Evolution and Revolution
Everything human evolves with intermittent periods of revolution. Evolution and Revolution allow for dramatic changes in how the individual behaves in the context of their environment. Humans grow from a tiny sense driven creature to fully self-actualized intelligent individuals in a relatively short period of time. Groups of humans evolve and go through stages of evolution in the same way. Groups of people evolve on many levels, which are distinguished in the Social Sciences; Economics, Political Science, Leadership, Organizational behavior, Psychology, Sociology, Religion, etc. Evolution from one stage to another is enabled through different revolutionary mechanisms.
There are 5 distinct stages of evolution that allow individuals, organizations and society to evolve. Evolution among the various stages occurs naturally within a stage, followed by a crisis, creating the revolutionary moment where the individual, organization, and society change dramatically. What emerge from this revolution are a healthy individual, organization, and society that can manage and thrive in the new reality.
Figure a. Stages of Evolution and Crisis based Revolution
There are common elements between the various scientific explanations for the evolution of the individual, the organization, and the society. Those elements are consistent in their nature, how they allow the individual to interact, and how the individual behaves in organizations, and how those organizations gather to form societies.
Organizations in this context are groups of individuals between 20 and 150, typically referred to as a “tribe”. This is the natural biological capacity of the human genome to associate with other humans. Groups of tribes form societies requiring different rules to survive through time. The group referred to as “Team” or 2-20 people is not addressed in this writing of the theory. When tribes combined society formed.
Each evolutionary stage exists marked by a period of evolution bound by a period of revolution where the individual, organization as well as the society go through a rapid change that leaves a distinctly different society and individual that was available in the previous stage. New rules are required to manage the individuals in the higher stages. During those revolutionary periods, old rules are thrown off in favor of more appropriate guidance from the more highly evolved culture.
Piaget discusses 5 stages of psychosocial development. Those stages are marked by periods of slow evolution where the individual learns more about their universe and in so learning discovers things that are not right. Their worldview changes somewhere in the latter stages of the developmental period, and a new distinctly different living model emerges replacing the previous model. In the individual, that new model is the rules the individual lives by to make sense of the world.
Organizations go through evolutionary stages interceded by revolutionary periods as well. They go through stages where the organization is happy being the organization it is, and then enters a crisis requiring a change in the rules of the organization to survive the next stage. Typically lead by the leadership within the organization, the systems and policies in place do not satisfy the changing demands of the organization as a whole causing a revolution. The organization that emerges from these revolutionary periods operate more efficiently, profitably, and provide better environments for the individuals within the organizations. The organization is healthier.
The same is true for societies, who go through distinct evolutionary stages. Each part of society is represented in a different science; religion, sociology, economics, and politics (as represented in how leaders are selected). All of which allows the society to evolve individually and evolve distinctly in contrast to other societies.
A healthy individual occurs when the person is congruent within their existing evolutionary stage. When their view of the world matches how they behave in the world. The rules used to drive behavior are consistent with the perception of the individual. The same is true for both organizations and societies.
The social meta theory implies that for every individual, group, organization, city, city state, nation and ultimately the world, that there is an evolutionary process that each goes through is similar in nature and in the way that the evolution to revolution process proceeds. It does not imply that for every individual in a culture will evolve. For instance, there are many cases of individuals being intellectually evolved and emotionally stunted. They are fully capable of operating in an environment of intellectual evolution but incapable of existing in a psychological or emotional environment. These imbalanced or unhealthy individuals are tormented by basic human interaction. Highly intellectual individuals can be fiscally irresponsible.
Measurement
Concepts in the Social Meta Theory can be measured and quantified, identifying tipping points and areas in crisis headed for revolution. Key drivers are provided, some of which are best guesses given limited knowledge, and others are concrete measurements identifying real issues within societies that drive growth. It is in the quantification of the basic driving factors of a society that allow us to quickly measure human behavior in aggregate to understand the relative health of the organization, city, state, nation and ultimately world.
This book does not address the actual implementation of the theory, only the articulation of the theory. The Social Meta Theory implementation will require research and assumption validation to identify the models.
New sciences emerge from the Meta Theory allowing for future development of concepts not currently studied. For instance, the concept of Responsibility as an evolving issue allowing more freedom as the individual takes more responsibility for his or her own actions.