Society, what society? A thesis framework.
Joan VellvĂŠ Rafecas
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Abstract It’s been a hard task to interview people I know from long. I thought that would be easier than what it was. Talking about social understanding and systems of relationships with people that I’ve been socializing with partly all my life, is talking about what has been your relationship during these years. How you value the social exchange, the time spent, rituals ... at least ist’s been challenging. After every first ten minuts of each recorded chat, where the confusion was taking most of the presence, the conversation easily flew into diverse and quite precise themes, such as the ones that you’ll read ahead. I’m yet not sure if it is because my friends and I have similar ways of understanding or because we reach the point where we easily adapt to what the other says or thinks. I’m not sure if I chose my friends because how they behave and think or it’s part of a long term relation to create such a link that imitation and evolution coexists to create stronger comunity bonds. Maybe it’s an empathic coexistance where because of my trust to them I, althoug not completely, agree with most of the conclusions that where achieved in the conversations. I tried to say as less as possible, bringing the chance for them to develope their own ideas of my concepts. I’m not sure if our relation relays in the time spend or what we did, because of our culture or house environment, yet I can asure that all of those mentionet took part on the decision. I’m neither sure of which are the patterns beyond those social exchanges in friendship shape. But what I do understand is that none are by chance, that either they affect me or I do to them, either we get close to what we feel represented by or is the time toghether that becomes scale in representing what was not there. Is about what I am in relation to them as well as the oposite, which are the points that create our networks so we can define ourselves as an small comunity, where social exchange is the most important part. Understanding that the most basic entity in a social network is a human being, with all our diferences, it’s easy to conclude that those patterns that would define this social network would be at least as complex as we know we are.
This research looks into social behavior and how in different contexts designers can enhance social community values, while triggering better social practices. Different aspects of social patterns will be taken in account under the viewpoint of Social design outsiders. This research is planned through two different perspectives. Through literature and theoretical re-search, the aim of these is to create a framework of vocabulary, ideograms, concepts and theories that will be transformed and personalized in order to bring my concepts and Ideas in words of others and the other way around. An exercise of reviewing the vocabulary, in its broader sense, that I use to achieve a better communication of concepts, but also a better understanding of theoretical approaches in the way of communicating patterns and systems at a community behavior level. In a second level of research interviews were conduced with different design outsiders in order to achieve diferent prespectives towards the social-community issue. In these interviews diferent aspects from the theoretical research get into play and are then reinforced with examples. Moreover the global research project aim is to look for a better understanding of social behavior and patterns in social interactions, creating a framework where design opportunities are established. I like to conclude with the personal Idea that how we are organized nowadays is affecting us directly. We should achieve a different social organization. The goal is not to discover the new fire in shape of ultimate pattern. This book is a conversation between theoretical approaches, interviews and me, weaved all together to frame my position for the thesis.
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Str ucture and Organitzation. There are a few things that I want to clarify before starting to deepen into my concept and thesis outline. This book for me is a tool that has helped me to compile lots of information regarding the theme, from the different perspectives already mentioned. I see it as a first outcome of my research where certain points of the framework of my thesis are developed. All the chapters and concepts are, as in a pattern, nodes that are interacting; they all represent a more global idea that will be introduced in the conclusions of this book and in the further development of my Testis. Coming back to what this outline book is presenting, the book is divided in 3 chapters; In the first chapter, Organization matters, is introduced the base concept of what I understand as community behavior. Through two examples will also introduce the concept of what society means, or how society is defined (as in the example from “fuck society�) positioning nature as part of the equation. In the second chapter, Patterns and structures, there is an always superfluous, who could say other ways, explanation about the state of the society, in an organizational level, focusing the spot on the economical theory because it’s heart within the actual model of organization. There is also a quick view into the role of the object in nowadays society concluding that they should also be part of the same equation, as nature. In the third and last chapter, Building Cohesion, there are different aspects that emerged within the talks that I conduced this summer. Where different nodes of social behavior are taken in account through the sieve of theoretical support. In this concepts there are represented systems of relations in between people, objects, and nature. After the third chapter there is a conclusion developed where all the acknowledgments developed in previous chapters are yarned to expose themselves as an open background pattern for thesis.
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photographer David Oliete
Chapter 1: Organitzation matters
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* Ref er ence to, “Crisis, what crisis?”.
Society, what Society ? * Graf fiti in a wall.
I’m walking through a small street in between a market and a school. I come from a nice chat on an “Eixample” neighborhood rooftop, Barcelona. With Andreu, the interviewee, we were talking either to start recording and therefore conduct the talk in the same tiles I’m stepping now or in his terrace. He felt his terrace better. Now I’m walking through this empty small street, in the way to my house and this huge graffiti pops on a side. I stop; I look at it, trying to achieve a possible answer for that person to write those words. I was trying to perceive signals looking through all my experience related to graffiti, world and behavior, anything that could make me understand why that street protester was against what I want to encourage and enhance. I can tell a thing which I am almost completely sure, or in another perspective, I would most possibly agree with the argument that I made during the walk home; the person who wrote these two words is not against society. What makes me take that assumption is basically because I suppose that the graffiti artist wouldn’t put instead of society, friends, his/ her brothers or sisters names, neither any kind of family relatives, political or blood related, or earn by trust, neither in my personal ideal, Earth or nature (please note that he wrote a heart as “i” punctuation). It’s impossible to argue against that he/she was angry at something or somebody when the painter decided to write “fuck society”. Let’s assume then that the author wants to refer to the system beyond society, the one that rules or at least is starring. The system that he can see, the one that for only himself is what represents society, the patterns that a person can create in his mind to help him survive, in a natural perspective, in his environment, trying to fight against those things that make feel like he’s not part of the pattern that he relates to those that he’s angry at. In the context it’s placed, where corruption and democratic diseased values are spread all around, isn’t difficult to assume that what he’s against is the pattern that he oversees while looking at what some other called society, or at most, how this society has been shaped. I would like to tell him that he’s wrong in the way, but I kind of agree in his argument too.
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Mar c Buchanan - “The Social Atom”.
Nature and human; seeking patter ns in visual examples.
“Spitsbergen is a Norwegian island in the Svalbard archipelago. It has spectacular mountains, abundant glaciers and desolate tundra, where stones are littered over a flat and mostly featureless terrain. In places on this tundra, the stones are arranged in a remarkable way; they lie not in a chaotic, haphazard jumble but in an ordered array of hauntingly beautiful, nearly perfect circular piles. As geophysicists Mark Kessler and Brad Werner first explained a few years ago, forces associated with freezing and thawing push the stones into stretched-out piles, and then curve the long piles around (at least sometimes) to form complete rings. Such spontaneous order is caused by feedback. A little pattern, even if it arises quite by accident, sets up forces that reinforce the pattern. A little clumping of stones on the tundra triggers physical reactions that lead to more clumping, and eventually to stone piles”
Spitsber gen.
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Lars Spuybriek Mark Buchanan
The sympathy of things. The Social Atom.
“A figure, a symbol, is a formal organitzation of variable points, not a fixed form. Fairly simple behavior by individual members resulting in complex and irreductible collective behavior.”
“One of the most important lessons of modern physics is that the way things are organized sometimes matters more than what they are made of. The same carbon atoms that make soft, dull graphite also make sparkling and super-hard diamond. Organization matters.” Catalog tr ee.
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photographer David Oliete 14
Chapter 2 Patterns and structures
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Mark Buchanan W illiam A. Dembski
The Social Atom. The Design Re volution: Answ ering the Toughest Questions about Intelligent Design
The mind of the recollector and hunter man.
“The duration of 800 lives chained can range more than 50,000 years. But of these 800 people, 650 spent their lives in caves or in worse places, only the latest 70 have had some truly effective means to communicate with others, only the last 6 have seen the printed word or had the resources to measure heat or cold, only the last 2 have used, elecrtic engines, and the vast majority of component elements that our material world has developed in the interval corresponding to the last of the 800 people.”
“The very comprehensibility of the world points to an intelligence behind the world. Indeed, science would be impossible if our intelligence were not adapted to the intelligibility of the world. The match between our intelligence and the intelligibility of the world is no accident. Nor can it properly be only attributed to natural selection, which places a premium on survival and reproduction and has no stake in truth or conscious thought.”
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I do understand society as if it was a structure in between individuals, natural and man made patterns that we can’t see because we are part of them, because we don’t position ourselves in the right perspective of abstraction, or because we are not in the right moment. The most visual example of a pattern is the “net” where the holes are fare more present than the connections, where the fragility of all the structure is subyascent to each connection. But not only is comparable to a net but also to the brain system of connections, where ideas are only existing as temporal connections between concepts, meanwhile the thought requieres them. Ideas are every time nascent, everytime decayent, like patterns never existing, allways there. We look at society as individuals choosing individual decisions, our rationality. But there’s a truth that is hidden, missed by our rationalist tryouts. Basically we, humans, are animals evolved following only natural “rationality”, based on instincts and the natural need to embrace changes and evolution to survive. This has brought us into a self contained bubble were we, Rational beings, are not anymore part of what nature is. Furthermore we exclude “nature” from the word society. To acknowledge that is a transcendent goal in order to reconstruct our systems of principles. Understanding that we are nature, bring us two different paths to follow. First we could argue that, as we are nature, can be studied as such, not aiming the intrinsic characteristic of being individuals but focusing on the community. Secondly we can talk also about the fact of the individual rational perspective of benefit( rational choice theory), and how in most cases our decisions aren’t either rational or searching for personal benefit. Moreover some of our decisions are against our personal benefit, showing a level of empathy and social welfare that no rational thought could have predict, we can understand those decisions as natural behavior, where the “benefit” of ones actions are either for community benefit or mimicry. Therefore both paths reinforce the idea that nature is part of the society because we are nature.
R abbi Ari Kahn
A Recipe for Happiness
“Modern man, intoxicated with his own success, is prone to hubris. He sees himself as a self-made man, and worships his ‘creator’ every time he glances in the mirror. Like Narcissus gazing into the water while perched on a rock, modern man no longer recalls where he came from, and his own self-absorption mesmerizes him. He is isolated, and because he has forgotten the past, he has no humility, no perspective, no context. At the same time, he jeopardizes his connection with the future: Only when we transmit historical consciousness to our children, and live beyond the narrow confines of the present, do we stand a chance of being appreciated by our children – rather than being rejected, in turn, as a relic from the past.”
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Br uno Latour
Reassembling the Social
The embodied patter ns. How we based our evolution in descifering patter ns.
“Villages appear to dot the landscape haphazardly until an archaeologist excavates the ancient road networks and realizes that all the settlements align perfectly on some ancient causeways, simply separated by the mean day march of the Roman legions. Who has created the settlement there? What force has been exerted? How could Caesar still be acting through the present landscape? Is there some other alien agency endowed with the long-lasting subterranean power to make settlers ‘freely choose’ the very place it has allotted them? Here again you wonder, and you wonder even more when you realize, watching the stock exchange one morning, that ten million of your fellow shareholders have sold the same stocks that day, as if your collective mind had been solidly swayed by the invisible hand of some invisible giant.”
Since the first humans we lived in a world that is presented as an overwhelming chaos, making it difficult to us to adapt into it’s different environments. Our capacity of visualizing and understanding patterns is almost intrinsic now. Patterns aren’t entities by themselves, they are as long as they are visualized, understood or comprehended. We can foresee patterns in the way animals do their migrations, in how they choose place to reproduce, to hide, to look for water. We see patterns in plant life, and how the earth interacts with all these. We understand patterns while we learn; we listen to music or read poetry. We achieved to have some pattern that relates our lives with the stars and planets. We are able to do that because we extracted from all those entities the idea of free will. The process behind all these is only natural and the consequences rationalizable. We see the simplicity of those who doesn’t have to make decisions. They don’t “choose” what they are, or do, so we can accept a past as present and future. Everyday the sun rises from the same side; we can see the pattern there. We forget that, for the development of what we are now, has been transcendental the implication of natural inputs and outputs, the same ones that can be applied to animal behavior. Is so difficult to think that humans act in systems that can be qualified as patterned and therefore subjacent to physical studies. The idea that we are a superior entity in the world of nature has no sense. We are no more special than any other specie or element. Our capacities might be higher but that doesn’t put us in a grounded deity position. While rational anthropocentric ideals prevail the understanding of social community behavior will be faded by a mist of self occlusion, as long as we don’t understand that the till the lowest element in our life-chain might be an irreplaceable entity for the construction of our organization. We don’t want to listen that our decisions are predictable as long as they are in a community environment and therefore is the community behavior itself, which is under the focus of the study. We learned from patterns, we come from animals that had to survive through the understanding of what they had around. Can’t we foresee that we are intrinsically bounded to what we where, are, and are so we can say that we are also community predictable. Is important to understand that even if we don’t feel belonging to what Society means to us, we are part of it, because partly the same pattern would define us. The negation of the bond won’t make it disappear. But if we learn to understand better our communities we will be able to get better solutions.
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Pedra Seca wall Organitzation matters. This is a typical construction from where I come from in Catalunya, but also from other mediterranian cultures, this one in the picture is from el Priorat, a terribly dry region where the most common ground is “Licorella�. Usually in shape of flat stones that are easily breakable by impact but resilient at compresion. The construction of Pedra Seca walls is a technique that refers in its name ( Pedra=Stone, Seca=dry) to the no use of aglotinant, cement or morter, in between the stones. Around the coutryside, specialy in the mountains where my ancestors where cultivating either wineyards, olive trees, almonds and such. You can spot dried stone walls from every valley, every peak, they stay there, some of them are falling apart, some are still. Those who where responsible of building this walls where skillfull constructors, obeservers. They had to look for stones that fit consecutivly, stones that stayed steady. They were organizing stones, in a way they were looking for perfect matching. Pedra Seca is a smart organitzational way of building. It was said that a good stone wall could last centuries. Time has proven them right. What is most beautyfull about them is that, as there’s no connective material, the stones that once where used for a house, are now used for a wall. Those stones that were delimitating my family ancestors plot, where afterused to build up my cellar by my grandfather and who knows where they will be in a century or two.
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Mar c Buchanan The Social Atom. Standford Enciclopedia of Philosophy
The naive racionalism (or Economical theor y) or how we can not define our system through rational decisions.
“I’m still not convinced that anyone can really predict and manage an economy on the basis of anything more scientific than the reading of tea leaves. As far as I can tell, economics, especially the “macroeconomics” of entire economies, is still very far from being a real science. It’s a long way from the ideal we might hope for, where economists would be trying as hard as possible to prove themselves wrong. If they have no incentive to do so, eventually a bigger crisis and the social response it engenders will do it for them.” “The "rationality" described by rational choice theory (basis of the economiical theory) is different from the colloquial and most philosophical use of the word. Typically, "rationality" means "sane" or "in a thoughtful clear-headed manner,." Rational choice theory uses a specific and narrower definition of "rationality" simply to mean that an individual acts as if balancing costs against benefits to arrive at action that maximizes personal advantage. In rational choice theory, all decisions, crazy or sane, are postulated as mimicking such a "rational" process. Thus rationality is seen as a property of patterns of choices, rather than of individual choices: there is nothing irrational in preferring fish to meat the first time, but there is something irrational in preferring fish to meat and preferring meat to fish, regularly”
Even if I think we can be structured as community, that we can achieve some ideal pattern in between our decisions there’s no book or destiny around that can be read in order to predict our individual future, past or present. The actual theory where the world hyper-structure is based on is the Economical rationalism, rephrased as Naive rationalism by Mark Buchanan in the “Social Atom”. My point of view regarding this aspect of our society is that, with this system ruling, we have no chance to get to know ourselves in better organizational levels. We live in an occlusive system that only is open for those versed with the technicalities of the system itself. Only the one already inside, with the consequent establishment related to it, would be able to change from inside the system that is feeding him. We live within a system that is not understandable, not trustful, intentionally not linked to any human scale. Somebody could argue that the capacity of rationalization, in which most of the economical theories are based on, replies to the instinctive nature of humans, and will be also true that all economical systems are based on rationalized concepts. So would be easy to conclude that by rationalized patterns of decisions, Economical theorists, could foresee and predict most of the markets fluctuation. Do they?. For being economics a real science they would prove themselves at least as erratic while never predicting any stock market fluctuation. But there’s a mistake in the rational choice theory or naive rationalism or economical system. The mistake is based on the assumption that the individual rational choice of benefit against costs is the scale to weigh all benefits, therefore forgets about the irrational decisions and those related to natural roots which aren’t computed in their system as possible. Also forgets those who simply exchange their benefit to what they consider a greater good. Or those who simply taking irrational decisions without a clue that they are. Therefore actual system is wrong in the basis of its theory, any assumption that you can make following the steps of an economical theory will mislead any result. Finding a new organizational system is needed in order to create better chances to evolve within this environment.
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Mar c Buchanan
Economists Need to Admit W hen They’r e Wr ong
“Take a few tiny steps from mathematical fantasy into reality, and you quickly have no theory at all, no reason to think the market is superior to alternatives.”
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Baudrillard
The System of Objects.
The objects as social exoskeletons.
“It is true that, at first sight, the difficulty of registering the role of objects comes from the apparent incommensurability of their modes of action with traditionally conceived social ties. But sociologists of the social have misunderstood the nature of such incommensurability. They have concluded that because they are incommensurable they should be kept separate from proper social ties, without realizing that they should have concluded precisely the opposite: it’s because they are incommensurable that they have been fetched in the first place! If they were as weak as the social skills they have to reinforce, if they were made of the same material quality, where would the gain be? Baboons we were, baboons we would have remained! (...) Even the most routine, traditional, and silent implements stop being taken for granted when they are approached by users rendered ignorant and clumsy by distance—distance in time as in archaeology, distance in space as in ethnology, distance in skills as in learning. (...) Although those associations might not trace an innovation per se, the same situation of novelty is produced, for the analyst at least, by the irruption into the normal course of action of strange, exotic, archaic, or mysterious implements. ”
When defining society objects need to be part of the equation. As humans we define ourselves through our nonmaterial and material means. Coping with most of the sociological theories around objects I also see them as defining. We learned through objects how to interact, we understood through objects and technology and they cannot be put aside from any social theory. We dress, we use, we buy, we share, we build, we play. We understand others and ourselves through the lens of the object that surrounds us, that contextualize us. Objects have become so close to ourselves that the line is blurred in what we consider us anymore. Are we what our physic-biological boundaries define? Don’t we understand ourselves as much more than only what genetics tell us. I understand that genetically we are somehow defined to be, but I feel much more than what I’m biologically set. We forgot about the importance of what the objects and man made structures mean to us, to our evolution, to our organizational systems. We forgot to mention them every time that we were talking about environment. They have disappeared of our sight as long as they do what they’re told. We only see them when they have a miss function. We love our computer till it appears the blue error screen, when basically we get mad while trying to understand it, but most of us can’t. We have a system of reciprocity with them; they help us as long as they are “in shape”. Certainly with the technological race out of control we broke that reciprocity while not being able to maintain that shape needed. Then we dispose them to buy another one. We forgot about objects because even if they play a big role in our society, they are expendables. People cannot fully comprehend technology anymore. We are no longer dealing with levers and pulleys. Technology has been developed as an enclosed system where only experts and technological brains can understand, quite alike to the economical system technology has been encoded through the unclear need for more. Is needed to understand an object in order to fully interact with it, to be able to create a true bond of trust. A complete reciprocity where objects represent ourselves as well as we feel somehow represented by them.
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Baudrillard
The System of Objects.
“Objects become mediators, at least for a while, before soon disappearing again through knowhow, habituation, or disuse.�
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Pe pa Gisper t Aguilar
“Decr ecimiento: camino hacia la sostenibilidad”
The decreasing theor y
“Towards what ultimate point is society tending by its industrial progress? When the progress ceases, in what condition are we to expect that it will leave mankind? It must always have been seen, more or less distinctly, by politi- cal economists, that the increase of wealth is not boundless: that at the end of what they term the progressive state lies the stationary state, that all progress in wealth is but a postponement of this, and that each step in advance is an ap- proach to it.’ (Mill 2004 [1848]: 688)
It is interesting here to understand again the use of words and the difference between growth and development. Development is a broader term that includes not only an increase of material welfare, but also access to education, health and culture, to a greater ideal of happiness while Growth values itself with expansion.
(...)
While people only see underdevelopment in decreasing I see a great potential in developing the decreasing, in achieving better, smarter and simpler systems, networks and objects. Achieving a wellbeing standard that can coexist with the actual framework. Using the resources in more efficient processes, going away from the broad and rough use of the techniques and develop them under the circumstances where we are. In a bettter symbiotic coexistence with our society.
Degrowth theory is based on an equitable downscaling of production and consumption that increases human well-being and enhances ecological conditions.“
But not only an established decreasing but also an understanding the decreasing as challenge to beat and break walls. We are evolutive by nature and we need to adapt, and we do. Not only in an organizational level, therefore we also need to swift the state of the Ideal consumption.
“Rather than building a concrete Real alternative society, the decrease implies unlearn, break away from a wrong lifestyle, incompatible with the planet. We need to seek new forms of socialization, economic and social organization.
Our resources and our capacities are limited; we understand easily the second one because we live it in our skin, every time we learn something. Having a full understanding that our resources are limited too is much more difficult. The idea of resource is a vague and broad idea that is spotted eventually and partially. Therefore is difficult to grasp.
Limitation bring us a hole new possibilities while creating smarter and more efficient systems, objects, etc... By designKeeping growth policies (economy of scale, ing through limitation we also understand that some sort of competitiveness and urgency) beyond the cli- a-growth in order to evolve is needed, that there’s no magic max of injury to the difficult living conditions Pandora’s box from where the winds will always blow. and the possibility of an orderly desceso. Now that than we are foreseeing how systems are crumbling The most suitable application of the princi- we feel the walls that we build because the stones are falling ples to a situation of limited resources can from the sky, but the walls were so high and endless that we make decline to be compatible with a sufficient thought that was none. level of welfare.”
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Pe pa Gisper t Aguilar
“Decr ecimiento: camino hacia la sostenibilidad”
“Sustainable degrowth goes also beyond decoupling material and energy use from growth (also referred to as ‘‘dematerialization’’), postulating that efficiency improvements alone are not sufficient and might be counterproductive. Limits and reductions in the scale of production and consumption are the key to achieving a future of low material use.”
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photographer Da vid Oliete
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Chapter 3 Building cohesion.
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Mar c Buchanan
The Social Atom
Comunity patter ns, the trend.
“There is no contradiction between individual freedom and the existence mathematical laws for the human world much like those of physics. The idea that there is rests on a deep misunderstanding.
I think that is widely understood that within our society, trends and different variants to them, define and create belonging feelings. They help us to feel part of a community, whichever you choose. Usually are imposed trends, in a commercial sense and they are generally no more than aesthetical representations of ideals, aspirations or wishes somehow. We look into them without the wish of belongThink about the end of a music concert. You ing, most of time we don’t look for them, but they reprecan begin clapping early or late, clap for a long sent us and we feel comforted by them. or short time, expressing your individual attitude. But if you make recordings of clapping - I understand that trends may endorse lots of negative conand scientists have actually done this - you find notations thanks to our massive production system and that the way the sound rises and falls tends organizational pyramid of values, but they also may have to follow a universal mathematical pattern, a positive effect. Moreover they can also be used from the much like clockwork. The pattern acts back opposite point of view, where the actual systems of values to influence and channel individual actions. So can be shifted and rewritten from the inside in order to while we’re free, we’re also strongly influenced access to a wide range of people through the camouflage in trends. Like the Trojan horse a seed of revolution in a and channeled by social patterns” walled community. “Imitation is not only a means by which we learn from others. As adults, we routinely and automatically copy each other's movements, postures, and facial expressions, and this has a variety of positive social consequences. After being mimicked, we behave more helpfully and generously toward others, from picking up others' dropped belongings to giving more money to charity. Much less is known, however, about the social effects of imitation on infants and young children.
But trends and community patterns as said before, are intrinsically bonded to systems of belonging, which are, naturally, one of the strongest feelings in a community level. Therefore to work within this framework can represent a arduous task. To fight against the actual ideal system based on monetary value systems from inside, in order to stretch the social values, represents a difficult task because it’s using the actual system to change it. We scale the world through a economical valued system, therefore for the swift to be made into a more socionatural organizational level there is the need to reinforce the community and the individual. We have to enhance both to satisfy individual goals and community ones for the people to accept this change willingly. It’s important that the change is not imposed; whenever you are imposed there are negative reactions even if the imposition is beneficial. To make a real change is needed that people individually and community accept and understand, the “W” typical questions. While accepting a concept and making it yours it’s important to feel free to adapt it and to be flexible with it.
Nonconscious interpersonal mimicry engenders liking, affiliation, empathy, and other positive social consequences. Some of these consequences have recently been shown to go beyond the dyad. In other words, interpersonal mimicry not only affects the way we feel toward our immediate interaction partner, but also affects our feelings and behavior toward Talking about trends seems like talking about worldwide other people in general.” notions of globalization, but the roots of a trend are individual motivations to individual relations. There’s no need to see only the bigger picture but also the underlined level of mimicry needed within the people. Motivation has to be enough to encourage change and we need change in order to evolve into a more a-growth (Serge Latouche concept) development. 28
Mar c Buchanan The Social Atom Demoti vators 2000 calendar
“When we see some social surprise that we can't understand a riot, a sudden wave of social protest, some crazy and seemingly senseless new fashion or the unexpected collapse of a great company and we often think that it's the baffling behaviour of the people involved, as individuals, that leads to our puzzlement. But the real reason is often quite different it is not the people as individuals that confound us, but the collective social patterns that well up among them. Even if people were completely simple automatons with all their behaviour fully and easily predictable we'd still often be confused by the amazing and surprising things that happen when you put 10 or 100 of them together.”
“When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other.”
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Mark Buchanan The Social Atom Hobbes Le viathan
The smar t egoist.
“Our ancestors lived as hunter-gatherers in small groups in the jungles and on the plains, and they often had deadly combat with others, or had to compete with others for land. It is not too hard to imagine that if two groups were competing, one being made of completely selfish individuals, and the other of ready cooperators, the latter would have a big advantage. Many of us today have altruistic feelings because such feelings have been essential to the successful history of human groups so you could say that even individual human character bears the traces of collective, pattern effects.”
“If a Covenant be made, wherein neither of the parties performe presently, but trust one another; in the condition of meer Nature, (which is a condition of warre of every man against every man,) upon any reasonable suspition, it is Voyd: But if there be a common Power to set over them both, with right and force sufficient to compell performance; it is not Voyd. For he that performerth first, has no assurance the other will perdorme after; because the bonds of words are too weak to bridle mens ambition, avarice, anger, and other Passions, without the faere of some coerceive Power; which in the condition of meer Nature, where all men are equall, and judges of the justness of their own fears cannot possibly be supposed. And therefore he performerth first, does but betray himselfe to his enemy; contrary to the Right (he can never abandon) of defending his life, and means of living.”
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First of all I’d like to clarify the difference that, in my eyes, there is in between the “egoiste” and “individualiste”. The big difference I see in between is that in the basis of the “individualiste” there is a will to go alone without the community in order to achieve goals, acting in its sole discretion and not in accordance with the collective. When using “egoisme”, I look for an idea where although the person is still the most important part of the equation of balance between benefit and costs, the collective is not set apart. Our individualistic society model has spread so quickly that we no more understand why is important to work towards the community. Seeing cooperation as an intrinsic egoist deal enroots in the ideal that we can enhance the society while getting the best of each of us and by being egoist in a smart social way we can push our surrounding to follow our endeavor. Moreover we don’t understand that everything that surrounds us is part of what Society is. Environment, as nature, people and man made structures are all part of what is society, no longer concepts of economists groups where people was the only existing part of society are accepted. Man interaction with nature and the exchange that has arisen have its origins in the same point in history as our evolution. We learned to cooperate to be able to survive in hostile environments. We evolved understanding that helping each other and helping the community was the only way to reach a certain level of personal welfare. A smart egoist would understand also that pushing himself to the best will only reattribute in the same direction. While getting the best for us, wanting the best for us as well, and therefore being egoist, an smart egoist. Competitive collective sports give us a perfect example of how an smart egoist working towards the community as well as towards himself. In an small community as in football competitive teams, organization is essential and best organized teams are usually enhancing better the individuals. These individuals learn to scarify their endeavor in order to achieve collective goals. Mastering football qualities then in a egoist perspective will achieve not only better technique, and therefore individual values, but also cooperative values within the community. What only is missing in this example is that football teams have a clear goal, win matches, while our society has lost the collective goals when pushing individualistic mentalities.
Gerald Gaus
Egoism, Altr uism, and Our Cooperati ve Social Order
“Humans are ultra-social creatures who do indeed help those who are not closely genetically related, but this helping is limited. In the evolution of human beings, there were always two opposed forces: a selection towards selfinterested behavior and one towards cooperative, altruistic, behavior.�
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Leda Cosmides and John Tooby. Gerald Gaus
Neur ocogniti ve Adaptations Designed for Social Exchange Egoism, Altr uism, and Our Cooperati ve Social Order
Social exchange and motivational endevour as natural behaviour
Social exchange as a way of what biologists Maybe my culture and my youth environment made me call reciprocal altruism, which is generated by how I am. I probably chose which aspects of the transmitted culture, rituals and traditions I was going to follow. My and preserves trust. family comes from countryside places spread in CatalunIn essence, everything changes if two people ya, all of the costumes and rituals that my family has aphave regular contact. The repetition completely propriated come from those environments. It’s also true that some of the most valued traditions in my home are changes the logic, as it makes between the two self-interpreted rituals, within the context of our possibilsides takes place a form of dialogue. ities and our motivational endeavor to keep this traditions alive is partly what makes this traditions so weaved within Each of them will continue to cooperate while the social structure of my family. the other will. Any tentative to cheat will be punished with the negative to work on the next I learned when I was a kid that to be able to eat those magnificent almonds that my granddad was harvesting I occasion. had to take care of the field, that to transform the grapes By exchanging benefits-goods, services, acts into wine meant more than a sunny day picking fruit and of help and kindness-people can make them- smashing it with your feet. That those windy cold grey selves better off than they were before. This days of winter collecting olives were totally understandable while tasting the real olive oil from the mill after a very basic fact of human social life is easy to month. Therefore there exists a motivation behind those take for granted. But when placed in zoologi- days of work, a motivation that goes beyond the value of cal perspective, social exchange stands out as a the economical growth or benefit. That also goes beyond strange phenomenon whose existence requires the material benefit, because this endeavor is also translatexplanation. ed to a ritualistic level where the cooperation became part of my system of belonging. (...) But not only the relation is within the direct bond in beThe simplest, most parsimonious explanation tween olives and oil, grapes and wine, etc. The true altruthat can account for all the results developed istic social relation spread naturally through the exchange mental, neuropsychological, and cognitive is of products and knowledge in between my two grandmothers. All started from gifts from one to another, being that social contract algorithms are a reliably politically related for a short period, created the context developing components of a universal human where social exchange could happen. While the strong sonature, designed by natural selection to pro- cial exchange prevailed, the relation in between them both duce an evolutionarily stable strategy for con- shifted into a relation of trust, of endeavor, and reciprociditional helping.” ty. Altruism was the sparkle that lights the fire. “It seems doubtful, however, that direct reciprocity can be the prime basis for the evolution of cooperation in medium-to-large groups. And in any event, while much of human altruism has strong features of reciprocity, morality in particular appears to require unrequited altruism. But unrequited altruism is the most perplexing of all forms of altruistic action.” 32
This exchange is natural now, every year there’s oil from one side and anxovi from the other, fresh time from the mountains and wine. It is obvious therefore how social exchange in this case material based and luxurious in a non-economical sense, is beneficial for both parts. But the values that they inherently exposed, where clearly enrooting in me as a third part. Moreover, thanks to the genuine relation that both had, with the endeavor required and the reciprocity, they, by simple acts of social altruism at the beginning enhanced the whole community relations by mimicry, altruistic reciprocity and social exchange.
R abbi Ari Kahn Leda Cosmides and John Tooby.
A Recipe for Happiness Neur ocogniti ve Adaptations Designed for Social Exchange
“The recipe for happiness combines all these things: Hard work to keep you honest; historical consciousness to provide context for your success; family and community to provide perspective. Healthy communication, generosity and humility will be inevitable dividends.”
“There are compelling reasons to think that such altruism is a precious resource that must be efficiently and effectively employed. It is because altruism is such a precious and relatively scarce resource for humans that morality demands of us a minimum of altruism, and almost always leaves the pursuit of self-interest up to the actor.”
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Bibliog raphy and rother references
Bruno Latour
What’s the story? Organizing as a mode of existence.
Networks, Societies, Spheres: Reflections of an Actor- network Theorist.
Waiting for Gaia. Composing the common world through arts and politics. Spheres and networks: Two ways to reinterpret globalitzation. Reassembling the Social : An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory.
Leda Cosmides and John Tooby. Neurocognitive Adaptations Designed for Social Exchange Social Exchange: The Evolutionary Design of a Neurocognitive System
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Richard Sennett
The craftsman.
(several Authors)
Pattern Language
Lars Spuybriek
The Sympathy of Things
Mark Buchanan
The Social Atom.
Jean Baudrillard
The system of objects.
Guillaume Deffuant Frédéric Amblard Gérard Weisbuch Thierry Faure (2002)
How can extremism prevail? A study based on the relative agreement interaction model Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation vol. 5, no. 4
François Schneider Giorgos Kallis Joan Martinez-Alier
Crisis or opportunity? Economic degrowth for social equity and ecological sustainability.
Gerald Gaus
Egoism, Altruism, and Our Cooperative Social Order
Fur ther references to develope Richard Senett
Toguether
Clive Hamilton
Growth fetish
Donald Norman
Living with complexity
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