[Main Blog Post] On the Usefulness of Social Technology as a Metaphor

[jprussell]

After getting into an interesting discussion in the comments on one of causticus 's recent posts, I wanted to expand a bit on my thoughts on "social technology" as a metaphor, and whether and how it might be useful in a non-pejorative sense.

Comments

[k_a_nitz]

What follows is a random dump of thoughts on reading your post ;-)

I tend to be wary of efforts to instrumentalise religion to achieve an end. The thing with the word technology is that it is generally tied to this idea of an instrument, so when we say 'social technology', I hear 'some way of instrumentalising social behaviour to some end', as if we still believed in a clockwork universe. Pierre Bourdieu's concept of 'social capital' is closely aligned in many people's eyes (though the full complexity of what he was getting at was missed by pretty much the entire academic field of sociology - in some ways he was trying to get beyond the structure-action dualism (ie determinism vs freewill) by finding a third thing that bridges the gap).

Regarding marriage, in the wider field of economics it is classified as an 'institution', and so to is the rule of law, property rights, family relationships in general, and religion. All these things are governed by arbitrary conventions that possess a persistence solely on account of their social basis. But it could always have been different - never forget the role of history in these things (one of my favourite books on the evolution of Economic Thought is called How Economics Forgot History).

What Coulange seems to be doing (I haven't read him either LOL) is to create a Just So story (go Rudyard Kipling!) for how certain religions came about at a high level. This is all good and well, but it is not a step-by-step guide any more than our understanding of human evolution can help us shape our future evolution.

I think I am in alignment with you in thinking that religion is an outcome, the convention that arises when people perform acts of ritual in ways that persist over time as internalised patterns in the sense of what Christopher Alexander came up with in A Timeless Way of Building. We can suggest new rituals, but unless we practise them and pass them on to those who follow to practise and let them become internalised as 'the way things are done', they will not become part of the religion. Like someone came up with on Ecosophia recently: rather than Be Here Now, Do Here Now. We 'practise' a religion - we may not get it right, we may not even know what getting right would be, but it is a doing. I was going to add 'in the faith that the outcomes will be to our benefit', but the more I consider the deeper examples of religion, the more I think it is outcome independent - it is a convention, an arbitrary way of doing, whose meaning derives from egregore built up by it.

Which brings me to ask would egregores be considered a form of 'social technology'?

I just realised that nowhere in the above did I bring up the idea of emergent properties ... my bad

[jprussell]

Thank you very much for your thoughts!

1) I am also quite wary of instrumentalizing things that shouldn't be treated as instruments, especially when done with full knowledge and intent that that's what you're doing - institutions, people, and so forth. I likely should have included a more explicit disclaimer to that effect here. That being said, we are tool users, and part of our lives here in the material world is making things happen towards goals, and as long as we have goals, we need instruments, and we'll find them wherever we can, so I think it's helpful to sometimes analyze things in that light. Spiritual matters are one of the places, though, where that's most likely to lose sight of what actually matters and become a problem, as you say, so once again, fair point.

2) Agreed on the arbitrariness and contingency of most (all?) institutions, but I would simply add that I don't believe that the arbitrariness or contingency are the whole story. As with evolution, the particular solution to a set of problems we end up with (say, four limbs with five digits each) is arbitrary, but it was arbitrary within bounds - to solve the problems of locomotion and manipulation of our environment, we needed some kind of physical arrangement to handle that. The existence of exoskeletons, tentacles, and so forth is proof that other arbitrary solutions exist within the possible set of solutions, but a possible solution that didn't meet the needs of survival would be outside it. Likewise, various economic and social arrangements can arise and have arisen to deal with various circumstances, but something that works great in a tropical jungle might not work in a cold steppe, and so forth.

3) Fair enough on not being a "step-by-step," but such stories and analysis might help us in coming up with alternatives to try out and ways of evaluating success or lack thereof.

4) Yes, exactly! The practice and doing are the essential part, and assumed within that approach is that you get "outcomes" besides the physically obvious. I think it's reductive and ultimately unhelpful to consider religion purely as an answer to social and physical difficulties (such as the whole "kosher law is a way to avoid food-borne illnesses"), but answering such social and physical difficulties might be part of what makes certain practices stick, in addition to the spiritual outcomes they produce. A tribe that has wonderfully rich relationships with its Gods but starves to death won't be around to pass those practices on, for example.

5) Hmmm, I don't know if egregores would fit into my definition, in part because I still don't understand the term well enough to evaluate. Certainly it seems that some of the things that develop their own egregores (like a nation) would fit my definition, and the fact that it has a more-or-less helpful egregore would likely be part of what makes it work well, but my current understanding is that egregores are more, as you allude to, emergent from underlying mechanisms, rather than standalone, but I could be way off here.

Thanks again for your thoughtful response!
Jeff