Evolution or End of the Nation-State?                                     J. Suter

Part B – TOOLS for CHANGE

  1. Language – Mental Models and Metaphors, Stories

  2. Bio models and Feedback

  3. Competition and Gradients

  4. Organization and Structures

  5. Examples

Mental Models and Metaphors

We make decisions as individuals but gather information and tell stories as a group.  Communication skills then become very valuable. We must find, filter, and move useful information at all levels and between all levels.

Would a powerful parent let their children destroy each other?  Of course not.  We must apply that same question to the Greater Being who goes by a different name in every society.  A powerful God, like the powerful parent, leads to peace.  This metaphor becomes real or not real by the actions or inactions of believers. 

When leaders tell stories that are not credible, one wants to ask, “Who do they think they are talking to?”  It may be that, in their own mind, they are back in their childhood, just making stuff up and hoping not to disappoint their parent, teacher, or authority figure.  Maybe they do not recognize the facial expressions of disbelief.  What do you do when you realize a leader is lying?  First, show no reaction.  Simply nod your head in agreement.  Second, you begin a process to replace them. 

Story is the software that guides our action and help to build a framework for our understanding of the world.  Good stories become a key part of the flow of useful information and can determine whether or not any particular bit of information is passed on to the next person or not.  Stories as weapons have never gone away, but in an information age, censorship and “Info-Terrorism” stories can lead us astray. 

Love & Language

The national anthem makes the heart swell, making one feel closer to the motherland.  In reality, a nation is not a sentient human being but simply an agreement among leaders.  This can be good or bad.  Elites set the boundaries, set the rules, and make predictable an environment for the grassroots people who are busy with their lives.

Jeff Bezos noted that people are not (generally) truth seekers but social in nature.  Go along to get along.  One could argue that this changes when important decisions must be made or decisions that will affect the whole group.  Both love and language draw people together.  Family, friends, and community.  They all matter.  The fact is, however, that there are Americans who would like to see me suffer, and conversely, there are people living in other countries who would sacrifice for me. 

Hermann Goering, Hitler’s right-hand man, expressed a strong conviction that wars are decided by the elites, and although the common man did not want to fight, it was always easy to bring them along.  Simply tell a story that creates fear of an enemy and the grassroots will join the effort. 

A crack in the story of Western Civilization started in the 1960’s when Detroit Automakers created a slogan for Americans to “buy American” while at the same time they themselves purchased foreign autoparts from Japan.  This allowed US Automakers to get lazy in research and development.

Historian Margaret MacMillan writes about the 4 causes of war:  1. Greed, 2. Self-protection, 3. Emotions and 4. Ideas.  It may be difficult to change 1-3, but #4 does hold some promise.  We should not forget boredom as a factor.  Historians reading personal letters from the period around WWI found that boredom actually was a factor in getting British elites to push for engagement.  These were people who had a lot of power at their fingertips and no place to use it. 

Stories

Kings queens and pawns make a good story, but is that framework sufficient for current challenges?  If there is any change in the environment (any kind of environment), the story must change to adapt.  The role of Hollywood in creating our present story should not be underestimated.  To continue on our present path, however, the Story cannot be clever enough.  Communication and filtering of useful information will therefore be essential. 

People need a story.   War makes for great stories. In the cycle of war, the first thing to do is to start rumors or a story about the place to be taken over.  Want to take over Canada?  First, prime the takeover by telling a story to dehumanize the people, then add a touch of something fearful.  That makes the takeover much easier.

People also need stories as software to help make decisions.  “Is that plant poisonous?”  The answer could be useful information.  “Is the guy over there an enemy?  How do you know?  Do you have a memory of trusting that person?”

We all use mental models and metaphors to navigate, communicate, and to build social systems.  In looking at the more successful systems we could pay attention to the biological systems that have been around for thousands of years.  We are part of that biological system.   The words we use acknowledge this fact: “head” of state, “arm” of the law, “branch” of government, or even “mother” in motherland show our innate biological selves.  We are part of this larger cycle and words help or hinder our understanding of it.  So we create stories of hunters, running down the gazelle in Africa.  Like all situations and stories about how to find food, water, and shelter, geographic location is specific and important. 

Cycles of war and peace reveal two or more forces in opposition, creating a back and forth dynamic, similar to cycles in a biological model.  War to release tension is a catharsis so there is always a tension between the Story and what is happening on the ground.  What is the role of the Story in war?  Is it to find and move Useful Information and to close this gap?  Or is the role of the Story to lead, to find another path and use whatever tension it can create to bring us along? 

Communication technology by itself is neutral on the abuse of language.   NGO’s used to be the good guys, but now they weave their way into a client government and gain a foothold for control.  The biological analogy here is that of a parasite but thankfully one which can be countered and controlled with Useful Information. 

Nuclear deterrence is a Story too and a belief that risk of self-destruction offers stability, at least at the international level.  There are now a growing number of nuclear states.  For this and various other reasons, political power now seems concentrated in a smaller number of people who are adversaries.  This combination pushes toward an increasing real risk of self-destruction of the planet.   

Competition from the bottom up

Silicon Valley’s success is built from the bottom up in the silicon chip, speaking both literally and metaphorically.  A closer look reveals other truths.  The silicon in the chips cannot be pure silicon, or it will not work.  There must be some other elements added, some impurities in tiny amounts for the transistor to work.  This might be a metaphor for the loyal opposition in Parliament, or maybe the First Amendment that keep leaders honest and in touch with reality. 

Silicon Valley’s success is primarily because scientists and engineers paid attention to what happens at smaller and smaller scale.  New languages and properties emerge when a million transistors can be put on a single chip, and with good software it begins to approach and exceed the capability of the human brain. Go small to go big.  Over the last 50 years the desire to use the communication ability of computers has become a natural instinct for most humans.

The wealth concentration created by Silicon Valley increases the added risk that previously reliable information sources can be bought and used as a megaphone to spread whatever message the owners want.  Yet they seem oblivious to this risk.

This brings up the question about who we are as individuals.  What is our local level purpose?  Our task?  Can we change the site and nature of the competition and keep it friendly?  Can we push others uphill toward sustainability?  Can we push in all directions and at many levels?  Nature is competition and we must learn to use it.

Biological Models (War again)

Another biological model to consider is the immune system.  It is the defense system of our body with killer T-cells, macrophages, and all kinds of cytokines, each distributed throughout the cells, organs, and tissues.  The skin is the first and primary barrier of defense, just like the border of a country is a primary part of national defense.  

Most nations of the world were not signatories of the Treaty of Westphalia, yet they all exhibit the same tendency to form national boundaries.  Are there limits to the size of a nation-state?  There are natural limits to size in the plant and animal kingdom.  The elephant has reached a natural limit on land and the whale in the ocean.  In each case they hit the limits of growth in their environment.

What forces demarcate the Nation-State?  How do they “know” to stop growing?  Push, push, push – until resistance – or some signal.  In cell biology this is an important question: “what stops a cell from growing?”  Cells and tissues of the body release chemical signals and provide resistance from neighboring cells.  Out-of-control growth is cancer.  Does this tell us anything about the limits of hegemony?

Alpha women tend to mate with alpha men.  (Do they still?)  This gives both of them power, a social adaptation probably related to our genes – or to a story they were told.  Biology can be very political, a fact that was shown by the intermarriage of royals during the Middle Ages.  Arthur Schlessinger, Jr. a special advisor and historian for JFK, made the remark that maybe the only way to avoid war is for everyone to inter-marry.  That is statistically unlikely to happen with humans, but it could happen with ideas. 

Information and Feedback

Feedback is defined here as useful information at the right time and right place.  Useful information via feedback can help to make a decision by either man, machine, or bio system.  Feedback for any policy or legislation can be written into the law to help keep it on track and not grow too large or obtrusive.  The good news is that feedback can be added post-policy implementation and added from people on the outside.  This is another role for citizens who can act together.   Feedback from reliable and balanced bias sources can be useful for anyone implementing a policy or legislation. 

The sensor for this social feedback is a small group (SG) of people picked randomly to provide another layer of information filtering.  This requires some imagination, but just as importantly, it requires a specific task and feedback from other people.  The structure of sensors and feedback loops may become standard once some good designs are discovered.  Plus, sensor groups and feedback loops do not need to have national boundaries. 

Another example of feedback in biology is the regulation of breathing.  How does your body know that you need to breath faster or slower.  The heart uses feedback to regulate the heart rate.   Breathing, growing, heart rate, senses such as hearing, and movement, all use feedback.  Biological feedback is mostly not seen or thought about.  With a well-designed feedback loop, however, these processes stay on track with a very small signal and good communication pathways.

Accountability is a subset of feedback.  Governments and corporations must have accountability to work well.   Feedback and accountability as types of information and sometimes be just as powerful as military or economic power.  This is why the First Amendment on free speech is critical, though by itself may not be enough. 

Gradients

Life is a flow of energy – mostly downhill.  Organization requires a local “uphill” movement of energy although the general trend is still downhill.  No gradient? No life.  No money?  No goods and services.  But a nation-state cannot survive on the movement of money among the financial sector. 

Gradients can be created with positive or negative slopes, prizes or negative punishments.  One can create a gradient with money as a symbol of value, but gradients, both positive and negative, can come with emotions like fear or desire.  Hope is a great motivator too, but mostly long term. 

Gradients can be one large gradient – or many smaller ones that one can see with a series of waterfalls, or a series of ten 3-volt batteries end to end that create a 30-volt drop in energy.  There is great potential energy in a town of only a few hundred people if they can find ways to organize for some task, or to find better information even for some group outside this town.  Some general organization can be done with a gradient alone plus a goal.  An information filter or story may help focus efforts.

Organization and Structures

In any economy, one can often make money by getting between a person and what they want, maybe adding some value, and charging a fee.  Here “want” is an indicator of emotion, tension, or gradient.  The role of business is primarily one of creating organization.  Without organization there is no product or service.  In a capitalist system the money flows in a downhill gradient in salaries and wages for services rendered and products purchased.  Those decisions are primarily made by consumers.  In a socialist society, decision making is less clear though it can be done.  In either case, good feedback is essential.

The division of labor for gathering and filtering useful information is a task traditionally for mainstream media, but that function is now coming into question.  We do not seem to be getting the best information for problems that confront us.  Course correction may require a new and different division of labor, i.e. a Division of labor for Information Gathering (DIG).

There seems to be a magic of majority in the structure of democracy.  The minority must either stay and fight a larger group or go home.  This dynamic is related to a common sense of fairness and seems to be a basic societal norm.  No matter if the government is democratic or non-democratic however, grassroots people can wake up to their power to change things by creating small group processes.  These small groups (SG) can be started by anyone and participants picked randomly. Depending on the task, they can be re-mixed as needed.  Their primary role is the gathering and filtering of information to provide feedback to Decision Makers (DM) or anyone. 

In social groups we often use the term “feedback” as a negative signal, telling the other person to “chill out” or change their behavior, but feedback can be both positive or negative.  Horseback riders give feedback to their horse and, if paying attention, will listen to the feedback from the horse. 

Feedback must reach the decision maker in an efficient way.  The pilot of an airplane has rows of instruments so that he or she can see what is happening at all critical places in the airplane.  Contrast that system with a passenger sitting near the tail who can see the position of a wing flap and passes that information person-to-person on up to the pilot.  That is a type of feedback too, but one can easily imagine that it would not work very well even assuming that other passengers cooperate.   

ANA – Anti-Nuclear Actuators

Actuators in a system can be thought of as automatic switches that wait for a specific signal before they flip.  They are usually devoted to one task.  If we want to taper off of our dependency on nuclear weapons, we can use the concept of small group Anti-Nuclear Actuators (ANA) which fit quite well with the concept of feedback for military preparedness and nuclear weapons.

The theoretical basis for nuclear deterrence is that one nation will not strike another with nuclear weapons because the aggressor will likely also be destroyed.  This gave rise to the acronym MAD or Mutual Assured Destruction.  This is destruction of all of society and probably all of humanity.  According to a RAND study on nuclear war, particulate matter thrown into the upper atmosphere would last for many years and cut 70% of the sunlight, leading to starvation of nearly all plants and animals.  Humans will not survive.   

In the dilemma of nuclear weapons that could destroy all of mankind, it becomes imperative that some message reach the decision makers directly – and it must be done a priori – before any nuclear war begins.  Otherwise it will be ignored.  Decision makers must realize that if there is any nuclear weapon detonated against either civilians or military personnel – anywhere in the world – then that Decision Maker along with their family and friends will be destroyed.  They must have strong incentives to work with leaders in other countries to abolish nuclear weapons.  Without a strong signal it gets pushed down on the list of priorities.  

Consequences must be clear.  These messages can be sent by post or email on a regular basis (every 3-6 months) with photos showing that they are being watched closely.  Who would send such a message and how would they get it there?  It could be done by small groups of Anti-Nuclear Actuators (ANA) made up of a few people from several countries and be state actors, non-state actors, or a mix.  Surveillance of the decision makers and their family and friends could be done by other small groups or by the same ANA.   The letters must also be made public but with few or no names attached. 

Is ANA murder?  No.  It is group accountability.  It is one way to include decision makers in the feedback loop.  When the Treaty of Westphalia was signed in 1648 it made sense to prohibit the assassination of one’s opponents for the sake of social stability.  With the question of nuclear annihilation, however, it makes more sense to include decision makers in the feedback loop.  This may be a moot point since few leaders will survive a nuclear exchange.  Alternatively, they will be picked off in the hallway by a security guard whose family and future are now destroyed.

Then God will be alone again, thinking about whether he or she wants to do it all over, disappointed that humans did not realize that they were still in the Garden. 

Some might argue that the role of nuclear weapons has been downgraded with the advent of new technologies in modern warfare such as the drones or supersonic cruise and ballistic missiles.  Others might argue that the gap between conventional weapons and nuclear weapons was a chasm so wide as to be unthinkable.  But now that chasm is now closing with recent advances in conventional weapon technology.  By itself, this narrowing of the chasm may pull us into use of nuclear weapons before we realize it. 

Nation-state leaders must have a strong incentive to move nuclear weapons to zero.  The fact that ANA and use of other non-nuclear weapons can be more precise in their targeting of decision makers will actually allow any nation to begin nuclear disarmament unilaterally since first use of nuclear weapons will give no advantage.

The key is in creating feedback, not only for ourselves, but giving feedback to many other parts of the system, much of it done without creation of rigid laws.  We must assume that people want to survive and will look for better methods of government.

Dynamic Democracy

French born journalist and political commentator Vladimir Posner noted that mainstream media in both the US and Russia chose to perpetuate the old stories about the other, hoping to keep up the mistrust – and maybe sell more papers.  Of course most readers had no specific task for which they would have to gather more accurate information about the other country.  If they did have such a task, they would have lost confidence in what they were reading in the mainstream media and searched for better sources.  Who would give them such a task – a task that required better information?  Maybe a teacher.  Maybe other readers.  Even a temporary need for better information could be useful when exploring unknown cultures or exploring almost anything new.  The incentive may be “artificial” or an “artifact” because it is man-made, but useful nonetheless.    

Competition versus War (the YMW20)

Boundaries mean less than they did in the past.  Remember that there are Americans who want to see me suffer, but foreigners who would sacrifice for me. 

The linchpin for changing the purpose of war away from a war business are the Young Men and Women (YMW) called to serve or paid to fight.  Hermann Goering’s dictum that one can always get the common people to fight needs to be modified:

If leaders want young people to go off and fight forever wars, keep them ignorant and angry.  But young people are not as ignorant as they used to be, and most of them want to devote their lives for something positive.  A society that abuses the hearts of young people does not deserve to survive.  If the young people have friends in other countries, they may decide to make a Covenant with those other young people, a Covenant that says they will not harm anyone their age or younger.  Maybe call it YMW20 (age 20 or whatever).  What would that look like?  It changes the value and the meaning of physical borders.  Rather than dividing people by geography or gender or race or religion or sports team, it divides people by age.  Some young people realize that they are being used for political purposes and are OK with that.  Others will find their own path.  Their war is not their father’s war. 

And democracy?  Is one-person-one-vote (OPOV) the best way?  Surviving in a changing environment appears to favor authoritarian regimes if one only looks superficially.  Yet democracy requires citizens to be educated on a wide variety of issues and the time frame for making decisions cannot be too long or too short.  That is a very difficult task to do without a Division of Information Gathering (DIG). 

An “Authority” is an “Author”, someone who writes things down.  What leaders agree to and sign can still work, even if it goes beyond one-person-one-vote (OPOV).  It can become a Dynamic Democracy if there is better FB.  In fact, the role of Western Democracies may lie in connecting people to each other, not in creating a look-alike democracy.  “Who is stealing from whom?”  We now have the ability to discover and move such information, even if we cannot change everyone else and convert all nation-states to Democracies.

We cannot move forward on stories based on lies.  The terrain is too difficult.  There is no one person or organization that has the ultimate truth on anything.  We each bring our bit of information, our idea or question, and try to make things work.