What If We Sincerely Wanted A Workable Contract ?

Wars and environmental challenges, minor issues such as these are the result of ignoring worldwide problems for long periods of time. It takes a lot of determination to ignore such large problems, because most solutions really want to be applied, and have to be held back with significant force.

This blog explores the idea that our differences might be much simpler to conceptualize than we are giving them credit for.

Is There A Magical Force Beyond Just Momentum ?

What is this force that causes people to go against their own impulses to fix things, and to ignore solutions that have been readily available for decades? Momentum often gets the blame, and I won't argue with that, but I'll propose that this force is much more magical than the mere momentum of human behaviors - there are underlying contracts.

These contracts are like icebergs in that they are mostly underwater and out of sight. The big "Woops" with these contracts is not represented by the iceberg analogy, but instead by those artifices which we used to carry those contracts below the water, and these artifices have been under great threat for 100 years due to technological change.

The Artifice Supporting the Contracts

What is an "artifice" in this context ? I am using that ambiguous term because it could mean anything - that's the whole point. In some cultures it is a religion, in other cultures it is a colder form of power structure, in other cultures it's the arrangement of houses and work to the fabric of the agriculture, or even to the sea, as in fishing cultures. The challenge offered to us with all these artifices is that when they go away, sometimes so does the behavioral contract, and then we are like fish out of water flopping around for direction - ripe for the next war or other degradation.

Personally, I think too much is made of these artifices. Sure, I could argue just as vehemently that too little is made of them, because that is also where family ties and other connections are all laced together - something that can't be valued enough. But as a programmer, the part of these artifices which deals with contracts really is just a program, a set of behavioral operations which defines how we work together. That part is too simple and too easy to be handed over to these "artifices" without discussion.

There is no chicken and egg question as it relates to such artifices and the resultant contracts. To pose the question of which comes first completely misses the point. They evolved hand in hand for thousands of years, even millions, given that much of it is hardwired in our DNA. 

Towards A New Contract

The new contract needs a couple things to come into play. One is a precipitating crisis, and that seems to be no problemo - the world is providing same. 

The other is a fundamental agreement on what kind of underlying basis we select for a current contract? There have always been differences between world views, and they are so completely opposed that there is no possible way to negotiate passage beyond this point without the appropriate world view being resolved first.

60% or Natural World View

There is a very normal and time tested world view that is most aligned with evolution itself. It is humorous that it's most vehement adherents are also most often the ones to deny evolution, but the rule is simple. Survival of the fittest determines who succeeds and who doesn't, and the health of our system is dependent upon letting the failures die.

Nature lives by this system. Hundreds of eggs might be laid by a sea turtle, and only 1% or less might be expected to make it to old age. That's the way it works.

I call it a 60% world view because that's a nice way of saying 40% are supposed to die before reaching old age, and that's just the way it is. Not that it's really 40% because every species and every situation is different, but overall the numbers are not going to be anything close to 100% of any group's members living a full and complete life.

People like me gravitate towards this kind of world view because it feels so obvious. Success and failure just happens, and the successes survive and multiply. Very instinctive, you don't have to think really hard. Just do the best you can and take your fate as it rolls. You fail, you die, no one will miss you. Or, at least that's the way this world view expresses itself.

The "Rights" View

There is a new contract that livened up recently, as in the past 100 years or so. It has always been there, but remains dormant and in smaller groups, such as families and workplaces. On the face of it, It depends on opposite conditions from the survivalism ethic, but it has expanded across borders now and threatens to predominate in any state of surplus.

This is the view that we all have certain rights, and that goes against this "let everyone that doesn't succeed die" view.

When extrapolated to it's logical conclusion, it is completely incompatible with the 60% view. People have a right to health care, to good food, to a warm place to sleep. You don't just let people die because things didn't work out for them last week. You help them out. That's their right, and it's your responsibility.

Republicans seem to hate that view. I'm not a Republican but I mostly hate that view too. Please note that I have been an extreme beneficiary of that view. I've never had a hungry day in my life. My distaste for the consequences of this same view is a little like the "last one in locks the gate behind them" perspective that some of the better communities are facing now - we all want to be that last one in. 

Problems With Each Perspective

Mathematically, neither perspective works when extrapolated out to it's logical conclusion, which explains in some degree why our current situation seems so unsolvable.

The math on the 40% must die perspective would work great, and it has for centuries, but for this minor issue of deciding who gets to fail, and who gets to succeed. If we let people die then our entire structure of rules and contracts goes down the tubes, and we can't let that happen. That would bring down our system. Plus, most of us don't want to be part of that 40%, so we gotta find another way.

The math on the "everyone has a Right" perspective is pretty dicey too. These pesky Republicans just won't stand for it when your Right is their Responsibility, and they have a point. I personally don't agree with them about the unfair burden, I don't think it's that big a burden, nor do I think it's unfair. A contract is just a contract, and I think that's a pretty workable contract.

Where the whole thing about your Right is my Responsibility thing goes wrong, mathematically, is where you assume that it maintains a steady state. Republicans get fat, Democrats get fat, independents get fat and no one really knows why there is so much food lying around to pork out on. At least when life was constantly being threatened, we could figure out what was what and do something about it. As it is now, no one can even figure out what is working and what is not.

It's a Technologically Caused Problem

From the perspective of a programmer or modeler, all this slack in the system is the real problem. That stuff about "which perspective causes which problem" is a red herring. The "rights" perspective isn't the cause of our current situation, it's the effect. Technology is creating so much wealth (historically speaking) that we really can't know how to use it.

It also seems equally nonsensical to call either view Capitalist or Socialist. Each of these perspectives is little more than wishful thinking, trying to layer a belief system and pre-existing set of behaviors onto a school of thought that might justify same. Neither would really model out, mathematically, as the capitalists do best when subtly taking over the effects of government as they have in the United States, and the socialists do best when allowing for some degree of survivalism, such as with China and the fall of the Soviet block.

Whatever it is that is really happening over this last century, it's happening before we can figure it all out.

That's why everything seems to be falling apart, because it's happening "to" us as individuals, and as groups. We can't know how to handle it because we've never had to learn how to handle all this goll durned slack in the system. We've become an insanely successful weed species, now what do we do?

The Contract

From my perspective we can't even think about going forward with a new contract unless we figure out which kind of contract we want to go under, or how to come up with another kind of contract, if neither of the above is going to work.

Neither type of contract models out very well, mathematically. Neither is supported by the existence of appropriate circumstances. We have to get rid of all this slack, or wealth, if we want the survivalist perspective to work. The rights view of the world is even more problematical, in that nothing is going to ever work as a system if we can't come up with a contract that sustains itself. Fat people is not just an analogy, it's a real situation. Diabetes isn't the only epidemic that we suffer from directly related to our wealth - but it makes an all too apparent symbol.

You can't pedal a bicycle very far with a loose or floppy chain, it has to be nice and tight. Systems just don't deal well with too much slack.

Before we worry about technological solutions to the world's problems, we have a much more fundamental issue to solve. What is an underlying contract that's going to work for us, going forward?

Status quo isn't going to cut it, in that regard.