Levels of Identification and Synergy
Ilya Shambat
humanity to develop: Human beings themselves, the family or the ethnic
group, humanity, and life. In all human beings will be found an
orientation, in various degrees, to all of the preceding. Some will
tend more toward one or the other orientation, and degree of
participation in each will vary
among individuals and during the lifetime of each individual. And each
orientation will favor more of its orientation while seeking to
exclude others.
The more atomized levels will see the more general levels as betrayal
or illusion. The more general levels will see the more atomized levels
as short-sighted, selfish, primitive or ignorant. The tribe or the
country does not like people to identify with humanity or with life,
any more than it wants them to identify with themselves or their
families or their ethnic group. The family orientation does not want
people to identify with the nation or with the more general levels at
the expense of itself. Similarly, humanity-orientation and life-
orientation does not want people to identify with their nations, their
ethnic groups, their families or themselves at the expense of humanity
and of life.
The people who have identified with the more atomized levels at the
expense of the more general ones are usually detested, except of
course by the members of the more atomized levels themselves of which
they are a part. Hitler and Genghis Khan, who identified with their
ethnicities and used their ethnicities to conquer and slaughter
millions of people of other ethnicities, are hated by most people
around the world - with the exception of course of the ethnocentrists
at home who think that they were great leaders and people who hate the
same people that Hitler or Genghis Khan wanted to exterminate. English
and Spanish imperialists, whose crimes equaled those of Hitler and far
exceeded those of Genghis Khan, are hated by people of the broader
identification as much as by people they conquered, but the hatred of
them is muffled in countries that owe a large part of their existence
to them. The leaders who favor themselves, their friends, their
families, their states, the businesses allied with them, or their
ethnic groups, at the expense of the countries that they lead, are
known as corrupt. That is because they pilfer the more generalized
entity to serve a more atomized entity, instead of serving the entity
that they are entrusted to lead.
Depending upon which level of identification is in vogue, are made
judgments as to which orientations are better and for what reason.
Thus, when ethicity-orientation or family-orientation is in vogue, the
national orientation is seen as statism or oppression. When
nationalism is in vogue, the humanity-orientation (internationalism)
or the life-orientation (environmentalism) are seen as craziness or as
treason; the self-orientation or family-orientation or group-
orientation, as selfishness or as sin. When humanity-orientation is in
vogue, the more atomized levels (national orientation, ethnic
orientation, family orientation and self orientation) are seen as
divisive, destructive, short-sighted and irrational, whereas
life-orientation is seen as betrayal of one's own kind. Humanity-
orientation itself, in its turn, is seen as incomplete, arrogant and
anthropocentric from the perspective of identification with life. The
more general levels engulf the more atomized ones and extend them.
From the position of the more general level, the more atomized levels
are seen as primitive and destructive; yet their presence is not
likely to go away.
What is of some interest is that the more general levels actually go
back to a prior stage in the development process. First there was
life; then there was humanity; then there was the ethnicity; then the
family; then the person. Looking outward toward general
identifications actually carries one into man's evolutionary past. But
it is a past that is inextricable from what man is today.
Among different peoples there is an identification that they foster.
Thus, many Jewish people identify with the destiny of humanity as much
as they do with Jewish people; tribal people identify with life and
nature as much as they do with their own tribes; and populations in
America that identify with America as much as they do with their own
region in America. And of course there are people in all of these
groups, and others, who identify wth themselves or their blood lines
as much as or more than they do with nation or with humanity or with
life.
In addition to the biological levels of identification, come also
artificial, man-made levels of identification. For example, there is
no natural reason why men should identify with other men more than
they should with women, or see it their duty before other men to
control and beat down their wives and their daughters; yet this
artificial identification takes place through manipulation of
predespositions that are common to men. Similarly, there is no natural
reason why a European person living in Europe and a descendant of
European people living in America should see each other as enemies;
this artificial identification takes place as a result of divergent
evolution of both places, with their different history creating
different and
in many respects hostile ways of life. Similarly we see identification
with religions, identification with political systems and ideologies,
identification with philosophies, identification with economical
systems, and identification with cultures and ways of life. While none
of these are biologically based, they become a large part of people's
identifications through thought, conviction, generational transmission
and coercion, and form identification that are frequently as strong as
or stronger than those that are of biological origin.
All levels of identification can be applied either constructively or
destructively. Destructive uses of general levels include, but are not
limited to: Destruction of people's individuality in the name of
family, community, ethnicity, nation, psychology or religion; severing
of loving interpersonal bonds between people in the name of all these
or humanity or life; prosecution
of commerce or science or art or beauty or personal freedom in the
name of the country or its "values"; cultural, social, economic,
political and religious oppression; and religions abusing, murdering
and sabotaging all that is life and all levels of life in order to
bring about an artificial Armageddon. Destructive uses of the more
atomized levels include, but are not limited to: Destruction of the
planet for sake of national interest or humanity's material well-
being; sabotaging of international cooperation on crucial matters for
the sake of national or communal interest; all that is known as racism
and ethnocentrism; communities and families effectively taking away
from their members the rights afforded to them by the nation,
committing and covering up crimes against them, controlling their
lives and denying to nation, to humanity and to life what they have to
give.
Identification levels can work together as well. One benefits life,
humanity and one's nation by finding ways to provide for humanity's
energy and water requirements in a way that is environmentally less
obtrusive than present technologies. One benefits self, family and
more general levels by doing meaningful, inventive, productive,
creative or knowledge-producing work. In optimum, is seen the levels
feeding into each other for benefit of each level and of the totality.
And in this, is finally found a thinking that has the capacity to
produce a livable future.
Life is not one of its components against all others. Life is all of
its pieces working in unity. A tree is not the roots or the trunk or
the branches or the leaves; it is all of these things at once. Nor is
the tree the branch eating the leaves, the trunk tearing off the
branches, or the leaves killing the trunk; it is all of the tree's
components working together. And what needs to happen at all levels of
human activity, as it happens in tree of life, is minimax optimization
among the levels, arriving at maximization of constructive interaction
among them and minimization of destruction done by all levels to one
another.
This has to start through replacing warring dualism with integrational
approach to dualities. It is not nature or civilization, worker or
businessman, intelligence or compassion, women or men, spirit or
physicality, ideal or reality, technology or naturality, nation or
humanity, government or private sector; it is all of these things at
once that make life. In all cases, as we have seen, there is capacity
both for conflict and for cooperation. The activities of thought, and
the activities of policy and interaction, should be directed toward
maximizing positive cooperation among the levels and minimizing
violence, abuse and destructiveness between them.
The model I have is that of minimax optimization through synergy
within the framework of check and balance. Check and balance, as was
first applied on a meaningful scale by American Constitution, means
that no level is allowed to become totalitarian and abuse all others.
Synergy means putting together the intelligence and work at all levels
to create favorable outcomes. And minimax optimization means achieving
scenarios that optimize the benefit while minimizing the wrong.
Through this thinking, and through this mechanism, it is possible to
create a livable long-term future that has a chance at lasting
sustainability and lasting peace. To honor nature and keep it
producing and living - to honor humanity's requirement for livable
future for those now living and many generations to come - to honor
distinctness of ways of life among cultures and of personhood among
individuals - will put in place the checks and balances against the
abuses among the levels, while allowing the levels to synergize toward
common good.
And then life can grow, blossom, and produce its greatest ever
accomplishments and long-term benefit at humanity level and life and
liberty at individual levels through thought and action that is
affirmative to the truth of humankind.
BOfL
> Encoded in human genome is the totality of what it has taken for
> humanity to develop: Human beings themselves, the family or the ethnic
> group, humanity, and life.
SNIP
>
> And then life can grow, blossom, and produce its greatest ever
> accomplishments and long-term benefit at humanity level and life and
> liberty at individual levels through thought and action that is
> affirmative to the truth of humankind.
The key here, is the fact that, simultanously, there are people like
your good self who have such vision, and many who would willingly
participate in an 'ethnic cleansing' exercise.
I have no doubt that there is a metaphysical gene equivalent involved
in the programming of 'the affairs of man' as well as the already
identified biological version. Not so far fetched when you consider
that there is 'quite a community' going on within ones body also. A
constant battle ground of 'good and evil'.
Both 'cultures' are part of the whole duality process, with one 'soul'
purpose, that being of 'self realization' . An individual cannot
attain such awareness other than by experienceing everything this
place can throw at him.
Life evolves both physically and spiritually, and once that awareness
starts to emerge, the 'university of the whole' starts to make sense.
BOfL