Institutional Consciousness and the Evolution of Society
Social interactions have evolved from personal habits and family traditions to a complex array of national and global-level social institutions like religions, states, banks, and corporations. As with individual human beings, social institutions can be focused and productive, or dysfunctional, abused, and misused. To serve society as a whole, the institutional consciousness that guides institutional action needs to be focused on the institutional purpose and limited on its goals. Like the organs of a human body, they need to work together for the health of society. Institutional Value Transmission (IVT) is an emerging field of study related to institutional consciousness.1See, Don Trubshaw, “Institutional Resilience and Ecological Threats as Factors in Societal Peace and Conflict,” International Journal on World Peace, Vol. XXXVIII, No. 4 (December 2021), pp. 11-37.
The Wilber AQAL Model
In A Theory of Everything,2Ken Wilber, A Theory of Everything, An Integral Vision for Business, Politics, Science, and Spirituality (Boston: Shambhala, 2001) Ken Wilber outlined the evolution of the consciousness of individuals and society in his All Quadrant, All Level (AQAL) model. It captures the broad wholeness of human reality, with consciousness and activities at both the individual and collective aspects of human life.
Wilber’s diagram contains four quadrants, with the upper two quadrants related to individuals and the lower two quadrants related to collectives. The left two quadrants describe consciousness, values, and ideas, while the right two quadrants refer to structures and actions. Traditional religions, spirituality, and psychology have focused on the relationship of individual consciousness (Upper Left Quadrant) to functionality (Upper Right Quadrant). Rules such as the Ten Commandments have evolved to guide and limit individual behavior.
The study of social consciousness and institutions is a more recent phenomenon. Under the reign of kings and emperors, social consciousness remained an extension of the worldview of those with power. The separation of Church and State was the first development toward autonomous institutions in an integral society. Social consciousness and governance were separated into two spheres, with the papacy representing the social value system (LL quadrant) and the emperors charged with the realization of those values in society (LR quadrant). The Renaissance, the Protestant Reformation, independent cities, and widespread literacy, following the invention of the printing press, enabled the development of social consciousness in the populace. This emboldened individuals to challenge authorities, and develop new social institutions. Individuals created banks, private enterprises, trade, discovered new inventions, and developed modern forms of philosophy, science, and spiritual movements.
The Evolution of Levels of Society
Wilber’s four quadrants exist at all levels and stages of social development. The historical evolution of society has developed levels of society, expanding from tribes to empires, states, modern value communities, and integral commons. This has been accompanied by expanded levels of individual and social consciousness and activity. These evolving levels are diagrammed as concentric circles in which each level, or holon, has complementary evolution in each quadrant. This Wilberian system, called All Quadrants, All Levels (AQAL), has been diagrammed by Brad Reynolds as follows:
While the AQAL diagram shows the level of complexity through successive holons radiating outwards from the intersection of the x and y axes, it does not capture the evolution of social institutions in a graphic manner. There is only a general movement from agrarian to industrial and information technologies, but not the social institutions that have arisen to support these activities. These social institutions can further be located in one of three social spheres: culture, economy, and governance.
Diagramming the Evolution of Social Instutions
Wilber’s broad theory of everything did not diagram an integral arrangement of specific social institutions in society. This can be accomplished by adding the z-axis to his two-dimensional diagram, making it three-dimensional. The z-axis can display the social institutions that make up the evolving complexity of human society.
The z-axis on the above diagram shows the evolution of the lower two quadrants: collective or social life.3© Gordon L. Anderson, developed while Adjunct Professor, CIIS, 2010 There are another two wings related to the upper two quadrants, individual consciousness and action, but that is not the focus of this article. In this diagram, institutions are divided into three social spheres that are rooted in different principles. Cultural institutions include knowledge, science, information, education, tradition, and belief. Economic institutions relate to the production and trade of goods and services. Political institutions, perhaps better-labeled institutions of governance, secure and regulate, through power and law, the well-being and functioning of the other spheres, which are voluntary but engender conflict, e.g. over resources and plans. We can call this model AQALAS, for all quadrants, all levels, and all spheres.
In the cultural sphere, we have the evolution of social institutions like religion, art, writing, books, schools, science, universities, movies, television programs, and internet blogs. In the economic sphere, we move from theft and hunting to barter, agriculture, money, farming, banking, industrial production, corporations, and stock markets. In the governance sphere, we have rules, laws, militaries, courts, legislative bodies, and government agencies. Institutions in all spheres exist at different levels contemporaneously and are not simply moving to higher levels through history. For example, the rise of state institutions does not necessarily replace city or county-level institutions. Here I want to emphasize the principle of subsidiarity, in which the greatest responsibility should be taken at the lowest possible level for maximum human happiness and freedom.4See: Individual Sovereignty Should Replace State Sovereignty{/mfn]
Institutional Consciousness and Value Transmission
Wilber diagrammed the formation of “value communities” after the emergence of the state. These communities could refer to many types of human associations and institutions: some large, some small, some general, and some specific in nature. I would like to link this idea of value communities to the emerging field of Institutional Value Transmission (IVT) being developed by Don Trubshaw and others.4Don Trubshaw, “Institutional Resilience and Ecological Threats as Factors in Societal Peace and Conflict,” International Journal on World Peace, Vol. XXXVIII, No. 4 (December 2021), pp. 11-37. IVT explains that for social institutions to be functional and resilient, they need to develop and transmit a set of values appropriate to that institution. The term corporate culture captures some of this idea, but many corporate cultures are far from ideal. For a corporation or any other social institution to be efficient and resilient, its institutional value system should derive from its institutional purpose.
Further, IVT should exclude other purposes that would sidetrack or hijack the institution much as a virus would infect or a slavemaster exploit an individual human. For example, a legislature should pass laws related to the security of the state and its ability to referee civil and economic disputes. It should not use state power to exploit citizens, expropriate property, or engage in businesses that displace private enterprises.5The Role of Government is a Referee, Not a Player, in Economics and Culture Similarly, a bank created for the purpose of borrowing and lending from customers, should not gamble with the customer’s money and jeopardize its business.6Gordon L. Anderson, “Institutional Resilience and Peace,” International Journal on World Peace, Vol. XVIII, No. 4, Dec. 2021, pp. 3-4, especially paragraphs 6-8.
In an advanced complex society, social institutions should contribute to the functioning of the whole of society, and not organize, like criminal gangs, to plunder and exploit society. Thus the governance sphere of society serves as a referee and has as one of its missions the policing of social institutions, allowing those pursuing the betterment of all citizens to flourish, while arresting and removing licensure from institutions aimed at theft, human trafficking, or other activities that harm citizens. Institutional culture and value transmission need to include sets of rules like the Ten Commandments that function at the institutional level. These could include the prevention of conflicts of interest, checks and balances, and other activities that harm the efficient and productive operation of the institution in meeting its goals.
Finally, it should be stated that every social institution consists of its members and its experts. In a corporation, the expert might be the department head, and the employees the members. In a government, elected officials should be experts in governance while the citizens who trust they will serve them are the voters. The institutional culture and values should be more fully embodied by the leaders, who should have more experience and skill in directing the institution for its purpose. Trubshaw argues that the most serious threats to an institution come from (1) having accomplished or outlived its mission when it should be dissolved, (2) manias of egotistical leaders, unionized members, or other selfish distractions from within, or (3) ideological capture that redirects institutional resources towards a different purpose, causing the fulfillment of the original purpose, for which the institution exists, to fail.
Conclusion
Social institutions are the organs of complex modern societies. An integral society, like the human body, has organs that serve the whole, and individuals, like the cells, can find value in serving the goals of an institution and in turn receive the support necessary for the pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness. Societal peace depends on efficient and resilient social institutions that remain focused on their mission, able to ward off viruses from within and hijacking from without.
Abuse of social institutions is one of the primary reasons for social dysfunction and lack of peace is a plethora of social institutions that (1) attempt to exceed their mission and displace other institutions, (2) individuals redirecting the resources of their social institutions for personal gain, (3) takeover by other institutions that drain their wealth and abandon their mission, and (4) ideological capture that attempt to redirect their resources to create a different society. These problems are rampant in corporate mergers and acquisitions, government serving moneyed interests rather than citizens, ideological capture of schools and universities, groups and political parties capturing states, and states fighting one another.
The All Quadrant, All Level, All Sphere (AQALAS) diagrams above provide an integral mapping of social institutions. Institutional Value Transmission through institutional culture and consciousness should guide to harmonious cooperation of the elites and the members of each social institution in the production of its goals. Elites must have competency in directing the institutional purpose, and not serve as political appointees or parent company corporate raiders aimed at using it to serve special interests. Many laws that govern and regulate institutions need to be changed. For example, the appointment of Supreme Court justices by partisan presidents would be better replaced by states submitting qualified candidates and selection by lottery.7In this example, two problems emerge. First, if a Supreme Court Justice is supposed to be neutral, but selected by a partisan president, for a partisan purpose, the mission of the court will be sidetracked. Second, since the Federal government should serve the states, a selection from among state nominees will serve this purpose. When the Supreme Court is beholden to the Federal government, it will favor federal power over state interests and fail to serve as a referee. Such changes are not easy to make immediately, but a broad understanding of integral society will shine a light on the direction we can move. Then when institutional policies are examined, and opportunities for change arise, they can be made according to the values that lie at the foundation of that particular social institution.
Comments
Institutional Consciousness and the Evolution of Society — No Comments
HTML tags allowed in your comment: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>