Evolutionary Decontrol

Context

Evolutionary Decontrol as the Mechanism for Networks to Transcend and Include the Previous 'TIM' forms

David Ronfeldt:

1.

"Decontrol as a crucial system dynamic: With that set of diagrams and the preceding discussion in mind, it should make sense that achieving these progressions in complexity is no easy feat. For the TIMN forms are quite different from each other. As ideals, they fundamentally contradict each other. In many ways, they are incompatible, tug in different directions, and are difficult to combine and hard to harmonize. Yet no society at any scale can do without them — all of them, to some degree. Thus during each phase transition there are major winners and losers. Operational challenges and power struggles occur all along the way, with many turning on issues of what to control and what to decontrol.

Evolutionary decontrol (not to mention control too) may be seen, then, as an art and science of creating a modus vivendi among the forms. Which means finding ways to harmonize their contradictions so their interactions become compatible and productive. Achieving a mutually-adaptive compatibility between the forms and their realms may be the defining goal of decontrol (not to mention control too).

One way to accomplish that over time is by respecting each form’s strengths and limitations, the better to keep them in balance and within limits in their respective realms and sectors. TIMN apparently has policy biases embedded within its evolutionary dynamics, and one is about keeping the forms and their realms in balance and within their design limits."

(https://davidronfeldt.substack.com/p/in-praise-of-decontrol-part-two-cont)

2.

""My main point is that societies cannot evolve from simpler to more complex designs — they can’t make the transitions to become more advanced types of society with additional systems — without allowing for decontrol as well as control processes to occur successfully along the way. All evolutionary theorizing I’ve seen emphasizes that social controls are required for major evolutionary transitions to work well — say, to move from an autocratic to a democratic political system, or from a statist to a market economy, or to deal with free-riders and trouble-makers. But it should not be difficult to notice that social decontrol may figure in there as well — say to assure pro-democracy or pro-market actors can fit in and do their thing properly.

While social decontrol processes appear to be less obvious, they also appear to deserve as much recognition as control processes have long received. Evolutionary theorists, as well as related political, economic, social, cultural, complexity, and cybernetics theorists, write constantly about control problems of one sort or another. It would benefit theory-building if they’d pay comparable attention to decontrol problems too."

(https://davidronfeldt.substack.com/p/in-praise-of-decontrol-part-two-intro)

History

David Ronfeldt:

"I mean to show that decontrol has mattered as a recurrent requirement, a periodically essential step, whenever one of those four cardinal TIMN forms has emerged, thereby raising prospects that societies are entering a next-new phase of social evolution. From a long-range TIMN perspective, three such phases have occurred, each spanning centuries — and a fourth looms:

• The first great decontrol arose millennia ago when bands of people clustered together to form tribes (the T form), giving themselves and their families over to tribal customs and codes of communal kinship and collective solidarity.

• The second great decontrol began millennia later when states, armies, and other hierarchical institutions (the +I form) emerged and began to professionalize, separating themselves from being run according to tribal principles.

• The third great decontrol emerged seven or eight centuries ago when market forms of organization (+M) arose, and state and other post-tribal actors slowly learned to let go, allowing market actors and activities to grow according to their own dynamics.

• A fourth great decontrol phase lies ahead, depending on what happens with the ongoing rise of information-age network forms of organization (+N) — an emergence whose distinctive potential I’ll discuss later.

Despite beginning ages ago, none of the earlier three decontrol phases has ever fully ended for all societies. Today’s world is rife with evolutionary decontrol problems, all of which boil down to new or persistent difficulties in coping with one or another of the earlier phases."

(https://davidronfeldt.substack.com/p/in-praise-of-decontrol-part-two-intro)

Copied at: David Ronfeldt on the Historical Phases of Evolutionary Decontrol

Examples

David Ronfeldt gives examples of the current 'decontrol' crisis in the U.S.:

"America, historically the society that has done best at accommodating to evolutionary decontrol dynamics, is currently awash in its own decontrol challenges. They are distorting all three major realms of our society: civil society, government, and the market economy. Here are three that trouble me these days:

Much of capitalism has entered a so-called “late capitalism” phase that justifies predatory profiteering, market rigging, and sector meddling in ways that diminish and distort not only our market system but also our political and civil-society systems. This “late capitalism,” unlike past “democratic capitalism,” is very control-oriented and is subverting how all four TIMN forms and their realms are performing in our society.

If Donald Trump regains the presidency, he intends to dismantle the “administrative state,” initially by firing myriad civil-service staff and then downsizing and replacing it with sworn loyalists, cronies, and fellow-travelers. While a case can be made for smaller government, Trump’s plan spells an unbridled reversion to tribal practices — an ancient method of control — in order to de-professionalize, suborn, and corrupt our political institutions for personalistic purposes.

America’s next major evolutionary decontrol challenge lies ahead: For several decades, the emergence of the information-age network form has unsettled nearly everything. One way or another, its rise lies behind all the social, political, cultural, and religious conflicts that have rent our society in recent decades. But while +N’s rise is affecting how the earlier three TIMN forms are being used, it is unclear what next-new realm of specialized actors and activities may ultimately coalesce around +N to create a fourth realm of society. More about that later. For the moment, I only want to note that our society is headed toward a new evolutionary transition because of the rise of the information-age network form. The outcome will depend on whether its own phase of decontrol dynamics unfolds properly, and on how long-entrenched political and business elites fight its unfolding.

Thus I mean to point out not only the overlooked yet pivotal role of decontrol in major evolutionary transitions from simpler to more complex societies. I also want to decry, again for evolutionary reasons, the stifling adversity wrought by autocratic government leaders around our troubled world who persistently think and act strictly in control terms, mostly for fear of losing control."

(https://davidronfeldt.substack.com/p/in-praise-of-decontrol-part-two-intro)