I'll begin by establishing the notion that Sovereign Nations are Evolutionary Systems. Do not mistake me for over generalizing what is a truly dynamic system. A Nation or Society is a collection of Evolutionary Subsystems. Meaning they all interact and influence one another accordingly. If we wish to understand a System fully, we would have to study it both from a macroscopic and microscopic point of view. For Instance, take a particular Subsystem of a System. To understand that particular Subsystem in full, we would have to understand how it reacts not only from the System from which it is contained in, but all other subsystems as well. This admittedly is a completely ludicrous undertaking. Alas we must simplify the problem enough to understand the basics of how a Evolutionary System is Dynamic. So while a Society may be a collection of Subsystems, we can begin by generalizing how Subsystems interact and exchange influence with their parent System, the Society. This will give us an understanding of how Subsystems interact and exchange influence between each other so that we may make more specific arguments in the future.
We must also establish what the source and type of energy that Societies utilize as an Evolutionary System. There are many, so we must isolate which best represent our argument. Currency is one form of energy in a society, but so is equity, securities and all other forms of monetary exchange. However our argument here is for a Free Society. Some may argue that money buys Freedom, I however do not believe that using money in this context of the argument is most suitable right now. If we were discussing Capitalism this may be a different story. A societies raw resources is another source of energy, but again this isn't the appropriate context. Resources may have more to do with how a society develops than how it is governed. Is governance a form of energy? Governance is not necessarily exchanged, but rather maintained. Governance is the ordered part of a Society in this context, so what is the exchange we are looking for?
The fact of the matter here is that there is no good conventional nomenclature for the representation of energy. I'd invite you to take a guess. Most of the time in passing conversation about this subject, I usually refer to this type of energy as Influence. While this sounds absurd or maybe too abstract, I did not come to that word so easily. In fact, most of the time when I talk about these ideas in conversation, I always tend to use the word Influence as a generalization, because it is anything but absurd. When we talk about a subsystem, in the environment of it's system, we talk about how it is influenced accordingly. How does the environment influence a system, or how does one system influence the next. So although there may be a better word for what I am arguing here, I will push forward to what I am used to, rather than make this post any longer than it has to be.
The last step is to pull it all together. To do this we will examine the argument from two perspectives. On one side of the argument, we will define the Evolutionary System to be society with a mostly centralized state with stringent boundary conditions. On the other side of the argument, we will consider a Society with a far less centralized state and more open boundary conditions. I have yet to explain how boundary conditions play a role with Evolutionary Systems, so consider this exercise and introduction to the topic.
With respect to the boundary conditions, the difference between the two societies is the flux of influence. For a centralized state to persist it must not allow outside influence to affect it's population. This says nothing for how it influences other systems in the same environment. When thinking about this, imagine a coffee mug, which is highly insulated. The temperature of the coffee inside tries to remain constant. If there was a magical internal source of heat which counteracted the heat lost through even these stringent boundary conditions (the insulation), then you would have the same type of system as we defined as the centralized state. The "magical heat source" being the centralized state in the society dictating how evenly distributed the influence (or heat) is throughout the system. So the boundary conditions tell us just how homogeneous the system will be, where more stringent boundary conditions give us a more homogeneous system than more open boundary conditions, which give us a more diverse system.
Just because a system is centralized, does not necessarily mean that it will forever be void of diversity. In fact, because of entropy a centralized state must forever combat natures tendency towards diversity. To do this, it's only option is to centralize itself even more. With each generation of the system, the state becomes more centralized and the tendency for more diversity are in constant competition. In other words, centralization of the state undermines itself. The more ordered a system is, the higher the probability of that system fracturing into smaller less centralized states. A real life example of this is the fact that there are more sovereign nations in the world today than there was fifty years ago. Fifty years ago, there were more sovereign nations than there was one hundred years ago. For some unknown reason, there is a common misconception that it is a natural tendency for the world to move towards more globalization, when in fact no where in the universe do we have multiple things spontaneous grouping themselves into one highly ordered system for any lengthy period. Even the most ordered structures in the Cosmos, black holes, deteriorate in time as they create the most entropy possible in their environment. Another example is this; In the first generation of automobiles, how many different choices did we have? One. In the second generation, what were our options? One brand, with a handful of color options. In the third generation, what did we have to choose from? Multiple brands with multiple colors. What do we have to choose from today? It is inevitable for any ordered system to breakdown into lesser ordered components. If you are a centralized state, then the faster to approach totalitarianism, the sooner you will undermine your efforts and fail.
On the other side of the argument we have our decentralized Society with open boundaries. It is interesting here to note that this side of the argument is the same as the centralized society which has recently failed. That is, when centralized societies fail, they reduce themselves into Free Societies. If they have not done this, then they have yet to fail. With open boundary conditions, a Free Society is allowed to feel the effects of the environment in which they exist. These effects influence the Society, and it adapts accordingly. Both good and bad are permitted through open boundaries. This both rewards and punishes the subsets of Society for all its doing. I say subsets of Society, because a Free Society is inherently a Diverse Society. A Diverse Society is an adaptable Society which will always reap the benefits of open boundary conditions.
The most efficient distribution of governance can be seen now in a Free Society. Again imagine the centralized state at the height of its existence. I have stated prior that it will always undermine itself and fail. The definition of failure is a reduction of the Society into many lesser centralized states. This creates a more diverse system, but it is the nature of the universe to exploit ordered systems until they pop into lesser ordered systems. This means that even lesser centralized states will inevitably undermine themselves and also fail. Every time this cycle completes a revolution (no pun intended), a centralized Society will be reduced into a more Free Society than what it was at the beginning of the previous cycle. This all happens because this is the effect that Entropy has on any System. It distributes governance to the most efficient distribution. With every cycle, Society learns little by little, that the most efficient distribution is the basic unit of Society. That basic unit is you.
The lesson of this is that anytime the universe throws you a problem, it is better to attack that problem from every possible vantage point than it is to make bets on any one centralized solution. The smartest person in the world may be able to guess weight of a man at the fair, but that person's guess will never be as good as the average of all the participants guesses. Until next time, safe travels.
