Social Systems and the membranes of our cells
For the last 8 years I have been informally investigating some of the underlying organizational principles of the human body and using some of those “truths” to inform my consulting work within a business environment. Though I have been mostly a lurker on the economics forum I mentioned in a previous post (and here is to show that lurker learning is one of the value propositions of an online forum) I have been greatly inspired by the dialogue to formalize and systematize this personal exploration. Last week I reached out to a former medical school colleague of mine (whom I used to compete vigorously with mind you) and we have begun meeting on a regular basis to discuss elements of biology, physiology, embryology, etc and to attempt to use some of these principles to help us understand the dynamics of our societal systems much like a physician would use his knowledge of these fields to understand the state of a patient. We are capturing our musings on what is, for the time being, a private wiki. I wanted to share a few minutes of the conversation we had this last week while we were discussing the functioning of the cell.
As I’m sure all of you are aware, the most commonly held view of the functioning of the cell is that the nucleus, floating within a nuclear membrane within the cytoplasmic matrix full of marvelous cellular machinery, operates much like a military HQ base wherein DNA (or some other mysterious force) will issue commands and, within the confines of this relatively isolated, buffered and protected environment, will determine the course of the future of the cell (i.e. what proteins are produced, how fast the cell grows, etc). Over the course of the last few years there has been an increasingly compelling body of evidence that seems to be hinting at what both of us had felt for a long time…that much of the executive functioning of the cell happens not at the level of the nucleus, but rather at the periphery and in the membrane of the cell. Furthermore, that the ability for the membrane to become conscious of the reality of its environment (through the production of channels, receptors, etc.) is directly proportional to its ability to survive within a changing environment. That is to say, that if the environment outside the cell changes, the nucleus won’t necessarily know. Rather it is to the extent that the membrane has gained awareness of the change in environment that it is able to issue, through cascading chains of protein modification and such, commands to the nucleus to produce the structural changes necessary for progress and survival. If, indeed, many of the executive functions of the cell are held at the periphery and not, as was once thought, at the core, this could have profound implications on the way we structure organizations and systems.
I wonder if there is a parallel in the membranes of our societal systems such that they must, as a function of their very purpose, become conscious of the changes outside its internal environment. Furthermore, I wonder if somehow these channels and receptors that we find in the membrane are essential elements of any emergent system such that the executive functions are structurally bound to the periphery and that the goal of such periphery is to continuously increase its consciousness of its environment through active and continuous transformation (there is a fascinating hypothetical link here to fractal geometric forms that I will spare us all but might also be worth considering when thinking of maximizing the area surface of the membrane to its environment). I wonder if one of the lenses through which we can view our current dilemma is that we have insulated the executive functioning and decision-making of our current systems to such an extent that we are simply no longer aware of a radical shift that has happened in the environment and as such our internal systems are failing. We are continuing to produce the machinery that allowed us to survive within an external environment of yesteryear and that because we created our membrane as a definitive and permanent form, its purpose was never to gain awareness nor to allow for continuous progress and change but rather more of a monument to our perceived brilliance. As such our societal membrane has never developed the necessary channels and receptors to become aware of change which, of course, precludes adaption.
In our conversation last week we also discussed the difference between homeostatasis and homeorhesis. Homeostasis, as you know, is maintaining something at a desired balance. Homeorhesis refers to the process of achieving a staged succession of balances in a trajectory of development, with each successive stage of balance at a higher level of complexity and therefore greater viability and adequacy. It is perhaps a useful concept from human development which can be used to describe other stages in the pattern of process leading to higher levels of development, especially when considering the notion of transitional forms of societal structure and development that was brought up earlier.
Anyways…a few thoughts for what its worth.
April 22nd, 2009 at 2:02 pm
Interesting. Would you say then that the growth comes from the customer since they would be half of the boarder between your company and the outside world? And would that then carry to the product since it would have to be in direct relation to the need of the customer for that moment in time? If so, wouldn’t the product have to focus on the true needs of the end user and not the whims of market forces and the gentle manipulation of the marketers and advertiser?
I am no expert when it comes to cells or anything else for this mater but in the case of the cell it interacts with its environment to determine its actions. Should organizations be that outward focused? And are out current business models flexible to deal with the complexities of such interactions?
My guess is that we don’t have that level of complexity built in and this is the cause for the feudalistic intellectual property laws. But any system which is interested in its own form and wellbeing over that of the other forms which coexist in its environment could not live in the ecosystem. Just like a cell that does not cooperate with the rest.
This calls for a higher level of complexity in our interactions. But I would argue that trustworthiness would be essential for a higher level of complexity. One in which every group is sincerely attempting to advance the other. As a customer, I want your company to succeed and as a company, I want my customer to be in a more advantageous position.
Just some random thoughts from the right minded.
ae
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April 23rd, 2009 at 4:26 pm
Below I am pasting a follow-up post by Michael Karlberg which I am reproducing here with his permission.
“I believe that the implications for economic activity are also profound. One thing that should be learned from the current global economic crisis is that huge, multi-national, centrally managed businesses and financial institutions are the ones that are generally failing around the world, while smaller locally owned and operated business and financial institutions (that are closer to the membrane, among other things) are fairing much better. National Banks are failing but local credit unions are doing fine. Many large auto companies and manufacturing industries and national retail chains are failing, but many small and mid-sized enterprises that are closer to the ground are doing much better.
The problem as I see it, in our economic sphere, is that countries like the US have adopted economic policies that encourage the growth of huge centrally managed mega-corporations and that discourage smaller-scale economic activity. This is true even in the agricultural sector, where a century of enormous public subsidies in the US (many billions of dollars for many decades) have supported the development of huge agro-businesses that employ integrated systems of highly mechanized, chemically intensive, genetic-engineering based industrial processes. These systems are derived from publicly-subsidized research and development dollars. They respond to direct crop subsidies and protectionist trade policies. And they have been liquidating ecological capital across the country through massive soil erosion, pollution and depletion of water sources, habitat destruction and species extinctions, and so forth.
In the process, small-scale, community-based, environmentally sustainable forms of agriculture, that create meaningful and empowering jobs for people, and where the learning and adaptation and generation of knowledge occurs “at the membrane”, have been completely decimated across the country (and around much of the world). Moreover, this situation has become so normalized that most people today simply assume that small-scale ecologically sustainable organic agriculture is “more expensive” and “less efficient” than the agro-industrial model.
What this normalization obscures, however, is that the primary reason the agro-industrial model APPEARS to be more efficient and less expensive is because it has benefited from a century of massively subsidized R&D money that privileged certain technologies and business practices, combined with direct subsidies and trade policies that further privilege those technologies and business practices, combined with governments that turn a blind eye while agro-industries engaged in the short-term liquidation of the earth’s ecological capital.
If those same billions of dollars of R&D money had been spent on developing ecologically-sound small-scale agricultural technologies and business practices rooted in the localized generation of both knowledge and jobs, and if equivalent subsidies and trade policies had been directed toward those job-generating and environmentally friendly agricultural practices, then the reverse would likely be the case: organic agriculture might be cheaper than the agro-industrial model. It would undoubtedly be cheaper when one factors in the environmental externalities.
As these current economic arrangements show, getting the relationship right between the “nucleus” (i.e., governing institutions and policies) and the “membrane” (localized production, innovation and adaptation) is essential. Otherwise, it is exceedingly difficult for people and small organizations at the membrane to function in the ways described in Todd’s post.
This is not to suggest that there is no place in the world for large organizations, or no place for international trade. It is simply to suggest that, as a result of prevailing systems of governance and the market distortions/corruptions that have been permitted/encouraged under their watch, the balance appears to be way out of whack.”
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JG Reply:
August 18th, 2009 at 1:22 pm
Great response by Karlberg. I agree with the statement “getting the relationship right between the “nucleus” (i.e., governing institutions and policies) and the “membrane” (localized production, innovation and adaptation) is essential.” If you look at more (gasp) Socialist countries such as France or Germany you can see that they have weathered the economic crisis better than the US and are quicker to recovery. One could argue that this is due to the closer relationship between the nucleus and membrane in these countries (ie, focusing less on rapid growth of very large corporations or single sectors of the economy and more on relative economic equality across the population). This is not to hold up the French or German models as ideal economic systems. They clearly have both economic and spiritual shortcomings. However, I think in these cases having a nucleus more closely connected to the periphery has created a level of resilience not seen in more disconnected economies.
Todd, your thoughts on homeorhesis bring to mind the work of James Kay at the University of Waterloo on self-organizing holarchic open systems (SOHO Systems). I’m not sure if you are familiar with his work relating to ecosystems and thermodynamics, but it’s really fascinating. Ecosystems really work in a state of non-equilibrium; they exist in a series of quasi-steady states away from equilibrium. They maintain these steady states by exporting their entropy (material and energy “disorder” or waste) to other holarchic (like hierarchic but with reciprocal power realationships, not the “top down” aspect of traditional hierarcy) levels. These levels span scale (watershed -> basin) and type (watershed -> landscape). At one of these quasi-steady states, the ecosystem is complex and resistant to change and gets more and more resistant as it approaches equilibrium. One could argue that ecosystems progress from steady-state to steady-state, increasing in complexity (homeorhesis). However, if you exhibit a strong enough force on one of these steady states (ie introduce or remove significant matter or energy) you can cause collapse of the complex state.
I think similarities can be drawn to social and economic systems. An economy, for instance, needs to operate at a position somewhat removed from equilibrium, since at equilibrium profits equal zero in a perfectly capitalist system. If we try to pull an economic system away from it’s steady state, say through concentrating energy and matter (power and capital) at nucleii, then the system will resist, often chaotically and possibly lead to a collapse to a lower level of complexity.
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April 25th, 2009 at 9:55 pm
really cool ideas todd! makes my mind go off in a million directions… all curious and positive, but then there’s this part of me that wonders, how do we formalize such thoughts? these are all analogies that make a lot of intuitive sense… and of course exploring them is the first (important and necessary) step to doing that, but what would the next steps be, and how can we prepare for formalizing these cool ideas!
very cool stuff though
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admin Reply:
May 26th, 2009 at 2:35 am
Hi Jessy,
Your question helped inspire me to write another entry http://www.toddero.com/?p=86
I think in general the value of exploring reality (like the membranes of our cells) is to help inform ourselves of the structure of reality. The more aligned our own understanding is with reality, then it seems that our thinking about the practical implementation and solution to any dilemma will be far more likely to produce desirable results.
As to the practical implementation of this particular piece of reality…I was hoping you could help me with that!!
But I think one implementation which I brought up in the post I mentioned is that somehow we structure organizations to actively seek a change in our understanding and then to have a system which translates that understanding into change. For example…some sort of annual review where the purpose of the organization is revisited perhaps? You tell me. Thx!!
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May 12th, 2009 at 11:55 am
Dr Karl Berg’s comments are amazing. They helped me really understand the analogy. While it’s easy to say that society is a single organism, to really see it that way, to see the various organizations, agencies, governments, businesses, and industries as a single unified whole, is such a drastic change from the way we are used to thinking. I will need to practice it more.
I think that what you both talking about, and please correct me if I am wrong, is not so much a favoring of the external over the internal, the membrane over the nucleus, but rather favoring them more equitably, recognizing that both have different, essential roles to play.
Todd, this reminds me of another example. The other day I was talking to your sister about the internal and external powers of man, as described by Abdu’l-Baha. The internal faculties of imagination, comprehension, thought, memory, and the common transmittal faculty, and the external senses which we share with the animal kingdom: http://reference.bahai.org/en/t/ab/SAQ/saq-56.html We were confused because the roles assigned to these faculties by Abdu’l-Baha differs from the common use of their terms. Imagination for example translates the raw data from the senses into images, which are then transmitted to the comprehension. Abdu’l-Baha was describing a process in which information comes from the external and is refined as it moves through each of the internal faculties. Often the process of thought I hear espoused is one that moves in only in the internal: we generate thoughts from our memory, go about comprehending them, imagining with them, and then putting the whole thing back into our memories. This is the exact opposite direction described by Abdu’l-Baha.
I’m not saying that either direction is preferable, but rather that there must be constant communication, refinement of process, etc in keeping with the roles and responsibilities on the various participants in the system, that is to say the internal and external realities must needs affect each other. Furthermore, because we live in a state where the central is strengthened and the peripheral largely ignored, the stronger participant, the central has the responsibility of recognizing and reinforcing the role of peripheral such that a better balance is achieved.
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