Pecking Order, Competition and Institution -
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All government and economic policy today has come into existence and evolved more or less inherently and circumstantially out of pecking-order. This 'warm-blooded animal property' is destined however, to have only vestigial influence in 'the ultimate course of human progression'; in time, consequently, the 'nature' and structure of government/economy will be significantly different from what it is today. (-from The Nature and Course of Human Evolution as The Basis of Economic Policy) |
The 'peculiarity' of the prohominid was that his cerebration did not 'confine his evolution to the relative econiche stability of some lesser organism'; it was rather, 'a machine that goes by itself', one of continuing configuration-space assimilation into successively higher-order relationals(*2), a registering of 'order' in other words, that was not of 'relatively immediate assimilation and consequence' as in the habits and procreation of 'lesser' animals, but one, rather, of 'dynamic order and meaningful activity' -of pro-evolutionary, eventually 'deliberative' function and operation.
[Barring countervailing human influence, it is 'entirely possible' that some further evolution of 'deliberating' chimpanzees, for example, might precipitate 'something of another prohominid'. (The System of Human
Experience)]
(*f) Primates have an understanding of 'relational properties' (the physical world about them) which they communicate by action and vocalizations of one kind or another, a primitive, proanthropoid property that took only the
evolutionally 'happenstantial' migration of the larynx downward (among related mechanisms) to perhaps 'channel' the evolution of those 'already meaningful sounds' into gradually more informational, primitive speech.]
Pecking-order, in other words, identifies the single and only basis of 'the first cerebrated, organism-interactive order imposed' -of primitive government, in
effect, which remains the basis of all government today -despite 'knowledge vestigializing it in the nature and course of human evolution' (below)- because human-kind has not been driven (so to speak) to observe its essential circumstantiality and
thus-far found no reason to operate otherwise. It is only as mankind comes to actually understand that 'nature and course' that perhaps 'some other and better basis of human-being' will surface.
(*e - re: 'natural rights and freedoms')
'Natural rights and freedoms' and the tenets of religion, democracy and other noumenalisms, for example, constitute 'intuited knowledge of natural order', but it is, in fact, only a situation of very primitively hierarchic 'success' and (out of
pecking-order and long evolution) great momentum; 'inevitably supercessional scientific method regarding the true nature of matter', consequently -regarding statistically qualifiable overpopulation, pollution and 'what
life-style-and-quality the system can bear', for further example- has yet to influence the 'insofar-as-possible imposition' of that pecking-order-based 'ignorance as government' on whatever clan, tribal, citadel, national, international or other
circumstantial population applicable -'economic policy' likewise included(*3).
(*d) [Lying not obscurely and most certainly not insignificantly on the side is the role (pecking-order, again) of the 'pop' or 'cultural' figure in government/economy. That the mass of variously supported and justified personal tastes and choices are almost entirely a product of circumstance rooted in power is a major economic factor in western civilization. It is from the United States of America -'outward and downward', that circumstance (historical) and diasporative exploition of 'untapped resource/environment riches' propel a hierarchy of 'willful aristocracy and its idolatry'. These 'figures' -sports and cinema primarily, but political, religious et cetera- are emulated precisely for a 'transferral' of whatever seeming power of 'style', 'chic', 'devil may care' and 'idle-mind time to indulge oneself' they express to 'lessers' -and it is implicit of 'American free-enterprise, capitalist democracy' then, entailing the use of science and technology, that, still pecking-order-based, such government/economy actively fosters the 'entrepreneurial success' that goes with that mentality -'the production, distribution and consumption of goods and services', that is, where neither 'merit' nor 'validity' is of concern(*4). -Nor, for that matter, is 'morality' an issue -'successful crack-dealer, computer hacker or computerized stocktrader'(*5), all are admired for the quite ostensible power (pecking-order) that sticks to them -and they are, one and all, major economic factors.]
As to the ontogeny of reconstituting 'government and economic policy' then:
1 - Deliberative capability is manifest in 'the continuing formulation of knowledge by discovery of configuration space constitution' -which, in relative primitivity therefore, is not necessarily correct(*2), but which, by
entering a primitive base of 'econiche phenomenon accountability', inherently facilitates primitively individual, pecking-order-based reproduction and viability (natural selection etc) and organism-whole progression and evolution.
-'Genetically driven, pecking-ordered sexual reproduction', in other words -the primitively first-deliberated organization, constitutes (knowledge) 'the primitively first institutionalized competition'(*6).
2 - There is however, 'a capability-and-rate of phenomenon registration and assimilation' which is relatively fixed by the de_facto physicality of genetics attaching any organism-specific level-of-evolution(*7), thus
primitively evolving 'knowledge' eventually came to contain 'at least some conjured explanations of perceived configuration-space order' at least some of which, by virtue of required congregational service, became institutionalized into
successively 'higher' and hierarchical organization -belief-in-spirits into religion, for example (-eventually), and 'successful willfulness' (modified) eventually into 'natural rights and freedoms'(*8). Primitive 'government' of
interpersonal, congregational and evolvingly higher-order relationships in other words, was, intrinsically and fundamentally, genetically-based and pecking-ordered -'institutionalizedly competitive' in that respect, and only superficially
deliberative (if at all) of knowledge in 'organism-whole viability and progression'.
3 - "It is intrinsic of vertebrate evolution that pecking-order is based on pain and that 'successful peckers' consequently enjoy something of 'an accordingly convenienced viability'. Given that, 'deliberative capability' and certain other mutations, hominid evolution is generally marked by 'peckers one-upping and superceding each other by successive assimilation of ecosystem constitution' -idlemind-time eventually, and 'life-style-and-quality'(*9) -the whole of such evolution, 'a machine that goes by itself' [-and -however-] 'The nature and constitution of human-being' is increasingly and ultimately a matter of 'the heuristic determination of life-style-and-quality under what the system can bear'" (Kernel Properties -); life-style-and-quality can be determined, consequently, only by (a) precedents of fundamentally individual, social, civilizational or other pecking-order-based 'competition' as of thus-far 'knowledgeable' such evolution -or by (b) higher-order consideration of that, the continuing evolution of which (consideration) is, in fact, intrinsic of deliberative capability as 'aristocratization' (next).
4 - The role of pecking-order in human evolution and progression then, depends only upon knowledge of that role -knowledge, in other words, under a 'human genetic imperative' which increasingly subordinates pecking-order to the aristocratization intrinsic of 'deliberative capability and investment of the configuration space'(*a), thus-
-Pecking-order 'may' work to advantage in some one or other particular situation, in other words, but the evolutionary mechanics are such that 'better understanding of the situation' (organism-whole viability and progression 'aristocratizing') is intrinsically more likely to lead to 'better resolution' (i.e. investment of the configuration space) -the influence of pecking-order, in effect, 'vestigializing in the course of human progression'. Another way of looking at this is to observe that because we cannot know how 'what we have yet to discover' will affect our being, we cannot know what form of government that intrinsically heuristic 'discovery and interactions' should take -except heuristically.
[The evolution of clan-head/priesthood -the first people to have 'explanations' for phenomena for which lessers did not (eg fire, death et cetera -at least 8,000 b.c. forward), precipitated the 'need' for that distinction -'appurtenance' that in excess of 'base-domain requirements' (eg face-paint in excess of common clothing) identified that 'knowledge' in an incipiently consumerist way, that is to say that that position-and-knowledge was not merely 'survival-of-the-fittest (pecking-order) expressing hegemony' in that 'pehaps primitively burgeoning government/economy', but added, de_facto, a new variable to it by the injection (purely circumstantial!) of primitive 'value'. -It takes no more than a parlay of this for a society of 'primitive H sapiens' successfully investing their configuration space' to progress thru simple emulation into the huckstered demands of today's still diasporating 'civilized world', into dialectics of 'value' and incentive(*b) in which one effectively 'chooses his individuality and knowledge-by-association' thru government/economics purveying to it.]
In 'economic' view of this situation then, the whole of 'the human phenomenon and things human' today is manifest thru expression of 'hominid-being (primitive) superiority' among ourselves and over all other organisms -'natural rights and freedoms' and life-style-and-quality, our ethnic, religious, cultural and political institutionalizations and mechanisms of material realization more or less autonomous in that respect, everywhere. There is, therefore, no 'appurtenance of this new organism on the block' -of either primitive or 'civilized' investment, that was not incipiently constituted as some element of pecking-ordered, teeming invasion of the resource/environment on the backs of other organisms and 'lessers than ourselves' -fellow humans included. Understanding this is the basis of an eventually miscegenating mankind of increasingly anoumenal, relatively monocultural ethos', of non-autonomous aristocratization and an inevitable re-evolution of 'appurtenances' and their 'government/economies'. (-from Evolution, Autonomy and Aristocratization)
feedback? -perryb@condition.org
First posted: March 20, 1998; Last modified: November 11, 2005