The World’s Revolutions: Open Society 2.0 – With A Pinch Of Salt
“Rigid and righteous ideology has little room in adaptive society, tending to be more oppressive than creative down the line. Ditto for dogma. The path to righteousness is not the same as the right path. What matters is getting out of a dead end and moving ahead.” – So say the survivors of old catastrophes to those who wish to follow in their footsteps.
Society is a pretty dynamic place. Ever since the decline of theocracy and absolute monarchy, people have been free to chase opportunity down in order to move up the ladder and make a better life for themselves. Despotism and oppression are no longer acceptable parts of life. Open society is now a fixture, firmly established in many parts of the world, striving to take hold in many more.
The motion has been extremely beneficial to humanity. Freedom to assemble, to vote, to own land and pursue one’s enterprise, to practice a religion or not practice one at all, to speak and express oneself and move around unencumbered, these are all measures opening up the horizon across the board.
But things are not as easy to implement in practice. There are limits to what can be done, as things stand.
source: http://www.caricatures-ireland.com
In particular there is a limit where individuals may go or what they can achieve right now. Opportunity is aplenty but not nearly plenty enough to blow the field wide open and give everyone a decent chance to excel and prosper. Social mobility is great when comparing today’s society with that of five hundred or two hundred or fifty years ago, but within an individual’s professional lifetime things are not rosy. Moving beyond one’s position and up the ladder to new heights is a hard thing to do across the board, and not so common. For every success story there’s thousands of failures unmentioned, swept under the rug.
The reason is simple. Society is hinged on a constructive myth, a fairytale-narrative geared to inspire people and provide them with hope, a rags-to-riches lottery for the aspiring and dedicated. ‘It could be you next time, the one who makes it big in the end. Keep investing in it, keep sacrificing, work hard, and one day – one day…’
It’s an ingenious narrative based on mass delusion and big carrots on long sticks. Hope is laid out in modern-day terms, in ways modern people can relate to so as to feed the fire and keep individuals trusting in the future. The educated know this and work through it or around it. The uneducated swallow it hook, line and sinker because they have no choice.
The premise is as old as it is effective. Organized religion thrived on it for millennia before science and secular society moved in. Hope and faith that everything will be alright keeps the world turning, making every day worthwhile. Prospect drives all, because social creatures thrive on stories that make the future possible.
Thus it becomes evident that fairytales, religious or secular, are a necessary evil, in both social and economic terms. Society needs dreams and aspirations to grow and innovate. Without them nothing gets done, nothing gets paid or funded, grown or developed. Dislike it as we may, they are part of civilization and the wind in our sails – or rather the charge in our wires, to be in line with the times.
In short, civilized society is built and maintained on inspirational narratives. Trust in making it and ending up better off keeps the wheel oiled and rolling. Religion has been substituted with the everyday dream of professional success or job benefits, from minimum wage levels to million dollar bonus tiers, giving new meaning to ending up taken care of. Heaven is suddenly much closer, within our grasp, if only we act out our roles and play our part in the system.
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It’s not a bad thing in itself. Order, so necessary for progress, knowledge, and safety, depends on the presence of a system. Destroy that and we are back to rules and regulation driven by nature in its basest form, our virtue as human beings surrendered to an orderly chaos we have long grown out of. To avoid it and move ahead we organize ourselves better, become more sophisticated and self-aware. Social and communicative creatures as we have to grown to become, and individual in our own right, we appreciate the need for organization and the benefits it bestows on us on the grand scale, as a species. We monitor history and make stories about what works, making sure we remember the tales of those who made it, promising to emulate their achievements if only we believe hard enough and work even harder to attain our goals. Hence our fairytale narratives.
Sometimes these narratives are worth it, dreams and promises and all. The sacrifice they demand in exchange for the reward they deliver is a small price to pay when looking back at things, seeing where one started and where one ended up, better off and with something substantial to show for. Hurt as it does, the process pays off in the end, making every moment spent toiling away a time well worth it. Through dedication and hard work good things come, as everyone knows by now.
But not always. Society is not fair by default. Sometimes things don’t work out as they should, or as they promise to. They often misguide, fail, or falter, or even downright lie. Broken promises and empty tales are a dime a dozen, and so are the schemes set up to take advantage of the willing and needy, of the aspiring and talented. Dreams and narratives on special offer, promising bliss and deliverance, need to be examined and criticized in order to avoid the smoke and mirrors in favor of the real thing. As everyone knows by now, discretion is the better part of valor. It is the better part of success.
Where does that lead us? To taking things with a pinch of salt. Examining dreams and separating the empty shells from the pearls is not a happy task, but it has to be done. Questions have to be asked and things must be placed under the microscope, no matter how unpleasant and off-putting the process sounds, so that we may separate heaven from hot air.
Socrates raised the question a few thousand years ago, when Athens was busy investing in futures and policies without facing facts. What is the underlying cause of the issue at hand, he asked in so many words. Treat the illness, not the symptom, he warned. Find the root of the problem and take it out so that you don’t have to deal with it again. Societies not questioning themselves in the name of not stirring up trouble have a way of missing the bigger picture, running round in circles. They eventually go down the drain. Socrates said in so many words.
Facing crisis after crisis as we are right now, from one fallout to another in a domino effect that seems set on playing itself out before it subsides, we ought to mind our step and ask the hard questions if we are to come through intact and functioning.
source: http://www.mindmapinspiration.com
Self-examination is of course not a crystal clear process, nor easy to handle. Too much of it too fast can be dysfunctional and self-defeating, even harmful. Too much self-criticism and prolonged introspection can stall even the most truthful sages and constrict the most aspiring societies. Mental and moral neuroticism never saved a civilization from the ills and pitfalls of the way ahead. There is a time to pause and think, to examine and question – and there is a time to just hit the road and take action, for better or worse, without second guessing or endless debating.
What to do then? Think or act?
The answer is self examination with a pinch of salt. A working equilibrium between thought and action in order to achieve something logical, sound, and functional.
How to do this? Hard to tell. Change is hard to handle, even harder to initiate and coordinate. These are times of deliberate action – and active deliberation – across the board, beyond one individual alone, where many things have to converge in order to push us through the string of problems we are faced with and start getting society back on track. If we are to withstand our financial, political and environmental crises without going through a period of chaos and mayhem, we need to make hard choices and sacrifices – with prudence, of course, lest we end up slaves to slave-drivers preaching salvation under the banners of the day.
One thing is for sure. Adaptive and open societies need to remain fluid and dynamic in order to keep progressing. Without such dynamism they digress and regress. They repress, oppress and implode. We need to remain open to possibility if we want to come out the other end as good as we had it when going in. The key is figuring out what needs to be done – not what we want done or would like done, or pray is done, or preach is done, but what is needed and essential. The question is an issue of pragmatism, of what is necessary at any given time, forcing us to adapt to change like biology to hostile surroundings, mutating to a new state perhaps, a fit state, one that will help us survive the changing environment without falling into old traps and pitfalls. Regression is not an option, and neither are atavisms. If we are to prevent oppressive and malignant institutions from taking over society again, we need to get serious and lay down a few ground rules.
Let us begin by remembering what we rejected and surpassed so that we may prevent it from making a comeback should it attempt one. Theocracy, nationalism, communism, absolutism, despotism, and censorship. Keep them at bay and we are on good track. Open society 2.0. Let the journey begin.
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