Varieties of Social Organization

When we are born, our first consistent discrimination is probably ‘me/not-me’. My survival depends on understanding myself in relation to my environment.

Gradually, I realize that that environment is not monochromatic. My mother relates to me differently from my stuffed animals…or the cat. Most importantly, I come to distinguish a loosely structured group of ‘big people’ who interact with me on a more or less regular basis. I will learn to think of those people as family. Et Voila, I have already begun drawing my social map of the world; I will continue to fill it in over the course of a lifetime.

Later, I’ll learn that I am also part of a clan, a neighborhood, a school, a parish, a nation, a species, and ultimately, a biosphere. 

Later still, I’m told that my precious, autonomous body is itself made up of only slightly less autonomous bodies called cells. And these cells themselves house other semi-autonomous life forms (nuclei & mitochondria). 

It’s bewildering. There are currently 8 billion pseudo-me living on Planet Earth but 30 trillion mini-me (cells) make up my body. Chances are, I’ll shuffle off this mortal coil still utterly unable to fully comprehend these basic realities.

My species, homo sapiens, covers most of a planet with a circumference of about 26,000 miles, soon to be connected by ‘filaments’ to other regions of space.

So the phenomenon colloquially known as ‘me’ is really a nesting of bio-social spheroids extending over more than 20 orders of magnitude (from the size of a mitochondrion to the circumference of Planet Earth). 

Across this scale, there are numerous styles of social organization. The components of a cell are symbionts while the cells themselves form tissues, organs, and ultimately the single macro-organism you affectionately know as ‘me’. 

I in turn belong to a hierarchy of variously ordered societies. My family, for example, is organized differently from my gang, my community, my country, my church. I once suggested to my father that we model our family on a parliamentary democracy but, strangely enough, he did not see wisdom in my idea. 

Animal cells are products of the merger of previously independent, prokaryotic (nuclear free) cells to form a single entity. These eukaryotic cells repeatedly reproduce until they provide the full complement and diversity needed to form the adult body of a macro-organism.

The Plant Kingdom exhibits different models of organization. For example, while animal behavior is often controlled by a central nervous system, plant intelligence tends to be distributed throughout the organism. Think Blockchain!

Bacteria, on the other hand, remain prokaryotic. They function and reproduce independently but they freely exchange DNA and often cooperate with members of the same or different species to pursue mutual objectives.

Some organisms organize into colonies - groups of genetically identical or closely related organisms, called zooids, that live together in a tight knit society, called Zooidland in an upcoming Lego Movie. 

Zooids are individual animals but they are also part of the larger colonial organism. Each zooid is capable of some degree of independent function. If necessary, it can survive outside the colony, but it can also work cooperatively as part of a larger whole. Coral is a good example of a colonial organization.

In many colonial species, different zooids specialize in specific functions like feeding, reproduction, or defense. This specialization allows for more efficient overall functioning of the colony. But then these same zooids work together, e.g. to create a colony-wide circulatory system. So, colonies resemble animal bodies, on one hand, and animal societies on the other. 

As individual humans, we participate at several levels of organization. On the one hand, our bodies are societies of cooperating cells; on another, we are ‘cells’ cooperating in the form and function of transpersonal organizations (above). But we are also members of a species (homo sapiens) and of a biosphere (Gaia). 

Question: Am I the stuff my social networks are made of…or am I merely the intersection of the various networks in which I participate? 

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