I’ve heard my fellow Italians discussing on the radio, I’ve seen my US friends doing it on the streets, and everyone doing it on the Internet. Our crisis is finally bearing fruit that we need: rethinking the fundamentals! This, in turn means that change is in the air, and that many practicalities of our lives might be found ripe for modification. Many of us are scared of such historic moments that seem to threaten the social stability and seem to be destroying the established values. Without the intention to slight the real pain that such changes might bring with them to many who are rightfully apprehensive of their future, I discount here the complaints of those with vested interest in the established order. Although they are sometimes easy to recognize, it nevertheless often remains difficult to demonstrate that the selfish are opposing the changes due to their narrow individual interests rather than in the assertively proclaimed interest of safeguarding the traditions and other high-minded excuses that tend to be cited in blocking the changes that are necessary. These opponents of change are often articulate and well connected, resulting in their capability of mounting significant blocks and thereby slowing down the impending changes.
Not unexpectedly, the selfish often get a lot of support from the individual’s and groups who are afraid of changes in spite of their true interests to the contrary. Their reasons of opposing the changes might include the simple and natural fear of the unknown, of regretfully underestimating their own chances due to a lack of confidence, or justifiably being afraid of not being able to perform well in the expected new environment, based on a realistic assessments of one’s own limits. These individuals and groups need to be supported and facilitated in recognizing the opportunities that might arise from the change that will depend on their support.
The problem with resistance to change we are facing this time in our very own crisis is not that, as usual, the individuals and the groups resisting the change are dug in, vocal and seductive. Rather, the environment we are dealing with now is a complex system without too much similarity to the societies of the past. Apparently, our civilization is reluctant in recognizing this change and is humbly trying to draw the lessons only from from our own limited attempts to improve our societies in the past. But, this time, our social system seems to be on the verge of a major change. As physics of chaos are teaching us, in all complex systems, the chance of sudden change increases in proportion to the system’s complexity. Our societies are now spinning in a vortex similar to the vortices we observe in complex fluid and gas systems. Our complex society reached a point where the changes will continue to occur incessantly, will be difficult to predict and impossible to prevent. As a civilization we need to adapt to the environment in which changes are persistent, rapid and radical. I submit we should enjoy it and have fun while it lasts. No one else before us had this privilege. Yet our evolutionary baggage, cultural environments and our education systems do not prepare us adequately for such environment.
As a consequence, presently, as individuals, we have huge problems correctly perceiving the changes that are underway during the very moments of their occurrences. This incapability is at least in part due to the consequences of our media consumption that diminished this capability. Our media consumption habits are focusing us on each highlighted event, regardless of its importance, rather then on the whole processes that are what matters. In addition, it seems that we also have problems correctly perceiving the slow and lengthy processes in their entirety and in their interaction with other related and unrelated social flows. This of course can only mean that our reactions based on the wrong perceptions are more often inadequate than adequate.
In connection to an earlier post on this blog (Rights or Assets, http://mladenvukmir.blogsome.com/2011/12/30/rights-or-assets/) I wish here to further comment on our substandard performance in relation to management of the immaterial institutions we have created over last centuries. I wish to focus largely on those immaterial institutions that rely on their legal nature to define their existence. This particular story starts, in my personal view, sometimes in the XVIII century with the creation of the legal (immaterial) person: the corporation. Once humanity created this abstract being we’ve unleashed tremendous amount of energy and business creativity, yet we never fully grasped the multi-fold impact of its immaterial nature on the various social levels. One of the glaring examples of this myopic social understanding that characterizes our social development is the role of personal liability of the corporate officers, for example. Yes, we have built a legal maze trying to regulate the responsibility vacuum created by substituting physical by legal personality, yet the consequence was only the increase of the complexity of the legal system rather than the changes in education and actual behavior of the officers. To this day, the corporate officers often continue to behave irresponsible to the society even after four centuries have passed richly displaying the limitations of self interest. To be clear, we are supportive of the self-interest theories per se and believe that it is a healthy motivation for social development, but at the same time believe that self-interests needs to be skillfully tied into the broader social interest to be meaningful and remain a healthy force. The growth of the legal system further increased the complexity of our societies yet we accepted this growth of complexity without much effort to examine any alternatives or question it’s necessity. After a long time, this resulted with the societies that do not conform with our needs and where the legal systems are becoming more burdensome more than useful.
We continued creating immaterial institutions at an ever faster pace and I include here, for example, both intellectual property and various forms of risk assessment trading strategies such as insurance and banking derivatives. Intellectual property is now with us for a couple of centuries, it is impressive how the society at large still has significant problems in grasping its concept and its usefulness to our development. I believe that our education systems, which are not devoting sufficient time to stimulating the social introspection of our own development are partially to blame. While it is now totally clear in light of this crisis that in spite, or because of its complexities, our society have had only the most rudimentary understanding of the interactions that such abstract-based structures entailed. At the same time, we continued to behave like the Masters of the Universe and did not make requisite efforts in order to fully understand the unavoidable social implications of the relations that were developed throughout the process. It is now abundantly clear that our skills are inadequate to predict or even interpret the abstract world that we have crated. In the field of intellectual property we are only now starting to comprehend how much we do NOT know about the phenomena we have thought to have mastered. Regarding the intellectual property, it is interesting to observe that only after two centuries are our societies getting a minimum degree of intimacy with the system that is so obviously rudimentary in respect of our current needs that even on the street level those inadequacies became apparent over the last years. Without elaborating, I wish here to mention only the research of Francesca Gino of Harvard University into the unethical behavior caused by wearing counterfeits and of Prof. Von Hippel of the MIT Sloane School of Management (links to follow) into the failed premises of the patent and invention policies. Regardless of our obviously low level of understanding of the world we have created, resisting the change and abstaining from intervention might easily become more dangerous than trying to act boldly, both in studying the possibilities as in creating the new opportunities to ease us out of the current doldrums.
Nevertheless, this high degree of ineptitude that our societies seem to be displaying in managing it’s own affairs does not for me indicate at all that we will turn away from further developing and exploiting immaterial objects and values. To the contrary, I predict further significant increase of introduction of the immaterial institutions and assets based on the human knowledge based creativity. Extrapolating from the present trends, I dare to say hat we might expect exploitation of the artificial intelligence and animal based creativity too.
This can mean one and only one thing in terms of predicting the necessary policies: introducing robust education structure that will empower individuals to participate and generate the change as a durable and desirable state. We need to deal with our evolutionary resistance to change and enhance our evolutionary adaptability in the moment when our civilization needs to confront and unprecedented need for fresh approaches and creation of alternative and practicable results. Fortunately, there aer at the same time many signs that our societies are capable of generating the wealth of newly created answer to the new problems we are facing. We "only" need to do it faster, on a larger scale and with more elan on a broader base. This will mean need for further increase of networking of the individuals and joining their creative energies. It will also mean working together in accepting each other differences in enabling creation of those results. Abandoning traditionally opposing positions based on irrelevant differences, such as for example cultural or religious, or between religious and non religious people is a necessity as the necessary changes will result only by working together. It means reshaping our educational and social systems so that ultimately it achieves and teaches an understanding that such differences do not matter on a scale of changes we are facing. The only thing that matters is the change, and it can be achieved only by everyone working jointly together in creating unexpected and ambitious results. We can do that.
