BOOK TWO
I- RULES OF NECESSITY
5. NEGENTROPY
So, we are all Alphas, and interdependence will soon make us all irreplaceable,
and therefore much more equal. Great isn't it? Well, freedom has its dark
side which is anarchy... and so has equality; it is called entropy and
it is a depressing concept. As a matter of fact entropy, in its physical,
material sense, is the grand-daddy of all depressing concepts.
The drive for equality
In simple terms, it means that all things in our universe are in a great
rush to exchange energy and to become "equal". As they do, they
tend towards less organization - which is a factor of differentiation that
implies hierarchy - and towards the perfect uniformity of a random distribution.
Want an example? Take your cosy living room in winter, open the window and
let the temperatures, inside and outside, tend towards a random distribution
of energy. The great outside will become a little warmer - though not noticeably
so - while your living room, of course, will cease to be cosy.
Some day, all the stars in our Universe will have exchanged their energy
with the Great Void; they will be cold, while the Great Void will not be
noticeably warmer... Scientists call this phenomenon "heat death",
and it is certainly death in its most absolute sense. When things are perfectly
equal, there is simply no flow, and any kind of order slowly but surely
disappears.
There is only one thing in the cosmos that seems not to obey the Law of
Entropy: life. Life is the still unexplained phenomenon that shows
"negentropy", a tendency for things to become more structured,
more organized, and for increasing complementarity to develop amongst the
different parts of an organic whole. So, if you do not like the concept
of entropy, do not commit suicide: the best you can do to fight entropy
is to remain alive. Being alive though, the chances are that you will not
try to be average, but to be better, to have the upper hand, and to achieve
something as close as possible to a God-like relation with the universe.
People do not want to be "equal"; they are all in favor of negentropy.
Which, to say the least, may create frictions. Human beings have the same
basic needs for the same scarce commodities and, in the beginning, had to
fight tooth and nail to satisfy their needs, attain their goals, be different
and better than "average". Primitive societies were "unidimensional"
and, complementarity notwithstanding, being "different" then meant
being higher up, or lower down, in the one and only available pecking order:
the order that measured the chances for survival. It made for quite a fight
in the bushes amongst the berry-pickers.
Even when team-work proved more efficient than individual efforts and people
had to learn primitive interdependence the hard way, the fight went on:
it simply took the form of a continuous jockeying for position within the
new born societies. Days of basic needs are days of injustice, when all
those who are not at the very top swear to God that they want nothing more
than equality, but "equality" meaning, for every-one, having the
same privileges enjoyed by whoever stands immediately above him in the hierarchy.
The drive for equality met with unequal success but was a great factor of
progress, since nobody seriously wanted to be equal anyway, just to push
ahead. What everyone really wanted was to have God or at least the State
on his side or, as a very poor second choice, to be granted fairness and
a chance to compete. There has been lots of talk about equality, but nobody
ever came close.
Enough of depressing concepts, though, here comes a ray of sunshine. As
long as the competition is for basic commodities and survival, it is the
original zero-sum game; once basic needs are satisfied, though people realize
that their higher goals diverge. Everyone still strives to make it to the
"top" but everyone may have his own idea about what the top means.
When we covet different preys, we may go hunting together without qualms
and help each others attain our respective goals. A level of cooperation
that had not been possible in a "one-track minded" primitive society,
in which everyone had all the reasons in the world to think only about food
and basics, became distinctly possible in a "wealthy" society
that could satisfy everyone's basic needs.
When the standards of living rise above mere survival, life in society becomes
more amenable, because everyone who is "rich" and has the upper
hand in something may also be "poor" in something else, so everyone
may be simultaneously on the giving or receiving end of a multitude of deals.
Society may become accepted as the "clearing house" where people
exchange thoughts, feelings, goods and services, and where compensatory
inequalities come to terms. Everyone will compensate for his weaknesses
with his strength, achieve his own "top" and feel equal. This
is when "equality", in a sense, becomes reasonable. Equality in
the sense that each may then believe his own goal to be as good or better
than his neighbor's, and have faith that, on his own individual track, he
is as successful and as close to the top as anyone else.
The only way for everybody to be equal is for everybody to be different
and to feel equal... which is possible only when we move above the
level at which basic needs are satisfied. The more prosperous a society,
the more its members can afford to diverge as to their objectives, to feel
"different yet equal", and to develop complementarity,
which is also a rule of necessity: the answer to the increasing complexity
of the system. Complementarity is built on self-esteem and is a prerequisite
for honest solidarity through differentiation.
The organic society
Complementarity requires that we listen to the drive in each of us, towards
differentiation, and that we accept also others to be different. Solidarity
is a problem, but it is not hard to sell differentiation: most people love
to be different. They love it! Differentiation is not hard to sell, simply
hard to live with. It is not so easy to deal with various pecking orders
and to forge together, into one single society, people who have different
goals and interests as it is to handle people who are distributed along
a single chain of command. It is easier to maintain the structure of a "one-track
minded" society, just as it takes less of a brain to keep alive an
earthworm than a complex vertebrate. Differentiation, however, leads to
complementarity..., and complex vertebrates are more interesting.
What will have people complement each other - but still follow their own
way - will generate momentum and make a society more alive and interesting
... if interdependence is strong enough to convince them to remain a society
and solidarity strong enough to have them pay joyfully the necessary price.
To accept to cooperate together as an organic whole, while they each run
after their own personal objectives, people must feel really equal in their
endeavors, feel interdependence in the marrow of their bones and practice
solidarity. Solidarity and differentiation come together and they must be
met as one challenge by a Creative Society.
Wealth brings up the level of our needs and is conducive to differentiation.
Nevertheless, differentiation in early industrial society did not come immediately
in the wake of affluence. To the contrary, we remained quite monolithic
in our goals, because "money" simply replaced "food"
as the universal exchanger and society remained almost as "one-track
minded", in the midst of affluence, as it had been when survival was
a daily concern. Money was so ubiquitous and pervasive, that complementary
strengths and weaknesses were not compensated in barter; each was priced,
and the result of unequal transaction was wealth. It created the sweet illusion
that money was always the tool, and that money could give the upper hand
in every deal.
We remained homogeneous in our aspirations as a society, because money did
a great job of pushing aside all alternatives for horizontal differentiation;
whatever the game one wanted to play, first base, it seemed, was always
money. Meanwhile, industrialization had the equalizing effect of machines
steal away the substance of vertical differentiation also, even along the
"get rich" track which became the last remaining avenue for ambition.
Now, it's a new game, because Helots bring to an end the "one-track
minded" society concerned mainly with money and material welfare. Not
because there is less desire for material welfare, but because there is
simply too much of everything money can buy - and too much money to begin
with - for this specific wish to command our exclusive attention anymore.
We are heading for differentiation.
This differentiation is already with us. In terms of ways of life, it began
as various weird clothes for youth in the Sixties. It is not unusual
for youth to dress "weird", by adults' standards; what was new
was the variety among traditionally monolithic non-conformist youths. Then
it became various more discreet - but still unusual - mores and habits
for maturing young adults. Now, it is the thought patterns of the new generation
that seem to lead, not to an opposite vision of the world, like in the Sixties,
but to a myriad of conflicting and unrelated views that do not converge
towards goals that we - or even they as a group - may comprehend.
The problem is not really whether their goals - for they are goals, however
nebulous they may appear - are clear to us or compatible with our goals,
but whether they are mutually compatible with one another and can coexist
in tomorrow's society. Alphas will diverge and begin to go after their own
goals; this we cannot prevent. We may, however, react in two ways to the
challenge of differentiation.
We can accept the type of exchanges that characterizes the differentiated
parts of an organic whole, renounce the Utopia of equality along any specific
"one-track" system, and actively support increased differentiation.
To do it, we must concentrate on playing the rules of human nature and necessity,
create structures that elicit more competitiveness, and place the survival
of the whole firmly and unavoidably on the path of the will to live and
grow of an effective majority of its parts. This is how a living body gets
by.
Or we may try to make all Alphas equal along a single track (whether it
is wealth, power, prestige or sanctity is rather immaterial), in which case
equality along this unique dimension will have to mean sameness, and our
society will die, as surely as a man whose heart would be made "equal"
with his spleen or liver..., after which the parts will diverge nonetheless,
when the whole slowly disintegrates.
The leisure gambit will allow entrepreneurship to bloom, and horizontal
differentiation will grow to match the increasing complexity of means and
objectives in a creative society. We will see complementarity in people's
ways to be, to act and to relate; this will come naturally. Vertical differentiation,
though, is harder to swallow. Shall we rise to the challenge and be satisfied
to let our basic equality as human beings be expressed in the fact that
all Alphas have equal rights and are irreplaceable, welcoming back, as a
motive for action, the very human drive to be different, to achieve, to
surpass and be more? Negentropy... or entropy?
A matter of privilege
We have been conditioned to feel that it is somewhat of an injustice that
some might succeed or gain more than others. Yet, it is not only unrealistic
to hope for efforts and dedication without some incentive, but unfair to
treat the same those who contribute to the common welfare as those who don't.
The new society must be built on the assumption that there is not only freedom
to work and compete, but freedom also to succeed and to enjoy the fruit
of one's efforts.
If you believe that this means more money for the rich, you have missed
the point somewhere; everyone should have the right to make all the money
he can, of course, but this will not be the answer. Money-wise, in terms
of real welfare, we have been for sometime yet on the path to equality and
machines would not let it be otherwise, even if we desperately wanted to
change this trend. Even as a tool for power, money will lose importance.
As a basis for discrimination, wealth, anyway, has picked up quite recently
and never quite made it. It is mainly in the U.S., where we decided democratically
that money should be "it"; a decision not unchallenged, even here,
even to-day, in scores of artistic, intellectual and spiritual subgroups...
and of course by all those for whom prejudice for race or creed is stronger
than any rational criteria. Elsewhere, shabby gentility still has its proud
followers, and noblesse oblige is also good for a lot of mileage
in most of the world. Money is not everything for everybody.
It will mean even less in a society of affluence, most of all in an affluent
creative society. We will need something else and, although it is the type
of differentiation that most opposes our ingrained habits, it is through
privileges that vertical differentiation will manifest itself and
that incentive will be provided in a creative society.
A creative society will discriminate in favor of its achievers, and it is
recognition - and the power and prestige that will come with recognition
- which will be the new "discriminants". People need recognition
and prestige, and pink limousines may not always convey exactly the proper
message. Peerage is not about to appear in America (it would not fit the
image) but it is a sure thing that, in a creative society which takes its
distance with money, something will appear that can be worn on the lapel
to prove that one is better than his neighbor.
We will grant privileges, and we will invent something more permanent, personal
and prestigious than money for motivation. We will go out of our way to
make some people more equal than others. Unthinkable in America? Why a Congressional
Medal of Honor? What use is the "Ph.D." on your business card?
Why "Members Only" on private clubs? Why gold and platinum credit
cards? Privileges to discriminate... Its on the way....
As money will fade out as the symbol of power, it will be important, however,
for a smooth transition, to keep wealth as one of the discriminants
for prestige, probably together with education, celebrity, and public service.
Maybe those who contribute lofty amounts in taxes would be gratified, even
now, to receive an Honorary Ph.D. in Financial Management... Who knows what
we will invent? A sure thing, though, is that positive discrimination will
come, and it will eventually carry more than prestige, it will carry power.
It will, because complementarity is a rule of necessity and that we will
encourage differentiation, granting honors, privileges, inequality enough
to motivate the needed drive towards complementarity. We will grant everyone
the freedom to be all that he can be and to be ostentatious about it if
he likes... and we will link very concrete manifestations of social power
to achievement. Negentropy will prevail.
If we are to make sure, however, that differentiation shall take place only
at the level where complementarity is required, that is above the level
of the common basic needs for which a Creative Society should provide -
a level that will raise steadily with affluence - we will have also to let
the State do for everybody what only the State can do in an interdependent
society. We will want to extend a net below the trapeze act, and the Individual
will pass a new contract with Society represented by the State.
We will strike a new deal with the Octopus.