Summary of Chaordic
|
From the chaordic website, here is an oversimplified summary of the rationale for the un-centralized systems that seem likely to be more and more characteristic of the post-post-modern era now ahead of us. These principles will be applied to DVS to the proper extent : • In order for any complex activity to run in an un-centralized manner, there have to be some rules of the game (like the ISO standards). • The rules need to be adopted by a sufficiently participatory, or representative, process, to persuade nearly all the “followers” they have been part of the “leadership.” • Until the rules are truly acceptable shared doctrine, there needs to be some interim authority (the policeman at an urban intersection, the foreman in a company, the guru in an ashram, a parent in a family) to remind everybody about the agreed rules. • In time, the “rules” become internalized standards of behavior – and the resulting community doesn’t need anybody to be “in charge.” • The “rules” are then learned at a parent’s knee or at school, by adult training and experience, and by informal (but effective) peer pressure. Procedural reminders and requisite services can mostly be automated – as with signal lights for automobile traffic, and ATMs for routine banking. In every well-functioning market, most of those involved in the myriad transactions are able to buy when they want to buy and sell when they want to sell, precisely because no one is in charge, telling them what to do. The discipline is instead provided by wide and instant knowledge of the prevailing price of whatever is sought or offered. Modern information technologies have made this knowledge spread possible on a global scale. The un-centralized way of thinking and working naturally becomes more complicated as “civilization” moves from the small homogeneous village to large multicultural societies, and beyond that to the governance of “communities” in cyberspace. But there is evidently a path from (a) the need for standards, through (b) the practice of consensus and (c) the constituting of interim authorities (whose mandate is to work themselves out of their interim jobs), to (d) patterns of naturally cooperative behavior. It's a path that may become universally valid for organized human effort however complex it has to be. Once upon a time, it seems to have required centuries and even millennia for human societies to find their way along a path without precedent. But everything else is speeded up these days. Maybe, once we can trace the path, our capacity to build un-centralized organizations will also be greatly accelerated. |
