The Unicist Research Institute


 

 

The Functionalist Principle: A Bridge between the East & the West

The functionalist principle defines that there is nothing in the universe, which is part of a system, that does not work with a purpose, an active and entropic function, and an energy conservation function. Their interaction defines the functionality of the binary actions that produce results.

The integration of the binary actions defined by Yin and Yang make the triadic structure of the unicist logic work. Both the TAO and the Unicist Logic explain the structure of the unified field of the functionality of a specific reality including its dynamics and evolution.

Tao gives birth to One,
One gives birth to Two,
The Two gives birth to Three,
The Three gives birth to all things.

Chapter 42 of the Tao Te Ching

Both the TAO and the Unicist Logic are based on the use of the conjunction “and” excluding the use of the exclusive disjunction “or”.

Yang is one of the binary actions that is homologous to the dialectics between the purpose and the active principle. It defines the active functionality of an entity.

Yin is one of the binary actions that is homologous to the dialectics between the purpose and the energy conservation principle. It defines the energy conservation functionality.

The conjunction of both actions is defined by the triadic structure that integrates the ultimate functional purpose of an entity with the active principle and with its complement, defined by the energy conservation principle.

Peter Belohlavek
The Unicist Research Institute

NOTE: The Unicist Research Institute has been, since 1976, the world-leading research organization that introduced the functionalist approach to science to manage the functionality of the real world. www.unicist.org


Elections in France: The Future of the European Union

The elections in France are a significant proof of the evolution of the European Union. The consolidation of the EU by the “Euro” requires the existence of the concept of European culture, that is still subject to acceptance. It implies the existence of a European archetype, which is still a matter of discussion. Understanding the functionality of ideologies helps to understand the long-term consequences of the elections in France.

Ideologies only exist in the mind of people

Ideologies are sets of beliefs that use a specific technology to satisfy their interests, which in turn confirm such beliefs.

They are ideas and, as such, they are useful and generate a social functionality when they are applied in some way. They are part of the ethics of a culture, group or individual. As ideologies in themselves they do not exist but in the mind of the ideologist.

Ideologies work as the immanent truth that individuals use to have a secure framework for their actions. Ideologies derive from the senses. This means they are not part of a metaphysical approach to reality.

They are influenced by the senses and senses are sensitive to the needs of the individuals.

Therefore, it can be said that the ideologies respond to the needs of individuals. They establish the political framework that allows the development of consensus in a society.

Absolute Ideologies

As it was said, Ideologies are sets of beliefs that use a specific technology to satisfy their interests, which in turn confirm such beliefs.

Ideologies are a homeostatic element, which ensures that the activity carried out by a social group will not deviate from its real purpose. In other words, ideology is what supports a culture’s archetype.

Ideologies are based on specific technologies and, (paradoxically) evolve when technologies change. Thus, the driver of change in ideologies is the change of technologies. Every qualitative change of a technology results in a modification of an ideology.

If we look at the birth of ideologies such as Feudalism or Marxism, we will irrefutably confirm that they are the consequence of the leading technologies of the times. Every observable situation is supported by an underlying ideology. Ideology is the homeostatic element of culture because it balances the ethics ruling the context.

There are absolute and relative ideologies. A social group achieves stability when its democratic spirit is so advanced that many different ideologies can co-exist. If this happens, we are in the presence of “soft ideologies”, which adapt to others without losing their identity.

Absolute ideologies normally perceive relative ideologies as absolute and opposed.  As an ideology establishes standards of acceptable behavior for its specific social environment, it is in itself a structure which integrates and shields its advocates.

Peter Belohlavek
The Unicist Research Institute

NOTE: The Unicist Research Institute has been, since 1976, the world-leading research organization that introduced the functionalist approach to science to manage the functionality of the real world. www.unicist.org


The Crisis of Ukraine – A Functionalist Approach to Scenario Building

Ukraine has basically evolved in a transition stage for centuries. Transition stages are such when there is more than one cultural nucleus seeking dominance in a culture. Transition stages drive naturally towards a need to survive to avoid being submitted to alien values.

In Ukraine there are now two different cultures in conflict. Now, this conflict assumed the extreme state of war, which in fact is the consequence of external interests that are associated with one of the archetypes of the population of Ukraine.

When there is a transition stage, the dominant values that ensure survival are individualism and materialism, which generate social dysfunctional behaviors. Dysfunctionality is always hidden behind fallacious cultural myths that avoid the perception of being endangered.

The chaos produced by war might generate three different consequences that cannot be predicted, because there is chaos, the influential forces are unclear, and there is an actual conflict of archetypes:

  1. Solving the problem of the internal cultural dispute.
  2. Generating an excision of the country
  3. Degradation of the culture to a deeper survival stage without solving the conflict.

A social mutation is produced when the functionality of a social entity has been lost, and there is the necessary available energy to generate a change.

The values of cultures are implicit in the values of their elites. Therefore, the understanding of the archetype of a culture implies researching the evolution of their establishment and the facts that were produced.

If you enter deeply in the history of a country, which is the way to try to discover the nature of a culture defined by its archetype, you will see that most of the changes happen at an operational level and not at a structural level.

But you can find turning points in culture like the one that was produced in Sweden more than 100 years ago. It might or not be the case of Ukraine. It fully depends on its establishment.

Peter Belohlavek

NOTE: The Unicist Research Institute has been, since 1976, the world-leading research organization that introduced the functionalist approach to science to manage the functionality of the real world. www.unicist.org


Religious Democracies: Understanding Afghanistan and other Countries

The chaos generated in Afghanistan in August 2021, is a demonstration that there are cultures where there is a concept of religious democracy that differs totally from the concept of democracy of the developed counties of the West.

Religious democracy is a special case that refers to cultures or institutions that are centrally ruled by their religious beliefs. Their functionality does not deal with the social, economic and political aspects but with the transcendent, moral and political aspects.

Religious Democracy

The purpose of a religious democracy is to sustain the supernatural and natural transcendence of the members of a society. This transcendence is materialized in the morality of the members. The role of its political democracy is to ensure that the morality of the actions drives towards transcendence.

This implies that social democracy is implicit in the attitude towards transcendence and the economic scenario is acted out by the moral-driven actions of a community.

Their Functional Drivers

The driver of a religious democracy is to foster the supernatural transcendence of the members of a culture. This driver makes individual actions become extremely powerful because of the need to fulfill the religious beliefs to achieve this goal.

The supernatural transcendence implies a personal transcendence for those individuals who participate and the recognition of the community, which allows individuals to achieve a transcendent role integrating the supernatural, the personal and the social transcendence.

This fulfills the need of all members of a religious democracy and allows managing the transcendence in the materialistic world following the rules of morality that are implicit.

Religious fundamentalism becomes necessary when religious democracy cannot satisfy the immanent needs of a culture. It drives the culture beyond materialistic needs to provide a superior level of satisfaction. Learn more:
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Peter Belohlavek

NOTE: The Unicist Research Institute (TURI) is a world leader in its segment. Since 1976, it has been specialized in complexity sciences applied to the research on the roots of evolution and its application to social, institutional, business and individual evolution.


Facileness, Clientelism and Paternalism

Facileness expands too fast in too many places in the world. Facileness becomes an addiction when it is integrated with clientelism and paternalism.

When it becomes an addiction, it forces the environment to adopt an over-adaptive behavior which establishes a context where facileness, protected by a set of fallacious myths, appears as a functional “way of life”.

About Facileness

Facileness implies making what one believes, wants or can do prevail over what is needed to be done. Facileness degrades, marginalizes and kills social, institutional and personal evolution.

About Clientelism

Clientelism is the exchange of goods and services for support. Clientelism reverts the slope of the asymmetry of the relation between authorities and members of a group or culture.

The one who receives the goods or services behaves as the client and the authority behaves as a provider. This corrupts the relationships and establishes a structural context for facileness.

About Paternalism

Paternalism is an action that limits a person’s or group’s freedom or autonomy.

Paternalism is the consequence of two actions. On the one hand there is someone who wants to control an environment and on the other hand there are people, who are driven by facileness, that want to avoid assuming the responsibility for their actions.

Paternalism protects the people who adopt facileness as a way of life and uses clientelism to ensure the sustainability of its power.

The absence of paternalistic leaders is the solution for facileness driven environments. It begins by generating chaos but ends in an upgrade if the preexisting paternalistic leaders have established a structural approach.

If this is not the case, the new situation degrades the environment and a new paternalistic leader becomes installed.  

Peter Belohlavek

NOTE: The Unicist Research Institute has been, since 1976, the pioneer in complexity science research where the Unicist Evolutionary Approach was developed.


The Functionality of Micro- and Macro-economics

The evolutionary economics introduced by Thorstein Bunde Veblen tried to change economics, focusing on social development and sustainability. Unfortunately, the lack of a model to understand and manage evolution transformed evolutionary economics into a utopian framework.

The discovery of the ontogenesis of evolution, at The Unicist Research Institute, provided the model needed to recover evolutionary economics to manage the sustainability of economic evolution based the empowerment of knowledge economy and microeconomics driven development.

It has to be considered that in an evolutionary approach, microeconomics drives the evolution while macroeconomics establishes the framework for social development.

The microeconomic initiative is lost when macroeconomics intends to be the driver of evolution.

Macroeconomics driven economies are only functional in transition stages when there is an extreme need for avoiding chaos.

Peter Belohlavek

NOTE: The Unicist Research Institute has been, since 1976, the pioneer in complexity science research to deal with adaptive entities and became a private global decentralized leading research organization in the field of adaptive systems and environments. It was one of the precursors of the Industry 4.0 concept


Unicist Approach: What drives the evolution of cultures?

The unicist approach defines that the driver of cultural evolution processes is the adaptation of a culture. This adaptation implies that a democratic attitude prevails, providing the necessary consensus to have social cohesion, being driven by a social efficiency, and making the necessary trade offs to maintain an efficient consensus.

The consensus of an evolutionary culture is oriented towards growth, which implies having a proactive attitude in the environment to generate value. Social efficiency means that the system is institutionalized having therefore a minimum level of entropy.

This institutionalization is materialized in the habits and in the myths and fallacious myths installed in a culture.

Trade-offs are implicitly conflicts and generate crises.

On the one hand, they can be evolution conflicts when they happen within the limits of efficiency and the value earning behavior. Or they can be involution conflicts, on the other hand, when the goal of these trade-offs is “buying” consensus. In this case the culture enters a conjunctural involution which naturally eliminates the leaders that made this trade-offs if the value adding ethics prevails in the institutions.

If this is not the case, and a survivors’ ethics becomes necessary for the institutions, the culture will have entered into an over-adaptive behavior driving the culture towards involution.

The maximal strategy of evolutionary cultures is sustained by their value adding ethics. This implies that the leaders of the dominant segments have a level of consciousness that allows them to be aware of the social processes and the long term consequences of the decisions that are made.

Social evolution requires participative processes within an authoritative environment that does not require the exertion of power to be efficient.

Unicist Press Committee

NOTE: The Unicist Research Institute was the pioneer in using the unicist logical approach in complexity science research and became a private global decentralized leading research organization in the field of human adaptive systems. It has an academic arm and a business arm.


Globalization and social capital in diplomacy and business

The social capital of a culture is based on its integration capacity, its competitive attitude and its cooperative willingness.

It can be defined by the strengths of the bonds between the members of the community.

It is necessary to understand the attitude of a culture when dealing with globalization.

Different cultures have different ways to evolve, based on their archetypes and materialized by their social capital.

It can be said that the Central European countries have a cooperative bias while the USA has a competitive bias and Japan an integrative one.

The attitude of a culture is driven by its elite and followed by the mass. Extremely individualistic elites, typical in non-consolidated countries, generate a lack of social capital making their structure unstable.

Diplomacy needs to adapt to the characteristics of cultures to achieve results. Multinational companies need to avoid projecting the values of their headquarters to foreign markets in order to expand.

Knowing the archetypes of countries is useful to adapt to each culture without losing the objectives to be achieved.

Peter Belohlavek

NOTE: The Unicist Research Institute was the pioneer in using the unicist logical approach in complexity science research and became a private global decentralized leading research organization in the field of human adaptive systems. It has an academic arm and a business arm.


Trends: Work as the driver of the Power of Nations

The Power of Nations is now based on the construction capacity which is given by work and sustained by the non-exerted destruction capacity that we call dissuasion power. This trend also applies to any institution that intends to influence the environment or the market. This is a new trend that requires a new perspective where the value added to the environment and its consistency defines the influential power and the dissuasion power is the core of the defensive strategy.

The Power of Nations

The legitimacy of military expansion became illegitimate in the world. A new power became evident: Work. Work became the power of a nation and technology its catalyst. Military became the necessary dissuasion power to defend the power of Work.

This implies that the economic power has to provide the maximal strategy, the possibility of upgrading to the next step while the dissuasion power developed by the administrative authorities of the country provides the necessary secure environment to grow.

It has to be considered that the economic power is basically individualistic oriented. In the materialistic world the same “thing” cannot be shared. Money is in my pocket or it is in your pocket. It cannot be in both at the same time.

That is why the nature of the materialistic world is the dualism which naturally drives towards fostering activities based on individual initiatives.

This is not necessary at a subsistence level but it is a must if a culture fosters expansion and influence in the environment.

Materialistic activities are naturally driven by individual responsibility. This means that the institutions that develop materialistic activities need to understand and manage the individual needs of their members in order to be successful.

The economic power of a country is strongly influenced by the individual value of work of the culture. Individuals expand the power of a Nation when it is implicit in the archetype.

When it is not the case, the power of a Nation diminishes.

The Power of Country Archetypes is defined by Work
P=W/t

Work implies the capacity of displacing facts in nature in order to generate a usable added value for a society.

Therefore it is implicit that the fundamentals of work are consistent with the different levels of archetypes. We will describe in the following the fundamentals of work in the different archetypes:

1) Social Value of Influential Work

The Power of NationsThe purpose of work in elites of influential archetypes is to generate added value in their societies. To do so their active function is driven by the transforming of nature and the energy conservation function is the need to overcome resource scarcity.

If we see it at an operational level we can define that:

The maximal strategy of the elites is to transform nature driven by the energy focused on knowledge and the personal need that sustains their actions is the self-affirmation of their deeds.

The minimum strategy to overcome resource scarcity is driven by the energy of their capacity to produce and the personal need that sustains their actions is the capacity to manage the time to make things happen.

2) Social Value of Expansive Work

The Power of NationsThe purpose of work in elites of expansive archetypes is to earn value in their societies. To do so their active function is driven by earning money and the energy conservation function is the need to survive.

If we see it at an operational level we can define that:

The maximal strategy of the elites is to earn money driven by the energy focused on their efforts to do so and the personal needs for recognition sustain their actions.

The expansive work driven segments are conservatives that use work “for a living”. Their drivers are the benefits they receive as a counterpart for work.

They influence the subsistent and survival driven segments. Value adding is their utopia.

The minimum strategy is to ensure subsistence, which is driven by the energy of their capacity to collect from the environment and the personal need that sustains their action is the need to “have” things.

3) Social Value of Subsistent Work

The Power of NationsThe purpose of work in elites of surviving archetypes is to follow the rules of survivors’ ethics. To do so their active function is driven by survival actions and the energy conservation function is the need to transfer costs.

 If we see it at an operational level we can define that:

The maximal strategy of the elite is to survive driven by the energy focused on collecting and the personal need “to have” of the elite sustains their actions.

The minimum strategy of the elites that belong to this segment is to transfer costs to the environment and is driven by the energy focused on minimizing efforts.

This minimum strategy is sustained by the personal needs to fulfill their basic needs.

Subsistent work segments are driven by over-adaptive behaviors that make them do what is necessary to obtain the materialistic benefits to survive. They expect to be “adopted” by the environment and judged by their intentions.

4) Social Value of Survivors Work

The Power of NationsThe purpose of work in surviving archetypes is to gain, based on the necessary justifications exerting all the necessary power to obtain the benefit. This is the ethics of stagnated survivors. To do so the active function that drives their survival is the transfer of costs and the energy conservation function is the value appropriation.

If we see it at an operational level, we can define that:

The maximal strategy of the elites is to transfer costs driven by the energy focused on minimizing the efforts and the personal satisfaction of the basic needs sustains their actions.

The minimum strategy is to appropriate value from the environment that is driven by the necessary justifications and sustained by the personal exertion of power.

Conclusion

Understanding that the power of a Nation depends on its capacity to work is something very difficult to accept because it is rather new.

And accepting that the archetype of a culture defines the level of work that is the standard in an environment sounds deterministic and for some people racist. Because it implies that every culture obtains what it produces; that underdevelopment is defined by the underdeveloped, development by the developed and emergent by the emerging.

Power = W/t: Power can be measured in speed

Power can be measured in speed. That is why we say we can make a metaphor and measure the level of development in speed.

If developed culture move at a speed of 100 km/hour, underdeveloped evolve more slowly.

That is why the gap between development and underdevelopment increases from day to day.

But emergent cultures are emergent because they move faster than the developed ones, which means that the gap between emergent cultures and developed cultures decreases from day to day, until the emergent cultures surpass the developed cultures

(*) An excerpt from the book “Unicist Conceptual Economy” by Peter Belohlavek

Unicist Future Research Lab

NOTE: The Unicist Research Institute was the pioneer in using the unicist logical approach in complexity science research and became a private global decentralized leading research organization in the field of human adaptive systems. It has an academic arm and a business arm.


Exercise: How do Fundamentalists build Sects?

Sectarian behavior is the dominant characteristic of fundamentalism. Sects are not necessarily religious. There are all kinds of sects: religious, military, political and social sects.

SectTo understand fundamentalism it is necessary to find our own fundamentalist behavior. The one who considers that never behaved as one should buy a mirror, because he is probably endangered by the question and is acting as one at the moment.

First step:

The need of a parallel reality

The first step to build a sect is to understand that one needs to create a parallel reality and find people who have the need of the particular reality one is creating.

Second step: Finding the members

The second step is to identify the potential members of the sect. They must be “survivors”. Survivors are individuals who cannot adapt to an environment because of psychological, spiritual, organic or materialistic reasons.

Survivors are everywhere, beginning with marginal individuals and ending in the upper class. One has to know that a survivor is a person who acts like a “black hole” absorbing all the energy he can.

Survivors are “infinite” takers. Nothing ever suffices. To avoid the fear of death, which dominates survivors, they are keepers; they take just for the pleasure to have. Their fear of failure is so dominant that they gather everything, “just in case…”

Third step: Defining the sect model

There are many possible models. The success of a sect is given by the consistency of the sect model with the needs of its members.

The unicist ontology of a sect describes the nature of sects. They all have in common one simple characteristic:

Fundamentalism

Sects are fundamentalistic and fundamentalists always belong to a sect, including the individualistic ones.

Sects are functional to themselves and their members. They create a parallel world with parallel rules. This parallel rules make them powerful if they succeed in the “survivors-raising” process.

Sects require the management of four central concepts:

  • Power
  • A superior moral
  • An Education – indoctrination model
  • A benefit sharing model

Peter Belohlavek

NOTE: The Unicist Research Institute was the pioneer in using the unicist logical approach in complexity science research and became a private global decentralized leading research organization in the field of human adaptive systems. It has an academic arm and a business arm.