The qualities of society I have stated—that the society be enabled to accomplish great achievements and concurrently that each individual’s experience within the society be a positive one—I have taken to be self-evident. Let me take a step back and describe the thoughts that form the basis for selecting this founding philosophy for social design as well as discussing why I think formation of society ought to be approached from a design perspective. The driving principles for all this is empirical—driven by personal observations.
The idea that societal design target positive experience for every individual within said society is not a new one. Indeed, the Declaration of Independence, founding the Unites States of America as an independent nation, includes, as self-evident truths, that the pursuit of happiness is an unalienable right of every individual, and that government (an intrinsic component of social structure) is instituted by the people governed “to effect their safety and happiness”. While positive experience, or happiness, of individuals within society is considered important in many countries around the world, it has often been considered to have so much variation between individuals as to make it intractable to form a basis for social policies. Current research efforts are underway to measure “subjective happiness” and “life satisfaction” (via surveys and polling) that could make social policy formation based on individual happiness tractable in the near future.
The article linked above posits goals of not only increasing individual happiness, but also reducing inequality of the level of happiness between individuals, both within one country as well as between countries. Such measurement methodologies, when fully developed, would provide the tools by which such goals could be tackled and by which progress may be measured. Will those tools be employed to achieve such goals? While only time will tell, human history, especially regarding the interactions between the leaders of a society and its members, does not inspire a great degree of optimism that leaders of societies would employ those tools to advance such goals.
As to society achieving great accomplishments, I think every individual in every society would agree with that goal for their society—this is, so long as it does not come at the cost of individual happiness. Any society that strives to concurrently achieve great accomplishments as well as provide a positive experience for each of the individual members of that society will encounter situations in which these two objectives are at odds with each other and must find a way to strike a balance.
Any societal design aiming at producing the type of society described above must, therefore, provide at its core the mechanisms and methodologies to establish and maintain such balance. Implicitly included in this are measurement techniques to detect a condition of imbalance and to providing sufficient data to guide employment of the given mechanisms to reestablish balance. The fact that both “positive experience” and “great accomplishment” are defined at the level of the individual person, with much variation between individuals, indicates the daunting level of complexity with which any such societal design attempt must grapple.
This then is the project we set before ourselves—to investigate and bring greater clarity to the design of society from this perspective. Is it even possible to produce a design handling this degree of complexity? If so, what are most promising directions of investigation we might pursue? We will delve into this endeavor in the ensuing writing, in which some investigation into past attempts our species has made in social organization in the context of these societal goals will provide a good starting point.
Random Thoughts 