O, Institutions, Institutions . . .
Institutions are made out of people. Who have the skills and ideas that they have, and who grow.
As we are stumbling toward profound and unpredictable breakthroughs in AI technology, this past week Elon Musk, Steve Wozniak and other prominent tech figures published a petition calling for a pause in all AI development. “This pause should be public and verifiable, and include all key actors. If such a pause cannot be enacted quickly, governments should step in and institute a moratorium,” they said.
So, notably, last week was the week that Elon Musk — who has variously called governments “slow, inefficient, and corrupt,” and “the greatest threat to freedom,” and who has leant increasingly substantial support to those most likely to dismantle government controls on the private sector altogether — also began to call on government to save the world from what he regards as a truly extraordinary existential risk. That’s not to frame a “gotcha” moment for Elon Musk, but it is to indicate a zeitgeist, and how that zeitgeist suddenly being shocked in a new direction.
It’s hard to imagine a time in the past hundred years when the steering echelons of our society have been more favorable to maverick ideology. Just about wherever there is wealth and power there is also a surprisingly robust vein of maverick futurism with the basic tenets a) that global systems are crumbling, apocalyptically, and b) that the future will be a “wiki-fied” network of free agents, building a better world by allowing everyone to be as free as possible. It’s clearly the been dream — though I don’t know if you would call it a dream at this point, or more accurately a reflex — of the rural, “land of the free” vein of American conservatism for decades (though that’s changing), and it’s also the dream of radical urban progressive movements, including forward-thinking DAO cultures.
Generally, I don’t think there’s any reason to say that a more beautiful world won’t be a freer, more de-centralized place. Ultimately, I think de-centralized models offer a lot of promise. But I do think there’s a tendency for people to want to de-construct institutional structures without thinking it all through — often because, unconsciously, we imagine we’ll get a world with both the benefits of the de-regulated frontier and the benefits of a world guided by existing institutions.
In many ways, I think this was the central error in American thinking in the last two decades of the twentieth century. The idea that you could loosen guardrails, in all ways at all levels, while preserving all the benefits of the guardrails was pervasive then — it defined the values of my generation during its formative years, I would say — and much of where we are today, two decades into the twenty-first century, is the consequence. We appear to be, just now, waking up to it.
Are we really going to make people more free by increasingly defying systemic norms and resisting all forms of collective organization? When you think about it, I think the answer is obvious: Yes and no. It can definitely make people more free in the short term, but the freedom that results is also likely to be raw and erratic — the kind of environment in which might makes right, which is ultimately not the freest place to be at all.
The big example of that springs most readily to mind is the attitude about central banks. In the maverick spirit of our day, people rail against central banks easily — and, frankly, often superstitiously. But do we really appreciate the extent to which the modern world is insulated from the raw cycles of boom and bust that central banks and other macro institutions in no small part prevent?
Or, again, there are plenty of people who exalt disruptors like Elon Musk — the brilliant gadflies zooming in from the provinces, breaking new ground in one exciting direction or another — but what happens when all the free agents begin to tamper with powers that could easily escape their individual control? Suddenly, larger and more coordinated systems of order don’t seem like such a bad idea anymore.
That’s not to ignore the problems with institutions. Institutions tend to be slow and, compared to individuals, inefficient. They struggle to remain relevant. Worse, when they articulate orthodoxies, they can try to enforce them — thereby, perhaps, to dominate and stifle all of life. There is a hell of order as surely as there is a hell of chaos.
But it seems to me that a basic mistake — and a basic solution — is forever overlooked when people think about the interplay between institutions and freedom. Systemic improvements do not reliably happen through changing the rules of the system. Systemic improvement reliably happen when people change — because systems are not atomic units; they are an emergent phenomenon of people.
In no small part, any form of organizations is encumbered by the fact that getting people organized is hard work, and we tend to lack the skills for it. And part of the reason we lack the skills is because they’re advanced skills and developing them takes time.
But part of the reason we lack the skills is because we aren’t even pursuing them. It’s worth being aware — I mean, really, really aware — of the global trend led by the industrialized world, particularly America, to normalize personal habits that are 100% antithetical to more efficient systemic functioning. How are we going to create efficient systems of cooperation if we are mostly hedonic, self-centered, and self-serving? Fundamentally, we want harmony while being people incapable of it.
A couple of basic counter-principles stand out.
One: Maturity is freedom. Full stop. The way we become free is through a kind of growth that is both mindful of our personal maturing and our necessary interdependence with others. This ended up being a culminating idea of the Enlightenment, and its power cannot be underestimated.
Two: Harmony involves renunciation of empire. The healthiest systems are an emergent phenomenon that is polluted by the personal gratification that comes from dominating others. The essential nature of this renunciation can’t be underestimated, either, I feel.
At this point, we must see that we need institutions, of some sort. On a basic level we need to see the benefits that come when humans agree to be somewhat organized. That’s what’s meant by institutions: life-giving forms of formation and organization.
We must see the centuries long effort to build the institutions we have, and why people have attempted to build them. It wasn’t all just about top-down order enacted by a ruling class to exploit the masses; there has also been a recognition that good organization helps, and good organization comes from skilled action, and skilled action can come from creating organizations where we help one another become more skilled in out action. We must see that good institutions are made from good people with good values, and we must see that this has been understood. Not every where and in all ways, but for a long time.
Are we good critical thinkers? Have we made an effort to understand how systems around us actually work? Yes, good questions.
But also, do we understand ourselves? Do we understand our own wounds and fears? Do we understand what we want and how we consciously and unconsciously maneuver to get these things? Do we understand whether what we want are the best things to want?
Do we know how to be with one another? Do we know how to hold our own inner climate while being respectfully aware of the inner climates of others? Do we live as though other people’s experiences are just as important as our own?
Do we open ourselves to transact with an intelligent mystery, which can unmistakably shape us — both individually and collectively — in ways that we simply cannot do on our own?
(Note: I will perpetually lobby the reader that there are four domains in which we must be seeking to grow: individual, mutual, systemic, cosmic. I think the call is clear.)
Also, notice that you need only go back a generation or so before you begin to discover a trove of resources aimed at developing people in circumspect, broadly virtuous ways. I think many of of these are still surprisingly relevant. I’m in a church group that is reading Richard Foster’s “Celebration of Discipline” This text is one of many that can indicate how keen thinking about virtue has been. I’d easily recommend to anyone of a spiritual bent (it’s very Christian, so if you’re not into that, then I suggest you just translate the Christian terminology into more familiar terms). I’d even tentatively recommend it to agnostics, too. (Heck, why not?)
It’s definitely the case that older models of formation sometimes need to be updated with the best of our modern social, psychological, and philosophical awareness, to freshen them up. But I think that it’s also the case that so-called outdated models of formation are typically misconstrued. In some ways, I think the past was not what we tend to think it was. There’s wisdom about human life that we have overshot, in an automatic effort to subvert the old for the sake of progress.
As democratic institutions are attacked from several directions; as the legal system struggles to do its core social function of supporting more cosmic notions of justice; as a wild-west private sector increasingly reveals itself to be a harbor for all kinds of plunderous bad actors and, perhaps soon enough, even silicon based, non-human antagonists; it’s easy to predict that we will hear more and more people talking about systemic organization as a way to promote the most harmony for the most people.
This seems wise to me. We are stronger when we’re organized in healthy ways. And in order to be strong and well-developed in our organization, it’s important to make an effort to grow, ourselves.
It’s absolutely essential to realize that the most essential instruments toward any more beautiful world are ourselves.