In Praise Of Decontrol: Part Two — Intro
How and why decontrol enables complex societies to progress
[What a shock: As I went to post these and ensuing pages as a single post, I discovered I’d already posted an earlier version of these pages weeks ago, on March 29. Somehow I lost track, maybe because I’ve been jumping around trying to draft several posts at once, or because my mind is aging more than I know. So I’m deleting that March post in favor of publishing this revised expanded iteration today. Tomorrow I’ll post the ensuing pages. With more to come. Warily hoping I don’t lose track again….]
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Despite my opening praise of decontrol in Part One, I’m still not happy with the word. I suspect you aren’t either. But until a better word comes along, please humor me as I dig into its pivotal role in the long-term evolution of societies.
My main point is that societies cannot evolve from simpler to more complex designs — they can’t make the transitions to become more advanced types of society with additional systems — without allowing for decontrol as well as control processes to occur successfully along the way. All evolutionary theorizing I’ve seen emphasizes that social controls are required for major evolutionary transitions to work well — say, to move from an autocratic to a democratic political system, or from a statist to a market economy, or to deal with free-riders and trouble-makers. But it should not be difficult to notice that social decontrol may figure in there as well — say to assure pro-democracy or pro-market actors can fit in and do their thing properly.
While social decontrol processes appear to be less obvious, they also appear to deserve as much recognition as control processes have long received. Evolutionary theorists, as well as related political, economic, social, cultural, complexity, and cybernetics theorists, write constantly about control problems of one sort or another. It would benefit theory-building if they’d pay comparable attention to decontrol problems too.
I have only limited examples to illustrate and back up my argument, and I cannot prove its validity. But at this point, I just want to try to field it again, at greater length, after first making an initial effort fifteen years ago.
• Decontrol in theory and practice
Here’s how I wrote about decontrol the first time I added it to the framework that I keep trying to fully unearth about how, why, and when four cardinal forms of organization — tribes, institutions, markets, and networks (TIMN) — emerged one at a time in that order, centuries apart, and got combined in phases to form evermore complex and capable societies:
“To advance through the TIMN progression, control must give way to decontrol: The evolution of complex societies is often said to involve increases in control (and coordination), partly so that all the differentiated parts work together. But social evolution does not revolve solely around ever-increasing capacities for control. Each transformational step in the TIMN progression requires some kind of decontrol — realizing that a new form and realm are taking hold, letting go of its activities, and allowing self-organization to develop around that form’s own rules. This is essential for the re-simplification and resynthesis process noted above. Over the long run, harmonious decontrol becomes as important as control; in advanced societies, power extends as much from decontrol as control. Thus, to refer back to the preceding proposition, the evolution of social complexity leads to increases in differentiation and control, but it also eventually requires some systemic de-differentiation and decontrol. Societies whose leaders exalt the tribal and hierarchical forms may have the hardest times with this.” (Ronfeldt, 2009)
I plop that quote up-front here with little context to let you know where I’m headed. But the last time I tried to argue for decontrol without much context a couple years ago, matters did not go well — listeners misinterpreted it (Ronfeldt, 2023). So I’ll try harder this time.
I mean to show that decontrol has mattered as a recurrent requirement, a periodically essential step, whenever one of those four cardinal TIMN forms has emerged, thereby raising prospects that societies are entering a next-new phase of social evolution. From a long-range TIMN perspective, three such phases have occurred, each spanning centuries — and a fourth looms:
The first great decontrol arose millennia ago when bands of people clustered together to form tribes (the T form), giving themselves and their families over to tribal customs and codes of communal kinship and collective solidarity.
The second great decontrol began millennia later when states, armies, and other hierarchical institutions (the +I form) emerged and began to professionalize, separating themselves from being run according to tribal principles.
The third great decontrol emerged seven or eight centuries ago when market forms of organization (+M) arose, and state and other post-tribal actors slowly learned to let go, allowing market actors and activities to grow according to their own dynamics.
A fourth great decontrol phase lies ahead, depending on what happens with the ongoing rise of information-age network forms of organization (+N) — an emergence whose distinctive potential I’ll discuss later.
Despite beginning ages ago, none of the earlier three decontrol phases has ever fully ended for all societies. Today’s world is rife with evolutionary decontrol problems, all of which boil down to new or persistent difficulties in coping with one or another of the earlier phases, as in these ongoing examples:
Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs (not to mention peoples elsewhere) remain too polarized in tribal terms to settle down together, despite centuries of needing and wanting to do so. They know how to control their tribal identities, but not how to decontrol them without feeling they are losing them. Learning to respectfully tolerate and accept other peoples’ identities and cultures is an act of decontrol.
China’s government keeps pursuing full-control approaches toward Hong Kong, Taiwan, Tibet, and Xinjiang — when China could achieve global leadership if it figured out an approach to sociocultural decontrol that set a planetary standard.
Russia (not to mention other nations) keeps failing to get the market form right, thus limiting its regime’s mentality to doubling-down on old forms of tribalized nationalism and autocratic institutionalism, in ways that stifle not only the development of open-free-fair markets but also Russia’s broader prospects for future evolvability as a civilization.
Indeed, the mentalities that Benjamin Netanyahu is applying toward Gaza, Xi Jinping toward China’s non-Han peoples and provinces, and Putin toward Russia’s business and civil-society leaders are entirely about control. But in the great grand sweep of evolution, these are also decontrol problems. It’s culturally understandable that dictatorships like Xi’s and Putin’s react in tight control terms, without finding ways to make decontrol work over the long term. But in doing so, they constrain the evolvability of their societies — they get stuck relying on old tribal and institutional principles, while trying to constrict the market form and exploiting the digital-age network form for hierarchical control purposes.
America, historically the society that has done best at accommodating to evolutionary decontrol dynamics, is currently awash in its own decontrol challenges. They are distorting all three major realms of our society: civil society, government, and the market economy. Here are three that trouble me these days:
Much of capitalism has entered a so-called “late capitalism” phase that justifies predatory profiteering, market rigging, and sector meddling in ways that diminish and distort not only our market system but also our political and civil-society systems. This “late capitalism,” unlike past “democratic capitalism,” is very control-oriented and is subverting how all four TIMN forms and their realms are performing in our society.
If Donald Trump regains the presidency, he intends to dismantle the “administrative state,” initially by firing myriad civil-service staff and then downsizing and replacing it with sworn loyalists, cronies, and fellow-travelers. While a case can be made for smaller government, Trump’s plan spells an unbridled reversion to tribal practices — an ancient method of control — in order to de-professionalize, suborn, and corrupt our political institutions for personalistic purposes.
America’s next major evolutionary decontrol challenge lies ahead: For several decades, the emergence of the information-age network form has unsettled nearly everything. One way or another, its rise lies behind all the social, political, cultural, and religious conflicts that have rent our society in recent decades. But while +N’s rise is affecting how the earlier three TIMN forms are being used, it is unclear what next-new realm of specialized actors and activities may ultimately coalesce around +N to create a fourth realm of society. More about that later. For the moment, I only want to note that our society is headed toward a new evolutionary transition because of the rise of the information-age network form. The outcome will depend on whether its own phase of decontrol dynamics unfolds properly, and on how long-entrenched political and business elites fight its unfolding.
Thus I mean to point out not only the overlooked yet pivotal role of decontrol in major evolutionary transitions from simpler to more complex societies. I also want to decry, again for evolutionary reasons, the stifling adversity wrought by autocratic government leaders around our troubled world who persistently think and act strictly in control terms, mostly for fear of losing control.
While such leaders keep scheming to increase their control over this or that matter, what they risk is not so much losing control as failing to undertake advisable decontrol. Social evolution’s deep dynamics are always aligned, assuming the right conditions exist, to favor a new pulse of decontrol. Control-obsessed leaders could enable movement toward higher-performing levels of organizational complexity for their societies, per the four great decontrol phases identified above, if they could learn to stop stifling them for one counter-evolutionary reason or another.
According to many accounts, our world is increasingly out of control; the key challenge is to restore control. In regards, yes. But overall, not so. The key world-wide challenge for purposes of improving security and evolvability for all is to find ways to embrace decontrol along with control dynamics that enable societies to progress.
References
Ronfeldt, David, “Explaining Social Evolution: Standard Cause-and-Effect vs. TIMN’s System Dynamics,” Materials for Two Theories, blog, September 18, 2009, online at:
http://twotheories.blogspot.com/2009/09/explaining-social-evolution-standard.html
Ronfeldt, David, “Noosphere Science Class Reflections: #15,” Onward With TIMN…STAC, NOO, and CYBOC too, blog, September 14, 2023, online at:
https://davidronfeldt.substack.com/p/noosphere-science-class-reflections-0a3
What’s Next For Part Two
As I tried to draft this post in full, it kept getting longer while I kept getting slower. So I’ve decided to post it in sections. Here’s what to expect, since I’ve already begun drafts for them:
Recap of TIMN’s Elements: Tribes, Institutions, Markets, Networks
System Dynamics Behind All Major Evolutionary Transitions
Decontrol Crucial For Structural-Functional Differentiation To Succeed
Awaiting The Future Emergence Of Quadriform Societies
Implications Of Decontrol Dynamics For U.S. Policy And Strategy
Coda To Part Two (With Part Three In Mind)