What Kind of Society Will We Have?

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The question "what kind of society will we have?" doesn't arise very often, as politics and the economy dominate the zeitgeist. This is likely the result of our cultural conception of what constitutes the ideal social order, which is based on the idea that each of us is first and foremost a rational economic individual seeking to maximize our self-interest. We believe this pursuit of individual self-interest magically optimizes society to serve everyone's interests.

Broadly speaking, this is "the liberal order," in which "liberal" refers not to political persuasions but the liberalization of everything into a market of buyers and sellers. In this order, the economic model of markets as self-organizing, self-optimizing structures is applied to everything.

Politics becomes a marketplace in which buyers and sellers of influence jostle to maximize their own gains--politicians and regulators sell their control of policy and regulations to the highest bidder, and corporations / wealthy individuals hire lobbyists to extract the maximum private gains for the lowest price from the political-influence auction.

This is called "advocacy," which offers a high-brow gloss to the tawdry auction of the political marketplace.

When everything becomes a market, status, novelty and identity all become "products" competing for cognitive shelf space in the 24/7 frenzy of marketing our "product" and ourselves.  As in all markets, spectacle offers a premium, as do exaggerated claims of benefits, you-snooze-you-lose "buy now" deals, high-gloss PR that leaves out the nasty side-effects, and a carefully curated mise-en-scene of the glorious happiness that awaits those who buy into whatever fantasy is being presented.

In this marketplace, idealized selves inhabit an idealized fantasy-world which can be yours for a price.

It's all fake, of course, and so it's unsatisfying. Whatever needs we have that can't be met by buying or selling something remain unmet. Note that "buying or selling something" isn't restricted to a tangible product or service; it includes "buying into" a fantasy and presenting a fantasy version of a product or ourselves. 

What maintains order in this society?

What maintains order is the belief that the marketplace is open to all, a structure that homogenizes everything and everyone into an exchange of "value," a commodified transaction that can be recorded and tracked on a receipt, financial ledger or on social media as "likes" and "views." 

There are winners and losers in this competitive marketplace of everything, but don't give up hope; your next product or selfie might hit the jackpot. 

In this endlessly competitive cascade of transactions, relationships grease transactions. Relationships that don't serve to maximize each participant's self-interest go by the wayside, as there's little time or energy left for "unproductive" relationships. 

What kind of society does this generate? We might start by asking, "what's the glue holding this social order together?"

There are various types of social "glue." One is the homogenization of a shared orthodoxy such as a religious faith or social belief that supports a hierarchy of authority--for example, Confucianism, which mandates authority in the family to the father and to the emperor in the state.

In a pluralistic society, competing nodes of power generate a dynamic stability as long as one node doesn't become dominant. In the U.S., the political power structure is designed to maintain a "balance of power" between the executive, legislative and judicial branches of government. This balance has been weakening for decades, as the "Imperial Presidency" has siphoned power from Congress, and an "activist" Supreme Court has siphoned power from both Congress and the Presidency. 

In theory, these competing nodes of power, each hosting "advocates" for various interests, generate a "force field" that protects pluralistic diversity from the oppression of a central authority or orthodoxy. But in the real world, this doesn't generate what correspondent Yusuf Chan (aussieasabiyyah.substack.com) calls solidarity, which he describes in this way: "Real solidarity has hospitality for considering and holding opposing narratives, but with individuals still remaining loyal to each other."

In other words, being able to insult others online may well be excused as "pluralistic advocacy," but it certainly isn't a solidarity that has hospitality for considering and holding opposing narratives nor is it a social order in which individuals still remain loyal to each other despite their opposing opinions.

The current decline of sociability into seething divisiveness exposes the fundamental weakness on the "make everything into a market" ideology of the self-serving individual optimizing private gain as the foundation of the social order. Optimizing self-interest within a commoditized transactional marketplace doesn't generate any social glue. 

It is more akin to a Dark Star whose weak gravitational field pulls the chaotic interactions of millions of individuals into a fragile orbit, an unstable orbit that can be cleared by a few collisions, in an analog of the Kessler Syndrome, in which debris from collisions of satellites with debris generate more collisions,  leading to a chain reaction that cascades into a mass of collisions that clears the entire orbit of everything, leaving a void.

Since everything is a market now, the other analog is a "market clearing event" in which markets become bidless--there are no buyers, only sellers, and the value of everything for sale goes to zero.

In this context, our reliance on online social contacts makes sense, as the "frictionless flow" of online transactions is easier and "costs less" in terms of time and effort than real-world interactions. 

But as with all "value," lower "investment" means we care less about the transaction or relationship.  This feeds the instability of the social order's orbit around optimizing self-interest as the primary organizing principle of society.

What kind of society will we have should a social Kessler Syndrome clear the unstable social order?

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