The Rise and Fall of the American Empire

When it comes to empires these days, it’s “easy come, easy go.” Only a few years ago, around the time of our cake-walk invasion of Iraq (and before the “oops” part), our media was full of self-congratulatory and, as it turns out, delusive claims that America, for better or worse, was now an empire – like Rome and Great Britain in their heyday. (Our pundits tended to overlook the darker examples of the Japanese and Soviet empires in the 20th century, for some reason.) We were told that now the United States was the “hegemon” – meaning that it was undisputed as the dominant military power – and the keeper of a stable international order.

Of course, past empires occupied and controlled “colonies” that they blatantly exploited for their own advantage. Also, a few historical details were overlooked by the pundits: Rome was undisputed in its power only for a (relatively) brief period in the middle of its thousand-year history; it remained a republic during much of its ascendancy and fought an unending series of wars against the “barbarians” in its latter stages. And British power was never uncontested. Indeed, the 18th and 19th century race for colonies among the British, French, Germans, Austro-Hungarians, Russians, Spanish, Italians, and Americans, was intense and contributed to the cataclysm of World Wars One and Two. Moreover, the voluntary dismantling of their empires by both the British and the Americans after World War Two (and somewhat more reluctantly by the French and then the Soviets after the fall of the Berlin Wall) seemed to bring an end to the imperialist era. Self-determination became the new mantra of a more democratic world order, or so the optimists proclaimed.

To be sure, America still guards the gates in various places – Germany, South Korea and the Middle East. And our military machine is still formidable, despite the costly humbling we have suffered in Iraq. Our annual military budget is greater than those of all the rest of the industrialized nations combined (but watch out for China). Equally important, the economic order that we have sponsored and supported – most significantly through the World Bank and the World Trade Organization – have been instrumentalities for advancing American economic interests (namely, capitalism and “free” trade -- with a few obvious exceptions like farm products). Our cultural exports have also been influential in the global community.

But there the analogy ends, and the disanalogies are growing stronger by the day – it seems. In fact, free trade has been hollowing out the underlying source of our power –our industrial capacity and trade surpluses. At the end of World War Two, the United States produced 50% of the world’s total Gross Domestic Product and was undisputed leader in just about every industrial sector. We had a favorable balance of trade for more than half a century. Now 70% of our GDP consists of consumer spending, much of it with borrowed money and much of it spent on goods (and oil) imported from China and everywhere else. More important, we have gone from being the world’s banker after World War Two to being world’s biggest debtor nation. Control over our own fiscal and economic destiny is rapidly slipping from our hands, as even some of the biggest of Wall Street’s banking and investment houses are being auctioned off to recoup from the sub-prime mortgage calamity.

Equally significant, what was once the world’s highest standard of living and most modern infrastructure has slipped badly; we now rank closer to some developing countries. To maintain our humongous military machine, we have also been starving the underpinnings of our society – our educational system, our public works, and more. (And this is not just an ideological stance; just look at the comparative statistics.) And, where once we were leaders in the world community, now our representatives (at the recent Bali climate change conference) are booed and we are asked please to “get out of the way.” Finally, a resurgent Russia and an emergent China are subtly resisting and challenging our “leadership.”

So the truth is that our imperial period never existed. It amount to a passing whiff of hubris -- followed by nemesis, of course. Now we ache to be out of Iraq. And we watch with baited breath as our economy struggles with the latest wasteful and destructive “bubble” (the sub-prime mortgage debacle), and with all the other sins of a spendthrift society. We will be hard-pressed to prevent further economic decline and, indeed, poverty and hardship on a scale that we have not experienced in this country for many years. The reality isn’t pretty, but facing up to it honestly is the first step toward coping with it. I keep waiting for candid leadership from our present crop of Presidential candidates. So far, no good.

Thought for the day: Sic transit Gloria mundi (thus passes the glory of the world), or fame is fleeting. It’s a lesson that each new generation seems to re-learn the hard way. Among the many variations on this theme (some humorous) was this headline in the New York Daily News some years back about the hospitalization of the prominent New York heiress Gloria Vanderbilt: “Sick Gloria in Transit Monday.”

Emergence and Evolution

“Emergence” seems to be the latest buzzword among a new generation of holistic/systems-oriented theorists. I say a “new” generation because emergence theory is not new. It can be traced back to a similar movement in the latter 19th century. (The history of this earlier movement is described in a recent article of mine in the journal Complexity called “The Re-emergence of Emergence: A Venerable Concept in Search of a Theory.”)

Among the many problems with the current reincarnation of emergence is the fact that there is no agreement on how to define the term in such a way that you can recognize emergence when you see it. One theorist who has done a creditable job, however, is biologist Robert Reid in his new book, Biological Emergences: Evolution by Natural Experiment (MIT Press 2007). Reid focuses on increases in biological complexity that produce qualitatively new functional properties, and he identifies three broad categories of emergent phenomena: (1) symbiosis and associations, (2) physiological and behavioral innovations, and (3) developmental and epigenetic influences. Reid also makes a compelling case for the thesis that emergence as he defines it has played a major creative role in evolution.

So far, so good. But Reid also attacks neo-Darwinism and claims that natural selection has had little to do with “progressive” evolution – meaning the evolution of complexity over time. Its role is primarily confined to “stabilizing” the innovations that have arisen autonomously, he asserts. Here, I’m afraid, we part company.

I certainly agree with Reid’s critique of the neo-Darwinists. And I certainly agree with his basic argument that emergence has played a fundamental creative role in evolution. How could I disagree. My own “Synergism Hypothesis” is really about emergent complexity -- though my theory emphasizes the functional (bioeconomic) effects – and their evolutionary consequences -- rather than the causes of emergence and embraces other, non-emergent forms of synergy as well. And yet, there remains a huge difference in our views about the role of natural selection, and I suspect it is traceable to differences in our "ground-zero" assumptions (as I call them) about the nature of life.

When all of Darwin's rhetorical flourishes, and his gradualism, and other problems with his theory are stripped away, the heart of his vision, I believe, is his assumption that life is at bottom a contingent, often precarious phenomenon (a "struggle for existence") and that "earning a living" in "the economy of nature" is the fundamental challenge for all life forms. I like to call it a "survival enterprise." In other words, failure is always an option. And, given the fact that life is predominately pursued in collectivities (emergent systems), the evolutionary process is -- at every level of complexity -- quintessentially a "collective survival enterprise." Moreover, economic criteria are crucially important; there are always costs for emergent novelties, and the benefits must outweigh the costs. (That is why the functional synergies associated with emergence are so significant.)

When this assumption is put together with Darwin's other basic assumption, that functionally important variability is a rule in the natural world, this means that natural selection (broadly defined) is inescapable. That is, the variants in every generation are subject to "differential survival and reproduction" based on their functional differences. It may be that some, or all, or none, of these variants can "make the cut" in any generation, but being subjected to the test of fitness is unavoidable. And this applies to any emergent novelty as well. Reid himself speaks of "natural experiments," and "adaptation," and "adaptability," and "functionality" (physiology is all about functions, he points out), and "workability," and "does it work?" The question is, adaptable/functional/workable for what? The answer, of course, is for ensuring/furthering/enhancing the "collective survival enterprise" in a given environmental context. I like biologist Theodosius Dobzhansky's characterization (or was it Julian Huxley's?) of evolution as a process of "trial-and-success."

So, while I wholeheartedly endorse Reid’s critique of the gene-centered, neo-Darwinian (mutation/competition/selection) paradigm, with its emphasis on ecological competition and its abstract "gene pool" model of the evolutionary process, and while I think emergence is of fundamental causal importance in evolution, I think natural selection (broadly defined) is also a party to the process at every step. I like evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayr's short-hand description of evolution as a "two-step tandem process" -- meaning (1) functional innovations, from whatever source, coupled with (2) differential success/failure over time. To assume otherwise is to assume away the basic survival problem, I believe. (Much of this is discussed further in my most recent book: Holistic Darwinism: Synergy, Cybernetics and the Bioeconomics of Evolution.)

Thought for the day: To quote again the great 20th century evolutionary biologist Theodosius Dobzhansky: "No theory of evolution that leaves the phenomenon of adaptation an unexplained mystery can be acceptable."

How Holistic Darwinism Trumps Neo-Conservatism

In his book, The Great Transformation (1944), Karl Polanyi produced a classic critique of the liberal (conservative) ideal of free market capitalism that still resonates today.

According to liberal economic doctrine, if various impediments are removed so that a market economy can operate free of constraints and imperfections, it would not only be self-regulating and self-equilibrating but would lead to the most “efficient” utilization of capital, resources and labor. Indeed, for the most fervent of free market advocates, this ideal is an end in itself.

Polanyi’s argument was that this model is utopian. It can never work in the real world, and the history of the great 19th century “transformation” to industrial market capitalism (not to mention the history of the 20th century) proves it. As Polanyi put it, markets are “embedded” in human societies, and the needs and wants of a society and its members cannot in the long run be subordinated to market efficiency. This is not simply a normative statement, or a moral claim, moreover. It is an empirical reality. Ultimately, people will rebel and governments will either need to intervene or they will be replaced. Indeed, even capitalists do not, as a rule, want complete freedom from government interference. They want laws, and regulations, and property rights and, very often, government support in the form of protections and subsidies.

Economist Joseph Stiglitz, in a commentary on Polanyi’s book, also points out that advanced industrial economies like ours are even more constrained by the fact that the vast majority of the population depends on the marketplace for their livelihoods (see my blog entry on the “paradox of dependency”). So “labor” is not simply an “input” that can lie idle or find other uses if no jobs are available. Unemployment has inescapably destructive consequences.

What Holistic Darwinism adds to this critique is a theoretical foundation. From an evolutionary/biological perspective, our basic vocation as individuals and families is survival and reproduction – and specifically the meeting of some 14 domains of “basic needs” (according to the Survival Indicators Project). These are biological imperatives. We are all implicitly engaged in a “survival enterprise.” Moreover, in a modern market economy, our individual needs have been aggregated into an extraordinarily complex, interdependent system – a “collective survival enterprise.” We are joint participants in a “biological contract.” Accordingly, economic markets represent a system -- a strategy -- for meeting our basic biological needs. And if the markets fail to do so, for whatever reason, corrective actions are entirely justified. Markets exist to serve our needs, not the other way around.

Neo-Darwinians and social Darwinists might object that, to the contrary, capitalism is natural because it embodies our innately selfish and competitive natures – as Adam Smith himself suggested. The problem with this model is that it overlooks our fundamental dependence on cooperation and the fact that we evolved over several million years in closely cooperating social groups. Equally important, modern societies remain deeply dependent on cooperation; we live in highly interdependent economic systems. Competition may also be natural and inevitable, reflecting the duality of human nature, but it must also be subordinated to our collective needs. And if capitalist markets fail to meet our needs, we have every right to cooperate in an effort to redress our grievances – whether it be through labor unions, or governments, or political movements or even revolution if necessary. To borrow a phrase, revolutions are politics by other means.

Thought for the day: As the American Declaration of Independence puts it, governments are “instituted among men” to secure our “inalienable rights,” and derive their “just powers” from “the consent of the governed.” Furthermore, whenever any form of government “becomes destructive of those ends,” the people have the right “to alter or abolish it.”

The Paradox of Dependency

What I call the “paradox of dependency” represents one of the great, often unanticipated traps in life, it seems. The more valuable is some resource (or person) – the greater its “utility” to use the economists’ jargon – the greater may be the cost of losing it. In other words, our vulnerability increases in direct proportion to its value.

An obvious example these days is the Internet. In just a few short years, a great many people, and businesses, have come to depend on it. And when Internet services occasionally go down, for various reasons, the consequences can be severe or even catastrophic. Indeed, complex technological societies are dependent upon an immensely intricate web of activities and processes, and we only become of aware of this, it seems, when something goes wrong – say a power outage, or a trucking strike, or a prolonged regional drought. And the same may be true with people. If there is only one really competent plumber in your community and he moves away, your pipes may no longer hold water.

Indeed, our vulnerability further increases when we do not have options or contingency plans -- in other words when our dependency is monogamous. Thus, if we prepare for a power outage with a backup generator and a wood stove, we effectively reduce our dependency. Or, if we have a mail-order business that uses both the Internet and phone orders, we might be able to continue taking orders if the Internet goes down.

On other other hand, some of the megatrends in our society have left us increasingly vulnerable. For instance, back in 1900, half of the American population still lived (mostly) on small farms. As a society our agricultural dependency was highly diversified. And when the dust bowl drought hit the American southwest in the 1920s and 30s, we were able to fallow one-quarter of our farmland and still feed our people. But in the past 80 years, our food production system has become highly concentrated, both regionally and in terms of ownership, even as the population has multiplied. Thus, today about one-quarter of all the fruits and vegetables produced in the United States are grown in California. Unfortunately, we now know that California has been subject to recurrent, severe “megadroughts” over the past 10,000 years or so. In other words, we have achieved much higher productivity and efficiency (and reduced food costs) while at the same time increasing our dependency on a system that is also highly vulnerable. Food for thought -- you might say!

Thought for the day: In a long-term study by biologist Kwang Jeon in the 1980s, a strain of Amoeba proteus was initially infected with bacterial parasites that were resistant to the hosts' digestive enzymes. But after 200 generations, or 18 months, a beneficial (mutualistic) relationship had become established, and after 10 years the symbionts had developed complete interdependence; they could no longer survive independently. So, if you are going to become a dependent, do it wisely.

A Reply to David Sloan Wilson

After receiving uniformly favorable – even glowing – reviews of my 2003 book, Nature’s Magic: Synergy in Evolution and the Fate of Humankind (Cambridge University Press), including high praise for the underlying theory from one of the most outstanding evolutionary biologists of the 20th century (John Maynard Smith), I was surprised, to put it mildly, when biologist David Sloan Wilson gave me a nasty, dismissive review in the on-line journal Evolutionary Psychology.

Wilson assured his readers that he was my friend (you know the old saying, “with friends like these…”) and that he only wanted to rescue me from my misguided ambitions. Indeed, I had just recently published an enthusiastic review of Wilson’s own book, Darwin’s Cathedral, in the Skeptic magazine. So it was puzzling and inexplicable for someone of his caliber and accomplishments in evolutionary theory to so completely misunderstand and misrepresent my theory, whether he agreed with it or not. He warned everyone to “beware” of it as “a theory of everything” and belittled the ways in which I had suggested that the theory could be tested.

Of course, it is not a theory of everything. The “Synergism Hypothesis” is a theory specifically about the “progressive” evolution of complexity in nature, and in human societies, a theory first proposed in 1983 as an explicit, Darwinian (bioeconomic) alternative to the various proposed “laws” of evolution that have been advanced over the years by the so-called complexity school – from Herbert Spencer to Ilya Prigogine to Stuart Kauffman and beyond. The theory explains this important evolutionary trend in terms of a common underlying principle – the principle of functional synergy.

In fact this theory is very similar in character to Darwin’s theory. Natural selection, after all, is not a “mechanism” but an “umbrella term” that is used to characterize a certain distinctive property of the evolutionary process, namely the differential survival and reproduction (or “selection”) of different forms as a result of their functional interactions (adaptations) both internally and with their environments. It is really a theory about the trans-generational consequences of these functional interactions, though the precise causes are in every case situation-specific and infinitely varied.

In the same manner, the Synergism Hypothesis is an umbrella term that singles out a subset of the relationships that are ubiquitous in nature, namely those that produce functional synergies which have consequences for differential survival and reproduction. The thesis, then, is that synergies of various kinds have been the underlying causes of the “progressive” trend in evolution toward more complex systems, in the same sense that natural selection is a causal theory of evolution more generally. Moreover, this dynamic can also be applied to the uniquely “progressive” aspect of cultural evolution in humankind. (Needless to say, I define “progressive” in strictly functional, not normative terms.)

Among the various implications of this theory is a directive that we must focus our attention, not on genes pursuing their individual agendas in isolation from one another but on “wholes” (systems) and the relationships among them, which are inescapable features of the living world. The theory also sensitizes us to the interdependencies that are everywhere in evidence, and it helps us to identify the commonalities and differences, as well as the advantages and vulnerabilities, that are associated with these relationships. In various recent writings I have also discussed the many different kinds of synergy, as well as various qualitative aspects of synergistic phenomena, along with describing various ways of testing for synergy in any given relationship.

So, I can only hope that David Sloan Wilson will ultimately come to recognize that this theory has its uses. But then, I’m also mindful of the fact that, almost 150 years after the publication of The Origin of Species, Darwin’s theory is still hotly debated. Alas.

Thought for the day: “The tipping point;” the “perfect storm;” “the straw that broke the camel’s back;” the “bingo effect.” All are variations on the synergy theme – when more (or less) is radically different. In other words, the whole is very often not “greater than the sum of its parts,” just different.

“Corporate Goods”

It is curious that both in economic theory and in classical neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory (both of which utilize game theory models), there has been little attention and even less theoretical work done on what I refer to as “corporate goods.” In the corporate goods model (which can include any number of players), the participants may contribute in many different ways to a joint product (say the capture of a large game animal or the manufacture and sale of an automobile). I like to call it a “combination of labor.” However, unlike “collective goods,” or “public goods” that are indivisible and must be equally shared (even possibly with non-participants and cheaters), corporate goods can be divided in accordance with various principles, or “rules” or “contracts”. The division of the spoils is thus not preordained, as is the case with the payoffs in most game theory models. In other words, the payoff matrix can be manipulated at will. Indeed, the question of how the goods are divided up may be crucially important in determining if the “game” will be played at all. If this sounds familiar, even commonplace, it is because corporate goods “games” are, in fact, ubiquitous in human societies, and are fairly common in nature as well. It is the predominant form of economic organization in a complex society.

Thought for the day: Back when America had a predominately middle-class society and one-income families were the rule (hard to believe today), the disparities in wealth were not so great. Nowadays, as a friend put it (with only a bit of hyperbole), either you have three houses or three jobs. There’s nothing in between.