*But the way Dr. Bar-Yam describes our complex super-organism of a world is equivalent to what you would call 5GW.*

This anticipates a post I've been contemplating…

*In a way, aggressions are really the simplifications of a complex situation. *

Interesting point…

What shape would that “greatest verticalization” take? Are you talking about a world government powerful enough to put down all violent conflict everywhere? Would that government be elected according to a representative process and subject to the consent of the governed? If so, wouldn't that condition require the existence and importance of “non-vertical” structures like political parties, activist organizations, churches, and so on? In other words, how vertical can you get while remaining democratic? Or are you saying that the great verticalization will not result in a democratic structure?

If that's what you're saying, then this claim sounds an awful lot like what I've heard from a lot of communists in the past. It goes something like, “The world will be a whole lot more peaceful once you just succumb to our will.” No matter whose will we're talking about, I don't think that a worldwide “succumbing” to any ideology is ever going to happen but, based on the model above, but this capitulation seems to be required in order for the “great verticalization” to be realized.

Or am I misunderstanding the model?

'What shape would that “greatest verticalization” take? '

An excellent question! Your next is just as good

'Are you talking about a world government powerful enough to put down all violent conflict everywhere? Would that government be elected according to a representative process and subject to the consent of the governed?'

War will always be with us. War means evolving and exploiting violence with a unifying vision, via a grand ideal or an overarching theme or a noble philosophy. [1] A hate crime is a form of low-intensity war, for instance, and it's clear that most “war” is the job of a police force and not an army. A Leviathan — a national or global military force — strong enough to end all meaningful violence just is not going to happen.

But there is hope: the evolution of warfare has in a real sense meant the civilization of warfare. War deaths as a percentage of the population are astronomically high in tribal violence. The more evolved you are, the more bloodless you get. We justly decry the horror and the terror of the World Wars, but our ancestors would have viewed a skirmish that killed that small a percentage of the population as not worth recording.

It is possible to end “wars as we have known them.” [2] Interpersonal war dropped like a stone once a state-level power existed to enforce a rule-set. And of all the states that existed, generally the ones with the smaller vertical rulesets (“don't do X, or go to jail”) thrived compared to those with larger vertical rulesets (“do X, or go to jail”).

Interstate will drop like a stone once a system-level power exists to enforce a ruleset. Indeed, that is exactly the reason state-level war is dropping like a stone. America's hegemony have convinced nearly every state that it cannot possibly win a state-on-state war, because America will punitively reverse the victories (think Yugoslavia and Iraq).

America's rise as World-Leader is the greatest verticalization in history. America's globalization rule-set is much smaller than Britain's, France's, Germany's, Japan's, or Russia's. Let's hope she succeeds.

Larry,

In your opinion, how does Bar-Yam's complex super-organism and the 5GW model compare to Howard Bloom's global brain? [3]

Larry & Curtis,

Right on the simplifying power of overt aggression. Overt aggression is an attempt to force an opponent to match value-with-value, forcing him convert strengths across a spectrum of domains into just those domains that will help him win. By the same token, Sunzi-style mutual subversion is a complication — a neurological addition to the complex adaptive system of our world.

[1] http://www.cominganarchy.com/archives/2006/07/05/empowerment-through-technology/#comment-109548
[2] http://www.tdaxp.com/archive/2005/12/23/embracing-defeat-part-iv-embracing-victory.html
[3] http://www.tdaxp.com/archive/2006/03/17/review-of-global-brain-by-howard-bloom.html

In my opinion Bar-Yam takes Howard Bloom’s global brain one step further. If I understand Howard Bloom, he understands complexity, but not scaling. I would think the gap between them is similar to the gaps between, Newtonian laws of physics and Quantum laws of physics. They are talking about the same thing, but not really. Howard Bloom seems to be thinking at only one scale, human; Bar-Yam is thinking at different scales, always rescaling to show the situation in such a way that the human mind can comprehend.
I can understand you thinking hunter/gatherers are networked. But what I believe is that Bar-Yam was showing the level of complexity as a unit of time. Hunter/gatherers are networked, but their OODA loop (network) is of the animals and plants they are hunting, and not their own. In other words, they are random moving object connected to their environment. Their complexity is equal to the complexity of their environment. The hunter/gatherers may move as a cohesive unit when hunting, but it is not with the complexity of an organ of a larger unit.
As an example, the blood that flows through us all could be considered a random movement of objects, but the organ’s relationship to us is not simple. The potential energy of the heart gives these random moving object cohesion. The heart adds displacement, friction, and a place to go, to an otherwise random body of movement. This cohesiveness turns a simple situation into a more complex situation. But these random moving objects with their added cohesiveness are still not networked with each other. The objects still, pretty much, move randomly about on their way to their destiny. However, they are networked with the other organs of the larger (super?) organism that is called human. This is where the complexity comes from and Bar-Yam talks about. It is not so much that we are networked with each other; complexity comes from our connection to the other organs of the super-organism. We can’t see this connection from the human scale. We have to Zoom out, so to speak, to see the sum of the parts. My guess is that Howard Bloom sees no larger picture than that of the human scale.

“This anticipates a post I've been contemplating…”
Well Curtis your writings have definitely point in that direction.

“Hunter/gatherers are networked, but their OODA loop (network) is of the animals and plants they are hunting, and not their own. In other words, they are random moving object connected to their environment.”

Hmmm.. This seems to be the central difference. Bloom constantly shifts scales — from cells to animals to people and cities — but emphasizes the power of offloading information processing, storage, and retrieval to other members of a population. Essentially, the rise of man as a social animal was the complex intermingling of his OODA with his fellows, and that this group then interacts to the environment.

So I guess I now strongly strongly recommend two books to you — ZMM and Global Brain. Both take a systematic view of the world, and I think you would enjoy that.

Won't ultimate verticalization (one-world-rule or world government) be a stagnating force?

Bobbit says that the evolution of the forms of states is driven by strategy and national security concerns. If that concern mostly goes away, the form of states will stagnant.

I would be concerned that vertical concentration of power without competing or alternative power sources would naturally flow to a bureaucratic ruling class that (per public choice theory) would really be concerned about its own self interests (and might actually be deluded into thinking what is best for them is best for everyone anyways as they are the privileged/special ones).

It might be interesting to think about how an ultimate world vertical authority could be designed to not follow the path of stagnation and authoritarianism.

I suspect that, broadly speaking, it will occur when vertical and horizontal controls become largely synonymous….Check the trackback I left above to see what I mean….