to be cutting-edge for healthcare, far into the future.

My sense of TIMN is that the tribal form rotates around maximizing pride; the institutional form, around maximizing power; and the market form, around maximizing profits. I’m still uncertain about the network form, but my latest notion is that it favors maximizing “stewardship” — a term I spotted while browsing a conservative blog, but that should suit liberal sensibilities as well. Isn’t healthcare about stewardship more than power or profit? If so, seeking a +N option makes sense, and nurturing networked nonprofit cooperatives may be a good way to do so.

Neither conservativism nor liberalism has shown how to incorporate the +N form. Yet, neither will be able to endure unless its exponents figure this out, while also rebalancing their dispositions toward the other TIMN forms. More likely, however, is that both these classic isms will by superseded by new ideologies that are more attuned to the new organizational dynamics of the information age.

- - - - -

Source note: Liberalism and conservativism are not my bag; nor is healthcare. So, to help prepare this post, I upped my attention level and acknowledge reading or listening to interesting materials from the following: David Brooks, John Derbyshire, David Frum, Neil Gabler, Hugh Hewitt, Steven Hayward, Bill Moyers, Sam Tanenhaus, and newscasters and their interviewees at Fox News, MSNBC, PBS, and NPR. I also benefitted from blog postings and related comments at Contrary Brin, Front Porch Republic, Spinuzzi, and ZenPundit, as well as from news articles and op-eds in the Los Angeles Times, New York Times, and Washington Post.

Caveat: I am likely, once again, to edit this text after it has been posted.

[UPDATE — MARCH 26, 2014:  For a belated update on the status and content of Part 3, which I never finished, see this 2014 post here.] 

Baseball trilogy (3rd of 3): religion — “God invented baseball”

[UPDATE — March 12, 2013: In keeping with this post’s themes, the stimulating new book by John Sexton, Thomas Oliphant, and Peter J. Schwartz, Baseball as a Road to God: Seeing Beyond the Game (2013) upholds that “Baseball evokes in the life of its faithful features we associate with the spiritual life: faith and doubt, conversion, blessings and curses, miracles, and so on. For some, baseball really is a road to God.”]

[UPDATE — July 24, 2010:  For a marvelous and marveling read, see David B. Hart, “A Perfect Game: The Metaphysical Meaning of Baseball,” First Things, Aug/Sept 2010.  It considers baseball a game of “immense spiritual horizons” and “oddly desolate beauty” whose “philosophical grammar truly is Platonist” and whose “possibilities of religious interpretation are numberless.”]

[UPDATE — June 1, 2010:  See the compilation of quotations in the article, "Baseball is religion without the mischief," National Catholic Reporter, Sept. 18, 1998.  Also see the book by Gary Graf, And God Said "Play Ball!": Amusing and Thought-Provoking Parallels Between the Bible and Baseball (2006).]

[UPDATE — March 6, 2010: Uh-oh, there's an interesting article in Christianity Today by Mark Galli supposing that "God created football." Fortunately, I see nothing in it to surpass the idea that "God created baseball."]


Suddenly it’s October, the playoffs are underway, and my favorite teams are still in the fray. Now seems like a good moment to complete my trilogy of blog posts on baseball. The first was about tribalism, the second about strategy. Here is the third, on the most sensitive matter of all: religion.

* * *

A few years ago, as I was turning into a baseball fan, a friend informed me that “God invented baseball.” Aha! I had already sensed that baseball was not just another mundane sport. But I hadn’t dared to look that deeply into its soul.

For a while I thought my friend was the source of this revelation. But no, it traces back to Michael Olesker, writing in the Baltimore Sun in 1983: “There are days when you know that God invented baseball to give us all a sense of eternity . . .” And the insight has been handed down ever since, but without much clarification.

So, I’ve been wondering, what are the ways in which the nature of baseball may reflect the nature of God? Here’s what I’ve discerned so far:

First and foremost, baseball does indeed symbolize eternity — in both time and space. Theoretically, a game could go on forever; it is not ruled by a clock. The outfield extends forever as well. Sure, there’s usually a fence or a wall out there, but its location is man-made. A soaring ball is never out of bounds; it points to the heavens.

Moreover, baseball stadiums constitute houses of worship — cathedrals of sport. Their fields are not the simple rectangles or ovals of other sports, but inspirational diamonds. They have a center of worship: the pitcher’s mound. They have a central axis, almost like a nave: the path the ball travels from the pitcher’s mound to home plate. Beyond that, they have inner and outer zones, and invite the congregation to peer out into eternity. In baseball, a stadium’s majesty stems from its asymmetry and open-endedness. Other sports have stadiums and arenas that are numbingly symmetrical and enclosing.

There is even a “miracle” built into the layout, as someone stated in the Ken Burns series on baseball. It’s the 90-foot distance from home plate to first base. A couple more feet in either direction, and the game would be very different, far less balanced between offense and defense. And like a true miracle, it has stood the test of time, having everlasting value despite the game’s physical and technological advances.

Then, notice that once a game begins, the players must go one by one. They are virtually born (at home plate), and if all goes well, each gets to visit a holy trinity (first, second, and third base), be saved (by being called “safe”), and finally be reborn (by returning to home plate). Along the way, they must stay on the paths of righteousness (the base paths), lest they stray outside and violate the law.

Thus, baseball is a spiritual as well as physical endeavor, for individuals as well as teams. But while the battle often goes to the stronger, the outcome is never certain. Sometimes, something so impossible occurs — like fumbling an easy catch — that it seems an “act of God” has entered into a game.

Isn’t that all quite theological? In God's image? Showing the Way? Even many of the Ten Commandments seem to be in effect:

• Consider the ones about having no other god, worshipping no false idols. In baseball, only the game itself is worshipped. If a player indulges in a hubristic display of narcissistic egoism, as so often seen in man-made sports, he is cast off the field, perhaps out of the garden. Some plays are even meant as sacrifices for the team, setting aside the self for the sake of a higher good.
• Recall the Commandment to observe the Sabbath as a day of rest? Well, baseball features a seventh-inning stretch, when people may reverently sing “God bless America.” A pretty clear parallel.
• Honor thy father and thy mother? Baseball is renowned among sports for being handed down through the generations — especially for sons recalling their fathers taking them to ballgames.
• Thou shalt not murder? Baseball’s culture is averse to winners running up disrespectful “killer scores” — they’re immoral in baseball.
• Thou shalt not steal? Okay, base stealing does occur, to great delight and dismay. But it occurs openly, in plain view, subject to the rules, and does not involve bearing false witness.

To enforce all this, there is a god-like agent on the field: the umpire. But while all must respect and obey him, no one worships him; he is no false idol. And paradoxically, his judgment may be the greatest source of human error on the field — like when he gets a call wrong. Is this not evidence that God works in mysterious ways?

Finally, notice that baseball’s origins remain shrouded in mystery. No longer is it believed that baseball was invented by Abner Doubleday, as a spin-off from English cricket or rounders. Recent evidence points in other directions. But it all remains so obscure and indeterminate that surely a Higher Power is involved? How else to explain that a sport so simple yet profound has come to grace our American land?

For all these reasons, I choose to accept that God invented baseball and bequeathed it to us. And in doing so, I must hope that I have not taken God’s name in vain. Too many people from too many religions are already doing that these days over other matters. Wouldn’t the world be a better place if we all just studied baseball instead?

* * * * *

Recommended reading: Bradd Shore, Culture in Mind: Cognition, Culture, and the Problem of Meaning (Oxford University Press, 1996) — esp. Ch. 3, titled “Mind Games: Cognitive Baseball,” and Ch. 4, titled “Playing with Rules: Sport at the Borderlands of Time and Space” — for its discussion of space, time, and action orientations in connection with baseball, in one of the few instances where an anthropologist speaks to all three of my “STA” interests.

Acknowledgements: Delightful appreciation to the following for helpful comments on an earlier draft: Bob Bridges, Matt Ronfeldt, and Brian Wilcox. I’m especially grateful to Brian for telling me about the saying in the first place.

Notice: I’m likely to continue editing this piece after it is posted here. I’ll indicate where, if I enter any major changes or updates.

TIMN: some implications for thinking about political philosophy and ideology (1st of 3 parts)

[UPDATE — October 10, 2009: I've amended Part I a bit, by editing a few words, adding a new paragraph to end the subsection on democracy, and another new paragraph after the material about anarchism and libertarianism.]


TIMN implies that it may be a good idea for Americans to start becoming quadriformists, perhaps progressive ecumenical neo-limitarian quadriformists, who are looking ahead to the age of networks. Better that than falling for today’s monoformist and biformist blowhards who rant against government and for the market, while trying to tribalize people so that they turn more divisively partisan than ever.

But if those are to become punch-lines of this post, there are other points that should be made first — above all, this one: The key isms and ocracies that are scattered across the history of political evolution all amount to expressions of one or more of the TIMN forms. And that will be the case far into the future as well. Figure out TIMN and you can figure out the past, present, and future of political philosophy and ideology.

* * * * *

Part I. Looking back: TIMN’s applicability across political systems and ideologies

In my understanding, TIMN is not an ideological framework. It may contain some centrist precepts; but it is not inherently leftist or rightist, at least not in today’s terms. Yet, TIMN can be used to analyze — to dissect, categorize, even to pass judgement on — most (all?) major political philosophies and ideologies across the ages.

All political systems and ideologies fit somewhere in the TIMN framework. The shapes that societies have taken, such as monarchies, empires, and nation-states, and the isms and ocracies that leaders have created — e.g., feudalism, absolutism, nationalism, mercantilism, capitalism, fascism, and socialism, as well as theocracy, aristocracy, and democracy — can all be reduced to particular configurations of, approaches to, or variations on the bright and dark sides of the TIMN forms. They are the paradigmatic nuclear forms, not the isms or ocracies built around them.

Toward a TIMN analysis of capitalism: As examples of how TIMN illuminates key differences among history’s isms and ocracies, consider mercantilism and capitalism: Mercantilism means efforts by government (+I) authorities to control commercial (+M) actors. In contrast, capitalism means that the +I and +M realms operate apart, with the latter often outweighing the former. In TIMN, mercantilism arose centuries ago as a transitional phase in the evolution of biform (T+I) into triform (T+I+M) societies. In contrast, capitalism developed as an achievement of full-fledged triform systems that idealized free, fair, open economic exchanges and gave rise to liberal democracies with competitive political party systems.

TIMN also offers a way to distinguish among the positive and negative varieties of capitalism: A capitalism that conforms to proper (Smithian?) market principles — not to mention a capitalism that also yields a thriving middle class and reinforces democratic politics — is different from and more desirable than a capitalism distorted by tribal or hierarchical forces. Such distortions may occur where enterprises are fraught with (T-type) cronyism or suborned to (+I) statism, or where the market (+M) realm is rigged to favor monopolistic corporations and oligarchic elites, or to allow unbridled speculation, profiteering, and an excessive concentration of wealth.

This is why I sometimes say that TIMN is pro-market but not necessarily pro-capitalist; for capitalist practices may turn out to contradict the best of +M (not to mention T, I, or N) principles.

Toward a TIMN analysis of democracy: Democracy is often viewed as a marvelous modern achievement, along with capitalism. And that is indeed true for liberal democracy, which characterizes triform (T+I+M) societies as a result of the infusion of the market form and its principles into and alongside the hierarchical institutional form in the political realm.

But TIMN suggests thinking more broadly about the evolution of democracy, and leads to noting that this particular ocracy is not just a unique end-state of late modernity. Each of the four TIMN forms is associated with a different kind of democratic tendency:

In tribal (T) systems, moments of direct democracy appear in tribal councils, clan gatherings, and similar assemblies where anybody and everybody who is invited can speak up. However, once a decision is made, strict conformity is normally expected; minority rights and dissenting opinions lack legitimacy. Ancient Athenian assemblies, Pashtun jirgas, and old American town-hall meetings represent examples, to varying degrees.

In hierarchical institutional (I) systems, top-down command is the norm. Yet, many hierarchies accommodate limited, bottom-up inputs and quasi-democratic deliberations, for example by inviting open discussions in controlled settings, or allowing elections of pre-approved candidates to some tiers in a pyramid, within doctrinal confines. Medieval England’s Council of State and the Catholic Church’s College of Cardinals seem to reflect this (or do they reflect the old tribal-council dynamic too?). In modern eras, even Leninism claimed to allow a “democratic centralism” within a single-party state. Today, the idea of “consultative dictatorship” remains appealing in parts of world where elites continue to reject liberal democracy.

Triform societies where market (+M) principles have altered the nature of the (+I) state provide the archetypes of liberal democracy. As Charles Lindblom observed (1977, p. 116): “Not all market-oriented systems are democratic, but every democratic system is also a market-oriented system.” Hallmarks of the spread of +M principles into government include competitive political parties and elected legislatures. TIMN’s implication is not so much that liberal democracy per se makes a nation stronger; it’s that once a level of complexity is reached, a nation cannot turn stronger without turning liberal-democratic. China, as a newly triform system that today is more a consultative dictatorship than a democracy, will eventually become a major test of this proposition.

According to TIMN, the rise of the network (+I) form will lead to new kinds of democracy (not to mention autocracy). And they’ll be radically different from the legislature-centric designs that define today’s liberal democracies. Indeed, lots of speculation has already occured about what such new, more participatory democracies may look like in the future. I may elaborate on that in section III of this post. But for the moment, I note it only to keep making the point, on TIMN’s behalf, that democracy has threads in all the forms.

Thus, democracy is not solely an expression of just one modern configuration of TIMN. All the forms can be applied in more democratic, or more autocratic, ways. And whether a society turns more democratic, or less, depends on what’s happening with all the forms and their potentials in that society. This may have cautionary implications for foreign-policy strategists who think other countries can and should be pressured to become liberal democracies (but, to maintain this post’s focus on philosophy and ideology, I must leave the strategy implications of TIMN for a possible future post).

Toward a TIMN analysis of extreme ideologies: As further examples, note that both the great modern totalitarianisms — communism and fascism — emphasized hierarchy and imposed powerful, centralized (+I) states, but were otherwise distinctive. Soviet communism sought to subdue local ethnic (T) sentiments in favor of internationalism, and to eliminate private (+M) businesses. In contrast, European fascism stoked ethno-nationalism (T) and fostered strong but subordinate (+M) capitalist enterprises. That’s why fascism represents a more modern (nearly +M) system than communism, and why it is an error to conflate communism and fascism.

More to the point, extreme ideologies normally exalt one TIMN form above the others; they do not seek balanced combinations. Consider anarchism, for example: Anarchists may crave individual freedom and extol direct action against tyranny, but they do not want a world rived by endless chaos. Instead, classic anarchism contains a yearning for tribe-like ways of life, free of statist hierarchies and capitalist markets. Anarchists espouse respect for individualism and community, for voluntary association and mutual aid. They believe that kin-like sentiments suffice to motivate self-organization. They favor consensus decision-making, communal sharing, and cooperative work. They desire a primitive kind of democracy: anti-authoritarian and anti-capitalist, free of bosses and based on local councils. This intent to live simply and autonomously, in harmony with nature, harks back to hunter-gatherer and agrarian models, early in the TIMN progression. Thus, in many respects, anarchism is essentially a monoform neo-tribal (T-type) ideology.

In comparison, libertarianism exalts free-market, mini-government principles for the sake of personal liberty to a degree that makes it into a nearly monoform ideology too, but of a decidedly +M orientation. Thus, as often noted, left-wing anarchism and right-wing libertarianism have much in common, but they each idealize a different TIMN form, while disdaining the same (+I) form.

This is not to say that anarchism or libertarianism is strictly monoformist. The adherents of each have plenty to say, pro and con, about all the TIMN forms, and about how society is being served or corrupted by beliefs and practices associated with each form. But dedicated anarchists and libertarians process their views mainly through their preferred form — for anarchists the T form, for libertarians the M form — and inevitably return to emphasizing it in philosophical/ideological ways that, overall, remain nearly monoformist. At least that’s what I keep seeing and hearing.

Recap and segue: These examples show that TIMN, spare as it is, provides a way to parse — to deconstruct and compare, even to praise or criticize — the isms and ocracies that have played prominent roles in political and evolutionary theory. That’s my limited objective for this part of this post. I hope I’ve met it, even though there are other significant isms and ocracies that I haven’t even mentioned so far, such as clientelism, corporatism, pluralism, plutocracy, and meritocracy — and oh yes, liberalism and conservatism. But I’m sure that they too can be subjected to TIMN analysis.

* * * * *

TO BE CONTINUED, AS FOLLOWS:

Part II. Looking around: Can TIMN help assess what seems to be ideologically amiss with liberalism and conservatism in the United States? Have both moved too far from being soundly triformist? Is one of them turning too tribalist (even monoformist) for its own and the country’s good? And what about a current policy issue — healthcare — that has liberals and conservatives all riled up, at odds over whether to go for a public (+I) or private (+M) option? Does TIMN imply developing the so-far least favored (+N?) option: networked non-profit cooperatives? I’m still working on this part, and I’ll post a separate announcement when it’s ready to be inserted here. Maybe next week.

Part III. Looking ahead: What’s next – way out there? Commonism? Neo-limitarianism? Cyberocracy? Any hope for quadriformism? I’m still working on this part too, though some of it was drafted years ago. I’ll post a separate announcement when it’s available here.

Onward.

[UPDATE — MARCH 26, 2014:  For a belated update on the status and content of Part III, which I never finished, see this 2014 post here.] 

Explaining social evolution: standard cause-and-effect vs. TIMN’s system dynamics

TIMN is supposed to become a theoretical framework, even a full theory, about social evolution. Such theorizing calls for a determination of causes and effects. This post addresses that, by offering pieces of what may eventually amount to a chapter.

The purpose of this post is to show that thinking in TIMN terms leads to an interesting set of propositions about system dynamics that go beyond standard cause-effect analysis. Some of the dynamics discussed here were mentioned in an earlier post about TIMN.

Standard approach to cause and effect

Social evolution depends on a flow of causes and effects. The standard way to theorize about them is to identify independent variables and assess what happens to dependent variables.

While scholarly debates have swirled around efforts to explain every phase of social evolution, the most vigorous debates I have encountered so far concern the transition from tribes, to chiefdoms, to states. The major explanatory factors (independent variables) that scholars repeatedly posit for this transition are increases in population, in economic production, in local and long-distance trade, in warfare and conquest, and in social stratification. Increases in such factors evidently generate needs as well as opportunities for increases in central control and coordination and for the emergence of specialized administrative and bureaucratic hierarchies — i.e., for a growth of the traits (dependent variables) that characterize the rise of the +I form, embodied in the state.

Of these causal factors, the one that has received the most agreement is population growth (Harris, 1977; Johnson and Earle, 1987; Sanderson, 1999; Carneiro, 2003). It, evidently more than any other factor, impels societies to intensify their capacities for economic production as well as for warfare and conquest. As Robert Carneiro (2003, p. 206) notes,

In the absence of concentrations of population, few if any chiefdoms or states ever arose. In its presence, many sprang up, responding to the demands that the increasing pressures of human numbers began exerting on existing political structures.

But are such factors primarily causes, or consequences? For example, consider an enduring debate about whether the growth of social stratification caused the rise of a hierarchical coordinating center, first as the chiefdom, later as the state. A view influenced by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (notably Fried, 1967) claims that the state arose in order to expand and defend inegalitarian stratification. An opposing view (notably Service, 1971) observes that little stratification (or private ownership) preceded the rise of the state, and that the state’s primary aim was simply to defend its rise as an autonomous institution. In this view, inequality and stratification were a consequence of the state’s rise, not a cause.

However — and of course — for many theorists, truth resides on both sides of the argument:

[T]he development of the state involved the specialization of a governing bureaucracy, as argued by Service, and the emergence of stratification based on access to basic resources, as argued by Fried. The two factors are not mutually exclusive; rather, they must be considered together to adequately explain the origin of the state. (Haas, 1982, p. 151, italics in orig.)

Political stage and social stratification are clearly very strongly correlated with each other, almost inextricably intertwined. It is difficult to say which is the dependent variable and which the independent variable. It may be best to conclude that these variables are codeterminants — they ratchet each other up in the evolutionary process. (Sanderson, 2001, p. 314)

Indeed, a ratcheting, spiraling coevolution of cause and effect makes the most sense — and not only for this early stage of social evolution. In reviewing a range of demographic, economic, military and other causal factors and the debates about them, Robert Carneiro (2003) makes the deep point that cause and effect may spiral together over time across all stages of social evolution. Steven Leblanc (2003) reiterates the point in neat style, based on his work on the interplay among tool making, big-game hunting, and warfare in primitive eras. Here’s what they say:

Causation may be said to be spiral in the sense that factors may react in such a way that something that may be a cause at one stage of the process may in turn become an effect at a later stage. And then this effect may once more play a causal role in a later stage, and so on. (Carneiro, 2003, p. 190, italics in orig.)

The idea of coevolution revolves around the concept that as one trait evolves, it causes a different one to evolve as well, and as this second trait evolves, it causes the first to evolve more: A encourages B, and B encourages A in a sort of spiral or loop. (Leblanc, 2003, p. 79)

I believe that this is the best way to theorize about cause and effect in the standard manner. Even so, this remains a difficult area of analysis, and debates continue to simmer among anthropologists and other theorists about what factors cause what early stages of social evolution. Similar debates exist regarding the causes and consequences of the later rise of the market and network forms — with technology advances playing ever larger roles as explanatory factors for modernization. (For excellent overviews, see various writings by Stephen K. Sanderson (1990, 1999, 2001, 2007), who adds his own theoretical thrust in terms of what he calls synthetic materialism.)

However, while identifying the material and other causes of particular transitions and stages of social evolution is a major concern of many scholars — and a fascinating one at that — I doubt much is to be gained for the formulation of the TIMN framework at this point by dwelling on specific causal factors. Standard cause-effect analysis can be fit into TIMN, and may assist with explaining the progressions from monoform through quadriform societies. Moreover, I need to be aware — and show that I am aware — of the main theorizing in this vein. But my sense is that TIMN depends mainly on system dynamics, far more than on standard cause-effect relationships.

System dynamics: a TIMN rethinking of causes and effects

By “system dynamics” — I don’t know what else to call them (and I’m open to suggestions) — I refer to patterned interactions among the TIMN forms that apply no matter which TIMN form is rising or settling, expanding or receding, influencing or being influenced. They reflect the ratcheting, spiraling coevolution of the four forms, rather than the specific causes and effects of each one. What is interesting about these dynamics is that they repeat whenever a form arises, irrespective of which form or transition it is. That is how and why this compact framework generates complex patterns.

I presumed that such patterns existed not long after I figured that social evolution revolved around just three or four forms of organization and their interactions. Since then, I have tried to cull from the literatures on social evolution those propositions that speak not to causal factors for each form, but rather to overarching dynamics that play a role in every TIMN transition, from monoform to quadriform systems.

What follows is an overview — in propositional style — of most of the dynamics I have spotted so far. I’d originally intended, over a month ago, to elaborate on these and other propositions in this one single post. But I stalled in the effort; also, it was becoming too long. Hence, I’m presenting this set of propositions here in a cursory, summary, rather abstract fashion. I hope to elaborate on them, mostly one at a time, in future posts.

As noted above, a few were already discussed in an earlier post that provided an overview of TIMN. But if that does not offer enough context, I suggest perusing other posts — here, here, here, and here — about the nature of the four TIMN forms.

A collection of propositions about TIMN system dynamics

During the rise of a new form, subversion precedes addition: When a new form arises, it has subversive effects on the old order that weaken the old forms, before it has additive effects that serve to consolidate a new order. This happens not only because of contradictions between the forms, but also because “bad guys” — e.g., warlords, smugglers, pirates, terrorists — may learn to adopt and exploit a new form quicker than the “good guys.”

Addition brings the creation and consolidation of a new realm: In the TIMN progression, each form, because of its unique strengths, operates to create and prevail in a particular realm of society. The new form and its realm take over functions and activities for which they are best suited, and which the older form(s) and realm(s) had been performing with increasing faults and inefficiencies as societal complexity grew.

Combination restructures and strengthens the overall system: As a form gains sway, combinatorial dynamics take hold vis à vis the established forms and their realms. The new form’s realm begins to separate from the older realms. The new realm cuts into parts of the older, takes some actors and activities away from them, and narrows and places new limits on their scope. The new form and its realm also have feedback effects that modify the design of the older forms/realms; they go through generational changes, which include taking on some attributes of the new form and its realm, perhaps partly to adapt to its growing strength. Yet, if all goes well, the addition of a new form and its realm ultimately strengthens the older ones; they emerge stronger — their capabilities grow within their scope of activity, even though that scope is newly circumscribed. Thus each new combination proves stronger than the old — e.g., a T+I+M society is generally stronger and more versatile than a T+I society.

Combination alters the nature of causation: Causation becomes more intricate as the TIMN progression develops. Whatever the causes that bring a new form into play, once it comes into play, it affects everything around it, altering the nature of adaptation and causation that had existed previously. The rise of the new form generates feedback effects that not only help to strengthen and spread the new form, but also to modify the prior forms and activities so that they better support (and resist?) the new form’s growth.

Successful combination depends on the development of regulatory interfaces: As societies progress in TIMN terms, the forms and their realms increasingly intersect and interact, such that a society’s functioning depends not only on which forms are present, but also on the nature of the interfaces between the realms. Regulatory mechanisms (laws, policies, agencies, etc.) enable realms — e.g., the state, the market — to function well together. Regulatory interfaces also help keep those realms separated and in balance, preventing one from overwhelming another. They provide a needed kind of connective tissue.

Balanced combination is imperative: In the TIMN progression, the rise of each new form depends on the successes and failures of the earlier forms. Each form (and its realm) builds on its predecessor(s); the development of each, in turn, may be crucial for the next to arise and take root. For a society to progress optimally through the addition of new forms, no single form should be allowed to dominate; and none should be suppressed or eliminated — some kind of balance and equilibrium should be sought. A society’s potential to function well at a given level, and to evolve to a higher level of complexity, depends on its ability to integrate these inherently contradictory forms into a well-functioning whole. Balanced combination is best for long-term evolution. Indeed, balance may be the key watchword of the entire TIMN framework. Otherwise, enormous structural and ideological distortions may occur; for imbalance — too much of this form or that — may bring out the worst aspects of a form.

Imperfect adaptation to a form may be optimal for continued evolution: The task of getting a form “right” does not mean that exact adaptation (or adaptedness) to its environment is best for a society’s potential for further evolution. Incomplete adaptation may provide for flexibility. Each form may well have an ideal type in theory and philosophy; yet, in practice, none operates fully according to its ideal — nor should it. One reason may be the presence of other forms, and the importance of having to function in relation to them. Another reason may be that imperfect adaptation may allow for opportune, innovative responses to environmental changes.

Complexity increases with TIMN progress, but so does simplicity: TIMN treats the evolution of “complexity” as a cumulative, combinatorial process, in which a social system develops sub-systems that operate according to different forms of organization. Thus TIMN, like most theories about social evolution, emphasizes differentiation and specialization — but with a twist. In classical theory, evolution amounts to a movement from simplicity to complexity — with that complexity becoming evermore complex. But in TIMN, the successful addition of a new form spells a reconfiguration that amounts to a kind of simplification — a resolution of excessive complexity (or complicatedness) from trying to do too many new things with old forms. Thus a triform T+I+M society is more complex than a biform T+I society; but a T+I+M society is also more streamlined and efficient — in key ways, simpler, less complicated — than a T+I society that is trying to conduct and control complex economic affairs without adopting the +M form. The drive for differentiation cannot be unceasing; resynthesis eventually requires a simplifying kind of de-differentiation as well.

To advance through the TIMN progression, control must give way to decontrol: The evolution of complex societies is often said to involve increases in control (and coordination), partly so that all the differentiated parts work together. But social evolution does not revolve solely around ever-increasing capacities for control. Each transformational step in the TIMN progression requires some kind of decontrol — realizing that a new form and realm are taking hold, letting go of its activities, and allowing self-organization to develop around that form’s own rules. This is essential for the re-simplification and resynthesis process noted above. Over the long run, harmonious decontrol becomes as important as control; in advanced societies, power extends as much from decontrol as control. Thus, to refer back to the preceding proposition, the evolution of social complexity leads to increases in differentiation and control, but it also eventually requires some systemic de-differentiation and decontrol. Societies whose leaders exalt the tribal and hierarchical forms may have the hardest times with this.

The more entrenched an older form, the more difficult it will be for a newer form to emerge on its own merits: This mostly occurs where tribal or hierarchical actors rule in rigid, grasping, domineering ways; but it may also apply where pro-market ideologues hold sway. Much of getting a form right or wrong depends not only on applying that form’s distinctive principles, but also on balancing and relating it properly to the other forms, while protecting it from infestation by them. The more a form is infested by another form’s actors, the more it may be distorted, and the more likely may be “monstrous moral hybrids” (Jacobs, 1992) that disdain the separation and balancing of forms and their realms. Examples may include governments rife with a clannish tribalism, militaries wallowing in lucrative business enterprises, and ostensibly capitalist market systems fraught with collusive, protectionist cronyism. The stronger are tribal/clan tendencies in a society, the more likely are corrupt hybrid designs. A society of myriad monstrous hybrids is likely to be a distorted society, even a mean-spirited one. (This does not contradict the proposition, presented in an earlier post, that functional hybrids appear during transitional phases in the TIMN progression from monoform to quadriform societies.)

Wrap-up remarks for this post

Some of the preceding paragraphs look awfully sketchy to me, lacking in detail and nuance, not to mention references to other’s writings. But that has to be it for now. At least I’ve conveyed some propositions from TIMN that I haven’t said much if anything about before.

I have more propositions in mind — e.g., each form’s maturation leads to increases in social stratification; each form is associated with a different notion of democracy; each shift in the TIMN progression leads to new modes of conflict and cooperation. But while I’ll not elaborate on them in this post, there they are, briefly stated, as hints of what is yet to be laid out. And I remain on the lookout for additional propositions.

Most of what I have put in this post was drafted years ago, for potential chapters seven and eight for a possible booklength treatment that is still tentatively titled How Societies Work: Social Evolution — Past, Present, and Future. Who knows whether I will ever complete it. But meanwhile, I intend to continue using this blog to present pieces for readers to view, should they be interested. At least I’ve moved the ideas out of my head and home, up into the clouds for eventual, hopefully positive consideration.