Peter Belohlavek

The Crisis of Ukraine – A Functionalist Approach to Scenario Building

 in A) Country Archetypes & Scenarios / Future Research Lab / The Unicist Research Institute  tagged Countries evolution / Future Research / Peter Belohlavek / Social Scenario / The Unicist Research Institute / Ukrainian Archetype / Unicist Future Research Lab by

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:

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  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

Install functional ideologies in your environment

 in Future Research Lab / Uncategorized  tagged Countries evolution / Functional Ideologies / Ideologies / Peter Belohlavek / Social Scenario / The Nature of Ideologies by

We invite you to define the functional ideologies that allow enhancing the synergy of your culture, group, or organization.

Ideologies save energy while they provide the complement that is needed to achieve the objectives that have been defined and drive the evolution of institutions and organizations. Their use only requires adopting a functionalist approach.

Ideologies are beliefs that use technologies to satisfy a given interest. This explains why adaptive people change their ideologies based on their personal evolution.

Ideologies sustain the functional ethics of people that vary according to their maturity. Ideologization happens within the dominant myths of a culture. These cultural myths are defined by the functional myths that sustain the values of the environments and the fallacious myths that hide the weaknesses the environment cannot bear.

Use the Power of Functional Ideologies

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Organizations, according to their type of activity, also have an ideology that sustains their functional ethics and allows them to exist and evolve.

Ideologies might be absolute or functional. Absolute ideologies exist in stages where people are driven by a survival ethics. They are based on the development of clientelism, which defines that “you are with me or against me”.

This is noticeable in stagnated or declining countries or organization. Ideologies are not absolute, but functional in developed or evolving countries.

Absolute ideologies necessarily divide the environment between “us” and “them”. The building of bridges is a “deadly sin”.

Functional ideologies integrate people towards an evolution process and require democratic leaders. Absolute ideologies integrate people in absolutist environments and require autocratic leaders. This book will provide the structural information to define the ideology that is functional in your environment.

Unicist Innovation Center – A Sharing Space
The Unicist Research Institute

The Unicist Functionalist Approach: The functionalist approach is based on the use of binary actions that are composed by two synchronized actions where the first one opens possibilities and the second one ensures results. The use of univocal actions only works in fully controlled processes or where the environment provides the second action that sustains it. Therefore, the use of binary actions is not optional when it is needed to ensure the generation of results. www.unicist.org

The Unicist Logic is an emulation of the ontogenetic intelligence of nature

 in Future Research Lab  tagged Adaptive Systems / Peter Belohlavek / Unicist Logic / Unicist Ontogenetic Intelligence of Nature by

The Unicist Logic is a synthetic logic that emulates the ontogenetic intelligence of nature and its maximal strategies to grow and minimum strategies to survive.

It was developed to validate the triadic functionality of natural and artificial complex adaptive systems and to design and build binary actions to manage them. 

The unicist logic was developed to manage consciously the unified field of complex adaptive systems. Conscious reasoning allows developing fallacy-free decisions and actions to ensure the results of what intends to be achieved.

This logic, which is based on human ontointelligence, allows dealing with the dynamics, evolution and nature of adaptive environments and provided the structure to build the unicist artificial intelligence. Non-adaptive environments are considered a “particular case” of adaptive systems.

The unicist logic allows understanding the functionality, dynamics and evolution of adaptive systems and environments. It is the basic knowledge needed to develop strategies in these environments. It applies to any kind of strategies.

Future Research Lab

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.

Unicist Approach: What drives the evolution of cultures?

 in D) Unicist Future Research / The Unicist Research Institute / Unicist Cobots  tagged Countries evolution / Country Archetypes / Future Research / Intelligent Systems / Peter Belohlavek / Social Scenario / unicist anthropology / Unicist Confederation / Unicist Corporate University / Unicist Evolutionary Approach / Unicist Ontogenetic Intelligence of Nature / Unicist Theory of Evolution by

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.

Trends: Work as the driver of the Power of Nations

 in The Unicist Research Institute / Uncategorized / Unicist Cobots  tagged Country Future Research / Economic Evolution / Peter Belohlavek / Power of Nations / Social Evolution / Unicist Evolutionary Approach / Unicist Future Research Lab by

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.

The Era of Conceptualization is Here

 in The Unicist Research Institute / Unicist Cobots / Unicist Functional Design  tagged Era of Conceptualization / Global Trends / Peter Belohlavek / Social Scenarios / Unicist Evolutionary Approach / Unicist Future Research Lab by

The Era of Knowledge ruled the evolution of the central world for decades, almost a century, and expanded marginally to the peripheral world, except for the “emerging” countries, where it became installed. It implied the prevalence of science and technologies over ancestral cultural values.

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The expansion of political democracy in the world triggered the introduction of the Era of Participation that finally exploded driven by communication technologies. Cell phones, Internet and Social Networking were the milestones of this new stage.

This explosion occurred generating immediate paradoxical side-effects. “To be liked” began to prevail over “being functional”; apparent consensus became more important than true consensus.

The Birth of the Era of Conceptualization

The Era of Conceptualization began when individuals were able to manage the root-causes of things in order to develop structural solutions. This Era was triggered by two discoveries:

On the one hand, the discovery of the intelligence that underlies nature allowed defining the structure of the intrinsic concepts that regulate the evolution of living beings and the structure of the functional (extrinsic) concepts that define the functionality of things, which made the management of concepts possible.

On the other hand, the research on human intelligence drove to the discovery that “mental concepts” drive human actions and that the conceptual short-term memory triggers the reactions of individuals.

This implies that human actions follow the concepts people have. The integration of the knowledge of functional concepts and the functionality of human intelligence allowed understanding the concepts of processes that allows understanding their nature and develop structural solutions.

It has to be considered that the structure of functional concepts is cross-cultural and timeless but their functionality is environment dependent.

The Proposal

Growth is the challenge in the world to provide a safe framework for the following generations. Growth requires managing the concepts of what is being done to ensure that it is possible and to know how to make it happen.

That is why a change in College Education needs to be promoted to go from the traditional theory-practice model, which is functional to develop tasks at an operational level, to an action-reflection-action model that allows every person to deal with the generation of value in their field of expertise.

Unicist Conceptual Management is also part of the Era of Conceptualization. It applies both to personal management and to business management.

Unicist Executive Committee

NOTE: The Unicist Research Institute has been, since 1976, the pioneer in using a unicist ontological approach to deal with complexity. It introduced a paradigm shift in sciences emulating the triadic intelligence of nature, integrating complexity sciences with systemic sciences. This research allowed developing unicist technologies to manage the complex aspects in the social, business and individual fields.

Donald Trump: The Era of Sustainable Globalization

 in The Unicist Research Institute / Unicist Cobots / Unicist Functional Design  tagged Donald Trump / Future Research Lab / Global Scenario / Globalization Scenario / Peter Belohlavek / Sustainable Globalization / The Unicist Research Institute / The Unicist School / Unicist Evolutionary Approach / USA Globalization Model / USA Scenario / USA turning point by

The elections won by Mr. Donald Trump might represent a turning point in America’s economic positioning as a response to the consolidation of several influential poles in the world, after the division between capitalists and communists ended.

This implies a change in the rules for global businesses. If it is a turning point, it will generate the opposition of all those who live in a comfort zone. Based on our forecasts USA is moving towards a “Sustainable Globalization Model”.

The core of this stage is the diplomacy of the participants because in fact it is a war between economic interests that now are totally different. The “war in peace” begins because USA finally decided to move from being the one who pays the bills to foster economic freedom and now decided to assume the leadership of its own interests.

The first step will be a confrontation of dissuasion powers in order to establish the new positions. This can adopt multiple shapes considering that if diplomacy (as a “war in peace” action) fails, real economic war will begin.

Those who have a positive trade balance are being threatened by the change of the positioning of USA and might become more threatened if the exports from the USA begin to be fostered.  This cannot be expected in the short term because of the investment and time needed to install automation to compensate the low wages of the developing countries.

From now on the globalization will be limited by the national interests of all countries including the USA. The United States have no more benefit from adopting the role of the “tutor” of freedom because the battle between freedom and security, capitalism vs. communism, ended. The confrontation between interests adopted a new shape.

This changes the way international companies need to design their business which implies that many of them will have to make their nationality prevail over the short term interests of the business.

Unicist Press Committee

NOTE: The Unicist Research Institute has been, since 1976, the pioneer in using a unicist ontological approach to deal with complexity. It introduced a paradigm shift in sciences emulating the triadic intelligence of nature, integrating complexity sciences with systemic sciences. This research allowed developing unicist technologies to manage the complex aspects in the social, business and individual fields.
http://www.unicist-school.org/future-research/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/turi-1.pdf

The 20-Year Future Scenario of Adaptive Leadership

 in A) Country Archetypes & Scenarios / The Unicist Research Institute / Unicist Cobots / Unicist Functional Design  tagged Intelligent Systems / Next Generation of Leaders / Peter Belohlavek / Social Evolution / The 20-Year Future Scenario of Leadership / The Unicist Research Institute / Trends in Leadership / unicist anthropology / Unicist Evolutionary Approach / Unicist Future Research Lab by

Conceptualization: the Core of Adaptive Leadership

In April 2011 the Unicist Future Research Lab, led by Peter Belohlavek, began a process to define which will be the possible evolution of the types of leadership in the world. The objective of the research was to find the trends in leadership that are driven by the upgrade of technologies.

The 20-Year Future Scenario of Adaptive Leadership

The reach of one’s globalization is defined by the limit of the pronoun “WE”…

The unicist approach to future research applied to leadership is based on an inferences based methodology to describe possible scenarios based on the knowledge of the concept of leadership and the laws of social evolution considering the evolution of the technologies and their consequences.

To access the basics on Unicist Future Research please enter:
www.unicist.org/sdp.shtml

Trends in Leadership

The influence of technology generates a strong segmentation of leadership. This segmentation implies a differentiation of cultures and activities based on the dominant collective intelligence.

Three different levels of functional leadership are expected to evolve which will establish differentiated habits that make them work as clusters. This means that there will be dominant types of leadership based on the culture and the available technologies.

The three dominant clusters will be:

  • Manipulative Leadership
  • Operational Leadership
  • Adaptive Leadership

The Cluster of Manipulative Leadership

Leadership maturityThis cluster is functional to segments that are driven by the need of survival.

This segment is based on over-adaptive behavior which implies rotating the roles of dominance, opposition and submission.

The acceptance of over-adaptiveness as a habit requires a strong subjective support for the participants that naturally drives towards manipulation in order to sustain the integrity of groups and avoid disgregation.

The Cluster of Operational Leadership

This cluster is functional for the massive operational activities in all fields. It is based on the development of two alternative leadership styles: the charismatic and the authoritarian roles. These roles are functional and accepted to influence operational environments.

Both roles are implicitly conservative and therefore functional to lead in stable environments where there is no need for change, innovation or expansion. The integration of both roles sustains the integrity of groups and avoids disgregation.

The Cluster of Adaptive Leadership

Adaptive leadership begins to be the “star” based on the need of assuming a role that supersedes the use of technology and allows expanding activities towards a superior level of productivity. It is driven by the need to save energy to develop sustainable groups and organizations.

This cluster is based on having the concepts of what needs to be done in order to use the available technologies or develop new technologies integrating peopleware with software and hardware to generate added value. They are constructive and creative leaders in their environment.

This role is basically occupied by doers who exert their leadership based on the functionality of their solutions and the building of peopleware to build sustainable groups and organizations.

Conclusion:
Adaptive Leadership – The Next Generation of Leaders

In 20 years the technologies that are now incipient will have become mature and will have changed the way leaders have to exert their role.

Technology is making the operational aspects fully transparent, which implies the appearance of a new scenario in which there is a need of having the personal reliability and the capacity of adjusting the behavior to the requirements of the problems that are dealt with. This is the definition of adaptive leadership.

Conceptualizing and having a mature strategic approach are the core aspects that are needed to be adaptive. Conceptualizing allows focusing on solutions and the mature strategic approach allows transforming concepts into reliable results.

Adaptiveness requires having the concept of what one is doing. This concept, installed in the long-term memory allows integrating the information received from the outside and transforming it into adaptive actions within the functional concept of the situation.

The new role of leadership requires going beyond the “preaching by example” approach, because now it is necessary to have the concept of what is being done and have the mind open to the different alternatives the available technologies enable.

It implies dealing with the complex aspects that are implicit in any conceptualization and transform them into simple operational processes that can be either automated or handcrafted.

When dealing in developed or emergent environments, adaptive leadership needs to be focused on organizing peopleware, software and hardware using a role driven model that allows establishing responsibilities for results while the technology generates most of the operational solutions.

But there will be always room for operational and manipulative leadership in the world depending on the culture and type of activities. These types of leadership will remain dominant in many regions of the world.

Access the complete report at: http://www.unicist.org/repo/#Future

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.
http://www.unicist-school.org/future-research/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/turi-1.pdf

Future Research: the Era of Participation is changing the habits

 in The Unicist Research Institute / Unicist Cobots / Unicist Functional Design  tagged Era of Knowledge / Era of Participation / Future Research / Individual Evolution / Institutional Evolution / Intelligent Systems / Peter Belohlavek / Social Evolution / Social Scenario / The Unicist Research Institute / unicist anthropology / Unicist Evolutionary Approach / Unicist Future Research Lab / Unicist Logical Approach by

The objective of people in the Era of Participation is to find a better place in the world, conserve it, expand it and avoid losing it. This era changes the way people deal with others. It generated a major change of habits that gives access to influential roles to all those who feel that they have something to say and drives towards an increasing transparency of public and private actions.

The reach of one’s globalization is defined
by the limit of the pronoun “WE”…

The unicist future research on the displacement of the “Era of Knowledge” by the “Era of Participation” was triggered by the need of knowing how to influence people in an adapted way. The notorious change in communication technologies, that gave most of the hidden villages in peripheral countries an access to the world, made evident that a new ideology was being introduced.

The research was led by Peter Belohlavek at The Unicist Research Institute using the Unicist Complexity Science Methodology. The research began in 2001 and included: Algeria, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada Chile, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, Egypt, Finland, France, Germany, Holland, India, Israel, Korean Republic, Mexico, New Zealand, Italy, Japan, Norway, Peru, Poland, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Slovakia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Tunisia, UK, Ukraine, Uruguay, USA.

The closing of the conclusions was possible based on the experiences with Google, Greenpeace, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

To access the basics on Unicist Future Research please enter: www.unicist.org/sdp.shtml

Which technologies have given birth to the Era of Participation?

Internet (Sharing)

The sharing capacity of Internet changed the world of communication in the field of work and of pastime activities. Although it began as a tool to work it evolved towards a tool to access and share.

Cell Phones (SMS – Short Message Service)

The communication and influential capacity of messages when they are used to share weaknesses transformed cell phones into a weapon to generate both adaptive and over-adaptive participation.

Facebook – Twitter (Social networks)

Social networks became the natural tool to be used by all the segments of participants (publicity driven, bragging driven, utopia driven, recognition driven, action driven). They made the building and managing of superficial relationships possible, which were not possible before.

Linkedin (Professional Networks)

Professional networks became a way to position individuals in hypothetical roles in order to make them become real personal roles. Their use is based on providing hope to the participants who want to find or improve their place in the world.

Consequences of this New Era:

  1. The change of the depth of relationships making them basically superficial and based on fallacious myths
  2. The increasing importance of the word of mouth communication to install ideas
  3. The increase of the value of charismatic leadership and its dysfunctional counterpart: the “manipulative leadership”
  4. The substitution of structural participation (institutions) by conjunctural participation
  5. The loss of credibility of formal authorities and the empowerment of authoritative roles
  6. The increase of egocentrism and the demand of permanent sensorial and materialistic stimuli
  7. The increase of addictive behaviors to escape
  8. The increase of fundamentalist groups to ensure survival (religious, civil, military)
  9. The multiplication of sectarian movements
  10. The installation of over-adaptive behaviors as a standard in the world
  11. The existence of multi-minorities
  12. The installation of active inaction as a standard in underdeveloped environments

The Increase of the Influence of Public Opinion

Public opinion became the central power in democratic countries. Public opinion is now driven by the new technologies that are available and tends to install a dualistic approach in cultures defined by those who accept something and those who oppose to it.

Era of ParticipationAs public opinion is intuition driven, this conflict becomes extreme when untrue information or disinformation is used by the parts.

Public opinion has always integrated the structure of the governmental power integrated by the legislative power, the executive power and the judiciary power.

The role of the legislative power is that of the driver of maximal strategies. In this role, it needs to be compatible with the public opinion but at the same time foster expansion and equality of opportunities.

The executive power has two alternatives in this Era: covering both the needs of expansion and distribution or focusing on distribution becoming a populist government. The extreme situation occurs when Distributism prevails absolutely to sustain the power of the government itself.

The judiciary power equilibrates the conflict between the public opinion, the legislative power and the executive power.

In the Era of Participation, the direct influence of people in governmental decision becomes dominant.

The End of the Era of Knowledge

The Era of Knowledge implied that the access to personal and social evolution was basically sustained by the knowledge individuals had and was demonstrated by their credentials.

But the Era of Knowledge came to an end. An “ERA” is such when it establishes an imperceptible “gravitational force” that sustains the behavior of an environment.

It has to be considered that knowledge began being ruled by religions in order to avoid the deviation of human behavior from the moral rules, but became a value in itself with the appearance of the Industrial Era in the world.

The paradox is that industrialization empowered knowledge but at the end, the Era of Industrialization was exceeded by the Era of Knowledge. Nevertheless, knowledge is still an appendix of religions in pre-industrialized societies.

Internet opened a window that allowed making the access of knowledge massive. It expanded the use of data and information that gave access to any person who lives in a non-marginal environment.

Era of ParticipationInformation can be defined as any data that can be transformed into a meaningful entity and thus can be stored in the long-term memory of an individual. Knowledge is such when the information one has can be used to produce something.

Google, as a concept, made the access to information basically free for everyone. The paradox is that people now have all the information they are willing to search but the value generation, which is based on knowledge, depends on the concepts they manage.

This explains why the open access to information did not produce a significant increase in productivity and quality of work.

Thus, the functionality of knowledge as a driver for personal evolution became fallacious. Education became a hygienic key; it was necessary to open doors but did not suffice to drive personal evolution and provide a meaningful place in the world.

The occurrence of economic crises in the world was the trigger to the end of the Era of Knowledge. Every economic crisis generates the lack of opportunities for many and the degradation of the ethical intelligence of a culture in order to survive. When crises are not cured, but only palliated, they plant the seed of the next crisis and the degradation of cultures continues.

A consequence of these crises is a growing individualism, which drives people to develop a surviving attitude that diminishes the generation of value and installs an unstable social environment.

Another consequence is the exclusion of youth, the newcomers in societies, diminishing their possibilities to find a social role to evolve.

These consequences gave birth to the Era of Participation, which can be synthesized in a shout:

“I need a better place in the world”

What is the Era of Participation?

The objective of participation is to find a better place in the world, conserve it, expand it and avoid losing it.

What needs to be established is the social role an individual looks for, which can imply a structural or an incidental positioning. It implies that there has to be an acceptance of the reference group the individual accepts as a rule maker.

This reference group can be real, virtual or super-natural. All what matters is that it has to exist in order to make a participative process possible. Without a superior reference group’s acceptance, there is no true place in the world and the participation degrades towards achieving a role of active or passive opposition.

The social role individuals fight for needs to have a belonging group where the individuals feel at home. Belonging groups are what make a place in the world safe. Therefore, participation implies fostering the existence of belonging groups who share similar utopias while they share the same weaknesses they need to cover.

Era of ParticipationThe participation process becomes redundant when a place in the world, accepted by the reference groups and the belonging group, has been gained. However, as the satisfaction of needs generates new needs this is a never-ending process at an operational level. This process generates social evolution when individuals have a role in the world that allows them to evolve based on the value they add.

Adaptive Participation

Evolutionary participation requires beginning with a conscious adaptive process where the individual is looking for a place to be who s/he is. This makes the individual a differentiated person that needs to begin by participating through value adding actions (participation to do) while sustaining the identity of the role by having the necessary image that allows others to tag him/her properly (participation to appear).

Participation is only possible when the members who participate are able to recognize each other as part of the same group. In fundamentalist groups this tagging might include tattoos or similar timeless marks but in social groups individuals need to have the necessary “look & feel” in order to be tagged and recognized as members.

This appearance is extremely notorious in social and professional networks that establish the basics of the profile that need to be covered in order for the group to accept a possible member. That is why appearance, which is given by the personal brand or image, is the entropy inhibitor that makes expansive participation possible.

When the image has been positioned, the final objective of being a real member becomes possible.

Over-adaptive Participation

The apparent paradox is that over-adaptation is the minimum strategy. This requires an explanation. Adapting implies influencing while being influenced to achieve a goal, which in this case is to have a place in the world. Influencing is what we call adaptive participation and being influenced is what in this case is named over-adaptive participation.

Over-adaptiveness implies accepting the rules of the environment, which implies submission but beginning with a dominant participation in order to feel that one is not submitting but establishing the rules.

When the self-esteem has been conserved by this dominant participation, which mostly implies active inaction that allows judging the environment, an oppositional role becomes necessary to accept the rules of the game.

When individuals are able to feel superior by judging the environment, opposing to some aspects to preserve their self-esteem, then over-adaptive participation becomes functional. But, this functionality depends on its compatibility with the adaptive participation.

Segments of Participation

Era of ParticipationThere are different segments or participants that need to be understood in order to deal with them. Accessing profiles and activities on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn is very useful to identify the different segments, which are never pure but always have an implicit dominant trend that drives their participation.

  1. Publicity Driven
  2. Bragging Driven
  3. Utopia Driven
  4. Recognition Driven
  5. Action Driven

Conclusions

Paradoxically, the Era of Participation implies a prevalence of observation over true participation. This implies that this Era will represent implicitly a battle between observers and participants.

Over-adaptive participation is based on an observational attitude while adaptive participation is based on the synergy of the members to produce something.

The preexisting Era of Knowledge will be included as a secondary driver during the next decades to sustain, on the one hand, those who participate to build and, on the other hand, to sustain those who participate to expose the implicit weaknesses of the adaptive participants.

This makes this period a battle and an integration of these two groups. Dualism will be the driver for the mass that over-adapts while integralism will be the driver for the elites who adopt an adaptive participative approach. It is a battle of communication.

Adaptive Participation Building

The building of adaptive participation is the responsibility of the elite of cultures. It is an institutional role that needs to exist in order to make participative behavior meaningful.

Era of ParticipationThe purpose of adaptive participation building is to establish an influential social capital. Social capital is given by the strengths of the bonds among the members of a group or community that drive their value generating actions. Social capital implicitly implies the existence of a greater good to sustain the relationships among the members.

Adaptive participation requires the existence of a double ethical behavior in the community. On the one hand, there has to exist an internal ethics of the group which needs to be based on cooperativeness and, on the other hand, an external ethics with the environment is required, which needs to be driven by competitiveness in order to ensure survival.

This is evident in the behavior of countries that naturally have two different attitudes: one towards the environment and another towards the members of the culture. However, both ethics need to be integrated by a social capital, which establishes the participation rules for the members of the group towards other members and towards the environment.

If cooperation is replaced by competition among the members of a group or community, the social capital becomes corrupt and over-adaptiveness replaces adaptiveness.

Corruption and over-adaptiveness also prevails when competition is based on the destruction of the environment in order to take advantage of it.

Adaptiveness drives towards evolution and over-adaptiveness is the cause and consequence of involution.

If you want to access more information about this study please contact n.i.brown@unicist.org

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.http://www.unicist.org/turi.pdf