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Next Worldview Culture
Values and Practices that 'Constrain the Super Organism'

The 'Cultivation of Agentic Values' from Which Emerge Social Systems

Concepts of society and culture often overlap, but these can be differentiated from a systems science perspective
If society is viewed as a system of rules, norms, and hierarchies that emerges from its agent's interactions
Then culture can be conceived as underlying purposefulness in its agents for their actions and interactions
From which emerge social systems with their own purposeful agentic impulses
Thus agent purposefulness might or might not be explicitly reflected in the behavior of social systems
Since the purposefulness of agents and that of social systems can both coincide and conflict
Also, agents can act 'from their values' or 'in subordination to' the self-assertion of social systems
Culture, as the collective purposefulness of agents, poses a turbulent relational network of diverse elements
These are necessarily complex and conflicting factors networked into feedback loops with social systems
But, this view allows considering how personal and shared human priorities for behavior configure a 'cultural worldview'
Which agentic social systems are then capable of manipulating, exploiting, or simply 'pretending to serve'
As well as what 'practices' agents manifest that can constrain the psychopathic self-assertion of social systems
This tension can make it adaptive for agents to think and act in ways that limit such social system self-assertion
if that system is to actually 'serve their interests' rather than primarily its own self-assertion
So, culture as a network of human attitudes and values both fosters and can resist social system super organisms
Teolological impulses in humans and their systems can differe
Only human values can express long term sustainable purposefulness
Adaptive Egoic Impulse in all CAS as reflexive agency but reflective in human agents: needed but dangerous
Social agents require cooperation with otherness, thus capacity to experience self-assertion as cooperation
Operant values of social system derive from interaction of culture-society
the Art of cultivating complex values of coop interdpendency vs competiive dependent manipulative control
Thus cultural priorities for agent behavior derive from human experience, which a social system cannot 'feel'
As human agents, we manifest concepts, feelings, beliefs, experience, of which our social systems are incapable
Emotion, empathy, beauty, spirituality, affinity, ideology, etc. are not actual properties of social systems
We can conceive our 'cultural worldview' as deriving from these priorities for purposeful agent behavior
social animals must cooperate to survive, so the purpose of self-assertion includes that of collective interdependence
What is worth/worthy of exerting agency for, and in what contexts?
what are the concepts, behaviors, or experiences that promote agent identification with those as 'values
Here, the attempt is to differentiate super organism self-assertion from the the shared values of its human agents
to understand how the former can emerge variously from the latter
Our collective worldview is constituted by concepts and experiences we share that influence our social systems
Piroritizing of purposes or values for agent self-assertion
Necessarily diverse, conflicted, and conditionally relevant network of orientating references
'Cultivated' by
agency or agentic activity is purposeful in pursuit of sustaining a system's existence
culture provides orients purpose fo social systems but can be maipulated my those
contexts identification and prposes for agency
Those systems are entities that cannot 'feel' as humans do, so self-assert primarily to promote their existence
These super organisms are systems beyond our direct control, yet are influenced by the 'humanness of culture'
A 'cultural worldview,' then, is distinguishable from institutionalized social systems, though each influences the other
How we 'attend to' self and world shapes how we experience and conceptualize these, forming our 'worldview'
Cultural attitudes and practices can emphasize either left or right brain hemisphere modes of attention
Modern cultural attitudes promote left-hemisphere emphasis on how we 'see,' conceive and experience
This suppresses awareness of interdepenency, emergent ordering, and the numinosity of an 'agentic world'
In contrast, indigenous cultures tend to have an intensely interdependent, agent-based, right hemisphere worldview
How we 'imagine' our selves in, or of, the world, has profound consequences for our experience and survival
This cultural imagination must be complex enough to constrain the psychopathic impetus of social super organisms
It is the basis for a social system's 'self-justification,' for validation of its configurations and manipulations of agents
As self and world are complex systems, it must somehow represent their 'conflicted wholeness' of order from disorder
The network of interpersonal thought and experience is not the same as those social systems
Humans have and share 'values' that our social systems both express and manipulate in recursive feedback loops
Thus, our ability to influence those systems is primarily in how we configure our personal and shared worldview
Culture as 'collective ways of mind-ing' from which social systems emerge then reflexively manipulate
We can register this contrast by noticing when our participation in social systems conflicts with our 'values'
Both our cultural worldview and society are composed of contrasting, even conflicting elements
There is an inherent conflicted complimentarity between the humanness of culture and psychopathy of society
That conflict is difficult to confront when our self-assertion and 'identity' is entangled with that of the super organism
This contrast and conflict between culture and social systems appears an intrinsic aspect of human life
The survival of the biosphere now depends upon a cultural worldview that opposes super organism self-assertion
How we 'attend' to self and world shapes how we experience and conceptualize these
Cultural attitudes and practices can emphasize either left or right brain hemisphere modes of attentio culture amplify or constrain super org psychopathy-civilization amplifies the ways super org influences culture
cult-ure as relational field formed by agentic purposefulness and prioritizing
the basis of 'we' that is not social system
reductive vs holistic, cooperative vs competitive, materialistic vs spiritual, literalistic vs symbolic cultural modalities
agents can think, act, and interact in ways 'outside' the constraints of social systems, that can subvert those systems
'cultural practices' can intensify and concentrate this 'extra-social' behavior
'ethical spirituality' is an example, as can be the expression of metaphoric symbolism, of making connections that society does not make or that contradict its categories, hierarchies, and reductions
Studies on happiness indicate material wealth and power do not increase experience of well being
culture and ways of attending
Seeing networks realistically necessarily requires seeing beyond the constraints of society and super organism
We have the factual knowledge of a network worldview, but not a cultural worldview capable of incorporating i
Our science now confronts us with a materially based but agency ordered self and world
Sustainable society requires cultural practices that subvert its hierarchical, pathological self-assertion
To inhabit this world sustainably we must perceive phenomena not as 'machinery' but as relational networks
We must prioritize 'seeing relational networks' over obsessively manipulating physical materials to increase our 'control'
This shift is not only a practical necessity for our survival, but a profound enhancement of our personal experience
Here, individuals are unique, continually emerging, mysterious expressions of nature's self-organizing impulse
We find our selves purposeful actors in a purposeful world that requires our devotion to sustain it's viable self-ordering
Thus society shifts its purpose from competition and control to facilitating the self-sustaining agency of the biosphere
That requires living in a constant struggle with the psychopathic self-assertion of human super organism systems
as the only potentially ethical agents in those systems, humans must constantly act to defuse their hierarchical dominance
Making this shift requires radically re-configuring the feedback networks of education, society, politics, economies
Confronted with the ecological and climate systems meta-crisis, we have much to do and little time to do it
But a network based worldview can provide inspiring new guidelines and sense of purpose for doing so
CAN ONLY BE DONE OUTSIDE EXISTING SYSTEM NETS, UNOFFICIAL/ALTERNATIVE NEW NETWORKS!

from control to reciprocity in personal relationships to geopolitics
value as the purposeful self-animating impulse of nature that we are the most complex expression of but which are only 'valid' if we experience our selves as it, through some mystical awareness of it in and all around us -- as the 'agents of creation' that is intrinsic to a seemingly 'meaningless' universe. The universe emergently creates 'meaning' as 'meaning making systems' which can only prosper through mutualistic relationships -- thus 'naturalistic ethics.' Physical universe is arbitrary but the emergence of autopoetic self-organization from it gives rise to is not. Thus a non-relativistic ethics founded in the primacy of self-organization as inherently meaningful? But our current purpose/value is configured as the maximumization of self-assertion, individually <> super organismally
Complex adaptive systems act purposefully, for the 'value' of asserting their continued existence: Value is intrinsic wherever such systems emerge. And the material world is the basis from which these emerge. Thus the particularities of how this universe is configured constitute an intrinsic basis for the emergence of value in CAS. The 'values' of the biased 'tuning' of the physical universe are the basis for the value of CAS
There is no life without value. Consciousness, as an emergent property of CAS, is intrinsically concerned with value -- even when 'in doubt' about the existence of values. Value can prompt calculation but calculation cannot create value. It can be interpreted infinitely by diverse systems in response to innumerable conditions and factors. The denial of the existence of value is an expression of value.
Value as the fundamental purposefulness of CAS assertion would seem to underlie diverse formulations of value in creatures and cultures, even genetic evolution as the basis for such CAS.
If agency is inherent in 'the world' made by complex adaptive systems, then adaptive culture must 'address it'
Culture involves a fundamental sense of purpose for life, society, and individuals
These typically involved mythological accounts of how agency created and orders the world
Modernity's dismissal of spirituality creates a de facto assumption that the universe is 'made by materialistic causality'
Thus there is an element in modern culture that the manipulation of material phenomenon is its purpose
thus reductive left-hemisphere thinking attains a cultural primacy
Campbell's 4 Functions of a cultural worldview: Sociological, Pedagogical, Cosmological, Metaphysical
Social norms; Life state guidance; cosmic connection/mystery; personal metaphysical awe/gratitude -- the latter both cohere collective in a sense of meaning beyond society and give indvidual validating meaning despite social status, life circumstances

How to Attend of an Emergently Self-Ordering, Agentic Self and World?

Worldview as Cultural Orientations for Adaptive Human Agency

What to 'Live For' and Why

Constellating Networked Origins, Identity, Purpose, Values, Priorities

interpretations of what, who, how, why, when of world and appropriate behaviors for successful self-assertion

Adaptive success of cultural attitudes in short and long term scales of space and time

Conditioning Cultural Attitudes through Symbolic Expression and Experiential Practices

Information and knowledge maintained in collective minding rather than genetic coding through language, symbolism, and experiential practices such as arts, stories, and ritualized enactment

traditional/customary conventions communally conditioned vs institutional law/procedure enforced by hierarchical authority

Cultural Values as the Basis for, then Justification of, Social Super Organisms

The Purposefulness of Agents 'Behind' Emergent Social Systems

As agent-based complex adaptive systems, societies derive their self-ordering, self-asserting properties from those of their constituent agents. From the purposeful self-assertion of agents emerges that of an additional collective system or super organism that in turn facilitates the survival of its agents. In the case of bees or ants, those feedback connections are relatively fixed by genetically encoded behaviors. However, the vastly more adaptive capacities of humans and human societies necessarily derive from greater diversity and complexity, both within human agents and among these. The intelligence of human adaptivity requires higher levels of analytical and innovative potential. Whereas ants and bees have not need to question their subordination to their super organism societies in order to act adaptively, humans actually require conflict and individualistic competition in order to act adaptively as a collective system. Thus the 'purposefulness' that impels adaptive behavior in both is appropriately convoluted and even conflicted. There is inherent tension within and between human agents about how best to self-assert in an adaptive manner under what conditions.

Agent self-assertion can arise in response to diverse concerns and in contrasting ways. For a distinct social system to arise there must be shared aspects of such impetus among agents, impetus that becomes linked in feedback loop networks, from which emerge distinct social norms, rules, hierarchies. We can think of these factors as priorities or 'values' associated with seeking 'adaptive advantage' by agents and that become broadly shared by them. However, being complex adaptive systems, agent perceptions of what promotes the purposes of 'adaptive advantage' are necessarily diverse, even conflicting, and context dependent regarding when one takes precedence over others. Not every agent attaches the same priority to a particular 'value' in all contexts, nor 'ranks' various values in the same hierarchy of priority.

Cultural Purposefulness as Chaotic Basis of Social Ordering

Culture's complex network of conditional and often contradictory 'values' or priorities constitute a chaotic underlying layer of references from which the self-organizing forms of social systems emerge. These diverse references for prioritizing the 'goals' of system self-assertion constitute a chaotically turbulent field of potential 'drivers' for formation of feedback loops among agents, from which emerges the network configuration of a particular social system or super organism. Here it is crucial to realize that the emergent social system is not directly caused not directed by those underlying purposes. It has its own self-directing, self-asserting autonomy and does not have the same emotional basis for generating such complex 'values' as do human agents. Yet it does manifest a capacity to manipulate how agents interpret those values.

This chaotic inconsistency in cultural values reflects the paradoxical character of 'how things happen' thus that of effective adaptation for survival. A simple example is the tension between the need for agents to prioritize their personal survival over that of others while at the same time needing others to survive. That is the conflict between competition and cooperation, or individualism and communalism, that leads to choices between 'saving one's self' versus 'saving others.'

Feedback Network Formation between Agent Priorities and Super Organism Self-Assertion

Most agents might rank notions of personal liberty very highly. But some might reserve consider that this value only applies to certain categories of individuals, such as a particular gender or ethnic group. That conditional attitude could lead to a social system which 'justifies itself' on the basis of promoting personal liberty, but actually only promotes such liberty for certain categories of agents. In this way, one sector of agents greater status and privilege from a cultural value that is widely shared but conditionally enforced by the social system. Consequently, those agents more privileged by this bias are more likely to identify their personal self-assertion with that of the social super organism.That in turn enhances the influence of the social system over its constituting agents.

Similarly, agents might generally share prioritizing the prohibition of interpersonal violence, but with exceptions for defense against violent attacks on individuals or a community. Such a shared 'cultural value' might lead to an institutionalized social system that 'claims' a 'monopoly' on violence against persons -- only the official operatives of 'the state,' as in police and millitaries, are allowed to commit violence against persons. In this way, a cultural value promotes a social super organism whose own network agency becomes empowered to express its self-assertion through a culturally justified 'monopoly on violence.' The social super organism derives that 'power' from the priorities of its agents, but then has the autonomy to use that power 'for its own purposes' of self-promoting self-assertion. A 'police state' is such a system exerting its psychopathic self-assertion over its agents, supported by a privileged elite of agents who have 'allied' their self-assertion with that of the super organism.

Such relationships between the self-assertion of super organism systems and privileged elite groups of agents manifest in financial, corporate, government, educational, and religions systems. These dynamics are found in autocratic as well as democratic societies, sometimes 'justified' in reference to similar sets of cultural priorities or values. It appears that this is a particularly prominent effect of the hierarchical configuration of civilizations.

There are numerous historical examples of how the inequitable effects of such network configuraiton on agents can promote 'revolutionary resistance' to the dominance of super organism systems and their associated elite agent 'operatives.' Such events can be understood as agents concluding that the power of the super organism created by the subordination of their personal self-assertion to that of the larger system is no longer 'serving their interests' or values. It can be seen when investors collectively withdraw there support for a corporation by selling off stock, or workers go on strike against employers.

Agent Subordination by Formalized Super Organism 'Concessions'

human rights, civil rights, nature rights? rule of law and equal justice
from biosemiosis to cosmological questing --the epistemological ontology of self-conscious consciousness in agentic evolution

Cultural Subordination of Cultural Values to the Self-Assertion of Social Systems

Society, as a Complex System, Does not 'Have' but Expresses a Worldview

Social System Configuration can Change or 'Over Ride' Worldview Valuations

Cultural Values as Cosmological Worldview for Social Systems

Hyper-Semiotic Humaness Promotes a Need for Interpretations of Origins and Purposes

analytical left hemisphere Human intelligence and the 'Question Why'

the manipulative potential of human agency requires 'explanations'

Adaptive Cultural Values are Diverse and Conflicting because Self and World are

priorities or values differentiate purposeful action but adaptive purposes are inherently conflcting and context dependent

Cultural Values for Adaptive Advantage Beyond Pragmatic Considerations / outside Social System

ethics of relations between agents an with nonm-human

human rights, civil rights, nature rights?

filial animism, pagan positive fatalism, ethical spiritualities,

re-linking social systems to nature, resisting dynamical momentum of control systems

4 functions of myth -- The Conflicting Purposefulness of Cultural Values and Practices in Social Systems

aesthetic

myth as rep of 'fundamental sources' of world and events: from mysterious/agentic to causal/materialistic

Cultural Practices versus Social Performances

cults of culture

Cultural Values and Sacredness

The ultimate prioritization of 'sacred status'

sacrifice

The 'Cultural Divide' between Ecologically Embedded and Civilizational Worldviews

From Inclusive Participation to Exploitive Opposition in Civilization's 'Wild verus Tame' Orientation

Science, as an Analytical Method, is Interpreted through Civilized Cultural Bias

The De Facto 'Mythology' of Modernity's Mechanistic Worldview

The Radical New Reality of Systems Science

Our Next

World View

Next Worldview Culture
Values and Practices that 'Constrain the Super Organism'

The 'Cultivation of Agentic Values' from Which Emerge Social Systems

We have the factual knowledge of a network worldview, but not a cultural worldview capable of incorporating i

Our science now confronts us with a materially based but agency ordered self and world

Sustainable society requires cultural practices that subvert its hierarchical, pathological self-assertion

To inhabit this world sustainably we must perceive phenomena not as 'machinery' but as relational networks

We must prioritize 'seeing relational networks' over obsessively manipulating physical materials to increase our 'control'

This shift is not only a practical necessity for our survival, but a profound enhancement of our personal experience

Here, individuals are unique, continually emerging, mysterious expressions of nature's self-organizing impulse

We find our selves purposeful actors in a purposeful world that requires our devotion to sustain it's viable self-ordering

Thus society shifts its purpose from competition and control to facilitating the self-sustaining agency of the biosphere

That requires living in a constant struggle with the psychopathic self-assertion of human super organism systems

as the only potentially ethical agents in those systems, humans must constantly act to defuse their hierarchical dominance

Making this shift requires radically re-configuring the feedback networks of education, society, politics, economies

Confronted with the ecological and climate systems meta-crisis, we have much to do and little time to do it

But a network based worldview can provide inspiring new guidelines and sense of purpose for doing so

CAN ONLY BE DONE OUTSIDE EXISTING SYSTEM NETS, UNOFFICIAL/ALTERNATIVE NEW NETWORKS!

from control to reciprocity in personal relationships to geopolitics

Value as the fundamental purposefulness of CAS assertion would seem to underlie diverse formulations of value in creatures and cultures, even genetic evolution as the basis for such CAS.

If agency is inherent in 'the world' made by complex adaptive systems, then adaptive culture must 'address it'

Culture involves a fundamental sense of purpose for life, society, and individuals

These typically involved mythological accounts of how agency created and orders the world

Modernity's dismissal of spirituality creates a de facto assumption that the universe is 'made by materialistic causality'

Thus there is an element in modern culture that the manipulation of material phenomenon is its purpose

thus reductive left-hemisphere thinking attains a cultural primacy

Campbell's 4 Functions of a cultural worldview: Sociological, Pedagogical, Cosmological, Metaphysical

Social norms; Life state guidance; cosmic connection/mystery; personal metaphysical awe/gratitude -- the latter both cohere collective in a sense of meaning beyond society and give indvidual validating meaning despite social status, life circumstances

For more on complex systems and networks see these websites:
Systems Innovation , Complexity Labs, Complexity Explained , and
The Complexity Explorer

Explore the Implications of Complex Network Science--

from Politics to Art, Sustainability, Climate Change, Economy, and Spirituality

Related Websites:

Our Next

World View

Next Worldview Culture Values and Practices that 'Constrain the Super Organism'

The 'Cultivation of Agentic Values' from Which Emerge Social Systems

​We have the factual knowledge of a network worldview, but not a cultural worldview capable of incorporating i

Our science now confronts us with a materially based but agency ordered self and world

Sustainable society requires cultural practices that subvert its hierarchical, pathological self-assertion

To inhabit this world sustainably we must perceive phenomena not as 'machinery' but as relational networks

We must prioritize 'seeing relational networks' over obsessively manipulating physical materials to increase our 'control'

This shift is not only a practical necessity for our survival, but a profound enhancement of our personal experience

Here, individuals are unique, continually emerging, mysterious expressions of nature's self-organizing impulse

We find our selves purposeful actors in a purposeful world that requires our devotion to sustain it's viable self-ordering

Thus society shifts its purpose from competition and control to facilitating the self-sustaining agency of the biosphere

​That requires living in a constant struggle with the psychopathic self-assertion of human super organism systems

as the only potentially ethical agents in those systems, humans must constantly act to defuse their hierarchical dominance

Making this shift requires radically re-configuring the feedback networks of education, society, politics, economies

Confronted with the ecological and climate systems meta-crisis, we have much to do and little time to do it

But a network based worldview can provide inspiring new guidelines and sense of purpose for doing so

CAN ONLY BE DONE OUTSIDE EXISTING SYSTEM NETS, UNOFFICIAL/ALTERNATIVE NEW NETWORKS!

​

from control to reciprocity in personal relationships to geopolitics

Value as the fundamental purposefulness of CAS assertion would seem to underlie diverse formulations of value in creatures and cultures, even genetic evolution as the basis for such CAS.

​

If agency is inherent in 'the world' made by complex adaptive systems, then adaptive culture must 'address it'

Culture involves a fundamental sense of purpose for life, society, and individuals

These typically involved mythological accounts of how agency created and orders the world

Modernity's dismissal of spirituality creates a de facto assumption that the universe is 'made by materialistic causality'

Thus there is an element in modern culture that the manipulation of material phenomenon is its purpose

thus reductive left-hemisphere thinking attains a cultural primacy

​​

Campbell's 4 Functions of a cultural worldview: Sociological, Pedagogical, Cosmological, Metaphysical

Social norms; Life state guidance; cosmic connection/mystery; personal metaphysical awe/gratitude -- the latter both cohere collective in a sense of meaning beyond society and give indvidual validating meaning despite social status, life circumstances

​

For more on complex systems and networks see these websites: Systems Innovation , Complexity Labs, Complexity Explained , and The Complexity Explorer

Next Worldview Culture
Values and Practices that 'Constrain the Super Organism'

We have the factual knowledge of a network worldview, but not a cultural worldview capable of incorporating i

That requires living in a constant struggle with the psychopathic self-assertion of human super organism systems

For more on complex systems and networks see these websites:
Systems Innovation , Complexity Labs, Complexity Explained , and
The Complexity Explorer