HORIZONTAL AND VERTICAL SOCIAL RELATIONSHIPS
HORIZONTAL AND VERTICAL SOCIAL RELATIONSHIPS
by Florian Colceag
One of the most important questions regards cultural role in the complex
cultural metabolism of the global world, and possibilities of adjusting of a
particular culture to the global world. These questions are imposed by
globalization and postindustrial period, by population explosion and
environmental destruction, by resources exhaustion and cultural struggle,
and by many other fundamental problems of the new millennium.
In this time of profound transformations will be possible for a forest
people culture to survive, as part of a broader cultural metabolism, or many
traditional cultures will perish? A fractal cultural perspective based on
informational feedback cycles will try to respond to these questions.
Traditionally human relationships are structured on various levels. From
individuals to family, from families to social group in a community, from
communities to cultures, from cultures to nations, from nations to cultural
area of trust, and from regional area of trust to the global world. Each of
these different stages can be described in function of specific
relationships that include two directions. Individuals relationships with
regard to family will be based on personal achievement, family perspective
with regards to individuals will be to create an order frame of behavior.
This double relationship will be found at various levels of complexity.
Emancipation and order will be found with various nuances as a complex
relationship at family-community level, at community culture level etc. At
any level this relationship will win more characteristics in complexity
forming the vertical frame of relationship in the global world.
The horizontal frame of relationships will be described locally at various
levels. In a family every member will occupy a specific social niche such as
in a holistic view the family unit to be functional. The same thing will
happen at cultural level, where different social groups will occupy
different economic niches, making in final a functional culture responding
to complex demands. The same tendency will be found in the regional area of
trust, where cultural differentiation will respond to a different kind of
cultural complex metabolism that includes not only economic needs, but also
various other needs. At the global level the relationship will be similar.
Cultural differentiation will create functional roles included in the global
cultural metabolism, creating the global human organism "Gaia".
How can be viewed these horizontal relationships, as part of "Gaia's"
metabolism is a matter of cultural structures and local relationships. Each
culture developed functional institutions for developing and preserving
complex relationships with the social and natural environment. Several
cultures developed specific rules that are not recognized by other cultures,
because their relationships with the environment were not nominating but
dominated or pacifist. These basic relationships can be synthetically
described using the following directions:
-"To be" dimension that characterizes local political rules and local
educational values and system. This dimension characterize political rules
concerning marriage, leadership, and taboos, or educational values like
totems, legends, and symbols, from the most primitive cultures to the most
modern.
-"To do" dimension characterizes local economies and economical rules, local
social structure and its rules. This dimension is also characteristic for
all cultures.
-"To have" dimension characterizes the local values in relationships with
the local natural and human resources, and with the environmental taming.
This dimension is a composite one, being specific for exploitation of local
resources without killing the golden goose. It is also characteristic for
every culture, but in different degrees and nuances, and creates the system
of values considered by any culture as welfare.
-"To become" dimension is a specific cultural dimension that characterizes
the tendency for individual evolution in the spiritual and social spaces.
This direction is culturally or religious dependent, creating individual or
cultural philosophies that will motivate certain individual or collective
actions. Freedom movements and emancipating movements characterize this
direction. At different historical moments and at various cultures this
direction gave very different historical results.
-"To adjust" dimension is characterized by the social or natural environment
adaptability. From dominating tendencies to parasite tendencies, a large
spectrum of cultural policies describes various cultures. This dimension is
cultural dependable, preserve behavioral traditions, and try to impose
cultural relationships to other cultures and to the natural environment.
-"To integrate" dimension is the dimension that permits to different
cultures to evolve integrating new information. This dimension permits
integration in human's life of new technologies, of other cultural values
transformed through the own cultural perspective, or scientific,
educational, and philosophical values, that doesn't change fundamentally the
cultural pattern. The selection of values that can be integrated, or have to
be rejected by a culture is part of this dimension.
Various cultures created specific institution able to preserve the cultural
pattern. These institutions in the traditional world are different from a
culture to a different culture. They describe the main cultural structure of
each culture, and usually are created around three main dimensions. The
other three become secondary dimensions. The number of three is given by the
necessity to have a small number of institutions, more dimensions creating a
too large institutional frame. As an example a traditional institutional
frame structured on "to be", "to do" and "to have" dimensions is described
in the Figure 1.
[pic]
The three representative dimensions will try to include rules that will
preserve the other three secondary dimensions. A structure with four
dimensions or more will contain much more institutions that need to
correlate their activities such as to respond to the social structural
needs. Each institution has to be structured such as to respond to several
specific needs. For example economic standards will contain specific
instructions for the economic pole of "to do" dimension. Health will include
two kinds of demands concerning the economic pole of "to be" dimensions, and
the environmental pole of "to have" dimension, considering the social
environment. Agriculture will contain three kinds of demands. These demands
will be social for "to do" dimension, environmental for "to have" dimension,
and educational for "to be" dimension.
Different cultures will create different institutional frames, but in their
areas of trust these institutions will participate into a regional cultural
metabolism. If we will consider every dimension and all cultures will be
possible to model in a six dimensional hyper-cube the entire net of
cultures. This map will give more information about the cultural structure
and about the cultural metabolism in the global world.
These two structures horizontal and vertical describing various
relationships will give also an image about the dynamism of the global
world. This dynamism can be view by the perspective of dominating cultures
versus dominated cultures, from the perspective of big structures versus
smaller structures, and from the perspective of environmental-human
relationships. When a structure will impose to its sub-structures, rules
that are not included in the structural pattern of the subculture, defending
reactions will appear. This defense can be reactive going towards the
adaptation and integration, contra reactive going towards resistance and
emancipation, or parasite going to wards the direction of finding the
weakest links of the system, and parasite or corrupt these links. These
reactions are unpredictable for a dominating culture. In the global world
cultural stability cannot be obtained without understanding these reactions
of the cultural network. A simple set of rules regarding liberal economy and
market, or ruling systems are not enough to create the possibility for an
organic integration of all cultures in a natural system; "Gaia".
The complex relationship with the environment created during the human
history by any culture cannot obey to market rules or liberal economy.
Obedience can mean destruction of the environment, one of the most actual
problems. Global rules that will apply to various cultural areas of trust
can create a frame of contradictions with these areas of trust endangering the global balance and peace. The delicate balances between social structures and environmental protection, between cultural and political relationships, and between various markets can easily damage. Another delicate balance between various vertical structures is more resistant, but can also damage. Long time frustration caused by dominating behavior of a structure with the inferior structural level can create various kinds of alienations. Too many rules cannot be respected insufficient rules are not efficient for balance maintaining. This dilemma cannot be solved by reductionism approaches, but by feedback cycles theory, that is able to describe the internal behavior of all these structures. Sociology is still in the structuralism period when post modernism approaches are required by the actual crises.
Both vertical and horizontal structures need a larger institutional structure at the global level, more functional and efficient in managing the human effort, and more protective for environmental and cultural situses. In a hyper-cubic view there are a great number of main institutions, and more than 50000 potential feedback circuits to follow. This means the possibility of very specialized jobs for an increasing number of people. This also means the peaceful relationship with the environment, many cultures being included in the environmental protection.
The social network is very sensitive both on vertical and on horizontal relationships. From the vertical perspective a responsible behavior at the top level creates responsible behaviors at lower levels to the individual level. The role of responsibility was in the charge of religious leadership, but becomes in our days a political necessity. This responsibility is corrupted from down to up by the lower levels. Lower levels need space to adjust to various situses and cannot obey rules one hundred percent. These levels will adjust rules to their need, creating local versions. These local versions will correspond to the local internal cultural metabolism. On the horizontal perspective, each adjustment of a culture to a situs will create the possible of more limited adaptation for other culture. These cultures that previously occupied the same situs will loose their position and will be forced to discover a different situs, or to create one. This fact creates mobility and adaptation of the cultural network to new demands. The possibility to find new situses is connected with the complexity of the social multidimensional culture. This adaptation to new situses will create new jobs, new skills and giftedness, will change several cultural values, but will preserve the main set of cultural values intact. Responsibility and corruption on vertical perspective, adaptation and evolution on horizontal perspective need to be considered by global politics. These tendencies include market rules (adaptation), human rights (responsibility), reforms (adaptation) and change (corruption). In order to understand this complexity feedback cycles computation will be required both on horizontal and vertical perspective. Most cultural problems will disappear if the internal structure of feedback cycles of one culture will be understand, and if several efforts to adjust better to their sites will be done.
From the feedback cycles perspective responsibility and corruption will create two half of the cycle the first one creating self-inhibition, the second one creating self-stimulation. In a similar way adaptation and evolution will create two half-cycles also the first being self-inhibiting and the second self-stimulating (see Figure 2).
[pic]We can notice that each cycle will close. Strategies of the responsibility-corruption will close from 6 to 1, strategies determining another perspective about welfare, and the initiation of a new corruption half cycle. In a similar way at the adaptation-evolution cycle, policies will determine other cultural horizon, determining a new half-cycle of adaptation. Both these half-cycles depend on each other both cycles will be inter-correlated to each other in a vertical and horizontal perspective. These perspectives will interfere to each other. In each part of the horizontal cycle can be developed a complete vertical cycle. For example cultural market of the horizontal cycle will be differentiated by different vertical stages in a responsibility-corruption cycle. On the cultural market will appear both highly valued and junk products as a result of the responsibility corruption cycle. It is a simple exercise to determine different particular differentiations for each part of the horizontal cycle. These differentiations will become part of smaller horizontal cycles. We can find horizontal communications both for responsible hemicycles, and for corruption hemicycles. For example we can notice cooperative relationships among scientists that form an international network, but also among various Mafia on the globe, that also form an international network.
These vertical and horizontal relationships can be found at various levels, for different cultures, and in any institution. This two dimensional characterization is not complete, but shows the general pattern of the global world’s complexity. Using a similar procedure we can find other directions of complexity excepting inter culture and intra culture like cultures-environment; cultures-giftedness, and others.
Even if the procedure presented here is not reductionism, but complex, it can be useful in explaining causes of various phenomena, not only to describe these phenomena. It also can be useful to give predictions based of structural cultural problems, to find cultural specifics that need to be included in the design of specific developmental programs, and to help different cultures in creating a cultural net of connections involving a cultural market. Such a design is a system of education on the Internet.
Complex thinking is required to rebalance various crises in which self-stimulating parasite behavior or corruption can damage the local or global balance. If the first half cycle of self –stimulation needs no more that linear thinking, the second one where complex situations are assessed and strategies are build needs complex thinking. Complex thinking is not usually promoted by usual education systems. National education systems cannot promote complex thinking a free thinkers development without risking changing their local leaders. Complex thinking is a globalization problem. Global balance is more important that stability of several groups of leaders. This complex thinking especially in gifted education has to be included and promoted by a global system of education on the Internet. Complex thinkers able to understand and work with feedbacks, chaos, catastrophe theories, to correlate various events, and to be independent on their cultural pressure, can promote the development of a broader institutional infrastructure on every cultural dimension, and solutions to various problems. A new contingent of specialists will be required soon by the globalization programs, and these specialists will be required to exist all over the world. This is another argument for the initiation of a system of education on the Internet. Due to the post-industrial époque, to population explosion, to the exhaustion of the planetary resources, to environmental crises, to the need for cultural adjustment required by globalization programs, the need for more correlation, for more complex jobs market, for cultural integration and for complex management will increase in time. We will certainly need computer programs do deal with these complexities, and specialized people to understand this complexity.
We always have been global. Globalization is not a recent invention, but a constant reality during history. The big problem is understanding this old globalization perspective, to improve it by respecting new technical demands like environmental and cultural protection, and consider the entire world to be our world, not my world and the others. This change of perspective must start first from globalization policies that must not give advantage to a culture in detriment to other cultures. Technically this ideal can be reached. Practically it requires political wish or a different kind of leadership. In the final our world will be Gaia, a complex world where nature and cultures will interfere in a very close relationships in a unique metabolism, or a permanent crises that can end with a final atomic war.
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