Great Founder Theory

Description

1. Ash Milton:

"Great Founder Theory ...proposes that great founders impact the world through the institutions they create, particularly those which outlast them. These institutions carry a civilization’s knowledge, organization, and social technologies. When they decay, so does society at large."

(https://samoburja.com/great-founders-build-civilization/)

2. Samo Burja:

"I will call those who found the most functional institutions that contribute to the bedrock of their civilizations Great Founders. Via the creation of institutions, Great Founders become the shaping force of society.

To examine a society, then, we should first look for functioning institutions. A simple way to do this is to identify businesses, religions, governments, and so forth that are radically outperforming their competitors. We then seek out the founders of these institutions.

By looking at the distribution of founders across various domains, we can make predictions about the future of specific fields and industries. Even further, by investigating the plans and intentions of Great Founders, and evaluating how likely they are to succeed, we can make specific predictions about what the future holds."

(https://medium.com/@samo.burja/great-founder-theory-93751e25c173)

Interview

* Ash Milton: "How does Great Founder Theory compare to other narratives and challenge those other narratives like Great Man Theory or more structural theories like institutionalism?

Samo Burja: In particular, I think what is often missed by some of the more structuralist theories is a sense of human choice and construction. Often it is said that various things that are a part of everyday lives are social constructs. I think this is completely true! They are social constructs. Just as my home is a physical construct, you don’t necessarily want to deconstruct all your physical constructs and you don’t want to deconstruct all your social constructs. But yes, fundamentally, the house is kind of arbitrary, as are things like having a job, or participating in an organized religion or being a citizen of a state.

Now, what drives these social technologies forward? I think a lot of people imagine that this stuff is overdetermined. I would say that there’s a scarcity of innovation in social technology. So I think it’s a significant bottleneck in a big historical and civilizational event, when someone introduces a new social technology such as a new functional code of laws, or a different form of organized religion, or a new way to organize militaries and so on. Essentially, this is the innovation bottleneck. I think this innovation necessarily comes from individuals and small groups. Now while these individuals and small groups are themselves socially determined, it can be extremely difficult to work out what the psychological consequences of living in a certain society are.

Even though, in a way, I’m kind of a determinist, I think it’s extremely difficult to predict how a creative individual is going to deterministically result from a particular society. And since it’s a very stochastic event, since it’s not necessary, such an individual happens to come into play – such a prophet, general, statesmen, entrepreneur, or technologist – it’s very hard to predict what happens. I think that it’s very useful to have a theory that takes, as a given, that this individual is relatively unconstrained modulo knowledge. You can’t necessarily predict which knowledge they will or won’t have. You can predict that they’ll be pursuing some objectives, right? So, I think that a lot of these social determinist theories would propose that, actually, the biggest determinants are these invariants, like large population centers or material technology – the absence or presence of things like steam engines and so on.

But if it actually hinges on these individuals – these unusual individuals – these small groups of people, I think then that that type of prediction just doesn’t hold. And all we can do is this other type of prediction, where we just take the founders for granted and we can analyze what they’re doing, we can analyze how difficult or easy it is for them to intervene on society. As to their objectives, their goals, it’s often very idiosyncratic."

(https://samoburja.com/great-founders-build-civilization/)

More information

• Video: Samo Burja on the Great Founder Theory