HIGHEST LEVEL of SOCIETAL MATURITY

HIGHEST LEVEL of SOCIETAL MATURITY

Work in progress

LEVEL 7 C SOCIETAL MATURITY

BY Edwin L. Young, PhD
October 4, 2003
Contents of Social-Political Maturity

BEING ONE WITH THE UNIVERSE
UNIVERSALISM AND COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF CULTURES
PERSPECTIVES ON TIME, HISTORY, AND THE RISE AND FALL OF NATIONS
STRUCTURALISM AND A MULTI-DISCIPLINARY APPROACH TO CULTURAL ANALYSIS
UNDERSTANDING A NATION, SOCIETY, OR CULTURE IN TERMS OF ITS SUCCESSIVE LEVELS OF STRUCTURES
UNDERSTANDING STRUCTURES AND SYSTEMS WITHIN A CULTURE, AS PRIMARY THE PRIMARY CAUSAL AGENTS OF WHAT IS TRANSPIRING IN THAT CULTURE
ANALYZING THE STRUCTURES AND SYSTEMS WITHIN A NATION’S ORGANIZATIONS AND UNDERSTANDING THE WAY THEY FUNCTION IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
STATES OF INCORPORATION WITH RESPECT TO INFORMATION AND BELIEFS AND OPINIONS
EXAMPLES OF PROBLEMATICAL, POLARIZING ISSUES FACING THE MODERN WORLD
THE ROLES, OF CASUISTRY, SPIN, DEBATE, LOGIC, SCIENCE, STATISTICS, FACTUALITY, DRAMATIZATION, STAGING, BIAS, MARKETING, AND VARIETIES OF MEDIA IN SHAPING NATIONAL, CROSS-NATIONAL, AND INTERNATIONAL PUBLIC OPINION
THE ROLE OF MULTI-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE TAKING VERSUS TRIBAL-CENTRISM IN CAUSING YOU TO ALTER OR QUESTION YOUR CULTURALLY DETERMINED BELIEF SYSTEMS AND OPINIONS
RELATIVISM, THE DEMOCRATIC IDEAL, AND DEALING WITH DIVERGENT OPINIONS WITHIN AND BETWEEN SOCIAL AND FAMILIAL REFERENCE GROUPS
THE DANGERS OF SOLUTIONS COMING FROM LIMITED ARENAS
THE NECESSITY FOR SOLUTIONS DERIVED FROM LARGER ARENAS IN A DEMOCRATIC STATE AND WITH NON-DEMOCRATIC NATIONS
DIPLOMACY AND TOUGH AND TENDER MINDEDNESS IN DEALING WITH AMBIGUITY, DIVERGENT OPINIONS, CULTURAL DIFFERENCES IN LOCAL AND GLOBAL SITUATIONS
SOCIAL ACTIVISM IN A MODERN GLOBAL WORLD

Questions to Ask Yourself before Reading This Treatise

1. Identify aspects of your culture that you feel have been and are counterproductive for your growth in personal maturity toward Universalism and personal welfare?

2. Considering your own life and the structures encompassing and influencing your life, what changes in those structures would you make to create the conditions that would promote your personal growth?

3. Consider your own life within its topology: the places you inhabit and go to; the organizations you belong to or visit; the relations you have with family; the relations agencies have with you; and the roles you are assigned, occupy, and take in each of these. What, about this topology, is not favorable to your welfare? What changes in this topology would you make that would promote your personal growth?

4. Now, consider the youths in your institution. What could it have been in the youths’ culture, the structures encompassing the youths’ lives, and the typical topology of the youths’ lives that have routed them into incarceration?

5. In the light of these perspectives on the life topology of these youths, the conditions of life of these youths outside of the institution, and particularly the structures within the institution, what changes would you like to see and what could you change to promote the growth in maturity and character of these youths?

6. What are your reasons for suggesting these particular changes?

1. BEING ONE WITH THE UNIVERSE

Being at one with the universe entails the ability to see oneself as a part that is inextricably bound up in the whole, to see that whole as an integration of both positive and negative forces, and to see the whole as a near infinite composition of parts or persons to be regarded as equally as valuable as oneself.
It entails the capacity to feel kinship with all humanity and all cultures, no matter how different.
It entails the ability to see any act by any person, including oneself, in terms of its formative global, historical context.
It is not possible to have a sense of alienation toward the world at the core of one’s being and at the same time be at the highest level of maturity, called Universalism, in one’s approach to world problems.

2. UNIVERSALISM AND COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF CULTURES

The highest level of social-political maturity entails the tendency to analyze, objectively and equally, one’s own and all or any other cultures and to grasp the Zeitgeists of those cultures.
It entails the tendency to try to grasp the essence and uniqueness of any culture through the use of comparative analysis of cultures, their histories, and tentatively project their possible futures.
It entails a comprehension of the necessity to accept the free and full civil expression of opposition within and between cultures, social groups, and individuals in order that they might arrive at a consensus and progress toward more viable syntheses.
It entails the ability to conceive of nations, cultures, and organizations in terms of their structures, interacting levels of structures, and systems to understand their homeostasis within cultures and the degree or range of system wide destabilization that changes can cause.
It entails the ability to conceive of the fact that the nature, function, and significance of time and memory is different in individuals, groups, cultures, and nations and that time is a product of their social evolution and their place and role within larger the developing networks of nations and the whole of humanity.

3. PERSPECTIVES ON TIME, HISTORY, AND THE RISE AND FALL OF NATIONS

Taking mature and informed perspectives on the rise and fall of cultures entails the ability to understand that categories of time are a function of the stage of evolution of a society and that societies relate differentially to their history and their grasp of history differentially effects the viability of their nation’s strategy for coping with challenges.
It entails the ability to adapt one’s own perspectives on time and history to one’s own social context and the particular socio-political problem being addressed.
It entails the ability to conceive of the fact that nations and organizations have innovative developments that had contributed to success during earlier stages or cycles of history. In spite of the fact that they had been successful, they can ossify and/or become obsolete and destructive in current contexts, even when most participants cannot see this.
It entails an understanding that in the post industrial world there are super-ordinate structures embracing all commercial, social, and political organizations and institutions that have the capacity to rapidly transform entire cultures, their general weltanschauung, their conventions, and the fate of their natural and technological resources. It is possible to grasp the significance of the impact of these super-ordinate structures without the opportunity for first hand participation or testing. It is also possible to understand that these influences of super-ordinate structures are beyond access to the consciousness of the affected citizens. This general lack of access to an understanding of how super-ordinate structures shape one’s consciousness holds true globally, regardless of one’s nation. The impact of the structure of the modern media on the consciousness of the people of entire cultures is a prime example of this emergent novelty affecting almost all contemporary civilizations and consciousness of their people.

4. STRUCTURALISM AND A MULTI-DISCIPLINARY APPROACH TO CULTURAL ANALYSIS

The highest level of social-political maturity entails the ability to take an open-minded stance toward essential differences of all disciplines. It entails an ability, or willingness, to appreciate the contribution of all disciplines, and to begin a movement toward seeing what the cross-fertilization of disciplines, as well as the integration of disciplines into a theoretically cohesive whole, might bring.
It entails the ability to value, attempt to understand, and, if possible, use the methods of study; investigation; analysis; measurement; assessment; evaluation; the content being studied; as well as the general orientation of many disciplines from pure science to applied, from philosophical to artistic. It entails an ability or willingness to take an orientation to the past, present, and future of different disciplines and to see what they may be able to contribute to understanding, evaluating, and regaining control over the super-ordinate structures, the ordinary structures and systems, and the new zeitgeist.
It entails the ability to think in terms of levels and types of causation for effects and issues that have traditionally been presented with mono-causal explanations and single remedies for ills. It entails the ability to understand that, while the latter seem plausible in the light of the authority making the claim, the power of the media presenting these simplistic paradigms, and their seeming success in the short run, that nevertheless these superficial, yet appealing, promotions may be extremely harmful when looked at from a multi-dimensional standpoint and from a longer term perspective.

5. UNDERSTANDING A NATION, SOCIETY, OR CULTURE IN TERMS OF ITS SUCCESSIVE LEVELS OF STRUCTURES

6. UNDERSTANDING STRUCTURES AND SYSTEMS WITHIN A CULTURE
AS THE PRIMARY CAUSAL AGENTS OF WHAT IS TRANSPIRING IN THAT CULTURE

The highest level of social-political maturity entails the ability to understand that global organizational structures subsume and configure systems and that the elements of different systems can interact dynamically.
It entails the ability to analyze the dynamic mutual influence between action patterns of systems within structures of organizations. It also entails the ability to understand that structure of organizations and the relations between organizations have the causal properties that can produce either productive or destructive effects and the altering structures can result in the resolution of destructive effects and problems.
It entails the ability to take perspectives from the top of organizations and their structures as well as the structure of different strata of a society. It also entails the ability to take perspectives from positions at the bottom social strata and the lowest level of an organization in order to try to comprehend the effects of current structural configurations and proposed future configurations.
It entails understanding that it is the structures and systems of a society or organization rather than the evil or good will of its citizens that leads to corruption and harm versus integrity and beneficence.
It entails understanding that these structures and systems of the basic Institutions of a society are ultimately the sources emotional security, or lack of it, in its people.

7. ANALYZING THE STRUCTURES AND SYSTEMS WITHIN A NATION’S ORGANIZATIONS AND UNDERSTANDING THE WAY THEY FUNCTION IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

Realization that the following are systems within structures that are the primary determinative of the problematic issues addressed by a society and only by looking at the broader perspective of structures and systems encompassing such issues can they be satisfactorily resolved:

Gestalt and history of the whole: How should nations be characterized and what aspects of their structure and systems account for this characterization? What are the major landmarks in their history and how have these shaped the nature of their contemporary Gestalt or characterization? What role has the history of their international relations played?
Vertical structure and systems of nations: What type of government does each of the nations have? What is their contemporary mission? How is their nation organized? What type of management systems do they use to manage their government, its bureaucracy, and their people? What is the relationship between the government and business, industry, and foreign trade? How do the levels of their vertical structures and systems interact with those of other nations?
Horizontal structure and systems of nations: How does the layout of their national boundaries with other nations figure in shaping the nation’s character and its structure and systems? What are the major categories of departments or centers of common functions? How does the nation’s geography and the distribution and characteristics of its natural environment and natural resources figure in the nation’s demographics? What is the status of the many aspects of its natural resources and what impact do they have on its socio-economic well-being?
Communication structure and systems of nations: what categories of media are present in the nation and to what level of sophistication have they reached? Who controls and finances the communication systems? What role does the government play in the control and financing of the nation’s communication systems? What functions do the communication systems serve in relation to the population? Who supplies content and who regulates content of the various categories of communication systems? How effective are the communication systems in achieving the goals and objectives of the various vested interests like the government, the private sector, the various sectarian groups, civic and social groups, and professional groups? What are the relations with the communication systems of other nations? Functions; what; to whom; how.
Economic structures and systems: In comparison with the economies of the nations of the world, whose model is most similar to this nation and what is the best label for it? What is the economic index of this nation? How does the economic status, or economic well-being, of this nation compare to other nations? What are the demographic statistics such as size of cities, average number in a family, average age of citizens, rate of employment, average income per household, occupational categories, and distribution of income by socio-economic status? How would you describe the type of regulation the government exercises over the economic sector? What are the funding sources for the government? What are the government’s budgetary structures and systems and what are the budgetary allocation systems? What are the relations between this nation’s economic systems and that of other nations? How is this nation’s monetary system related to the international system?
Performance systems: Tasks; Job descriptions; accountability; measures.
Longitudinal systems: Flow of products and/or persons through the system
Social systems: Who relates to whom in the formal and informal relations and what roles do they play in each; how do they influence the organization.
Extra-organization systems: What external agencies, institutions, and organizations interact with and have an impact on the organization.
Systems for the restructuring of organizations and their structures and systems: what organization evaluation, development, and training programs are operative?

8. STATES OF INCORPORATION WITH RESPECT TO INFORMATION AND BELIEFS AND OPINIONS

9. EXAMPLES OF PROBLEMATICAL, POLARIZING ISSUES FACING THE MODERN WORLD

• Profit with fair wages and health standards Vs Worker Exploitation

• Profit with social and environmental responsibility Vs General human and environmental harm

• Environmental Stewardship Vs Corporate Pillage and Neglect

• Social Darwinianism Vs Social Responsibility

• Doing anything it takes to Win Vs Winning fairly and ethically

• Being socially exclusive and supporting Separatism Vs Being inclusive and supporting Universalism

• Being solely concerned with Outcomes Vs Care and concern with and for Process

• Being legalistic and resorting to the Law Vs Being concerned with understanding, love and acceptance, and using negotiation and social problem solving

• Authority Vs Democracy

• Coercion Vs Care and Cultivation

• Control Vs Guidance

• Rules Vs Judgment

• Punishment Vs Correction

• Superstition Vs Science

• Spin and Hype Vs Honest-Objective Media

• Conformity Vs Individuality

• Discrimination Vs Tolerance and Acceptance

• Ostracism Vs Inclusiveness and Understanding

• Individualism Vs Community

• Regimented Institutions Vs Facilitating Maturation

• Infantilizing Institutions Vs Empowering

• Self Indulgent Society Vs Self Sacrifice for Whole

• Narcissistic Society Vs Reserved

• Egoistic Society Vs Altruistic

• Manipulative Vs Mutual Facilitation

• Chauvinism Vs Globalism

• Rivalry Vs Mutuality

• Self Centered Vs Universalistic

10. THE ROLES CASUISTRY, SPIN, DEBATE, ARGUMENT FRAMING, LOGIC, SCIENCE, STATISTICS, FACTUALITY, DRAMATIZATION, STAGING, BIAS, MARKETING, AND VARIETIES OF MEDIA IN SHAPING NATIONAL, CROSS-NATIONAL, AND INTERNATIONAL PUBLIC OPINION

What if I could construct a mirror made of truth and goodness and hold it in such a manner that it reflected my soul, my unvarnished inner self, as well as my observable behavior? What would I see? How would it make me feel? What if the mirror functioned like a prism and separated out qualities of my self? What if the mirror instantly reflected my attempts to re-color and could undo those re-coloring attempts so that the reflection was unwavering, exact, and brutally honest? I wonder, how would I feel in the presence of that mirror? What if I questioned the source of the composition of my mirror? How would I know if it was ‘the’ true instance of truth and goodness?

Suppose I truly felt that my mirror of truth and goodness was correct and correctly reflected my soul. ‘I’ suppose, first of all, that I would not see much that needed to be changed. Second, ‘I’ suppose that, if I did see something in the prism-like mirror that was not consistent with the truth and goodness image, I would not be successful, even if highly motivated to do so, in doing much in the way of changing the ‘bad’ so that I was more ‘good’. If I did make a change, it would not last long. In the presence of the mirror that would not let me recolor anything or aspect of me that was negative, more sooner than later I would simply stop looking at that mirror. And, finally, if I did look steadily and did make enduring changes, how would I know that my mirror of truth and goodness was not simply constructed out of my own myopic assumptions about truth and goodness rather than something that was delivered to me by an external source that was somehow guaranteed to provide me with objective knowledge of good and evil? When confronted with the mirror, regardless of whether it reflects universal, eternal, objective truth and goodness, my attempt to recolor what I see of me is an exercise in casuistry. When confronted, from any other source, with my deviation from what I deeply but secretly feel to be a corrective fact or point of view and attempt to use verbal trickery to maintain my position and evade the truth of the confrontation, that is an exercise in casuistry. In schools of debate, many of the techniques of debate are techniques of casuistry. Casuistry is the opposite of logic and science. Take a syllogism like “All men are mortal. Socrates is a man. Therefore, Socrates is mortal.” The relationships between the terms are clear when you use a Venn Diagram. But, suppose you had a syllogism that said, “All humans are mortal. Hindus are humans. Therefore, Hindus are mortal.” Since Hindus believe in form of immortality, namely reincarnation, I suspect they would find a way to tamper with the middle term: ‘mortal’. The way they tamper with the word ‘mortal’ is casuistry. Casuistry preserves something that you believe but that does not conform to logic, to being publicly observable, or the public, repeatable tests of science Casuistry obeys your need for psychological comfort. Teenagers and defense and prosecuting attorneys are adept at casuistry while judges require that statements conform to logic, to being publicly observable, or to the public, repeatable tests of science.

11. THE ROLE OF PERSPECTIVE TAKING VERSUS TRIBALISM IN CAUSING YOU TO ALTER OR QUESTION YOUR CULTURALLY DETERMINED BELIEF SYSTEMS AND OPINIONS

What are the dimensions of the arena of my mind? Does the arena of my mind extend to immediate life circumstances, my own or prior generations, period of history, era, millennium, back to the dawn of humans, or even to the origin of life? Does the arena of my mind extend to tomorrow, to next year, to the next period, era, or millennium or to the extinguishing of our sun and planet? On the other hand, does the arena of my mind extend to what I am looking at this instant, feeling this instant, thinking this instant? Does it extend to deeper knowledge of my own self, my life history, and the multitude of internal factors and processes that are operating in my own self, my mind? Does the arena of my mind extend to an awareness and understanding of my immediate circumstances and the immediate forces influencing the focus, content, and direction of my mind? Does it extend to an awareness and understanding of my family influences, to the influence of my subculture on me and the influence of other subcultures on the people inhabiting them? Do I know or try to imagine what it is like to be another person in another time and place? Given that one of these ‘others’ could engage in the mirror experiment, can I imagine that those others might be totally convinced that the variation of truth and goodness in their mirror is objectively and absolutely correct even though it dramatically differs from mine?

12. RELATIVISM, THE DEMOCRATIC IDEAL, AND DEALING WITH DIVERGENT OPINIONS WITHIN AND BETWEEN SOCIAL AND FAMILIAL REFERENCE GROUPS

When, in the course of evolution, did objective good and evil enter? Is one person the sole possessor of the formulation of objective good and evil? Suppose that you or I believe that we are that person who possesses knowledge of objective good and evil and yet we find that someone else has a similar belief in themselves but that their version of objective good and evil is dramatically different from ours in such an way that that someone else feels the two versions of objective good and evil can not coexist. Suppose we feel or think that the consequences that result from that someone else holding their belief are, to us, truly horrible and that they feel the same about us and our belief. Is it not possible to think that either or both of these absolutists would feel they had to destroy the other? Does it not seem that perhaps, ironically, the very notion of absolutism, versus relativism, could be a cause of the very violence we wish to avoid? Is it not one of the foundational principles of democracy that, to avoid this dilemma, the government is relativistic and allows for the solution to problems involving conflicting values to be the universal vote, yet preserving the ‘Bill of Rights’. In the philosophies of Thomas Hobbs [believer in rule by power and intimidation and in absolutism] and Friedrich Nietzsche [proponent of the ideal of Superman might makes right] are opposites, yet they both disregard egalitarianism and democratic ideals. Are these two opposites not a formula for the eternal perpetuation of violence?

In our democracy, such conflicting values are provided a public forum for debate. In my opinion, all sides in the debate should be heard and are inherently valuable, no matter how idiotic they may seem to me. All points of view represent some important part of the ‘body’ politic. They each supply a piece to the ultimate solution to the problem. Some opinions may be discarded out of hand by the majority, while others result in intense, drawn out, debate The debate raises information and perspectives that each of the opposing parties need to hear and respond to. Together they eventually arrive at a more well rounded solution than either side would have arrived at alone. Democracies eventually decide with a vote. Quakers do not decide until each participant has aired all of their differences and reservations and all come to a consensus. The latter two positions seem to be least-harm, workable methods for dealing with conflicting values. It is a relativistic model in which many of its participants may feel they have a corner on the knowledge of objective good and evil even though their views strongly conflict with one another.

13. THE DANGERS OF SOLUTIONS COMING FROM LIMITED ARENAS

When a solution to a problem of major proportions and far reaching consequences is based on a limited perspective or, to use my metaphor, limited arena, the result, at least in the long run, should be an eventual spate of small problems that evolve into another problem of major proportions and far reaching consequences. A limited arena may be one that ignores perspectives on degrees of distance into the past and/or future. A limited arena could be one that ignores perspectives on degrees of depth into the individual persons. A limited perspective may be one that ignores perspectives on levels of social or organizational influences, from immediate situations, through neighborhoods and subcultures, through levels in organizations and agencies, through cities, states, and the nation, and to the global network of nations. A limited arena may be one that has few and narrow sources of information.

People generally are not aware of the nature or extent of their own mental arenas. No human knows what they do not know. An important tautology! Were one somehow to become aware of such limitations in one’s self, it might make them prone to question themselves, be quite cautious and heuristic in their opinions, eager to test their opinions in a public and repeatable way, and make them more likely to be open-minded to the vast worlds of knowledge that they ‘may’ not yet know.

14. THE NECESSITY FOR SOLUTIONS DERIVED FROM LARGER ARENAS
IN A DEMOCRATIC STATE AND MULTICRATIC, INTERNATIONAL WORLD

Should one be capable of and willing to entertain the dimensions of very large arenas, encompassing the vast range of perspectives and even those that differ from their own [unless they are in absolute control as in a totalitarian state], they must settle for promulgating their views as clearly as they can to as many different types of persons as possible and let their views enter the arena to compete with others in the democratic process. I suspect that the more such persons take this approach, the more the solutions will be beneficial to the largest number of people for the longest period of time. People in such a changed ‘structure’ might actually find themselves becoming better people from the point of view of what is reflected in their mirror of truth and goodness, as well as from the point of view of those associated with them.

A person who practices this kind of open-mindedness and opens themselves to a large, multi-dimensional arena is bound to have the experience of new perspectives and information crashing through and shaking up their schema of the world so that they have to make revisions in their schema. This is called accommodation versus assimilation of ideas [Piaget]. This I believe to be intellectual courage.

15. DIPLOMACY, EMPATHY, AND TOUGH AND TENDER MINDEDNESS IN DEALING WITH AMBIGUITY, DIVERGENT OPINIONS, AND CULTURAL DIFFERENCES IN LOCAL AND GLOBAL SITUATIONS

16. SOCIAL ACTIVISM IN A MODERN GLOBAL WORLD

As a member of the whole, embracing the positive, and negative as the self, one is able to commit oneself to the mission of facilitating the resolution of opposites into higher, more universally wholesome syntheses.
Understanding that it is the restructuring of the topology of the lives of persons that leads to enduring, positive change.
Being able to rationally consider the optimal strategies for or approaches to social action, given each person’s personal and material resources, their life situation, and their unique position in the world, so as to choose the course of maximum effectiveness.
Understanding that the modern, intelligent, universalistic human must develop entirely new ways to understand, evaluate, and regain control over the age of information, its re-formation of the content and processes of mind, and its dissociation from our ability to test this content or evaluate its effects on human existence.
The ability to understand that there is a dialectical tension between the structure of a nation or society and the freedom of choice for all of its individuals. Any change must involve simultaneous adjustments in each or the result will be mutually destructive conflict that will persist for the indefinite future and will be difficult and costly to resolve.
The ability to think scenarios of ‘What if?’, ‘Why not?’, and” How?” in addition to the usual “Why?” with respect to the great issues facing individuals and the modern world.

This treatise is my opinion and perspective. It urges upon me the necessity to grow continually in Societal Maturity.

WAYS TO QUESTION YOURSELF, YOUR BELIEF SYSTEMS, YOUR PERSPECTIVES,
AND THE STATUS OF YOUR KNOWLEDGE AND LACK OF KNOWLEDGE
WITHOUT CAVING IN TO TRIBAL ALLEGIANCES

Identify aspects of your culture that you feel have been and are counterproductive for your growth in personal maturity toward Universalism and personal welfare?
Considering your own life and the structures encompassing and influencing your life, what changes in those structures would you make to create the conditions that would promote your personal growth?
Consider your own life within its topology: the places you inhabit and go to; the relations you have with family and extended family; the organizations you belong to or visit; the relations agencies have with you and their impact; and the roles you are assigned, occupy, and/or take in each of these What about this topology is not favorable to your welfare? What changes in this topology would you make, if you could, that would promote your personal growth?
Now, consider the youths in your institution. What could it have been in the youths’ culture, the structures encompassing the youths’ lives, and the typical topology of the youths’ lives that have routed them into incarceration?
In the light of these perspectives on the life topology of these youths, the conditions of life of these youths outside of the institution, and particularly the structures within the institution, what changes would you like to see and what could you change to promote the growth in maturity and character of these youths?
What are your reasons for suggesting these particular changes?