This might be a significant contrast to rational actor theory or any other forms of economics which emphasize the vantage point of any individual or actor. Holonic systems are perfectly capable of including any number of nested actors with their own sets of incentives and motivations without a primary or exclusive focus on any element.

Another implication of using the word “fuel” is that it implies movement. This implies the correct assessment that organisms must move in order to survive. It also implies, correctly, that many dynamics in evolutionary systems have a competitive aspect. More fuel often but not always leads to a competitive advantage.

That said, if fat on the body is the equivalent of stored fuel, it is equally true that these elements that can be considered “excessive” in that they may lead to the deterioration of health of the host or a lack of competitiveness.

Consequently, from the standpoint of an organism, the proper amount may be considered the amount that fuels the growth of more complex systems without leading to unhealthy or sluggish behavior.

The idea that there a “proper” amount and that it can be quantified leads holonic philosophy to differ significantly both from traditional investment theory, which generally is about quantitative maximization, or any of the economic theories which use an aggregate sense of “proper” (i.e. wealth distribution) without considering the needs and capabilities of the individual actor.

For example, from the standpoint of overall system efficiency, it might be highly desirable to have a few “supernodes” who are specialized in financing and, consequently, exist in a state of superwealth. Such a state could, arguably, lead to an overall optimal system efficiency.

In general, any large system will likely always have multiple corridors for investment and which are likely to always be in a state of potential optimization. It will take moving to a high degree of abstraction and examining the goals of the organization to see which types of investment are likely to lead to the overall goals of the organization.

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Curiously, this follows a similar principle to life itself. As we have discussed in past essays, life often defies entropy by coherence at the quantum level. This principle of coherence is likely to be the scientific basis what we call love. So long as it remains, life can expand and become more lively. When it evaporates, the structure rigidifies and becomes stale and ultimately dies.

Religions, even if many of them have started as expositions of this central principle, are equally subject to this same process. Absent the beating heart of their own poetic principles they become mere collections of laws and dogma.

Many of the great myths of humanity started with myths of colliding masculine and feminine beings. For example, masculine sky god pierces a feminine dragon and worlds are born. Whether or not the gendering carries over to physical forms, there is both an inherent violence and, in short, reconciliation that happens in these epic exchanges.

Love songs are a staple of many religious traditions, from David to Rumi to Halevi to Rilke and it often bridges, as it were, the carnal and physical, with divine and transcendent. The cadence of the song might even be described as a quantum principle, that which brings us all together.

Martin Buber discusses something similar in his concept of the I and Thou. At moments, our separation is a useful tool for interacting with our physical reality. At others, our merger takes us back to what might be justly described as the meta-principle for coherence of all physicality which defies entropy.

The dragon herself is entropic and yet, when the sky god descends, worlds are born. Perhaps we find him on his knees in a Cathedral. Perhaps we find him on the peak of a summit. Perhaps we find him in a manger in a forgotten corner of the empire. What matters most, if we value love, is that we find him.

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(1) Examine an organizational type and state clearly the goals of that organization. In Koestler’s formulation this would be the Gestalt-Form. In the Exponential Organizational model this is called the “Massive Transformative Purpose,” or MTP. For example, if it is a corporation that provides a software platform for connecting people, it might be “to connect the world.

(2) Figure out what fundamentals are related to the health of that organization. For example, if the goal of the organization is connecting people, there are probably ways to see how well this is working. How many people does the network have? How often do they communicate with each other?

(3) Find quantifiable mechanisms to see how well this is working. Once you’ve managed to prioritize goals related to the health of the organization, track them and optimized For example, dashboarding solutions as documented here

(4) Create motivational and accountability mechanisms. For example, it is shown that, for humans, small achievable goals create positive momentum that leads to more being accomplished than gigantic goals that may or may not be achievable.

This structure is remarkably flexible, and can apply to all types of organizations. In fact, it might even be sufficient to determine whether or not there is coherence at all in an organization. For example, in certain forms of cellular life, this coherence happens at the quantum level. Alignment at this level is probably what is most necessary.

Along these lines, this applies equally well to organizations such as a “church” as to corporations. For example, such an organization might have the purpose of “inspiring people and encouraging them to live in love.” When you have that, you might realize that certain ways of approaching problems are not conducive to that overall goal and that you need to embrace a new type of ‘love’ based metrics (perhaps including the latest in neuroeconomics research, among other things).

Equally important in Holonic philosophy is the continual fractal and nested nature of these structures. All of these goals and optimization happens equally importantly (and perhaps even more importantly) at the level of individuals. If the individual is not well, it is unlikely that the “corporate” manifestation will produce good fruit. Additionally, the process of social organization should be one of synchronization and not coercion. Once an individual has identified their purpose for living and is able to articulate it, he/she will be better able to aggregate with others who share it.

“Health” here is a very useful word, insofar as there are clear things which indication of sickness, as well as types of performance that are aligned with the goals of an organization which can continually be optimized. Additionally,the more tightly honed one is to the purpose, the more motivation one has for optimization.

Additionally, various other elements, like money, suddenly look a lot like fuel for facilitating the purpose, rather than ends in and of themselves. That said, creativity in attaining these goals may also be used, and, just as human biology has many different types of nutrients, it is unlikely that money will be an exclusive value transfer mechanism. In fact, in a highly honed purpose driven organization it may not even be the primary mechanism for
expressing value.

In short, holonic philosophy is not merely a theoretical construct. It is a highly practical tool to facilitate optimal system design and applies to all types of social organizations and
individuals.

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Most of the organizations we have inherited today are born out of certain fairly static templates which are, in turn, derived from fairly stolid concepts of human life. Humans have certain stable patterns of organization and desires, and the types of ways in which they bind together are also have certain reappearing patterns, of which corporations are one of the best known.

Somewhat notable around this is the extent to which the corporation, originally born as a’joint-stock company’ has gradually superseded many other forms of human organization. First, it was given its own legal identity as a “person.” Second, it has gradually grown to take over many of the roles of the nation-state, which at least in most incarnations, was a group identity based around a particular ethnicity or notion of nationhood.

It was not always so. The corporation has at its heart a certain economically derived idea of human interaction, which by and large privileges the idea of each autonomous individual pursuing their own self-interest, which then is reified in the code of law in the form of compensation and equity. Most everything you see around you is to some extent derived from these norms. Even folks like Apple, which had a certain internal quasi-religious temperament, have chosen this as their primary form.

There are other historically successful forms. The Daibutsu, for example, was what succeeded the Samurai culture of Japan, which highly leveraged a martial culture with a highly engrained ability of self-sacrifice. In some respects, this might be seen as an even larger degree of ‘corporatism’ in the sense that the communal identity is so strong that the needs of the individual are subsumed, even to the point of death. Admittedly, many of the strongest implementations of such instances happened in cultures where death was not the end, it was merely seen as a gateway to another reality that might be even more scintillating than the one from which one had come.

“Holonics” in looking back at biological systems starts with a very different vantage point that most modern systems. For example, all modern utilitarian systems start with human life and human preferences and, by and large, ignore other species or wider senses of ecology. Holonics, conversely, looks at how these systems organize and converge, and considers humans, and human organizations, as simply a subset of these overall dynamics. The more general principle, which is one that is easily understood by those with a background in computer systems design, is the idea of “nesting.” Fractals and other structures are often infinitely sub-divisible and allow similar structures or patterns to reoccur in the part that occur at the higher system level. These seem to often create systems of incredible complexity and robustness. This is partially to suggest that human cognition and functioning may actually be strongly handicapped by a strong sense of ego, including many of the democratically enforced ideas that place a strong emphasis on the rights of the individual and their sometimes desire to be as loud as possible.

Conversely, other systems, like monarchy, may at times seen to be highly evolved structures in the sense that they can allow very easy nesting and decision-making that, at least ostensibly, represents the parts. Some of the West’s great thinkers have explicitly addressed this idea in the context of Kingship. For example, Aquinas suggested that the king had a secondary “body’ that represented the polis as a whole. In the 20th century this was taken up by Ernst Kantorwitz in the elegant work “King’s Two Bodies.” This is not to say that holonic thinking is explicitly monarchic, or would have embraced any of the formulations that, it merely accepts this as one possible topology. In fact, unlike many modern political formulations (e.g. communism, democracy),which implicitly assume that their political formulation is the ideal and ultimate form, holonics is ultimately more of a descriptive system. Rather than looking for an ideal to promote, it looks for markers of health and energy to optimize for.

Holonic philosophy was originally circulated by Arthur Kostler under the idea concept of “gestalt form,” which is tricky to formulate as it has an idea of form that is something beyond the mere sum of its parts. It almost implies a concept similar to an artist motif, consciousness, or some other binding non-physical mechanism that enables the whole to cohere. A modern clue to this “glue” is found in the work on quantum mechanics, for example Schrodinger’s insights as elegantly described by Stuart Kauffman. It is, for example, only in quantum mechanics that we found how systems that would seemingly decay into entropy can maintain a coherent state.

Ken Wilber, the American metaphysical philosopher, has taken this up in several works. In this modern reformulation, seemingly explicitly derived by expositions of consciousness, it is ‘”love” that serves as the bond and allows these various states to interact with each other. In some cases, this may even allow the non-physical and non-corporal to interact with the material and corporal, allowing for new types of inspiration. Today several works also attempt to apply this to human organizational design, of which the best known is called “Holacracy.” Somewhere between a dungeons and dragons manual and a guidelines for implementing holonic organizations, this has has some traction among small companies that find traditional corporate structures too heavy or flawed in other ways.

Other sets of technologists have explicitly been inspired by blockchain, most particularly the gas of the Ethereum network which promises to fuel new forms of organizations. These people, and the author is one major proponent, believe the relatively low barriers to entry and lack of friction in these networks will allow organizations that mirror self-organizing systems, or swarms. It was the early thought leaders of these communities, themselves throughly versed in political philosophy, that thought of setting up autonomous living units, also known as “holons.” The holon was thought to potentially serve as a focal point, not only for technologists, but also for artists and deep thinkers in other areas.

The Ethereum Foundation ultimately decided to focus more on technology than larger artistic and cultural engagement, but private individuals continued to move forward with this vision. The Palo Alto holon, also known as a Nest, adopted a philosophy that was similar to the Burning Man cultural movement. Monetary incentives were explicitly not emphasized and organization on the basis of other principles was explicitly encouraged. It might be said that holonic philosophy as formulated above is explicitly non-normative and anti-ideological, and builds its concepts of ideas from things like health and strength, including the idea that these principles apply throughout all of the systems. For example, it might make sense to speak of a sick organization in the sense it makes sense to speak of a sick individual. Similarly, it is difficult to imagine a healthy organization that is full of sick people.

There are currently numerous people working to apply some of these principles to help optimize both individuals and organizations for peak performance. ExO Works, a consulting company spun out of Singularity University, applies the broader theories of exponential organizations and sets up small disruptive cells within a larger organization that can identify high leverage areas for disruptive growth. Agentic Group, an organization that has done pioneering work on social organisms, looks explicitly at holonic modes and how they can create a larger immune systems within large organizations. We are probably at the beginning of an arc in which organizations are re-thought within the context of old philosophies and new tools. One mode that may accelerate this is
artificial intelligence. While human institutions may be unlikely to adopt change, especially at the fairly radical level of complete re-organization, there is no reason why artificial intelligence can’t evolve at a much more rapid rate.

Holonics is not a single tool, it is more of a way of looking at life, one that takes a deliberate scientific approach to areas that have often been the subject of ideology. It also deliberately starts the focal point at the smallest unit and deliberately moves up the tree to aggregate measurements. It is revolutionary, in the sense that it potentially has the tools to create replacements to things that we have previously taken for granted. It is solutionary, in the sense that it is highly focused on measurable improvements.

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With Swarm, I under took the task of building a truly distributed version of the p2p ecosystem. Some of this went well. Others went less well. People I relied on overpromised and under delivered. They drew designs but grew tired during the implementation. They stole things that belonged to the commons. They painted rainbows but delivered coal.

This irritated me, because what I came here to do was not sing Kumbayah and tell stories of a world that could be. I came here to build it.

These are some of the key things I think the p2p ecosystem needs to truly thrive:

(1) Leaders. The way I define a leader is someone who is willing to do something that no one else is. It means picking up trash and it also means taking on some risks that other people aren’t willing to take on. We need more people like this. We used to call these people heroes, but somehow that word has been debauched to mean someone who kills other people. Gandhi and Mother Teresa are in many ways the truest of heroes, not only because they lived radical lives dedicated to truth, but because they illustrated it in beautiful and simple ways that everyone could understand.

(2) Test environments. Burning man is a great example of people dropping out and taking their values (i.e. radical inclusion) and prototyping them in a safe space. Ecovillages and other folks who are dedicated to living a better reality can be a great test bed for radical new thinking and new technologies, but they need to be globally engaged. Most likely, there needs to be a hub of people who are dedicated to living the most forward-thinking version of these things intentionally and experimentally.

(3) Deep ecology. We have to re-build the world tree. If you don’t know what that means, read some Norse mythology or go dig your hand into the dirt. Ecology means recognizing that we are connected to everything and that we need to respect that connection. Scarcity dynamics simply don’t belong in a world of radical connection. We have to honor nature and build system that show her at her greatest and best.

(4) Fresh image. There are lots of people who have been writing about very valuable things about collaborative dynamics and “Brockian” wealth and all sorts of generally correct and good concepts. However, an outline of the idea often needs a the younger generation to bring it things to fruition .This requires things like a fresh appealing image, accessibility, and leveraging existing technology. It means outreach in the Instagram way, with fresh images that convey the state of mind we want to cultivate.

(5) Simple message. There are different types of leaders. We need to deliberately cultivate thought leaders that can reach into the mainstream and give them the message that doesn’t confuse them. p2p, ecosystems, distributed networks, swarm intelligence, network topology, all of these are things that are correct to emphasize and explain to those who can understand them — but this is not everyone and we need the sorts of simple messages that can be distributed broadly as well.

Also, I’ve often realized that I’ve been acting out of an anti-scarcity message instead of an abundance message. Or an anti-hegemony message instead of a personal autonomy message. Or an anti-VC message instead of a positive community capital message. In all of these things we should stay positive.

(6) Ecosystem wide planning. There are many pieces that need to be built in what I’ve called the “True sharing economy” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wsv6Z29jyM). Although there are some funds out there with a social mission (i.e. Union Square Ventures), I’m not at all confident that these venture capitalists can really do anything that is focused on maximizing social or public goods within the context of their existing infrastructure. Consequently, their efforts to maximize their own piece of pie may not lead to the best status for the rest of us.

What we need is to be strategic, building alliances across p2p channels and figuring out what are the places to maximize our return today. Sometimes this requires compromises too. Swarm saw another standard VC-backed company arise to help out the DCO networks, and that is beautiful, because it brings in old world money into the new ecosystem. Of course, I’m still personally dedicated to the more radical and purist version of the same, because old world ways will always bring old world compromises and pressures with them, but as some of these things grow, we all grow.

(7) Anger. Anger is a very powerful tool if it can be channeled into something productive. So many people live in a stage of inertia and simply put whatever sort of manufactured food is served up in front of them. That’s a herd mentality. Sometimes it takes real force to say, “We will not take this oppression any longer.” If you want a good example of that, consider the nursing home scene in Cloud Atlas. What we are trying to plan our escape.

(8) Quality Control. One of the core needs I see in this space is accountability. During our own buildout phase for Swarm one of our developers flat out disappeared, of course after he was paid. I’ve also seen countless examples of do-gooder hippies who promise the world and deliver on nothing. If we are going to build something that can exist and thrive outside of the current market system, we need ways to highlight people who are doing awesome things that don’t involve money and screen out these people who are talk only or who have other significant moral failings (like disappearing before the work is done).

Even beyond that, there is a vast gap between people who like to talk and those who like to deliver and even when someone is actually building things, that doesn’t mean that those things are any good.

(9) Solving problems that people have today. I remember chatting with Tom Greco not so long ago about transitioning to a better economic model. That’s a really tricky problem. The easiest way to solve it is to identify core areas where people have a sufficiently large problem today where you have a credible way to solve it. Sometimes that’s less sexy than simply sowing the seeds of a new age. And if I were doing that at this moment I probably couldn’t write this to you. But that’s what many of us have to do to make these seeds turn into vibrant systems.

(10) Capital. Need I tell you all that we can’t do very much without resources? We should really be looking at every old world system we are associated with and looking for ways to lead it into the new. Individually, I’m spending a lot of time advising old world monetary, energy, and governance systems how to leverage blockchain technology and to embrace part of this p2p trend as something that can be a competitive advantage. If you have creative ways of how to do the same, please let me know.

The principles of connection mean that we are all in this together, whether we know it or not. Love is the glue that allows us to realize this and leverage  interpersonal strength into building a common future. It is what takes us beyond being atomized individuals and into a beautiful future in which both male and female are respected and thrive, instead of commodified and abused.

Maybe if we realize these things we can work strategically to build a global system in which the people really have the power.

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Source – https://discourse.swarm.fund/t/suggestions-for-the-swarm-community-on-basic-income-voluntary-basic-capital/183

These are only suggestions. It is meant to provoke discussions and to enhance the potential for the voluntary basic income experiments.

1) Create a new software license called the voluntary basic capital license (VBCL). This would be similar to the GPL but would designate by law that anyone using the source code has to agree to the social consensus. So if the social consensus is that all verified humans get some percentage of all businesses who use that license then the license now has the teeth of the traditional legal system similar to the GPL.

2) A DCO is required. Swarm got this part right and did the legal legwork to formalize the “community oriented DAC” into the DCO. I think Swarm got this part better than right.

3) Enforce the social contract of the community as a smart contract, in code, so that the moment the person installs the app instead of seeing “terms of service agreement” legalese they are asked “do you agree with the social contract of our community”? At that point the social contract should be presented to them and if they agree to it then if the app has transaction taxes then their use of the app will become basic income through transaction taxes.

4) The community should enforce through reputation. Most people want to give back to society, to their community, to mankind, because it helps them to look good and it’s good for reputation. In a blockchain based world reputation can be decentralized, transparent, and people who use certain apps will be looked upon differently. So reputation is an enforcement mechanism for the social contract along with the voluntary basic capital license if it’s a corporation the community has to deal with.

The software license should exist to protect the community from corporations coming along, forking, taking the best technologies developed, and then not giving anything back to the community.

The DCO is to protect the community from government legal actions.

The social contract existing as a smart contract or in code embeds it into the app to protect the social contract from being tampered with without community social consensus backing it.

The decentralized reputation element is to encourage the community to support itself. It’s easy to encourage people to give something back when the givers get a reputation and the takers get a reputation. Bittorrent used this idea of seeders and leechers to great success and while it isn’t something directly enforced there is a ratio which easily allowed people to not share with anyone who has a bad ratio. The same could happen in business interactions where smart contracts could look for some adherence to the social contract of the community and if the entrepreneur doesn’t meet the minimum then the community doesn’t have to provide any sort of good reviews to their business.

Below are a few references and shout outs

Social Networks as Contract Enforcement: Evidence from a Lab Experiment in the Field
https://www.nber.org/papers/w202594

Decentralized reputation based reward networks and gift economics
http://darkai.org/?p=1906

On social contracts – Part I
blog.synereo.com/2015/02/10/social-contracts-pt/

On social contracts – Part II
blog.synereo.com/2015/03/06/social-contracts-pt-ii/

Acknowledgement to Dan and Stan Larimer for coming up with the idea of social consensus and social contract, for being among the first to declare the importance of profitability and competition.

Acknowledgement to Vitalik Buterin and his team for their efforts with Ethereum and for being the first to not only set record breaking crowd funding numbers but to attempt to implement a Turing complete scripting DAC.

Acknowledgement to the Synereo and GetGems team for their effort to help create an attention economy.

Acknowledgement to Satoshi Nakamoto for making all of this possible.

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