Scope of Social Design

The particular goal of the social design to be investigated in these pages is to better enable a large ensemble of people to accomplish astounding creative achievements during which the experience of each individual is positive. This is a rather lofty goal, and I have indeed been accused of trying to create a Utopian society. Looking at my first sentence it is hard for me to reject that accusation on the basis of my goal. However, I do reject that statement based on the effect that statement has, which is almost passive-aggressive in impact—making one subconsciously conclude that the goal I have stated is not achievable. To counter that directly, I will modify the phrasing of the goal with no meaningful change to it, in the following restatement:

Enable a large ensemble of people to accomplish creative achievements as astounding as possible during which each individual’s experience is as positive as possible.

In revising the statement in this way, it clearly refers only to what is possible, hence achievable.

More importantly, the intent at present is not to produce such a design for society, but to investigate, as fully as I am able, all the aspects that must be taken into serious consideration in attempting to produce such a design. The scope of what is to be considered in this investigation remains ambiguous at the present, hence some analysis is needed to determine that scope itself—how do we know when sufficient investigation has been done to determine all important aspects? This question is one of methodology and exposes a larger set of methodological questions that may be encompassed in the following: What methodology shall be employed in performing the investigation upon which we wish to embark?

Over the larger course of our investigation, we shall keep in mind this overarching question of methodology, and take note of techniques used in any given instance that may provide the basis for an investigative approach to be added to our methodological toolkit. One such instance appears above in the generation of those two questions—that of generalizing a given question into a class of question. Perhaps this will be a useful method to apply in the future, and possibly the more general questions thus proposed may also be ones to keep in mind as the investigation proceeds.

Returning to the initial question of how to determine when the investigation is complete, first we note that completion involves “all” of something, making it appear that completion of the investigation will involve having investigated everything. While this is intractable, we will attempt to do the best we can. At any given point in the investigation, not only will there be some things not investigated, there will be some things overlooked—that have not occurred to us as needing investigation. This itself indicates that we cannot clearly define what it means to have completed the investigation up front. We will need a methodology to evaluate whether to consider the investigation as sufficiently complete at any given point along the way.

Whatever that methodology ends up being, the information it can use for evaluation are:

1. The items already investigated along with the results of their investigation,
2. The items identified as not needing deeper investigation,
3. The existence of unknown items.

The forgoing list arises from categorization of items that may be subject to investigation, first into the categories of those known vs. those unknown, and subsequent division of those known (as nothing further may be considered concerning those unknown) into those that cannot have a significant impact on the goals of the social design, hence do not need further investigation, vs. those requiring investigation. Note that this implies the methodology deciding whether the investigation is sufficiently complete need only be applied at a given point in the process of investigation if, at that point in the process, all items known to need investigation have been investigated.

The immensity of the task before us is now clearly exposed—no only are we unable to scope the size of the task, we are even not able to fully define the criteria for completion. We note that throughout history societies have arisen much more often via various sorts of evolutionary processes rather than by design—large numbers of people inhabit a geographic region and some individual or group gains sufficient support to define the daily operation of the society. The stability of a society derives from conscious and unconscious evaluation done by the individuals of the populace comparing the conditions of the society at that time with the hypothetical conditions if there is no centralized “ruling class” in society or against the hypothetical conditions presented by one who has an interest in changing the society in a given way. Such a “one” typically imagines themselves as being part of a newly defined “ruling class” in the social order they propose.

Returning to the type of social design that these investigations are intended to help enable, I note it does not appear to follow the format of any historical society of which I am aware. In considering some great accomplishments of past societies (consider, for example, the pyramids of ancient Egypt, and other such achievement of ancient civilizations) certain figures of the “ruling class” or other elite class have organized large masses of skilled people to work together in achieving such amazing feats. If there were individuals with the desire and skills to achieve similar results, but not holding the proper position, the historical record would not only be lacking the artifact they would have produced, but also the fact that they even existed and held such a desire.

The present effort is to enable more of a “grass roots” social design—to investigate what would be needed from each individual within such an idyllic society in order for it to be able to be idyllic. If such a Utopian society is possible, it would not be possible under the models of how societies have been structured to date. Moreover, even if a Utopian society is actually not possible, it is likely that an honest attempt to do the best we can in determining the minimal prerequisites can provide useful information and lessons that may empower each of us to make improvements in today’s societies.

Having established some basis of a methodological framework, we need to define the starting point from which to launch this investigation—that is, to define which items to consider from the start. Two of the items of the starting point derive directly from the target societal type we have described above:

1. of society, to accomplish amazing creative achievements
2. of the individual, to have a positive experience

For each of these items, we need to more clearly define and delineate its meaning, and to determine what the necessary factors are to enable it. The process by which we perform the second portion of these tasks requires a basis on empirical evidence. It is in those stages that lessons from history and learning from science need be incorporated.

In my coming posts, we shall proceed into the investigations themselves…