This book presents solutions to problems that are total and based on thinking about how and why humans have organized themselves. It discusses how to avoid the now well-documented Holocene Extinction, propelled by climate change, wars, resource depletion, desertification, degrading knowledge quality, famine, and deterioration of societies overall. It explains why we cannot respond effectively with hedonistic, incompetent, corrupt, and anarchistic "liberal democracy" and why neither personality cult regimes can suffice.
The book offers a model of an organic social structure embodying a collective consciousness of communitarianism and Platonic-style ethos. Putting an emphasis on the re-establishment of Classical Greek virtue, it offers solutions to resolve identity politics, alienation, and meritocracy. While doing so, the author opposes the "everyone is equal" ideology to govern the section of policymakers, instead circumscribing "rights" in terms of responsibilities, prioritizing education and training to carry forth the ethos of valuing truth above materialism, and developing Durkheim's social brain via a new discipline, "sociointelligence". The book goes on to explain how underpinning these elements is a comprehensive elucidation of often misunderstood words like "liberty", "freedom", "authoritarianism", and "democracy". All of these areas are arranged and combined in uniquely describing the organic society the author deems necessary to avoid human extinction. As a result, the book presents a “new organicity”, where the emerging transhumanism seeks to transcend hydrocarbon-based life with humanly-constructed life.
This book will appeal to students, researchers, and scholars of political science, philosophy, and the social sciences interested in a better understanding of complexity, democratic theory, Holocene Extinction, organic thinking, and meritocratic societies.
Author(s): Jeremy Horne
Series: Contributions to Political Science
Publisher: Springer
Year: 2023
Language: English
Pages: 447
City: Cham
Preface
A Note on Style and Criteria
A Note on Sources and Their Uses
Acknowledgments
Contents
Chapter 1: Introduction
1.1 Audience
1.2 The Turmoil We Are in
1.3 The Yellow Brick Road
1.4 Uniqueness of This Book
1.5 Presentation Method
1.6 The United States as a Paradigm
References (all accessed 15-29 November 2022)
Chapter 2: What Is Promoting Human Extinction?
2.1 About This Chapter
2.1.1 Scope
2.1.2 Rationale for Method
2.1.3 Rationale for Categories
2.1.4 Sourcing
2.2 The Categories
2.2.1 Individual
2.2.1.1 Alienation and Identity
2.2.1.2 The Liberal Democratic Response: Identity Politics
2.2.1.3 Health
Health Care Overall
Mental Health
Substance Abuse
Nutritional Compromise
2.2.1.4 Education and Lack of Basic Knowledge
2.2.1.5 Work
Losing Oneself at Work
Types and Conditions of Work Environments
2.2.2 Society
2.2.2.1 Social Institutional Decay
Income Stratification: The Consequences
And the Proletarians, the Bulk of Society?
General Flaws in the Governing Document, the Constitution
A Constitutional Action Plan of the Dark Variety
2.2.2.2 Infrastructure
2.2.3 Environment: Natural
2.2.3.1 Climate Change/Global Warming
2.2.3.2 Resource Depletion
2.2.3.3 Environmental Degradation and Major Reasons for It
2.2.4 Environment: Artificial
2.2.4.1 Ethos, Ethics, and Morals
2.2.4.2 Philosophy and Ideology
2.2.4.3 Telecommunications Vulnerabilities
2.2.4.4 Artificial Intelligences
2.2.4.5 Knowledge Quality
Documentation
Pseudoscience and on the Borderlands of Science
Information Quality, Peer Review, and ``Fake News´´
2.2.4.6 Socioeconomics: Mergers and Acquisitions
2.2.4.7 Technological Complexity
2.2.4.8 Overpopulation
2.3 Other Problems
2.4 The Prison Planet
2.5 Summary of Problem Areas
References (all accessed 15-29 November 2022)
Chapter 3: Responses to Social Problems
3.1 Power
3.2 From Zero to Infinity in a Hierarchy
3.3 Archies, Ocracies and Isms
3.4 Philosophical Isms
3.4.1 Libertarianism
3.4.2 Authoritarianism
3.4.3 Totalitarianism
3.4.4 Statism
3.4.5 Nationalism
3.4.6 Populism
3.5 Structural ``Isms´´
3.5.1 Capitalism
3.5.2 Fascism
3.5.3 National Socialism
3.5.4 Americanism
3.5.5 Socialism
3.6 Hierarchal Types
3.6.1 Anarchy
3.6.2 Democracy
3.6.3 Liberal Democracy
3.6.4 Republic
3.6.5 Oligarchy
3.6.6 Plutocracy: From Wiktionary
3.6.7 Aristocracy: From Wiktionary
3.6.8 Meritocracy: From Wiktionary
3.6.9 Monarchy: From Wiktionary
3.6.10 Theocracy: From Wiktionary
3.6.11 Autocracy: From Wiktionary
3.7 Toward the Etiology
References (all accessed 15-29 November 2022)
Chapter 4: How these Conditions Came to be
4.1 Alas, the Isms and Ocracies don´t Function
4.2 Some History of the Problems and the Responses
4.3 The Culmination of History
4.4 What Are some Major Processes Driving the Problems?
4.5 What Specifically Is Shaping the Current Environment?
4.5.1 Technology of Superfluous Variety and Waste
4.5.2 Personal Identity
4.5.3 Free Will, Determinism, and Individualism
4.5.4 Society´s Vocabulary
4.5.5 Automation
4.5.6 ``Working Class´´ Responses
4.5.7 Extreme Democracy
4.5.8 Owning Problems and Participation in Decision-Making
4.5.9 Education and Training
4.5.10 Mental Health
4.5.11 Caring for the Aged
4.6 Ethos
4.6.1 Law and Ethos
4.6.2 Developing the Core: Ethos
4.7 Summary
References (all Accessed 15-29 November 2022)
Chapter 5: Solution Requirements
5.1 Building a Requirements List
5.1.1 Recognize a Problem Exists
5.1.2 The Will to Solve the Problems
5.1.3 Ethos, Ethics, and Morals
5.1.4 Identifying a Social Philosophy
5.1.5 Ideology, Religiosity, and Critical Thinking
5.1.6 Social Integration and Alienation
5.1.7 Virtue
5.1.8 Rights, Duties, and Responsibilities
5.1.9 Knowing Who Should Decide
5.1.10 Planning with a Coherent Framework
5.1.11 Individual Physical Needs
5.1.12 Social Physical Needs: Infrastructure and Product Manufacture
5.1.13 Schools: Education and Training
5.1.14 Mental Capability
5.2 Continuing with Solution Sets
References (all Accessed 15-29 November 2022)
Chapter 6: Order: The Social Embryo
6.1 Order and Its Manifestations
6.1.1 Overview
6.1.2 What to Read
6.1.3 Why You Read all the Chapters
6.2 Problems in Knowing
6.2.1 Epistemology
6.2.2 Second-Order Self-critique
6.2.3 Reality and its Representation
6.2.4 Boundary and Time
6.2.5 Dimensionality
6.3 Reference Frames: The Bootstrap Basis of Structures
6.3.1 The Most Fundamental Law
6.3.2 The Substratum
6.4 Historical Markers of Bivalency
6.5 The Origin and Development of Order
6.5.1 Order
6.5.2 The Infinitesimal, Infinite, and their Commonality
6.6 Some Logic
6.6.1 Logic
6.6.2 Logos
6.6.3 Deduction and Induction
6.7 Deduction
6.8 Induction
6.8.1 Four Relational Worlds
6.8.2 General Remarks about the Four Worlds
6.8.3 Application
6.9 How Binary Structure Communicates
6.9.1 The Mechanics
6.9.2 Findings
6.10 What Is Complexity?
6.11 Complex Order
6.12 Implications and Applications
6.13 Elements of System Construction
6.13.1 What Is a System?
6.13.2 Whither our Social System?
References (All Accessed 15-29 November 2022)
Chapter 7: How Order Comes to Life
7.1 Why Are We Even Considering This Question?
7.2 How Reasonable Is the Organic Society Model?
7.3 Organism
7.3.1 Qualities of Machines and Organisms
7.3.2 Life´s Origins
7.4 Boundary between Life and Death
7.4.1 Autopoiesis and Emergence
7.4.2 What Is Life, Then?
7.4.3 Applications
References (All Accessed 15-29 November 2022)
Chapter 8: Who Says Societies Are Living?
8.1 What this Discussion Is About: Scope
8.2 General Considerations
8.2.1 Nature of Selections
8.2.2 Translations
8.3 Backdrop
8.4 The Organic Philosophers
8.4.1 Plato (circa 428/427 BCE-circa 348/347)
8.4.2 Aristotle (circa 384-circa 322 B.C.E.)
8.4.3 Thomas Hobbes (5 April 1588-4 December 1679)
8.4.4 Jean Jacques Rousseau (28 June 1712-2 July 1778)
8.4.5 Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (27 August 1770-14 November 1831)
8.4.6 Johann Caspar (Also Kaspar) Bluntschli (7 March 1808-21 October 1881)
8.4.7 Auguste Comte (19 January 1798-5 September 1857)
8.4.8 Henri Saint-Simon (17 October 1760-19 May 1825)
8.4.9 Herbert Spencer (27 April 1820-8 December 1903)
8.4.10 Emile Durkheim (15 April 1858-15 November 1917)
8.4.11 Oswald Spengler (29 May 1880-8 May 1936)
8.4.12 Summary of Organic Thinkers
8.5 Dangers of the Organic Model
8.5.1 The Usual Suspects
8.5.2 Classifying Populations
8.5.3 What We Do with History
References (All Accessed 15-29 November 2022)
Chapter 9: That Special Organism: The State
9.1 The Missing Person in the Room
9.2 The Corpus
9.3 Brief Legal and Historical Development
9.4 Interpretations of ``Corporate´´
9.5 How to Distinguish ``corporation´´ from ``Corporation´´
9.6 The State
9.6.1 From the Ashes of Rome to the Present
9.6.2 Philosophical Underpinnings of the State
9.6.3 What Happened to the State?
9.7 Lessons to Be Learned
9.7.1 Entering the Classroom
9.7.2 The Lessons
9.7.2.1 Challenging the Axiom of Private Property
9.7.2.2 Challenging the Prevailing Social Structure
9.7.2.3 Taking Responsibility
9.8 The Modern State
References (All Accessed 15-29 November 2022)
Chapter 10: The Social Brain
10.1 Overview of the Theory
10.2 Intelligence and its Variants
10.2.1 Sorting out Abilities
10.2.2 Species Intelligence: Individual and Collective
10.2.3 A Note on Leadership
10.3 Fallout
10.4 Mentation´s Physical Substructure
10.5 Praxis
10.5.1 Computation-robotics-full Mentation
10.5.2 U.S. Government Calls for Help
10.5.3 IARPA
10.5.4 Other Work
10.6 Artificial Mentation
10.7 Sociointelligence
References (All Accessed 15-29 November 2022)
Chapter 11: Toward A Solution: The Framework
11.1 Are We Ready for a Solution?
11.2 Building the Framework
11.3 Some Framework Parameters
11.4 Ideology and Philosophy: The Content
11.4.1 Knowledge Quality
11.4.2 Overcoming False Ideas
11.4.2.1 Social and Ability Equality
11.4.2.2 Liberal Democracy
11.4.2.3 Free Enterprise and Rugged Individualism
11.5 The Framework
11.5.1 Personal Identity
11.5.1.1 Alienation
11.5.1.2 Self-Ownership and Control
11.5.1.3 Family
11.5.1.4 Schools
11.5.1.5 Work
11.5.1.6 Ability of Workers to Organize Must Know What they Want
11.5.1.7 The Role of Work: Individual and Society
11.5.1.8 The Ideology Versus the Role of Work
11.5.1.9 Ability to Work
11.5.2 The State: Rights, Duties, and Responsibilities
11.5.2.1 Legitimation
11.5.2.2 Natural and Human Law
11.5.2.3 Legal Form and Substance: The Bourgeois Legalism
11.5.2.4 Implications
11.5.2.5 The Role of the State in Production, Distribution, and Remunerative Labor
11.6 Generic Solution Methods
11.6.1 The Dialectics of Problems: Constraints, Context, and Style
11.6.2 Checks and Balances
11.6.3 The New Political Science
References
Chapter 12: Towards a Solution: The Responses
12.1 Applying the Unity of Difference
12.2 How the Responses Are Selected
12.3 Solutions Framework
12.3.1 Individual
12.3.1.1 Alienation and Identity
12.3.1.2 Health
Health Care Overall
Transhumanism
Eugenics
The Future of Our Nature
12.3.1.3 Education
12.3.1.4 Work
12.3.2 Society
12.3.2.1 The Noble State: A Being with Purpose
12.3.2.2 The Constitution: Rewriting the User´s Guide
12.3.2.3 The Corporation
The Corporatist Domain
The Legislative Chambers: State Legislature (Corporatist Assembly)
Judicial
Executive
12.3.2.4 Service Corps
National Youth Service Corps
Adult Service Corps
Prison Alternatives
12.3.2.5 Health - Mental - Selecting Decision Makers - Making the Social Brain
12.3.2.6 Voting
Standards for Selecting State Decision Makers
Selecting Elected Decision Makers
Appointed and Civil Service Officers
12.3.2.7 Health: Physical
Infrastructure
Culture
12.3.3 Citizens Accountability Corporation
12.3.3.1 Scope
12.3.3.2 Selection and Participation
12.3.3.3 Response Requirement
12.3.3.4 Legal Aid and Rights
12.3.3.5 Elections
12.3.3.6 Corruption
12.3.3.7 Knowledge Quality Institute
12.3.3.8 The Press
12.3.3.9 Censorship
12.3.4 Goods Production and Service Quality Department/Commission/Agency
12.3.5 Communications Development and Security Institute
12.3.6 The State´s Environment: Foreign Policy
12.3.7 Public Schools in General
12.3.8 Environment: Natural
12.3.9 Environment: Artificial
12.3.9.1 Ethos, Ethics, and Morals
12.3.9.2 Philosophy and Ideology
The Role of Philosophy/Ideology
Philosophy/Ideology for Whom?
12.3.9.3 Knowledge Quality
12.3.9.4 Socioeconomics
Autarky
Money, Banks, Credit, and Currency
Speculation
Loans, Investments, and Savings
Rents and Interest
Housing
Income and Property Control
Poverty and Employment
Cooperatives and Individual Businesses
Advertising
Insurance
Taxes
Retirement
Citizen Participation in Local Governance
Centralized Records and Privacy
Immigration
Energy
National Pride Projects
Family Planning and License to Have Children
Religion
Other Issues
12.4 Policy Implementation Framework
12.5 Action Plan: Shadow Governments and Their Organelles
References (All Accessed 15-29 November 2022)
Chapter 13: Conclusions
13.1 Observations
13.2 Bringing It All About
13.2.1 Method: The New Social Science
13.2.2 Avenue: Shadow State
13.2.3 Default
(You) The Unfinished Book: The Final Chapter?
Appendix A: Major Conceptual Building Blocks
Scope
The Terms and Concepts
Bourgeois
Capital
Class
Collectivism
Conservative
Contract State
Freedom (See ``Liberty and Freedom´´)
Human Capital (See ``Capital´´)
Human Rights
Ideology
Industry
Left-Wing
Liberal, liberal (Lower-Case ``l´´)
Liberty and Freedom
Narcissism (and Its Derivatives)
Ownership (See ``Property´´)
Power
Political and Political Science
Predator
Progressive
Property
Ownership
Own
Control
Control
The Split in Human Identity: Ownership and Control
Radical
Reactionary
Revolutionary
Right and Left Wing
Social Contract (See ``Contract State´´)
Social Entropy
Applying Terms
Appendix B: The New Political Science
Contemporary Programs
Our New Social Science
References (All Accessed 15-29 November 2022)
