Decision Making Matrix
"Historians will have to face the fact that natural selection determined the evolution of cultures in the same manner as it did that of species." - Konrad Lorenz
"The quality of decision is like the well-timed swoop of a falcon which enables it to strike and destroy its victim." - Sun Tzu
"Act quickly, think slowly." - Germaine Greer
This matrix of decision making is explained with two axis. One is determined by how power is expressed and the second by the inclusiveness of the decision making approach. It is an original work that is rooted in concepts of evolutionary theory and fairly rudimentary history. Three concepts underpin this idea.
Firstly, in evolution the focus is usually on the species that is evolving over time, however the other side of evolution is the multi-dimensional environment in which species adaptation over time occurs. An animal that has evolved for one set of specific conditions may not survive as well in another environment. So to in decision making, the physical characteristics and parameters of an environment, in which a decision needs to be made, is going to mould and shape over time the best way to make that decision. This is a 'memetic' approach to understanding decision making which is directly analogous to the standard genetic approach in evolution. As the physical world is the shaping force of the genetic material over time, so to will the factors surrounding a decision shape the memetic material being expressed in a culture over time.
Secondly, in some cases where a species through population can effectively change the environment, so too can the decision making process affect the landscape of the decision that needs to made. This idea speaks to a bi-directional interaction between species and environment in the natural world, and in decision making between the substantive decision being made and the environment in which it is being made.
Thirdly, that parallel forms of evolutionary adaptation are possible. In the natural world, similar phenotypic expression in two largely unrelated species will evolve separately but usually because of the same environmental pressures. For instance the jaw of an African cat will have strikingly similar characteristics to the jaw of a thylacine (carnivorous marsupial) in Australia, even though they are very diverse in terms of their evolution.
In decision making, this commonality of environmental pressure leads to parallel forms of decision making processes even though there may be no causal link between two distinct cultures. For instance, dynastic inheritance in the South America Inca had no connection to the models of dynastic inheritance that evolved in Europe or Asia. The parallel development of decision making processes points to the focus of discussion here, because we see the same emergent picture of decision making processes reoccur throughout history and across vastly different cultures.
A popular discussion about evolution in the natural world will typically omit the importance of the environment. There is usually a focus on the species and the evolutionary changes over time that the species undergoes, but what is often left out of picture is the idea that it is a multi-dimensional environment being expressed through the genetic changes in the species. This multi-dimensional environment goes beyond geology, temperature, rainfall etc and includes, perhaps most importantly, the other species housed within the environment. This idea points to a massively complex system of overlapping evolutionary stories. It's a fairly radical way of viewing evolution, to say that the species is a reflection, almost like a photo negative of the environment.
When looking at decision making and the development of political structures, it is useful to take the same approach where the conditions in which the decision is being made ultimately affects how a group will come to a decision. This notion can transcend the substantive content of the decision (what is being decided) in order to look at the decision making process itself (how it is decided) so that the decision emerges from the specific contextual environment in which the decision is made.
So what are these common environmental pressures of decision making? One key factor in making a decision may be the number of people that the decision is going to affect. Population size has a huge impact in how to make decisions because as the number of people increases, the process by which the decision is made must enrol the support of more and more people. In a small group of 3 people, a decision is relatively easy to make, like for instance if the decision were to be as mundane as where you would go out for dinner. But in a group of 30 it becomes somewhat awkward and difficult, often resulting in a compromise solution. However if 1 person were to take command and say we are going here at this date and eating this type of food, then the others can either go or not as they please.
Frequencies and the normal distribution, change the population size and you get more 'extremes' (eg: height)
But plan far enough in advance and the point is moot as to weather others will follow. This means that time scale is also critical in the decision making process. When the demand for time criticality is low, that is the implementation of the decision can wait, then there is more capacity to increase the number of people the decision is to affect. So factors that affect the time scale are important, which means that the life and death nature of the decision is a fundamental constraint on how the decision is made. How critical is it? The decision about where to go out for dinner is not life and death, however the decision about wether to leave a house being threatened by a bush fire or to stay and defend it is a great deal more critical in it's nature, and not something that can be delayed. They are both decisions, but this factor of criticality taps directly into a spectrum of function in the amygdala that pertains to basic survival. Some decisions, like where, when and what to eat in a social group, may be entirely benign, however other decisions like what to do in life threatening crisis, are functionally very different, and essentially tap into different neurological constructs as a result. (The nature of these two different neurological structures is discussed in a later section). The two parameters of population size and criticality are discussed below in the explanation of the decision making matrix, because they best characterise the categories that are being explained. However they may not be the only factors present, they are merely useful for explaining the evolution of decision making methods, with the ultimate purpose to allow the reader to step outside of the content of the decision and look at how the decision is being made.
What is being constructed here is a 3 x 3 grid, where the first cell pertains to that method of decision making when power is taken and responsibility is in the hands of one person. This category is called the leader.
| Power is taken | |||
| One person | The Leader | ||
"When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem invincible but in the end, they always fall - think of it, always." - Mohandas Gandhi
"A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a moulder of consensus." - Martin Luther King, Jr.
This is the most obvious decision making method and a good place to start because it is usually the first to come about in most situations. This is where one person stakes their position and says "ok, who is coming with me ?". Or stated in a more authoritarian way, "it's my way or the highway!"
Vast libraries of literature exist when it comes to leadership, however like most concepts in this work the definition used is simple and hopefully commonly accepted. Leadership is a quality within a person that people can respond to in a given context, that they can resonate with, to such a degree that they are willing to follow that person. However as usually occurs the focus is less on leadership per-se and more often about the specific leader in question.
In communications theory the leader expresses the beginning of decision as it pertains to the broadcast method of information exchange, and it fits neatly into that mould. However it also has features of the network method of information exchange in that the leader can respond to individual sentiment and individuals can resonate with what is being said by the leader. In a way there is a synthesis of the two communication methods when it works properly, or in a benevolent fashion.
Another way to look a this is to view 'the group' as single entity. In this way we have a synchronous peer-to-peer network relationship between the leader and the group, a 1 on 1 conversation, but we also have an asynchronous broadcast one-to-many relationship between the leader and the individuals in the group. As an extension of this, a representative of the group when talking to a representative of another group (diplomats) will be another peer to peer relationship, albeit at a group level. In this way, leadership tell us that the 'group' is like the 'individual' when it comes to understanding the method of communication, and that a leader is sort of temporarily put at the same level as the group when communication is a peer to peer network structure.
(aside: Any one-to-one communication will tend towards secrecy, and any one-to-many communication will, by it's very nature tend towards transparency. However when the one-to-many communication fails to be transparent, as with party caucus, then corruption ensues.)
In terms of the evolutionary pressures of decision making, leadership is relatively straight forward when the population of the group is small. Consider for instance something from the natural world, where you were looking at a distribution of heights for a given population. With smaller population size you are less likely to get extremely tall and extremely short individuals. This is basic probability as it relates to a normal or "bell" distribution curve. However, if you were to look at the distribution of heights in a large population, then there is a greater probability that you may encounter more extreme tallness and more extreme shortness. The principal is that the larger the population the greater the spread of the distribution for a given characteristic, which is in this case is physical height.
If however the characteristic was a predisposition of what people see as important, as expressed for example on a left-wing / right wing continuum, then the same aspects of a normal distribution apply. In a small group of people, the opinions will be relatively clumped together (around the average), however in a very large group of people you are probably going to come across extremes of left wing and extremes of right wing opinion. The left/right concept is introduced here as most readers are relatively familiar with it, but left unsaid for the moment is the driving factors behind this distribution spread. i.e.: the question of why some people are left wing and some people are right wing. Suffice to say that it is the environmental pressure, as a causal factor associated with decision making, that is being examined for the moment.
Under pressure from a life and death situation, leadership is often viewed as the most pragmatic way forward when decisions need to be made. Consider the small group of fire-fighters that have to save people from a burning building. Their training will usually involve making sure that a command structure is in place to handle decisions that need to made on the fly. In simple terms, there is just no time to form a subcommittee and creatively work out the best way forward. For the person who seeks consensus decision making, like the F|S individual, this may be a difficult premise to accept, because they feel that for the most part all decisions need to be collective in nature. But the converse is also true, such that when the decision is relatively low in its urgency, such as deciding on how to budget for health care and education over the next decade, it is not necessarily the best thing to do to be having all the decisions made by a single individual, and it doesn't matter how charismatic they are, better decisions will always involve more input. Unfortunately the malevolent dictator will be as uncomfortable with this fact as the proponent of consensus is with the life and death critical decision.
In terms of the other environmental pressure, as the population increases, the extreme opinions in the group begin to emerge. This creates a problem for the leader and the simple solution is to be a better leader. Much of what is written about in understanding leadership pertains to the qualities of good and bad leadership. However with the leader who just takes control, the coercive leader, as the population continues to increase, and the demands on the leader continue to grow, eventually a point is reached when the structure of coercive leadership is undermined to the point where it will become unworkable.
One temporary fix is to increase the degree of anxiety within the population. When a group of people is under threat of imminent danger, they will generally put aside their differences and move towards a centrist position. This is a genuine phenomena that occurs when a natural disaster strikes a relatively cohered population. In Japan 2011 when the tsunami stuck after a very large earthquake the extremely cohered national consciousness of the Japanese citizenry came to the fore. However when hurricane Katrina hit in 2005, the relative disparate cultural and socio economic groups in New Orleans were relatively more fragmented, as indicated by the looting and general collapse of civilisation for a time, such that they could not cohere to a centrist position as easily.
The problem is that when there is a genuine crisis, the resilience has to already be there. What could be happening however is that politicians have for some time been creating the appearance of a crisis in order to temporarily rally support to their short term policies. This has become a sort of 'Crying Wolf Politics' that has a long term detrimental effect. This is not a new concept, make a people afraid and they will be easier to manipulate if you can also offer them safety. This 'quick fix' to obtain group cohesion is compounded by economic demand of the commercial media where it uses a short term news cycle to make people pay attention, all so they can sell advertising space. The best way to get someone's attention is to make them anxious or afraid about something. In the next section we'll return to this idea because it also has an inherent long term outcome over time that is ultimately destructive, but for now it is enough to consider that the leader who can make a people cohere, through whatever means, will be more successful.
In terms of consciousness, the leader can be seen as an avatar for the C|P stage of consciousness to the stages of consciousness that precede it. The leader acts as an individual (C|P) in order to take the control of the group (B|O). In it's basic and primitive form this is really about one person who takes control often for a very selfish reason. But the leader may also expose themselves to the suffering of the group, and this is what drives the creation of empathy. The creation of empathy is when the 'early adopting' leader in the egotistical C|P becomes the avatar for D|Q consciousness. Put simply, the leader learns empathy and decides to also stand up for those who cannot protect themselves.
Over time, the pressures of population will increase and the leader that takes control will just not be able to hold the group together for very long. Most often the coercive leader will become a malevolent dictator in order to enforce their will, eventually to be replaced in revolution by what is usually another coercive leader.
But very occasionally the leader will realise that a benevolent approach has the best long term outcome. Once secure in their role, the leader who becomes benevolent will often survive longer. There is but one more problem they face, which is that they will ultimately die, and with this comes a desire that their leadership position, with all of the advantages it contains, should be inherited by their offspring. If they can get this transition right then next cell in the matrix arises, where power is assigned.
| Power is taken | Power is assigned | ||
| One person | The Leader | The Monarch | |
When power is assigned, it is best to build the belief in the group that something bigger than the group is assigning this power. It is tantamount to duping the population when viewed very simplistically, but when this assignment by something greater is done successfully then the monarch will emerge. It is called the monarch hear but it could equally be called the pharaoh, emperor, or even mafia boss in a modern day context, and it is usually a family of leaders where the head position is transferred through the generations and where other positions are subject to assignment by the head.
There are other evolved memes which help with this process of transferring power to one's offspring. It is usually correlated with memetic structures like 'honour', 'virtue' or the chivalric code, which act as they suggest, but also become a more general overlord-like disposition to protect those who need protection. Based on the development of empathy when they first emerge, these memes of honour describe the advancements of the D|Q stage of Absolutionist thinking where there exists in the world good and evil, right and wrong and of course we are on the side of doing good and righting wrongs. But the compassion for the peasant also has to be justified in light of the status quo being protected, and so the external source (god) that set up this condition is the absolute reference point used to allow this incongruence to continue. So the thinking of the monarch goes like this 'those who are suffering do so because that is their lot in life as defined by God's will, and I must do all I can to help the less fortunate', that is everything except give up control.
With the assignment of power comes the ability to build a set of rules that people can adhere to. This stage requires the transmission of these rules down through time, and eventually they appear as those laws that seem to transcend the individual because they apply to the group. The very act of transmitting these laws from one to many is an act of broadcasting information. Over time the laws themselves become the source of power, simply because it can be said that "...it is written". So that if you want to argue a position, then all the proponent need do is say "It's is written...". This is the D|Q Absolutionist memetic structure in full flight.
The monarch, who's power is assigned from on high, has an advantage over the simple coercive leader because they are able to better cohere the group. The associated stage of consciousness is about the cohesion of the group, and the monarch provides a focal point that the individual members of the group can look to and acquiesce some of their autonomy towards. It's is seen as ok because well, "that's just the way it is". Eventually it does not even matter if he is a good king or a bad king, the point is that he is the king and "long live the king".
What usually occurs in the monarchy is an hierarchical system of decision delivery through other sub leaders who are also, rather neatly, subject to the higher authority. This feudal system is a hierarchy and delivers a degree of success over a simple coercive leader method of decision making, because the lowest elements might have a bad king, but they could have the benefit of a good lord, or the other way around. Furthermore, it creates a marketplace of chivalric duty where the lords (sub leaders) can ascend or descend based on their behaviour (or ability to not get caught cheating).
Another structure that parallels the feudal structure in its hierarchical composition is the military. Over time the military organisation that has grown out of the feudal structure, which even through the revolution caused by gunpowder, is even more closely tied to the notions of adherence to a memetic code of conduct. But where as the nobility became more and more separated from the process of conflict, the military had to adapt and survive in a field of life and death combat. Here there is a strong connection to the leadership qualities expressed above, simply because the life-and-death nature of the environment demands this adherence to honour memes. It is not surprising then that as the nobility rots within its own exuberance, the military agent of change, a sort of transitional agent, can emerge to challenge the idea that power is just assigned because it is written down somewhere.
But success leads to population growth and population growth continues to put pressure on the system of control and decision making. Eventually the pressure builds such that again dissent becomes an infectious spreading malignancy, or due to it's own success, the graft and corruption that is inherent in hereditary system starts to decay the initial position of the power 'that is assigned'. Just as the C|P Leader is an avatar for the B|O group, and the D|Q Monarch is an avatar for the C|P group, so too is the very rare E|R transitional revolutionary agent which can be an avatar for the D|Q group.
The higher order transitional agent is very rare and they appear in the rise of civilisations like beacons, usually because they are from a military background. Oliver Cromwell (England, 1600s), George Washington (U.S, 1700s), Napoleon (France, early 1800's) were all to some extent transitional agents from a military background. They are not necessarily wholly exempt of malevolent acts, and much controversy still exists even after hundreds of years of debate, but they are undoubtedly change agents. However not all change agents are purely militarist in their background, other avatars for change could be said to include Ghandi, Martin-Luther King Jr and even Nelson Mandela, which are discussed later in this section. The most interesting models to look at are George Washington and Nelson Mandela, Washington because he used military power to advance a system of decision making that was egalitarian, pluralistic and beyond the confines of a monarch, and Mandela because he started in violence but transformed into a peaceful purpose where, in a similar way to George Washington, he did not want to have the power for himself because for him it was more about the greater freedom that a democratic system creates.
In Greek, 'Demos' means 'the people of the community' and 'Kratos' is roughly translates to 'power to decide'. The transition that is seeded by these revolutionaries, that is ultimately picked up upon in the wider consciousness of the population is one of power that is agreed upon. This manifest in the first instance when the formal process of agreement elects a leader.
| Power is taken | Power is assigned | Power is agreed upon | |
| One person | The Leader | The Monarch | The President |
The President is a system of decision making where a single person is accepted as a leader through a democratic process of the people. Here the major memes at work include a sense that all people in the group (now called citizens) are equal in their status within that group, and that the rights and privileges of being a citizen come with it a responsibility to act for the benefit of that group.
This method of decision making has a "process" at it's core that can be adaptive over time to the changing demands of the world. It does not do away with the previous forms of leadership, it rather augments them. The ideas about how society should function are still "written" somewhere, but it has a built in structure of amending and augmenting these laws as required. As a process, through the periodic election of the leader we get the feedback mechanism at work between the leader and the group. Again we are looking at a network communication between the President and this rarefied concept of the group, whilst still containing a broadcast communication between the President and the people within the group.
The true benefit of the Presidential decision making process is that it is relatively stable over time, largely because of this periodic feedback mechanism in the form of an election. And when this feedback mechanism is transparent, when it is seen as fair, then the process itself will enrol a larger number of people into the decision making process. This is where it supersedes the monarchy, because it is seen as based on equality and an explicit and well defined constitutional process. However when it is not transparent or seen as fair, when the vote is corrupted or even if the process is undermined by large donations from interested third parties, then the cracks begin to appear again within the democratic structure.
Because no system seems to completely immune to corruption there is once again the 'taking of power' by vested interests, where a subset of the general population assume they can do a better job and make a better decision. When only 1 person is elected then we have a mathematical likelihood that over time and successive elections you will end up with two closed groups (caucus) vying for the single position of leadership. Wether this position be a president, or any other leader, when you have only 1 then simply by virtue of the mathematics involved over time, you have a migration to two party rule. But either of these parties are only a subset of the population that through better oratory, more resources and political machinations will get the top spot. When the party meets in private to discuss policy, when they remove themselves from any form of transparency, then you basically have a subgroup of people taking power.
The president or single representative leader is only half of the picture of a modern democratic state. That's because up to this point we have only considered the assignment of responsibility in terms of 1 person. In the next row of this matrix we expand the assignment of responsibility to a subset of the group, and we return to earlier times to see its first incarnation. This is where a subset of people in a shared leadership role effectively take power.
| Power is taken | Power is assigned | Power is agreed upon | |
| One person | The Leader | The monarch | The President |
| Subset | The Oligarch | ||
The first identification of decision making through multiple representation occurs when a subset of the entire population effectively conspire to take power. Oligarchic states have their origins in tribal cultures where, for example, a council of elders will work to determine the best course of action for the group, this may typically describe the B|O level of consciousness where the relatively stable group or village is finally safe from the dangers of the wilderness because they can understand the cycles of nature and they can know when to plant, what to harvest and how to protect. This wisdom gets transmitted down through the generations through a stable subgroup of the whole population who learn the stories and unwritten laws which pass this information on.
This stability brings prosperity and with it an increasing population. As individuals venture into the personal journey of the C|P egotistical consciousness, the oligarchy may need to get tougher in order to maintain the system. But the pressures of population growth don't stop, and the extremes of opinion start to emerge as the tails of the normal (bell) curve expand. The village turns into a city and then a state, and even though there will be leaders who come and go, there will also be subsets of the population that conspire to control how the state is to be run.
The circle of elders, the oligarchs of ancient Greece city states are two more overt structures of when power is taken by a subgroup. But there are also many occurrences of when the subset conspire in a more secretaire fashion. The various religions of the world have a strong oligarchic influence, where the ruling elite, the patriarchs and their conclaves direct and fashion a lot of the way the organisational structure is implemented. Professional organisation also emerge where simple guilds become increasingly successful through there ability to organise and control the work that is undertaken, ultimately realising that they can manipulate the market to their benefit. The Free Masons may just be an organisation designed to penetrate and influence the more overt governing structures of a nation state. Most people are not aware of this point of etiquette, but the head mason in Britain is the only person who does not have to bow to the monarch. The modern day interpretation of such organisation is the trade union who collectively organise and also pursue a political agenda, some of which is overt and some of which not so transparent.
The oligarchy can also take the form of purely hidden structures whose main purpose is to corrupt decision making processes and extract as much as it can from the general population. Organised crime is essentially a subset of the population seizing power in order to accumulate wealth. What is interesting is that like every other form of decision making, the same basic principles are essentially cross cultural. The mafia, the Yakusa, the Triads, call them whatever you like but organised crime is still just a subset of the general population acting to 'take power' and control.
Whilst the oligarchy is the conspiracy of a subset of the population, within the subset itself you will usually see a hierarchy or a leadership method of control within the group. As a general rule, when the oligarchy is more noble in it's purpose then it tends to a more structured process in how it operates. What might be tradition in earlier cultures may be constitution in later efforts. However with the more nefarious forms of conspiratorial control, the rules are dominated by the strength of the individual.
Again we can see an harmonic with the previously mentioned transition from the Dictator to the Monarchical forms of decision making, where in order to have the intergenerational transmission of power, the rules and processes need to be codified in some way. When the feudal lords seized control of the English state, they set up a parliament and they eventually gained control of the money and formed a standing army from that revenue. This all set about an attempt to codify the rules through which power was to be expressed. The feudal court eventually gave way to the modern day court, where it is "written" and as such that power is assigned, only this time, ...to the subgroup.
| Power is taken | Power is assigned | Power is agreed upon | |
| One person | The Leader | The Monarch | The President |
| Subset | The Oligarch | The Court / Jury | |
"The main foundations of every state, new states as well as ancient or composite ones, are good laws and good arms you cannot have good laws without good arms, and where there are good arms, good laws inevitably follow." - Niccolo Machiavelli
"There is no such thing as public opinion. There is only published opinion." - Winston Churchill
The Magna Carta, written in 1215 is a truly profound document in that it is the first to codify laws in an attempt to constrain a monarch, which in this case was in England. It is one of several documents that over time have led to the formation of the modern state. It ultimately led to decision making based on the rule of law. However it began because the nobles and bishops of the day, the oligarchs, wanted to make sure the monarch would agree to the unwritten framework of the court. The nobility were trying to cover themselves from a future tyrant and so they conspired to write it down. It's simple enough to understand, but the very act of recording how to make a decision has the effect of empowering the decision making processes being used.
It could be argued that in classical times, Egypt, Persia, Assyria, Greece and Rome all had version of recording what was to be done and how it was to be done. The first recording of history that also includes the laws and teachings of a people exists in the Torah. This document transformed a people because it was a relatively stable recording that could be transferred down through time. It superseded the simple storytelling of verbally transmitted history, even though it still contained these stories, but they were intended to be a teaching aid for future generations and with this came the rule of law. What the Magna Carta did was transform this idea into a new age, where in it became law because it was written, and by being written, as it was in the biblical sense, almost as if it were written in stone.
The modern state venerates these documents because they encapsulate the transformation into a way of making decisions that can be agreed upon through time. In the contemporary sense the process of becoming accepted into the subset of the population that can interpret these laws is one based on a kind of meritocracy, even if the 'merit' was really wealth and being able to read and write. It is still just a subset of the population that is interpreting and defining this method of making decisions, but by virtue of the fact that it is more stable over time, it transcends the often chaotic and easily manipulated simple oligarchy that precedes it.
The subset of the population that make decisions through an assignment of power is able to cope with a larger population, and the processes through which the decision are being made, when transparent, will allow for a far greater enrolment within this growing population. In simple terms, because the average member of a group can see the fairness of the process in making the decision, they will be more accepting of the outcome.
Some form of jury process did exist in ancient Athens where courts were made up of randomly selected groups of men and no judge. In some parts of Europe, the long standing tradition of having a selection of people from the local area group together to decide on crimes was eventually codified in England in the 12th century during the reign of Henry II. Over time the processes was codified into laws and procedures that made for more effective decision making. It was more effective because of it's transparent nature, even if the actual subject of the decision was held in-camera as is done in a modern sense.
The Jury is an important step forward in decision making. The process is codified and in this sense transparent and open to legal argument. But the substantive decision being made can be done in the closed process of the jury room in order to protect the rights of persons associated with the crime from being adversely affected. The court and the jury together sit at the heart of our 3 x 3 matrix of decision making, and it reflects a fine balance between all the other methods presented. However it is in effect limited in scope where it deals with the assignment of guilt or innocence of a person being tried for a crime. It works probably because the members of the jury do not have a vested interest in the outcome of the trial. Yes it can be corrupted by adding an incentive or disincentive through illicit means, but in theory it works because there is no connection between defendant and juror or the prosecutor and the juror.
The jury is not used for decision making more generally (apart from a constitutional convention approach) because in the broader sphere of a feudal court, the subset of the population making decision will have a vested interest in the outcome of the decisions. This same problem keeps propping up throughout history, where the desires of a smaller group of the population, be that a single individual or a family or a conspiracy of individuals will tend to want to corrupt the decision making process at a larger sphere of decision making. What starts out as a principled motivation to make 'good' decisions, end up as pragmatic motivation to obtain or hold onto power.
Like the transformation between monarch and president, what is needed is a process of relatively frequent feedback from the general population that will keep the structures of decision making more stable over time. Again we see how 'feedback' that can often seem chaotic will actually result in stability over a longer period of time. Here then is a profound koan, where ...there needs to be a regular perturbation to the system in order to keep it stable.
This process of a regular perturbation to the system came about in the 16th century when writs were sent out to feudal lords and bishops, commanding that they meet to talk, or "parley".
| Power is taken | Power is assigned | Power is agreed upon | |
| One person | The Leader | The Monarch | The President |
| Subset | The Oligarch | The Court / Jury | Parliament and Representation |
The first recorded instance of a representative system occurred in ancient Athens, where an assembly called the 'boule' was made up of 500 males who were randomly selected by lot, in a way this is fundamentally similar to the jury. It is interesting to note that it worked in ancient Athens, but this random selection technique has not been used since. Did the Athenians know something about probability that we don't? However it could be argued that the modern day poll is just another form of the representative system.
Out of the feudal court, and through successive steps to limit the power of the monarch the parliament emerged as a memetic construct that would transform the process of decision making and ultimately put oligarchy's firmly in the drivers seat. The original parliaments were essentially regular meetings of an oligarchic construct (feudal lords and clergy), which became more codified over time such that the regular perturbation to the system of decision making, through meeting in parliament, did not replace the previous process of governing through a subset of the population, but rather it augmented them.
Again this brought stability and with it success and with that an increasing population. The tail ends of opinion again begin to emerge and dissent and corruption of the process inevitably hurl the society through time on a trajectory that leads to the representative parliament. In the reign of Edward I the process started with the ability for a commoner to petition the parliament, where the grievance of ordinary people could be heard, and sometimes even acted on. This had the effect of enrolling more of the general population into the decision making process. There is now the impression that a person could work within the system to affect change, and there wasn't the need to revolt and send people to the guillotine.
But as the number of petitions increased, they became increasingly ignored by the monarch. In the 12th 13th and 14th century the parliament of England was a counter point to the unilateral decision making authority of the crown. However following on from the Magna Carta, the nobles gained an increasingly stronger grip on the reins of financial power, through the raising of taxes. And so for financially based matters the monarch would send out writs to the lower ranked knights and burgesses as well as the higher ranked lords and bishops. The inclusion of the representatives from distinct geographical boroughs is important because here there is the origin of a electoral process that is generated from the ranks of the "common man", and is the origin of the modern democratic state. But the lower ranked "commons" (knights and burgesses) were called in when taxes need to be handed over, a sort of buy in to the governance process, but then dismissed when the matters of revenue had been dealt with. Yet their involvement did result in an increased sense of control in the general population.
The commons and the lords in England met separately for the first time in 1341, and the advantage to the monarch for using the parliament was that it meant they could raise taxes whilst keeping the level of discontent to a level that could be managed. In general the system worked and over the next few hundred years the traditions, structures and institutions of the modern parliament began to emerge. Positions like the Speaker of the house, the Lord Great Chamberlain, the premise in which they met, and the processes by which bills are enacted began to become embedded into the culture over time.
But it was also a time of massive political upheaval as the parliament wrested control away from the monarch. It was a civil war, a turning point being the 'Rump Parliament' set up by Cromwell between 1649 and 1653, where no monarch was on the throne. It delivered a powerful message to later monarchs, which was that the parliament could exist with or without a monarch. The traditions from this period are a story in it's own right, and a reflection of this reality that Parliament could sit independently of the monarch are played out in the ceremony at the convocation of each new parliament, where the queens representative has the door to parliament slammed in his face by the house of commons, and upon which he knocks three times with the black rod. The whole of the civil war in England and the centuries of advancement are crystallised in traditions such as this, and these traditions themselves help to build group cohesion over time.
But these traditions, this story-telling over time, took a long time to emerge. In effect the "emotional" component that impacts on the formation of the democracy is catered for by these long standing traditions. When the traditions are absent, as with a newly formed democracy often imposed on a developing country, there may be no subsequent agreement and atonement in the general population. The people feel that they do not belong to the process. Without an emotional buy in, the process of democracy can be unstable and fragile. Often it is the corruption of individuals who feel no vested interest in the group decision making process that leads to a slow erosion of the state. The individual feels that this system is largely irrelevant to their daily life and they might as well just look after number one and get the most they can by perverting the process of democratic decision making. Democracy is associated with the E|R stage of consciousness, but when the bulk of the populus are still at the C|P stage of consciousness, then the democratic process is systemically inept due to wide spread graft and corruption. That is, people within government structures, who are still in the selfish C|P stage of consciousness will be corrupt, or act only in the interests of their immediate family (graft) because they may not have been through the group cohesion that comes with the generation of empathy towards the nation state (nationalism), that is part of the D|Q stage of consciousness. Without the counterbalance of honorific memes from D|Q, democracy in developing nations is doomed to failure.
Feudalism has been given a very bad reputation by the E|R and F|S stages of consciousness. These more contemporary ways of seeing the world will deprecate the whole concept of a class system. But for a person suffering in a world of egotistical and violent warlords, having a protector is desirable. Warlords, organised crime syndicates, and even street gangs are representations of the early D|Q level of consciousness. As the group fights off other groups and protects their own members so long as they conform to the rules laid down by the one in charge. Every now and then, this feudal approach can create a benevolent overlord. Someone who is compassionate and has a strong sense of empathy, such that they want to protect the poor and the weak. Our modern democratic state is built of this very foundation of "poor huddled masses" and the sense that those who are willing should be given every freedom and liberty to excel in life and contribute to the common good.
Often when looking at attempts to establish the institutions of a modern parliamentary democracy in developing countries, it is these traditions of compassion (honour, integrity, chivalry) that are missing. When democracy is thrust onto a culture, it often does not fit because the stage of consciousness that democracy enshrines is not concordant with the stage the people are at. When the country has not gone through the required steps along the road of consciousness raising, for the most part there is not the substrate of understanding within the population to encompass what it means to be a democratic state. Some emergent democratic states will emerge and survive, and certainly it is education that can move this process along more than anything else. But if they have mineral resources, and particularly if they have mineral resources close to the surface, the will often revert back to a warlord stage (C|P) that was never really advanced through to larger group cohesion (D|Q). There is often too much desire for personal wealth that drives the malevolent warlord.
The point here is that a society needs to self organise. In much the same way that a child growing up must lay the foundations of later consciousness by experiencing and living through earlier levels of consciousness. This is a pyramid structure, and to expand up, you must first expand out.
Of course the modern democratic state has it's own set of problems. The most notable is that there are still dictators and oligarchs, ...they just wear a suit. There is still a tendency within some individuals to seek to control the process of decision making with an attitude of "we know better than the general population". The voting process itself has problems, not least of which is outright fraud. But assuming you have that covered, there are also strongarm tactics to make people vote the way you want, something that is overcome somewhat by a secret ballot, but never really eliminated.
Then the voting system itself has problems, specifically the idea of electing one person to represent a geographical area. In the 16th century, before the internet, television, radio, the telephone, modern postal system and long distance telegraph, before all these advances in communication technology, the idea of having a single representative fitted neatly into the feudal model of governance. But as society changed the way it made decisions, it also created a new environment into which society then had to adapt. The best adaptation to the new environment created by the modern parliament is the caucus. This is where a group of like minded representatives form an external association to the parliament and decide to vote as a block. They work out their position before the parliament sits, that is, they make a decision in private, before then coming to the parliament to vote on it.
The problem with this is that the decision making process is once again in private. The party caucus is now just an oligarchy that is up against a competing oligarchy, the end result being that the decision making process is not transparent. There is feedback in the form of media commentary and there are polls and there is the election every few years, but essentially the public is led to expect that most decisions are already pre-decided before they get to the parliament which effectively becomes a rubber stamp. To be fair, and in general, this approach has worked up to this point, however the communication medium is changing and the older memes are struggling to survive, the end result of which is that we are now in a perpetual election mode.
But there is a very subtle and slow erosion happening, because people have come to expect that the only good decision is a quick decision. The voting public are never exposed to the whole notion that it is possible to be undecided for a time as you take in new information. Deliberation is seen as weakness, and the opposing oligarchy will pound you in the media by exposing "division" in your party if you take the time to deliberate. The party that deliberates is viewed to be weak and ineffectual. To really emphasis this point, it is basically saying that to deliberate is "BAD". But deliberation is exactly the skill required when making a decision.
For most people they do not even consider the deliberation process as of any consequence. Thinking about something, taking in new information is, in and of itself, something to be deprecated. The core problem is that the political apparatchik is doing two things in caucus when they should be doing only one. They are making decisions about governance, but the are also making decisions about how to get re-elected. Given that both these motivations are in operation, it could be argued that the caucus process itself is fundamentally compromised by a conflict of interest.
This is exactly the point we are at now within a modern democratic process. The media (asynchronous broadcast communication) do their best to offer deliberation on topics and issues, but unless the media is a public broadcaster, they are really driven by selling advertising space, which means they need to grab and hold peoples attention, such that there is a constant process of tapping into peoples fundamental fears about the world and exaggerating them in order to get their attention. Shock jocks that are constantly saying the sky is falling, add to a constant barrage of broadcast communication loaded with sex and violence that has the purpose of manipulating primitive emotional triggers in the human brain. It has become an adrenalin and cortisol fuelled surge of "Pay attention! Pay attention!"
But people are turning off, the asynchronous broadcast message of fear has been hammering away at peoples psyche for so long now that the individual has had to build up an immunity to it. With this political immune system in place people are just not paying attention. Politicians for the most part are just spinning the truth, reframing it so that it can be seen as more palatable, or even just plain lying. It's become a drab monotone, where the accomplished master politician is able to take up a lot of air time without actually saying anything at all apart from the five second sound bites that they spent rehearsing with their publicists that morning. The process is not transparent, the media are making people afraid and the spin doctors from both sides are waging a war for the moral low ground.
Obviously, when it comes to how groups make decision, we are not out of the egoic woods yet. The population keeps growing, cities give way to states that become nations which form part of global experience of reality. There are always groups within groups, ever jostling for position. And in the internationalisation of decision making there is a gaping hole that is not possible to fill with a representative system. The people themselves want to directly influence the decision being made. This is the next tier of decision making where there is a 'buy in' by all the people into the decision making process. This is consensus, and to understand it, it is better to work backwards across the table, starting with the electoral process of the referendum.
| Power is taken | Power is assigned | Power is agreed upon | |
| One person | The Leader | The Monarch | The President |
| Subset | The Oligarch | The Court / Jury | Parliament and Representation |
| Consensus (all) | Referendum (Direct Democracy) | ||
Consensus is a process that seeks the consent of all involved in the decision making process, but not necessarily their agreement. So there is a distinction between 'consent' and 'agreement'. When a person in the group can not consent to the outcome of the decision making process then consensus is said to be blocked. Often misunderstood with a 50% majority vote, consensus differs because it has another category on top of the 'yes' and 'no' vote. In consensus there is a "yes" vote, a "no - but I can live with it" vote (a consent vote); and a "no - and I can't live with it" or a "blocking" or "veto" vote. Really then two factors need to be met, the yes vote has to greater than 50% to pass, and the blocking vote has to be lower than a set threshold (typically say 10%). So a consensus approach is typically measured by the size of the blocking vote.
But this truer form of consensus is rare, and it's probably easier to understand consensus decision making first in terms of the simple referendum which is more commonly understood. However it is by unpacking this yes/consent/block system that the whole of the consensus layer of decision making from the matrix can be understood, because wether you like it or not a blocking system is always available, as will become apparent in a later section.
The referendum or plebiscite process is, on the surface, a fairly straight forward affair. A substantive motion is created, usually as a yes/no proposition, and every eligible voter is able to cast a ballot on the decision. There is a period of time in which debate can occur, and in which vested interests can campaign.
Direct democracy, of which ancient Athens could be regarded as an example, is where the citizenry is directly involved in the decision making process, effectively attempting to circumvent the tendency to form oligarchic groupings of "like minded" persons. Whatever the forum, there always tends to be one end of the spectrum where power is grabbed by the hands of the few, be that a leader or an oligarchy, versus the other end of the spectrum where everyone wants to have their say and be involved in the process.
The referendum, and it's various alternate forms, initiatives and recall decisions, based on the petition process, all sounds pretty simple, straightforward and fair, but it also has a few problems. The first problem is that direct democracy really only works best on a highly motivated and relatively small population. The process of running a referendum in a large nation state is a massive undertaking from a legal and financial perspective, and it becomes unworkable in paper form when you consider the number of bills that are passed through a parliament.
The question that is put in the referendum is also subject to manipulation, where the substantive motion is posed in a way that will bias the outcome. Also a problem is the popularise of the issue, where critics can argue that the common citizen is just not informed enough to be able to make the decision and simplistic yet less confusing and highly popular arguments will win the day. This same approach can be used to make horrendous decisions through the use of propaganda, where on the surface it would seem like a popular decision, when in fact it is a highly manipulative process or demagogy that appeals to baser fears, prejudices, vanities and basically fails to properly manage expectations in the general population.
Stepping back, a divide exists between the idea of a decision made through a meritocracy (professional opinion) and the decision made through popular opinion. With a popular vote you can get a positive feedback loop where talking about an issue will encourage more debate such that the output of the system becomes the input to the system and it amplifies and explodes the idea outward. With a meritocracy there can be debate where the information expressed (output) also becomes and input to the system, but in this case it has a balancing effect that moves towards homeostasis and a quagmire of inaction as nothing gets done, because there are always counter-valanced arguments. In strict engineering terms we have a positive feedback system and a negative feedback system that are both in operation concurrently such that you then get a basic non-linear or dynamical system occurring. This is from Chaos Theory, or more correctly, non-linear dynamical systems theory, and it is just part of what is taken up in the next section.
For now, looking at the referendum, there are valid arguments both for and against the idea of direct democracy, however for the most part it can work quite well on a small scale, that is, when a small group of people are affected and these same people are actively involved in the decision making process. When it comes to very large decisions that need to be made, what if the decision could be made electronically. The idea of using technology to augment the referendum approach has not yet been fully realised, that is because in its current form there are a few basic and largely unsolvable problems.
The first is just one of generational change, where speaking generally, the older the person the less adept and proficient the person is with technology, which creates a barrier to using that technology. But this will eventually fade away, in much the same way the general literacy is required for the paper ballot system to work properly.
The second problem is one of trust, and it is far more difficult to overcome. There is, to date, no electronic system that can honestly say that it has these characteristics. It must 1.) keep the voter anonymous, 2.) it must be transparent in process (i.e.: it can be audited), and 3.) it can NOT rely on any party saying "trust me" in order for it to work. If you critically examine any electronic voting system today, you will see that one or more of these conditions are not met.
The paper ballot and the ballot box have a superior edge because of what is termed an "air gap". This term comes from information technology and refers to when a server or computer is separated from the network via an actual gap such that there is absolutely no way for information to pass from the computer to the network. With the physical ballot box you have a voter who receives their ballot whilst being marked off a roll, they fill this ballot out in secrecy, fold it and place it in the ballot box so that they remain anonymous. The electronic equivalent to this does not exist, because every process has a basic flaw in how the data is stored and transmitted. To relate this flaw to the physical ballot box and paper method, it would be like having another person (the one saying "trust me") taking the ballot from the voter, and then putting it in the ballot box for them. You can never be really sure the process is not being tampered with. In the physical ballot box system the voter themselves physically transcends this air gap and ensures the viability of the system.
When the ballot box is opened, all the papers within are effectively anonymous, and the counting is done whilst being witnessed by scrutineers. The process and functions played by the returning officer, the ballot counters and the scrutineers should receive more credit than they currently get. The scrutineers are appointed by candidates and have very limited but extremely important role to play. They check the number of people who took a ballot paper and that the same number of ballots have been counted. The scrutineer also ensures that each ballot is assigned appropriately and that any disputes are escalated to a higher level of the returning officer structure. Like the voter crossing the floor to put their folder paper in the box, the other cornerstone of the modern physical system is where the scrutineers watch the ballot counting, but are strictly forbidden from touching ballots.
The only electronic voting process that has any merit might involve quantum encryption technology. Unfortunately it does not exist yet, but is probably not far off. In a standard encryption the information is held as effectively binary data (0 or 1). With a quantum packet, the data can be 0, 1 or in a superstate of 0/1, which is something that even the best physicists have a problem understanding. The upshot of this however means that when a packet of data is transmitted and the read, the reading of the packet will fundamentally alter that packet so that you know it has been read. If you are the second person to read it, then it will be obvious that the data has already been intercepted.
But even an incredibly complex system using quantum technology may still fall short of the mark because it will still be perceived in the minds of the voters as being a non-transparent thing and they have to "trust" that the person telling them it is ok is someone that can be trusted. To be fair, the physical ballot box still has parties saying "trust me", namely the electoral officials counting the ballot, however in this situation the physical actions of the people doing the counting are overseen by scrutineers with a pre-stated interest in the election and it is the tension of interests from multiple scrutineers which means no one party (electoral official or scrutineer) is left having to say "trust me".
There is no electronic equivalent to the physical system, and there never will be because in electronics there is no embodied sense of being able to see if someone is lying. Humans have an extraordinary capacity to detect lying, because humans also have the capacity to lie. The whole structure that underpins the formation of society in general is the product of a long period of an evolutionary arms race around lying and the detection of lying. Taking this structure into the digital domain is essentially going to make one person blind to the other, because the massive amounts of data in facial and somatic information is lost. Which leads back to the first point where no matter how hard you try, people will not trust electronic voting, and if they do, then they shouldn't.
The only way around it is to do away with the secret ballot. If every voter were able to see how their vote had been lodged and could verify this at any time, then the problem goes away. However another set of problems then arise, which are to do with coercion, intimidation, bribes and corruption ...which would be even worse.
With the French Revolution came the first modern day interpretation of the secret ballot. Australia began using a secret ballot system in some of it's elections from the 1850's onward. The U.K. only changed in 1872, and the U.S. in 1892 when Grover Cleveland was the first U.S. president to be elected using a secret ballot process. Before this very significant change, the democratic process was riddled with corruption and intimidation.
Some processes of electoral secrecy existed in ancient times. Ancient Athens used secrecy at the core of it's ostracism process, where in order to forestall the disruptive effect of strong rivals, people (citizens) were given the chance to place the name of someone to be ostracised onto a broken piece of clay (called an ostraka). If enough ostraka were counted (amounts are contradicted) then the "winner" would be ostracised for 10 years. This was a very early interpretation of direct democracy even though it is often compared with a judicial process, but for the most part there has always been a basic requirement that each person in the decision making process must stand up and state what there position is at some point. Having rules that define this approach is the next cell in our matrix to examine.
| Power is taken | Power is assigned | Power is agreed upon | |
| One person | The Leader | The Monarch | The President |
| Subset | The Oligarch | The Court / Jury | Parliament and Representation |
| Consensus (all) | The Meeting Process | Referendum (Direct Democracy) | |
"Meetings! Who needs them"
The meeting. Like the Referendum, this method of decision making has not been fully explored, but it speaks to the processes by which we resolve differences. To a limited extent we do this all the time at work and in other forums. It is where the best decision to be reached involves the input from a number of sources and the deliberation is achieved through a series of processes. Power is assigned in that it comes from an agreement of the whole group, who have also agreed to follow the rules of the meeting. The rules that govern how to conduct a meeting could consist of, electing a chair, choosing a minute taker (secretary), accepting the minutes of the previous meeting, forming an agenda where each item has a proponent and a seconder, followed by an allotment of time to discuss for and against, and finally a voting on the substantive issue. It may not seem profound, but the rules by which we agree to conduct ourselves are fundamental to the process of making all decisions. Power comes from everyone agreeing that the process adopted is the way it should be done. There can still be disagreement, but the decision ultimately rests on the face to face (embodied) actions and reactions of all that are assembled. The problem however is that it really only works with small groups.
It works with a small group because it is possible for the human brain to take in (mostly unconsciously) the various inputs from 2 to 12 other people without much effort. With a group of 3 people, person A is aware of their own interactions with person B and their own interactions with person C, but person A is also cognizant of the interactions that may be occurring between B and C. As you increase the number of people, their is a corresponding exponential increase in the number of dyadic possibilities. Usually the meeting process breaks down at high numbers and you need progressively more and more complex rules in order to maintain a semblance of function. In a parliament, which is essentially a meeting, the whole chamber needs to adhere to a strict set of protocols if anything is to be achieved at all, even if it is only rubberstamping the decisions already made in caucus, which once again, is another meeting process that is held in secret (out of public view).
Population size is again intrinsic as a determinant of the decision making method. In the consensus process, the real benefit is that by having everyone's input, then you have a larger "buy in" by those affected with regards the outcome of the decision that is being made. However the crucial role of consensus decision making is not because people agree, it's the process for what happens when people do not agree.
Most meeting structures will work on a simple majority of 50% +1 vote resulting in the substantive item being carried. However this simple majority can leave up to 50% -1 person being disenfranchised. As a result some consensus approaches work on attempting to attain a higher percentage being anywhere from a two thirds majority (67%) all the way to 100%. But even if we take a percentage of 90%, there may still be some people who may end up feeling left out or disenfranchised. Usually this may not be a problem, if the individuals themselves are still able to feel like they belong to the group in general.
This attempt to instil a sense of belonging in individuals is really the goal of consensus decision making. This is because consensus is actually a PROCESS of decision making which must include listening to dissenting opinions and making sure that the proponent in the minority has been heard and fairly represented. This listening can only really happen in a meeting, where as the referendum is more subject to the advertising budget of the proponents and any particular bias within the media.
The meeting and the referendum go wrong when the dissenting voice is not able to be heard. Sometimes this will happen because the dissenting voice is not coming from a logical place, but rather from an emotional frame of reference... even though they are not aware of this difference. This distinction between a logical/conceptual point of view (which is more objective), versus an emotional (more subjective) point of view, is critical in understanding how people and groups make decisions. The two forms of organisation of experience emotional/subjective vs. conceptual/objective is discussed more in the next section as it forms the bases of the dynamical system that underpins the self.
The antithesis is where a dissenting voice is rational and conceptual, but the rest of the group has been carried away on a positive feedback system of agreement called "ochlocracy" or mob rule, which is almost exclusively driven by an emotional state that is highly subjective.
But even without emotion in the drivers seat, another form of poor decision making can occur in meetings, and is understood as "groupthink". Coined by Irving Janis after observations on US foreign policy decision since the 1930's and culminating in the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. Groupthink is more common in very tightly cohered groups, where it is the cohesive nature of the group itself that actively dissuades contrary points of view, causing a headlong rush to agree without proper deliberation. So the consensus approach, which attempts to cohere the group, may in the case of very small groups, go too far and end up causing very poor decision making, because very few alternate options have been adequately explored. In dynamical system terms, this is another positive feedback loop that can rapidly accelerate in one direction, and that may end up being detrimental.
Of course, consensus decision making, with it's PROCESSES of listening to dissent has been with us for as long as we have been grouping together. From the pre-historical village to the modern board of directors, it has always been part of the makeup of how we make decisions. The real problems arise with consensus decision making when the population expands to such a degree that it means there will always be a few individuals on the extreme fringe of the bell curve, who cannot, and will not agree. Where the decision being made is literally something they cannot live with.
| Power is taken | Power is assigned | Power is agreed upon | |
| One person | The Leader | The Monarch | The President |
| Subset | The Oligarch | The Court / Jury | Parliament and Representation |
| Consensus (all) | Rebel, Freedom Fighter / Terrorist | The Meeting Process | Referendum (Direct Democracy) |
The only answer for some individuals who cannot agree with the decision is unilateral action to undermine the entire structure on which the decision is predicated. Consensus is about having general agreement, but when it is not achieved, when the dissenting voice is constantly not heard or subjected to domination by the majority you get the rebel. Here power is 'taken' by virtue of the fact that it is denied to the status quo and consensus is shown to be non-existent as a new reality around the decision emerges.
The 'rebel' category of decision making is placed as part of the consensus level because it is the application of that power which is affected. To understand this, it's necessary to first understand the strength of consensus (meetings and referenda) is really about the act of listening to all stakeholders, responding to their concerns and working inclusively towards an outcome. A decision can only be implemented if the people it affects agree to undertake the action that result from the decision. A 'rebel' then is someone who simply denies to act in the 'agreed' way, and in a contrary way. The 'motivation' of the rebel is really what needs to be unpacked when it occurs, but a simple context independent hypothesis is that the disenfranchised feel like they have not been heard. When making a decision as part of a group, it is being heard, of being listened to, that brings about a sense of inclusion in the process. Consensus then, is about the process of decision making itself and being heard more specifically.
If listening is important, then the implications for either a broadcast or network communication medium dominance is relevant. In a broadcast medium the main game for the leader is to reinforce the idea that they are always listening to the people (even when they don't). Polls are a primary rough measure and focus groups can flesh out the detail. From this emerges the sanitized message, which is needed in order to prevent stepping outside of the mainstream thought bubble. Left to run it's course, a broadcast dominated world will lead to sycophantic politicians, guided not by policy but polling, and with a message manipulated by shock jocks as they desperately scramble for the middle ground. In a network structure, the decision making process is a product of the propagation of ideas through the network. Nodes in this network structure will emerge (as network theory suggests they do) and the leader then is an emergent property of the network.
Rebel, freedom fighter, separatists, revolutionary, vigilante, militant, guerrilla, terrorist, it has existed throughout history in many forms. The only distinction worth making is the means by which they achieve their goals, most often violent, and in some very rare cases non-violent. But the cause is the same, an individual or small group of people will basically start to work, in a unilateral way that is outside of the process by which 'agreement' was reached.
History is littered with examples of violent rebellion, and any valence (good/bad) judgement around them has to be suspended in order to understand how this is consensus being 'forced' or 'taken'. Wether the resistance movements in the second world war, or the Zionist bombing of the King David hotel in 1946, or the airplane hijackings by Islamists that followed, the Irish Republican Army, the Tamil Tigers, the Fretilin, or any number of other groups that exist today. Going back in time there is the National Socialist usurping of power in Germany and before that in Italy, the communist revolutions of the early 20th century. The American Civil War, the French Revolution, the English Civil War... and so on back into antiquity. It is from the study of these conflicts, and the valence judgements that surround them, that the truism is born where the history books are written by the victor, where for instance the freedom fighters of the American Revolution were 'good' but the 'terrorists' of Islamic jihad are 'bad' even though it is fundamentally the same concept operating with regards to decision making, i.e.: the denial of consensus.
The rare exceptions to the violent mode of insurgency are the non-violent examples. Usually history has shown that non-violent change is slower to take hold, but far more effective and longer lasting. Here the actions being undertaken are still largely within the existing legal structure of the status quo, but these actions are also strongly at odds with it. It is a more finely balanced thing, and it encapsulates both the amplification feedback structures "spreading the message" and balancing feedback structures of not breaking the more fundamental conventions of civility (i.e.: being non violent) that seem to mix in such a way as to create change. Where the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa had violent beginnings, it only became successful after it had embraced non-violent methods. There is also the civil rights movement in the USA, the independence movement in India and even as far back as the early Christian movement which had it's embryonic stage in ancient Judea. The one consistent feature of non-violent change, where consensus is denied, is that there is usually a profoundly avatar like leader involved. Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther-King Jr, Mohandas Ghandi and Jesus Christ respectively.
Being a rebel can have real and positive outcomes. The voice of dissent is actually quite rare and two commonly cited experiments from psychology demonstrate this. In the popularly coined 'Milgram' study, the subject being tested was not aware they were being tested when they were told to apply electric shocks to an acting confederate who would answer questions incorrectly. An incredible 65% (in the original study) inflicted the most extreme shock possible, and by ramping up the 'authority' of the person in charge, this figure would be even higher, even though the actors receiving the 'shock' would sometimes feign death or unconsciousness. But not everyone would play along with the authority's instructions, a few people would rebel and simply refuse to continue the experiment. Being a rebel is sometimes required, and having an internally resilient moral compass is too valuable an asset to loose in evolutionary terms.
Another bit of research, the Stanford Prison Study, saw subjects delegated to the role of either prisoner or guard whilst being observed in a prison like environment. At the start of the study, the abuse was non-existent, but over the course of a few days more and more abuse was inflicted on the prisoners by the guards. The study was meant to last for 14 days, and the head researcher Limbardo, also gradually succumbed into the 'normalisation' of the abuse being perpetrated. It wasn't until his then partner, Christina Maslach came back to campus, after being away for the first 6 days of the experiment that she managed to convince Limbardo to close the experiment down. It is in being a rebel that you can stand up to authority and simply say 'no', sometimes it is absolutely required to do so, and it often means being able to see things from a different perspective.
But the rebellion category of decision making has a very dark side as well. It can degenerate into a explosive feedback loop of violence. Retribution that feeds into more atrocities that feed into more violence. There is some simple advice for those in power when rebellion happens, and it's really very simple, listen to the rebels. There is also some very simple advice for rebels protesting against the dominant power, which is to use non-violent methods as it will be more effective in the long run.
So Which System of Decision Making is the Best?
If it occurs to you that one is better than another then you may not have had the experience of witnessing that was hoped for. The answer is that they all have a place. It really depends on the nature of the decision to be made and the parameters that surround it. When a team of fire-fighters need to save people from a burning building you have to have a strong, capable and very experienced leader, because the last thing you want to do is form a subcommittee for discussion of the possible options available, brainstorm up a list of possible actions, perform a cost-benefit analysis, relegate the actions to smaller sub groups ... it just won't work given the time criticality. On the other hand, a developing nation must have the attachment to the ideals and principles of the group that come with traditions and rules that are developed over time, codified, modified and passed down as laws. Then again, when the population is large and there are day to day decisions to be made that affect everyone, then an optimal strategy is to use representatives. However when the direction of your society is being changed, in a non-life and death way, such that these changes extend beyond a 4 year election cycle, then a referendum is better because it includes everyone from the outset, where through the media and water-cooler discourse at work, everyone can have their say and feel part of the discussion. Within smaller groups where a nuanced and difficult task is being worked on, it is better to involve as many minds as possible without being weighed down by the numbers involved. And sometimes you need to break ranks and say, "no!", and have the strength and resilience to do so.
Considering the broader picture, there are repeated references to the emotional context that surrounds decision making. What is surprising is that this emotional context is rarely examined as an entirely separate area of study. We know about kings, usurpers, assignations, laws and processes, but we never examine the emotional content that is the subtext to this story. In the leadership method when the dictator starts to loose their grip on a successively larger group of people, they will control with FEAR. When the chivalric code lays down the traditions that are meant to INSPIRE with notions of HONOUR and integrity the observer will feel a subtle warming that really has no word apart from that of feeling SAFE and more TRUSTING. In consensus there are extremes that include the RIGHTOUS ANGER expressed by the rebel as they insist on their point of view. Alternatively we can see the effect of not being heard or feeling DISENFRANCHISED, but when heard, then we feel BELONGING. When the experiences of tradition are acted out, by something as simple as the rapping of a black staff on a door to the parliament, we are held transfixed by the SOLOMNESS of the occasion, and feel that something greater is holding all this together. And when the strong orator speaks to the people and pronounces what it means to be a people united, there is a feeling of INSPIRATION will emerge, a feeling can even be triggered now merely through the stubs of a speech and the context in which they were spoken:
He stands on the steps in front of a million people and holds their aspirations of equality and justice when he proclaims "I have a dream!"
On the eve of total obliteration by the enemy, after a ruthless air battle that saw the entire nation running from black curtained buildings to huddle in bomb shelters these words filter across the radio static, "Never in the field of human endeavour..";
Or gathering near a stump, in a graveyard too full and a battlefield too close, the listeners stand through an hour long speech by one orator long forgotten, to be completely outdone by 273 words that drive to the very heart of what nationhood means "Four score and seven years ago..."
What are you feeling now?
It is something that transcends a feeling state of an individual. It can only be felt within the context of a larger group. The tribe, the nation, all of humanity. It's all too bloody powerful, because it is a reflection of this larger self organised entity. When people first banded together and attempted to explain what it was, they invoked gods and later a single god. That feeling of being in the presence of something profound. In the modern context it is the feeling of nationalism. Between two people it's that part of the movie where through all adversity, the relationship survives, where trust dominates and safety is assured and that strong loving bond between two people, that catharsis is expressed. Catharsis, attached to the heart, the profound love that transcends words. Ironically it is this thing which cannot be described that is the focus of the final section in this work. No small thing, unpacking love.
But nationalism/catharsis etc, are also just feeling states like fear, anger, belonging, helplessness etc. Why is the feeling never discussed in terms of it's relevance to decision making? It's there all the time, but never overtly discussed. It is used as a means to manipulate and it can also allow the group can to grow larger, whilst still tolerating the fringe extremes causing dissent. Tapping into the feeling state is essential for the modern democratic process to work. But it can also go horribly wrong as this same feeling can be used to malevolent ends.
The role of emotion, by not being explicitly understood, often becomes the driving force in all our decision making. It is manipulation when the leader unites a people and attempts to drive them in a specific direction, and when emotion is at the helm then the direction can be anywhere. The longest cheer (5+ minutes) for a political speech relative to speech length followed a proclamation of just six words "eins kamph, eins reich, eins furher."
In politics the role of emotion is relegated to a back seat and never really talked about, it sort of acts like a skeleton in the closet, however in neuropsychology the role of emotion is understood more fully. In order to explicitly encapsulate this idea in the literature it's necessary to get a bit academic here. Antonio Damasio talks about the role that emotion plays in decision making through his "somatic marker hypothesis" which suggest that logical and rational decision making is biased by emotions, such that emotions are required before you can have rational decision making. More specifically that emotional intelligence is required before rational decision becomes possible. What Damasio is alluding to is that a conceptual understanding of the world, like apples falling to the ground, has an organisation of experience that is conceptual (gravity), as well as having an experience that is emotional, where it feels right that apples fall to the ground, where as on the international space station, an apple that gently floats across the room will 'feel' wrong somehow, that is until the mind has been able to organise the experience of micro gravity.
The embodied somatic representations of reality provide (how we feel) is something akin to a quick find index at the back of a textbook. A persons emotions are summaries of the schemas through which the person understands the world. There is in Damasio's idea the potential for a contradiction because whilst discounting the dualistic notion of a separate "mind" and "body", the somatic marker theory also suggests a neural basis of the self where there are two sets of representations of the self, one being the protoself or core consciousness and the other being an extended autobiographical consciousness (which, just for clarity is similar to Sterns 'verbal self'). The terms "body self" and "conceptual self" are used here, and have analogues in the ideas presented in the next section. But suffice to say that these two representations of reality, that is schemas or maps, through which we are better able to navigate the world are both separate whilst still being fundamentally connected. It is, by definition, a contradiction, a paradox, that is more fully explored later, because it is the basis of the chaotic self.
The organisation of experience must necessarily happen within or upon a neurological substrate. Because the 'self' of a person is perceived as static and constant (for the most part), the 'self' then is capable of observing itself. Furthermore, this self-observing of the self is also an organisation of experience that appears as a SINGLE process. The first illusion of the self, also referred to in Buddhist teachings, understands that there is an illusion of a constant, unchanging or "core" self. The second illusion of the self refers to the idea that two processes are in play which appear to be just one. When either one of the processes is incapacitated through brain injury as Damasio suggests, then the whole system falls over.
In evolution, one of natures great tricks is to use similar mechanisms more than once in order to achieve different outcomes. A bundle of nerve endings in an ancient primordial worm could evolve over time to become receptors of information. A bundle of nerves at the side of the 'head' might evolve to become an array of sensitive hairs suspended in fluid that can detect subtle changes in air pressure caused by sound. Another bundle of nerve endings at the front of the 'head' might take a different path, such that they become sensitive to wavelengths of light between 480nm and 600 nm. But the point is that they both started out as collections of nerve endings. Nature seems to want to reuse a good idea.
In humans, when it comes to decision making, we have an ability to organise our experience from sensations which are then modified by our somatic (bodily) makeup. This happens in the amygdala, which sits at the apex of the HPA (Hypothalamic Pituitary Axis) and is connected for the most part to the Autonomic Nervous System (ANS). The amygdala is mostly involved when emotions are felt within the body.
But humans also have the ability to organise experience in the areas of the neo cortex, specifically the Pre-Frontal Cortex (PFC). Technically also connected to sensations in the body, this information comes in through sensations, but it takes a slightly different route to the PFC. Both the systems are interfaced in key areas like the corpus callosum (a highway between left and right hemispheres) and the basil ganglia which is associated with movement (sensory/motor cortex), and it is thought, motivation.
Theory is that we have two functionally separate, yet connected, brain areas that can organise experience. One in the Amygdala which is associated with subjective emotional states of awareness, and the other in the Pref Frontal Cortex with a more abstract/conceptual function and attempts to understand the objective reality of the external world.
However to the 'self', it appears that there is just one 'self'.
As previously mentioned, when the detective or the science researcher is acting on a hunch, are they just working from a 'gut' feeling or is this really just the result of a lot of investigative work where information has been collected and unconsciously organised within the Pre-frontal cortex and this intuitive process leads them to imagine that it is has a subjective emotional component? Alternatively a religious fundamentalist may take a view of homosexuality which is based in a subjective emotional feeling of disgust, however they are led to believe that it is an objective interpretation of reality such that homosexuality is wrong "...because it just is!"
Think off all the instances where there is conflict occurring in decision making and what seems to be happening is a confusion around this illusion of a singular process of the organisation of experience, when really there are two. One is subjective and emotional in origin (Damasio's protoself) and the other is a seemingly more rational and objective in origin (Damasio's extended consciousness or Stern's verbal self). That both are interconnected and appear to be one is crucially what identifies the self as a dynamical or chaotic system.
This problem of two systems being confused as one gets compounded by desire. With desire, that is, desire for resources, desire to be re-elected, desire to be heard, desire to avoid pain or helplessness, desire to be loved, there is a profound problem of not be able to disentangle the objective from the subjective. Desire is essentially the core component of motivation and it is needed if we are to get out of bed in the morning, however it is also a subjectively determined emotion that will cloud all decision making. The modern day politician is driven by the desire to get re-elected. Only very rarely do you find someone who is driven by more noble desires, but for the most part the political apparatchik is fogged in by their own desire state that is predicated on an emotional gap (or need to be recognised, heard, loved).
So transparency of decision making is a problem because a fundamental conflict of interest is evident in the modern democratic state. When politicians meet in a caucus that is hidden from outside observation they are supposed to be there in order to make decisions about proper governance of the nation. However they are also going to discuss, and be motived by, decisions about being re-elected and forming a government. This is a simple conflict of interest, where it would seem that desire to be re-elected will trump most decisions around good governance. It is ironic that the killer application in the modern parliament is the non-transparent caucus, however it is also the achillis heal of democracy more generally, because it leads inevitably to this conflict of interest between governance and (re)election, which is then susceptible to a need for party donations along with media backing or industry support that is fundamentally a process of corruption which may eventually lead to poor decision making.
It is only when we understand the role of emotion, that we can make better decisions. It is not about eliminating it as with Spock and the Vulcans of Gene Rodenbury's fictional work "Star Trek", but rather it is about accepting and positioning the emotion properly, such that it can be transcended. In psychotherapy, one of the objectives is to foster the growth of mindfulness in the client, where in they can witness their own emotional turbulence and make sense of what is happening in their lives. In the group, we have less at our disposal to help with this growth of mindfulness, that is the group itself will not be able to witness it's own turbulence. For the most part this group mindfulness happens in art and storytelling and possible also in sport, however this institutions are not part of the explicit political process and as a consequence the political process has no way to understand itself and the emotional turbulence it encounters.
Building structures that accept, integrate and transcend emotion can happen through traditions, but not always. Traditions play a crucial role in managing the emotional content. When a group of people meet in the morning, they are fresh and have had very little previous experience in that day (for the most part). But when people meet in the evening, they will carry with them a huge amount of baggage from their individual daily experience. The point about this emotional baggage is that it needs to be expressed otherwise it will just dominate proceedings. In psychotherapy, by expressing the baggage we make a basic connection between the limbic (emotional) parts of the brain, with the PFC via the language centres of the brain. Talking about what is going on for us (anger, joy, fear etc) is the first step to not being controlled by it.
As previously discussed, within the individual there is a growth in consciousness from egoic/subsistence to witness/being. However this same fundamental transition also has to occur in the group when it comes to how they make decisions. The matrix of decision making presented has hopefully shown that there is not a one size fits all approach, but rather the parameters of the decision, such as the life and death criticality, and the population size affected, must be considered before choosing how to make the decision. Not wanting to abuse the often misused prefix "meta", but this is really something that can be called "meta-decision making", where the decision making must know itself (which is how the prefix "meta" should be used).
As often happens in successful psychotherapy, when the decision making apparatus of the individual can acknowledge or witness it's own self, then the shift to higher consciousness occurs. When the decision making apparatus of the group can acknowledge it's own emotional context then a similar profound shift occurs. What's required is a form of political psychotherapy.
The next section tackles this head on by looking at the creation of the self in a radically different way, and how the self of an individual is part of the same system that occurs in couples (dyads) and the larger group.