The actions of the elite of a society, its Establishment, are the drivers of the evolution or involution of such society. This elite is a natural representative of the values of the mass of the society and defines the possibilities of social evolution, which are sustained by the middle class that diminishes the conflicts between the mass and the elite.
When a culture is evolving there are natural opportunities for social ascension, which implies that the members of the “low” class can become members of the middle class.
Nevertheless, the Establishment embodies the values that drive social growth.
It has to be considered that corruption is the structural inhibitor for social growth, because it destroys justice, which is a precondition for social evolution.
Corruption is a palliative to injustice in many cultures, but when it becomes installed as a standard, it destroys the possibilities for social growth.
The Basic Fundamentals of Social Growth
The purpose of social growth is to empower the archetype of a culture in order to foster an increase in the wellbeing of such culture and provide a context for the coming generations. What needs to be accepted is the fact that there exists no balanced situation in social evolutions. A society is either evolving or involving.
The evolution is driven by social adaptiveness, which allows influencing the environment while being influenced by it.
This allows fostering social growth by empowering the adaptive culture of the environment.
Cultural adaptiveness implies having a strong cultural nucleus that has fuzzy limits in order to include those outsiders who decided to belong.
Absolute ideologies hinder adaptiveness.
Social influence implies having a national synergy based on a strong social capital, which requires the acceptance of the Establishment and the existence of a structural institutionalization that allows guiding the social cultures.
The Ontogenetic Map of Social Growth
The unicist ontology of social growth defines the fundamentals that make growth possible. The nature of social growth is extremely difficult to be apprehended because it is implicit in the natural behavior of individuals, which makes them culture-blind.
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That is why elites need to assume the responsibility of guiding towards a superior social stage that empowers the wellbeing of the society and the possibilities of future generations. The synthetic description of each basic fundamental of social growth allows having the guiding idea of the concept.
Social Identity
The essential driver of social growth is the archetype of the culture. This implies that the culture archetype drives the social behavior of a society. This social behavior evolves or involves based on the functionality of the educational model.
This educational model has two different objectives. On the one hand, it has to provide the basic education that allows people to adapt in the environment, generating the necessary added value to grow. And, on the other hand, it drives the elite towards a superior stage in order to make the cultural archetype evolve towards a superior level.
The dominant religious beliefs, dealing with immanent human activities, sustain the cultural archetype and establish the moral rules of the society, which regulate the relationship among its members and establish the basics of the culture’s ethics.
Social Adaptiveness
Ensuring transcendence is the goal of social adaptiveness. This transcendence, which includes both immanent and transcendent aspects, is ensured by the capacity of the culture of introducing changes that make the culture more adaptive in the environment.
These changes are based on tiny mutations of the culture, which are necessarily driven by a change of ethics.
Ethics can either evolve towards a superior level of value generation that drives towards growth, or towards a superior level of value appropriation of the members of the culture that drives towards individualism, which hinders social growth.
Cultural adaptiveness is the catalyst of social growth. It is based on exerting influence in a society in order to generate growth.
This influence requires empowering the social capital of the society, which naturally requires the institutionalization of the culture and the existence of a universally accepted role.
Roles are such when their produces are predefined, reliable and structured. Cultural adaptiveness also requires submitting to the values of the environment while influencing their evolution.
Social Influence
The purpose of social influence is to upgrade the social scenario of a culture, which deals with the transcendence of the society that is sustained by the educational model and the institutionalization of the relationships.
Social growth requires an educational model that both upgrades those who have superior capacities and protects those who need to be protected in order to sustain their inclusion in the society.
Social influence is acted out by the social power of a society. Such social power sustains the national identity through the actions of the elite of the culture within the rules established by the institutionalized environment. The actions that sustain the building of social power pursue transcendent goals and the wellbeing of the members of the society.
The entropy inhibitor of social growth is cultural evolution that drives towards adaptive behavior, which is driven by value adding ethics and value earning ethics. The driver of growth is the value adding ethics of the culture.
The value earning ethics sustains the materialistic evolution of the members. Justice, the judiciary system, is the “gravitational force” of a culture that ensures both cultural adaptiveness and cultural evolution. The judiciary system working as a gravitational force is the basic support for social growth.
Levels of Social Growth
There are five levels of social growth:
- Survival Growth – The Anti-growth
- Individual Growth
- Cultural Growth
- National Growth
- Evolutionary Growth
1) Survival Growth –
The Anti-growth
It is the reactive growth for those cultures that are endangered by a crisis of values. This type of growth is based on a fallacious myth in which people judge others based on their actions but judge themselves based on intentions.
Survival growth naturally drives towards installing subjectivism as an addictive behavior that allows “relativizing” everything, which drives naturally towards social chaos and extreme individualism.
Survival growth drives the declination of societies. Every crisis drives to a lower level of ethics to survive in the environment.
2) Individual Growth
The individual growth is the most basic level of growth in which individuals decide to expand socially without considering the consequences of their individualistic actions.
It is the case of individuals who achieve goals based on a sort of “outsider” attitude. This type of growth is based on a very low level of institutionalization and the absence of a “social system”.
This growth is extremely unstable and only allows upgrading to a superior level if the members of the Establishment that act it out are considered social “heroes”.
3) Cultural Growth
Cultural growth includes the individual growth, which is transformed into a cultural growth when the individuals are proud of the culture they belong to.
This pride has two effects: on the one hand, it provides an incipient feeling of national identity but, on the other hand, it generates the existence of the feeling of self-sufficiency that limits their possibilities of a dynamic adaptation to the external environment.
This level of growth is the necessary transition to upgrade to a full national identity that allows ensuring social transcendence. It drives towards a superior level of social growth if the social and judiciary justice recognize those individuals who generate value.
4) National Growth
The national growth level, which includes the preceding cultural growth level, becomes such level when the archetype of the culture becomes expansive.
This level of social growth demands a high level of awareness of the elite and the existence of an established institutionalization in which the change is institutionally driven.
The national identity is sustained by the acceptance of the transcendence of the values of the culture. This level of social growth allows the introduction of changes in order to better adapt to the environment.
These cultures have a very low level of corruption, which allows them to rely on the rules that are being applied. It drives towards a superior level of social growth when a sustainable global approach is accepted in the environment.
5) Evolutionary Growth
The evolutionary growth level, which includes the preceding national growth level, becomes such when a culture decides to become influential in the environment without assuming a dominant role.
This level of social growth is extremely rare at a national level but it is more frequent in smaller institutionalized environments. Evolutionary growth fosters learning and a conscious dynamic adaptation to the environment.
This level of social growth requires a superior level of social ethics from the participants. It requires minimizing the conflicts generated by the natural changes that need to be installed in order to adapt without changing the identity of the culture.
This level of evolutionary growth becomes dysfunctional when global crises affect a culture.
