Socialising
Animals reach consensus pretty quickly, we may look at some of their behaviour and think that humans are much more civilised. For sure we are able to work in much larger groups and invest in some wondrous infrastructure with long lasting benefits.
Despite our ability to organise into large groups with expert skills and knowledge, we still use brute force, gang up on weaker members of our own and other "tribes”. Even more damaging though is the often unconscious habit of misrepresenting, hiding or obfuscating the evidence required for group decisions. All of these behaviours damage people and move us further towards defensiveness, making it much harder to cooperate.
Obviously, animals do not coordinate to change the creation and allocation of resources to the degree that humans do. The dynamics under-pinning our group behaviour are even more impactful on our habitats than our technologies and the wonderful tools we make.
Before we can agree to join forces and delay our own plans, to work on projects with far reaching consequences, we must first reach consensus. We either passionately apply ourselves or we are bought, usually a combination of the two.
Trust in experts
One of the reasons that the Portuguese Man o War, (jellyfish that is not a fish), is such an effective colony of organisms, (if its species could write it would have a 500 million year old resume) is that the parts that make up its whole, are so highly specialised. They can do this because they can completely rely on the other parts to supply what they need and play their roles optimally. In a human organisation we would call this trust, trust is built on experience and practiced until cause and effect flow seamlessly and appropriately. Automatically, yet not without awareness.
Governing Specialists
So we can see that socialising is a way to reach consensus not only on what we are going to do, but also on who can best be trusted to do what. Competition among experts is healthy because it demonstrates expertise and allows us to role play and practice working in teams and on projects.
Even though we are individuals with our own skills, talents, and high levels of personal choice and preference we look to each other continuously for guidance and feedback on our own actions. We need to trust and be trusted and the signals we give and receive need to be congruent with the roles we have taken.
Socialising is much more than just relaxing and feeling good, it is how value is determined. Much of it happens at the level of the sub conscious, we notice the emotions even if we do not notice exactly what is driving them.
Emotion as language
Most of us know we are moved by emotion, and justify those actions with reason. Does this sound like a strange way for an intelligent creature to behave? Take a look around, not in the up market high end shopping malls. Look downtown, in the post industrial slums, where the economic storm has been and gone, where we have given up even trying to preserve not only the ecology but the failed manufacturing, harvesting or extracting projects that once were so important.
What failed here, was it the specialists or the governance? Perhaps it is the way we socialise that selects which people and which projects receive energy and attention? Is it something in the emotions that are confounding our reasoning?
In the part 4 we will delve more deeply into how emotions effect the quality and direction of our focus, and how collectively that moves our markets and shapes our infrastructure.
Thank you for reading,
=8-P
Ecology to Economics Series
Part 1 - Jelly Brains
Part 2 - Colonies