The Origin of Man

ROUGH DRAFT
CIVILIS ED
THE ORIGIN OF MAN
AND THE
EVOLUTION OF COOPERATIVE BEHAVIOUR
A Book by Julian Hart
“Civilisation happened
because we found a new way
to help each other meet
our fundamental human needs.”
DRAFT – Feb 2010
On a theory of social interaction, which explains the progress of human civilisation, suggests
a unified theory for the social sciences and hints at the possibility of a general theory of
evolution.
PREFACE Draft – Feb 2010
The Origin of Civilised Man and the Evolution of Cooperative Behaviour
Short Synopsis
The ideas presented in this book provide a possible new theory of human development – that
is sustainable development, synthesising together social, economic, cultural and
technological development into a single holistic theory. (And it actually works!) It is a theory
which draws on many strands of current thinking in the social sciences, which are combined
together into a simple framework which explains why human civilisations first appeared and
thence how civilisation has progressed from the outset to the here and now. While the
headline framework is simple, it provides the scope for the evolution of the myriad of different
types of societies and their cultures, both historic tribal and present civilised, that we see to
exist and to have existed. Furthermore the theory is compatible with evolution theory in the
biological sciences, providing scope for a generic comprehension of the progression and
development of living organisms and ecosystems through five fundamental different forms of
competition and cooperation.
If this theory proves to have merit, then it has the potential to transform the way we
understand how societies progress and could have radical repercussions for the whole social
and natural sciences, and possibly the physical sciences too. In the context of concern over
potential future human conflict for environmental resources, arising out of or inspite of global
warming, this theory represents an extremely important tool to help develop policies and
strategies to avoid catastrophic scenarios.
Long Synopsis
The new theory of social interaction provides for the first time a comprehensive synthesis
across the social sciences from psychology to the macro-economy. It represents a step-
change in thinking, which makes a complete break with many historic and conventional
constructs within sociology and economics. Yet simultaneously it accurately maps against
some of the most influential ideas within these sciences, as well as empirical evidence and
common observations of the human world. Conceived from basic, and broadly accepted,
propositions in the fields of positive and social psychology, this startling new theory step-by-
step builds up a rational framework, which explains the history and evolution of civilisation.
The initial premise is that humans, being very social animals, interact to satisfy their basic
needs. Such interaction can be cooperative or competitive, where the latter situation is
entirely aligned with Darwinian thinking. It has been the interplay between cooperative and
competitive behaviours, which has characterised the progress of human societies.
! Julian Hart Page 2 of 7 10/6/10

The theory starts with a re-interpretation of Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Human Needs to
create a more consistent Needs framework. There still remain five Needs, broadly similar to
Maslow’s original ideas, but these are now understood across the full experience of life for an
individual – being a biological organism, a thinking person and a social animal. The
hypothesis that we interact with others to satisfy our personal needs leads to the identification
of five Ideal Type cooperative interactions, each of which has an antithetical competitive
equivalent. For example, two people each seeking to meet their nutritional needs might
exchange different food items (or food for money) and achieve mutual benefit or they could
fight over the food leading to one winner and one loser. (The concept of Ideal Type
interaction is directly drawn from Max Weber’s notion of Ideal Type actions, where the real
world is messy and most actual interactions involve to a greater or lesser degree a
combination of Ideal Types.)
Analysis of these Needs-driven interactions suggests that they can best be understood as
processes. Two people are driven to interact to satisfy a certain Need. To interact requires
certain behaviour patterns, which are particular to each Ideal Type of interaction. These
behaviour patterns and the nature of the interaction itself influence how we perceive other
people, thence ourselves and by extension the world around us. When an interaction is
successful we are stimulated to repeat the interaction, which reinforces those behaviours and
all that goes with them. Over and over.
In more detail, interactions themselves give rise to economic outcomes, specific to each Ideal
Type interaction: an object is shared or exchanged or we cooperate to carry out an agreed
task. In order to enable an interaction to take place, the participants must enact a particular
behaviour: for example, acting peacefully or predictably. Recent research in social
psychology suggests that behaviour has a strong influence on attitude, which informs
perceptions: for example, someone who acts predictably can be trusted and is, by deduction,
a trustworthy person, which enables the first person to learn the capacity to trust.
Each interaction Type has a particular Form, which is the way the interaction takes place in
time and space: is it instantaneous or does it happen over a defined time period and does it
necessitate physical proximity? The Forms of interaction determine the nature of social
bonds, which emerge between people: such bonds become continually strengthened or
weakened according to the degree to which interactions continue to be mutually beneficial for
the interacting persons. When an interaction is successful, then a person feels a sense of
happiness or contentment or other variations on the concept of happiness, which stimulate
him or her to want to repeat the interaction with the same person or with someone else or with
something else. Meanwhile that large human brain develops a narrative to explain why we
wish to repeat our interactions or finds other reasons to repeat interactions, thereby extending
real Needs into perceived Wants.

Being interpreted as processes, it proves relatively easy to scale up these Ideal Type
interactions to make apparent five pure Social Processes. The energy exchange of individual
interactions (all interactions can be distilled down to an exchange of energy or effort between
people) scales up to provide our wider economy. Social bonds create social structure.
Behaviours and attitudes characterise the culture of a society. And personal narrative
becomes all encompassing ideology.
The resultant five macroscopic social processes are ever present within human tribal and
civilised societies, where tribes are mostly characterised by sharing interactions and
civilisation develops from exchanging interactions. In their pure form these five Processes
can be understood as the processes of Birth, Growth, Health (health maintenance),
Adaptation and Transformation of towns and cities. Together they have been the driving
force behind the creation and evolution of human civilisation.
Manifestations of these five Social Processes are well known aspects of the human world.
One Process creates the free market economy, another generates bureaucracies and drives
us to collaborate to make things (the industrial economy) and another gives rise to our Third
Sector (communities, political parties, unions, charities and religious organisations).
Furthermore, long-term trends engendered by these Processes have informed the social
sciences. One of the Processes is the stimulus behind Modernity: the observation of ever-
increasing rationality in civilised and urban societies. Another is the driver behind a
continually more complex Division of Labour in our modern economies.
Once understood through the theory of social interaction, it becomes apparent that there is
much, much more to these Social Processes than these headline observed trends. For
instance, the same Process that has given us the free market economy and has been the
underlying driver behind Modernity is also the positive feedback Process which caused the
recent Credit Crunch. Alternatively, the Process, which has given us more and more Division
of Labour, is the same process that creates the very hierarchic, capitalist economies of the
modern era, or taken to the extreme can create communist states. This is also the same
Process, which can drive societies to engage in child labour and drive adults (usually men) to
death from working too hard. Each of these Processes alone proves to be highly dangerous;
they are each positive feedback systems. But together they balance each other out and
counteract each other’s excesses to enable human society to progress in a sustainable way.
Another Process, for example, counteracts materialism and another acts to break down social
hierarchies.
When you come to understand the nature of these Social Processes, you will appreciate that
they infuse every aspect of your world. They frame every single interaction you have with

other human beings, and by extension everything. You are who you are (your identity, your
personality) because of your Ideal Type interactions with others since birth and from exposure
to the economic, social, cultural and ideological environments created by these Social
Processes. Between them, they encapsulate our entire worldview and every thinking, acting
and dreaming moment.
The power of these Social Processes cannot be underestimated because they are driven by
the unrelenting human urge to be happy, in whichever way we each come to interpret
happiness through our childhood exposure to these Processes. If we learn only to be
materialistic when young, then we will seek out a consumer lifestyle to be happy as an adult,
and all the negative implications. They are positive feedback systems, which gradually
evolve from generation to generation.
In forward gear, these Processes have enabled humans to cooperate to build our greatest
cities. Yet all processes have the capability or stalling or going into reverse, at the extreme
resulting in whole civilisations going to war and the devastating consequences for lives and
the natural world. Or we might stop reproducing. Or we may revert from democracy to
autocracy. Arising from an understanding of these Social Processes, we can now define
social progress. It manifests as increasing cooperative behaviour across human society for
all our Needs. Progress happens most successfully and most sustainably when these five
Social Processes progress forwards and operate in combination, in balance.
Through the theory of social interaction, you will come to see your life in a very different way.
You will come to see how you can play a small part in making human society more
sustainable through your day-to-day interactions with those around you. More importantly,
the most important legacy that we can leave our children is not some resource or some
technology but to teach them how best to interact with their fellow human beings. All the rest,
valuing and saving the planet, flows from that.
But there is more. When this new theory is generalised beyond the human domain, it sets the
scene for a general theory of evolution, which spans not just the social and natural sciences
but the physical sciences too. The same set of processes, which have initiated and built our
greatest cities, are the same set of processes which instigated and evolved life on earth.
They are the same set of process which have created our sun. They are the same set of
processes which have generated all the elements of the Periodic Table. They are the same
set of processes which cause marriages to flourish or fall apart. If it is correct, this new theory
will change the way we see and understand our whole universe – a truly living universe.
Enjoy!

Contents
1. Introduction
2. Sustainable Development – Current Thinking
3. Civilisation and Cities
4. Human Beings – Happiness and Quality of Life
5. Social Interactions
6. Social Relationships
7. Social Processes
8. Social Process 1 – Birth
9. Social Process 2 – Growth
10. Social Process 3 – Health
11. Social Process 4 – Adaptation
12. Social Process 5 – Transformation
13. The Evolution of the Sustainable City
14. Intellectual Roots
15. The Making of Civilised Man
16. Sustainable Development

Preface
It started in a bar, as any good train of thought often does. Over a beer with a now long-time
friend the first insight was uttered, which eventually led to this book. The bar, where it all
began, was the student dive in the Uxbridge Campus of Brunel University. This particular
university campus did, at that time in the early 1990s, rather a disservice to both the
University and the man after whom it is named. The Campus was a blatant 1960s concrete
construct. The students' bar is, or at least was, located in the basement of one of the very
square, grey and rapidly aging buildings. The bar was always dark and the floor permanently
tacky. But the beer was cheap.
It was early evening. Dan and I had just sat down at a table on the raised dais, a persistent
feature – it seems – of all cheap bars and pubs. "You know I've got it," said Dan and then
took a purposeful sip of beer, creating that dramatic pause at which all men are expert in pubs
and all wish they could repeat when speaking in public.
"Got what?" I said, though somehow I knew he was referring to an idea and not an object nor
a sexual disease. "Well, this sustainable development malarkey," he replied and took another
sip of beer. I waited patiently and took a slurp of my own. Such long pauses meant the idea
had to be good when it came. "Well, what it all means," he went on. "What it all really means
is how much change ..." He paused again.
"How do you mean?" I queried. This was clearly going to be a good evening with so much
'meaning' happening so early. Dan paused a moment to compose his final significant
statement of the evening.
"What sustainable development really means is how much change can society accept
without tearing itself apart?"
I readily agreed and took a long draught of beer. And, oh, how right he was.
Perhaps a little subconsciously at the time, I decided to set out on an intellectual quest to
work out what he meant. Little did I guess that this quest would lead me to re-invent our
understanding of the social sciences from the grass roots up. And bring me to within a
whisker’s breadth of a general theory of evolution.
This is the story of my intellectual adventure.

Chapter 1 – Introduction Page 1 of 6 10/6/10
Chapter 1 - Introduction
Why does human civilisation exist? Why has it developed in the way that it has? Why does it mostly
advance forwards (development, progress), yet sometimes stall or go backwards with disastrous
consequences? What are cities, even why are cities, and what role do they play in the creation of
human civilisation? Why do we attribute cities with personality, but not countries?
These are the kinds of questions one might expect from a bright six year-old. And yet, basic as they
may be, they are unanswerable by our established scientific understanding of human beings and the
highly social world that we live in.
I never set out to answer these questions. Rather, 12 years ago, disenchanted with the way that the
concept of Sustainability was being framed (and still is), I embarked upon an intellectual quest to find a
better way to understand and explain sustainable development. On reflection, it was rather naïve on
my part to think that one could formulate a theory of sustainable development without basing such
theory on a firm foundation, which would need to be a robust theory of human development. But then
I had broadly assumed, as I am discovering many others still do, that science already had a good
account for how we “got here”. Little did I know when I started this mental journey how far removed
our current social and humanistic sciences are from explaining our experienced reality.
In a cafeteria in Harvard, Boston, in 1997, perchance I came across and read in succession the
following three books: Jane Jacobs’ “The Economy of Cities”(Jacobs 1970), Abraham Maslow’s
“Towards a Psychology of Being“(Maslow 1968) and Karl Popper’s “Objective Knowledge: An
Evolutionary Approach”(Popper 1972). It was through these three books that I first picked up the
scent that I had been looking for. The journey since then has been like a mouse in a laboratory maze:
I could smell the cheese, it was so close and yet so far and every twist and turn I took, using those
established ways of framing our thinking, led to dead ends. I eventually found that the only way
forward was to open my mind, to drop all preconceptions and to ignore those artificial constraints,
such as the academic silos that we have collectively created for ourselves. When the walls of the
maze dropped away, I found the solution staring me in the face – so unbelievably simple: yet just
complex enough to provide scope for the apparent infinite variety that we experience in our daily lives
around this amazing planet of ours.
In a nutshell, the answer is this. Human beings have gained through our evolution a very precise set
of five underlying Needs, the satisfaction of which help us to survive and be happy. These Needs are,
very simply, (1) day-to-day energy, water and nutrients, (2) safety and security, (3) health and
reproduction, (4) autonomy and (5) success in our endeavours: no different, in fact, from the basic
needs of any biological organism. As our genetic ancestors evolved they discovered an ecological
niche, whereby instead of competing to meet their personal organism needs, they gradually evolved to
cooperate to help each other meet their personal needs and so became social animals. For instance,
as a tribe they were better able to hunt and obtain food. As a group, they were better able to watch for
! Julian Hart Draft – Feb 2010 jalhart@btinternet.com

danger. Progressing through our genetic lineage, the degree of sophistication of our cooperation
advanced – cooperating not just to source food and be safe, but also in rearing off-spring and
ultimately in terms of developing new technology.
The first intellectual break through presented in this book has been the appreciation that satiation of
our Needs drives action in the real world: the tiger’s hunger sends it out hunting. For the human social
animal, Needs-driven-actions almost inevitably cause us to interact with our fellow Man: your hunger
takes you to a shop to buy some food. Interaction. The second intellectual leap represented the
realisation that in a social world different Needs cause us to interact with each other in distinctly
different ways. In homage to the great sociologist, Max Weber, I have called these Ideal Type
Interactions. There are five, one for each Need.
Tribal living proved to be one way of satisfactorily enabling individuals to cooperate in five different
ways to meet their personal Needs and through this made Homo Sapiens a very social animal and a
successful species. Civilisation initiated because we collectively began to explore a new form of
cooperation. As do children in modern society, we progressed from sharing to learning to exchange. I
only came to this realisation through watching our own children at play. This transition in economic
interaction has led to a series of major Tipping Points, or Cultural Bifurcations, the first of which gave
rise to the first cities.
Human development within civilisation has continued apace as we learn better and better how to
cooperate for each Need across larger and larger social groups. Civilisation has gone backwards,
sometimes even degenerated into Dark Ages, when we have descended into selfish behaviour and
collectively competed instead of cooperated. It is a simple proposition: to cooperate or to compete to
meet five specific Needs. But it leads to a complex solution, as complicated as the real world we
inhabit.
This is not some airy-fairy, socialist or religious explanation of human existence; it is hard reality: to
compete or cooperate to survive. When you begin to understand the true nature of the free economic
market, as laid bare by this theory, then it can be seen to be a collaborative effort. The market
economy may superficially appear competitive; but rest assured that the competition has been tamed,
civilised: real competition is war. The debate between left and right, or the different political solutions
of liberalism and socialism, come to be seen to be mere manifestations of the processes of human
development in operation – each solution driven by the collective priority a particular society gives to
satisfying the different underlying Needs of the population. The theory of social interaction presented
in this book explains everything from the difference between tribal cultures and civilised society, to the
reason for and generic nature of human religions, to the full flavour of real democracy, and explaining
why we have the politics of left and right, and why psychologists, after 100 years of empirical research,
are concluding that there are five dimensions to human personality. It even shows which of those
personality types will naturally favour which political persuasion.

Understanding the manner of progression and evolution of civilisation all comes down to appreciating
process: in fact five specific and identifiable pure social processes, relating to each Ideal Type
Interaction. These social processes infuse every aspect of our daily, social lives. Social processes
arise as the macroscopic expression of the microscopic interactions we have with each other as we go
about our day-to-day life, seeking to satisfy our personal Needs. Feedback takes places where
successful or failed interactions help to inform our personalities (especially at a young age) and infuse
our cultures, thereby influencing the nature of future interactions – those of our own and those of our
children. Every encounter that we have with another human being in some small way reinforces and
perpetuates these macroscopic social processes. Of course, as Weber realised a hundred years ago,
real life is messy: real interactions are not purely for one Need or another, but may help meet several
Needs at once. But that does not detract from the incredible strength and influence that these
underlying macroscopic social processes have on our own identities and on the human cultures that
we inhabit, driving whole societies to boom or bust, to build or destroy, to value or waste and so on.
Remarkably these social processes have always been there; they defined how we human beings
evolved to live in tribes and how those tribes operated and equally, through that first but important
transition, that noted Cultural Bifurcation leading to the first cities, have driven the development of
civilised society from the start. I have labelled these social processes: Birth, Growth, Health,
Adaptation and Transformation. When these processes stall or go into reverse, so does our humanity:
the consequences are, respectively, War, Terror, Slavery, Autocracy and Depression.
As I explore within this book the nature of these pure social processes, you will begin to see the world
around you with new eyes. The academic silos that we have collectively created for ourselves turn out
to be one of our biggest hindrances to understanding the human experience. A completely new way
of structuring and understanding the social sciences emerges: a new unified framework from
psychology to macroeconomics.
In this book I present you with the conclusions from this intellectual journey. I will endeavour to
describe the true, almost tangible, nature of these macroscopic Social Processes which affect the
whole of society, from the way you think, the way you see yourself, the way you see other people
through to the social structures that are created and the cultures that arise. They infuse every aspect
of your life: to a quite disturbing extent. In society, you cannot escape their influence: they infuse your
whole physical and psychological make up.
The structure of this book endeavours to build up a logical explanation for the existence of the
identified Social Processes through the early chapters. A brief review is provided in Chapter 2 of
existing constructs of sustainable development and sustainability to demonstrate why I had reason to
question their validity. Chapter 3 turns to the big question of human civilisation and suggests that
human cities should philosophically be understood as living systems, not fundamentally different to
any other living systems (ants nests, trees, animals), when it comes to questions of growth and
development. All cities are different, but logically all cities grow and develop through the same

underlying developmental processes: all people are different, but our underlying biology and
biochemical processes are all the same. In Chapter 4, consideration is given to the atoms of human
society – people – to understand what motivates behaviour and interaction. It is deduced that as a
minimum there are five fundamental Human Needs that drive our actions in the real world, which in
turn in a social world force each of us to interact with others. Each Need leads to an Ideal Type
Interaction.
Chapter 5 comprises a review of the science of social psychology to endeavour to discover whether it
is possible to formulate a better understanding of human interaction and relationships. This leads
directly into Chapter 6, which builds up the generic structure of the idea of macroscopic social
processes, which arise out of and are ultimately driven by the microscopic interactions and
relationships taking place between pairs and groups of people. Chapters 7 through to 11 roll out the
deductions made in Chapters 4, 5 and 6 to uncover the true identity of five macroscopic social
processes, which drive the formation, growth and development of human society. The five
macroscopic social processes derive directly from the five fundamental Human Needs.
In Chapter 12, I have attempted to show the chronology of development of human society as
expressed through the formation of cities. This shows how the macroscopic social processes manifest
themselves in physical form through the structure and character of the built environment. Chapter 13
then takes a look at the overall framework, which has emerged, and seeks to show how this maps
against existing thinking in the social sciences.
Chapters 14 and 15 seek to tie up loose ends and take forward the theory of social interaction to
consider what it suggests about how we should go about addressing some of the current problems
and challenges faced by modern society. Finally I provide an Afterword, which touches upon the
generalisation of this framework beyond the social sciences and into the biological and physical
sciences, in order to show that the formulated social theory may indeed simply be the expression of
some deeper processes within our universe.
My personal experience of developing this new theory is that it has opened my eyes to the world
around me. When you come to grips with the ideas presented here, the Processes themselves can
begin to achieve an almost physical presence; you begin to see them in action every which way you
look: scarily so. Furthermore, once you start to understand the nature of these underlying Processes,
you begin to appreciate why so many things in society are as they are. While this knowledge and
understanding is enlightening, it is also quite frightening, because one comes to realise the incredible
strength of these Social Processes – processes that have created our greatest cities, our greatest
religions and driven us to achieve the technological advances we now have at our fingertips. But
when these Processes become unbalanced, they can have equally devastating effects, driving us to
war, to anarchy, to slavery, to credit crunches and great depressions. Between them, they underpin
everything that is good and everything that is bad about civilisation.

All the while that I was deriving this theory for the social sciences I was acutely aware that it might
have generalised applicability for the biological sciences. And later on, extension into the physical
sciences too. While the Processes that I have derived have clearly (at least to me and I hope to you
by the end of this book) guided the evolution of civilisation, the question that I have found myself
asking is: are they an expression of something deeper? Maslow’s hypothesis, his Hierarchy of Human
Needs, clearly has the potential for general application to all animals; after all, Maslow worked up his
Needs Hierarchy through observation of rhesus monkeys, not humans. If the Needs hierarchy (as
adapted in this book) could be generalised to all organisms, might it not represent the expression of
something deeper, which drives evolution in general. That is a question that I cannot fully answer yet.
This book focuses on the social sciences; if the application to the social sciences is deemed to have
merit, then wider consideration will likely follow.
For the 12 years since I had the first intuition, which set me out on this intellectual journey, my had has
been bursting with ideas, possibilities and eurekas. Finally, now that I have put this down in writing,
my head is no longer threatening to explode any minute. I trust that you are wearing a crash helmet.
This is quite a ride and a fascinating insight into the world, the universe, in which we live.
If I have written this book in a comprehensible manner, and if you are capable of opening your mind to
something radically different (yet at the same time not so different at all), then what follows will
fundamentally change the way that you perceive the (social) world around you. All of a sudden
economic booms and credit crunches become quite explicable, the reason why bureaucracies have a
habit of growing and growing will be trivial, why countries fight over borders whereas religions
compete for your time and attention will emerge with crystal clarity. Even more amazing, you will
come to appreciate why democracy and the Olympics (in fact sport in general) are intimately entwined
and the awe inspiring social and cultural implications of the digital revolution. The radical change that
you see about you in society at the moment has only just begun. And you will come to appreciate why
some of us naturally embrace this change, while others fear it.
And the best bit of all: this book shows how sustainable development and our personal happiness, and
that of our children too, are not only mutually compatible, but totally reliant on each other. The
greatest gift that we can bestow our children and our children’s children is not some physical legacy of
renewable or non-renewable resources or some fancy new technologies, but the ability and capacity
to interact better with those other humans with whom they live and share this small planet. Everything
else, the survival of humankind, naturally follows.

Any reader of this book is asked to maintain an open mind. Every attempt has been made to explain
the story of the intuition that the theory presented here represents, and to ground the ideas in historic
thinking. However, certain aspects of the ideas presented significantly challenge many current
preconceptions about society, social systems and economies, in particular some of the academic
presumptions about how the social sciences should be broken up into different silos. The patient
reader will see that the outcome is a powerful explanation not only of the manner in which societies
naturally develop, but also provides scope for a true synthesis between cultural theory, sociology and
economics, and possibly beyond to the biological sciences and the physical sciences.
This is the first time that this particular theory has been presented. Given its novelty, there are bound
to be mistakes that have been made in its formulation, in how it is explained, the words chosen to
provide explanation and in relation to some of the selected examples of how it can be observed in the
real world. The reader is asked to look beyond singular errors, to deduce whether the whole picture
fits together. If he or she finds that it largely works successfully, then in due course any discrete errors
in explanation and demonstration can be resolved.
Jacobs, J. (1970). The Economy of Cities, Vintage.
Maslow, A. (1968). Towards a Psychology of Being, Van Nostrand.
Popper, K. (1972). Objective Knowledge: An Evolutionary Approach, Oxford University Press.

Chapter 2 – Sustainable Development Page 1 of 10 10/6/10
Chapter 2 – Sustainable Development
Definition?
“What can be more important to you and your colleagues than the sustainability of your
business?” I concluded hopefully at the culmination of a heated discussion.
The subject matter of this exchange was the rather esoteric difference between the meaning
of the terms ‘corporate social responsibility’ and ‘sustainability’. The conversation took place
with several senior executives of a major listed property developer. You could be forgiven for
wondering why they were wasting their precious time debating such semantics during the
working day. They were in fact discussing whether they should be publishing a Corporate
Social Responsibility Report or a Sustainability Report, and which of the above should they
actually have produced for the previous five or so years.
The argument that I put forward was that the two terms were, to all intents and purposes,
synonymous. The only thing that should really matter to them as a business was
consistency. For those that would likely read such a report, the title mattered little; it would be
the contents that counted. Unfortunately during the discussion somehow the debate was
diverted onto the question of what was the bigger, broader and more important issue:
sustainability or corporate social responsibility. One of the executives had taken the view,
and I believe still does, that sustainability was a subset of corporate social responsibility. And
hence my attempted concluding and slightly exasperated remark about the sustainability of
their business … and presumably thence their jobs and current personal lifestyles (though I
didn’t voice this last bit).
Inconsequential as it should have been, that the debate had to take place at all points to a
rather fundamental question – what is sustainability? Or for that matter, what do we really
mean by the closely related term ‘sustainable development’? And how do they relate to
corporate social responsibility?
These are not trivial questions. Not only are they difficult to answer, they encapsulate some
extremely important dilemmas facing the world’s human population. Almost every day we
now see articles in mainstream newspapers about the challenges ahead: climate change
being a current major concern. The world economy (well at time of first writing this) may
currently appear relatively robust and functional. Yet we seem to be living in a period of
relative doom and gloom, feeling the future to be a threat rather than an opportunity. This
may be as much because of wider social (or is that cultural) issues, such as the growing
friction between Arabia and the West, as being driven by increasing environmental and

resource availability concerns. Or perhaps those frictions between larger societies are just
the start of a path towards fighting over those vital natural resources.
Or maybe it is just the way new epochs always start. There is the impending rush at the end
of a last century, with great expectations for the new century to come and, in this case, new
millennium. Yet once the fireworks have faded away, we remember that the start of that new
century or millennium is just tomorrow, next year, next decade. Things are not likely to
change that quickly and we still have to deal with the same problems we faced yesterday.
Heads down – let’s get on with the hard work of living … and dealing with the challenges
ahead and working out what the meaning is of some of those terms that we invented during
i
that period of end-of-millennium hype .
This still leaves the busy executive scratching his head wondering what or who to believe
when it comes to trying to understand these terms – sustainability, sustainable development,
corporate social responsibility and so on.
The Triple Bottom Line
The drive to formulate the theory presented in this book arose out of dissatisfaction in the
widely used and abused approach taken to define sustainable development. Wherever the
terms sustainable development and sustainability are used – in science, in politics, in
business – it would seem that every thinker, writer/speaker and reader/listener automatically
draws on the notion of balancing social, environmental and economic objectives associated
with the topic of discussion, whether the latter be formulation of town planning policy, creation
of business strategy, arguments over political objectives or whatever.
The roots of this powerful Triple Bottom Line concept can be traced back to John Elkington’s
book “Cannibals with Forks” (Elkington 1998) in which he outlined the idea of the Triple
Bottom Line: the three lines ostensibly pertaining to economic, social and environmental
issues. The Triple Bottom Line is proving to be a successful strategy for making businesses
act more responsibly through investing a proportion of today’s profit in the environment,
technology, research and development, the local community or society at large, in order
better to secure a licence to operate for that business and make its future profits more likely –
very literally making that business more ‘sustainable’.
Since writing his book, Elkington’s concept has been extensively transposed across into
areas other than business. But there is a problem in this. It is difficult (probably impossible)
to apply this idea effectively to subjects where the economic component is not explicitly a
financial profit centre – such as institutions, communities, towns, cities, regions and countries.
Where a profit centre does clearly exist, then Elkington’s concept operates as a helpful tool

and useful basis for business strategy; there are well-rehearsed intellectual roots to the idea
based on the argument that businesses need to find ways to better mitigate the externalities
(undesirable external impacts such as pollution) arising from their operations (Pearce 1995).
In fact, under a different guise, exactly the same concept has underpinned the UK town
planning system ever since its first conception in 1948: the use of planning gain taxes to
mitigate against the environmental and social impact of new physical (private sector)
developments. So the ‘Triple Bottom Line’ is simply a new monica for a long-standing (over
50 years) societal principle. Where there is no profit centre, however, then the concept
becomes confused and loses its applicability in the real world – in essence, what are the
externalities and where are they situated? What impacts on society and the environment are
being mitigated and who should bare the economic cost of such mitigation? To add to the
confusion, institutions (say Governments, the United Nations or the European Commission)
will often add a fourth ‘bottom-line’ headed “Insitutional”, to cover all those issues that don’t
seem to fit under the other headings.
Elkington’s approach was a clever piece of marketing to the business world. Business
leaders, with so much management and business training over the last few decades, have
become used to the term ‘the Bottom Line’ and its importance for the on-going success of
their business. Elkington sought to infer two additional, heretofore invisible, bottom lines.
Unfortunately these simply do not exist.
What has happened is that Elkington’s original three headings – economic prosperity, of the
business / profit centre in question, balanced against environmental quality and social justice
outside the business – have steadily become more and more interpreted as meaning all
things perceived to be economic (in other words issues studied by economists, and usually
taken to be macroeconomic factors) balanced against social issues (which should be issues
studied by sociologists, but actually end up being micro-economic factors such as standard of
living and average income of individuals) balanced against all those factors that might be
construed to fall under the remit of the physical and biological sciences (environmental quality
and resource use). ‘Balancing’ these things against each other is actually meaningless. The
beautiful irony is that the two new bottom lines are almost always measured in the negative,
not the positive – the impact arising, not the profit generated.
To observe how this supposed framework has been interpreted into practice one only need
visit the website of the International Institute of Sustainable Development (IISD). There is a
compendium of indicator sets which have been created to seek to measure sustainable
development strategies, where every town, city, country, institution the world over appears to
have created their own lists of indicators, more often than not falling under these three
ii
headings .

The Triple Bottom Line approach for formulating strategies for sustainable development, or
for appraising other policies or strategies to ascertain whether they are compatible with
sustainable development, has resulted in the increasingly farcical Sustainability Appraisal
process now required for all new town planning policy formulated in the United
Kingdom(ODPM 2005). The guidance for this appraisal process simply states that the
Sustainability Appraisal must assess the sustainability of a proposal (planning policy,
development brief or other), where sustainability issues are taken to mean “the full cross-
section of sustainability issues, including social, environmental and economic factors” (!): a
tautology? While none have seemingly spoken out about this yet, in my personal experience
there is a growing disquiet amongst practitioners that this process is proving ineffectual at
best, badly misleading at worst and generally ignored by decision-makers. This is despite the
huge effort required to write these Appraisals, sometimes (perhaps often) more than that
required to formulate the appraised policies and strategies themselves.
Back in the real world the notion is quite absurd that a simple explanation (or framework) for
the sustainable development of a city, for example, can be formulated out of simply creating
three headings, which have essentially been assumed to be the three academic silos –
economics (quantitative social sciences), qualitative social sciences and environmental
sciences – and then listing under these headings everything and anything that comes to mind
as being relevant to that broad subject matter. It is a checklist or indicator mentality, drawing
on no theory of how our human society naturally progresses. It is consequently manifestly
obvious for any expert working in this ‘sustainable’ field that no matter how strongly politicians
urge that all their ideas and thinking are underpinned by sustainable development, in actual
fact at a practical level there is absolutely no linkage at all. Rather, more likely given that
there is actually no theory of sustainable development, Sustainability is really interpreted to
mean whatever is necessary to appear to align with and support those policies and strategies
dreamt up by said politicians. The rest is just a gravy train for consultants – myself included.
The inconvenient truth is that there is an intellectual vacuum between all the warm and cosy
‘motherhood and apple pie’ words and the reality that no one actually knows what sustainable
development is or could be. ‘Yes’, we need to reduce resource use and, ‘yes’, we need to
protect the natural environment of our fragile planet. But what this means for the progress
and development of society is currently anyone’s guess. This is brought home when, on
analysis of the sciences of sociology and economics, it is apparent that we, humans at the
st
beginning of the 21 century, actually have no theory of development (whether you call this
human development or economic development or just development). We cannot possibly,
therefore, have a theory of sustainable development.
In the more qualitative side of the social sciences, sociology and anthropology, there is
actually a widespread presumption that social progress does not happen – society does not

iii
develop – change ‘Yes’, but not develop . Established thinking in both these disciplines does
not actually provide scope for any notion of social development, progress, evolution or
advancement or whatever you might want to call it (Runciman 2000). The concept is simply
negated. Meanwhile the evidence of the last few decades has shown that the more
quantitative social science, economics, is equally no closer to understanding the concept of
development, progress, evolution, advancement. At least, however, the economic science
does recognise that there might be such a thing as development: give or take some
fluctuations and occasional set backs, people’s standard of living can be seen to have
improved over the last 1,000 years in many countries around the globe.
The failure of economics to explain development has been best demonstrated by the collapse
of the Washington Consensus, which held sway as the orthodox approach of the World Bank
and International Monetary Fund, and all who worked with them, for 2 ! decades from the
late 70s to early 00s (Yergin and Stanislaw 2002). The Washington Consensus and
variations on the theme represented a list (note another list) of interventions that were
deemed to be essential to enable any country to undergo economic development and
prosper. Yet many Asian countries have developed and are developing and rapidly improving
the standard of living of their populations (China included) without following the Washington
Consensus approach (Naim 1999; Rodrik 2004). Meanwhile many other countries in Africa
and South America, which did pursue the Washington Consensus method (often very
rigorously), have not developed and, relative to the Asian Tigers, have gone significantly
backwards. It is quite clear that the Washington Consensus, which evolved from the work of
legal and banking practitioners in the field, again is just a checklist of objectives and is not
based on any fundamentally sound theory of economic, and certainly not human or
sustainable, development. One of the most vocal critics of the Washington Consensus is Joe
Stiglitz, who was Chief Economist and Vice President of the World Bank from 1997 through to
2000, when he was fired for expressing dissent.
As the Washington Consensus has proven wanting, the intellectual power of the World Bank
has more recently waned and the lead on defining terms of reference for human development
i
has been taken by the United Nations . The UN has embraced a broader agenda than just
economic development, an agenda which in fact is essentially Elkington’s Triple Bottom Line
applied at a country level, and which is embedded into the UN Millennium Goals, which are
proving to be tantalisingly out of reach.
No theory, replaced by … no theory.
While a much more detailed argument can be constructed that the interpretation of
sustainable development as somehow balancing social, economic and environmental
objectives has no intellectual or philosophical basis beyond being used in situations where

there are very clear profit centres (businesses), hopefully the above explanation gives a
satisfactory quick summary as to why one might, as a scientist and philosopher, become
dissatisfied with it as a supposed strategy for the survival of humankind. If, in realising the
superficiality of this approach, you decide to revert back to the original Brundtland definition
(WCED 1987), then just remember that it is coined in the negative (“Humanity has the ability
to make development sustainable - to ensure that it meets the needs of the present without
compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs”). This is not exactly a
positive way to express what must surely be the most important policy statement for the
future of the whole of humanity.
This lack of any real political or scientific ideology about how society should progress is
summed up by Francis Fukuyama in his book “The End of History”(Fukuyama 1992), in which
he shows that collectively we have seemingly stopped trying to work out a better future and
are now simply focussing on managing our big bureaucracies, today and no further than
tomorrow. All politics has essentially coalesced on the central ground and, with the clear
exception of climate change issues, has become very focused on the present (for reasons
that will become very clear in later chapters once you get to grips with the Birth Process
(SP1)). But the challenge of sustainable development demands otherwise. Meanwhile there
are many organisations and individuals seeking to challenge the dominant established
economic orthodoxy and trying to develop better explanations of human development: key
examples include The Natural Step, Manfred Maxneef’s concept of human scale development
and John Burton’s ideas on societal conflict resolution. There are many more. This
demonstrates in itself a wider intellectual dissatisfaction with current practiced approaches to
development.
It turns out that to develop a new theory of sustainable development has required standing
back and taking a fresh look at the whole picture, and in particular not being constrained by
the existing academic silos of economics and sociology. It has required much more radical
and creative thinking than just meshing together the existing scientific interpretations of
perceived parts of the human experience. Yet when we get to the end of this book it will
become apparent why Elkington’s Triple Bottom Line has been adopted so readily. There is
indeed a certain logic to it; but such logic only becomes fully apparent once you have
reconstituted the whole jigsaw puzzle to create an entirely different picture of the process of
human development.
Of course, I didn’t have the time to explain all the above to those busy development
executives in that property firm trying to deduce what to call its annual publicity document
(Sustainability Statement or Corporate Social Responsibility Statement), which effectively set
out how it had been mitigating its impact on society and the environment. Fortunately, in their

instance, it did not matter because, being a profit centre, the Triple Bottom Line does make a
reasonable degree of sense (albeit still frequently misconstrued).
The Nature of Development
In writing this book, I am acutely aware that I am one small individual attempting to tackle an
issue which intellectual giants have been trying to address through the ages, and with
particular vigour for the last 200 years, with only moderate success. It is only by standing on
their shoulders that I have been able to put this work together. What I have attempted to do
is use the facts and the logic of others to draw together a different perspective on the notion
of human development. It is like one of those auto-stereograms, those dot pictures which
encode a 3-D scene amid apparently random dots or another image. When you squint or
defocus your eyes, you realise that hidden within is an entirely different picture, often a much
more beautiful and interesting image than that on the surface. In the case of this book, the
same basic information (the science we have at our disposal), simply structured and
presented in a different way which hopefully leads to greater enlightenment on how we,
humanity, have reached the present and the options we have for going forwards.
In trying to comprehend such a complex issue, I start out with a single but fundamental
principle. Whatever explanation of human development that is reached by the end of this
book, it must be applicable to all human societies, human economies and cultures – both
present and historic. Tall order … yes. But as we will come to see there may well be some
underlying principles on how human societies develop and evolve for no other reason than
that we are all human. In all being human, we, no matter our creed, colour or sex, have some
basic similarities which cause groupings and societies of human beings also to have some
similarities. This notion is not new. In his recent book Critical Mass (Ball 2005), Philip Ball
showed how both small and large groups of humans can react to stimuli in remarkably
predictable ways. In similar vein, but somewhat different fashion, I am attempting a similar
approach for cities and human societies.
My personal academic training has been in the physical sciences which I consider to have
proven to be a distinct benefit when seeking to understand the softer sciences, for two main
reasons. Firstly I have approached the social sciences with minimal prejudice on how
societies and economies ought to behave. I also came to read the social sciences at a later
point in my education and life, which meant that I was better able to see the theories of past
masters as simply explanations of what they saw rather than necessarily being fundamental
theories of how the human world actually works. Secondly it is from this physical science
background that I draw the principle noted in the above paragraph. The Laws of
Thermodynamics, for example, are universally applicable. Darwin’s theory of the survival of
the fittest is universal to all ecosystems. Looking at the human world, from an objective

perspective, there is no particular logical reason (except perhaps your own personal political
prejudices) why underlying laws (or equivalent) cannot also be deciphered for the way that
human societies evolve and how they can be expected to react to external or internal stimuli.
“This has been tried many times before” I hear you think, “with no one ever succeeding to
formulate anything that is practically useful.” “Or alternatively,” I would riposte, “with
disastrous effect, such as the various failed attempts to implement Marxism.”
Given the human history on this planet over the last 200 years, it is quite understandable that
we have come to fear ideologies about how humanity should develop (referring in particular,
but not isolated, to the utopian vision of Marxism and the attempts to put it into practice
through Communism). Collectively, we feel that we have moved beyond trying to envision
utopian futures and working towards them. Yet this has resulted in a negation that progress
takes place at all, which goes against common sense and simple observation. So, we need
to avoid the mistakes of the past. Clearly dreaming up utopias has not proven successful.
So how can we formulate a theory of development without making such mistakes?
These previous failures could be argued to have strengthened the academic silos of modern
science through persuading budding social scientists and academics that a universal solution
is unattainable. But science generally has moved on. At the end of the last century there
were significant breakthroughs in areas such as non-linear dynamics and understanding the
behaviour of complex systems. I am not, in this work, going to approach any of the
mathematics used within these disciplines; I have never been a strong mathematician and the
maths in these disciplines are as far beyond me as any man on the street. But I will draw
from them a simple philosophical principle. This is that it is possible to identify the underlying
processes within a system without having to pre-determine its outcome. In fact it is actually
impossible to pre-determine the outcome. The future is open. Thankfully. But this does not
mean that we cannot understand ourselves better in order to help us make better decisions
en route.
So, all (“!”) we have to do is understand better how we have reached the here and now, how
human civilisation has naturally developed over the last 10,000 years, in particular how cities
naturally grow. This will give us a theory of development to work with and then we can start
to develop strategies, sustainable development strategies, for the future. The intellectual
challenge is set: can we develop a theory of the development of civilisation? The answer is:
yes we can. But we need to be very lateral in our thinking to reach a satisfactory conclusion.
The result is remarkably simple, yet leads to the incredible complexity and variety that has
been seen throughout history and that we see in the human world today.

This book draws on the relevant science we now have at our disposal and stitches it together
in a way that I hope you will find enlightening. Equally importantly, this work draws on our
collective history as much as it does modern science, to show how we have reached the here
and now. Only by understanding how we have attained our current position, can we have any
hope in understanding what choices we have to go forwards. This is a continuation of a
iv
project which has been central to the study of sociology, back to before Ibn Khaldun , before
sociology was sociology; it builds upon the ideas developed by such greats as Marx,
Durkheim and Weber. In the light of modern psychology, social psychology, our
understanding of cities, historical knowledge and the physical sciences, this work attempts to
take another step forwards in that endeavour.
How have we got to where we are and where are we going? What is the process of human
development?
v
What makes a man civilised? The flippant answer is: other men, other women. A fuller
answer takes the rest of this book.
Ball, P. (2005). Critical Mass: How One Thing Leads to Another, Arrow Books.
Elkington, J. (1998). Cannibals with Forks: The Triple Bottom Line of 21st Century Business,
New Society Publishers.
Fukuyama, F. (1992). The End of History and the Last Man, Free Press.
Naim, M. (1999). "Fads and Fashion in Economic Reforms: Washington Consensus or

Washington Confusion." Foreign Policy Magazine.
ODPM (2005). Sustainability Appraisal of Regional Spatial Strategies and Local Development
Documents. O. o. t. D. P. Minister.
Pearce, D. (1995). Blueprint for a Green Economy, Earthscan.
Rodrik, D. (2004). Rethinking Growth Strategies. WIDER Annual Lecture, UNU-World

Institute for Development Economics Research.
Runciman, W. G. (2000). The Social Animal, University of Michigan Press.
WCED (1987). Our Common Future, World Commission on Environment and Development.
Yergin, D. and J. Stanislaw (2002). The Commanding Heights: The Battle for the World
Economy, Public Broadcasting Service.
i
An example of pre-millennium hype followed by doom and gloom is most clearly exhibited by
the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). In the lead up to 2000, the UN drew up eight
MDGS which form a blueprint agreed to by all the world’s countries and all the world’s leading

development institutions. These Goals range from halving extreme poverty to halting the
spread of HIV/AIDS and providing universal primary education. The original intent was that
they would all be achieved by the target date of 2015. They are supposed to have galvanized
unprecedented efforts to meet the needs of the world’s poorest. Yet the reports published by
the UN subsequent to 2000 are very gloomy indeed and indicate that very little is actually
being achieved. In the 2005 Report, Kofi Annan, the then Secretary General states that “If
current trends persist, there is a risk that many of the poorest countries will not be able to
meet many of them. Considering how far we have come, such a failure would mark a
tragically missed opportunity.” The 2007 Report, at mid-point of the period, has equally stark
warnings that many of the Goals will not be achieved even by affluent nations.
ii
International Institute of Sustainable Development website – database of over 600 indicator
sets developed by different parties to measure (?) sustainable development
http://www.iisd.org/measure/compendium/about.asp
iii
I am taking the term development here to mean something beneficial. For society to
undergo social development would infer that society changed in a beneficial manner. The
question that this immediately raises is: beneficial for whom? The argument has been made
that if social development took place for the benefit of all then how could such atrocities as
th
the World Wars of the 20 century have taken place. Surely going to War represents social
un-development. The inference is that social change does take place, but that there is no on-
going trend of social development leading to improved ‘something’ for all members of society
or some undefined improvement in society itself. In the current constructs available to
sociology, it is a sticking point for the science.
iv
Ibn Khaldun (1332 – 1406) is considered to be the father of various fields in the social
sciences and politics, including sociology itself. With a classical Arabic training, he essentially
provided an intellectual bridge between the Arabic world and the emerging European
civilisation.
v
Throughout this book, wherever I make reference to Man or Men I am also referring in equal
measure to Woman and Women, unless otherwise explicitly stated.

Chapter 3 – Cities and Civilisation Page 1 of 10 10/6/10
Chapter 3 – Cities and Civilisation
Is London sustainable?
Some years ago, I was one of those busy development executives met at the beginning of the
last chapter, working for a leading urban regeneration company on London’s largest (at the
time) development project. One of the advantages of working on such a large regeneration
scheme, namely Stratford City in East London (now centre-piece of the London 2012
Olympics), is that I was invited to and had licence to attend all manner of different types of
meetings and initiatives currently on the go in the capital. One particular day in the summer
of 2004, I was invited to attend a meeting by the London Development Agency (LDA) to
discuss the organisation’s strategy for sustainable development across London. It was an
inauspicious meeting in their (then) non-descript brick offices, located just down the road from
the beautifully renovated St Katherine’s Dock. They had meeting rooms overlooking the
Thames and Tower Bridge and on this sunny morning through the middle of the two towers of
the Bridge one could just make out David Blaine prowling around his see-through glass cage
and next to it London’s glass egg, otherwise known as Ken Livingston’s headquarters (now
home to Boris), and not quite so transparent.
The other twenty-five invitees represented a wide cross-section of professionals drawn from
the London property and property consultancy scene, all of whom could claim some
relationship to, and hence knowledge of, the sustainability agenda or development or both.
After the normal niceties, queuing at the coffee table routine and our host pointing to the door
we had entered through as being the exit should we need it in case of emergencies, the
consultant chairing the meeting started with the following question: “Will London be
sustainable in 2012?” And he followed this up, as the debate commenced, with: “Will
sustainability still be an issue facing us in 2020?” I am happy to give him credit that he was
trying to be provocative, but I was aghast when the debate that followed indicated that a
sizeable proportion of those present considered that ‘Yes, London could achieve sustainable
development by 2012 or the latest of 2020’ on the premise that it wasn’t actually sustainable
now (in 2004), but could be shortly if the right policies and strategies were pursued.
I participated until I realised that I was fighting a lost cause and reverted to observing David
Blaine dangling from his crane. “How,” I wondered, “could a popular ideology, which is
already well over a decade old, be so misconstrued? And further, if the last 2,000 years of
London’s history had taken it on an unsustainable path, just because Ken and his cronies
were leading the ship it certainly wasn’t going to redeem itself inside the next 8 years.” The
visual analogy of turning an oil tanker on a six-penny came to mind.
My more considered answer to the question posed by the consultant at the LDA meeting is:
“If London has been around for over two millennia, maybe it would be worth pondering how.
© Julian Hart Draft – Feb 2010 jalhart@btinternet.com

Certainly, if it isn’t sustainable now, it won’t be in 8 or 16 years time. But if it is sustainable

now … now that’s a magical thought worth investigating further.” Though not in a glass box.
Cities
The best place to start an investigation into the true nature of sustainable development is with
cities, for no other reason than that it confirms that there must exist a theory of human
development; we just need to discover it. Every city is manifestly different, amazingly and
awe inspiringly different. Yet despite the superficial differences in form and appearance,
every city is actually the same. As French historian Fernand Braudel said: “a town is a town
wherever it is” (Braudel 1973). I hope to prove his observation.
In the introduction to his book “Cities”, John Reader asks whether cities are natural or
unnatural (Reader 2005). While cities may be man-made and in that sense artificial, are they
still a natural phenomenon? The answer has to be “yes”. It would be unscientific to consider
otherwise. Humans are not above scientific investigation. While discrete parts of cities are
actively planned (sometimes successfully, often not), cities as a whole are not generally pre-
planned (Marshall 2008) and history shows that most, if not all, cities (Brazilia and Milton
Keynes aside) were indeed fully fledged cities long before anyone started actively to try to
masterplan them.
If we look at any normally perceived natural system, an animal, a tree, an ants nest, the
human body, while each object will physically look different, we recognise that for each
identifiable system there will be a consistent and identifiable set of processes that created
that system. All oak trees are unique in structure and form. Yet all healthy oak trees grow
through exactly the same set of biochemical and biological processes: exactly the same. The
same goes for termite mounds: everyone totally different, yet every one created through the
same identical processes. If we are to consider accepting that the city as a phenomenon is a
natural system, then this identifiable object in the natural world must grow by means of an
identifiable and discrete number of underlying processes and be the same wherever … and
for that matter whenever. We can learn further from the natural world, through phenomena
such as metamorphosis, that it is those processes (whether biochemical, evolutionary or
social) which are the constant throughout the life of a living organism or ecosystem and not
i
necessarily its structure, form, appearance or even current function .
Understanding process is the key.
In each situation, to have any hope of understanding the processes and the resultant
energetic and material cycles within a structure under investigation, it is necessary to have a
good conception of the building blocks: atoms and molecules in the physical sciences,

humans in the social sciences, and how these units interact with each other. In the physical
world, process gives rise to and dissolves structure at both the microscopic and macroscopic
levels. Process represents the energy flows through a system and its relationship with
structure gives rise to growth and bifurcations in behaviour (Prigogine and Stengers 1989;
Prigogine 1997).
Others have started to investigate the importance of process to human development, for
example Jared Diamond’s series of books on the development and destruction of civilisations
(Diamond 2005). But the rest of sociology and economics seem totally blind to the concept.
In fact, my personal observation of the social sciences is that mainstream sociology and
economics are actually blind to the existence of cities, full stop, leave alone the role they play
in human development.
It will take the whole of this book to prove that cities are indeed natural systems. But if one
were to accept the hypothesis that the city is a natural system, rather than an artificial system,
then there are two instant realisations, which go against the grain of conventional wisdom in
any of the more established scientific fields which concern themselves with cities.
Firstly, and possibly most importantly, there is the realisation that it does not matter when a
city first formed, its growth processes are likely to be identical. This means that whether or
not one is considering the birth of Catal Huyuk, generally recognised to have been one of the
first ever cities, or Ancient Rome or London or Chicago, then the manner in which these cities
developed will have been identical in process terms. Very obviously the speed of
development will have differed and the form of the city and the nature of its culture will have
differed. But the process of growth that each went through will have been the same. We will
come to see that though Catal Huyuk started the same way, it never got beyond first base.
But the originating process was the same, and, if it had survived, it would have followed the
same development path that the other great cities followed … albeit possibly slower because
it was breaking new ground. The reason why Chicago grew from nothing to a million-head
city in the space of 100 years was because it was drawing on the lessons learnt from almost
10,000 years of civilisation. But the processes Chicago went through were exactly the same
as any of those cities that appeared before it. Speed of development, then, is the difference
between distant past, recent past and present, but not the process.
The second realisation, which arises from addressing the city as a natural system, is that the
process of development is not going to be just economic, or just social, or just cultural. The
process is going to involve all aspects of the human experience, including technological
development. All the above issues, which are conventionally split up into different academic
silos, will somehow interrelate; true human development is going to be a holistic process and
not just be measured by improved technological advancement and associated standard of

living. Drawing on this point, it is interesting to note how people perceive history, when you
engage them in casual discussion on the matter. Frequently I find that there is a sense that
real historical change is measured by technological development alone – that the difference
between now, in Western civilised society, and, say, Ancient Rome comes down to our
electricity, computers and washing machines. When people voice such a view, I ask them
how they would have felt if they were transported back 2,000 years and invited to attend a
gladiatorial contest at the Coliseum in Rome. How would they feel, watching people being
butchered to the applause of the crowd? I then put it to them that there is perhaps a thing
such as cultural development as well … it is just that modern social sciences have not yet
worked out what that is. We will return to this question in Chapter 14, once we have the tools
to answer it properly.
These consequences of treating the city as a natural phenomenon beg explanation. But
there is certainly none forthcoming within the existing mainstream social sciences.
For starters, the notion of social process goes against the grain of orthodox economic and
th th
sociological thought throughout the 19 and 20 centuries, especially in sociology, which has
become stuck on the concept of functionalism (and if not that then structuralism)
(Abercrombie, Hill et al. 2000). Functionalism, for the uninitiated, essentially states that social
structures, such as businesses, armies or government bureaucracies, are formed within
society in order to serve a function. If only we could work out what that function is. The
concept originated with one of the first true sociologists, August Comte, around 200 years
ago. It was then repackaged by one of the greatest sociological thinkers, Emile Durkheim,
and has since been twice reformulated again – firstly by Bronislaw Malinowski, a polish
anthropologist, and subsequently by Talcott Parsons, an American sociologist – but never
particularly successfully. A way of looking at functionalism, which pervades the historical
thinking on the subject, is to think of society in an organic sense and then see structures
within as analogous to the structures within a human body (liver, kidney, brain, etc) each
serving a function for the benefit of the whole. Structuralism ditches the functionality bit and
simply allows structures to exist for their own purpose or for the purpose of those who form
them (from the bottom up rather than from the top down). But again, it has not yet been
successfully identified what purpose the structures play for the benefit of those who have
created them. Of key importance, neither approach provides scope for change in society.
Structure exists, as observed, but there is no process to enable change to take place, either
to grow structures or destroy them. Most recently Anthony Giddens has sought to resolve
this conundrum through his Structuration Theory. But that too, at its heart, still entirely fails to
explain why structures change and evolve.
The failure to appreciate the importance of process has influenced other fields, for example
town planning and urban geography, which have sought to characterise towns and cities as

physical phenomena, each unique to its geographic location – seeing the differences between
each rather than the similarities. This has further resulted in a separation between the
physical and social sciences, which is still strongly manifest in activities such as architecture
and urban planning – something which I can vouch from personal experience – a separation
which is recognised but studiously not openly admitted by members of these professions. It
is also expressed through the oddity that mainstream sociology for most of its entire history
(with the exception of some of the very original thinkers such as Ibn Khaldun) has treated
human society as an evenly distributed carpet across the landscape and has entirely ignored,
for example, the fundamental differences in culture between villages and cities and the
obvious observation that human societies, for some still largely inexplicable reason,
aggregate around nodes (towns and cities) (Soja 2000).
This separation between social and physical has influenced recent great thinkers on cities,
from Lewis Mumford (Mumford 1961) to Peter Hall (Hall 1999), to envisage the city, town,
village primarily as either the built object alone or society alone, failing to understand truly the
relationship between the physical structure and the society, which inhabits that space, and
how the two interact. This lack of appreciation of the importance of social interaction either
social to social or social to physical directly led to the creation of the failed 1960s construction
boom, which we now have to live with. It is actually still a manifest problem today in the field
of practical urban regeneration and town planning policy formulation (Marshall 2008). In
theory this artificial separation is reducing, because of the huge intellectual influence of the
thinking of Jane Jacobs. Jacobs wrote her original ground-breaking book (Jacobs 1961) as a
means to protest against the large scale destruction of city centre communities in American
cities in the 1950s and 1960s, being razed to provide space for the concrete freeways serving
the suburbs. Unfortunately in practice it is clear that there still exists a huge gulf between the
social and the physical and a distinct lack of understanding about how the two relate.
In the field of town planning such separation between social and physical was originally
supported in an intellectual sense because of early thinking underpinning the science of
urban geography. Urban geography construed, and in some text books still does, that cities
originated around 10,000 years ago purely as habitats for populations. Gordon Childe’s
classic assumption that agriculture preceded towns and cities automatically leads students to
treat the city as simply a habitat, a nest, a purely physical object, which is then inhabited by a
population. Clearly the population has to build the habitation to live in. But this picture of the
world entirely fails to recognise the importance of that process of creating the physical form,
the cultural learning that comes from such process and then the influence that the physical
form has on society in return.
Childe had envisaged Neolithic villages growing into cities because of a surplus of food,
which enabled the population to grow. It is now known that the suggested food surpluses

ii
almost certainly never happened by chance ; villages did not naturally grow into cities simply
through food surpluses. Where such transformation and growth of the urban does happen
something else is driving it. It is not simply a growth process, but rather a development
process. A city is not just a scaled up village. This latter point we know from our day-to-day
experience of life; yet it is an empirical fact which is simply ignored by the social sciences –
cannot be explained, so best ignore it.
Seeing the city as the physical object is an approach which philosophically fails to recognise
that the real city is actually the population, the human society. That society creates and
adapts the physical environment around itself for its own purposes, no more and no less than
an ant or termite community creates its nest to live in. The population of living creatures
gives rise to the physical object that is the observable built city and not vice versa. And that
population creates the technology needed to support itself. The buildings of the city are just
one component of all those physical objects a society creates for itself, now including washing
machines, mobile phones, railway lines and chemicals (paints and drugs, etc.). It is important
to keep this logical order in mind; recognising, of course, that once the physical object is built,
its structure inevitably has repercussions on the subsequent healthy functioning of that host
society. The successful society will perpetually adapt and change the physical around itself
and continue to thrive; the successful society takes the initiative. It is the successful society
which is the living city, not the physical structure it inhabits.
Jane Jacobs’ passion for cities led her to develop her thinking beyond everyday city planning.
She subsequently wrote a book titled The Economy of Cities (Jacobs 1970), which radically
challenged the orthodoxy, which was based on Childe’s presumption of the primacy of
agriculture (that agriculture came first). Jacobs’ basic thesis was that cities originated through
trade, where trade is an activity pursued by human beings. She posited that as cities grew,
they developed agricultural technology to support their need for food, rather than the other
way round. In due course, the technology developed in the city was exported outwards to the
wider landscape and to other cities. It has taken almost 40 years for Jacobs’ ideas to become
accepted; they now form a key part of the thinking underpinning the economic sub-discipline
iii
– regional economics . Jacobs’ thinking is clearly more process oriented than that of any
th
other social thinker, with the one exception of the 19 century born Charles Horton Cooley
(who we will meet in Chapter 6 and who was subsequently entirely side-lined by the
mainstream intellectual establishment).
Jacobs’ focus was on the purely economic aspects of a city. Taking forward her original
thesis that cities originated from trade, she showed how cities continue throughout their
existence to act as problem solving systems. She developed a notion of a virtuous cycle of
economic growth until a critical threshold is reached. The latter will force a city into a different
mode of operation. For example, a city might experience an importing phase, importing all

manner of goods to improve the standard of living of the population. If exports do not keep up
with this importing activity, then the local currency will fall, making imports more costly. To
counter this, a city will need to learn to manufacture these previously imported goods itself,
given that there is now a market (a desire) for such goods within the local population. More
importantly, the city will find new ways, new materials and new services to deliver the
standard of living benefits provided by the previously imported goods and to which the
resident population had become accustomed. This will require technological development
and innovation, finding ways to achieve the same ends, as expeditiously as possible. In due
course such technological development will be exported again. Competition between cities
drives each city to perform better. This process breaks down when one city, such as Ancient
Rome, becomes all powerful as it turns from this virtuous cycle of competitive development to
a vicious cycle of destruction as it forces (through might) other cities to continue to provide
those material imports even though it cannot, itself, afford them any longer.
The process of problem solving can be seen in another area of city development. Growth of
a city inevitably creates problems. For example, the growth of London can be seen to have
generated its own environmental problems, such as the water quality problems of the early
th
Victorian age (19 century), giving rise to frequent cholera epidemics, and the air quality
th
problems of the earlier 20 century, giving rise to the infamous smogs. When problems
became severe, the city would solve them and move on.
The awkward, inconvenient truth to appreciate about the way that cities have historically
solved these types of environmental or economic problems is that such growth or
developmental limiting thresholds have only been properly dealt with when a problem has
become so severe that it has affected a sizeable proportion of the population. Almost always
the technology to solve problems has existed for some time before it has been implemented.
This was notably the case with the London smogs, where the technology to solve the smogs
existed for several decades before (Schobert 2002). But London society procrastinated and
procrastinated until eventually a Tipping Point was reached and the various pieces of
legislation were finally adopted and implemented. Overnight the smogs dissipated.
Returning to the commentary at the start of this chapter, the truly sustainable city is, and has
always been, the city which is capable of solving problems. With the huge urbanisation of the
world’s population and the inter-connectivity of that urban world, this feature of the historically
successful city must now be promoted by society as a whole. And we cannot probably wait
until the problems of climate change become so severe that they affect everyone to a level
that we are all willing to forego our perceived standard of living. We collectively need to
change before such a threshold is reached. But to-date the social sciences provide us with
no clue as to how we might collectively persuade ourselves to do this. They certainly do not

provide any understanding as to what might make any particular city, or society, a better
problem solving system. How do we self-promote cultural evolution?
The Challenge
Jane Jacobs’ suggested that it is trade that initiated the formation of the first real cities, some
10,000 years ago, and that it is trade which underpins the existence and continued survival of
each and every city. This might be unpalatable to those demonstrating against the World
Trade Organisation, but it seems to be an unavoidable truth. We will come to see that trade
is actually the physical manifestation of a social process, in fact part of the fundamental
process that kicked off civilisation. But how and why did it start? What is the full nature of
this process? What are the other processes and where, in combination, are these processes
taking us? And most importantly for sustainable development, can we influence them?
Notwithstanding the negation of social progress in sociology and failure to conceive a

successful theory of economic development within economics, there are two key observations
that have been made about civilisation which are deemed unequivocal. The observation to
have historically been made second is now best explained through Anthony Gidden’s term
Modernity (Giddens 1991) – the origin of this concept came from Auguste Comte, one of the
forefathers of sociology. It is recognised that throughout the history of civilisation there has
been a continual movement towards greater rationality, which is best exemplified by our
modern-day reliance on science. The seemingly ever-increasing activity of and reliance on
scientific investigation is simply a manifestation of Modernity: each and everyone of us is a
little bit more rational than our parents and grandparents going all the way back to our
Neolithic and earlier ancestors. This is most obviously a process in action: but what can that
process be? The second important continuous change is the increasing reliance on ‘Division
of Labour’. It is a concept, which is self-explanatory from its title, and it has been little
th
adapted since it was originally construed by William Petty in the 18 century. Again, this is
clearly a social process in action. But what is the full scope of that social process?
Any successful theory for the development of civilisation must be able to explain both
Modernity and Division of Labour. That is, perhaps, the greatest test of any potential theory,
and would make it a true scientific theory for the social sciences, worthy of being classed as a
real scientific theory by Karl Popper: a theory that could be used to make predictions, which
could be tested.
So, where to start? We begin with the building blocks, the atoms, of human society – human
beings themselves.
Abercrombie, N., S. Hill, et al. (2000). The penguin dictionary of sociology, Penguin.
Braudel, F. (1973). Capitalism and Material Life, 1400-1800, Harper Collins.

Diamond, J. (2005). Collapse: house societies choose to fail or succeed, Penguin.
Giddens, A. (1991). Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age,
Polity Press.
Hall, P. (1999). Cities in Civilisation: Culture, Innovation, and Urban Order, Phoenix Giant.
Jacobs, J. (1961). The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Vintage.
Jacobs, J. (1970). The Economy of Cities, Vintage.
Marshall, S. (2008). Cities, Design and Evolution, Routledge.
Mumford, L. (1961). The City in History: its origins, its transformations, and its projects,
Harcourt Inc.
Prigogine, I. (1997). The End of Uncertainty, Free Press.
Prigogine, I. and I. Stengers (1989). Order out of chaos: time and complexity in the physical
sciences, Bantam.
Reader, J. (2005). Cities, Vintage Books.
Schobert, H. H. (2002). Energy and Society: An Introduction, Taylor & Francis.
Soja, E. (2000). Postmetropolis: critical studies of cities and regions, Blackwell Publishing.
i
In making these sweeping statements about the reality we live in and the universal character
of all types of systems, I draw from my understanding of nature derived from the broad field of
systems thinking, systems theory, complexity and emergent behaviour. This intellectual
th th
endeavour has been very much a 20 century pursuit, with clear roots in 19 century
thermodynamics, tracing back to the philosophy of John Stuart Mill. A key focus of systems
theory and associated scientific fields can be construed to be to understand emergence:
those behaviours and characteristics of identifiably bounded systems which would not
otherwise be predicted (or be previously predicted) to arise from analytical analysis drawing
directly from the Laws of Motion and Thermodynamics. My personal influences in developing
my understanding of this field draw from the works and writings of a large host of contributors,
including (in no particular order): Erwin Schrodinger, Stuart Kauffman, Ilya Prigogine, Peter
Checkland, Alfred J Lotka, Roger Penrose, Stephen Jay Gould, Karl Popper, Ludwig von
Bertalanffy, Fritjof Capra, Howard Odum, Murray Gellman and Jay W. Forrester.
ii
One of the most authoritative perspectives on this is that of Ian Hodder, who after a
significant gap has taken over the archaeological excavations of Catal Huyuk in 1993. His
analysis has shown that the agricultural technology at Catal Huyuk could never have
supported the population. Building on this, there is a growing body of knowledge which has
suggested that the transition from Palaeolithic (hunter-gatherer) lifestyles to Neolithic

(sedentary agricultural) lifestyles was far from beneficial for people. It turns out that the
Palaeolithic peoples tended to be much better nourished and experienced longer life
expectancy than their descendants. Tilling and toiling the earth, it turns out, was a much
harder endeavour than gathering and hunting for food. References for this evidence include:
S. Boyd Eaton in The Paleolithic Prescription (1988), Richard Heinberg in The Primitivist
Critique of Civilization and Jared Diamond in The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human
Race.
iii
Edward Glaeser, Paul Romer and Robert Lucas, who are all leading thinking in urban and
regional economics, have all recognised Jane Jacobs’ critically important early contribution to
their science. Her novel intellectual approach to cities helped all of them to break away from
the orthodox equilibrium approach in mainstream economics. A good summary of the history
of regional economics, recognising Jane Jacobs input, is to be found in a paper by Ed
Glaeser – The future of urban research: nonmarket interactions (Brookings-Wharton Papers
on Urban Affairs 2000 (2000) 101 – 138).

Chapter 4 – Human Beings - Happiness Page 1 of 19 10/6/10
Chapter 4 – Human Beings - Happiness and Quality of Life
Sustainable development seems a pretty pointless ambition (or headline policy statement for
humanity) if it does not in some little, or hopefully major, way help each and every one of us
to find a bit of extra happiness. Or turning it on it’s head, we can say with a fair amount of
common sense certainty: “Sustainable development certainly ain’t gonna happen if it doesn’t
i
help people be happier.” In the words of the Dalai Lama: “the purpose of life is to be happy”
(Gyatso and Lama 2001). How can we collectively achieve this aspiration?
I am using the word ‘happiness’ in its broadest sense, in a way which is compatible with the
approach to happiness emerging out of recent thinking in psychology, in particular the
discipline of positive psychology. We will explore the latter amongst other things in this and
the next Chapters. In this respect happiness might be that momentary elated, cheerful
feeling. Or it may be contentment, or a general good and positive attitude, a sense of hope or
satisfaction, of joy or relaxedness. Or it may be earnest and intense concentration as you
undertake a task that you set for yourself, or that someone agreeable has set for you,
expectant in the sense of satisfaction you will achieve on completion, or hopeful reward for
your endeavours. It is a quality of life that you reasonably expect. Perhaps it includes that
sereneness which we see in the Dali Lama himself. All in all it represents a sense that life is,
and is headed in, a direction that you want and that the ‘world seems (for the most part) to be
on your side’. Through this Chapter we will explore the nature of happiness in much more
detail.
The human society on this planet is made up of some 6 or so billion people. Each person is
an individual and (assuming they are mentally able, which for the most part they are) each
capable of considering and feeling the question: “are you happy?” Each and every one of us
has a life to lead and ideally should be able to respond to that burning desire to find
happiness, so long, of course, that our personal actions do not detrimentally affect another or
prevent another from seeking their own form of happiness. Okay, so there are bound to be
circumstances when two people’s happiness’s are going to be mutually exclusive – to clash.
But let’s start with the ideal and consider the individual. Then, in due course, we can start
considering how to manage or prevent “happiness clashes”. As it turns out, happiness
clashes do not actually need to happen at all, but much ground needs to be covered before
we can appreciate why.
A key philosophic principle underlying the ideas presented in this book is that sustainable
development will not happen if it is counter to natural human tendencies, whatever they may
be. If, for example, sustainability requires that 6 billion people all give up (in their eyes) a bit
of happiness, then you can guarantee that at least 5.99 billion of them will say “thanks, but no
thanks, mate”, and walk in the other direction. Sustainable development, in other words, has

to be downhill, the easy way out, and entirely in tune with what people as individuals and
groups of people together would want to do in the natural course of events. It means it must
fit with that burning desire that each and every one of us has to be happy, in whichever way
we feel and perceive that may happen. But what really is this thing called happiness? What
causes it and why?
Living to ski or skiing to live?
Are you happy?
It is not the easiest of questions to answer rationally, rather more of a feel. Happiness is a
very personal thing and quite confusing. We have all experienced the bemusing situations of
doing something we thought we’d hate, and realising that we were actually enjoying ourselves
despite, and the converse. Perhaps a better way to pose the question is: “do you have a
burning desire to be doing something different to that which you are ‘bound’ to be doing
today, this week, this month, this year?” If you do, then the probability is that you are not
entirely happy, and certainly not contented, with your situation, and thence with life.
I am (or at least was, before my wife and I chose to try to have children and still while we
were trying) a self-confessed skiing addict: downhill skiing that is, the less hard work type (at
least if you take a lift to the top). I was (still am) passionate about the sport, to the extent of
being willing to put the hard work in to climb higher than the lifts go, and I led a mis-spent
twenties dedicating as much time to it as I could (though not quite as much as my wife). In
my flat in London I had filled the hallway with skiing photos taken from a calendar which had
little quotes under each one. Under one such photo, which showed a pair of skiers bouncing
down a powder field below a towering cliff face, read the caption:
“Happiness is wanting what you have, not having what you want”.
Easy for them to say, out in that fresh high altitude air, wind in the hair, gliding silently at
speed down a mountainside. Oh, the adrenalin. Oh, the pleasure. Easy to feel envious,
cooped up in a little flat in the middle of one of the largest, smoggiest urban conurbations on
the planet. But I didn’t up-sticks and move to Chamonix. I stayed in London and visited
Chamonix or Val D’Isere on holiday, whenever I could afford the time and expense to go. My
choice: yet everyday looking at those photos wondering when next I would be back in snowy
heaven, remembering that rare moment that I had a bow-wave of powder flying over my
head. Or the adrenalin of navigating down a tricky couloir, using the skills I’d learnt, over the
mis-spent years, to keep myself alive, followed by the exhilaration of reaching the bottom in
one piece, alive. Very alive.

So, what stopped me? There are those horribly practical issues, but which in reality I knew
were just short-term barriers to change. How would I earn a living? I would have to learn
French, German or Italian or wait for a US Green Card. But there are more, deeper,
disincentives. If I were to partake in this pleasurable activity day after day all winter season,
would I still enjoy it so much or just get used to it? Would it be fulfilling? If I were to teach
skiing or become a mountain guide, in order to be certain of doing it everyday (assuming no
injuries), would I find fulfilment? And what about that network of family and friends I have at
home in Blighty? How often would I see them?
Instead, I stayed and dreamt, seeking real fulfilment and day-to-day happiness in the Big
Smoke – at home, at play and at work. Now living on the edge of London, my wife and I
purchased a dinghy sailing boat – sailing being another of our joint passions – on the premise
that we could (practically, economically and socially) incorporate sailing into our daily life,
where skiing is an expensive addiction to be relished on occasion when we can afford it.
Then children arrived, our choice, and time to do the sailing has gone too: so we have made,
for the time being, our children our passion. And enjoy today.
We all make life choices of this nature and whilst some do decide that the adrenalin or other
activities will give them lasting happiness and go follow that dream, a remarkable many stay
at home and commute and live another dream. But is skiing a hedonistic pleasure or
something from which real happiness can be found?
(Clearly replace skiing with whatever your favourite pass-time or pleasure so happens to be.)
The Holy Grail … Happiness / Fulfilment / Contentment
For the sake of clarity, let’s assume happiness is our prime human motivation. It doesn’t
really matter what you call it. Economists denote it with the wonderfully functional term
‘utility’. Psychologists (at least American psychologists) often refer to the term ‘subjective
well-being’, which brings to mind people relaxing in the hot water in a natural spa or a brand
of bottled water. For the purposes here, we will rely on the good old term – ‘happiness’. And
we will assume that the Dalai Lama is correct – the purpose of life is to be happy. But, as
noted already, happiness comes in many guises. There is the short-term form of happiness,
when you win a prize, get a bonus, successfully finish a task, solve a puzzle or buy a new pair
of shiny shoes. And there are other forms of happiness, which are more difficult to pin-point
and which last much longer. For instance, feeling relaxed, not stressed. Or feeling fulfilled
because what you are doing day-to-day has meaning: for example nurturing children, caring
for an elderly relative or just helping in the community, charity work, etc. And there are those
relative forms of happiness: for example, sensing that your career is progressing, you feel

that you are climbing a ladder at work and you are being able to demonstrate your capabilities
to others. We revert, to start with, to the shorter-term form of happiness, noting however that
a key difference in these described forms of happiness is simply the duration, the time span,
over which they endure. General contentment is like being gleeful, but stretched over a long
period, and therefore much less acute. The principles discussed below thereby apply to all
the above forms of happiness, simply over different time durations.
Achieving a moment of short-term happiness, for as we shall come to see it is a fairly short-
lived emotion, can be taken to be the outcome of obtaining an objective or desire. At that
moment, you, as a mentally fit and stable human being, have no further drivers or motivators.
Thinkers on the subject of evolutionary psychology consider it to have developed as the
emotion we achieve when we attain a goal that we set ourselves – whatever that objective
might be (Grinde 2002). You have done what you set out to do and accomplished it, whether
that be successfully hunting a meal for your family, buying lunch, finishing a work project,
seducing someone, making love to your partner or completing a virtuoso musical
performance on stage (or just watching). Or, of course, finding yourself skiing in beautiful
deep soft powder. You set out to do it. You are now doing it or you have just achieved it and
you are rewarded with the psycho-physical-emotional response: happiness.
Clearly this is all influenced by your circumstances and represents the best you consider you
can get given the context of your situation. We may always hold, at the back of our minds
and occasionally at the forefront, the hope to win the lottery; but failure to do so for most of us
and for the most part has little impact on our general feeling of subjective well-being. “Oh
well, better luck next week”, we say, and get on with our lives. Besides which, we reason,
those lottery millionaires are often pretty miserable characters after six months – having
alienated all their previous friends.
So your aim in life, my aim in life and the aim of each of 6 or so billion others is to be happy in
as many of those many moments that make up life as we can. As we grow older (and if we
are of healthy mind), we learn better to manage our lives with the process of delayed
gratification (Peck 1997; Lowenstein, Read et al. 2003). We become more able to exert effort
or go through discomfort in the short-term in order to reap long-term benefits and personal
achievements, where we reason with ourselves that it is really worth it. Though people like
Helen McCarthy must wonder at times, when beset by storms in the southern seas, whether
this solo voyage this time is rationally worth it. Or your religious zealot who believes that
hard-ship in this life will be rewarded with Heaven in the next has perhaps, at least from the
perspective of most of the rest of us, taken the idea of delayed gratification a little too far.
What you actually do to make yourself happy is a rational choice on your part, which is
necessarily influenced by various factors. In the first instance the decision is based on what

you have realised and decided will make you happy, whether this is what you have been
taught and learnt through your culture and social circumstances, or what it is you have
discovered in life about yourself, which is personal to you and ‘in your genes’, so-to-speak.
Secondly, it is strongly influenced by your extant circumstances at the time and therefore
what rational objectives you set for yourself. It may be to survive to live another day, to avoid
any bullets or to find and obtain your next meal. Or it may be to earn your next million. Or to
save up to go skiing or to complete this book. Or to spend a day with your children.
All of the above, we can deduce without reference to any experts and it echoes the line of
thinking expounded by various historic existential psychologists and philosophers, from
Herodotus and Aristotle through to Locke and Rousseau (McMahon 2005). Furthermore, you
will be relieved to know that at the end of the day you are the only expert on you. What will
make you happy is entirely subjective; and hence why the psychologists use the term
‘subjective well-being’. Pry as they might, they would never be able to predict accurately
what you feel at any one moment is going to make you happy; it is subjective. Only you can
do that and even you can often get it wrong: hence the modern psychotherapist’s reliance on
therapy and counselling, where a therapist or counsellor helps a person to better understand
and ultimately help themselves.
This subjectivity has naturally, and for over 200 years now, been rather a bane to the
economists interested in Utility Theory, particularly those who would hope their science could
be empirical and distanced from its social side. In the early 1900s a rather tautological
(circular) argument and post-rationalised solution emerged, which suggested that whatever
you did do at any particular moment, must be what you believed at the time, given your
current knowledge and interpretation of your circumstances, to be a rational decision to
maximise your personal utility (Pareto 1906). And so began the materialistic process of
analysing what people put in their notional shopping basket (i.e. what you buy on a day-to-
day basis) to see what it must be that people generally decide to be their maximum utility.
The Government (in the UK and I’m guessing in many other countries too) now monitors this
to determine the Retail Price Index (i.e. inflation) on a month-by-month basis.
This is another little bit of institutionalisation of our materialistic culture. But have they got it
right? To what extent does our cultural environment direct us to make sub-optimal choices?
How much of our life is actually spent shopping as opposed to, say, socialising with friends,
working on a hobby, doing a sport or something else more fulfilling than retail therapy. The
economists do not seem to measure these other things; they certainly do not appear in this
so-called imaginary shopping basket.
The psychologists (and some forward thinking economists) are now discovering that there are
some generalised traits amongst humans, which seem to make people happier on an hour-

by-hour, day-by-day, year-on-year basis. Interestingly, it has only a small correlation with
what you decide to put in that shopping basket. So it is to the discipline of positive
psychology that we turn to take our first step to discover what sustainable development might
really mean.
Positive Psychology – the Nature of Happiness
Arguably seeking happiness, in its various guises, is the primary motivation of human
behaviour and action. Yet the mainstream science of psychology has only just, in the last
decade, started to unfathom what it is that makes human beings happy. Where economics
th
has been known as the dismal science, psychology throughout the 20 century was the
depressed science, focussing on pathologies and the nature and characteristics of mental
illnesses, rather than trying to understand what made for healthy and happy people in mind.
Like city historians and urban geographers focussing on the differences between cities, much
of psychology has focussed on the differences between people and not our similarities. For
example, what is the psychological equivalent of a healthy temperature and blood pressure?
As yet we have no real answer to this. With the publishing and associated industries
booming with books and other media on how to be happier, the real underlying science is at
last beginning to catch up. Leading thinkers in this new field, termed positive psychology (the
negative being silent for the rest of the discipline), include Martin Seligman, Mihaly
Csikszentmihalyi, Daniel Kahneman, Amos Tversky, Daniel Gilbert, David Myers, Ed Diener,
George Loewenstein, Ruut Veenhoven, David Lykken and Peter Ubel.
There are two key themes that are being researched by the positive psychologists,
sometimes in close collaboration with forward thinking economists. On the one hand, what is
the nature of happiness itself, this seemingly elusive emotion? And on the other, is the
question: what gives rise to happiness? Or, what makes a person happy?
Those researching the nature of happiness have concluded that each human being has a
natural set point, which we have inherited in part through our genes and in part from our
childhood (Ubel, Lowenstein et al. 1998; Lykken 1999; Lykken 2001; Ubel 2006). The feeling
of happiness represents a positive movement in our emotions above this set point, which can
be gained through events in the real world. The key point to note is that this movement is a
short-term state before we quite quickly revert to our set point. You win the lottery, you are
briefly happy and then revert to your set point. And, in mirror image, you lose a leg, you are
unhappy (depressed), but in due course revert to your set point (or at least most people do).
Achieving happiness can then be seen as a constant pursuit for each and every person; we
have to repeat the experience to retrieve that happy state. It is like a drug; and like a drug,
there are diminishing returns on each repetition. How a person learns to be happy is
consequently very important for everyone and everything around them because they are

likely to keep repeating the perceived successful action to obtain and recover that momentary
feeling of happiness. If it requires buying another pair of shoes or handbag, it can become
both a costly endeavour and, when scaled up to the societal level, have serious
consequences for the environment – material consumption and waste (Diener and Biswas-
Diener 2002; Diener and Seligman 2004).
We will see later on as we begin to unearth the full extent of a new theory of social interaction
that this time component is very important. It will further become evident that many of these
positive psychologists have been focussing mostly on only one element of happiness –
notably happiness that can arise from instantaneous events and in turn is a short-lived
emotion. The broader understanding of happiness, including contentment, being unstressed,
contentment, fulfilment and satisfaction, is much more difficult to examine in short-term
experiments or superficial surveys because they arise from longer-term experiences and give
rise to longer-lasting emotional states. However, whilst these other forms of happiness are
drawn out over much longer time periods (both cause and effect), this general principle of
event giving rise to happiness and such happiness then decaying over time, requiring a new
event for happiness to be regained, almost certainly still applies.
There are other characteristics to the nature of happiness, which are being unearthed through
empirical research. But the most important factor for the arguments presented later in this
book are this set point and the sense of happiness eventually reverting to a normal state.
This acts as a positive feedback influence to motivate actions in the real world. When we find
actions to be successful – sense of happiness attained – we are driven to repeat the actions
to re-attain that happy state. Again and again and again, our whole lives through.
Positive Psychology – the Content of Happiness
So, happiness is time bounded – it decays over time and events which provide happiness (in
its broadest sense) require repetition to maintain a sense of well-being. The next question is:
what are those experiences that lead us humans to feel momentarily, or more enduringly,
happy?
Ed Diener and David Myers and Martin Seligman are three of the most vocal promoters of
this new trend in psychological research. All of them unabashedly criticise our materialistic
culture as a false objective when it comes to everyday happiness for everyday people. Their
writings provide a good overview of this new area of science. From their works (Myers 1993;
Diener, Suh et al. 1999; Seligman 2002) it becomes apparent that framing the numerous
different ideas coming forward, competing for attention as to what are the specific core
attributes of happiness and what makes people happy, there are four broad categories of
experiences that make us humans happy.

Perhaps the easiest category of experiences to identify is the matter of friends and good
social relationships. It would appear that having strong positive friendships is fundamental to
happiness and well-being. Original early work (undertaken long before it was legitimate to
research happiness) was undertaken on this thesis back in 1969 by Bradburn (Bradburn
1969). All subsequent research on this matter seems to bolster and support the conclusions
of this work – that close friends and family are not only necessary for happiness, but also for
health and optimal cognitive functioning (Diener and Oishi 2005). (I think the latter is
basically psycho-babble for feeling good and ‘on form’ and not being depressed – in other
words mentally healthy.) In addition to this, more recent research indicates that it is not just
relationships that are necessary, but that these relationships must be good and positive to
remain happy with them and within them. One negative close relationship can offset in a bad
way many other good friendships and it is important, in order to maintain happiness, to keep
up and keep positive one’s close relationships. It appears that in any one particular friendship
for each occasion that an individual does something to reduce the friendship (for example a
criticism, which is taken or given badly), this must be compensated by around three
supportive actions or statements for the relationship to be sustained. The actual figure
coming out of research is 2.9 times and is known as the Gottman Ratio. No surprises there
then; you have to work at relationships to maintain your friends and support network. To
actually improve a relationship over time, clearly you have to do more than just the Gottman
Ratio; you really have to work at relationships. This is an important point that will be taken up
in later chapters in discussion on social interaction and relationships.
A second category, which is also relatively easy to define, is known by several terms, the
most used being self-actualisation or flow (Csikszentmihalyi 1991). They amount to nuances
of the same thing and remain a particular interest of Seligman and a close colleague of his
called Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (don’t ask me to pronounce it). Flow happens when you are
doing something that you love doing. It is when time passes by without you noticing. “Oh my
… it’s 3pm already,” you say, feeling that only 30 minutes had passed, when actually three
hours have gone by. Flow takes place when you are self-actualising, doing something that
for you – and it is a very personal and subjective thing whatever it is – that for you is
completely self-absorbing and which you enjoy. While you are doing it, you are happy and
not worrying about other things in life. You are existing totally in the present – no worries
about the future or the past. For me, such flow things include skiing, sailing, writing, cooking,
reading a good book and watching a good film. You will have your own flow things – maybe
listening to or playing music. But there is also a balance to flow things, you cannot absorb
yourself in flow only. There are other needs that you and I need to fulfil, which we will explore
in more depth in the next Chapter. I could not spend my whole life cooking, but cooking at
the right time and for short periods of time gives me flow. I can spend more time writing, but
not my whole time. Gardening, generally, doesn’t do it for me; but it does for many, many

others. Looking after children ‘does it’ for some, but not for others. And golf is a popular flow
activity.
Self-actualisation is usually something constructive, when you are developing a skill or using
a skill that you have learnt. More often than not it results in constructive outcomes – a well-
maintained and beautiful garden, a tasty dish to eat or, hopefully, a good book to read. Skiing
gives me flow and self-actualisation because I am forever improving my skill and applying all
that I have learnt. There are other sports that are well-known for being ‘addictive’ in this
respect, such as golf; you can never be quite good enough and there is always more you
could do to develop your skill. And it is such a buzz when all that you have learnt clicks and
you achieve that perfect round … or perfect descent. The theory of flow, if you could call it
that, is that people are happiest when they are doing something constructive or creative with
their lives, where that something is very personal and subjective to each person. Some thing,
which is personally rewarding; although, as we will come to see, there is an important social
element to this. It is largely the same conclusion that Aristotle came to some 2,000 years ago
in his original consideration of this subject in his book Ethics.
The above two categories, flow / self-actualisation being one and socialising with friends and
family the other, are uncontroversial and represent core elements of research in positive
psychology and are widely considered to be key factors that contribute towards people’s
levels of happiness. There is a third category, which appears to exist, but is not so clearly
defined; in part, this is probably because it is a very difficult subject to research. It is simply
this – being in control. Officially in psychological research parlance it is termed ‘locus of
control’; it is closely connected to the issue of self-esteem or self-respect. If you have a high
locus of control, you are likely to have higher self-esteem (though clearly locus of control
relates to an instantaneous situation, where self-esteem/self-respect are learnt characteristics
of an individual).
The evidence that I draw on to support the argument that ‘locus of control’ is an important and
discrete component of positive psychology is as follows. If you peruse the literature coming
out of the happiness industry (the countless self-help books, for example) then a key subject
they address is the ‘taking control of your own life in order to be happier’ issue. This is further
supported by the lines of the research by those such as the Daniels (Gilbert and Kahneman)
where it is clear that people feel happier subsequent to perceived positive events (i.e. events
which they might wish to happen) (Kahneman and Tversky 1979; Gilbert 2006). There is also
another whole field of research in psychology on the subject of resilience and the ability to
bounce back after adversity (the opposite to Seligman’s learnt helplessness research); the
latter relates strongly to a person’s self-respect or self-esteem. These all point to a significant
need for individuals to have control of their life in order to genuinely feel happy.

What is meant by ‘being in control’ and its relationship with level of happiness? It is the
extent to which circumstances and events (whether social or physical) in the outside world
meet a person’s reasonable expectations of what could happen, preferably for their personal
benefit. I don’t expect to win the lottery, but I do expect my boiler to work. I do expect trains
to run reasonably on time. I do expect that if I work hard, I will be recompensed by a pay rise.
I don’t expect to receive a pay-rise above my peers unless I have earned it. If, smiling, I say
“hello” to someone, I expect them to respond in-kind. And so forth. Rationally, given my
experience of life, I have developed expectations on outcomes, which are both in my control
and outside of my control. If I am entirely in control of the situation, then presumably I can
dictate the outcome according to my expectations, and if it works in the way I want it to, then I
will presumably be happy. If I am not in control, then I am at the whim of my environment and
context. When that environment turns to my benefit (in other words changes in a direction
that I would choose to make it, if I were in control) I am happier, than when it does not.
The reason why control of our environment (social and physical) and thence our personal
destiny might be important is highlighted from a subtly different scientific field. One can find
direct reference to this element of our experience by scientists such as Heylighen (Heylighen
1992), who seems to straddle several different scientific silos, notably cybernetics,
psychology and evolution theory. The notion Heylighen and colleagues put forward is that
from an evolutionary perspective, and treating people as living systems, fitness is achieved
through control of our environment – ‘the capacity to counteract deviations from the goal state
in which the system can optimally survive’ (fantastic babble, but hopefully you understand it).
What cyberneticists appear to be saying is that being evolved biological entities we are
programmed to try and take control of our environment and there is an inevitable feedback
loop such that we are going to feel good if things go our way and not good if they don’t.
Moving onto a fourth category of happiness research, the empirical findings of another
member of the happy club (this time for once not an American) are not unsurprising. For the
last 30 years Ruut Veenhoven, a professor in sociology, has been collecting survey
information on subjective well-being across 140 countries. He now has a World Database of
Happiness. It seems rather ironic that such a database should be located in an
unprepossessing, grey suburb of Rotterdam; the Erasmus University is a Dutch equivalent of
Brunel University, but with taller buildings. Whilst Rotterdam has worked hard to regenerate
itself in recent years, I cannot forget my father’s oft used phrase, when he had to travel there
on business: “Second prize would have been two trips!”.
What Veenhoven has shown (Veenhoven 1991) is that despite the substantial economic
growth in the richer countries (say US, Canada, Western Europe and Japan) over the last 30
years, there has not been a consequent rise in happiness amongst their populations. There
is furthermore no consistency between levels of GDP per capita and levels of well-being. For

example, several Eastern European countries (and certainly during Soviet times) have much
lower satisfaction levels than would be expected if there were a direct correlate between
standard of living and happiness. In the meantime countries such as Mexico exhibit much
higher levels of happiness in the population than might otherwise be predicted. The
countries, which consistently display highest levels of happiness, are Switzerland and the
Scandinavian countries (despite the long winters), which Veenhoven attributes to be related
to the higher levels of democratic participation in these countries – the more frequent
referenda and regionalisation or localisation of government. We will hopefully come to
appreciate why this might be so in later chapters; they relate to the locus of control issues
discussed above.
Another of the very interesting conclusions which Veenhoven has deduced from his database
is that happiness does correlate with standard of living and income up to a certain level. It is
apparent that, once you (as a human) are sure, on a day-to-day basis, to be able to eat and
drink and have a secure house to go home to, there is no further correlation between your
material wealth and your happiness. So, this represents the forth discrete area, which has an
important influence on our happiness levels: fulfilment of our immediate material needs.
Veenhoven’s observations explain why Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill in formulating
Utility Theory 200 years ago, assumed that optimal utility (or happiness) for an individual was
directly correlated to wealth. In early Victorian England, extreme poverty was widespread.
Bentham and Mill saw a large number of people below this line (below which happiness
correlates directly with wealth) and to them it quite reasonably seemed that happiness did
correlate strongly with wealth. Note also that our societies manifested much clearer and
steeper social hierarchies in those days, where wealth and social status were strongly linked.
So above this notional poverty line, the observation by Bradburn concerning a correlation
between happiness and social status would have been more marked, thereby appearing to
further support Bentham and Mill’s deductions in Utility Theory. In respect of satisfaction of
material needs, Karl Marx in turn used this observation to assume that the most important
determinant of social life is the work people do, especially where this results in acquisition of
sufficient money to purchase the basic necessities of life – food, clothing and shelter. This is
why Marx is sometimes referred to as a materialist philosopher.
Thinking about Veenhoven’s conclusions, here at last we might have a measurable and
objective poverty line – that nebulous thing that until now politicians have endlessly talked
about to justify their policies but have always seemed coy to be able to define with anything
more than blatant subjective views: does poverty or does poverty not correlate to owning a
colour television? I know people who choose not to own a television, which infers that
television ownership is certainly not a poverty issue even if some politicians might try to
persuade you otherwise.

Drawing all the above together, what is it that helps us be happy, or to have a good quality of
life? This new discipline of positive psychology can be seen to be split into four identifiable
fields of activity: (1) understanding the relationship between material consumption and
happiness, (2) the role that families and friends play in our mental health and happiness, (3)
the concept of locus of control and self-respect (control over one’s destiny), and (4) flow,
otherwise known as self-actualisation.
Humanistic Psychology
These four major themes evident within positive psychology research have appeared before.
Back in the 1960s, there was a break away branch of mainstream psychology, which in time
has become known as humanistic psychology. The leaders of this field of investigation had
very similar objectives to those now pursued by the positive psychologists. But humanistic
psychology was ignored or discredited by mainstream psychology as not being sufficiently
rigorous in scientific terms; a criticism which has been taken on board by modern positive
psychologists to ensure the new discipline does not suffer the same fate. The most notorious
founder of this field of work was Abraham Maslow, who in turn developed a theory known as
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Human Needs (Maslow 1968). This theory is set out in Maslow’s
book, which as noted at the beginning was one of the original concepts that gave me my
initial intuition for the theory of social interaction.
Maslow’s Hierarchy comprises five fundamental Human Needs that he saw as being essential
for an individual human being to be happy and healthy (both in mind and body). Four out of
five of these Needs are essentially identical to the core areas of investigation by the positive
psychologists. The first Need identified by Maslow was the Need for a basic level of material
satisfaction – notably air, nutrients, food and water being the most important elements. The
second Need was for safety and security, which is overtly absent from core research in
positive psychology, though it is recognised elsewhere as an essential Need (Burton 1990;
Max Neef 1991). A possible explanation of the omission of safety and security from core
research in positive psychology relates to the comment made earlier about mainstream
psychology and the historic tendency to focus on pathologies and not healthy, happy
individuals. Hence there has generally been more focus on stress and associated ailments
arising from absence of safety and security than on the sense of self-assuredness and
relaxedness from feeling safe and secure. Or perhaps, an alternative hypothesis, modern
civilised society is sufficiently good at providing, for the most part for most people, safety and
security that we take it too much for granted. Further explanation will become apparent as we
investigate in Chapter 8 just how society helps us satisfy this Need.
The third Need was for a positive social environment with family and friends. We will come to
see in Chapter 9 that what Maslow was observing was a superficial aspect of the real

underlying Need for health and reproduction. For reasons, which will become apparent, a key
way in which we seek to satisfy these basic biological needs is through being friendly and
social. Maslow had noted the expression of how we act to satisfy the Need and not the Need
itself; all will be fully explained in subsequent chapters. The fourth Need was for self-esteem,
which as already mentioned is strongly linked to the matter of locus of control. And the fifth
Need was self-actualisation. In regard to both these higher Needs, we will explore later how
these operate, how we help each other satisfy them and the implications for our societies and
cultures. It is through this that full appreciation will emerge as to why Maslow’s original
observations dovetail neatly with modern research in the disciplines of positive and social
psychology.
Noting that Maslow may have misinterpreted the Level 3 Need (Social Needs), there is
another apparent, unexplained inconsistency in his Hierarchy. Level 1 (Material) and Level 2
(Safety and Security) most explicitly apply to the physical side of our nature. They are very
physical Needs. However, by Level 4 (Self-Respect) and Level 5 (Self-Actualisation) the
Needs are clearly more mental in character. This made me wonder: is it more consistent to
see each Need as having different components (physical and mental)? The answer to this
question will be addressed in the next chapter (Chapter 5).
Originally Maslow put these five Needs into a steep hierarchy, with the suggestion that we, as
humans, do not pursue a higher Need until the Need below is fully satisfied. After criticism
Maslow downplayed the Hierarchy and accepted a significant degree of overlap between
Needs: just because I am momentarily hungry or thirsty, I do not immediately ignore my
family and friends (rather, I probably combine the two and ask whether anyone else wants to
join me in a drink or meal).
While Maslow’s Hierarchy of Human Needs has been embraced enthusiastically by business
schools all over the world (it is core syllabus for almost every MBA), it has been largely
discredited and ignored by the core social sciences, such as sociology. As a generalisation,
the social scientists’ view is that as a model Maslow’s idea is overly focussed on the
individual and could therefore not have any role in understanding social issues and wider
society. In my personal view, which I hope to prove, this is an error because a very
compelling framework can indeed be developed from Maslow’s Hierarchy, using the five
identified Needs as the underlying drivers of those social processes that we are looking for:
the processes which have created cities and thence civilisation.
Needs and Wants
Maslow identified an underlying driver of human action and behaviour – a set of fundamental
Needs that we seek to satisfy. But in day-to-day life, these underlying real Needs become

interpreted into preferred Wants. Most simply, if I Need a drink, I have a wide choice on how
to satisfy that Need and I mentally convert the real Need into a Want. Do I Want a cup of tea,
a cup of coffee, a lemonade, a cold beer, or what? Any of these could assuage my thirst, but
I usually decide upon a particular type of drink at a discrete moment in time as the one I Want
and would prefer to fulfil this Need.
How we learn to interpret Needs into Wants is very much informed by our up-bringing. If I
were to grow up in China, I would develop a very different set of Wants to those that I would
learn in the United States or Africa. These Wants drive our actions. Furthermore, we learn
through childhood how to prioritise our Needs. We may incorrectly learn, for example, that
material wealth is the best and only route to achieve happiness (this can easily happen
through parents not giving a child time and attention and instead inundate that child with toys,
food and gifts). That young person might then spend the rest of their lives feeling a little
hollow, not knowing actually how to resolve this. Being overly focussed on material
satisfaction, they might addictively consume ever-greater quantities of materials (food, drink,
drugs, experiences) in a desperate search to be happier, all the while not appreciating that
what they really lacked were some friends or constructive hobbies (other than retail therapy)
and positive, long-lasting interactions with other people.
People can also become confused and mentally attach the wrong need fulfillers to the wrong
needs. For example, Maslow himself thought that sex was a Level 1 Material Need, when it
can be shown that it is actually a Level 3 Belonging Need (see Chapter 9); once we
understand Maslow’s error on this matter, the true nature of Maslow’s Level 3 Need starts to
reveal itself.
Human beings have not fundamentally changed as biological organisms since the first homo
sapiens trod this earth, some 70,000 to 170,000 years ago. Our basic Needs today are the
same as our most ancient ancestors (Seabright 2004). We can have no expectation of
changing those Needs. But we can most definitely change how those underlying Needs are
interpreted into Wants and how we each choose to prioritise the satisfaction of those Needs.
As we explore in later chapters how we collaborate to satisfy our personal Needs, all these
day-to-day life experiences and choices (for instance, to seek consolation in retail therapy or
through a drink with a dear friend) will become better understood.
How Many Needs Do We Need?
In any framework that draws on the concept of Needs, care has to be taken not to
accidentally extend into the world of Wants. It is, however, very easy to be drawn into
interpreting things that we have come to Want as being necessary. That beer beckons!

According to Maslow there were five fundamentally different types of Need. Others, who
have ventured into this subject area, have suggested that there are more fundamental Needs
to those envisaged by Maslow. Both Manfred Maxneef (Max Neef 1991) and John Burton
(Burton 1990), who have both developed theories based on the Needs hypothesis, have
added to Maslow’s five basic Needs: they have both added to Maslow’s original suggestion to
create Needs frameworks comprising nine different basis Needs. These differ slightly
between their two frameworks. But have they both strayed into the world of Wants?
Maxneef, for example, includes Leisure as a fundamental Need. It is certainly nice to have.
But is it a Need?
This book builds upon Maslow’s Needs hypothesis and develops from it a new general theory
for the social sciences. Out of the concept of Needs, it is possible to formulate a theory of
human development. But it will become apparent as the book proceeds that if, accidentally,
any of the identified core Needs were actually to be Wants, the outcome would be vastly
different and likely to be totally wrong. A theory of human development must be applicable to
all human societies – at any time and in any place. This means that it must build upon those
absolutes, which are fundamental to everything and anything human. Satisfying thirst with
beer is not, because there are many other ways to achieve the same end – tea, coffee, wine,
a spritzer or whatever. The underlying Need to quench thirst is, however, an absolute. In fact
it is an inherent requirement of all land living organisms; or at least those which are water
based, which covers all those on Planet Earth.
To build a robust framework on Needs requires identification of those Needs which are an
absolute for the human condition and applicable to every human culture past, present and
future. Contrastingly, Wants are relative and qualitatively vary from culture to culture. The
consequence is that any framework of this nature which accidentally errs into relying on
Wants will immediately lose its explanatory nature.
For me, Maslow’s Hierarchy of Human Needs appears about as reduced a set of Needs as is
probably possible. There is no scope within it for accidentally incorporating Wants. At this
stage, you (the reader) might have reservations about self-esteem and self-actualisation, but
hopefully once you come to appreciate how these manifest themselves in the social context, it
will become apparent that they are essential Needs. Furthermore, with a minor adaptation of
Maslow’s Belonging Need, all Maslow’s Needs can be understood from a living systems
perspective when his Hierarchy is generalised in energy terms for living organisms (see
Chapter 6). In contrast, both Max Neef’s nine Needs and Burton’s slightly different nine
Needs do not stand the same scrutiny. In fact, the approach taken in the theory presented in
this book automatically incorporates both Maxneef’s and Burton’s additional Needs without
actually extending the number of basic Needs above five.

Another way to confirm that Maslow’s set of Needs is the reduced absolute set is by way of
iteration. Once the method taken in this book becomes clear, in terms of extending the
Needs hypothesis into the social world, then one can assess any other potential Needs to see
whether they too might represent drivers of social interaction between humans. If they do
not, then they cannot represent an underlying Need. Or, alternatively, do the five suggested
Needs of Maslow lead to a framework that encompasses our whole lived and observed
experience? Again, if it does not, then by deduction there are Needs that we have missed
out. In writing this book, I welcome debate on this matter. For the moment, I rely on the
genius of Maslow; the basic five seem to provide a fairly comprehensive explanation for
society and civilisation. Or at the very least a good starting point for exploring a new possible
construct for the social sciences.
Can Human Needs Be Fully Satiated?
Maslow originally suggested a steep Hierarchy where an individual would not worry, for
example, about Safety and Security Needs (Level 2) until basic Material Needs (Level 1) were
fully satiated. Does this premise stand scrutiny?
Probably the best way to answer this question is through a stark comparison. Consider, for
example, a rich celebrity residing in a Five Star Hotel in London. Compare this character to
the homeless person, who so happens to be sleeping in the alcove of one of the back doors
to the hotel. Clearly the standard of living of the celebrity far exceeds that of the homeless
person. But is his quality of life any better? To what extent are his Needs being better met?
Are all his Needs being satisfied to a higher degree? Is the celebrity happier than his
homeless counterpart?
Let’s take a look at the circumstances of the homeless person. Not the situation that any of
us would aspire to, but how bad is it? Let us say that he, or she, has just been to the soup
kitchen and has had a fill of food and liquid. There may be starving people in this world, but
th
I’ve never seen one on the streets of late 20 century London (hungry, yes, but not starving).
Our homeless person has found a roof over his/her head (of sorts) and has a sleeping bag
and some cardboard. Not the best of homes, but he or she can be quite certain to survive the
night (albeit perhaps disturbed by the occasional drunken passer-by, and possibly a little
chilly in winter). Whilst their situation is certainly not to be envied, in reality it is much, much
better than many currently endured elsewhere in the world and in London in previous times in
history. Whilst the degree to which the homeless person’s material needs are being met fall
significantly short of the level of material satisfaction experienced by the celebrity within the
hotel, our example homeless person’s basic material needs are actually still being met. It is
just a matter of degree. Yet the celebrity would certainly not choose to swap conditions.

From his perspective, all those aspects of his current circumstances (the best service the
hotel can provide) are quite necessary to satisfy him.
The simple conclusion from this is that, contrary to Maslow’s presumption, there is actually no
point at which we can state our Material Needs are being fully satisfied. The celebrity, while
living the life of luxury, may still be ruing that he didn’t book himself into one of those new
fangled Six Star Hotel’s down the road, where your needs (or rather wants) really are well
met. Or he or she may be feeling lonely. The Need for food and water and basic protection
from the elements is absolute. But beyond a minimal degree required to ensure existence
into another day (or until the next meal), the perceived degree to which a Need is satisfied
becomes entirely relative.
In addition one can easily concoct circumstances where the homeless person could be found
to be much happier than the celebrity customer. Perhaps the celebrity has recently received
death threats and breaks into a cold sweat every time he hears footsteps in the corridor.
Meanwhile the homeless person might be confident from experience that he will not be
ousted from this particular doorway and he knows the soup kitchen will open again in the
morning to provide his next meal. It might not appear so from simple observation, but our
homeless person could actually be far more secure than the celebrity. He might even have a
much stronger cohort of friends and social support network than that of the rich kid indoors.
This example indicates that the criticisms of Maslow’s steep hierarchy were well placed. It is
actually not possible to fully satisfy a Need within a social context where others may be seen
to ‘have it better’. We each must choose a point at which we are happy, or reasonably happy.
But there must still be a degree of hierarchy; in the concentration camp, when food was at its
scarcest, then the prisoners mind dwelt on nothing else.
There are clearly also other factors which will influence the degree to which we feel that
different Needs are being satisfied. Situation and circumstances will have a strong bearing
on the matter. Further, a little knowledge is dangerous. Your cavemen would have been quite
satisfied having a fire at the entrance to their cave to ward off the odd bear or sabre tooth
tiger. In contrast, the modern civilised man might be more worried about the sound operation
of a global safety net to deflect stray meteors. The Need is still the same. But interpretation
into Wants and the judgement of what will satisfy that Need varies hugely from culture to
culture and from one age of civilisation to another.
From the Individual to the Social
The intuition that I made about 12 years ago, when I first read Maslow’s Hierarchy of Human
Needs, was simply this. If we each have a defined set of fundamental and absolute Needs,

the satisfaction of which enables us to be happy, and if most of us most of the time live our
lives in social circumstances with other people, then perhaps we actually need each other to
satisfy all our basic Needs. Taken at face value, this is obviously the case in respect of the
Level 3 Belonging Needs, often referred to as Social Needs. But what about the other four
Needs? Perhaps we need each other to enable satisfaction of all our Needs. And, if that
were the case, what would it lead to?
To deduce whether this intuition had any merit, I next turned to the subject of social
psychology to learn what our current science has to say about the individual in a social
context.
Bradburn, N. (1969). The Structure of Psychological Well-being. Chicago, Aldine.
Burton, J. (1990). Conflict: Resolution and Prevention, St Martin's Press.
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Lykken, D. (2001). "Happiness: The Nature and Nurture of Joy and Contentment." Journal of
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Max Neef, M. (1991). Human Scale Development. New York and London, Apex Press.
McMahon, D. (2005). Happiness: A History, Atlantic Press Monthly.
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Seligman, M. (2002). Authentic Happiness, Free Press.
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i
“I believe that the purpose of life is to be happy. From the moment of birth, every human
being wants happiness and does not want suffering. Neither social conditioning nor education
nor ideology affect this. From the very core of our being, we simply desire contentment. I don't
know whether the universe, with its countless galaxies, stars and planets, has a deeper
meaning or not, but at the very least, it is clear that we humans who live on this earth face the
task of making a happy life for ourselves. Therefore, it is important to discover what will bring
about the greatest degree of happiness.” Compassion and the Individual by H.H. the
Fourteenth Dalai Lama. “The Compassionate Life” by Tenzin Gyatso and His Holiness the
Dalai Lama, Wisdom Publications (2001).

Chapter 5 – Social Interactions Page 1 of 19 10/6/10
Chapter 5 - Social Interactions
"Society is merely the name for a number of individuals, connected by interaction"

(Georg, Simmel, Fundamental Problems of Sociology)
How free do you feel? How free are you both in your everyday life and in the decisions you
make about the future? We speak readily about freedoms and living in a free society. But
how really free are you to do what you please, when you want, how you like?
For lunch you can choose which shop or café to visit to buy some food or eat at home or have
a picnic. You are free to choose to eat raspberries or strawberries or no fruit at all, as
healthily or unhealthily as you please. But lunch itself for much of the employed world, for five
days out of seven, most weeks of the year, can only take place over a limited time bounded
period at approximately the middle of the working day. Even with flexitime, there still tends to
be a requirement to lunch for a minimum of half-an-hour between noon and 2pm. When
alone, you can clearly do as you please. But how often are you totally alone, and how
constrained are your actions in the company of others? Once you start to ponder the matter
in depth, it quickly becomes apparent that our behaviours, for much of the waking day, are
highly constrained, bound or obligated, or habituated in terms of the way you tend respond to
other people’s actions. If you are so fully bound, does that mean you are still an individual
with freedom? Or perhaps the words ‘freedom’ and ‘individuality’ have become confused.
You are clearly an individual, with your own thinking brain and own physical body, which
together experience the world around you. But that individual can choose to act freely or it
can choose to be (or learns to enact the role of) a social animal and be part of the crowd,
conceding to those daily constraints, binds and obligations, habits, customs and manners.
This uncertainty on quite how individual and free we are is naturally reflected in the social
sciences. If you were to make an analogy between the different scientific disciplines and
geological tectonic plates, then social psychology, at the heart of the social sciences, would
lie along one of the most active seismic zones. Underlying the science of social psychology
is one of the biggest philosophical questions about the human experience. The question is
this: to what extent are we humans first and foremost individuals, who choose to socialise
(and live by all those constraints, binds and obligations), verses social animals, who cannot
exist without (or cannot resist) socialising and in some way conforming? This question may
seem trite and far removed from any practical theory on sustainable development, but it is in
fact essential for an understanding of what motivates our behaviour and how that behaviour
across everyone might change to achieve a more sustainable future for us all. Social
psychology does not by any means have an answer to this yet. But we need to work with
what is thought and known to-date.

As can be expected for a scientific discipline, which lies along a ‘fault line’, the subject elicits
some very strong views. The depth to which people are willing to side with one side or the
other can be seen through our lived history of the last 200 years: it relates to the on-going
debate between left and right, communism and capitalism, socialism and liberalism.
Unfortunately many of these political arguments represent a corruption of the real
philosophical question as they have converted an argument about the degree to which you as
an individual need to be social and are in turn influenced by your social setting into a debate
over the degree to which the state (note, not society) should govern your behaviour. As we
will come eventually to see, through the combined set of Social Processes described in
Chapters 7 to 11, this distortion is a gross simplification of the real experience of a human
individual living in a civilised human society. In due course, through coming to understand
the operation of those Social Processes, it becomes quite explicable why that distortion has
arisen.
On one side of this fault line we have some of the major players of the Enlightenment
including Rene Descartes, Benedict de Spinoza, John Locke, David Hume, Jean-Jacques
Rousseau and Immanuel Kant. All the above took the position of the paramount nature of the
ego, which perhaps drew from the Christian legacy and belief in the freedom of the individual
to choose to do good or to sin. But the thesis presented here does not in the end agree with
the notion developed by some of the above thinkers that people have to enter into a social
contract which forces them to lose their freedoms in order to enable society to operate. For
example, Rousseau, an individual who lived very much on the edge of society for much of his
life, took this notion of the social contract further – that we each as individuals have to make a
significant compromise to participate in civilised society (Rousseau 1968). If you read about
Rousseau’s up-bringing and life experiences, from orphanage to exile, his philosophic project
is quite understandable.
The problem with the social contract argument is that it simply does not stack up: why, as
John Reader questioned in his book on Cities (Reader 2005), would people flock to cities
i
throughout history to give up something? Why, for that matter, would cities ever form in the
first place? (A question posed, but not entirely satisfactorily answered, by Ed Soja, a leading
current city scholar (Soja 2000)). We will come to see through the framework of Social
Processes that it is in fact the civilised society formed within cities, which gives us freedom in
the first place. Whilst we may have subsequently to make compromises to live trustworthily
and amicably together, in a healthy and sustainable society these conciliations are never
greater than the original gift of liberty. We will come to see later that there are social
structures (such as authoritarian state bureaucracies), which can come to inhabit civilised
society and which can compromise an individual’s freedom; it was against these that
Rousseau was so vocally riling.

That the individual is the first and foremost essence of the human experience has had a great
deal of influence in the formation of subsequent societies since the Enlightenment,
particularly the United States with various clauses on this matter in its constitution.
International law on human rights also ultimately derives from the philosophical standpoint of
setting the individual apart from society. Within both the American constitution and the
modern thinking on human rights, there is an unspoken assumption: that the needs of the
individual and the needs of society are at odds. This thinking can be traced back to
Rousseau and his colleagues and largely represents a counter-play against the opinionists,
who subsequently emerged on the other side.
Karl Marx started to redress the balance of this tug-of-war across the notional fault line.
Marx’s philosophical project was not, however, focussed specifically on this subject. Marx
took the position that it was not Man against society, but Man against Man at different levels
within society – the essence of his Conflict Theory. He foresaw a utopia where society as a
whole operated to the benefit of Man, where such conflict had been eradicated. But he was
famously vague as to how this utopia might operate. His thinking, however, became
transposed into a dogma, which sought a system where the needs of society took
precedence over the needs of the individual. Yet, ironically, communism, Marxism, socialism,
fascism or whatever you want to call them still effectively assume Rousseau’s conclusion –
that the needs of society are inevitably at odds with the needs of the individual. The latter
social ideologies and consequent states simply presume that the individual should
compromise for the sake of society and not the other way round.
But what if this whole conjecture is wrong? What if the needs of society and the needs of the
individual have, for the most part, been aligned (or rather continually aligning) throughout
much of the history of civilisation? And could it be that it is only as they align that we
collectively, that is our society at large, experience this thing called ‘development’. But before
we can start to understand better how and why this might be, it is necessary to delve into the
discipline of social psychology to better comprehend the relationship between the individual
and the society within which he or she lives out his or her life.
Social Psychology – Phase 1
The most influential early thinker, who informed the origins of the science of social
psychology, was George Herbert Mead. He was an American philosopher, sociologist and
psychologist, born in 1863 in South Hadley, Massachusetts and lived in a time when it was
still acceptable (or, as will become appreciated in Chapter 10, still possible) to be a polymath.
Perhaps one of the most intriguing things about Mead, given the respect and status he is now
given, is that he neither finished his Harvard dissertation nor completed a single book. In fact
he died at 68 of a heart attack while completing his first ever book manuscript. But he left a

legacy for his students and colleagues to pick up and take forward, such that since his death
in 1931 a Charles Morris has managed to put together five books from Mead’s unpublished
scripts and stenograph records of his lectures. There is an on-going Mead Project at the
Brock University in Ontario (accessible on the internet) which intends eventually to publish all
of Mead’s 80-odd remaining unpublished writings (Mead Project).
Mead’ s theory of how the mind and self emerge from the social process of communication by
signs founded the symbolic interactionist school of sociology and social psychology.
Symbolic interactionism has been defined by Herbert Blumer, a student of Mead, as: “people
act toward things based on the meaning those things have for them, where these meanings
are derived from social interaction and modified through interpretation” (Blumer 1962).
Mead argued the view that the individual is a product of society, the self arising out of the
social experience as an object of socially symbolic gestures and interactions. Mead
suggested that humans are unique in taking the perspective of other actors towards objects,
but that this is what enables complex human society and subtle coordination (Mead 1938).
For example, in the social act of economic exchange, both buyer and seller must take each
other’s perspectives towards the object being exchanged. The seller must recognise the
value for the buyer, while the buyer must recognise the desirability of money for the seller.
Only with this mutual perspective taking can the economic exchange occur. For Mead,
existence in community comes before individual consciousness. First one must participate in
the different social interactions within society and only subsequently can one use that
experience to take the perspective of others and thus become truly self-conscious: in other
words, a child’s identity is forged by its cultural and social context.
Mead’s perspective, that the social animal side of us takes precedence over the individual, is
supported by the thinking of two other important contributors to sociology and psychology.
One is Emile Durkheim, who set himself the task of founding sociology as a separate
scientific discipline. Durkheim developed the notion of the collective consciousness of a
society, which dictates people’s behaviour (Durkheim 1893; Durkheim 1895): that collective
consciousness comprises all the social facts that make up our culture (we will return to these
concepts later in this chapter). Durkheim’s viewpoint gained strong support with
anthropologists studying primitive societies, where this notion of collective consciousness
driving the behaviour of individuals seems to be much more apparent than in civilised society
(for reasons which will become very apparent). The other character, who has supported the
notion of the social animal taking priority over the individual, is John B. Watson, who founded
the psychological school of behaviourism (remember Pavlov’s dog). He is particularly known
for having claimed that he could take any healthy infant and, by applying behavioral
techniques, create whatever kind of person he desired (Watson 1930): again, cultural and
social setting defining identity of the child.

Drawing from Mead’s, Durkheim’s and Watson’s thinking and experiments, it can be
construed that as adults we feel that we have control of ourselves and our destiny and think
we make judgements freely, forgetting that our values and how we interpret the symbols and
actions of others around us have been learnt through our early conditioning. The difference
between Watson and Durkheim is that Watson thought of individuals as being moulded by
other individuals, whereas Durkheim saw an individual moulded by the collective
consciousness of society itself. With modern television, radio and internet, Durkheim’s views
may be becoming more important. But for our purposes here it matters little how it initially
takes place, these are all nuances on the same viewpoint – that we are social animals first
and foremost and only then are we self-conscious individuals.
Social Psychology – Phase 2
th
Social psychology of the latter half of the 20 century has been strongly guided by the now
classic definition given to the discipline by Gordon Allport in the 1950s: “social psychology is
an attempt to understand and explain how the thought, feeling and behaviour of individuals is
influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied presence of others” (Hogg and Vaughan 2005).
As an aside, Allport was a forerunner who provided a strong influence to Abraham Maslow
and colleagues to develop the discipline of humanistic psychology, focussed on the cognitive
mind. With the emergence of positive psychology as a discrete sub-discipline of psychology,
it is clear that there are strong and growing links between social psychology and positive
psychology because, as I have already alluded, the presence of other people is recognised to
be an important contributor to people’s happiness. This is most notable in respect of
Maslow’s need of belongingness: but we will come to see that the same applies to all our
Needs.
Building on Allport’s definition, much experimental work in social psychology over the last 50
years has tended to focus on the question: what is it that the individual might do in a social
situation which is different to what he or she might do if alone? This emphasis on the
individual has opened up the discipline to criticism from the more social thinking academics
and clearly stands in marked contrast to Mead and the other early thinkers. In this respect,
social psychology, in its current form and given most of the recent findings in this area of
science, might be better described as group behaviour. The experimental work does not
really extend into full sociology because it all focuses on the instant and does not address the
development of relationships between people – the formation of social bonds. Clearly study
of the latter would require longitudinal studies (experiments carried out over long time
periods) where most research budgets require faster results and force researchers instead to
focus on latitudinal (effectively instantaneous) experiments. Though the empirical research of

the psychologists has dominated this discipline, the experimental results do still provide some
assistance with understanding a relevant part of the human experience.
The first conundrum to consider is the relationship between belief (or attitude), what you as
an individual know and believe about something, and your behaviour. Prior to any findings
from empirical research, the original assumption, and if you are from Western society
probably the one which you yourself would take in first instance given the influence of
Christianity and the Enlightenment thinkers, is that belief (or attitude) drives behaviour: what
you know and believe about the world will inform how you behave. The individual ego and
cognitive mind is pre-eminent and dictates our actions.
Social psychological research indicates that the relationship between attitude and behaviour
is not nearly so clear-cut as one might presume. Behaviour, in fact, has a profound influence
on attitude. What has been discovered is that when you as an individual are unsure of what
you believe in (which is oft the case when you are a kid), or when you have no strong or firm
opinions about something, then it is likely that you will take your behavioural cue from the
actions of others. You will emulate. You will then most likely infer your own beliefs and
attitudes from your own actions. “If I acted in that way, then that is what I must believe”, you
reason. For example, imagine you had some new neighbours who asked, politely, to borrow
something small (say, a tea-bag). In lending them something and thereby helping them, you
reason to yourself that you were nice to them so you presumably must like them. This has
been termed Self-Perception Theory (Myers 2000): not “I think therefore I am”, but “I perceive
myself and deduce my attitude and beliefs from what I have done and how I have behaved”.
(Professional marketers and salesmen then take advantage of this by following up and asking
for incrementally bigger things, such as donations to a charity or a political party.)
Closely correlated to Self-Perception Theory is the concept of Cognitive Dissonance Theory

(Myers 2000), which points to the observation that in social contexts people will often act in a
different way to the way they predict they would and counter to what they believe (even if that
belief is strong and well-defined). The title of the theory points to the observation that when
people disagree with each other they tend to perceive or feel a need to find an agreed
solution: to appease the perceived dissonance. This will lead people to avoid dissonance in
the first place and “go with the crowd” or just whoever else is present, regardless of the
individual’s prior held beliefs and knowledge. For example having met someone and
deduced that you liked them, if in a future encounter you were in the presence of other people
who openly treated this same person badly, then the probability is you would act with the
crowd, or at the very least remain silent. But in acting with the crowd (or at the least not
endeavoured to influence the crowd in any other direction) you have acted in a particular way
and, according to Self-Perception Theory, this gives you grounds to infer your own beliefs.
From a starting point of liking someone, all of a sudden you are not so sure and perhaps even

deduce from your own actions that you actually do not like them. One can immediately see
how easily prejudices can grow between different communities and races.
Such prejudices can then easily lead onto what has been termed Behavioural Confirmation
(Myers 2000). Experiments were conducted by Mark Snyder in 1984 (Snyder, Tanke et al.
1977; Snyder 1984) which showed how prior information can influence someone’s actions
which in turn elicit a response from another which confirms their belief. Snyder asked male
students to talk on the telephone with women they thought were either attractive or
unattractive. Prior to the telephone conversation, they had been shown a picture, which they
were told was that of the women on the end of the phone – some pictures were of very
attractive women and some of less attractive women, but no correlation with the actual
woman on the end of the line. Subsequent assessment of just the women’s conversation
revealed that the supposedly attractive women spoke far more warmly than those women
who were supposedly unattractive. The men’s mistaken beliefs had become self-fulfilling and
they had educed a corresponding response. So, you gain a preconception about those from
another community and any encounter you have with them elicits behaviour, which confirms
your initial belief. The prejudice is reinforced.
We see through these theories the first evidence of the existence of social processes.
Processes in general require feedback, positive or negative, in order to exist and propagate.
Another experiment undertaken by a Richard Miller (Miller, Brickman et al. 1975) and
colleagues showed how strongly praise or denigration by another can affect behaviour
regardless of whether such praise or criticism is warranted. Miller took two school classes
where in both circumstances the children were putting only about 15% of their litter into
wastebaskets. He asked one set of teachers for one class to repeatedly tell the children to
put litter into baskets. This achieved an improvement to 45% for a short period of time, which
fell away as soon as the teachers stopped demanding a particular response from the
students. For the other class, the teachers were told to repeatedly congratulate the children
for being so neat and tidy. After 8 days the children had improved their tidiness to 80%. Two
weeks after the experiment had started and after the teachers had stopped congratulating the
children, they were still putting more than 80% of the litter into wastebaskets. The lesson
according to David Myers, who has written many of the university texts on social psychology
and positive psychology, is that by repeatedly telling children that they are hardworking and
kind, the children are likely to come to believe this of themselves, regardless of whether it was
true to start with. They are then much more likely to live up to your words … and desires.
All of these results point to the degree to which we are influenced (very often unknowingly or
subconsciously) by our social context. This happens to adults as well as children. We will
return later in this chapter to make practical use of some of these realisations, especially the
Behaviour and Attitude relationship.

So we have two fundamental positions: the supremacy of the individual and the individual
self-consciousness, your cognitive mind, being the principle driver behind your actions,
verses the alternative hypothesis of the self-consciousness, identity and beliefs emerging out
of social relationships, whether these be your immediate relationships or society at large. I
have not dwelt on the individualised perspective for two reasons. Firstly (if you are a
Westerner) it can be reasonably assumed, unless you are already well schooled on sociology
and social psychology, that you will culturally have presumed that you are (at least as an
adult) a cognitive mind first and foremost and only then a social animal. Even with significant
family and other obligations, we still culturally prefer to think of ourselves as free individuals.
Secondly, the earlier discussion on positive psychology and human needs is strongly
focussed on the individual and it is not necessary to take this argument further by delving
back into the philosophy.
Individual or Social Animal or …
The reality is that we are a bit of both – individual and social animal – and the degree to which
we operate as one or the other probably changes over our life-time. As Watson observed
children are very malleable to their social context. In contrast we all know that age frequently
leads people to become fixed (even dogmatic) in their ways. As time goes by, we think and
feel that we act more and more as free-thinking individuals, while unwilling to recognise that
we are self-conscious individuals with baggage. That baggage comprises all the meaning we
have derived from our social and other surroundings during our earlier or previous years.
This effectively means that our perception of acting as free-thinking individuals is in many
respects just an illusion that we create for ourselves.
Few mainstream thinkers seem to have tried to bridge and achieve a balance between these
two perspectives. But there are two influential scientists/philosophers from either side of the
English Channel who seem to have accepted this outcome: in chronological order Emmanuel
Levinas and Garry Runciman.
Levinas’ core philosophical project had similarities with that of Mead’s but where Mead saw
the individual self-consciousness arising out of his or her social context and experience,
Levinas took a more balanced view and recognised that an independent ego does exist from
early on. To quote the New York Times obituary to Levinas (Obituary December 27, 1995):
“Instead of thinking “I” epitomised in “I think, therefore I am” - the phrase with which Rene
Descartes launched much of modern philosophy – Dr Levinas began with an ethical “I”.
For him, even the self is possible only with its recognition of “the Other” …

As already noted, there have been various critiques in recent years on social psychology,
which point to its lack of appreciation of our social side. In one of these (Gantt and Williams
2002) the authors draw on Levinas to explain that: “The self – that part of us we experience
as ourselves – is the product of an innately and profoundly social experience. Sociality
predates individual identity and self-awareness both logically and chronologically.” And
“…our very individuality requires other people. It requires sociality.”
In essence what these people are pointing to is their answer to the question: can we choose
to be social beings? Their answer is no. While we are obviously born as separate individual
beings, we owe our identity to the others around us. We can only be self-conscious beings
by being social. In turn, we can only be social creatures by being individual. After all, the
hermit is often construed as being mad. And those extreme social animals, those
chameleons who never disagree and fail to hold any opinions of their own, are equally
maddening.
Turning to Garry Runciman, a still resident fellow at Cambridge and one of the leading current
British sociologists, he draws all this together at the start of his short and very readable
introduction to sociology: The Social Animal (Runciman 2000). He opens as follows:
“It is more than two thousand years since Aristotle said that a human being capable of
living outside society is either a wild beast or a god…
You, like myself and every other human being in the world, are at the same time three
things. First you are an organism – that is, a living creature born … Second, you are an
organism with a brain, and therefore a mind: and although other species have minds too,
yours is altogether more complex and sophisticated than the minds of even the cleverest
of our close genetic relatives, the chimpanzees. Third, you are an organism with a
complex mind living in regular contact with other organisms with complex minds, and
therefore you have a social life in which you have relationships with other people to which
you and they attach a meaning.”
Runciman’s tripartite description of the human experience directly reflects Popper’s Three
Worlds Theory. At the outset, it was stated that Karl Popper’s Objective Theory of Knowledge
contributed to my initial flash of inspiration. On reading Popper’s thesis, it was the first time
that I had personally been exposed (apart from through Christian religion) to the perspective
of treating the human existence in triplicate, as described by Popper’s Three World’s
Theorem.
Popper posited that the human experience can be broken up into three discrete parts. There
is your mind and that which goes on in your head which is totally private to yourself: hence

the notion of subjective well-being, the technical term that used to be used by American
psychologists to make research into ‘happiness’ appear acceptable. It is the subjective world
which psychology seeks to explore. There is also, most obviously and tangibly, the physical
world that we experience with our senses. That physical world includes everything that is a
material object and its environment and includes the physical manifestation of other human
beings as well as your own physical body, which you can sense with your own senses (touch
yourself). It is everything physical that you can touch, see, smell, taste, hear.
Those first two ‘worlds’ are obvious. In his objective theory of knowledge Popper set out to
prove that Durkheim’s social consciousness, our culture and all its embedded symbols and
language and ways of communicating, exists as a discrete objective phenomenon in the
universe, just as much as what goes on in your head and what exists in the physical universe.
This world, our collective social consciousness, represents the third of the three worlds of our
human experience. In Chapter 10 we will come to understand better not only the full nature
of Popper’s objective social world, but also why Popper was driven to such a philosophical
th
project to prove its objective existence during the 20 century.
Popper argued that the social consciousness, more normally now referred to as our culture,
comprising social facts, represents something that exists and is not simply imagined or
perceived. It genuinely exists as an objective phenomenon in this universe. The social facts,
which make up that phenomenon are the equivalent of material objects in physical space.
They are elements of our culture including, for example, the words that make up a language,
pieces of knowledge, our recorded history, our science and so on. The book you hold now
represents a material object in the physical universe and so too are the printed words on the
page. But the meaning you take as a reader from those words is something from what I have
come to term social space (in contrast to physical space); the meaning in those words that
you and any other reader will initially take is from our common social consciousness. What
then happens in your head (and clearly dependent on your innate imagination and
intelligence) is entirely subjective to you. Whether you decide you agree or disagree with the
meaning embedded in those words will largely depend upon what you have read before and
learnt prior to reading this particular book, including how you have learnt to respond to new
ideas and alternative ways of thinking: your prior exposure to that social space. As a starter,
such prior exposure necessarily included learning to read the Western alphabet and the
English language.
If you look at a building, it exists as a physical object in the universe (it is made of matter), but
its form, aesthetics and the knowledge required to build it, operate it and manage it are all
social facts. As an individual you look at the building and it elicits thoughts in your head,
where such thoughts draw from your own exposure to the wider social consciousness (social
space) and your personal relationship to that extant social consciousness. You see that

building not just as a physical object, but a physical object with meaning, a message,
conveyed from the architect who designed it.
Popper’s Three Worlds Theorem represents a slightly different way of approaching the same
conclusion drawn by Levinas and Runciman: that the human being can only be fully
understood if you are willing to recognise his or her three aspects – social animal (which
relates to that social consciousness – our collectively created social space), physical or
biological being and cognitive mind (the ego). Each aspect is just as important as the others.
How Popper’s Three Worlds Theorem actually contributed to my original intuition I cannot
now tell you. I just know that it was an important part of the overall jigsaw puzzle. And
subsequently it has proven very useful in enabling me to craft the theory of social interaction
presented in this book. For my purposes here, the most important message to draw from the
whole field of social psychology is that we humans are these three things – organism
(biological being), cognitive mind and social animal – at the same time and broadly to the
same extent. In regard to the third of these manifestations, being social animals, we Need
others and they Need us. But how?
A Complete Needs Framework
If the human being can best be understood in a tripartite sense, as biological being,
psychological being and social animal, all at once, then the next question to ask is how
different aspects of our persona experience Needs. It was noted in Chapter 4 that there is an
evident oddity in Maslow’s original Needs Hierarchy, in that it switches from biological Needs
at lower levels over to more mental Needs for the higher levels. In the context of treating the
human being in a tripartite sense, this would seem inconsistent. Rather it would be more
coherent to suggest that each Need will be expressed in all aspects of our persona. This is
borne out through observation.
Metabolism is clearly a process. We need food, we eat it and process it to provide the energy
to live. We use that energy to act in the real physical universe to obtain more energy. It is
the cycle of life. So for each of us the process continues until we each die. In a social
context, the Need to obtain food drives us to interact with the other people around us – our
tribal contemporaries or potentially random strangers in the civilised context. But is this very
physical process the full story when it comes to understanding why and how we interact with
others? The answer is most probably not. The inference from the social interactionist school
of thought is that there is an important psychological or mental aspect to the interaction too,
ii
which necessitates a modification to Maslow’s Hierarchy .

Clearly we have to eat regularly. The Need itself returns on an all too frequent basis – two,
three, four or more times a day. This Need is driven by our biology – the biological organism
and its metabolism. This drives us to seek out food. In tribal society, that drive would have
caused us to go out and hunt and gather with other members of the tribe. We would then
learn to share the food that we had obtained. Each time we shared we had to be peaceful to
our tribal companions and would thereby become more accepting of them. Treating the
interaction itself as a process, we come to see that acting peacefully promotes an attitude of
acceptance of another and acceptance of another allows us to act peacefully towards them,
which better enables us each to participate in the next exchanging or sharing interaction. In
civilised society, this same drive causes the individual to go to a shop or market stall and
exchange some money for some food. Again, each time we have to act peacefully and
through this be more accepting of those with whom we have just traded. In between times,
from Neolithic society to modern day in some parts of the world, we would have cooperated
as a village to grow food and nurture livestock to provide our food needs – food which we
would have mostly shared with each other, and then sometimes exchanged for other goods
with a local townspeople … and been Peaceful and Accepting in both situations. But, and
this is an important But, we will come to see in the next chapter that the action of Sharing and
the action of Exchange have fundamentally different repercussions to the individuals involved
in the interaction.
If we are to accept the premise put forward by the symbolic interactionists, that we are equally
importantly social animals, then in addition to the biological driver to interact with others there
is also a psychological driver to interact. According to both Mead and Levinas as children we
have to interact with other people in order to develop our self-consciousness, our identity.
So, how important is this thing: Identity? Looking to other, perhaps anecdotal, evidence, the
work of Victor Frankl is instructive about the relationship between mind and body and the
importance of an individual’s Identity to his or her survival.
Frankl was an Austrian Jew and doctor of psychology, who had the misfortune to be taken to
the Nazi concentration camps early during the World War II. Frankl by chance survived a
series of prison camps and in his latter days of the War, while acting as a doctor in various
camps, developed his thinking on what he subsequently called Logotherapy (Frankl 2004). It
was a style of counselling that super-ceded many of modern therapy counselling techniques
and was aimed to help individuals find their meaning in life. In due course, Frankl’s ideas
influenced the humanistic psychologists, Maslow’s contemporaries. In documenting his life in
the concentration camp, Frankl provided an interesting psychologist’s perspective of life as a
concentration camp prisoner, when life was at its most severe. He wrote about how at such
extremes it was patently obvious how important an individual’s Identity was to their continued
survival; as soon as a person lost his or her Identity he quickly spiralled downwards to
imminent death. This often took only a couple of days, or just overnight.

Laterally related to Frankl’s experiences, it is well known that sensory deprivation through
solitary confinement can, in fact for lengthy periods of confinement automatically does, have
long-term detrimental psychological impact on prisoners. Sensory deprivation became a very
popular subject of analysis amongst psychologists and psychiatrists during the 1950s and
1960s (Solomon, Leiderman et al. 1957). Out of this research, it became apparent that a
human being experiencing complete sensory deprivation can quite quickly become extremely
anxious, experience hallucinations, bizarre thoughts and depression. Burns victims, whose
treatment requires them to be physically isolated, can become disoriented, confused and
experience illusions (Lasagna and Germoglio 2002). Whilst sensory deprivation for very short
periods (up to an hour at most) may be considered by some to be beneficial, enabling
meditation, over longer periods it has become understood to be very detrimental to the
human brain and mental health. In the last two decades there have been class action
lawsuits in the States against the use of solitary confinement of prisoners on account of the
very long-term (often permanent) mental health problems that can arise from such treatment
(Grassian 1993). The conclusions from the research in this subject is that the average
human being does not cope well with being isolated and is quickly damaged by deprivation of
sensory input. We need continually to experience the world around us.
My deduction from combining these practical observations with the ideas of the symbolic
interactionists is that it is as important for the survival of the individual human being to have a
mental or psychological Identity as it is to have a physical body. (I am going to be annoyingly
vague as to what I mean by Identity. Its true sense will emerge in Chapter 7 and beyond.)
Drawing on the above considerations, I would suggest that at Level 1 of Maslow’s Hierarchy
our Human Needs manifest as Material Needs (food, water, etc) for the biological being to
keep it functioning and alive and Experiential Needs for the mind, to enable it to maintain an
Identity, a Self, an Ego. Both these Needs, the mental and the physical drive us to interact
with other human beings. Our evolved trait of being highly social animals clearly facilitates
such interaction and in a sense this creates in itself an expression of our Level 1 Need: the
human as social animal Needs to interact with others. Putting these together, and looking at
the human being considered in the round, at Level 1 of Maslow’s Hierarchy, he or she Needs
food to maintain his or her physical existence, Needs experiences and sensations to maintain
mental existence and expresses these individual Needs by needing the presence of others to
interact with to facilitate the satisfaction of entire Need.
If Level 1 Needs can be justified as being expressed both physically and mentally, then it
would be more consistent to suggest that all our Needs have both mental and physical
components to them. As social animals these become expressed in terms of how we need to
engage with others. The outcome of this is a revision to Maslow’s original Hierarchy to
produce a more comprehensive Needs framework. The conclusions of this exercise are

provided below. The detailed explanation and justification for the selected other elements of
Need will be provided in subsequent chapters.
Maslow’s Original
More consistent adaptation of Maslow’s Hierarchy
Hierarchy
Hierarchy Level Biological Needs Psychological Needs Social Needs
1 Material Needs Energy / Materials Experiences Presence of Others
Safety / Security
2 Safety Security Predictability in Others
Needs
Physical Health /
Social / Belonging Mental Health / Dependability Of
3 Biological
Needs Cultural Reproduction Others
Reproduction
Self-Respect / Self- Consideration by
4 Autonomy Locus of Control
Esteem Others
Recognition from
5 Self-Actualisation Environmental Control Success
Others
The Biological Needs and their associated Psychological Needs are for the most part self-
explanatory, albeit justification for Levels 4 and 5 will be provided in Chapters 10 and 11
respectively. As the full theory emerges, the starting point is to understand the Needs drivers
(both physical and mental). The Social Needs then emerge out of understanding better the
nature of the interactions, into which people enter in order to meet their individual physical
and mental Needs.
Social Interaction as a Process
It was discussed in the last section how Material Needs are inherently linked to our biological
metabolism: the latter is most obviously a process, which converts food, air and water into
useful energy to create structure and support life. If this most fundamental aspect of our
Needs is a process, then perhaps it is appropriate to consider all our Needs and fulfilment of
those Needs as being a process.
If you sense a Need, whichever Need, this drives you to act in the physical universe. Such
action hopefully leads to resolution of that Need, which is then satiated until it returns. This is
most obvious in the context of Material Needs: you feel hungry, you find some food, you eat,
you are full and then at some future point you begin to feel hungry again. It is also quite
explicit in respect of Level 3 Health Needs: you eat, you feel that your teeth are unclean, you
clean them and then at some point they feel dirty again and need to be cleaned again. The
same argument can be developed in relation to all our Needs; this will become more obvious
as you read through Chapters 7 to 11 and come to understand better the nature of the
different Needs, how they are expressed and how we act to resolve them.

Drawing on the discussions so far, it would appear that happiness is another essential
component to the overall process. When you feel hungry and then find some food, you are
elated, immediately happy, that you are now able to eat. The nature of the happiness
experienced in emotional, physical and mental terms will likely differ according to the Need
being resolved by an action, but it is still happiness, taken in its broadest sense.
Out of these deductions, an initial process diagram can be suggested, which is generic to all
Needs.
Needs-driven-
Interaction
…
as a Process NEED
ACTION /
INTERACTION YES
HAPPY?
NO
When we act in the real world to seek to resolve a sensed Need, then we feel happy. This
happiness represents a positive driver, which leads human beings to repeat actions or
interactions when they prove to be successful. “Last time I did this, I felt happy. So next time
I will first try this again.” If we fail in our endeavours, we will not feel happy, possibly sad.
The consequence of the latter is that we will likely try to satisfy our sensed Need in another
way in order to avoid failure and associated feeling of sadness.
For the tiger operating alone in the jungle, the above diagram might be the sum total of a
process required to enable that tiger to survive. For the human being in a highly social world,
the process is naturally a little more complicated. We will discover in the next few chapters
that there are a sequence of steps to any interaction, each of which has a different
repercussion on ourselves and how we see the world around us. However, that additional
complexity all fits within this basic process structure involving positive feedback to guide us to
repeat our successful actions or interactions and not repeat those which fail. We will also
come to see that this process can easily become self-serving, where the Needs step is
missed and people simply act or interact to feel happy regardless of whether a Need
genuinely returns. In Chapter 6, it will become apparent that by considering individual

interactions as processes, it becomes much easier to scale up from pair relationships to

society at large.
A Set of Interactions
It became quite apparent to me that the nature of an interaction associated with each Need
would likely be very different. How I interact with a shopkeeper to obtained a pint of milk is
very different to the way that I interact with work colleagues, which in turn is different to the
way I interact with my wife to have and nurture our children. This observation has led me to
the conclusion that underlying all the complexity of our daily lives, there exist five Ideal Types
of social interaction. If the Needs framework, identified above, proves to be comprehensive
of the human experience (i.e. it encapsulates all our Needs), then the interactions arising from
our actions to meet those Needs should, in theory, encapsulate our whole lived experience in
a social world.
There is a precedent of thinking along the above lines. Max Weber, one of the most famous
early sociologists, developed the notion of Ideal Types of Social Action. He suggested that
underlying the complexity of the real world, there are four types of social action. He called
these affectual, traditional, zweckrational and wertrational. Weber suggested that in our
everyday lives any social action by an individual could be construed to be made up from
these four Ideal Types. For the theory of social interaction, I have adopted the same
approach. Any interaction we have with another human being may be motivated by a
combination of Needs: I might feel hungry and insecure. We may therefore seek to interact
with others to resolve different Needs simultaneously. If you offer someone a cup of tea, you
may then sit and chat, which might involve exchanging some useful information or could be a
nurturing chat to get something off your mind (helping to maintain mental health).
The inference, therefore, is that there exist five Ideal Types of social interaction, one
pertaining to each identified Need. As we explore these Ideal Types in the following chapters,
it will become apparent that each Ideal Type is fundamentally different. In Chapter 13 further
consideration will be given as to how these map against the Ideal Types of social action
proposed originally by Weber. While the Ideal Types of Social Interaction do not map exactly
against Weber’s originally proposed social actions, there is clearly a degree of equivalence.
Having identified the core Needs we humans experience and identified that social interactions
can be considered to be processes, the next step is to build up a better understanding of the
full extent of those processes and then begin to decipher how they differ according to the
different driving Needs.

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i
John Reader noted in his fascinating book that until the revolution in our understanding of
th
health and hygiene, which emerged during the 19 century, cities were death traps. Cities

killed far more people than they gave birth to; people flocked to cities for opportunity, but
many of them died in the process.
ii
The purpose of following this particular line of thought is to make Maslow’s Hierarchy of
Human Needs logically consistent. A quick perusal of Maslow’s Hierarchy shows that the
lower (more basic) Needs are strongly focussed on our biology (the Need for food and
oxygen). Yet the higher Needs seem more psychological or mental (Level 4: Self-Esteem
and Level 5: Self-Actualisation). But if you embrace the discussion about the tripartite nature
of being – biological, psychological and social – then by deduction Maslow’s Needs should
cut across all three manifestations of our experience of life for all Needs. We should expect
therefore that for each Need there would be a biological expression of that Need, a
psychological expression and a social expression. It will become clear in later chapters both
why this correction to Maslow’s Hierarchy is required and why the higher Needs are more
outwardly expressed in mental terms – largely because of our very social context.

Chapter 6 – Social Relationships Page 1 of 16 10/6/10
Chapter 6 – Social Relationships
Quote?
I discovered to my surprise and a little consternation that, at least within the core of social
psychology, there is little in the way of real scientific research and evidence which has
genuinely extended into relationships. The quick summary provided in Chapter 5 is about as
far as this science has progressed. What I really needed to confirm and take forward my
original intuition and thinking on interaction as a process is work by true social psychologists
(as opposed to group behaviourists). I needed empirical and evidence based work that took
forward the ideas of the early social psychologists, Mead and others. I was looking for
thinking from scientists who had looked at relationships and how interaction between people
develops and evolves over time and the wider implications. But I began to realise that such
thinking and experimental work does not appear to exist: at least not within the mainstream
social sciences. Rather, I began to realise that I had to look elsewhere. It became apparent
to me that the main source of thinking on relationships is instead embedded within another
aspect of our cultural heritage; it is the subject matter of much English and other literature,
poetry, the arts and general life experience, but, for the moment, outside the remit of ‘true’
science. Yet, whilst each biography, autobiography or novel may provide anecdotal
evidence, as a body of work they all contribute significantly to our understanding of the
human experience. This appreciation will be re-affirmed in Chapter 10.
Later, I did become aware that there are other areas of scientific research, albeit not core
social sciences, that do provide a degree of focus on relationships. A key discipline, which
has to a degree considered the way human relationships evolve over time, is that of
management science. Rather than provide a detailed analysis of the relevance of
management science to the arguments presented here, my wife Nicola, who is a change
management consultant and expert in management science, has provided an excerpt to this
chapter (to be added at end).
Reflecting on the ideas presented so far, a key part of the jigsaw puzzle was clearly that the
human beings can be viewed in three different ways. One of these ways is that of the social
animal – that we Need other people and they Need us. From Mead we also have the notion
that the way we interact with people strongly influences how we come to see ourselves and
how we relate to the physical world around us. But no one has seemingly tried to
operationalise this idea. Other pieces of the jigsaw puzzle, which I felt must make some form
of meaningful picture, were as follows. We have Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Human
Needs. There is Jane Jacobs’ hypothesis about the origin of cities and that the driver behind
city development is trade – the activity of exchange. And there are the two long-standing
social trends – Modernity and Division of Labour – which have seemingly continued

throughout civilisation and most obviously represent expressions of some form of underlying
evolutionary processes. But how do all these fit together?
As I pondered this, I
thought more about the HUMAN NEED
DRIVES ACTION
relationship between
Attitude and Behaviour,
unearthed and SEEK TO
INTERACT
explored through
experiment by the R E P E A T ED
social psychologists. REQUIRED CONSEQUENT
BEHAVIOUR ATTITUDE
The relationship
between attitude and
behaviour seemed to YES IS NEED
me to provide the SATISFIED?
scope for some form of NO

self-reinforcing cycle or
New Type of
process to be taking
Interaction
place within the overall Required
interaction process. If
how you behave Figure 5.1 : Attitude / Behaviour Cycle
informs your attitude,
which then influences how you next behave, then a particular attitude and behaviour pattern
could potentially arise, continually reinforcing each other, so long as they achieve successful
results for the individual.
Figure 5.1 depicts this inter-relationship between Behaviour and Attitude as part of an
interaction feedback cycle. As described in the last chapter, we start with a Human Need,
which must be fulfilled and motivates the individual to do something in the physical universe.
In social circumstances this drives the individual to interact with others. The interaction might
be facilitated through a particular behaviour towards another. This could elicit in both
individuals (especially when the behaviour becomes mutually expressed) a characteristic
attitude that naturally arises from that particular type of behaviour. I came to realise that
those behaviours that do achieve mutual satisfaction of Needs are very specific.
Naturally the real exploring of that which works and that which doesn’t takes place in our
childhood. By the time we are adults, we are fairly fixed in our ways through the self-
reinforcing nature of this process: Behaviour and Attitude become locked in. This process
has also been observed in a speeded up way in management science (Tuckman 1965).
Where new teams of people are brought together they ‘Form, Storm, Norm and Perform’ (a

sequence of team behaviours) as they learn as a group to operate together and achieve a
collective set of mutually successful behaviours and attitudes.
Does this approach, this notion of a self-reinforcing feedback cycle in terms of how we each
learn to operate in (reasonable) harmony with others, reflect our experience of life? On this, I
can only personally draw on my own experience, as I have tended to read from the body of
science and not our collective literature. But again turning to Nicola, my wife, who is far better
read on that literature heritage on the subject of relationships and who has had extensive
experience managing individual and group relationships within change situations in business,
she has advised me as follows:
“Close human relationships do not tend to stand still, to be static. They improve or
wane, depending how much energy one chooses to invest in them, when you do
interact.”
To me, this is a clear indication of some process taking place: relationships are not static.
They are not simply ‘social bonds’ but are always active and dependent upon the participants
in any individual relationship. One could go further and suggest that the observation of
gaining or reducing in strength according to effort exerted infers a positive feedback of some
form, with a control or decision point embedded within. If you repeat interactions with certain
people, then there is the potential for your relationship with those others to improve. We each
choose with whom we exert effort depending on how much we find we enjoy any particular
interaction. You then each become more aligned in your mutual behaviours and associated
attitudes. No interaction and relationships naturally wax and wane as you drift apart,
behaviours and attitudes diverging away from each other. The isolated individual eventually
becomes mad: at least from the perspective of the society from whence he or she came.
Appreciating the potential for the existence of some form of self-reinforcing process, which
drives the development of pair relationships proved to be the easy bit. The next and more
difficult question that I had to address was: what Attitudes and Behaviours would correspond
to an individual seeking to meet a particular Need. To deduce this required a slow iterative
process of trying out ideas, following them through and seeing what happened as one tried to
scale up the one-to-one interaction to a social level. Hence why it has taken me over 10
years from original intuition to putting this idea down in a book. I will not trouble you with the
false starts and dead-ends beyond noting that each time that I found what I believe to be the
correct solution, it was always compelling and obvious that I was then heading in the right
direction. As you will come to see, whilst the underlying methodology (a virtuous cycle or
positive feedback process arising from individual relationships and extending across the
whole of society) is the same, the specific Social Process arising from each Need is
fundamentally different … amazingly so … with awe inspiring consequences.

In writing this and if these ideas are only partly accepted by others, then I am acutely aware
that I have only just started down the road of understanding the power of this theory and its
immense implications. I am also constrained by our language and have attempted to use the
most appropriate terminology, but have been frequently aware that the words chosen often
have baggage which is inappropriate or somehow the term does not quite properly describe
the full nature of the social interactions or social processes involved and what these give rise
to in society. I hope, however, that I have made a good start for others to take forward. But I
will most certainly have made some blunders.
Returning to the question, what Attitude and Behaviour corresponds to each Need, it was
Jane Jacobs who enabled me to find the first pair within civilisation through her ideas on the
origin of cities. It was only as I was bringing up my own children that I came to fully realise
the difference between tribal and civilised versions of this relationship.
The Hunt for the First Behaviour/Attitude Pairing
When you think about it, the origin of the first city was quite incredible, frankly unbelievable
and certainly inexplicable with current scientific constructs. For somewhere between 70,000
and 170,000 years, a long time at whichever end of that range, homo sapiens had existed on
this planet and lived essentially as an animal. Throughout that period of our history we
apparently lived in tribal units. There is much debate about how big these tribes were, though
recent thinking in anthropology points towards 150 as a likely average size for a large majority
of tribes (Dunbar 1993). And then overnight – that is overnight in the context of 70,000+
years – the first city appeared and within a few hundred years this city had grown to a
population of over 8,000 people. Try to imagine finding a city of chimpanzees in deepest,
darkest Africa, and you will begin to appreciate how incredible it was that humans all of a
sudden started to live in closely packed, sedentary and relatively sizeable populations.
The nature of this transition is all the more remarkable when one considers the character of
tribes. Tribes are very insular cultural environments and closed social units; you are either a
member of a tribe or not. No in between. As anthropologists have noted, and which was
mentioned earlier in this chapter, the culture of a tribe has a very, very strong and defining
influence on the way tribal members behave (Sokefeld 1999). Furthermore, if you are one of
the tribe, you are treated as family. Everyone else is a stranger to be treated with extreme
prejudice, caution, even fear. In contrast, in civilised society we can express a high degree of
comfort and relaxedness even when surrounded by complete strangers (Seabright 2004).
How have we evolved to be comfortable amongst strangers?
Taking this point even further, there is the observation that Anthony Giddens made when
constructing his theory of Modernity (James 2006). In our tribal past, time was circular,

essentially going round with the seasons. In most tribal cultures there is no sense of future
and no sense of past, just the circle of life: year-on-year nothing really changes. Where
development, such as technological development, takes place, it is very, very slow and
haphazard. In stark contrast, in civilisation this circular time unwinds to give a past and a
future and relatively rapid technological and cultural progress.
What caused this transition, which seemingly changed the whole way that humanity operated
– from a landscape of isolated and individually operating tribal units to a landscape inhabited
by a connected society? The degree and suddenness of this change begs an explanation,
yet none is forthcoming within our existing social sciences. The theory of social interaction
does, however, provide a reasonably plausible storyline, which I will trace initially now and
then consider in more detail in later chapters.
We have already deduced that human beings are social animals. In this respect, homo
sapiens evolved to live in tribes. In our distant past we became an organism, which survives
much better cooperating with others of our species than operating alone. We are not tigers,
nor leopards, which are highly tuned lone hunting machines. As humans, together we are
very effective hunters and gatherers. To enable living in social groups we must have learnt,
sometime in our evolution, to share food. This is particularly the case in our carnivorous role.
Monkeys and apes graze foliage and fruit trees respectively and, whilst they live together in
groups, they do not share in the way we had to learn to: lions and wolves are a closer
comparison in that respect. A kill has to be actively shared between members of the social
group, the tribe, especially when the kill is not sufficient to satisfy everyone’s hunger entirely.
To share food we had to learn to be non-threatening towards each other, even when very
hungry: at least within our tribal unit.
Now consider our modern civilised society. For the most part in daily life we do not go out
hunting for food and then share it in our tribe. Rather we exist as individuals in society, where
sharing mainly takes place within the family unit. Outside the family we obtain our food
through the interaction of exchanging – go down the supermarket and buy something to eat,
food exchanged for money. What began to become apparent to me is that within modern
society the family unit represents the residual tribal unit: sharing within. But, whereas tribes
ostensibly competed or did not interact at all, families in modern society do cooperate. The
collaborate by means of exchange. Could this possibly mean that sharing and exchanging
are two variants of cooperative economic interaction required to enable people to meet their
fundamental food needs? (A more considered explanation of the difference between sharing
and exchanging in respect of Level 1 interactions (Material Needs) is provided in Chapter 8).
This observation, that there are two fundamentally different economic or social types of
interaction, has been made before by Margaret Clark and Judson Mills through their

combined work on relationships (Clark and Mills 1979; Mills and Clark 1982) and sequence of
papers from 1979 through to 1999. Their terminology has been that of communal and
exchange relationships. I have preferred to use the word ‘sharing’ instead of ‘communal’ for
consistency (to share or to exchange – both verbs). The concept of communal, we shall
come to see, is rather a social and cultural consequence of certain types of sharing
interaction.
If we go back far enough into our human history, then presumably there was a time, possibly
pre-homo sapiens, when no exchange activity took place at all: only sharing inside tribes.
Chimps, for instance, can participate in barter and exchange, but not readily so (Hyatt and
Hopkins 1998; Brosnan and Grady 2008). Somehow, over human history, the tribes which
preceded civilisation adapted from being competitive to begin to cooperate. Catal Huyuk,
now perceived by many to have been the first true city(Balter 1998; Shane III and Kucuk
1998), was reliant on exchange. Archaeological investigations have exposed a city of family
households, housing 10 to 20 head: extended, multi-generational families. But not tribes.
These were trading families, making obsidian tools and exchanging them for food stuffs. The
archaeology has further shown that the agricultural technology available to this city could not
have fed the population (Hodder 1987; Caldwell and Caldwell 2003). The inference is that
this city society was reliant on exchange activity to survive. They had made a fundamental
switch to reliance on exchange instead of sharing.
Before the archaeological evidence had been fully unearthed, it was Jane Jacobs who
suggested that this switch had occurred. She hypothesised that it was the activity of
exchange that somehow enabled the city to appear and grow: the primacy of trade argument.
Now, if Jane Jacobs’ thesis is correct, or at least heading in the right direction, then we have
to assume that trade existed for some time before the origin of the first city: people, especially
tribal people, do not all of a sudden change their whole manner of operation, to become
reliant on a completely different way of meeting their most important Human Need – food
(energy). To support this, archaeological evidence suggests that trade between neighbouring
tribes probably started in earnest some 40,000 years ago, when there was a sudden
flourishing of culture in human tribes, including an otherwise inexplicable sudden increase in
the production of trinkets and jewellery than before (Appenzeller, Clery et al. 1998). But why
or what was this pre-city trade? Drawing on the evidence of an increase in trinkets and
jewellery for some 30,000 years before cities appeared, one might assume that these
represented a part of that exchanging activity. But why? One plausible explanation is that
trade started as mutual peach offerings, seeking to maintain peace between tribes.
Now, if trade had been taking place for a long period of time between proximate tribes, then
one can construe that individuals and groups of individuals became quite au fait with the
notion of exchange of material items. It is an activity that has also been observed to take

place in tribes of recent history (Sherry Jr 1983; Walsh 2008). This gradual growth in
exchange activity, originating in the actions of neighbouring tribes giving and receiving peace
gifts, provides a coherent argument to suggest that by the time the first cities appeared,
exchange between neighbouring tribes, certainly those on the Anatolian plateau some 10,000
years ago, was no longer a novelty.
The action of exchange could thereby have become an everyday occurrence between
adjacent tribes: giving and receiving gifts in peaceful circumstances to maintain a peaceful
relationship at their boundaries. It would have slowly grown over time and not represented
any major cultural change at any discrete point. This could have continued regardless of
whether tribes began to develop some early agricultural technology and practices. At some
point, however, some tribe, somewhere made some very important incremental transitions.
Firstly, instead of simply exchanging trinkets and jewellery, they began trading useful things –
tools and food. Jane Jacobs proposed that such tribe existed on the Anatolian plateau
proximate to a volcano which provided a good source of obsidian, which can be easily crafted
into very useful tools for hunting, cutting and skinning. Once such exchange activity had
become established, the key transition, Tipping Point, would have been that moment when
such tribe came to rely on the exchange activity rather than treat it as a luxury. This
economic change, from luxury to necessity, may have been entirely imperceptible. There
would have been a slow cultural shift as the tribe became more and more reliant on food
obtained through exchange than food directly sourced from its own tribal territory.
The precise timing of Tipping Points, as documented by Malcolm Gladwell in his book of that
name (Gladwell 2000), can be very difficult to pin-point. So, even though such event may
have passed without notice, all of a sudden humanity became capable of much more. As
soon as that first group of people had, probably unwittingly, made that switch from treating
exchange as a luxury to treating exchange as an essentiality, then civilisation became
possible. Having crossed that invisible line, suddenly a city could exist regardless of the
extant agricultural technology. Through exchange and trade, the nascent city could
immediately draw on a far, far wider geographical landscape and its population would
naturally grow (exponentially) to match this new increased food supply base. We see from
this a characteristic process of slow cultural evolution leading to a critical point which is then
followed by very rapid social and economic change.
There are two inferences to be taken from the above discussion. Firstly there appear to be
two ways for people to cooperate to satisfy their material needs: sharing, where one party
shares with another where such act is presumably reciprocated a some later date, and
exchanging, a manifestly complete and immediate interaction. I have come to term these
Tempers of Interaction; these will be discussed in further detail in Chapter 7. Secondly, both
these different tempers of cooperative interaction are facilitated by the interacting parties

behaving peacefully and non-threateningly towards each other. If we assume, then, that the
behaviour required to facilitate this Level 1 (Material Needs) interaction, then what is the
accompanying attitude?
After a bit of trial and error, I came to the conclusion that the consequential attitude is that of
Acceptance. In first instance, the definition of Acceptance, on which I am drawing, is in the
context of the verb Accept, when it is used as follows: “to regard as normal, suitable or usual”
and “to receive without adverse reaction”. More detailed reasoning for this choice of
terminology and a more detailed definition will be provided in Chapter 8.
There is now the first emergence of some form of framework: that each Ideal Type interaction
might have two cooperative tempers of interaction and that for each Needs-driven interaction
there exists a definite behaviour / attitude pair which facilitate both tempers. In this way, a
social group is able to evolve from one form of cooperation to another without having to
fundamentally change the way people behave towards each other. Rather, as in the case of
the story of the nascent city, a behaviour and attitude previously only enacted with and
extended to tribal companions becomes projected outwards to a wider population.
Whether the above explanation of the origin of cities is fully correct or not is neither here nor
there, so long as it is better than any explanatory theory that has gone before (according to
Popper’s view of scientific theories). In my humble opinion, the above explanation is better
than both Jacobs’ or Childe’s hypotheses (see Chapter 3) because it builds upon both. It
does away with the debate between supporters of Jacobs and supporters of Childe as to
whether agriculture came before cities. Agriculture almost certainly did … to a degree …
which is now known from the archaeological excavations at Catal Huyuk; the proto-city did
have some early agriculture and animal husbandry, but insufficient to feed a population of
8,000. Regardless of the state of that agricultural technology, it was trade that created the
first city, turning it from a village with agriculture into a proper city, and every city thereafter.
And it was then cities that took that nascent agricultural technology and turned it into the
advanced agriculture we have today.
Detailed Interaction Process
Through the above incorporation of behaviour and attitude into the interaction process, we
see an additional level of complexity to the original simple feedback process: Need, Interact,
Happiness? Over ten years of development of the theory of social interaction, I eventually
came to the conclusion that there are in fact six identifiable steps or components to any
interaction. These are: (1) Need, (2) Focus, (3) Ethos, (4) Form, (5) Outcome and (6)
Response. An initial explanation of these steps will be provided later in this chapter and then

developed into more detail in the subsequent chapters. Firstly some important considerations
need to be noted.
1. NEED
Being a cyclic
process, the order of
the steps to any
interaction are 6. RESPONSE 2. FOCUS
x5
arguably a little
arbitrary. While Need
initially drives the
process of Need- processes
fulfilment, the cycle 5. OUTCOME 3. ETHOS
can easily taken a life
of its own, effectively
by-passing Need
4. FORM
altogether. In our real
lived experience,
trying to specify which of the steps comes first or second is consequently almost impossible.
It is probably best to conceive all steps essentially taking place simultaneously, being
components to an interaction rather than a sequence of steps. For representational
purposes, it is easier, however, to display the process as a sequence of steps.
For each identified step, there are two parts. These essentially equate to the biological being
and the mental person. This is most obvious in terms of the Behaviour/Attitude pairing noted
above. The biological animal must behave in a particular way and the psychological being
develops an associated attitude. A similar duality applies to all the steps or components. I
have provisionally termed these Experience (relating to physical expression) and
Consequence (relating to mental internalisation of the experience). For step (3), Ethos,
therefore, the Behaviour is the Experience and Attitude is the Consequence. When all the
Experiences come together, then we see the Outward Expression of a human being. The
sum total of all the Consequences give rise to the Inner Identity of the same person.
Remember, there are five Ideal Types of interaction, so together this can become quite
complicated; in fact as complex as the real world we live in.
While we are dealing with matters of terminology, where through the rest of the book I refer to
‘Level’ this relates to the Level of Maslow’s Hierarchy: a Level 1 Need corresponds to a Level
1 Interaction and scaled up a Level 1 Process.

Interaction Steps
Need. As already considered in depth, this is the felt or perceived Need by the individual,
which in some way requires fulfilment or resolution. When processes become self-serving,
then Needs naturally extend into Wants. As discussed in Chapter 4, each individual human
being perceives all five Needs to greater or lesser degrees all the time. At any moment in
time a person will prioritise a particular Need for acting upon. Because of the interaction
process, this comes to characterise the overall expression of a person that we see from the
outside, which may change and evolve over a person’s life as different Needs come to the
fore.
Focus. The focus is simply the focus of attention of the individual while they are feeling
needy. What is it that must happen in the real physical universe in order to resolve the Need
in question: do I need to obtain food, or do I need to improve my security and so on. This
translates in physical terms into the direction of focus of personal energy: do I go out hunting
or gathering to get some food or do I build a wall to defend an encampment? We will come to
see in later chapters that the mental consequence of the focus influences our perception of
other people: what do I need you to do so that I can satisfy my own Need?
Ethos. The ethos of an interaction relates to the Behaviour/Attitude pairing, already

discussed. In Chapters 8 to 12 a detailed explanation will be provided as to the Behaviour
and Attitude pairs associated with each Needs-driven interaction. By way of introduction, the
conclusions of this analysis are provided in the following table:
Ideal Type Behaviour Attitude

Level 1 – Material Needs Peaceful Acceptance
Level 2 – Security Needs Predictable Trust
Level 3 – Belonging Needs Dependable Faith
Level 4 – Self-Esteem Needs Inclusive Respect
Level 5 – Self-Actualisation Needs Admiring Deference
Form. This corresponds to the manner in which an interaction takes place in time and space.
For example, is it instantaneous or does it occur over an extended time period, does it require
physical proximity and so on? The physical expression of this is simply that: our physical
experience of the interaction. The mental consequence strongly influences how we come to
perceive time and space.

Ideal Type Temporal Form Spatial Form

Sharing – Infinite (circular)
Level 1 – Material Needs Proximity Required
Exchange – Instantaneous
Level 2 – Security Needs Time Bounded Strictly Correlated
Level 3 – Belonging Needs Not Time Bounded Loosely Correlated
Sharing – Proximity
Level 4 – Self-Esteem Needs Instantaneous
Exchange – No Proximity
Level 5 – Self-Actualisation Needs Varies Correlation Varies
How and why there are differences in Form between the tempers of sharing and exchanging
will be examined in each case for each Ideal Type of interaction in Chapters 8 to 12.
Outcome. Each interaction gives rise to an economic event in the physical universe: an
object exchanging hands, work completed, health maintained or information shared. The
physical experience is simply whether, for example, I now have food in my belly or not. The
mental consequence of this is the objective observation that I am not hungry any more and
this feeds into the narrative, which we develop around an interaction (see Response below).
Over time, the Outcome clearly influences an individuals physical and mental make up: for
example, over eating leading to an obese individual.
Response. There is most obviously the issue of happiness, which is a combination of

physical, psychological and emotional experience. The outward expression is simply a
question of whether a person seems to be happy or not: smiling, spring in their step, etc. The
internalisation of this feeds off the objective observation of what physically happened to reach
the happy state and leads to the formulation of a narrative to justify repetition: “I feel happy
because …”. This clearly has a strong influence on how a person decides to proceed next
time they sense the Need returning or when the happy state wears off.
Detailed Interaction Framework
Bringing all the above together, a generic framework emerges for each of the Ideal Types of
Social Interaction. We see from this that how an individual human being comes to express
themselves in the real world will depend upon how he or she focuses their energies on
fulfilment of individual Needs. If someone is brought up in a very materialistic environment,
then they will become used to a state of happiness arising from instantaneous exchange of
materials interactions. In coming used to this, they will likely spend their adult life looking to
obtain such instant gratification through material exchanges. This will continually influence
both the outward expression and inner identity of that person in ways which directly arise from
the Level 1 Interaction.

The full detailed generic framework for each Ideal Type interaction is set out in the diagram
below.
BIOLOGICAL NEED MENTAL

1 NEED
Identity
2
FOCUS OF ATTENTION Perceptions of Others and
Self
ETHOS: BEHAVIOUR Attitude

REPEATED
FORM OF Social Bonds

INTERACTION
OUTCOME Economic
Event
EMOTIONAL Narrative
YES RESPONSE
HAPPY
NO SAD
New Type of Interaction

Required
REINFORCED
THROUGH
1 – Process repeated when Need returns REPETITION
2 – Process becomes self-serving
A Cautionary Word
This theory does not exclude there being other types of interaction between people, driven for
example by Wants rather than Needs. But, as previously discussed, people’s Wants are all
so different and particular that any such interactions are likely to be confined to pair
interactions and will not spread beyond a couple or core family or at most a discrete
community (or tribe). Interactions based on Wants, not correlated to Human Needs, may
explain some of the more bizarre tribes seen through human history. Needs, however, are
universal to all people – we need to eat again and again and again – and it is these Needs
that drive similar forms of interaction which spread outwards and affect the whole character of
a population. For the most part, Wants simply represent expressions of the underlying Needs
(“I Want a tea, not a diet coke.”) and thereby enable a huge variety of cultures to emerge. But

underlying the Wants are these universal Needs, which give rise to a discrete number
(proposed here to be five) of characterisable interactions and associated behaviours,
consequent attitudes and emergent social processes, which affect the whole of a developing
society.
It was late on this intellectual journey that I became familiar with the work of an oddly named
character called Talcott Parsons – one of the most famous American sociologists – who
attempted to formulate his own general theory for the social sciences (Parsons 1937; Parsons
1964; Parsons, Shils et al. 2001). It is through Parsons that Max Weber and Emile Durkheim
have been so exceptionally canonised as founders of the science of sociology. Parsons was
not the first to seek to formulate a general theory; he was preceded by one of Weber’s and
Durkheim’s lesser known contemporaries, Georg Simmel (who we will meet at the beginning
of the next chapter).
Parsons sought to bring Weber’s and Durkheim’s works together, drawing in Pareto’s
economics for good measure, under one singular theory. Weber saw society from the bottom
up, a society created by individual actions (note not interactions), while Durkheim saw society
from the top down where the individuals conform to the requirements of society. Weber and
Durkheim sat on different sides of the fault line mentioned at the beginning of the last chapter
and Parsons sought to resolve the differences and combine the two perspectives on the
human experience. But, beyond his critique of previous thinkers, his work has seemingly not
come to much and eventually I came to see why. He attempted to build a castle on sand.
The problem Parson faced (as did Simmel before) relates to this very issue of Wants verses
Needs. If you cannot identify the true underlying Needs and focus alone on Wants, then
there are so many possible forms of social interaction that could be construed to be taking
place within society, that none will manifest themselves strongly enough ever to influence the
development of that society. If that makes sense? By focusing on Wants, no social
processes will become apparent, because all the different types of social interaction will end
up cancelling each other out or simply be one-to-one interactions that do not extend beyond
the pair and thereby do not influence the formation of any social structure or the perpetuation
of any cultural trends. This problematic has probably stalled anyone else from trying to follow
Parsons. Fortunately it was not until I was well advance in my ideas and realised that I was
onto something seriously compelling that I came to look at Parsons thinking.
As I worked through the logic set out above, I came to discover five fundamental macroscopic
social processes, which appear to explain every aspect of civilised human society and its
development over time. Though I have not fully tested it, I am expectant that it explains much
about historic and contemporary tribal societies too. I am sure that there will be people who
will rile against this notion that every aspect of human society can be explained simply by

means of five relatively simple Social Processes. Simple they may be, but together they can
create the amazing complexity and diversity that we observe in the real world in which we
live. As I try to set out my understanding of how these processes operate, then I would hope
and expect that the reader will find that these Processes speak for themselves.
I am also certain that many more sociological minded individuals will find what follows to feel
to be overly biased towards economic style thinking. I ask these individuals to set aside their
preconceptions and read on with an open mind; they will learn much about themselves and
society if they are able to do so. Where readers feel that I have made a mistake, then I beg
that they seek a better explanation, but do not immediately throw away the whole framework;
it could just as easily be my error in interpretation than an error in the underlying theory or
methodology.
To recognise the full explanatory power of this theory, you have to make that leap of faith that
we need other people and they need us. We are not individuals who simply chose to
socialise. We are actually, as Mead and Levinas appreciated, individual beings who have to
be social for our existence and our sanity. If you are ready to embrace that notion, then join
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Chapter 7 – Social Processes Page 1 of 25 10/6/10
Chapter 7 - Social Processes
"[Social man] is not partially social and partially individual; rather, his existence is shaped by a
fundamental unity, which cannot be accounted for in any other way than through the
synthesis or coincidence of two logically contradictory determinations: man in both social link
and being for himself, both product of society and life from an autonomous center." Georg
Simmel
Dead Sociologists
The concept of a social process is not entirely new; it was originally conceived, though largely
in an abstract sense, well over a hundred years ago. But for the same reasons that Talcott
Parsons failed to develop any substantive theory with practical utility, the idea has been left in
the backwaters of the science of Sociology – an interesting idea, which has been gathering
dust, for students to reflect upon. The notion of process in the social sciences was first put
down on paper by Charles Horton Cooley, an American, who focussed on the bigger picture.
From Germany and a short while later, Georg Simmel also wrote about society as a process,
though his focus of attention was at the atomic scale of society – individual human
interactions.
Charles Horton Cooley is a little known American sociologist who was born the year after
Mead in 1864. Cooley was originally an engineer by training, taking seven years to complete
a college degree at the University of Michigan. He then returned in 1890 to carry out
graduate work in political economy and sociology. He was evidently a very withdrawn and
shy man, living in the shadow of an extremely ambitious father, and lived a fairly secluded
academic life. His intellectual project had strong similarities to that of Mead and he sought to
find a way to understand better the dualism discussed at the start of Chapter 5: society on the
one hand and the individual human being on the other. Cooley’s most famous theory was
that of the ‘looking glass self’ (Cooley 1902), which proved to be influential to Mead’s thinking
and a foundation stone to the school of symbolic interactionism. In the looking glass self
Cooley suggested that we each develop and maintain our self-image through our interaction
with others. He proposed a process by which we develop this self-image. We start by
picturing our own appearance, our traits and our personalities. We then use the reactions of
others to interpret how they visualise us. We then compare our interpretation of those others’
reactions with our original viewpoint and this acts to enhance or reduce our original self-
image. In this way, our sense of self and view of ourselves is increased or decreased in
certain directions accordingly. This clearly represents a feedback process of the kind
proposed in the last two chapters and a variation of this idea will be put to practical effect later
in this chapter and in Chapters 8 to 12.

Of equal interest here, in 1918 Cooley wrote a book titled Social Process (Cooley 1918). This
book starts with the following text:
“WE see around us in the world of men an onward movement of life. There seems to be a
vital impulse, of unknown origin, that tends to work ahead in innumerable directions and
manners, each continuous with something of the same sort in the past. The whole thing
appears to be a kind of growth, and we might add that it is an adaptive growth, meaning by
this that the forms of life we see-men, associations of men, traditions, institutions,
conventions, theories, ideals-are not separate or independent, but that the growth of each
takes place in contact and interaction with that of others. Thus any one phase of the
movement may be regarded as a series of adaptations to other phases.
That the growth of persons is adaptive is apparent to every one. Each of us has energy and
character, but not for an hour do these develop except by communication and adjustment with
the persons and conditions about us. And the case is not different with a social group, or with
the ideas which live in the common medium of communicative thought. Human life is thus all
one growing whole, unified by ceaseless currents of interaction …”
Unfortunately much of Cooley’s work is quite impenetrable, but within it there are pearls of
wisdom, suggesting that he was before his time in his thinking and would have fitted well with
current thinkers on ecology and complex systems. I discovered to my astonishment that,
though Cooley’s work has seemingly been relegated to a backwater in sociological thinking,
hidden within his ramblings is essentially exactly where I had reached in terms of my thinking
on social processes. But, where Cooley could only guess at what these processes might
really be, I have the benefit of Maslow’s genius to draw from and a much greater acceptance
within science generally in regard to the notion of complex dynamics and processes taking
place within nature.
Jumping back to Europe, the whole of Georg Simmel’s approach to understanding society
revolves around the social interaction. To him society only exists where a number of
individuals enter into interaction (Simmel 1949). Furthermore, in complete accordance with
the theory of social interaction presented here, he considered that individuals enter into
interaction on the basis of certain drives or for the sake of certain purposes. Unfortunately for
Simmel, he was never able to deduce what those drives or purposes were. Like Parsons
much later, Simmel found himself at sea, lost in a world of infinite Wants, every interaction
seemingly taking place for a different reason. Yet he was convinced that society existed
because of a web of patterned interactions. To him, one of the purest forms of interaction
was that of exchange and to this end he wrote extensively on money and its role in society.
I found that the philosophical projects of both Cooley and Simmel had strong similarities to the
intellectual journey that I had so far trodden. With neither the benefit of Maslow’s Needs

th
hypothesis nor the advantage of late 20 century empirical research in social psychology
(especially the behaviour/attitude relationship) then arguably both thinkers found themselves
straying into the intellectual wilderness ... for much the same reason as Talcott Parsons later
found himself building a castle on sand.
In this Chapter I hope to explain how social interactions introduced in Chapters 5 and 6
naturally scales up to produce Social Processes, which exist throughout the whole of human
society, infusing every aspect of our selves and our lives, our cultures and our ideologies.
They are wholly ubiquitous and always have been – they make you who you are, mentally,
physically and emotionally and they make our societies what they are economically,
structurally, culturally and ideologically.
Re-interpreting Maslow
We start by looking afresh at Maslow’s Hierarchy and interpreting it in an objective, purely

physical sense. This will inevitably feel entirely alien to social scientists (even more than the
individuality of Maslow’s Needs hypothesis), but if the reader is willing to bear with me and
keep an open mind, then hopefully it will become apparent that there is method to my
madness. I am going to re-consider Human Needs in terms of energetics. It is becoming
evermore acceptable to think of the animal and plant kingdoms in terms of energy (Schneider
and Sagan 2006; Whitfield 2006), with general principles now emerging to explain aspects of
evolutionary theory and the growth of organisms purely in terms of energy. Since we are
ultimately biological, it would be inconsistent not to do so for humans. Let us briefly ignore
the mental and social side of human nature and consider only our biological / physical
experience. The rest, with all its magnificent colour and variety, can then be layered back on
top.
We Need energy to survive. That is blatantly obvious: to survive one must breathe and eat. It
is, however, something which can be easily forgotten as an essentiality in the modern
Western world when energy and food are so easy to come by. Civilisation or not, in order to
survive for the remainder of today and be in a position to wake up alive (or at least happily
alive) tomorrow, a human must obtain energy from air, water and food: now, today. Clearly
there are many other desirable standards to our living, over and above these basics. But all
other things are, in reality, non-essential to immediate survival. Stripping away all the ‘nice-
to-haves’, the absolute and fundamental Need to survive is energy, normally provided through
food, where metabolism of that food is facilitated through breathing and drinking. Maslow’s
original description of Material Needs included much more, presumably because he was
thinking in terms of what we, in civilised society, have become accustomed to. But in reality,
at its most basic level air, water and food are all that we require and little else. No comfort.

No standard of living, as we tend to call it. Just air, water and food to survive the rest of
today.
But what of Levels 2 and above. How do these relate to energy?
Drawing from the latest thinking in biology and the energetics of living systems, Safety and
Security Needs can actually be seen to represent a requirement for a reasonably steady
supply of energy (Kooijman 2000). Mild fluctuations in energy supply can be absorbed, but
major fluctuations – abundance today, famine tomorrow – can have a devastating impact on
populations and pose a high risk to the survival of any individual. Most critically, those
fluctuations can act to stunt our growth. Maslow’s Level 2 Need, when interpreted purely in
terms of energy, consequently represents security in energy supply. When one realises that
money is actually a proxy for energy (to be explained shortly), then it is readily apparent in
one’s day to day life experience that security of energy supply does not come without a cost –
an energetic / monetary cost. To maintain or secure a steady supply of energy, we have to
expend energy (for instance going to work). This requires an incrementally greater amount of
energy consumption than if one were to operate on a purely opportunistic basis and leave it to
the hands of fate to continually provide a ready supply of energy. Satisfying our Level 2
Needs therefore requires consuming more daily energy, in order to secure tomorrow’s energy
supply, than simply worrying about today’s energy supply only. By way of example, a tribal
hunter needs to spend time today fashioning arrows and other tools to aid his hunting
activities tomorrow.
Moving on, in Chapter 4 it was noted that Maslow actually misconstrued the Level 3 Need.
For his Hierarchy to be internally self-consistent, where all Needs must have a physical
aspect to them, Level 3 Needs for the physical being actually relate to its Health and
Reproduction Needs. (The full reasoning for this will be provided in Chapter 9; we will come
to appreciate that what Maslow observed, apparent Social or Belonging Needs, are in fact
simply an expression of how social animals meet the underlying basic and invidualistic Need
of maintaining health and being able to reproduce.) For the individual biological creature, our
human being, to maintain its health (for instance carry out personal grooming, build a
protective home and keep it clean, etc) and be able to reproduce and rear off-spring requires
another incremental increase in energy consumption over that required for both day-to-day
survival and that required to secure a future supply of energy. Nurturing young children, for
example, is an extremely energy intensive activity.
The energy requirements for Levels 4 and 5 are not so obvious, principally because in
Maslow’s original Hierarchy there was no apparent physical aspect to the identified Needs,
only mental, at these higher Levels. As noted previously this made Maslow’s Hierarchy
ontologically inconsistent. The detailed explanation of how these Need Levels manifest in the

biological animal will be provided in Chapters 10 and 11 respectively. For the present, I will
simply state that at Level 4 additional energy is required to provide the individual with mobility
(in the social context, equating to social mobility). At Level 5 further energy still is required for
the repetitive mobility necessary to practice and develop a skill to enable subsequent
successful application of that skill.
Treating Human Needs in this way may on the face of it appears a very sterile way of
describing our colourful human experience. We will come to see that just because this
provides a strong physical sciences underlay to the theory does not in any way diminish the
ability to layer back on the colourful diversity of human life and culture that we each
experience in day-to-day life.
Social Thermodynamics
Approaching Human Needs in terms of energetics, I would have felt very much ‘out in the
cold’ if it were not for the recent works of Gary Becker, a Nobel Prize winner in economics
(Becker 1976; Becker 1992; Becker and Murphy 2001). Becker won his Nobel Prize for his
empirical research which has shown that economics actually underpins much more of day-to-
day life than the orthodox science of economics has heretofore suggested. Becker has
shown that economic analysis should not be confined only to those circumstances where
money obviously changes hands or where materials are directly exchanged. Rather, through
his research, he has gathered evidence to suggest that economic transactions occur in many
aspects of our daily lives, away from the work place or the shops. For instance, Becker has
shown that the parent-child relationship can be understood in economic terms: parent looking
after child now in expectation of the favour being returned in later life. In these examples no
money is being exchanged, but effort is clearly being exerted and energy expended by the
carer on behalf of the cared.
The theory of social interaction presented here extends Becker’s thesis further. The theory is
predicated on the realisation that every interaction you have with any other human being
always has an economic (or is that energetic) component to it … without exception. To
appreciate this it is necessary to reconsider what is the nature of money itself.
While the use of money has extended far and wide in modern civilisation, its original use was
almost certainly as a substitute for food and used to facilitate satisfaction of that most basic
Need. It enabled easier trading of our basic Material Needs, which in those days were
primarily food (before too much culture and Wants had been layered on top of the underlying
basics). Consider for a moment what life would be like without money. Going to the
supermarket you would need to take with you something to barter and exchange. Or on e-
bay you would need to find at home something that equated in value to the item you were

after. Life would be very difficult and we certainly would not have progressed to where we are
now without money. But originally it was just a substitute for food to enable people to barter
foodstuffs (apples for pears) and non-food items for food (say, tools to produce food). Money
consequently arose as a proxy for energy.
I recognise that there have been many attempts to explain what this thing ‘money’ is. Most of
these seem to have only looked at the superficial and failed to dig deeper to see what it is that
money is doing; they look at the object of exchange (the coinage, etc) rather than the role and
purpose that object fulfils. Perhaps the closest historic interpretation I have found is provided
by Georg Simmel in his book The Philosophy of Money: “What is eventually measured as
value is not money, which is merely the expression of value …” (Simmel 1978). A quick look
on the internet now brings to light many articles and blogs, which state precisely as I have
done above – “money is energy”. I have not, however, been able to identify the route to this
thinking as it does not appear to come from the more well established and recognised
historical economists. It could be people reading Becker’s work and taking the next logical
step (Reference1 ; Reference2 ; Reference3 - various web pages).
Taking money as a proxy for energy, it should not be seen, as one is prone to do, as a
material object which can accumulate. Energy does not naturally hang around: it flows and
disperses. And so does money. Unless interest is given, then money in the bank is, for
example, the equivalent of the charged battery: over time it leaks (inflation). Energy only
‘hangs around’ if you turn it into some structure: for example fat deposits or oil. Appreciating
money as a proxy for energy, it becomes quite clear that the focus of economics is (or
perhaps should be) the science of energy flow through society. Wherever an individual
expends energy on behalf of another, then that is economics. Wherever energy is exchanged
or shared between two people, then an economic exchange has just taken place. Becker
may not have reached this full conclusion yet, but there is certainly an inference in the
direction that his work is going that effort, energy and money are essentially the same thing.
You will now hopefully begin to see the relevance of interpreting the Needs Hierarchy in terms
of energetics. As social animals we interact with other people in order to satisfy our Needs, in
other words our personal energy requirements. We have evolved not as lone hunting
machines, but as social animals, and to this end we are better adapted to satisfy our personal
energy requirements in the collective rather than as an individual. It is this that leads to the
formation of the human tribe or human society. We will come to see in subsequent chapters
that money has come to be used most frequently in circumstances where instantaneous
exchanges occur or when we are trying to exchange very different Need requirements
(Material Needs for one traded for Safety/Security Needs for another). As Becker has
inferred, and probably beyond what he would dare suggest, economics actually underpins
every type of interaction regardless of whether money is involved or not. To this end,
economics is in fact the science of social thermodynamics … and all that that entails. The

fundamental importance of this appreciation will become apparent as we progress through the
following chapters.
This interpretation of Needs and thence needs-driven interactions in energetic terms can be
used to frame our understanding of social interactions. When a person senses a Need, this
will clearly focus him or her on what must physically happen in order to satiate that Need.
This could be to obtain some food to eat, or to build a fence to protect some sheep, or to find
a mate, or to obtain some information to digest. Any interaction will therefore start out with a
focus of the mind and direction of action of the body to do or achieve something. The
culmination of an interaction, if successful, will then give rise to an energetic or material or
informational change in physical space. The latter represents the outcome of the interaction,
as set out in the last chapter. The core economic aspects of the interaction thereby bookend
the interaction itself, but are in turn framed by the originating Need and the culminating
response. It is for these reasons why the interaction steps have been set out in the sequence
introduced in Chapter 6.
This no doubt sounds and feels all very, very strange to those qualitative social scientists.
Rest assured, it is not the end of the story … the colour and quality has yet to be added. The
next step is to address the different types of economic outcome, which can arise from
interactions.
Economic Temper of Interactions: Cooperation or Competition
In any given circumstance, there are four courses of action that we can each (in theory)
choose to pursue to satisfy a particular energy Need: three of these are interactions and one
an individual action. The non-interaction represents acting alone, equivalent to the leopard or
tiger, those lone hunters. To do so probably requires becoming a hermit – not so easy on a
busy planet – at risk of going mad (at least from the perspective of more socialised others).
The other three courses of action are Taking, Sharing and Exchanging. The first of these is
clearly not mutually beneficial; it is very obviously competitive. The other two tempers of
interaction, however, represent the different tempers of cooperation, which were introduced in
Chapter 6.
The full Set of Tempers of Interaction are set out in the table below.
Passive Active
Cooperative Exchanging Sharing
Competitive Lone Operator Taking

I have suggested the notions of Active and Passive on the basis that, at least in the
competitive context, this is quite apparent. The lone operator may not be Taking from another
in an active sense, but he is by definition an inherent competition for resources. If the
availability of food across the landscape were to reduce, then lone operators are forced either
to diverge, so as not to compete for the same energy source (same food types), or are driven
into active competition. The concept of divergence will be further discussed later in this
Chapter.
Focusing on the mutually beneficial tempers of social interaction, there is a fundamental

difference in economic terms between the interaction of sharing and that of exchanging. On
each event sharing actually represents only half an interaction. This is most apparent in the
context of Material Needs interactions. If you share, you give me some food … and then
what? You have just enabled me to survive another day at your expense. Exchange in
contrast represents a full interaction. We both benefit out of the interaction: you give me
some apples and I give you an equivalent amount of pears or money or exerted effort
equivalent (same quantum of energy passing in each direction, but different in quality (I use
the word quantum knowingly)). The instantaneous nature of the interaction of exchange will
be considered in depth in Chapter 8. The key point to note here is that there is no
outstanding commitment from either party once the exchange has taken place. We can each
walk away and never meet again; there are no outstanding obligations. This means that
individuals can freely enter and freely leave exchange situations. In contrast, on each event
the sharing situation effectively represents only half an exchange. In the sharing situation
there is an outstanding obligation from the recipient to the giver.
While the above is fairly obvious, once explained, in respect of Material Needs, similar
principles actually apply for all levels of interaction, each Ideal Type, but manifest in subtly
different ways. We will come to see in Chapters 8 to 12, when Ideal Type interactions are
scaled up to a social level that these different tempers give rise to very different social
situations. To this end, I have suggested that the active cooperating temper is sharing and
the passive version is exchange. Active interactions give rise to a one-way flow of energy or
information; passive interactions do not involve any net flow of energy.
(While on the subject, here is another term. A temper of interaction gives rise to a mode of
operation of a social process. Where all people within a particular social unit or society are
operating through, for instance, sharing temper interactions for a particular Ideal Type, then
we can say that the resultant social process is operating in a Sharing Mode.)
As a generality, the sharing temper of any Ideal Type interaction has a tendency to bind social
units together and to create very clearly defined social boundaries around any group. In
contrast exchanging tempers of interaction have a tendency to break down social barriers and

open up a social group to merge with other surrounding social groups. This notion of
switching from half to complete interactions in the exchanging context is fundamental to this.
However, as will be explored in Chapters 8 to 12, the emergence of exchanging interactions
across a society does not entirely eradicate competition. Rather it shifts competition from
being real physical competition (say tribes competing for food across the physical landscape)
into competition within social space (for example, companies competing for market share).
Where sharing within a group creates highly defined social units, such units by definition
compete with other surrounding social units. A classic example is that of tribes dispersed
across a physical landscape; they are all sharing within but competing between. Competition
between naturally leads to divergence. In the case of the tribes, the divergence is that of a
tribal identity, leading to very clearly defined and identifiable tribal units. In the modern
context, an example might be two solicitors setting up business in adjacent offices. As they
seek to market their businesses, they find themselves competing directly against each other.
The natural tendency then is that the two businesses start to diverge, differentiate, in terms of
the service that they seek to offer.
We see then three different outcomes within society arising from these different tempers of
interaction. Sharing brings things together within a social group and differentiates or
demarcates that social unit from others. Taking, or competition generally, leads to divergence
between social units. And exchanging straddles direct competition and sharing, leading to the
emergence of something new. This ‘something new’ is the social space we inhabit, which will
be introduced in a moment.
The critical realisation coming out of this analysis is the appreciation that any system of
interacting humans is bounded. Each and every person has a limited set of options to choose
from in the way that they can interact with other people. This can clearly be dressed up in an
infinite number of multi-coloured cultural variations (how many different ways can you say
hello, peacefully and non-threateningly?). But underlying all that colour there are only a
discrete set of ways in which energy can flow through society. It is this boundedness that
leads to the emergence of social processes, which can extend into and subvert the direction
in which any particular social group develops and evolves, focussing that social group on,
say, growth related development, or health related development or other. The difficulties
faced by Talcott Parsons, Georg Simmel and Charles Horton Cooley, because they failed to
see these underlying very specific types of drivers and thence interactions, fall away and all of
a sudden a very clear picture of how can society develop is able to emerge.

Social Emulation
So far we have been primarily considering the interaction between pairs of individuals – direct
one-to-one interactions and emergent relationships – albeit in the last section there have ben
some allusions to the scaling up of the interactions to a social level. The question which
needs next to be asked is how individual interactions propagate outwards to a social context.
It is now pertinent to revert to some of the social psychology research identified in Chapter 5.
In first instance, given the proposition that embedded within any social interaction there are
required behaviours, it is quite easy to see that these would be observed by others beyond a
pair interaction. Drawing on theories such as Cognitive Dissonance Theory and Behavioural
Confirmation, it is quite reasonable to suggest that if someone is exposed to others acting in a
particular way this will rub off. Furthermore, if someone interacts directly with you in a
particular way, the social animal in us has a tendency to respond in kind. If someone
genuinely smiles at you, you naturally respond likewise. On the other hand, if someone is
threatening, it is natural either to threaten back or to cower. We seem to have learned
responses in our social make-up. While as adults, we may each be less influenced by other
behaviours around us, as children we are very affected by the actions and interactions with
others. Children naturally emulate. So in a family, whose adults enact particular behaviour
patterns, these will almost certainly be passed on in some way to the next generation.
There is clearly in the world a huge variety of behaviours. There are, for instance, countless
ways to say “hello” in a peaceful, non-threatening manner. But beneath this huge variety,
there lie a limited number of behaviour types relating to the five Ideal Types of interaction
already identified. For each Ideal Type of interaction there is a cooperative behaviour and a
competitive behaviour. These are summarised below:
Ideal Type Cooperative Behaviour Competitive Behaviour

Level 1 – Material Needs Peaceful Aggression
Level 2 – Security Needs Predictable Threatening*
Level 3 – Belonging Needs Dependable Intimidation*
Level 4 – Self-Esteem Needs Inclusive Exclusive
Level 5 – Self-Actualisation Needs Admiring Condescending
(* For the purposes here, Threatening is taken to be direct threat of aggression or violance to
an individual’s person, whereas Intimidation represents threat of aggression to another
person or object which is dear to the person (for example, through extortion of money by
means of kidnap).

Drawing on the discussion on boundedness, the above Behaviour Types represent the sum
total of all underlying behaviours. These may be expressed in innumerable different ways,
but underlying the complexity and diversity of the real world that we know, all observed
behaviours should be traceable to these ten behaviour types. If this is true, then it
corroborates the theory. If not, then there may be a missing Need. (Or the whole framework
may be wrong!)
Proceeding on the basis that this hypothesis is correct, the remainder of this chapter will
explore some of the other generic consequences of the social processes which emerge out of
social interactions.
Influence of Social Interactions on Identities/Personalities
Drawing on Cooley’s concept of the Looking Glass Self, there appeared to me to be a natural
and logical extension to the ideas so far developed. The hypothesis is this. Humans infer
their own Identities from the attitudes that they gain which in turn arise from enacted
behaviours which they perform as they interact. So, for example, if I learn to accept other
human beings peacefully through either sharing or exchanging and if they also behave as if
they accept me, then I learn to accept myself. The more I am able to accept others, then the
more I develop the ability to accept myself. The inference is that the greater my ability to
accept others and in return the greater that others accept me, then the greater will be my own
self-acceptance,. This gives me a stronger underlying identity – acceptance of the self. At
Level 2, the more I learn to be predictable towards others for them to trust me, then the more I
learn to trust myself. Trusting oneself essentially means being self-assured (self-secure).
And the same feedback process acts for the other Ideal Type interactions.
These interaction processes at the individual level act to reinforce how a person operates
within a social context, regardless of the company kept. A child, who develops a strong
identity in each of these aspects, will go on to influence in these ways whoever he or she
spends time with in later life.
It is at this point that we truly begin to see the emergence of the Social Process. Clearly
attitudes can be communicated between people. But it is deeper than this; there is an
automatic, unspoken aspect too. At the individual level we discovered in Chapter 6 that
behaviour and attitude form part of a cyclic, self-reinforcing process. This becomes even
more reinforcing when two or more people are involved. In fact the more people involved, the
stronger the feedback process. Through accepting another, I help them to increase their
personal degree of self-acceptance, the strength of their primary identity. This builds their
own capacity to accept others and they can thereby be more accepting of me in return. The
relationship of acceptance naturally builds each time we interact to share or exchange our

most fundamental energy requirements. In regard to acceptance, we experience it greatest in

city centre environments, where everyone develops a sense of anonymity – simply accepted.
Alternatively, in highly structured environments, say an army or a civil service bureaucracy,
people feel strong pressure to be predictable and regulated in how they operate, developing
strong codes of conduct. Everyone influences everyone else to fit the mould.
This promulgation of defined attitudes, informing people’s personal identities, represents a

core mechanism by which Social Processes become powerful drivers of development within
society. The table below provides the Sets of Behaviour Types, Attitudes and resulting
Identities. Again the detailed derivations are provided in Chapters 8 to 12.
Identity / Self-
Ideal Type Behaviour Attitude
Perception
Level 1 – Material Needs Peaceful Acceptance Self-(Acceptance)
Level 2 – Security Needs Predictable Trust Self-Assured
Level 3 – Belonging Needs Principled Faith Self-Worth
Level 4 – Self-Esteem Needs Inclusive Respectful Self-Esteem/Respect
Level 5 – Self-Actualisation Needs Admiring Deferential Self-Confident
The implication from the above is that the Identity that an individual develops has five
components to it. This Identity ultimately derives from the social interactions in which he or
she participates during his or her life – especially the early years. We are very much moulded
by the manner in which we interact with those around us, as predicted by both Durkheim and
Watson (discussed in Chapter 5). We will come to see in Chapter 14 that there is now strong
empirical evidence to support this hypothesis. There are indeed five different traits to the
human identity or personality (whatever you want to call it). Not only do psychologists now
believe that there are five dimensions to human personality, but these empirically determined
aspects to the human identity map directly onto the theoretically deduce personality types
arising from the theory of social interaction. Theory and practice dovetail, beautifully.
Summary of the Social Processes
By this point, you are probably burning to find out exactly what these social processes are.
So the following represents a fast summary of each social process. A full description is
provided in each of Chapters 8 to 12.
The Birth Process is arguably the most powerful process (or if not, certainly most important
for the survival of society). It is driven by people seeking to satisfy their daily material needs
(food and water). It is a process, which rather counter intuitively acts to tear society apart.
Wherever existing social structures or boundaries exist, from tribal systems to banks and

international institutions, the Birth Process operates to atomise and break apart these extant
structures and social delineations. It does this by forever creating new possibilities,
insinuating competition wherever cooperation has a hold. It has been the driver behind
Modernity; increasing rationality in human society. The Birth Process can most readily be
associated with the ideology of liberalism. Its logical extreme is anarchy. The Birth Process
instils in human society a blinkered focus on the present (past and future become irrelevant).
It is the process of entropy.
The Growth Process can most easily be associated with the formation and expansion of
bureaucratic systems, noting the tendency of the latter for inexorable growth. It creates rigid
social structure and through this provides human societies with the ability to build physical
structures. In its pure form the Growth Process represents simple replication of structure:
another brick on the wall, another identical car produced from the manufacturing line, another
identikit role created in society. It is a process, which is driven by people seeking safety and
security, to ensure that their material needs will continue to be available tomorrow (in the
immediate future) as well as today. Counter-intuitively this process inculcates in human
society a total focus on the past, seeking to extend and perpetuate agreeable trends and the
status quo: extending the security and predictability of the known past into the near future.
The Growth Process can most readily be associated with the ideologies of socialism and
capitalism (these are different expressions of the same underlying process). The Growth
Process has also been the driving force behind ever-increasing division of labour. When
allowed to spin out of control, this process can cause a human society rapidly to coalesce into
a singular bureaucratic entity (most explicitly demonstrated in the last century in the form of
communism).
The Health Process corresponds to the reproduction of city populations and all that is
required to create and nurture future generations. It is the process, which generates much
looser, more fluid social structures, commonly referred to as communities. It provides the
basis for creating the social, cultural and physical environments, which are conducive to the
successful rearing of children and maintenance of mental and physical health amongst the
wider population. As a process it produces the moral fabric of society, historically manifest in
the form of religions, and engenders a focus on the future – beyond tomorrow. However,
when allowed to run out of control, this process can cause societies to layer into distinct
castes (or classes) and eventually to the emergence of apartheid or even slavery. But without
a functional Health Process, societies lose sight of their own future, stop caring for their
children and the environment they inhabit. People literally lose the ability to value their own
health or that of anyone or anything else.
The Adaptation Process underpins both democracy and our modern information economies.
It is driven by people seeking autonomy and social mobility, to achieve individual freedom

within a society which has been vertically (Growth Process) and horizontally (Health Process)
structured, without completely destroying the underlying social fabric (as happens under the
influence of the Birth Process). The Adaptation Process enables individuals to unlink from
their own inherited roles and to navigate their own personal trajectories through social space.
In this respect social space itself becomes objectified – a new landscape to explore. As
individuals within society become mobile, society itself becomes more flexible and adaptable,
changing to accommodate external influences. The Process relies upon and engenders
respect and inclusivity, not just between people but of all that is important and worth valuing.
The process directs us to see things in balance: today, tomorrow and the future. The
ideology created by the Adaptation Process is none other than Sustainability: the ideology of
democratically structured societies. Physical manifestations of the Adaptation Process
include public transport and non-lethal sports.
The Transformation Process enables whole cities and their societies to be creative and to
take control of their destinies. It is a process, which allows thinking and action to transcend
scales in time and space. Beyond that, the author can tell you no more. We have yet to
experience the Transformation Process across wider society. And may not do so for many
centuries or millennia to come; even assuming we survive the current crises facing humanity.
Terminology
In order to facilitate understanding of the following chapters, here follows some key new
terminologies.
Social Process Modes
Only when a sizeable proportion of the people within a social group (family, business,
community, society, nation state) are all interacting in a similar way do discrete interactions
combine together to create a positive feedback driven social process.
Sharing interactions writ-large across a social group will tend to bind a group together in a
particular way dependent upon the Ideal Type of interactions. The consequence of this is to
create “membership” (using the word in its broadest sense) social structures (disparate
examples include tribes, nuclear families, discrete businesses, religious communities, nation
states), which have clear social boundaries around them (see below for further discussion on
social boundaries).
An identified social process will operate inside the social boundary it creates; it will not extend
directly over that boundary. This creates social units which can then interact with each other.
For example, members of a family share food, whereas family units operate on an exchange

basis between each other.
Exchanging interactions, in contrast, will tend to open up a social group, reducing social
boundaries and interlacing an initially discrete and identifiable group into a wider society. For
example, through connection to cities over generations original tribes eventually merge into a
wider amorphous society.
The Mode of Operation of a Social Process is driven by the underlying Tempers of Interaction
which dominate within a social group.
Social Boundaries and Nesting of Processes
Maslow originally suggested that Needs sit in a hierarchy, where by necessity daily Material
Needs will become prioritised on a day-to-day basis over higher Needs. Social conditioning
and the cultural environment can change this, driving some individuals to prioritise Needs in a
different order (for example, the religious zealot prioritising his afterlife over current standard
of living). But, by and large, the hierarchy holds. Certainly on a statistical basis, lower Needs
will be treated with priority over higher Needs.
This degree of hierarchy has the effect of causing processes to ‘nest’. For example, in tribal
situations the Birth Process (Level 1 Need) in Sharing Mode causes a tribe to knit together
under a singular identity forming an impenetrable social boundary around the tribe. No
cooperation can take place across this social divide at any level – only competition. Inside
the tribal boundary, different tribes may have been structured in different ways. The resultant
social structure can be likened to layers of an onion.
Social boundaries cannot be crossed to enable any higher level of cooperation, only lower
level cooperation. For instance, cooperation in security cannot cross a divide created by
competition for material goods. Cooperation in health and reproduction does not normally or
naturally cross a divide created by competition in security (where the latter is often expressed
through mutual terror). Contrastingly, trade may continue to take place between to social
groups, say neighbouring states, which are acting competitively in respect of security needs.
Cultural Bifurcations
Cultural bifurcations represent none other than grandiose Tipping Points. Examples of
cultural bifurcations in our history include the appearance of money (a common currency)
within various societies, the emergence of property rights, the arrival of monotheistic religions
and the creation of democratic election processes.

The evolution of Alternative Nested Tribal Structures

human society
Five Layers. Level 1 Tribal Boundary on the outside
has taken place
through the
gradual removal
of social
boundaries and
the step-by-step
switching of
social processes
from sharing to exchanging modes. Originating tribes, with social boundaries relating to all
Needs (say five layers) have gradually had those boundaries stripped away and merged into
broader societies. This started from the lower Needs. Original tribes, competing for material
needs, began incrementally to cooperate through exchanging peace offerings, which in due
course developed into early trade. At a critical point, early in our history, a cultural bifurcation
took place whence trade came to dominate social interactions across the population (mostly
between nuclear family units), replacing the initial sharing interactions within tribes. The outer
layer of tribal differentiation, arising from sharing interactions within tribes with respect to
material needs, consequently dissipated. Direct, physical competition between the
descendants of the initial tribal groups then moved up a Level to competition for security
needs.
But competition for materials needs was not entirely eradicated. Rather it was tamed and
transferred from physical space into social space. Competition was no longer direct head-to-
head competition for food to eat, but for money to obtain to enable the purchasing of food to
eat. Money is a social construction allowing cooperating exchange interactions to propagate
across a society. In civilized society, we compete for money (proxy for energy) in order to
cooperate in exchange of energy (food).
As development of civilised society has progressed, competition has been tamed and
transferred from the physical realm to the social world. Step-by-step through a series of
cultural bifurcations extending further and further across larger and larger swathes of
civilisation. A great example of the taming of competition is the emergence of non-lethal
sports in combination with the rise of democratic societies.
Cultural bifurcations are characterised by a long, slow process of cultural change as more and
more people across a society begin to alter the way they interact with each other. This can
take hundreds of years. At a critical point a social phase change happens (the cultural
bifurcation itself) and positive feedback kicks-in, directly leading to very rapid economic and
structural changes to a society. Classic examples in history of such events include:

! the appearance of Christianity and Islam, both of which were in gestation for many
centuries before suddenly taking the ancient world by storm
! the current information and communications revolution, which is the result of many
centuries of development of notions in and around the concept of democracy and people
learning to tell each other the truth
Competition and Divergence
A fundamental concept embedded within the theory of social interaction is the notion that
cooperation can emerge out of divergence. We see this in our everyday lives in the context of
division of labour. Two brick layers, for instance, might be able to cooperate together in a
Sharing Temper interaction, where there is sufficient work load to employ both of them. In
this context, they would be simply splitting the overall task between them. But if there were a
contraction in the economy, then the two brick layers would naturally become competitors for
COMPETITION
(Level) 1 2 3 4 5
COOPERATION
employment. However, if one of them diverges into, say, plastering, then they can continue to
cooperate, albeit now on an exchange basis – classic division of labour.
The idea of divergence runs throughout the theory of social interaction, applying to all Levels
of the Needs hierarchy and giving rise to the following:
1. Division of the Sourcing of Materials – divergence in trading economy

2. Division of Labour – divergence in the manufacturing / construction economy
3. Division of Nurture – divergence in nurture related activities (for example new
divergent specialisms in health care)
4. Division of Competence – divergence in the knowledge economy
5. Division of Technology – divergence in areas of creativity
The concept of increasing division over time, driven by natural competition, becomes
particularly important when considering the long-term evolution of a society or city. At critical
points, potentially giving rise to Tipping Points of major change, division of activity across a
society can enable a new degree of cooperation to emerge. This may be gradual or quite
sudden. Examples which are less obvious than straightforward division of labour include the
emergence of public space and public buildings, which are dedicated to particular needs of a
community, and the appearance of public transport, which arises when people are no longer
in direct competition for travel.

Power Relationships
The implicit hierarchy of the Needs gives rise to a very familiar, long discussed, but erstwhile
still unexplained, phenomenon within human societies: power and why do some people end
up with power over others?
Social Social Matrix Examples of physical and structure Many

Process manifestations of Social Matrices interactions
(when Social Processes are operating between
in Exchange Mode) people are
Level 1 Peace Matrix Money (common currency) not directly
Birth Process Market places egalitarian,
Level 2 Trust Matrix Legal system but
Growth Property rights comprise
Process Constructed cities uneven or
Level 3 Value Matrix Monotheistic religions unequal
Health Process Health service interactions.
Education system A classic
Public space in cities example is
Level 4 Equality Matrix Election systems the
Adaptation Structured sporting competitions prostitute
Process Formal consultation systems (or just
Public transport escort or
Level 5 Diversity Award ceremonies paid for
Transformation Matrix New Technology mistress),
Process offering sex
(or simply
good, interested, nurturing company) in return for money and other material Needs. The
paying party to such an interaction has his or her material Needs currently satisfied (adequate
amount of money or income) and is looking for a higher Need to be met. The prostitute or
escort or mistress is seeking a basic income to survive – money for today’s material needs or
to secure an on-going income, but with no expectation of having any higher Needs met,
whether health, respect or recognition.
If you look around society, then it is quickly apparent that a very large proportion of
interactions are unequal. Most paid employment is a Level 1 (Material Needs) to Level
2 (Security) interaction: owner of a company employs staff, who through their work increase
the owner’s security (say, production of goods for sale) and in return receive a regular stipend
(daily, weekly, monthly). The regular income received meets an employees daily material
needs, but provides little in the way of security. This is the basis of capitalism. It is also, to all

intents and purposes, the basis of communism (real communism as opposed to idealistic
communism/Marxism).
Matrices and SIMS
The entire cultural and social environment arising from the social interactions taking place
within a group create a Social Matrix. These are all the cultural and social elements arising
from the interactions – perceptions of others, perceptions of success, behaviours and
attitudes, comprehension of time and space, narratives and ideologies. Each Ideal Type of
interaction, when manifest as a pure social process within a social group, creates a social
Matrix. Labels have been suggested for these in the table below. There are therefore five
social matrices, which aggregated together represent the entire social consciousness of a
society – that is the entire Social World according to Popper’s Three Worlds Theorem.
When a Cultural Bifurcation occurs, such that the majority of interactions associated with a
particular Ideal Type across a society (for instance between individuals or between families or
between businesses) have converted to exchange interactions, then this manifests by a
fundamental change in the relevant social matrix.
Social Matrices become apparent through physical manifestations. For example, the Level 1
(Birth Process) Social Matrix (here referred to as the Peace Matrix) gives rise to a commonly
accepted currency (money) across a society. The European Union has recently undergone a
Cultural Bifurcation between nation states, most of them adopting a common currency in the
Euro.
SIMS stands for Systems Inhabiting Matrices. SIMS can be either hierarchic or egalitarian
and represent bounded social systems operating within a matrix. Examples of SIMS include:
tribes, nuclear family units, market places, bureaucratic organisations, armies, towns and
cities, cults, modern businesses, unions, nation states, etc.
One of the easiest examples to draw on to explain SIMS is the concept of the hierarchic
bureaucracy. Most bureaucracies, as already alluded, are built up from unequal Level 1 to
Level 2 relationships, where the higher up the bureaucracy the better served an individual’s
Safety and Security Needs will be. The lower the rank of an individual in a bureaucracy the
more an individual is sacrificing his Safety and Security Needs in order to obtain essential
daily Material Needs. This is most obvious in history in the context of armies: the king leading
his army, which he pays to protect him: the foot soldiers receive a daily hand out, but their
lives are most at risk. The maximum size to which a bureaucracy can grow is dependent
upon the culture of trust and predictability which pervades a society. This ultimately derives
from the strength of the underlying Trust Matrix across a society.

Cults represent a very different form of hierarchic social organisation involving a single central
figure, elevated in some way above a mass of supporters. The size to which a cult can grow
is not dependent on the Trust Matrix (albeit it may have a part to play) but rather is most
reliant on a strong underlying Value Matrix.
Social
Social Matrix Systems Inhabiting Matrices (SIMS)
Process
Sharing Mode Exchanging Mode
Level 1
Peace Matrix Tribes Market Places
Birth Process
Level 2
Bureaucratic
Growth Trust Matrix Supply Chains
Organisations
Process
Level 3
Value Matrix Cults Communities
Health Process
Level 4 Group Decision-

Equality
Adaptation Modern Businesses making Systems /
Matrix
Process Election Systems
Level 5
Diversity Creative / Learning
Transformation Award Ceremonies
Matrix Organisations
Process
The Complete Structure of Social Interactions and Social Processes
Set out below is a diagram of the full construct of a Social Interaction and how it feeds into
Social Process.

STRUCTURE OF AN IDEAL TYPE OF

BIOLOGICAL MENTAL INTERACTION, FEEDING INTO A PURE
1 NEED NEED PROCESS
Identity Interpretation of
success in society
2 FOCUS OF Perceptions of Cultural way of P

ATTENTION Others and Self thinking about others
R
ETHOS: Attitude Cultural way of treating O
BEHAVIOUR others
C
REPEATED
FORM OF Social Bonds Social Structure E

INTERACTION
S
OUTCOME Economic Economic
S
Event Activity
EMOTIONAL Narrative Ideology

YES RESPONSE
HAPPY
NO SAD
New Type of
Interaction
Required REINFORCED REINFORCED
THROUGH THROUGH
1 – Process repeated when Need returns REPETITION PROPAGATION
2 – Process becomes self-serving
The Five Fundamental Social Processes of Civilisation
Putting the five social processes together, we find ourselves with one process which tears
society apart, in every which way it is possible to do so, destroying all social fabric and
atomising society. Counter-intuitively this is the Birth Process, which set civilisation off in the
first place. Two processes continually act to reconstitute structure in society – Growth
(vertical structure) and Health (horizontal structure). The Adaptation Process enables society
to change without destroying the underlying social structures. And the Transformation
Process enables society to take control of its own destiny and proactively change itself.
We will come to see that the Birth Process given rise to the manifestation of Modernity – the
creation of the (more) Rational Man. We will come to understand that the Growth Process
gives rise to, amongst other things, ever increasing Division of Labour and simultaneously
acts to create a (more) rational legal system and enables the formation of ever larger
bureaucracies. I sense that the Health Process is currently rather lacking in the Western
world, but otherwise enables the development of social cohesion in communities (that is
communities of interest from religious communities through to political parties, guilds and
unions and those over-referenced ‘sustainable communities’, otherwise known as local
communities of place). The Adaptation Process is giving rise to democracy and much, much

more besides. The fifth process, Transformation, is probably synonymous with meritocracy
(albeit genuine meritocracy and not just the financial version we currently understand).
The Social Processes come to manifest themselves in physical form. The Birth Process, for
example, gives rise to the creation of trade routes and trading centres (in other words drives
the initial formation of cities). We will come to see that the Growth Process drives the
manufacturing economies and the basic infrastructure development of our cities (to protect
them from the elements – floods, etc). The Health Process has given rise to the creation of
our great religious monuments throughout history. The Adaptation Process is driving the
exponential growth of our knowledge of the universe and our communications economies, the
internet and (intriguingly) the building of sports stadia.
The Social Processes are even more insidious than one might care to appreciate on initial
inspection. As noted, each Process can be seen to generate its own intellectual justification,
its own ideology. For Processes 1, 2, 3 and 4, we will come to appreciate that these are
(approximately) Liberalism, Socialism, Fundamentalism and Sustainability, respectively. In
this respect, individuals who become infused and enthused by one or other Social Process
help to generate and then draw from the intellectual strands of thinking that justify the
promotion of that particular Process.
Remember that each of these Social Processes represents a pure Process arising out of an
Ideal Type of social interaction. Within society, whether tribal or civilised, these five
processes are always in operation, to varying degrees. The way that society actually
develops at any one time depends upon the rate of progress of each process and the
interaction between these processes. In some respects different processes cancel each
other out, in other ways they accentuate change within society. In looking back, for example
the last 1,000 years of European history, the different processes can be seen to ‘kick-in’ at
different times and to be in the ‘driving-seat’, so-to-speak, in directing the development of
society at that particular time. For instance it will become apparent that Social Process 1
drove the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution arose from Social Processes 2 and 4
st
operating at full-speed. In the period in which I write this book, during the early 21 century,
then Social Processes 1 and 4 seem to be in the driving-seat. The implications of this will
become more apparent once you have digested the following five chapters.
Sustainable Development
And what of sustainable development? I would suggest that it arises out of that interplay and
continuing competition between the different Social Processes, competing to drive our
evolution in one or other direction. It is not a question of following a path of Liberalism or

Socialism, but a matter of finding a suitable balance between these competing directions of
development.
Before considering the full implications of these five processes, first a word of caution.
Anywhere where a process exists, there is the potential for it to be stopped, or worse to go
into reverse. The consequences for civilisation are devastating. In counter-play to the five
positive processes above, when these social processes fail or go into reverse the results are,
in order, (1) War, (2) Terror, (3) Slavery, (4) Autocracy and (5) Stagnation. At the
individual scale, these are expressed in terms of (1) Death/Exile, (2) Torture, (3)
Imprisonment, (4) Exclusion and (5) Failure.
In addition to this, it can be seen that the processes themselves represent positive feedback
loops, each of which has the potential to race forwards out of control. My interpretation is that
sustainable development represents keeping the positive social processes in balance. When
one process races ahead out-of-control, then this can be as devastating for society as a
process stopping or going into reverse: a recent example is the 2008 Credit Crunch driven by
Social Process 1 operating at full throttle. So the trick for political policy is not to try to slow
down processes, for fear of stopping or reversing them, but to seek to speed up the other
processes to catch up with the one that has careened ahead. The processes together drive
development and they each act differently on each other: some of the processes twisting the
others in odd ways and others limiting their speed. So the only safe way to limit a process
running out of control is to find which other processes need enhancing to act as a check to
that process which is running too fast. For example, you should not stop trade by putting in
trade barriers, rather you need to enhance Social Processes 2 and 3 to counter the negative
aspects of trade.
In our present world (early 2000s and particularly in the English-speaking Western world), it is
most obvious that there is a loss of balance and that the Freedom process is currently racing
ahead, quite possibly totally out of control. The consequence could be catastrophic; its logical
conclusion, as we will come to see, is beyond total liberalisation, ending (possibly even self-
destructing) in complete anarchy! (I wrote the last two sentences in Spring 2008, before the
full effects of the Credit Crunch had become apparent). If the Justice Process were to run out
of control, the end result is (to all intents and purposes) a communist state. If the Amity
Process were to run out of control, one would end up with a fundamentalist religious state
(well beyond anything we observe in today’s world and probably more akin to Ancient Egypt
with an associated extreme caste or class system). If the Democracy Process were to run out
of control, one would end up with a state unable to make a single decision, ever (I think) – the
perpetually dithering society (not yet experienced by humanity). And if the Fifth Process were
to run out of control, then (uncertain of this, but here is a stab in the dark) the outcome would

be a Groundhog Day at the Oscars society. We will return to consider how we might regain a
more sustainable form of development in Chapter 15.
In the next five chapters, we will consider each of these processes in turn and seek to
understand what they mean for our day-to-day lives and the world we live in. This will be
done by following logically through the implications of each of the identified social interactions
to try to envisage what happens when these are scaled up to the societal level. It is worth
realising from the outset that these five processes operate effectively as follows. The
Freedom process acts continually to tear society apart, giving total and utter priority to the
opportunistic individual (hence, in part, why its logical conclusion when operating out of
control is anarchy). The Justice and Amity processes act to reconstitute society through
strong social structures in more rational (note the relativeness) forms than the original tribes
from which society was and is formed. The Justice process creates both bureaucracies and
the rational rules and laws of civilised society, while the Amity process generates religions
and then rational ethical and moral frameworks and the associated social bonds and social
structures. The fourth process, Democracy, influences how society makes decisions about
the future and acts to give the individual mobility within those social structures created by
Social Processes 2 and 3. And the fifth process provides the scope for real intended social
change to take place.
These five Social Processes have created our civilisation. By understanding them, we at last
have a real opportunity to influence how we collectively move forwards.
Message to Readers
In the following five Chapters, I have followed the logic of this framework and tried to set out
how I have deduced that the identified Social Processes act to influence the way we each
behave, our attitudes, how we think about ourselves and others, our perception of the
universe and so on. I have not attempted to ground these ideas in these chapters. Rather, in
Chapter 13, further consideration will be given to show how the conclusions regarding each
Process link to existing thinking (primarily thinking that has taken place over the last 200
years).
Please treat these Chapters as my personal tentative exploration into the nature and
implications of these identified Social Processes. I may, indeed will, have made some,
perhaps numerous, mistakes. I have not had the time or resources to carry out the detailed
research which might prove or disprove aspects of my conclusions. But I am confident that I
have interpreted them broadly correctly – there are simply too many coincidences and pieces
of anecdotal evidence to ignore. So, please read with an open mind. And if you think I have

made errors, then, once you have a feel for the method, use it yourself to see whether you
can come up with better explanations.
Remember, and this has been one of the most difficult parts of writing these following
chapters, each chapter focuses on a pure Social Process. In our daily lives, all Processes are
forever present … just to varying degrees depending on who you are and the life you lead.
Remember also that, taken on their own, each of the Processes can be quite unnerving.
Thankfully society does, for the most part, develop in a way that gives a degree of balance to
them – our continued survival (and sustainable development) depends on it.
Becker, G. (1976). The Economic Approach to Human Behaviour, University of Chicago

Press.
Becker, G. (1992). The Economic Way of Looking at Life. Nobel Prize Lecture.
Becker, G. and K. Murphy (2001). Social Economics: Market Behaviour in a Social

Environment, Harvard University Press.
Cooley, C. H. (1902). Human Nature and the Social Order, Charles Scribner's Sons.
Cooley, C. H. (1918). Social Process, Charles Scribner's Sons.
Diamond, J. (1987). The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race. Discover. May: 64-
66.
Giddens, A. (1986). The Constitution of Society: Outline of the Theory of Structuration,

University of California Press.
Kooijman, S. (2000). Dynamic Energy and Mass Budgets in Biological Systems, Cambridge
University Press.
Reference1. "Money is a proxy for energy reference." from www.moneyisenergy.com.
Reference2. "Money is a proxy for energy reference." from www.moneyenergy.co.uk.
Reference3. "Money is a proxy for energy reference." from www.holisticwealthcreation.com.
Schneider, E. and D. Sagan (2006). Into the Cool: Energy Flow, Thermodynamics and Life,
University of Chicago Press.
Simmel, G. (1949). "The Sociology of Sociability." American Journal of Sociology 55(3): 254-
261.
Simmel, G. (1978). The Philosophy of Money, Routledge.
Whitfield, J. (2006). In the Beat of a Heart: Life, Energy, and the Unity of Nature, Joseph
Henry Press.

Chapter 8 – Birth Process (Social Process 1) Page 1 of 22 10/6/10
Chapter 8 – The Birth Process (Social Process 1)
“The natural effect of commerce is to lead to peace”

(Baron de Montesquieu, 1748, The Spirit of the Laws, Book 20, Chapter 2: ‘Of the Spirit of
Commerce’).
Without the Birth Process civilisation would simply not exist. Yet when the Birth Process is
allowed to operate out of control, as it has been for much of the last half century or more, then
it can have devastating consequences which infuse every aspect of society. As with all the
Processes to follow, they are all essential for human development, but each only in balanced
moderation. Having constructed the concept of social processes in the last two chapters and
set out broadly how they operate in abstract from the microscopic upwards, it is now time to
roll out this framework to see the real consequences. It is quite phenomenal and will explain
much more than you can dare imagine. For instance, why is it during the recent boom years
that banks and other financial institutions have come to appear more and more immoral and
to treat people more and more as objects to be exploited, rather than as customers? All will
be revealed.
Material Needs – the interaction driver
We start by reviewing Maslow’s interpretation of the Level 1 Need – Material Needs.
For reasons which will become quite apparent by the end of this chapter, Maslow originally
interpreted his Level 1 Material Needs to include a whole variety of factors that provide for our
current standards of living, including food, drink, but also a comfortable home and those
modern gadgets that make life in modern civilisation quite easy: the material side of life. To
understand the real driver behind the Birth Process, it is necessary to strip away all those
factors of the modern world that make life so much easier and palatable, including a nice
comfortable home to live in. Rather the initial focus has to be on the real core Needs, the
original and main driver – energy, acquired in the form of food and water. All the rest can be
considered to be Wants, and not Needs, and will be layered back on later.
Our absolute essential and most basic requirement is to obtain sufficient energy to stay alive.
This energy must be acquired through consuming food, water and appropriate nutrients.
This Need is a very immediate Need. We become very hungry and very irritable, very
quickly, if we do not get our daily bread. And the onset of headaches when parched is never
too far away. Satisfying this Need is therefore an urgent business. In our daily routine of life
in modern affluent society, we can easily forget how urgent a business it is. No food and
everything else stops, until you find some food. You must eat and drink regularly, preferably
daily, to survive.

Being so urgent, our Material Needs are a very strong driver of action in the real world.
Everyday we have to act to ensure that this Level 1 Need is satisfied to a reasonable degree.
I cannot emphasise this enough.
Human beings evolved into social animals living in tribes. We evolved to satisfy this most
basic and urgent Need in a social situation. By deduction that context has proven a more
successful evolutionary strategy for our species than each of us ‘going-it-alone’. In the tribal
environment humans learn from a young age to share food with their tribal companions, to
whom they are quite probably genetically related. Most of us still do learn in this way during
childhood within the nuclear family unit – the modern tribal equivalent. But whilst clearly
beneficial for our species, being social has its consequences at the individual level.
For any individual human being, the most dangerous animal that he or she knows is other
humans. This is quite obvious in modern urbanised society. Yet this most certainly was also
the case in tribal times. Lions and tigers might be ferocious predators. But dangerous as
such animals may be, in the scheme of things and from an evolutionary perspective the
statistical threat that such creatures pose is a minor risk. In learning to live as social animals,
the human chooses to live daily, hour-to-hour, minute-to-minute, in the company of another
animal who is perfectly able to kill, to murder, and given its intellect actually far more capable
in that respect than either lion or tiger. Counting up all those minutes spent with each other,
the risk of being turned on by another human being is and always has been orders of
magnitude greater than most people past or present have ever experienced in terms of threat
from other predators or snakes or spiders or whatever. The threat from fellow man would
have been particularly great when food resources were short.
Yet humans learnt, evolved, to share food: no different to a pride of lions sharing a kill.
For a group of carnivores or omnivores to share food, they must learn to enact behaviour that
facilitates this sharing interaction. I have posited that the required behaviour is to act
peacefully. More accurately they must act in such a way that makes those others around feel
unthreatened. Such behaviours can be seen explicitly within the animal kingdom amongst
other social animals, especially around food. They are perhaps more difficult to see amongst
humans, in part because they are now largely enacted through language and more subtle
queues: for example, smiling.
I have already explained in the last two chapters that I have concluded that the attitude that
arises from, and in due course is seen simply to accompany, peaceful behaviour is that of
acceptance. Over the last few years I have tried out other words for this, but always returned
to the word ‘acceptance’ as seeming most fitting. It is an attitude of simply allowing another
human being to exist in close proximity: peaceful seeming without expressing aggression.
But it is more than just that because it means accepting the very existence of that other

person. That other human being is, after all, the most proximate, most immediate and most
endured competitor for exactly the same essential energy sources from the environment.
Other animals and plants are either sources of food or require subtly different types of food
intake; but other humans require exactly the same food types and to this end are the most
direct competitors for survival. To allow another human to continue living means to accept
their existence, and their continued existence, as an objective part of our reality. It means
accepting not only that they are not eliminated as a competitor now, but that they are allowed
to remain a competitor into tomorrow.
Whether we seek to participate in sharing interactions or exchange interactions with other

human beings, we have to learn to be peaceful towards those others and to be accepting of
them. Up to this point nothing has changed from our pre-history to the present. A monkey
troop can only survive if most of the members continue to accept each other. A human tribe
can only survive if all the members of the tribe normally remain peaceful and accepting
towards each other. A civilised society can only survive if all (or the vast majority) of its
members are peaceful and accepting of each other.
When I use the term ‘acceptance’, I use it in the sense of the opposite to ‘prejudice’. To fully
accept (there is clearly much grey ground between total prejudice and total acceptance)
another person means more than acting peacefully towards them and allowing them to co-
exist. It also means accepting what they represent: not holding any prejudices towards them.
We will explore this further after first considering the form of the Level 1 interaction. In
contrast to total acceptance, extreme prejudice would mean not allowing another to continue
to co-exist: extreme prejudice requires that the competition is eliminated.
Material Needs – the focus of attention and form of interaction
As we proceed over this and the next four chapters, we will come to understand better the
long-standing and often discussed conundrum in ethics and the philosophy of ethics: why do,
or can, human beings appear altruistic? Indeed, we will come to appreciate that humans can
essentially become altruistic through interaction. But the starting point is necessarily to treat
the individual as selfish; it is through interaction that we learn how to be part of and belong in
society and to exhibit at the very least the appearance of altruism. The baby and young infant
are, however, very clearly not altruistic. And that is our starting point.
Being individual living organisms that must eat to survive, no matter how social we are, we
are forced to focus at least some of our time on Number 1. Am I hungry? What do I need to
eat? Where can I get some food? These questions answer for us this matter of what is the
focus of attention during any interaction directly associated with food acquisition, any Level 1
interaction. It is very definitely the food itself. When you go into a supermarket to buy some

food, and especially if you are feeling a little peckish, your focus is on what food you are
going to buy. It is not on who you might meet on the way, or who you might speak to at the
cash till or what conversation you will have with them. No. It is first and foremost on the
object – the food.
In a tribal situation, there would have been no choice on source. You obtain the food with the
tribe, within its defined territory, and it is through the tribe’s combined efforts that you are able
to obtain enough food to eat – hunting or gathering. This brings us directly to a very
important concept: the accurate differentiation between Sharing and Exchanging. In the
sharing context, in a tribe, it is ultimately the Source of Food that is being shared. If you pick
fruit from the same tree, you are sharing that source of food. If together you kill a water
buffalo, it is that source of food which you then share. Exchange, in contrast, means relying
on different sources of food and coming together to trade – some apples for some pears.
This differentiation is critical from hereon and any reference to sharing or exchanging
Materials should always be read as the sharing or exchanging of the Sourcing of Materials.
This terminology extends onwards into the other Ideal Type interactions, as will become
explicit in the following chapters.
In a tribal context, because all members of a tribe are living perpetually in close contact, the
Ideal Type interactions (all sharing) mix together such that it is difficult to extricate one from
another. But when exchanging interactions begin to appear, and certainly in more civilised
societies, it would seem that Ideal Type interactions become much more differentiated. I go
to a shop only to obtain food; the rest of my Needs are satisfied through interaction with other
people – at home, at work, etc.
The next issue to address is the form of the exchange of sourcing interaction, in particular its
characteristics in space and time. The Material Needs sharing interaction is something,
which may appear to take place over a period of time: the act of eating food together in a tribe
involves an inherent time duration. This, I believe, is misleading. While the act of eating
together clearly contributes to the suggested development of the tribal identity, I would
suggest that it is secondary to the influence of mutual indebtedness that arises because each
event of sharing represents only half an interaction. Rather, and this is something which can
be readily learnt from watching children at play, the critical point of a sharing of sourcing
interaction is the decision point (or at least its outward communication) – to share or not to
share – which is essentially an instantaneous point in time. Once the person with the material
item, the food or toy, has signalled agreement to share, then the most critical moment is over
and the recipient can relax … to a degree. But the indebtedness, which arises from a sharing
(only half) interaction, effectively makes the duration of a full sharing interaction to be infinite
in length; it is uncertain when the debt will be repaid.

In contrast the exchange interaction, being a complete interaction, is obviously instantaneous.

You may spend half an hour or more going round the supermarket to fill the shopping trolley
with food. But until you have paid for it, it is still not yours. The time period of the actual
transaction itself is (in the scheme of life) essentially instantaneous. One moment the food is
someone else’s, the next instant it is yours, to do with as you please.
Exchange of Sourcing of Materials interactions are inherently and manifestly instantaneous.
Reverting back to the urgency of the Material Need, the interactions of exchanging or sharing
are quite magical. They achieve an immediate resolution to the Need. One moment the food
is in the ownership of another human being and you might lose your life in a fight if you were
to try to take it by force. In this respect, when the food is in the ownership of another human
being, then it effectively does not exist (or alternatively, though visible, it effectively exists at
infinite distance (infinite effort) away). This may be a difficult concept to grasp when you can
see the food and when you are well fed; but imagine walking through a food market if you had
not eaten for a few days and had no money and nothing to exchange. How would you feel?
Yet if you did have money and were to buy some food, all of a sudden in that next instant, by
finding something to exchange, the food would suddenly be yours. In this sense, not only is
the transaction instantaneous, it conceptually brings the food from infinite distance away to
being within your immediate grasp, to eat as quickly or as delicately as you please. The very
transaction itself thereby effects an apparent evaporation of distance. Quite magical, really.
The relevance of this last observation will become more apparent on consideration of the
wider societal implications of the Birth Process later in this chapter. The key points to draw
from the above are that the Material Need is very immediate, the focus of attention is on the
physical object (food in the first instance), and (whether sharing or exchanging) the
transaction effects a perceptual evaporation of distance. The temporal form of the interaction,
however, undergoes a fundamental switch between sharing and exchanging. In the case of
sharing, the interaction is essentially infinite in duration; in the context of the exchange
interaction the interval collapses to being instantaneous.
Birth Process – Behaviour, Attitude and Perceptions
I will start by considering what perception of other people we develop through the Level 1
exchange of sourcing interaction and then move to address how this influences our view of
ourselves and then our construction of reality, how we perceive the world and universe
around us. We will come to appreciate that this acts as a fundamental influence on our
personal identities (others might prefer the term – personalities). This method may seem a
little odd at first sight; by Chapter 9 you should have the hang of how this operates and,

further, hopefully appreciate that it probably does work this way in the real world … and all
that follows as a consequence.
We discovered above that the focus of attention of the individual seeking to meet his or her
Material Need through interaction is on the object, the food. The other human being from
whom he or she is seeking to enter into an interaction, especially for an exchange interaction,
is a secondary consideration. That other person is the means to the end, not the end itself: it
is one’s own hunger that one is trying to satisfy and that takes priority. A little surprisingly, at
Level 1, the focus of attention is not even on the self. It is on satisfying hunger, for which
food, energy, will enable amelioration of that feeling of hunger or thirst. The hunger itself is in
a sense objectified, which means that, as we will come to appreciate, satisfaction of this Need
can actually become detrimental to health when not controlled.
The consequence of this focus on the object and not the other person is that we come to see
the other person merely in terms of the opportunity that they provide for obtaining food. If this
sounds odd, then remember that we are focussing here on a pure social process; there is
plenty of opportunity for more humanity to enter the equation under the other processes. At
Level 1, however, the perception gained of other people is merely as opportunities for
interaction through sharing or exchange of, in first instance, food and then, as we will see, by
extension all material items.
This starting point of seeing other people merely as opportunities to access essential energy
to survive is further accentuated by the interaction itself. As noted above, the interaction is
effectively instantaneous. In such a short time period, it is not possible to learn anything
about the other person beyond the external, superficial things that can be seen or heard.
What colour is their skin? What clothes and jewellery are they wearing and what other
accessories are they carrying? Do they have any identifying markings, such as tattoos?
What language or dialect do they speak? These are all mostly things that one can see and
remember in a split instant or hear in a quick passing moment while the transaction takes
place. Before the transaction, remember, our focus is on the food itself, not the provider.
It is this focus on the material item that facilitates the attitude of acceptance. No matter our
pre-held prejudices, our immediate Need drives us to interact regardless of who that
interaction is with (especially if we had no other choice of source). After the event we might
then remember those superficial external messages displayed by the other party to the
interaction – whether that other was black or white, what was the significance of those
tattoos, which religion does that jewellery announce, and so on. No matter our prior
prejudices against all those signals, in participating in the interaction we have just aided that
other person and been peaceful towards them. Ergo we accept them (or observed that we
did accept them for that instant of the interaction) and all the baggage of meaning that they

brought with them. Repeat the interaction enough times and we find ourselves genuinely
accepting them at any time, not just at the moment of Level 1 Need requiring satisfaction.
As an important aside, the framework created by the theory of social interaction suggests that
there are two fundamentally different types of tribe, which can form. One is egalitarian and is
based around reciprocal and equal sharing interactions taking place amongst members of the
tribe. The other is hierarchic and takes place when one individual has access to food or
energy supplies and provides for the Needs of other people by a perpetual one-sided sharing
interaction; he gives food to others on an on-going basis. This arises because of the
difference between sharing and exchanging interactions. When, as discussed, two
individuals exchange and then walk away, all they need to do is briefly be peaceful and
accept each other. But when a sharing interaction takes place, being only half an interaction,
a debt remains until the favour can be returned. For that whole period of time, the recipient
remains in an accepting state towards the giver. In the egalitarian context, they then switch
and the other becomes a recipient and accepts. When this is repeated over-and-over, the
dynamics act to bind the tribe together under a singular tribal identity. When the arrangement
is not reciprocal, then the first recipient remains permanently indebted. As time goes by, the
recipient will more and more take on and adopt the identity of the doner. The giver of food is,
after all, the recipient’s sole ability to survive. In Chapter 8 we will come to see how this
manifests in situations where the recipient has a choice and can opt to change allegiances.
When there is no choice, the result is a very dangerous tribe: one that is formed around and
entirely obedient to one leading character.
Returning to the exchange of materials interaction, given that the interaction is instantaneous,
there is no need to accept the other party in any deep, identity way. We only need to accept
the superficial for a brief moment in time. It proves to be quite easy to accept people at this
level; in a sense it could be anyone dressed up in those strange clothes. In any event, we are
not focussed on the other because our objective is to buy something to eat, not to interact for
any longer than is absolutely necessary to achieve that purpose.
The impression then obtained of other human beings is a very shallow one. If the only
interactions you ever experienced with other people were exchange of materials interactions,
then you would inevitably begin to see other people merely as cardboard cut-outs –
superficial objects that enable you to get what you need. In the extreme, the impression of
the other person collapses to a mere identity number – someone’s customer reference
number, someone’s bank account or someone’s e-bay username. If you find this explanation
uncomfortable or unbelievable, then try reading Oliver James’ book Affluenza (James 2007;
James 2008) which humorously documents the attitudes of those millionaires and billionaires
who live their lives only experiencing others through exchange of sourcing interactions. They
come to see and then treat other people only as objects to be used.

But it goes further than this. If you spend much time in a city environment and a high
proportion of your experience of other people is through exchange of sourcing interactions,
with numerous others from a multitude of different cultural backgrounds, then in due course
you will become numb to any of the individual cultural messages. You reach a point of no
longer caring. So what if he is black, yellow or white. So what if he is Christian or Muslim or
professes to be a devil worshipper. All other people eventually become dressed manikins,
where the nature of the dress becomes totally irrelevant – a piece of today’s fashion, with no
historic or religious meaning. You simply learn to accept: no prejudice towards anything or
anyone. Exchange of sourcing interactions make the individual an accepting person: note, by
way of example, the stark cultural difference in attitude between big city and small town
America. The implication of this is that whilst the accepting person is clearly an individual in
society, he or she no longer senses a difference in cultural identity between themselves and
anyone else. To this accepting person, we are all just people in one society, who so happen
to have different colour skin and dress differently: and so what if we do?
This acceptance of others naturally extends beyond the person to the ideas, cultures,
identities, to which those others belong and which they might seek to convey. Becoming an
accepting person is not just manifest in terms of how we interact with others. Rather it
becomes expressed in the way that we interact with everything and anything, including
thoughts and beliefs, ideologies and religions.
Next we move to consider the image that we develop of ourselves. Drawing on Cooley’s
Looking Glass Self, I would suggest that how we perceive ourselves is strongly informed by
how we perceive other people. This is influenced by the nature of the typical interactions in
which we are involved. In the case of the equal exchange interactions, I would suggest that
there is an inevitable mirroring that takes place. If you live your life interacting with people
through only exchange of sourcing interactions, then what you see in others comes to be
what you see in yourself. You would inevitably come to perceive yourself as a shallow card-
board cut-out: only the superficial, observable aspects to your person count as important. All
depth is lost. This probably does not happen to the same degree in the case of sharing
interactions because the closed tribal environment forces other types of interaction to take
place with the same group of people, each day, each week. But in an open civilised society it
does become possible for an individual to start to live in a manner where a majority of
interactions are of an exchange of sourcing nature only. The result is clearly exposed in
James’ book, Affluenza, when he interviews various characters from around the world, who
have clearly lost much of their humanity and are about as shallow as a human can get without
becoming literally cardboard thin.

People who live their lives in such a way that a majority of their interactions with other people
are characterised by Level 1 exchange of sourcing interactions simply become shallow and
superficial. It is unavoidable. And it is exactly what we observe around us. They come to
live by the instant – those instants of exchange interactions. Time between each
instantaneous interaction is effectively void: a void that needs to be filled.
Finally we come to our perception of reality. Again it is the nature of the interaction itself,
which defines our perspective of our reality. The nature of the Level 1 exchange of sourcing
interaction is instantaneous and affects a perceptual collapse of space (distance). The result
in terms of perception of reality is that those people, whose total interactions with others are
dominated by Level 1 interactions, become very present oriented. Time past is irrelevant.
Time future is certainly not a concern. It is today, this instant, now, the present, the current
that counts and is important over and above all other considerations. Time, then, has no
depth; just as people’s personalities become entirely superficial, so does our perception of
time. The perception of space that we gain is that of uniform infinity; but where, also, our
perception of space between us and others, with whom we are interacting, is perceptually
compressed to no distance. This gives rise to our current sense of the global village. It can
also begin to be appreciated better why the pace of life feels so fast within city centre
environments which are dominated by Level 1 interactions … everyone rushing to make their
next instantaneous interaction … to fill the void.
Birth Process – influence on human economy
The influence of the Birth Process on the human economy has already been touched upon in
Chapters 6 and 7. As exchange of sourcing of materials begins to emerge between different
geographic areas, it has a two-fold economic impact on those tribes or societies, which have
started to participate in trade. This can best be explained from a bit of early history.
Jumping back to the beginning. Catal Huyuk, generally accepted now to have been one of
the very first cities, was a strange town by today’s expectations. It was not until Jane Jacobs
suggested that it could have been a city that it was thought of in any other way than an
overgrown village. Yet this was a difficult perception to maintain given that it is now
understood to have grown to at least the size of many of the Mesopotamian cities that
followed a 1,000 or so years later. However, earlier city historians such as Lewis Mumford
were adamant that a city was not really a city until it was obviously built as such and manifest
magnificent administrative and religious buildings.
Catal Huyuk had no built administrative or religious structures. It was simply comprised of
hundreds of individual dwellings, laid out in no particular pattern, situated cheek-by-jowl and
all accessed through the roof. There were no streets. No public spaces. Nothing to signify

community or society. It was rather analogous to a market place: and that is exactly what it
was. Each dwelling acted as a separate stall, all in intense competition with each other.
Each small dwelling was also the factory and the house, occupied by a single, multi-
generation family of up to 20 individuals: living and crafting in their shop. In these cramped
quarters they manufactured the tools of obsidian that they sold. The people were born, they
lived, they died and they were buried within this small home packed in amongst hundreds of
other small homes. At its height, a population of over 8,000 people lived in this very closely
cramped proto-city. To-date there is nothing to suggest that there was any money used here;
everything appears to have operated on the basis of direct exchange.
While we might consider Catal Huyuk to be a strange phenomenon, it differed little from the
way all cities start. The main subsequent difference is that more recent cities have
themselves rapidly developed beyond this proto-state, because they have been linked into a
wider city network of already more developed cities. Catal Huyuk in contrast remained frozen
as a proto-city for a 1,000 or more years. Consider the famous trading cities of the last
millennium, Venice, Brugge, Amsterdam, London, New York, Chicago – they all began life
purely as trading centres or market places. No manufacturing, no real community, no law, no
order, no administration, no religion, sometimes not even a permanent population at the start
– just a market place – initially temporary, eventually permanent and thereafter the rest
followed.
Market places are centralised nodes of activity where exchange interactions can take place.
In due course, and if the other social processes successfully kick into gear, then such market
places become the central cores of future cities. The detailed explanation of this chronology
will be provided in Chapter 12. So, the Birth Process represents the birthing process for new
towns and cities, which gradually draw in outlying tribes to participate more and more in
exchange activity. Through involvement in trade, the perceived cultural boundaries between
erstwhile tribes begin to blur in the minds of all.
The other very significant outcome of trade is the creation of a more robust human society,
which has spread its risk across geographic areas. For societies actively participating in and
dependent upon exchange of sourcing of materials, a drought or a flood in their locality need
no longer be catastrophic. When a society is engaged in a trade network, then they have
access to alternative sources of food from other places. In years of drought in their local
area, they can focus on, say, mining and trading minerals in exchange for food from afar.
This provides the ability for a local population to continue and thrive through such periods of
local inclement climate without suffering a population crash and losing all other aspects of
cultural and technological development that they may have achieved to that date.

Birth Process – influence on social structure
We have now seen the driver behind the Birth Process, the nature of the interaction that takes
place when people satisfy their Material Needs through exchange of sourcing of materials
and the impact this has on how we see other people, ourselves and the reality around us.
Next we come to consider how this interaction impacts upon social bonds, social structures
and the manifestation of these societal characteristics in the real world.
Clearly an interaction, which is instantaneous, does not provide much scope for forming
relationships with others. And indeed it does not. The exchange interaction does not create
any firm relationships. If you buy an apple from a store holder one day, you have no
obligation to buy from the same man the next: there is simply no committed relationship. No
matter how many times you repeat the interaction with one person, no matter how many
single apples you buy, there is still no social obligation to continue trading with that particular
person. Whilst other factors may arise and other Ideal Types of interaction can develop and
create more lasting relationships, from the exchange of sourcing interaction alone, there is no
obligation and no social bond created.
What is instead intriguing is the effect that the exchange of sourcing interaction has on
existing relationships. It acts to erode all existing relationships and social bonds that an
individual has with anyone else. This is very subtle, to be sure. And very insidious and
inexorable.
The suggestion of the theory of social interaction is that each and every interaction you have
with another human being in some small, infinitesimal, way affects who you are, how you
behave and the attitude you have towards others, yourself and the world around. Each
individual interaction can be driven by or involve several Ideal Types of interaction associated
with Needs Levels 1 to 5. At a dinner party, you may share food, but it is also a forum to
learn more about the other participants in the evening, and to this extent represents much
more than a Level 1 sharing of sourcing interaction (gift of food from the host). Consider,
however, if someone were to enter a period of his life and find that the large majority of the
interactions that he experienced on a day-to-day basis became purely exchange of sourcing
interactions: an example might be a young man leaving university and entering the city as a
freelance stockbroker. After a while, through the day-to-day, long hours, working
environment, where almost all interactions were of an exchange of sourcing type, it would
begin to be inevitable that this would influence that individual’s perception of others: all
others. We will explore in a moment the cultural implications of this; but in first instance the
social implications are that this individual would unavoidably begin to see all other human
beings as shallow and he in return. For someone operating in such a manner it would begin
to be impossible to maintain deep, meaningful relationships with others, even those existing

familiar others. No new deep relationships could be made and at the same time all existing
social bonds would gradually be eroded. He would find himself living entirely in the present.
The simple explanation is that someone who sees everyone around as only superficial shells
and sees themselves with no depth will come to expect all interactions to be only fleeting – no
depth, no time. They are then bound to reinforce this expectation and perspective through
their own behaviour and thereby perpetuate the process of becoming ever shallower in
character.
The demonstration of this explanation lies with the caricatures that we create of city types
(especially traders and stock brokers) or retailers or salesmen. These are all people working
in professions that cause them to have many brief, exchange of sourcing interactions and
they come to exhibit extreme versions of this behaviour. But do not, for one moment, think
that the rest of us are immune to this. In a world of retail therapy, materialism, experientialism
(to be explained in a moment) and other aspects of modern life, it is something that has
become strongly infused into all of us. We experience, especially in urban settings, countless
instantaneous interactions with countless others; this can come to affect our expectations of
relationships generally – looking only for short-term interactions with no depth. The Level 1
exchange of sourcing interaction consequently acts as a destroyer of social bonds and, by
extension, of all social structures. Where people are daily exposed to high proportions of
exchange of sourcing of materials interactions, these insidiously erode each and every social
bond within any social structure, slowly weakening the integrity of all exposed structures
within a society.
Taken to its extreme this is experienced by the individual in terms of the sense of anonymity
felt in central city environments. In these locales, people become entirely accepting of others,
with no expectation that others will have any depth to their personality. The individual inside
becomes totally anonymous, experiencing complete anomie – a sense of numbness to
interaction with others – needing fulfilment through more and more meaningless
instantaneous interactions – and thereby contributing to other people’s mutually experienced
anonymity and anomie. It is a social ether of bouncing billiard balls, in which (as per modern
understanding of chaos theory) knowledge of the structure of the system is quickly lost and
the future is unpredictable from one moment to the next. (Society moves towards, in
thermodynamic terms, maximum entropy.)
At the same time that the Level 1 exchange of sourcing interaction weakens existing
relationships, it creates people who need to interact with others – the extrovert needing other
people and flitting from one person to the next. This need of others causes people to
congregate together and is, ultimately, the underlying force that causes cities to exist. With
each and every person feeling driven to seek many, but shallow, interactions with others, the

effect is a kind of gravitational force (analogy knowingly made) drawing people together to
satisfy their need to interact. The result, over the course of time, is the transformation of the
human landscape from a population of dispersed and clearly bounded and demarcated tribes
into a landscape of a social ether focused around nodes of very intense interaction – our
towns and cities. I have termed this social ether a Peace Matrix. It is the underlying social
matrix of mutual acceptance that allows a civilisation to exist. The Peace Matrix comes to be
expressed in physical form as a common currency (money) accepted by all, which by way of
positive feedback enables and facilitates exchange interactions to take place.
In trying to make sense of the above, I can imagine the reader agreeing that a key driver
behind the existence of cities is the need for trade centres. Where a dominant form of
interaction within a society has become exchange of sourcing of materials, rather than
sharing, then people must have the opportunity to visit market places to enter into exchange
of sourcing interactions. This requires a degree of permanent proximity to city or town
centres in order to obtain food through exchange to satiate vital energy requirements. But I
have inferred above that there is an additional driver of city formation: by creating extroverted
individuals, these people are simply drawn to live in and around cities regardless of the
underlying economic drive. The economic Need (the need for food) may have started the
process going. In due course this gets overtaken, or subsumed, by the extroverted
personality traits engendered throughout the population, which cause people to Want (not just
Need) to congregate together. This is a demonstration of the incredible power of the Birth
Process to influence how we individually and collectively behave.
To conclude on the subject of social structure, as the Birth Process proceeds it continually
acts to weaken originating, highly defined and tightly bound social units – human tribes.
These have gradually been eroded down to smaller and smaller social units. The action of
the Birth Process is not, however, confined to its effects on tribes; it acts continually to
enfeeble all subsequently formed social structure within society. Under the influence of the
Birth Process, we each find that those bonds that tie us to other people all become weakened
and simply seem less important in our day-to-day, present-oriented lives. We each begin to
break free from any social ties and any societal constraints. Society as a whole inexorably
moves towards a social ether, an atomised society of billiard-ball human beings.
Birth Process – Systems Inhabiting Matrices
We can now see that there are two forms of system, which inhabit the Peace Matrix: one
arises out of sharing interactions and the other forms from exchanging interactions. The
sharing interactions create tribes (egalitarian and hierarchical). These were the human
systems, effectively organisms (self-propagating systems), which occupied the landscape
before the appearance of exchange activity and to which the structure of human society can

easily revert if trade stops. Over the history of civilisation these originating tribes have been
eroded from once highly defined, self-contained reproducing units of some 150 individuals,
eventually to produce the modern-day tribe: the nuclear family (at least in those more urban
locations). At the extreme, in recently atomised parts of Western society, the tribe is taken to
its reduced limit: it is the lone human being. The other type of SIM within the Peace Matrix is
the market place; this equates to an ecosystem, as opposed to an organism. One can
immediately see that the ecosystem type of SIM, the market place, is made up from a
multitude of interacting organisms (human tribal units).
Birth Process – influence on culture and ideology
In becoming extroverted personality types, flitting from one person to another, we also adopt
an extroverted approach to the physical world. The insidious influence of the Level 1
exchange of sourcing interaction is that we lose our attachment to any discrete objects and
instead adopt an ephemeral approach to all physical things. We seek to experience many
things, but none of them in a profound way. The result can be seen throughout our current
societies, where people judge themselves and judge each other on the basis of quantity of
material experiences: the flow of energy and goods through the household becomes the
priority, rather than, for example, the quantity of material collected and squirreled away or the
quality of such material. Such material experiences may include a wasteful level of
consumption of food and materials, or measuring oneself according to the amount of objects
bought and sold on e-bay, or living a lifestyle of unnecessary clothing purchases with items
used once and then disposed. Or it may be measured in terms of travel to numerous
destinations, or seeking out experiences like bungee-jumping and other cheap thrills. The
popularity of extreme activities (but not sports) and theme parks are classic examples, where
people experience numerous little adrenalin-rushes on roller-coaster rides and other instant
actions, without ever having to develop any skill (such as a sport: skiing or mountain biking,
for example). Extreme examples of this are those rich millionaires who pay to be taken up
Everest for the thrill of it, expecting to be able to participate in such a dangerous sport without
any prior skill development. (Real skills, as we will come to appreciate in Chapter 11, require
a profound understanding of a social or physical environment and take a long-time to
develop.) Time is the key; under the influence of the Birth Process, there is no time.
Everything must be instantaneous. I have termed this Experientialism
All the above are familiar characteristics of the world we live in at the present for the simple
reason that the Birth Process has been dominant in our societies, certainly in the West and
increasingly everywhere, for much of the last half-century. We have all become more
materialistic and experiential extroverts than previous generations and we measure ourselves
and compare ourselves to others according to our number of ‘friends’ (or rather
acquaintances) and our personal levels of material and experiential consumption. Many

people have become uncomfortable with deep and meaningful relationships with either
people or objects. This is institutionalised in our societies through our mutual comparison
according to standard of living and failure to measure quality of life by means of anything
other than indices of material consumption. The feedback is formalised through measures
such as retail price index, informing current apparent inflation, which entirely ignores all other
parameters (to be discovered in subsequent chapters) associated with true quality of life.
Society thereby measures its own success purely in terms of quantity of total aggregated
materialistic (and experiential) experiences. It is this that the green movement has been
fighting and it will only be by harnessing other higher Social Processes, and broadening our
understanding of quality of life accordingly, that we have any chance of saving the world that
we live in and to bring the Birth Process back under control.
All the while that our materialistic extrovert is living their life, they are also a thinking being,
able to watch and monitor what they are doing. The sense obtained is that each time an
exchange of sourcing of materials interaction is successful and satisfies the Need for food,
then the individual feels happy. Happiness feels good and drives the individual to try the
interaction again. And again, and again. But there is only so much we need to eat. So the
individual tries exchanging other things. It is here that we begin to truly enter that world of
Wants, extending beyond our essential Needs. As the process progresses the natural
consequence is that the individual becomes gradually more and more materialistic, gaining a
greater and greater list of things that are perceived as necessary. Yet the ultimate irony is
that it is not the material items themselves that make the individual happy. Rather happiness
comes from obtaining the food or objects through interaction. The individual quickly loses
interest in the material items, almost as if they have actually been eaten, consumed: hence
‘material consumption’.
This short-term sense of happiness, attained where the individual feels happy from an
interaction, infers why and then seeks to repeat the interaction (or seeks another reason to
repeat the interaction), provides a key part of the feedback mechanism that drives the Birth
Process. As Ed Diener and other researchers on materialism and happiness have
concluded, it really is a relentless conveyor belt driving both more consumption of the same
and more consumption of new things. While this most obviously represents the core drive
behind aspects of society such as the fashion industry, it actually drives our whole modern
trading economies – that relentless flow of goods around the world, which are all, ultimately,
destined for landfill or incineration after being briefly flirted with by a few people.
The individual caught up in this process naturally becomes an opportunist. In an environment

where other people are seen simply as economic operators and opportunities for interaction,
then it is unsurprising that the individual develops a sense of him or herself as being a rational
economic person, making the best of each and every situation in which he or she finds him or

herself with no thought for the future. As noted in the discussion on Identity, earlier in this
chapter, this individual will become accepting of new ideas and new influences. Similarly to
the changing relationships this individual has with others, creating many brief liaisons and
becoming more socially distant from family and friends, the individual caught up in the Birth
Process will lose affiliation to the cultural influences in which he or she were brought up. The
historic culturally learnt knowledge, practices, moors, codes of conduct and so on will become
diluted by those newly experienced ideas and ways of operating and being – trends and
fashions ensue.
As Jane Jacobs noted, cities, where the Birth Process is strongest, represent cultural melting
pots. The individual in the city centre environment consequently finds themselves immersed
in all these different cultural influences and will find it almost impossible to hold onto those
that they grew up with. The individual becomes not only a social butterfly and then physical
butterfly, but a mental flitter too, forever day-to-day flirting with new ideas. With other people
being accepting of difference, then the individual becomes free to chose who he or she wants
to be, to adopt those cultural ways of being, those ideas and that wisdom he or she wishes.
This may change on a day-to-day basis. He or she becomes genuinely free in both thought
and action; there are no longer any expectations on how to behave, how that person should
source their Needs, who they should interact with and so on. In this way, with this complete
freedom, the individual becomes an ultimate opportunist, living from moment-to-moment
exactly as he or she spontaneously wishes.
This manifests itself in terms of how the individual treats the physical world. In becoming
opportunistic in a social context, our materialistic individual forms a view of the physical world
merely as an opportunity for exploitation. In the cultural melting pot of the city environment
there is no longer any sense of importance attributed to factors other than meeting Material
Needs and Wants. Hence the sacred forest, the religious ground, the historic building, the
ancient archaeological site, all lose their importance and become secondary considerations
after exploitation of resources, whether essential or merely satisfying Wants. This is all
wrapped up in the perception that the present dominates – there is no past, the future is
immaterial, there is only the now … must keep up with the latest trend.
With the individual human being becoming highly opportunistic, then it is only natural that any
intellectual justification of people’s actions build on this. In the case of the Birth Process,
there is a huge scientific edifice built upon the back of the Level 1 exchange of sourcing
interaction. It is the science of market economics. Quite explicitly that science for more than
hundred years has made a basic premise, on which much else has been constructed: the
notion of the Rational Economic Man. If you start with the assumption that people operate
according to this highly opportunistic rational individual, then all that follows is a science
which maps out the Birth Process. Economics is, of course, the scientific and intellectual

justification for liberalism. This is the ideology, which has evolved to support at a societal
level the progress of the Birth Process – another element of positive feedback.
Economics has been plagued from the outset in that it clearly only works for certain
situations, which perhaps now can be better categorised and understood. Existing
conventional and mainstream economics will only ever work in situations where people are
involved in instantaneous interactions. To this end, it works (to a degree) for Level 1 and
also, to a lesser degree, for Level 4 interactions (to which we will come in Chapter 10). As a
science it completely falls apart in the context of Level 2 and Level 3 interactions. (In
Chapters 8 and 9, you will hopefully come to understand why.)
Birth – Process Over-run
If the affects of the Birth Process operating at full-steam, as described above, all sound very
familiar, then that is because the Birth process is probably the most dominant process of our
moment, certainly in the Western world and increasingly everywhere. The world is gripped,
and has been for the last fifty or so years, by a trading bonanza which has acted to reduce
our perception of time towards the present and simultaneously extend our perception of
space … around the world (the global village) and beyond.
Together these cultural influences are manifesting themselves through a whole host of
different forms. In a spatial sense, people are travelling more than ever before, with everyday
holidaying destinations extending rapidly outwards: to holiday in your home country is almost
becoming an oddity. While the drive to travel actually arises from Social Process 4
(Adaptation) (as will be explained in Chapter 10), the ability to do so, that you will be accepted
into and allowed to visit those foreign lands, is a consequence of Social Process 1 (Birth): we
are all members of a larger society, the global Peace Matrix … with a few holes in it here and
there. While the tendency to travel more and more is clearly having a major impact on the
global environment, it is the collapse of time towards the present, which is having the most
obvious impact on society and our populations. As perception of time becomes more and
more focussed on today, then more and more reliance on instantaneous gratification is the
consequence. Issues such as obesity, drug abuse, alcoholism, experientialism (grabbing
instant adrenalin hits from activities such as sky diving and bungy jumping without any skill
required) and out-of-control material consumption are all the outcomes.
Now look at our modern urban landscape (especially in America), which is littered with proto-
cities. These are the retail malls that have appeared. The character of these developments
fit neatly with what would be expected from the discussion on the Birth Process so far. They
are built as highly superficial, cheap and essentially temporary structures (I know, I’ve worked
for a retail developer!). The business models behind retail malls require them to be

successful for a very short period of time. Thereafter the intelligent developer disposes of the
object and moves on to build another nearby, which better reflects the latest trends and
fashions, and destroys the economic performance of the first. The macroscopic result is a
geographic landscape of a multitude of dispersed, poorly performing dying malls, which have
in turn destroyed the hearts of those earlier great cities. To all intents and purposes, the
explosion of retail malls across the American landscape equates to a proliferation of still-born
cities. In the end, when you follow the Birth Process to its natural conclusion, the inescapable
result is maximum entropy (essentially equating to maximum dispersion).
This seems to provide a contradiction. On the one hand the Birth Process gives rise to new
nodes of concentrated human activity – market places. On the other hand, feed in enough
energy (say, oil and gas) and allow the Birth Process to run to its logical conclusion and it
gives rise to dispersion across a smooth landscape, destroying the very nodes of activity
which it had already created. The way to appreciate this is to understand the Birth Process
as a continual city birthing process, forever seeking to give new life to new city centres – new
market places. But each new inevitably competes with what already exists. This process has
been very visibly played out across the geographic landscape of America (and many other
Western societies) through the creation of hundreds of retail malls, which have inevitably
challenged and sometimes killed the existing centres of once thriving towns and cities.
Through understanding the Birth Process and the full extent of its influence at all scales –
from individual behaviour, attitudes and thinking up to large scale societal change – it can
become better appreciated how and why economic bubbles arise, such as that which
preceded the recent Credit Crunch. Our city centres and especially their stock markets are
locations where exchange of sourcing of materials interactions clearly dominate. The
individuals at the centre of this inevitably become influenced by the daily social environment
they inhabit and become intensely wrapped up in the perceived need to have many
superficial interactions – a classic difference between the urbanite and country folk. Dealers,
bankers, traders and others feel happy when they are able to interact through buying and
selling and so are driven to repeat again and again. This manifests as a growing shopping
list of Wants (excuses to trade), which caused Maslow in the original interpretation of his
hierarchy to overstate the fundamental nature of our Material Needs. In the banking and
stock market environment, this shopping list of Wants becomes exacerbated to the extreme:
positive feedback to desire materialistic consumption without constraint. Everyone becomes
greedy.
The outcome has been the literal creation (dreaming up) of things to trade, for absolutely no
other reason than the excuse to have something to trade to enable superficial interactions to
take place … and thereby each person involved feeling momentarily happy and
instantaneously fulfilled. To enable this to happen, the financial institutions and their

employees needed to leverage more and more debt, borrowed against nothing; it was
hypeinflation by another means. The manifest result has been the collective creation of a
huge quantity of different, otherwise meaningless and useless, financial instruments and
products for everyone to trade around amongst themselves. Let the good times seem to roll.
The positive feedback created a frenzy of dreaming up more and more new ethereal
nonsenses to exchange. For the benefit it has to wider society and over the longer term, all
these people may just as well have sat down and played monopoly, day, after day, after day.
And one day, someone woke up and realised that is exactly what they were all doing –
trading monopoly money and living an instantaneous unsustainable dream. With that
realisation, the bubble popped, the dream imploded, and they collectively fell back to earth
with a bruising thump.
But … and this is a big But. What all our governments, the world over, seem to have failed to
appreciate is the impact that such a trading bonanza has at a very deep level. It has eroded,
in every little bit of society from marriages to vast corporations, the Trust (Level 2) and Faith
(Level 3) that we each have in each other. This trading bonanza so weakened the bonds
holding society together that huge businesses crumbled and many others came very close to
collapse. The full implications will become apparent once you have read Chapters 8 and 9.
This simply cannot be remedied overnight. Trust and Faith take years and decades to build.
The booms, followed by inevitable busts, of the kind we have recently experienced take a
long time to heal. It is the boom itself which was most damaging to society; the bust is just
the hangover after the collective binge.
Birth – Process Failure
While allowing the Birth Process to run out of control ahead of the other processes has
devastating consequences, the solution is not, however, directly to halt trade. Rather the
Birth Process needs to be controlled through the action of the other social processes: this will
become more apparent as you read through the nature of the other social processes.
To appreciate the implications of preventing trade, let us return to consider the form of this
basic social interaction and the underlying, very fundamental, Need that drives it. If I am
hungry, yet you, with some surplus food, refuse to participate in an exchange interaction, I am
not likely to be best pleased. It certainly doesn’t warm me to you. In a world where there are
plenty of other people to turn to, with whom I can exchange something to earn the money to
buy some food, this matters little. But if you were a principal source of food for me and there
was no one else I could turn to, then your refusal to participate could have disastrous
consequences.

My Need for food is a very pressing Need and if I don’t obtain that food, then I will weaken
and potentially die. My options are to explore other avenues to obtain food, or to focus my
energies on trying to persuade you to give me some food, by force or subservience if
required. It is for this very reason that, as Lewis Mumford noted, cities throughout history
have developed in one of two ways: through growing far reaching trading networks or through
conquering all those who stood in their way and thereby taking control of the food supplies
from source. Or, of course, failing and disappearing.
But you probably had very good reasons for refusing to trade, probably because you only just
had enough food for yourself and family. So the natural consequence is war. Food is such a
pressing requirement, particularly when scaled up to a whole population in Need of food, that
when there is scarcity (or even just a perceived scarcity, as took place in Germany twice in
the last century) war is almost inevitable. When the action of exchange stops between
parties, then there results an inevitable growing prejudice between factions. Out of a free and
peaceful society, tribal boundaries begin to reappear. When trade breaks down, the
consequence is simply a reversion to the tribal state: and “two tribes go to war”. In extreme
circumstances, this manifests itself as genocide, where genocide is no different from any
other war situation; it is just that one side does not have the means to protect and defend
itself and is therefore wiped out – extreme prejudice.
To make explicit how devastating complete reversal is, the last time that Europe experienced
total failure of the Birth Process was around 800AD, when the Moors took control of the
Mediterranean and interrupted trading activity amongst the post-Roman European cities. The
consequence: Europe descended into the Dark Ages, losing all its cities and almost all its
coinage too. Trade stopped and life became very, very tough. The human population
reverted to a semi-tribal system, albeit not the pre-civilisation, relatively comfortable
egalitarian tribes. Rather the Dark Ages were more characterised by hierarchical tribes: a
landscape of permanently warring War Lords.
Conclusion
The culture arising from the Birth process is most obviously expressed in the major city
centres. The bigger the city and the closer to the centre you are, the more the Birth Process
clearly dominates society: modern stock markets lie at the heart of the heart. As you travel
away from the city centre and move into rural hinterlands, the strength of this process is
manifestly reduced and Social Processes 2 and 3 (Growth and Health respectively become
more dominant). Once you appreciate, through the explanation provided in this chapter, how
this culture arises and how it influences how people behave and how they see themselves
and each other, the process becomes almost palpable.

Yet despite the apparent downsides of this Social Process, one can also begin to see the
importance of the Birth Process from reducing risk to civilisation to enabling change to take
place in society (allowing cultural beliefs and practices to be absorbed into a wider social
ether, allowing these to be questioned and compared to others and the breaking apart of
embedded social structures). It is in fact the driving force behind Modernity. This is a
process of ever increasing rationality that is continually at play, whenever and wherever
people rely on exchange of sourcing of materials and trade to provide for their basic material
needs.
In becoming more rational, we each become more opportunistic. This is most obviously
manifest in the economists’ idealised human being: the Rational Economic Man, who has by
definition the archetype opportunistic nature, seeking always to extract maximum personal
benefit from any situation, with no legal or moral inhibitions – in other words no heed of past
or future. In a world where there is ever greater acceptance of difference, then we each can
look to other ways of trading and exchanging to meet our material needs. Increasing
rationality breeds increasing opportunism because we are released from any cultural
baggage about how we should behave, how we should go about obtaining food, how we
should seek our safety, how we should reproduce. At its extreme, all ‘shoulds’ would be
eradicated: there is neither legality nor morality left.
Through the process of creating ever more rational and thence opportunistic individuals, the
Birth Process acts to tear society apart in every respect. It weakens the bonds between
people that might otherwise be taken for granted. It sows doubt about those cultural practices
that have been past down from generation to generation. It very literally acts to melt the
structure of society, both socially and culturally. The felt consequence of this is the sense of
anonymity (closely related to anomie) that we each experience within large city centres,
where the Birth culture exists at its strongest. At its extreme a whole society becomes
unlinked from reality, only experiencing the instantaneous present, touching and experiencing
everything at once but with such a light touch that neither the physical nor the social can be
profoundly experienced. It is like floating in a dream world with no sense of time or space …
a collective dream of continual interaction … until the bubble inevitably bursts. We wake up
and come back to earth with a bump … and a hangover.
As with all the other processes to follow, the Birth Process is a positive feedback process,
which if allowed to run freely will manifest exponential tendencies. As it turns out, the best
(possibly only safe) control mechanism actually arises from the limitations placed on the Birth
Process by the action of the other processes, which we have yet to explore. Taken to its
extreme, the Birth Process represents Herbert Smith’s idealistic libertarian world, which is
actually none other than anarchy: there would be no social structure of any form and no

coherent cultural system. Utopia or hell? The result would be total individualisation (or
atomisation) of society.
As trade and exchange extend their reach outwards and more deeply inwards, then all
individuals within society become more and more dependent on the successful functioning of
society at large. But simultaneously less and less deeply rooted to that society: hence the
sense of anomie. Individuals are given the freedom to believe whatever they want, hold
whatever attitudes they desire and behave however they want. Ideas and beliefs multiply,
such that society abounds with untested and seemingly incompatible thinking. Fashions
revolve faster and faster until there is no fashion: every fashion is today. At the same time, in
a form of widespread inverse social contract, in order for individuals to be free in behaviour
and attitude, everyone becomes more accepting of difference in others; they have to be, as
everyone is doing their utmost to develop their own unique personal identity, disconnected
from any historic tribal roots or cultural systems. That is true freedom – in mind, body and
spirit – you are simply accepted regardless of your appearance and behaviour. Which
means, for a very social animal, you are totally free. Anything goes. In total counter-position
to Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s social contract, true freedom is actually a gift of civilisation! And
best we not forget that.
James, O. (2007). Affluenza, Vermilion.
James, O. (2008). The Selfish Capitalist, Vermilion.

Chapter 9 – Growth Process (Social Process 2) Page 1 of 24 10/6/10
Chapter 9 – Growth Process (Social Process 2)
“Liberty is the right of doing whatever the laws permit.”

XI, ch. 3 De l'Esprit des Lois (1748) [The Spirit of the Laws] - Charles de Montesquieu
The concepts of Sharing and Exchanging, Taking and Giving are quite easy to grasp in the
context of material objects and money, or the sources thereof. As parents of young children,
we spend our lives repeating the mantra “Please share it, Johnny”. In the modern world we
live through the process of exchange of material items; we cannot exist in society without
almost daily participating in material exchange interactions (money for food and other goodies
in shops). How this manifests itself in relation to our Safety and Security Needs is not nearly
so obvious … at least not at first sight.
Here, then, in the context of Sharing and Exchanging is a very simple example to help you
grasp how this theory of social interaction operates for Social Process 2 (Safety and Security
Needs).
Imagine
Imagine that you are on safari in Africa with a single other friend, on foot, and you misjudge
your navigation and find yourselves having to camp out under the stars over night … in a
landscape full of predators. There are two of you. Between you, you must maintain a watch;
someone must stay awake to watch out for potential threats and keep the fire going. To
complete this task, for it is a task that causes each of you to metabolise more energy than if
you were sleeping peacefully, there are two fundamentally different approaches: Sharing and
Exchanging. One option is for the two of you to sit back-to-back the whole night through.
This represents Sharing. You are sharing the whole task, 360 degrees of observation,
between the pair: effectively taking 180 degrees of observation each for the full time duration,
the full 12 hours of darkness. You have divided the whole task spatially.
The alternative is to divvy up the task and take watches. One of you watches a full 360
degrees for half-the-night and then swaps and sleeps the rest. The other does the opposite.
In this way you achieve a complete division of labour, in which you appear to share the task in
a temporal sense: whole task for half the time instead of half the task for the whole time. In
actual fact, in this latter case you are still splitting the task spatially – four eyes divided by two,
to give each pair of eyes a rest. The apparent temporal division is a consequence, not the
drive. This difference between spatial and temporal division of activity will become clearer
through this and the next chapter. We will come to see in Chapter 9 how we share and
exchange temporally and the very different repercussions that emerge.

On the face of it, the sharing approach to keeping watch provides greater protection,
especially since we are not herbivores who have almost 360 degree vision. One person
watching is surely less effective than two. But that ignores the tiredness that would set in
during the early hours of the morning, if both of you tried to stay awake the whole night,
together with the reduced ability to function the next day for lack of sleep. So both
approaches are effective, just in different ways.
To assist explanation of the Growth Process, it is pertinent to introduce some new terms.
Both Social Process 2 (Growth Process – Safety and Security Needs) and Social Process 3
(Health Process – Health and Reproduction Needs) revolve around the carrying out of tasks,
or activities. These activities, we will come to see, are fundamentally different in nature. For
Social Process 2 (Growth), I have come to use the term Exchange of Labour (contrasted to
Sharing of Labour), where the term “labour” is used in exactly the same sense as it is used in
the well-known term Division of Labour. We will come to appreciate that Exchange of Labour
arises out of a Division of Labour in the same way that Exchange of Sourcing of Materials
arises out of an effective Division of the Sourcing of Materials (sourcing from different
sources). For what will hopefully become an obvious reason, for Social Process 3 (Health) I
have come to use the term Nurture to replace the word Labour: hence Exchange of Nurture
arising from Division of Nurture, contrasted to Sharing of Nurture. Where both the Ideal
Types of interaction (at Levels 2 and 3) are on occasion referred to together, then I will use
the term Activity.
With terminology and some underlying concepts introduced, we start as before in Chapter 7
with looking at the nature of the interaction driver, our Safety and Security Needs.
Growth Process – the interaction driver
Maslow’s Level 2 Need contains two aspects – safety and security. Both relate to the ability
of the organism, the human being, to survive tomorrow and beyond, as opposed to the Level
1 Need which is first and foremost concerned with surviving the rest of today and into
tomorrow. These two factors can be split apart and considered separately, though intimately
connected. Security could be construed to relate to the requirement for a dependable supply
of energy from the environment: it is simply security of supply of material resources, the
certainty that there will be food to eat tomorrow as well as today. To understand Safety
requires reference back to the last chapter. It was stated that as social animals the most
dangerous factor in our day-to-day life is the presence of other human beings. While there
are many other factors that can threaten us in our everyday existence, the most treacherous
and immediate peril arises from the close proximity of other human beings. Not that other
humans are necessarily a danger if they have grown up in a tribe with you or if they have
become fully civilised, they just have the potential to be. We will come to appreciate that

when humans work together to satisfy their individual Safety and Security Needs, then they
help to protect each other from danger – as per the example provided at the beginning of this
Chapter, as well as helping to secure their mutual future energy need.
It is readily apparent how humans have come to be social animals; the ecological niche that
we historically occupied took us in an evolutionary direction that meant that we were not
brilliant hunters on our own, such as the cheetah or the tiger. The inference is that it was,
then, the Level 1 Material Needs that drove us originally to be social. The starting point, or
baseline, for considering Level 2 (Safety and Security Needs and associated interaction) is
therefore that we are already social, living in tribal units or a wider society. But, being living
organisms, we have this additional Need over and above immediate Material Needs, to be
safe and to secure a continued supply of energy into each tomorrow. The simple
consequence of failure is that we do not grow into adulthood to be able to reproduce (Level 3
Need) and thereby propagate the species: an erratic supply of energy is a known inhibitor of
growth for organisms (Whitfield 2006).
That the Level 2 Need is strongly focussed on tomorrow’s Material Needs, securing a
continued supply of food (or income in civilised society) in the near future, on the face of it
indicates that the Level 1 (Material) Need would always take priority. Indeed when life is on
the edge, it does: consider for example Victor Frankl’s descriptions of life and death in
concentration camps (Frankl 2004). But, for most of us most of the time, life is not on the
edge, food is readily forthcoming, and thence securing tomorrow’s income stream or food
stream becomes a forceful influence on our everyday thinking and behaviour. Once you have
food in your belly, you are free to think about other things, such as how to make sure that you
will have food again in your belly tomorrow. In this respect, the Level 2 Need is clearly less
urgent than the direct Material Needs. Nevertheless it is something that would focus the mind
and something that would drive one to action as soon as the immediate Material Needs of
today had been reasonably satisfied. What that action might be we will come to in the next
section.
The starting point, then, is that the individual finds himself or herself in a social context, his or
her immediate Material Needs are reasonably satisfied, so the focus is on how to remain safe
for the remainder of today and through the night and if possible place that individual in a
position to be able to secure food tomorrow, when that objectified hunger returns. How, in a
social context, can an individual maximise the possibility of remaining safe and being in a
position to act (potentially with other human beings) to secure new food for tomorrow? What
behaviours would be required to ensure that a group of individuals are not a hazard to each
other and further might allow them to operate collaboratively to secure future food? What do
they need to do individually or collaboratively to secure their immediate future?

Growth Process – the focus of attention and the form of interaction
With the Level 2 Need also considerably focussed on securing material needs, albeit in the
near future and not now, one would have thought that there would be scope for confusion
between Level 1 and Level 2. But this does not appear to be the case and, as we work up
the Growth Process, we will come to see that it is fundamentally different to the Birth Process:
for starters Social Process 2 creates rather than destroys structure. As before, to understand
the full extent of this Process, the next step is to consider what is the focus of attention for the
individual, this time seeking to enter into a labour interaction.
To explain the focus of the attention for the Level 2 (Safety and Security Needs) interaction, it
is easier to start by considering how we seek to achieve our Safety Needs. As the Process is
worked up, this morphs into encompassing achievement of Security Needs too. At its most
simplistic and conceptual level, to provide for our Safety Needs we have to ‘do work’ in the
physical universe. This may, as per the example at the beginning of this chapter, be as
simple as keeping watch overnight. Or it might be to build a fence around an encampment to
provide safety over a longer time period. As a general principle the extent of the work and
effort required, if directed in the right way, defines how long and how wide ranging (in space)
the protection provided will be. Building a wall of stones will likely be longer lasting than a
wooden fence, but requires considerably more effort in the making. Effort may also be done
today in order to make life easier tomorrow: the classic example is the building of an
aqueduct to redirect water to a desired location, thereby making access to water in the future
much easier on a day-to-day basis.
The general principle that I am working towards is that to achieve our personal safety, we
need to do tasks in the world, to change physically the structure of materials around us, so
that a degree of protection is provided by them. The focus of attention of the individual is
consequently the task that needs to be done and completed in order to provide that extra
degree of safety that we seek. Just as in the Level 1 (Material Needs) process, other human
beings are a means to an end. Others can help or not help the individual to satisfy his or her
own personal Safety Needs. The focus of the attention of that individual is, however, on how
to achieve the task required: in contrast to Level 1, where the focus of attention was the
material object sought.
Having ascertained the focus of attention, we turn to consider what is the form of the
interaction with others, in spatial and temporal terms, which can enable the individual to
satisfy his or her Safety and Security Needs. For the Birth Process, we found that the object
of attention is objects for transaction and that the resulting interaction is instantaneous and
effects an evaporation of distance.

To satisfy Safety and Security Needs, the object of interest is a task to be completed. A task,
that is any task, has inherent time duration. But, and this is something which proves to be
vitally important, the set of activities required to satiate our Safety and Security Needs are
time limited or time bounded; they start and they finish. We will come to see in Chapter 9 that
one of the major differences between Level 2 interactions and Level 3 (Health and
Reproduction Needs) interactions is that at Level 3 the set of necessary activities are not time
bounded; they have no clear beginning or end; they are indefinite. At Level 2, however, as
sure as the night has a beginning and end, then so does the action of keeping watch, whether
that be sharing the whole night through or taking turns (exchanging).
In the very simple example provided at the beginning of this chapter it is apparent from the
sharing example how this interaction manifests itself in spatial terms. The two individuals
sitting back-to-back the whole night through, each keeping watch over 180 degrees, are
acting to create structure in space. They have defined between them a dividing line: “you
take that 180 degrees and I the other”. Arbitrary as it may be to an external observer, it
becomes their point of reference. This might seem so obvious as to be a triviality, not worth
noting; but it is actually incredibly important. Underlying the whole of Social Process 2 lies
the principle of humans structuring space around themselves within a time bounded period,
which can come to manifest itself as enduring structure in space. As noted, it is important to
keep in mind that for Level 2 (Safety and Security Needs) Ideal Type interactions an apparent
temporal split (for example, taking turns doing something) is a consequence of the spatial
division.
In that example of keeping watch, the exchange version of the interaction does not so
obviously achieve the same. To appreciate that it does, we need to consider a slightly more
complicated example. Imagine that the two of you, lost on the savannah surrounded by
potential predators, realise that you need to make a more permanent encampment, so that
you can survive for several days and nights. The task that you need to complete is to erect a
fence around a space. This fence will only be a very simple construction: sharpened
branches stuck in the ground in a circle, pointing slightly outwards. You gather a large
number of sizeable sticks or small branches together (subtask 1: Sharing) and then find a
suitable spot to ‘defend’. To complete the objective of creating a defended space, there are
two further subtasks required: subtask 2 is to strip and sharpen the branches and subtask 3 is
to dig them into position. You can split these two tasks in two ways, where each solution will
likely be completed over the same total time duration. You can both (assuming that you have
two knives) strip and sharpen the branches together and then, again together, dig them into
the ground: this represents sharing both tasks. Or you can specialise, such that one of you
strips and sharpens the sticks, while the other secures them into position. This latter solution
is none other than the classic Division of Labour.

It is now, hopefully, more obvious how the Exchange of Labour approach also acts to
structure space. In the sharing situation, again the 180 degrees split in space (the physcal
universe) arises, as you each sharpen half the branches and build individually half of the
overall fence (a semi-circle each). However in the exchange of labour option, you have split
the overall task into its two different spatial components. The total task, which links the two
subtasks, frames your actions and provides and bounds the two of you in terms of your
spatial separation and spatial relationship. We see then that through the exchange
interaction space is still structured by the combined actions of the two individuals. It is,
however, a subtler structuring than the simple sub-division of space as per the sharing
interaction. When this is scaled up to a social process it results in an absolute structuring of
physical space in the sharing mode, such that social structure precisely maps onto the
physical world; there is no real distinction between physical and social spaces. In the
exchanging mode, this converts to a relative structure in physical space and absolute
structure in social space. The latter manifests as the creation of roles within highly defined
organisational structures, but where such structures do not map directly onto a physical
environment. With a little thought, one can begin to see that this applies to many situations
where there is, in classic terminology, a Division of Labour (not to be confused with the terms
to be met later – Nurture (Level 3) and Competence (Level 4)).
To conclude, by working together, whether Sharing or Exchanging Labour, you are

perceptually structuring space around you, arbitrary to anyone else but quite specific from
your own frame of reference. Your combined efforts manifest as real physical, enduring
structures in space. The starting point for this is a time bounded activity, which represents
the focus of attention and which causes the interaction to take place. From your short-term
social structure, you achieve a long-lasting physical structure: an imprint in the physical
universe.
Growth Process – Behaviour, Attitude and Perceptions
As I mulled over the idea of how individuals might help each other meet their mutual safety
and security needs, I slowly came to the deduction that the behaviour, which would be
necessary to enable two individuals to cooperate to meet such Needs would be that of
predictability. For the Level 1 Material Needs interaction, I had deduced that the individual
must act peacefully towards others to enable an interaction to take place. At Level 2 (Safety
and Security Needs) an individual must remain predictably peaceful, in whatever way they
culturally come to express peaceful behaviour, to put another at ease that that other is safe in
the sustained (not instant) presence of the first individual.
Being predictable acts to reassure everyone around that the individual is being, and will
continue to be, a safe and peaceful companion. Such predictability clearly includes not killing

or harming each other. From behaviour to attitude, if we can be predictable towards each
other, this paves the way for us to begin to trust each other, to trust how we each will behave
through known circumstances: “this is how he/she acted last time that this situation arose, so
this is how I expect him/her to behave this time”. In dangerous circumstances this enables
the individuals to rely on each other and know how they are likely to respond: seeing a big cat
predator on the savannah, of one of my own tribe I know that he will stand his ground, so I will
stand mine too. Mutual predictability and mutual trust allows us to automatically respond in
unison. This allows a tribe (or whatever social unit being considered, whether in the human
or animal kingdoms) to defend themselves against danger: action in unison with no direction
required. It depends on mutual predictability (behaviour) and trust (attitude).
Being predictable towards each other thereby helps the individual achieve safety both from
his companions and in the group as a whole from external threats. But it extends beyond
simple actions such as keeping watch or fighting in consort in defence. Predictability is
essential for any circumstance where two individuals agree to carry out a task together.
Consider the scenario where a rich person wishes to build a wall around his home in order to
provide better safety to his family from intrusion by other people or by dangerous animals.
Imagine that he goes into the local town to look for a man to complete the task. He meets
with a variety of men, all of whom are physically fit and able and all who appear to be willing
to do the work for the hourly wage that the rich man is willing to offer. Who does the rich man
pick? The simple answer is the person, who he thinks he can trust best to do the work. But
how can he know who is most trustworthy? There are two ways that our rich man can find
out. He may know already because he has employed several of the men before and
developed his own impression of who can be trusted most. Or he can ask others who have
commissioned labour from the town whom they consider to have performed best and been
most trustworthy in work and attitude. The key point to note is that, in both cases, the only
way that the rich man can determine who is most trustworthy is through knowledge of the
history of the potential contractors. Only through observation, by himself or others, which of
the men is most predictable and has proven historically most diligent and accurate at
following given instructions, can the degree of trustworthiness be known.
As the rich man employs the initially unknown individual on a short-contract basis, then if that
individual proves to be predictable, then he may incrementally increase the length of the
i
transaction duration, the size of the contract, as his trust of the labourer builds . That trust is
purely dependent upon the predictability of the labourer, which essentially represents
knowledge of the past actions of that labourer in the given circumstances of the task required.
For ease of understanding by the reader, the example given above has been of an autocratic
situation – money (proxy for energy and thereby Level 1 Need for the labourer) in exchange

for work done (Level 2 Need for the rich man). However, the same situation applies to
exactly the same degree if we draw on the fence building exercise discussed earlier between
two travellers on the savannah. The two friends are operating on an egalitarian basis – direct
sharing or exchanging of labour. For them to be able to accomplish the task, they need to be
able to trust each other. In this scenario, clearly they can each monitor how the other is
performing on a moment to moment basis. But if, for whatever reason, they were forced to
work in a situation where they could not see the other, then precisely the same considerations
would cross the minds of each of the two individuals: how can I trust that he will do his bit?
The answer lies in historic observed predictability and thence apparent trustworthiness of the
other.
So, what perception of the other does this create? Where the other is seen as an opportunity
to help complete a specific task to provide for improved safety and security, that other,
whoever that other is, is seen in the context of their ability (who is the best person?) to carry
out whatever work is deemed necessary to complete the overall tasks necessary to improve
safety and security. Through this process, the individual builds up a picture of other people in
terms of what they are known to be able to do through their history. People thereby become
pigeon-holed as being a specialist in this or that, according to what they are known to have
done in the past. Other people are simply known through their history.
And what of the self? As before, it is a premise of this framework that the individual sees
himself or herself in the same light as that of others around. The consequence is that through
this process the individual learns to understand himself through his background; he becomes
entirely defined by what is written on his curriculum vitae. All else is largely irrelevant, class,
creed, sex, sexuality and so on. The only factor of import is what the individual has proven
that he is capable of doing through past performance. But it goes further than this.
The essential criterion of being able to perform in the context of Social Process 2 (Growth
Process) is to be predictable towards others, to give them the sense that they can trust you.
In this respect, the individual comes to see himself as a very predictable animal, highly
regulated in behaviour through codes of conduct and other means. (We will return to these
aspects in later sections.) We see through this that the civilising individual, who has learnt a
degree of freedom through Social Process 1, effectively losing connection to tribal identity
roots and becoming superficial in nature, can now develop a degree of depth through his
personal history. In the civilised context, where exchange interactions come to dominate,
those tribal origins become meaningless and instead the individual is much more judged (by
self and other) on the basis of his or her personal history and from this their known abilities.
Through the process of finding out about someone else’s history, we see here the first
inklings of ‘apparent altruism’. One person may appear very interest in another person’s

background, what they have done in the past, what they have achieved, who they have
worked for or with, how they produced what they did, what skills they developed along the
way … and so on and so forth. But that interest is ultimately for the express purpose of the
first person being able to determine how trustworthy the other is and to be able to pigeon-hole
them into categories of what they might be able to do, based on what they are known to have
done. Of course, the best way to fully appreciate, how trustworthy someone else is, is by
spending time with them and observing how they behave and how predictable they are.
Whereas under Social Process 1, instantaneous interactions leave void time between
interactions, in Social Process 2 there is less need for any void time. In fact, the less void
time the better to be able to see how predictable and trustworthy is the other.
Under the influence of Social Process 2 (Growth), we learn to treat the physical universe in
the same way as we come to treat other people. We seek to discover predictability in nature
so that we can predict the near future. This leads us to want to know as much as we can
about the past and to seek to learn about trends in nature, which can be extrapolated
forwards into the near future. Time past thereby becomes the most important consideration
and (I think) can, as the Process revolves and accelerates, lead to such a focus on the past
that there develops a cultural blindness to the future. The past is what we know, and in a
sense that is what we can control (or at the least predict). The more we know about the past,
the better we can know and control the immediate future, and ideally control that future to
ensure that it remains safe and secure. We hold on to what we have and what we know, in
an attempt to maintain the status quo.
Through the lense of Social Process 2 (Growth), we also find ourselves wanting to structure
and categorise space and time. For example, we create ages and eras of history: whether or
not these time periods have any bearing on what actually happened, such structuring from
our point of view feels good. We also seek to structure space using precise geometry, such
as Cartesian geometry, now usually referred to as Analytic geometry. Again, such structuring
of space may have absolutely no bearing on how space is really structured in respect of
something, but we feel good about placing such structure on our reality. We will return to
explore more of these influences and manifestations of Social Process 2 (Growth) in the later
section on ‘influence on culture’.
Growth Process – influence on the economy
All the examples provided so far represent discrete tasks with a clear beginning and a clear
end. A fence or wall is constructed and then it is complete. Such constructions will obviously
require on-going maintenance, but that action is time unbounded, over an indefinite period,
and that turns out to lead to a very different form of human interaction and thence social
process – the Level 3 Health Process (focussing on health maintenance). To understand

how Social Process 2 influences the development of the human economy, we need to explore
how the singular task converts into a continuous stream of time bounded tasks. There are
clearly numerous singular tasks, which can lead to an improvement in an individual’s or a
group’s safety and security. These can represent infrastructure related projects, from building
a fence round an encampment through to building a city wall or constructuring a modern
sewerage system and associated flood defences. But consider the following scenario.
For ease of explanation, we travel back to tribal times, tens of millennia ago. In order to
enable a tribe to hunt, they needed to create tools – spears, arrows, axes, knives and so on.
Time would need to be spent by the members of the tribe fashioning such weaponry, which
would then be used to secure tomorrow’s food. Work was therefore being done today in
order to enable, or at the least make easier, the acquisition of food tomorrow. The making of
each arrow represents a single task, where numerous arrows need to be produced. In this
case the single task converts into a linear sequence of time bounded tasks.
Now consider the situation of Catal Huyuk, 10,000 years ago. By this time, human tribes
were quite familiar with the improvement to survival chances arising from spending time
fashioning suitable hunting implements and other tools to facilitate everyday life. On the
Anatolian plateau, a local tribe at Catal Huyuk presumably found that the obsidian proved to
be a rather useful material for fashioning tools. They then discovered that they could
exchange it (exchange of sourcing interaction) with members of other proximate tribes to
provide for their own food needs. Those other tribes probably onward exchanged these
manufactured, rather useful tools and then came back for more. There was consequently an
on-going demand. Where a single tribe operating alone would only need to produce so many
arrows and axes for the next weeks hunting, when a tribe or city starts to exchange the tools
for food, then the linear time bounded activity effectively becomes continuous. In this way the
city of Catal Huyuk evolved into a manufacturing centre, where the society mined the obsidian
and then fashioned it into tools on a continuous basis.
Each tool was made with the purpose of doing work today in order to secure food for
tomorrow (not necessarily precisely today/tomorrow, but that sort of time relationship). The
activity of manufacturing the tools thereby became an activity that was required to satisfy the
need to secure future energy. Once items had been manufactured, they could be exchanged
for instantaneous gratification, but the objects needed to be produced first.
In this way it can begin to be seen that all situations of manufacturing goods, where work is
done today in order to be able to exchange that good tomorrow for energy (now normally in
proxy form as money), represent people carrying out tasks to satisfy their Safety and Security
Needs. When the single task extends to a continuous stream of products being
manufactured, then we see the emergence of a group of spatially connected people all

working simultaneously on a different physical aspect of the process. The consequences

have been well documented over the last 300 years by economists going all the way back to
William Petty and Adam Smith, leading to ideas on Division of Labour in the manufacturing
economy, famously revolutionised in the 1930s by Ford to achieve the modern manufacturing
system based on a complete Exchange of Labour.
Under the influence of the Birth Process we saw that all interactions are instantaneous. Level
2 interactions instead last over discrete, contracted time periods. Therefore, whereas the
Birth Process gives rise to the open market place, the Growth Process gives rise to supply
chains and supply webs. Instead of purely instantaneous economic interactions, we see the
emergence of longer-term economic exchanges, which can either be continuous or simply to
achieve a pre-define output: for example, all the different businesses contracted to supply
materials, services and labour to construct a building. The fundamental transition brought
about by Ford in the 1930s was to internalise supply chains within a single business;
thereafter the degree to which supply chains have been internalised or out-sourced has been
in constant flux as businesses compete to find the most efficient approach to production.
We can appreciate from the above that it is the Growth Process, which is the driver behind
our industrial economies … and a whole lot more.
Growth Process – influence on social structure
It has already been noted that while a pair of individuals, or for that matter any number of
individuals, are engaged in a time bounded task to satisfy their mutual Safety and Security
Needs, then they are spatially bound together in some form of predictable relationship. The
inherent time duration associated with the interaction ensures that a social bond is created,
which manifests in the form of this sense of relative predictability in space. This may not
always express itself in the precise sense of two people sitting side by side cobbling shoes,
but may be in the form of regular association through regular meetings. Two sentries keeping
watch along a wall may not maintain the same distance between them as they walk two and
fro, but their movements are predictable and can be spatially correlated.
So, what is the nature of this social bond created by Social Process 2?
During any time that we individually agree to interact, to contract, with another to carry out an
agreed task, whether on a sharing or an exchanging basis, then we find ourselves bound into
a relationship for the duration of the defined task. As noted a few paragraphs earlier, an
individual task may become continuous repetition of a task, indefinitely. The contractual
relationship places onto us specific expectations of our own predictability to accomplish the
specified task in a particular way in an agreed time period. The more time that we spend

carrying out tasks in a contracted situation, in collaboration with others, then the more
influence this will have on our own behaviour, attitude, perception of ourselves and what we
expect of others and through relationships with others. Most critically, the more time we
spend in these types of interactions generally, then the more predictable and trustworthy we
each inevitably become. While the Birth Process creates an individual free from the past and
the future, the Growth Process acts to embed an individual thoroughly into his or her past.
We each become our personal history: this is how we see ourselves and the terms in which
others see us.
While the sharing and exchanging of labour situations have the same consequence at the
very individual level, making people more predictable, more trustworthy and more trusting, at
the societal level the different tempers of this Ideal Type of interaction have different
repercussions.
We have seen in the examples given that in the sharing of labour situation, two interacting
people will be carrying out exactly the same task at the same time. The key difference
between them is the division of the activity in space, which leads to a temporary symmetry
break within space (arbitrary from the perspective of any observer, but very specific from the
perspective of those participating in the interaction). In this way the sharing of labour leads to
a very precise (and I think normally static) spatial relationship between the individuals
participating in such an interaction. The two friends in the savannah both sharpening sticks
sit side-by-side throughout the duration of the task. In addition to this, the interacting parties
will fall-in-line in the way they are operating: they are likely to adopt identical ways of doing
the task: mutual emulation of behaviour. We will see in the next section that this gives rise to
very precise and coordinated codes of conduct. The consequence of this is that tasks
become highly regulated within any group, say a tribe, preventing any novelty in the way
things are done to creep in. This in part explains why tribal humans have such strong tribally
specific codes of behaviour and why technological development within such tribes proved to
be so slow.
Considering the examples given, it immediately becomes apparent that the spatial
relationship between two individuals who are participating in exhange of labour is less clearly
defined. The relative actions of the individuals will need to be predictable; they each must
operate predictably to each other. But the spatial relationship will not necessarily be as direct
as that in the sharing situation. In the savannah example, one friend sits in the middle of the
circle, while his friend moves around the circle rim digging in the prepared sharpened
branches into the ground; correlation predictable but not static. The two individuals in a
simple interaction will find themselves doing different tasks as part of the overall task. This
enables originality to creep into the actions of each. Rather than falling into step with each

other, they are free to accomplish the subtask in their own way, so long as it is completed in
the expected time period and delivers the prior agreed output.
In order to accommodate this less specific spatial relationship between two interacting
individuals, we see the appearance of a new social matrix, which I have come to call the Trust
Matrix. This is layered onto the emerging Peace Matrix, which arose from the Birth Process.
The utility of the Trust Matrix in the exchange situations is that it enables the interacting
parties to have a very precise and constant relationship, relative positions, within social space
even though their positions in real physical space may appear to be fluctuating. Such Matrix
is clearly not so necessary in the sharing context. In exchange of labour the Trust Matrix
provides the very precise point of reference for the individual, which might otherwise seem
arbitrary to any outside observer. As two interacting individuals extend to a group of
interacting people, then the singular point of reference converts into a precisely defined
matrix.
The effect of the emergence of the Trust Matrix is to give the individual a firm, secure, handle
on the social world around him (Popper’s World 2). People may be moving in random
physical directions, but they all have very clear and precise positions, known in conventional
sociology as roles, in social space. Under the influence of the Growth Process people
become locked into these social positions, which have the effect of creating stability and
security for everyone. A key benefit for the development of human society, which is enabled
by the appearance of the Trust Matrix, is that individual members of society can extrapolate
their trust of specific individuals to trusting the whole matrix. In this way, anyone who
conforms to the codes of conduct (the expression of predictable behaviour) that are dictated
as appropriate by the Trust Matrix, can be trusted. (The full implications of this will be
explored in further detail in the next section under consideration of the influence of the Growth
Process on culture – the manifestation of the Trust Matrix in our culture.)
To reflect, under the influence of Social Process 1 (Birth Process) we see the emergence of a
Peace Matrix, which ultimately acts to make invisible pre-existing tribal boundaries. Under
the influence of Social Process 2 (Growth Process) we see the appearance of a Trust Matrix,
which acts to create a highly regulated society, which enables that society to operate in
unison in defence of itself as well as helping that society build structures in physical space
which also help to make that whole society safer and more secure in terms of energy supply.
We saw within the last chapter that a Peace Matrix will spread out across a whole population,
embracing all those tribes who are engaged in trade with each other. It should be noted that
the Trust Matrix cannot extend beyond the remit of the Peace Matrix; it cannot over-sail
strong tribal (Level 1) boundaries. It can only arise and develop within the boundary of the
earlier formed Peace Matrix.

Growth Process – Systems Inhabiting Matrices (SIMS)
As the Trust Matrix strengthens within an emerging society, it too creates the environment in
which a new form of social organism can exist (for the Peace Matrix, the SIMS were tribes for
sharing and market places for exchanging). The social organisms, which inhabit the Trust
Matrix, are none other than bureaucracies (as classically defined by Max Weber).
Bureaucracies can be seen to be rational tribes. The Peace Matrix erodes real identity tribes
and makes the whole of society, through the Markets and the process of Modernity, to be
more rational. Out of the social fabric of the original real merged tribes, we see emerging
these more rational tribes – bureaucracies, culturally defined by codes of conduct rather than
more basic identity.
(Before considering the nature of bureaucracies in more detail, a word of caution is needed.
No one reading this book in our modern era will have experienced the full harshness of a pure
bureaucracy, a social structure that is created out of only Level 2 Ideal Type interactions. All
our modern social organisations have been severely softened through the operation of Level
3 (Health) and Level 4 (Adaptation) Social Processes. Examples of relatively pure
bureaucracies seen over the last 100 years include the state structure of the old Soviet Union
(especially in Stalin’s era), the Nazi war machine and the British Army in the First World War
(but not the Second). Looking back in history, the Roman army probably knew a fairly pure
form of bureaucracy.)
There can be two forms of bureaucracy: autocratic and egalitarian. The autocratic variety
represents the more familiar hierarchical situation. The egalitarian bureaucracy equates to a
modern business partnership arrangement, such as a firm of solicitors (or at least the
partners thereof). I will focus in the following discussion on the autocratic variety.
Firstly, unlike the egalitarian Trust Matrix, discussed above, bureaucracies are not founded on
all participants seeking to satisfy their Safety and Security Needs; rather they represent a
combination of those seeking to satisfy their immediate Material Needs and those seeking to
achieve better safety and future security of material supply. The most obvious example is a
king paying soldiers to protect him: the king has money (proxy for energy) and desires to hire
protection, while the soldiers need their day-to-day food. The inherent hierarchy in any
bureaucracy arises because there is unevenness to the relationship. It is actually more akin
to a one-sided sharing relationship: one party provides for the immediate Level 1 Material
Needs of the other (in the modern world, a financial income) and the recipient of the income is
forced into a subservient relationship, providing the superior individual with their protection (a
higher Need). While the king and soldiers scenario is quite clear, the social game being
played is actually no different to a modern business: all bureaucracies operate on this
premise.

Unlike the pure tribal version of the sharing relationship, which represents an assumed
reciprocity because all participants share a tribal identity, in the bureaucracy the arrangement
is formally contracted: “I will do this amount of protection for you in return for a daily income”:
a discrete time bounded period. The outcome is that the individual, the foot-soldier or the
employee, is not bound to adopt the identity of the payer, the king or business, and will not do
so for so long as there are alternative sources of employment; a point which was recognised
by Machiavelli in his book The Prince, when he wrote about the unreliability of mercenaries.
But, while not having to accept the pay masters identity, the employee is contracted to
provide the employer with protection in the form of accepting a defined division of labour
dictated by the employer. “You will make this for me.” Or “You will complete this task for me,
which will enable me (as employer) to secure a better income and thereby better satisfy my
own future material needs.” Or “You will stand guard here.”
The consequence of this lopsided relationship is that the senior person in the hierarchy is
operating more freely and more able to express his or her own identity, while the junior
person in any such arrangement, whether formal employment or client to consultant contract,
is contracted to be trustworthy, predictable and more specialist. This arises because of the
expectations placed on the other within such mixed Need interactions of this kind. For
instance, Person A is seeking to interact to satisfy his or her Material Needs, so enters the
interaction as if it were a pure Level 1 Ideal Type interaction, meanwhile the Person B, having
plenty of energy today (a materially wealthy person), desires to satisfy his or her Safety and
Security Needs and therefore enters the interaction as if it were a pure Level 2 Ideal Type
interaction. In this scenario Person A is more Needy (more important Need) and is forced to
accept that Person B can act with greater freedom and express their identity; in contrast
Person B is in the more powerful position, being less Needy, and can expect of Person A all
that is associated with pure Level 2 interactions: predictability and trustworthiness. How you
mentally enter into an interaction determines what you expect of the other participants to that
interaction.
Arising out of this one can immediately see the truth behind those sayings, such as: “never
trust you boss”, “your boss will always act according to his needs and not yours” and so on.
The arrangement is such that the junior party must be trustworthy and predictable and be
more bounded in his behaviour, whereas the senior party is able to operate more closely to a
Level 1 behaviour and be free, spontaneous (responding to his or her own immediate
perceived needs) and express more freely his or her identity. This would appear to be how
the concept power arises in human societies: it all depends on who is most Needy when
participating in social interactions.

In coming to understand how bureaucracies arise out of this underlying mixed interaction, an
otherwise inexplicable truism of our everyday understanding of bureaucracies becomes
apparent. We all know they have a tendency to grow. The reason for this is simply that,
inherent to the whole social structure, the further an individual is up the hierarchy, the safer
and more secure he or she will be. This might not be the case to the same degree in modern
bureaucratic-seeming structures as we will discover on consideration of the Level 4
Adaptation Process; but it is certainly the case in pure bureaucratic structures (think old-style
armies). It is always better to have people below you in the hierarchy. So building
powerbases is a clear survival strategy for any individual within a bureaucratic structure.
We see from this that inherent to the bureaucratic structure is a positive feedback process
that seeks to continually improve safety and security for those at the top: the bigger the
structure, the securer they feel that they become. Once one appreciates that money is a
proxy for energy, then financial wealth obviously equates to a higher degree of short-term
security. The Growth Process leads to an accumulation of wealth at the top of those
hierarchic social structures known as bureaucracies. In other words, this process gives rise
to capitalism as depicted by Karl Marx. Perhaps, then, not such a new or recent
phenomenon after all – just one that is now expressed more in terms of money than in terms
of explicit physical safety.
Much more could be said about bureaucracies through the theory presented in this book, but
the above should hopefully represent a reasonable introduction and appreciation of the power
this theory has for explanation. We now turn to consider the physical manifestations of the
Trust Matrix.
Growth Process – Physical Expression
It was noted in the last chapter that Social Process 1 (the Birth Process) manifests itself in the
manner of leading the population of a society to congregate together to form nodes of
interaction and activity – our towns and cities. In terms of our daily interaction with the
physical environment, the Birth Process leads us to seek many instantaneous interactions
with the physical, as with the social. So, how does the Growth Process influence our
behaviour?
The Growth Process leads us to structure the world around us and to build. In fact almost
everything that humankind has ever constructed from the tiniest microchip to the greatest
suspension bridge has been enabled, if not driven, by the Growth Process. The creation of
any physical structures of any size or complexity can only be achieved through the prior
construction of significant social structures, which themselves by definition artificially structure
space. In this respect, whilst the Birth Process has been the driver behind the initial formation

of each and every successful city that ever has been (probably without exception), it is the
Growth Process that has then built those cities into, what Lewis Mumford and other early city
historians considered to be, true cities.
All the while that the Growth Process has given societies the capacity to structure the
physical world and to construct, it imbues within society some attributes which can be both
highly beneficial and highly destructive. The example provided at the beginning of this
Chapter, of two friends splitting space between them to keep watch overnight on the
savannah, provides a clue. It is the matter of dividing space. This leads to inherent and
inevitable territoriality: through Level 2 interactions people are unerringly influenced, even
forced, to defend space. This is expressed very strongly in bureaucratic social structures,
where people find themselves (often uncharacteristically compared to their way of being
outside work) being territorial, fiercely defending their patch. In the historic context (before
the Level 4 Adaptation Process had had any influence on the nature of bureaucracies), such
territorial behaviour tended to be mapped directly onto physical space (for example, the
bureaucracy of old, with king at the top supported by lords, in turn supported by land-owning
subordinates, was a tree-like hierarchy which was mapped directly onto the physical
landscape in terms of areas of control – and woe-betide a lord who encroached on a
neighbouring lord’s land). In the modern world, such territorial tendencies are more
expressed in physical space, such as defending a workstream in the office.
This territorial nature extends outwards from the individual such that both the Trust Matrix and
the bureaucracies, which inhabit the Trust Matrix, are exclusionary in space. In a very
beneficial way, this gives rise to property rights at different scales. At a societal level, for
example, we see the nation state, most obviously a Trust Matrix with its own rules and laws
and codes of conduct, which occupies a clearly defined territory. At the small scale, we see
individuals and families and businesses owning clearly identifiable physical territory and
physical objects.
Turning to the destructive side of this territorial behaviour, a significant number of all human
wars have been over control of space. Usually it has involved two social groups seeking to
enforce their own rules on a population which inhabits a particular landscape. Even more
insidiously, we will see in the next chapter that many supposedly religious wars have arisen
when religious organisational structures (created by the Level 3 Health Process) have
converted into bureaucratic hierarchies (the Catholic Church is an exceptional example). The
consequence is that once happily co-inhabiting communities all of a sudden seek to be
exclusionary in space.
The influence of the Growth Process extends, however, beyond just structuring space and
building things. It also influences us to want to hoard material items. It leads us to want to

develop long-lasting relationships with material objects, to become collectors, to wish to

accumulate material items. It influences us to hold onto all that junk in the attic (but not to
maintain it – that comes from Social Process 3). It stops us from throwing anything away, just
in case such stuff might prove to be useful in the future (though always, in our minds eye, the
near future, not the distant future). It also influences us to seek to categorise those things
that we have collected. Where the Birth Process leads us to measure our personal success
on the basis of flow of materials and energy, how much we consume on a day-to-day basis,
the Growth Process leads people to measure their respective and collective success on the
basis of accumulated wealth: the more wealth you have (generally measured in financial or
equivalent terms) the better protected you are for the immediate future.
Growth Process – influence on culture
We now come to consider what our cognitive minds, our thinking brains, infer from the Level 2
Exchange of Labour interaction and how this Ideal Type interaction goes on to influence our
cultures and our intellectual judgement.
We have seen that the identity of the individual influenced by the Growth Process has a
tendency to become bounded and associated with past actions and developed skills and
abilities. Such a person knows who he or she is through how he or she has responded and
reacted to known circumstances. This is an important factor – this process is all to do with
the known through recorded history. We will see in the next chapter that appreciating how an
individual might respond to unknown or not previously experienced situations is a matter for
the Level 3 Health Process. Level 2 interactions, however, are all to do with the known and
recorded in terms of self and others. Through this the individual strongly influenced by the
Growth Process is someone who has a tendency to hold onto the known, both people and
things, to preserve the status quo, to stick to relationships that he or she knows and has
developed over long time periods. Everyone around is seen through the lense of how
predictable and thence trustworthy they have proven to have been historically; they are
known by their history and their personal history alone.
Such person naturally feels happiest when he or she feels safe and secure in his or her
surroundings. Given that the feeling of happiness is less instantaneous than experienced
through Level 1 interactions, it is felt more as a sense of contentment than as an immediate
happiness. They will feel more self-assured and less stressed. This feels good. So, as with
the sense of immediate happiness arising from Level 1 interactions, the individual quite
naturally extends his or her actions and interactions beyond what is absolutely necessary.
This leads the individual into the world of Wants. But in this case, these are not instant
gratification Wants, but a very different form of Wants.

The first affect of this is to make the individual into a very industrious and busy character.
This arises because of the process of objectifying the Need, such that the desire to achieve
Safety and Security takes on a life of its own. This becomes expressed through mental focus
on the task at hand. The individual thereby loses sight of the sense of needing to satisfy just
his or her Safety and Security Needs, but instead becomes entirely focussed on working for
the sake of working, to carry out tasks for the sake of being busy doing things and seeing
material outputs from his or her industrious activity. This can be seen in the case of the busy
executive who completely loses sight of what is really necessary, but instead finds himself
driven to work every minute or hour that he or she can. This becomes manifest in the
business world as the long-hours culture, most notably expressed in places such as Japan
and China where in our current time the Growth Process is manifestly stronger than in many
other societies. The person under the strong influence of the Growth Process is ultimately
driven to fill time with effort, regardless of how productive he or she has become.
(I told you these Processes were insidious!)
This expectation on the self becomes expressed as an expectation on others in more ways
than just spending time seeming to be being productive. The person influenced strongly by
the Growth Process finds himself Wanting those around to be extremely predictable in
behaviour, to follow precisely to rules, regulations and exacting codes of conduct. This
becomes expressed in larger organisations and in society itself through the desire to
continually make more and more precise laws and rules for people in society to follow.
(Weber noted the tendency of bureaucracies to be very rule focussed, but he stopped short of
appreciating how bureaucracies do not just rely on rules, but they are inherently rule making
machines, seeking forever to make more and more rules for everyone (inside and out) to
follow.) The growth in structure and the increase in rules can be seen to operate hand-in-
hand, seeping outwards across society to create more and more, stronger and stronger social
structure. It is therefore through the Growth Process that we have achieved the basic social
infrastructure behind our legal system: and further note just how that legal system operates –
through case law and historic precedents.
It all begins to make sense!
If this theory of social interaction proves to be correct, then it is almost certain that it was the
Growth Process that also gave us the written word. As we have seen from Chapter 7, the
Birth Process has absolutely no use for recording down anything – past and future are
completely irrelevant. However, the Growth Process, with its incredible focus on recording
things for the sake of recording things and on seeking to create rules for everyone to follow,
would have created a huge incentive for people to want to right things down, to record what

happened, to set out contractual arrangements and to seek to control the present and near
future through things that have historically been set out in writing.
Where the person strongly influenced by the Birth Process was seen in the last chapter to
become an opportunist, the individual under the influence of the Growth Process naturally
becomes, what might be termed, a ‘structurist’. She is someone who seeks to place structure
on things, wherever she goes. Naturally this strongly influences how we treat nature. This
Process drives us to seek to classify the whole of nature – placing everything into neat
pigeon-holes: just as we seek to put people into defined roles in terms of what tasks they can
perform, so too do we find ourselves trying to do the same with the natural world. And to
create rules for nature too – the Laws of Thermodynamics being the most obvious example.
The ideology, which would seem most strongly to fit against the characteristics of society
influenced by the Growth Process, is socialism. We will come to appreciate through Chapter
9, however, that it is the original and perhaps purer form of socialism, which was conceived
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during the 19 century by Karl Marx and others, which best fits the Growth Process, and not
the later variants, which co-opted aspects of society which more naturally arise out of the
Level 3 Health Process. Socialism has never been quite as clear a doctrine as liberalism.
That said, the basic tenets of socialism, which most naturally fit with the Growth Process,
would seem to include the desire for much of the business of society to fall within public
ownership – in other words belong to one singular state bureaucratic system (equivalent to
that conceived by the Soviet Union). Other aspects include the desire to strongly regulate
society, especially the free economic market.
The reader will perhaps now better understand how and why the Soviet Union existed as it
did including why all the iconography of the industrious worker went hand-in-hand with a huge
state bureaucratic system, and why such system was so blind to the environmental
destruction that it wrought on the landscape in the drive to build and construct a huge state
machinery and associated physical infrastructure. The Soviet communist system was a very
pure example of a society arising out of a runaway Growth Process.
Process Over-run
Whilst the Soviet Union was a classic example of the Growth Process taking control of a
society and, through positive feedback, turning that society into one singular solid social
bureaucracy, it is apparent from this description of how bureaucracies emerge that there is
little in practical terms to differentiate between communism, fascism or any other form of non-
religious autocracy.

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Germany during the 19 century was another society, which experienced the Growth Process
operating largely to the exclusion of other social processes. The German economy
industrialised later and at a pace that was far quicker than that experienced in the United
Kingdom. But, where the UK is surrounded by sea and had developed a huge empire with
which it traded extensively, which kept the Birth Process operating successfully, Germany is
relatively isolated from the sea. The consequence is that as it industrialised, unlike the British
society, which remained quite fluid, German society solidified into a huge bureaucratic
system. Its economy is still, nowadays, strongly characterised by its degree of
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connectedness not seen elsewhere. The drive to war at the beginning of the 20 century
arose because German society fooled itself into thinking that it was running out of access to
food and energy. Its lack of external trade meant that the external tribal boundaries were still
sufficiently high that the whole society converted quickly into a rather frightening rational tribe,
seeking to fight its way to get access to energy. And then exactly the same happened again
25 years later.
In the absence of the Birth Process, the Growth Process proves to be a very scary process,
which on the one hand creates a society, which is very resilient to external impacts, but on
the other hand gives that society the means to be very effective in warfare. In addition, we all
know the euphemism that it takes years to build trust, but such trust can evaporate in an
instant. As bureaucracies are social structures built out of trust, they prove to be very brittle.
The consequence is that when they fail, they almost always disintegrate quickly and
catastrophically, demonstrated to marked effect by the rapid collapse of the Eastern Block
during the 1990s.
Process Failure
Failure of the Growth Process can manifest in two ways. There is the insidious weakening of
the underlying Trust Matrix, the result of which is that society is no longer able to grow and
support large bureaucracies. This can require the inhabiting bureaucracies to lay off the
lowest, least protected, layers, in order to maintain their overall structural integrity.
Alternatively, the bureaucracies may break catastrophically.
If a fissure were to occur within an underlying Trust Matrix, then this would not immediately
lead to full-blown war or genocide, as seen with failure of the Birth Process. Rather it would
manifest itself in the form of two Trust Matrices seeking to occupy and be exclusionary of the
same geographical space. The outcome tends to be one of terrorism, where two societies
seek to threaten each other. They do this by seeking to make the other feel that their safety
and security is at risk. This may lead to the deaths of a few unfortunate individuals here and
there, but nothing like the scale that happens from full-scale war. The occasional deaths are

used to cause the other society to cower and withdraw from territory, believing that they are
under threat.
The reason why full-blown war does not tend to break out is simply that both Trust Matrices,
both social groups, are still potentially operating within the same Peace Matrix. People from
both sides do not wish to annihilate the other, they simply wish the other to abide by their own
rules or to be given their own geographic space in which they can create and maintain their
own set of rules. This does not prevent such social postering declining into full war, if through
the process trade stops and the Peace Matrix breaks down, allowing the emergence of two
tribes. To this extent the strength of the Peace Matrix is vitally important to prevent fractures
in the Trust Matrix from turning into tribal warfare.
At an individual level, breakdown of trust does not lead to instant death, as would happen in
respect of breakdown of identity. Rather it leads to exclusion of the individual from
membership of the Trust Matrix and by deduction from the land. From a business, once the
brittle trust relationship is broken, snap, you are quickly fired. From a country, historically
people were exiled, or, in the Soviet Union, sent to the gulag (essentially the same solution) .
In a highly populated global village, exile is no longer possible, so individuals who can no
longer be trusted have their passports taken away and are incarcerated – isolated and
spatially contained from the rest of society, until such time that they can be trusted again.
Conclusion
The Birth Process may have started the ‘ball’ of civilisation rolling. But it is the Growth
Process that structured and paved a road for that ball to roll along. The consequence of the
Birth Process has been to spread risk for human populations across geographical space
through trade. But at the same time, the social repercussions of trade have acted to break
down social barriers and thence social structures, wherever they exist. From a more rational
social ether, the Growth Process has continually acted to construct a new structured society.
That construction is in first instance formal social organisations, which in turn can build
physical structures that are so visibly the legacy of emergent civilisations. The Growth
Process further acts to create for civilisation its very own history, its rules and regulations, its
codes of conduct and a more structured relationship with nature and the physical universe.
The influence of the Growth Process at the individual level is to fashion a human who is
predictable, trusting, trustworthy and consequently agreeable to working alongside others, to
labour together. It drives us all to seek to structure space around ourselves and to seek to
structure the way we interact with others. But when the influence of this Process is taken to
its extreme it can lead to the Victorian Dad caricature – someone who seeks to rule his
personal universe, to structure all around him to a high degree of precision, to collect and

categorise all that he can and to work and work and work. Until his heart and health give out
from the intensity of his toils.
Each of the Social Processes seem to bring with them benefits for society at the collective
and individual levels. In the case of the Birth Process these manifest as the spreading of risk
across space, the breaking down of social barriers and prejudices and giving people freedom.
But with benefits also come potential problems. In the case of the Birth Process, these are
rampant environmental destruction and relentless consumption of resources, with no heed for
tomorrow. The benefits of the Growth Process are a structured social and physical
environment, rules and regulated in a manner that can give the individual security, safety and
self-assurance within society. At the collective levels the Growth Process enables society to
structure space (property rights at the small scale and nation states at the large scale) and to
construct, to build structures in physical space, from minuscule and intricately complex to the
vast and awe inspiringly simple.
The Trust Matrix itself, being a matrix of trust relationships, is inherently a membership matrix.
In contrast the Peace Matrix does not concern itself about membership, so long as each and
every individual is reasonably peaceful and accepting of everyone else. But Trust Matrices
are very particular on this matter: you are either trusted or you are not. It is therefore no
surprise that both bureaucracies and nation states are membership systems, where in
contrast cities have always tended to operate more naturally an open-gate policy. In the
bureaucracy, your membership is defined by your signed contract of employment. For the
nation state, your passport essentially represents your contract, and you are a trusted
member of that land so long as you abide by the laws of that land. And what is the core
raison d’etre of the nation state? To protect and defend.
So, in its egalitarian form, the Growth Process has given us the defended nation, a just legal
system, property rights and a safety net welfare state – all the core trappings of the socialist
ideology. But, in a twist of beautiful irony, the Growth Process also gives us the hierarchic
and bureaucratic social form, which is the basis of capitalism, and all the inherent unfairness
that it imbues. Where the Birth Process ‘let rip’ would consume all the world’s resources until
there were literally no tomorrow, the Growth Process would use those resources to pave over
the world – to structure all that we behold, past and present, until there too would be little in
the way of tomorrow to look forward to.
In this chapter, I have probably only scratched the surface of the full implications and power
of the Growth process. But hopefully the explanations provided are sufficient to provide a
flavour of how this social process affects so much of our lives and existence, from culture to
social structures to economic output and the construction of our cities. In respect of the latter
much more could be said about how the Growth Process influences the appearance and

structure of urban environments – the gridiron pattern, for example, or the degree to which a
city is structured in hierarchical or egalitarian form. Not to mention the architecture itself.
Some of these issues will be revisited in Chapter 12.
We have seen the present. We have explored how civilisations create their own history. So
now we look to the future --- and find out just how intimate sex and religion really are.

House/Rider.
Henry Press.
i
As a small, but important aside, let us consider what the options are for the rich man if he
has no knowledge of any of the potential labourers and can find out nothing from anyone he
might choose to ask. His option in this scenario is to take on any one of the men, randomly,
but to condense the time period of pay down to a minimal level. Rather than paying per day,
where he might give an instruction, leave the man to his work for the day, and then return at
the end of the day to pay for the work done, he might condense the contract time down to an
hour: less trust, shorter contract time. Following this exercise to its limit, the rich man might
pay the seemingly very untrustworthy individual on a minute-by-minute basis, or less. At its
limit, the Exchange of Labour interaction condenses to the equivalent of an Exchange of
Sourcing of Materials interaction: instantaneous. At this limit, there is no trust required. But
at such limit the rich man must so micro-manage the task, he may as well have done it
himself. It is apparent that for any lengthening of the duration of the interaction from
instantaneous upwards then more and more trust is required. In this sense, the labour
interaction equates in mathematical (calculus) terms to an integration of numerous of
Sourcing of Materials interactions over a defined time period. We will come to see in Chapter
10 that Level 3 interactions take this forward by representing integration over an undefined, or
infinite, time period.

Chapter 10 – Health Process (Social Process 3) Page 1 of 26 10/6/10
Chapter 10 – Health Process (Social Process 3)
“But whoever takes the water I give him will never be in need of drink again; for the water
I give him will become in him a fountain of eternal life.” John 4:14, Bible in Basic English
Imagine
To help begin to understand the third social process, the Health Process, I start with a little
scenario. I take you back 5,000 years. You are a farmer, as is everyone else around you,
living off the land. You work hard to make the land furnish you and your family with the food
for the next season, the next year. So far, thankfully, you have been successful and kept
your family sustained from year to year. You have experienced some heartbreaking losses,
as some children have died in their early years, but you now have some children ages 5
years or more and, if you are fortunate, most of them will grow to adults themselves.
You have food in the larder for the moment and there seems little by way to threaten your
day-to-day existence – just now and for the foreseeable days and weeks ahead. But the
long-term is unknown: will this year’s harvest deliver?
So you till the land; you care for the land. Each day you go out and make sure there is
nothing that could in anyway damage next season’s food. You check the plants for diseases,
quickly removing those that might have something that could spread to others. In the years
that you have done this, you have developed ways of tending your crop. Those ways have
proven successful and you dare not do anything differently to the way you acted last year, for
fear that doing something different might be a mistake. Each year as you have tended your
crops, you have become more and more fixated about the way and the manner in which you
do this, developing into almost ritualistic behaviour.
You say to yourself: ”This week last year, I checked this bit of land. Next week, I must do this
particular activity. I need to know which week of the year it is so that I can know what task
and activity I must do. And I must not err from how I do it. What has proven successful for
me, I will teach my children so that they too can be sure to make each harvest a successful
one.” While your objective is the long-term moment that you hope to bring in a full harvest,
your day-to-day activities, what you spend most if not all your time doing, is nurturing this
land: making sure it is healthy. This is the focus of your attention. You know that ultimately
you cannot control the weather, but you can control what you do. Together you and the
others in the village can control what you all do to make sure that the future is conducive to
your continuing existence.

You discuss with the others in your village what it is that makes the harvest successful. You
have developed your own techniques together and you hold each other to them. None of you
must stray from the known path that leads, year-on-year, to a successful harvest. As time
has gone by, you started to develop little rituals that are enacted together as a village. And
you told stories about what others did that reaped a successful future reward and what others
did that caused their own doom. You tell these stories to each other and to your children and
you teach the next generation the little rituals, so that they can use them and pass these on to
their own children and children’s children, after you yourself are gone.
Health Process – the interaction driver (reinterpretation of Maslow)
It was stated in Chapter 4 that Maslow’s third Human Need requires clarification. It took me
several years to resolve this fully and I hope that my conclusion makes sense. Maslow’s third
Human Need was originally titled Belonging Needs and has since often been referred to as
our Social Needs. Drawing on my reading of the sociological and social philosophy literature
it was quite apparent to me that human beings are deeply social animals. My original intuition
that civilisation occurred through us learning to help each other satisfy our Needs infers that
being social is fundamental to our nature. It did not make sense to me then that the Need to
be social (per se) came so far up the Hierarchy. I came by this conclusion particularly after
consideration of the views of the social interactionists such as Mead, who deduced that
humans depend upon the presence of other humans during their childhood to enable them to
develop a personal, unique identity.
The clue to the solution for Level 3 came when I was reading Victor Frankl’s work on Man’s
Search for Meaning. I had previously noted that Maslow had assumed that sex was a
Material Need (Level 1) and I had taken this at face value. But Frankl documented that in
concentration camps, the sexual drive of prisoners evaporated. He further explained that the
need for sex, men or women, was completely subsumed by the day-to-day requirement to
ensure survival – obtaining enough food to eat and avoiding being shot. This made me
ponder that perhaps Maslow had misinterpreted the importance of sex and that, as with
assuming our modern standards of living to be a vital part of Material Needs, he might have
been swayed by the cultural environment in which he lived and thereby effectively over-
prioritised sex.
As I thought through the conundrum, it became clear to me that if one strips away all the
modern comforts of life, as done at the beginning of Chapter 7 in order to explore the
underlying Need driver for Material Needs, then doing the same for Level 3 it begins to make
sense that reproduction might be the key relevant biological Need, which in due course has
become dressed up with cultural clothes by our modern society. Forgetting momentarily our
human side and thinking purely in biological terms, it makes sense that any organism must

first and foremost obtain energy today, in order to survive into tomorrow. An organism’s
second Need is to secure a reasonable and continuous energy supply in order to be able to
grow and develop structure and to reach a sufficient size to be able to reproduce. Then, and
only then, does any individual organism become sexually active and seek to reproduce to
continue the genetic line, the species. To be consistent with the starting proposition of the
world seen through the eyes of individual people, Human Needs, reproduction of the species
must come third-fiddle to day-to-day survival and growth from infant to young adult.
So at Level 3, in biological terms the Need could be the requirement to be able to reproduce.
Failure to do so means failure of the species, but not the organism itself. Thinking in
evolutionary terms, reproduction must reside somewhere within the overall Needs hierarchy
and this seems a logical point for it to manifest. As to how this manifests in the human
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psychology, we have some ground to cover before this will become fully apparent .
As I worked on the Level 3 Health Process, it became apparent that the Need could readily
be construed to extend beyond reproduction and to pertain to health of the individual as well.
In fact in our day-to-day life it is the health aspect which dominates. The connection can be
made in various ways. In a purely biological context, for an animal to be able successfully to
reproduce, as well as grow, it must remain healthy until it is sexually mature. Mating rituals in
the animal kingdom have been interpreted in various ways, but one obvious one is that the
two animals are checking each other’s health and seeking to prove to each other that they are
healthy and worthy of being a reproduction partner. Alternatively and rather anecdotally, in
the human context one sees examples of businessmen becoming so addicted to work
through the Growth Process that it proves to be detrimental to their health: inferring that the
Level 2 Safety and Security Need is frequently prioritised over Level 3 Health Need. The
health damaging addictive behaviours associated with the Level 1 Need – obesity, drug
abuse, alcoholism, adrenalin junkies and retail therapy – speak for themselves. As we work
through the Level 3 Health Process, the connection between health and reproduction will be
further affirmed.
The Need to maintain good health does not obviously drive us to interact; the Need to
reproduce does. Whilst there are creatures in the animal kingdom, which are not social and
do not cooperate in reproduction (beyond an instantaneous interaction), this should not be, or
rather has not historically through our more recent evolution been, the case with humans.
The sexual act may be relatively instantaneous and hence why it can be easily misinterpreted
as a Material Need; but the successful rearing of children clearly takes enormous time and
effort. Given that human beings have evolved to a point where the children take more than
10 years to reach a point at which they could in theory reasonably survive without parents or
mentors and also over 10 years to reach sexual maturity, we are a species, which has
evolved to take the rearing of offspring very seriously. In the scheme of life, the act of

reproduction is an instant compared to the subsequent huge time and effort involved in
nurturing children. The term nurture is here taken to mean tending to the physical, emotional
and mental health of a child and rearing him or her to a point at which they can look after
themselves by meeting their own Needs through their own instigated interactions in the big
wide world, including maintaining their own physical, emotional and mental health.
Health Process – focus of attention and form of interaction
To come to understand the form of the interaction that appears from the underlying Human
Need to be healthy and to reproduce, it is necessary to consider the question: what does it
mean and involve to keep oneself healthy or to maintain one’s environment in a way that it
remains conducive to one’s continued good health? What do we each need to do? Whether
one is considering one’s one body, that of your child, the state and cleanliness of your house
and your garden, to keep any of these in a good state, then physical actions are required.
Time and energy must be expended focussing on the object in question to maintain it, to
clean it, to groom it, to remove pests, to keep a watchful eye for any evidence of ill-health, to
prevent it (say, a child) wandering into danger, to provide the right balance of nutrients and so
on and so forth. All these activities require mental focus and associated exertion. In this
respect, work must be done, and energy expended in the real physical world, no less so than
the set of tasks identified as necessary to help secure an individual’s safety and security.
But the set of tasks associated with maintaining yourself or anything else in good health are
not time bounded. Each time you brush your teeth represents a discrete task. But how long
do you decide to brush them for and how frequently should you do it? If you were to believe
the adverts on television, then you would spend your whole life brushing your teeth to
eradicate that plaque and stave away those unwanted bacteria. Alternatively, if you are
fastidious in your cleanliness around the house, especially a house full of young children, you
could spend your whole life cleaning and tidying. Perhaps the best example that could be
given is that well worn anecdote about painting the Severn Bridge: “as soon as they have
completed, they must start again: it is a never-ending job”.
That is the case for all the set of tasks that are associated with Health and Reproduction
Needs. They are not time bounded; they are indefinite. If one were to build a wall round a
house to provide safety and security, then the task can be completed: the last brick can be
placed and the wall considered built. Job complete. But the maintenance task to keep that
wall in a good state of repair from that point forwards is never ending. It may not require
much effort on a day-to-day basis, but it is a task that must forever be returned to once in a
while to ensure that the wall does not eventually degrade and crumble. It is this fundamental
difference - time bounded to time unbounded – that sets the resulting two Social Processes
apart. It may appear a triviality when considered at the discrete single task basis; but when

scaled up to the level of a social process, the results are quite astoundingly different: and yet
at the same time with intriguing similarities and orthogonal disparities.
Now, let us consider the set of activities that are required to provide for an individual’s health,
or for child rearing, or gardening or farming. These activities all fall into the category of being
nurturing activities and require repetition on a regular basis to maintain our selves and
environment in a manner, which is conducive to our longer-term health and reproductive
success. A key characteristic of many, if not all, of these activities are that they occur in
situations where we are acutely aware that there are so many variables that it is very difficult
to know precisely whether what we did worked or not. The outcome from these activities also
tends to be in the distant future – harvesting a crop half a year away or preventing that tooth
decay from ever appearing. Many things can happen during the time period between action
and outcome (even if outcome is to maintain health) that it is nigh impossible to know whether
the actions that we did ourselves and the way we did them actually had a beneficial or
detrimental influence. This is especially notable in the context of rearing children, where the
outcome will be 10 to 20 years hence. In many cases an action will need to be repeated
numerous times before the outcome is observable (or not in the case of averted tooth decay).
These Level 3 associated activities can be contrasted against those activities associated with
meeting our Level 2 Needs, where all of the latter tend to give rise to a fairly immediate result:
you know quite quickly whether your efforts in laying bricks have successfully created a
structurally sound defensive wall.
As noted in Chapter 8, to differentiate between these types of activities, I have termed Level 2
Need-driven activity as labour and Level 3 Need-driven activity as nurture. As we enter into a
Level 3 Ideal Type of interaction, the initial focus of our attention is on the desire to carry out
repetitive tasks to maintain either our own health of that or our off-spring, or to maintain the
environment in which we live. We will come to see, as we work up the process that this
develops into something so much more than a focus on brushing our teeth or hovering the
home. But like laying one brick on top of another, these little necessary tasks are the starting
point.
To begin to understand the form of the interaction we again go back to basics. A good
example is to consider chimpanzees grooming each other, removing parasites from each
other’s skin to prevent such pests from becoming a burden to good health. To be effective at
parasite removal, the task can best be achieved one at a time: ‘you do my back and then I’ll
do yours’ or vice versa. The interacting parties must take turns. This contrasts with a most
basic labour (Level 2) activity (say, keeping watch through the night), where the initial sharing
of labour interaction is most simply done as a division of space and effort exerted
simultaneously. In contrast, the simplest form of sharing of nurture represents direct
reciprocation of the same activity: taking turns.

We see then from the individualistic perspective that the aim of the interaction is to have
another do a task for your personal longer-term benefit. That other will only gain if the favour
is reciprocated. Exertion on their behalf to remove parasites from your back otherwise has a
very low level of return. Put yourself into the chimps shoes, so-to-speak. Imagine you have
an irritating parasite on your back that you just cannot reach. In order to persuade another
chimp to put in the effort to remove the itchy parasite, you may need to initiate the process by
offering first to check their back and do a bit of grooming for them. But who, out of your
chimpanzee companions, should you approach? Who will most likely reciprocate? We will
seek to answer this question in the next section; first let us consider that you are successful,
what is the form of the interaction that occurs?
Think again of two chimpanzees taking turns grooming each other. Whereas for Level 2 Ideal
Type interactions the simplest interaction gave rise to a simple division of space, for Level 3
we see space take on circular patterns. The chimp being groomed becomes the automatic
central focus, with the grooming chimpanzee working its way around this central focus. Then
the two chimpanzees swap and the centre of space moves (jumps) to the other chimp. Time,
on the other hand, becomes a structured sequence of events with no breaks – a metronome
ticking out the turns taken. Time is broken down into discrete temporal chunks: the length of
time it takes to carry out a full body grooming. Space, however, becomes much more fluid
(analogy knowingly made), centred around something, but that centre continually jumping
from one locus to another with the ticking of the clock.
Let us extend the example to a more familiar human situation with a mother and father
tending to the demands of a newborn infant. We see the baby take on the centre of their
universe: the mother and father looking inwards at the babe in the crib (note in Level 2
interactions, keeping watch = looking outwards). Stand back a bit and we see a second tier
of carers, the grandparents and immediate aunts and uncles, forming the next ring out: and
beyond them, their own friends and other relatives, showing a momentary interest in the
newborn child. For a short while, the form of interaction gives rise to concentric circles of
interested persons conceptually forming around the new baby.
But that centre of attention is continually mobile. Next moment one of those aunts in the
second tier gives birth and the circles all re-arrange themselves around the newest new
comer. Within circles, attention changes as new dad turns to new mum and asks her how
she is feeling. She then asks back in return and says a few smoothing, nurturing words. In
the human world, physical grooming has moved on to a situation where verbal and other
grooming have become much more important. Suddenly one of the babies cries and all our
attentions revert back to that baby. And when that baby is happy suckling, then the other.

The outcome of these Level 3 Ideal Type interactions is space structured as concentric circles
around a central point. In a healthy, egalitarian community, that central point is constantly
moving. Note importantly that the physical structure of space is responsive to the temporal
situation – on whose turn it is to receive attention. This is completely orthogonal to the Level
2 Ideal Type interactions, where instead we see the structure of time responding to the way
that space had been structured and divided up to enable the cooperative carrying out of
particular tasks to achieve definite outputs.
Within the Health Process, we therefore see time clearly structured into an unknown future.
The structure of space is, however, and certainly from an external perspective, very difficult to
comprehend; it seems to be in constant flux. As we work up the Health Process, we will
come to see that it gives rise to enduring, but seemingly fluid, social structures, whose
principle focus is on the continued structuring of time, from generation to generation. It can
also be appreciated that there are no natural voids in time between Level 3 interactions: the
baby needs constant attention and someone available to respond even when it is asleep. In
contrast Level 1 interactions, being instantaneous, and Level 2 interactions, being time-
bounded, both naturally leave voids between interactions. These are expressed in our
experienced world by the fact that we only go for shopping trips and that we go home from
work; looking after children, in contrast, is continuous with no breaks. However Level 3
interactions, being inherently inward looking, do provide scope for voids in space. The
repercussions of these observations will be noted later in this chapter. To be clear, the
Growth Process leaves no voids in space, but does create voids in time, whereas the Health
Process leaves no voids in time, but does generate voids in space.
Health Process – Behaviour, Attitude and Perceptions
We now come back to the question of how you might know whether another will or will not
reciprocate to your initiated grooming – chimp or human. In the human context such
grooming may range from a flattering or sympathetic comment through to the full blown care
of a baby, a married partner or elderly relative. It took me a long time to deduce the right
terminology for this to my personal satisfaction; I am still entirely open to suggestions on
possible better wording. Clearly the solution was similar to predictability and trust (as in Level
2), but somehow not. Here follows how I came by a possible answer.
At the time I was solving this question, I and my wife had our first child. And seventeen
months later, twins. With a big generational gap, we were both in our late thirties, neither of
us had any real experience of babies and young children. Not since we were small
ourselves. Our world rapidly became very unpredictable; every day, every week, we were
confronted by events and experiences of which neither of us had any prior experience. We
quickly realised that we had no idea ourselves how we would respond, in the context of infant

demands and sleep deprivation, leave alone our better half.
Tussling with these observations, and having by then got to grips with the Growth Process, it
was apparent to me that what bound us together was much more than trust. Trust is
something which works when the world is predictable. In the working world, for example,
colleagues will complete a known task; as time goes by, we come to trust that they will deliver
the pre-defined output in the pre-agreed timescales. But when the world is constantly
changing, especially the universe of young growing children, something more than
predictability and trust is required.
But what?
My suggested answer is that the required behaviour is that of being Dependable (an
alternative word might be Principled). (This may be challenged, but I will run with it for now.)
The reason for the choice is that we are looking for a behaviour, which essentially provides
predictability within unpredictable situations. If we have no experience of something and
have no past history to draw on to revert to in order to guide our actions and behaviours, then
we need to look deeper. For my wife and I, having children and taking the rearing of them
seriously, forced us to look deep, to seek to understand what principles we each adhered to
which might guide our decisions and actions when the world around us was becoming a
chaotic roller-coaster ride.
I am interpreting the word Dependable to mean someone acting and behaving on the basis of
definite principles. This could equally be interpreted as morals or ethics. But Dependable, as
a word, has less baggage. We will come to see later in this chapter that principles are quite
relative to each society and not absolute (just as the ‘laws of the land’). What is moral or
ethical in one society may not be in another. So dependability and principles are good
unbiaised, widely applicable words.
To accompany a Dependable behaviour, I would suggest there develops an attitude of Faith.

While the word Faith has significant inferences, meanings and connotations, I could not find
any other word which seems to encapsulate better the nature of the attitude associated with
the Level 3 Ideal Type interaction. To start off with, you need to divorce your interpretation of
the word Faith from any of its religious connotations: as per the dictionary definition “belief in,
devotion to, or trust in somebody or something, especially without logical proof”. We see then
that Trust operates in circumstances where two individuals are (in first instance) working
simultaneously to achieve a pre-defined output (often seeking themselves to maintain the
status quo). Faith, in contrast, operates where activities are not, in first instance, necessarily
simultaneous. It requires that each party have faith in the other that they will, when required
or requested, reciprocate. We can never be certain that another will return the favour; but we

ii
can hope and have faith that they will .
The context of child-rearing can be used to further reinforce the difference. If I and my wife
encounter situations, which are entirely novel, how do I know (or rather have faith) that my
partner will act in a way which I would support? Or for that matter, how do I know that I will
act in a way, which I would on reflection think to have been appropriate, and which she would
likely support? If two parents leave each other with the children and the kids run amok in a
way neither adult had experienced before, how can they each have faith in the other that the
other’s response will be appropriate and proportionate? Trust relies on the known; it is simply
not relevant to these changing circumstances. We each have to draw on deeper principles.
What is the agreed or assumed long-term objective? What action or reaction would best build
towards that long-term goal?
Moving onto perceptions of others, we enter into sharing or exchanging of nurture interactions
with a focus on our health needs (or that of someone or something close and important to
us). In first instance this suggests that other people are seen in terms of how or whether they
can help us meet our own Need. But, similarly to Level 2 Ideal Type interactions, which direct
us to show an interest in and to explore someone else’s past history, we need to find out
more about that other person. In the case of Level 3 Ideal Type interactions, we have to
ascertain whether another’s future objectives are aligned with our own. Is it in their interest to
reciprocate? This directs us to express an interest in that other’s future. Given the future is
unknown and unknowable, how do we come by this answer?
It would appear that there are two principal ways, in which we explore other people’s futures.
In doing so, what we are looking for is to determine whether, as far as we can each ascertain,
our own and that other person’s futures are aligned, that we have similar and mutually
compatible and potentially interlinked objectives, such that we might each gain from effort
exerted on the other’s behalf. Can we expect to depend on each other?
One of the routes is through narrative. We tell stories and explore through those stories
whether we agree with the actions and reactions of the characters in those stories to
imagined eventualities. Such stories could equally be about recent events that have occurred
to ourselves or someone we know, discussing how we or that someone responded. Often, or
perhaps usually, such stories entail taking known life to its extremes and testing the limit,
even to destruction, whether our collective principles remain and at what point they might
break down. We then compare this to real life to determine whether there is any likelihood
that future life might extend beyond the point of breakdown of whichever principles. We will
return in the section on culture to explore what this becomes in a wider social context; in first
instance, such interaction clearly requires lots of communication (mostly talking).

The other way, in which we seek to know another’s degree of dependability and faithfulness,
is to look for consistency in their behaviour across a whole host of different situations. One of
the best ways to do that is through socialising. We look for consistency in those around us in
the many small interactions which they have with other people. This is most obviously done
when looking for a partner for marriage, but in reality happens throughout our life. We watch
another in their interactions with others and we explore with those others how the first person,
in whom we might be interested for friendship or more, has interacted. We look for
consistency across their whole present-day life, to see whether expressed principles accord
with enacted behaviour. This suggestion is supported by research, which shows that over
65% and possibly upto 80% of all human conversation tends to be of a gossip nature: “did
you hear what so-and-so did?” (Emler 2001). Furthermore, the great thing about having the
facility of speech is that we humans can do lots of tentative testing out of the Level 3 Ideal
Type interaction, through conversation (exchanging flattering and nurturing comments),
before embarking upon full-blown interactions, which require significant physical effort (such
as having children).
Here, again, we see an intriguing othogonality with the Growth Process. For Level 2
interactions, we look back into the past to explore consistency in another’s behaviour over
time as a means to predict how that other will act and perform spatially in the present and
near future. For Level 3, we find ourselves looking for consistency across the whole spatial
life of a person in the present as a means to predict their behaviour (as far as it can be
known) into the more distant future. The most obvious example to demonstrate this point is
to compare the work interview, which depends largely on a curriculum vitae and a couple of
references on past performance and little more, verses the “marriage interview”, and all the
socialising which the latter normally entails. Need more be said?
So, we end up with a situation where to find others to interact with to meet our health and
reproduction needs we have to be social. This explains Maslow’s original observation and
suggestion that our Level 3 Need is that of Social or Belonging Needs. What he was seeing
was simply the expression of how we go about meeting an underlying Need (Health and
Reproduction) and not the need itself.
All this socialising is, of course, a two-way process. In looking for consistency in others, we
cannot escape the realisation that that is what those other’s might be looking for in us. If we
are looking for depth in other people, to understand their principles and how consistently they
apply them, we are led to look in the mirror at ourselves. As we look for others, with whom to
enter into Level 3 Ideal Type interactions and thereafter as we participate in such interactions,
we are forced ourselves to explore what our personal morality and ethics are and to seek to
be consistent in our behaviour with all those others around and in all situations in which we
find ourselves. The perception that we consequently begin to develop of ourselves is

someone who has, holds onto and lives by stronger and stronger beliefs. It is something
which grows with time, the more so, the more that one participates in mutual and successful
Level 3 Ideal Type interactions. As stated at the outset of this book, it really is other people
who make any Man civilised. In this context, we engender amongst each other a sense of
morality.
It goes further than this. The starting point for this interaction is to satisfy our personal health
needs; as we enter into a Level 3 Ideal Type interaction, from socialising, to making love and
beyond, then it is our own health (mental, physical and emotional) which is the first focus of
our attention. If someone else responds by helping us with whatever task is necessary, then
it reaffirms that our own health is important: “Another human being is exerting effort directly
on my behalf; I must be important”. The outcome of this is that mutually successful Level 3
Ideal Type interactions help to give people self-worth: “I am being valued by another”. It is
this that is an incredibly important aspect of child-rearing – to give the child self-worth by
actively, consistently and continually nurturing him or her and tending to his or her physical
(and as time goes by ever more importantly mental and emotional) health. The degree to
which a child is reared to adult with a strong degree of self-worth will strongly influence how
they will then value themselves and seek to perpetuate a social environment where people
cooperate to value and nurture each other.
As with the other Ideal Type interactions we naturally extend these perceptions of ourselves
and others onto the wider universe. We are driven to look for deeper meaning in the physical
and natural world and to look for signals that would suggest that the future and objectives of
said wider world are aligned with our own. We even imbue that world with ‘objectives’.
Rather than just predictability in nature, as sought under the influence of the Growth Process
(creating rules and laws and categorizing things into precise roles), we instead look for
consistency across the known universe as a means to try to predict the more distant future.
This, for instance, directs us to undertake large-scale statistical surveys and the like: the
wider the platform of information in the present, the more certain we hope our predictions of
the more distant future will be.
Under the influence of Level 2 interactions, we are influenced to focus at the past and the
known. Instead under the influence of Level 3 interactions, we are driven to seek to peer into
the future, into the unknown. That unknown is simple that which is beyond our direct
observation in space and in time, especially future time. The Growth Process drives us to
structure the past in order to control the present and to keep out that which we do not want.
The Health Process, in contrast, leads us to paint many pictures of the possible future and to
keep in what we want. It leads us to encircle space and to look after and value that which is
inside.

Critical to the whole debate about sustainable development, it is only through mutually
successful Level 3 Ideal Type interactions that we learn to value. Only those who have
developed a strong sense of self-worth are capable of projecting that outwards and thereby
see their immediate environment as something which is also valuable. Only if we interact to
look after our own health do we come to appreciate that our environment is something which
needs nurturing too in order to retain its conduciveness to our longer term productive success
as a tribe, community or, perhaps now, as a species.
Health Process – influence on the economy
The role that the Health Process has in our overall modern economies is very significant,
albeit, as is the nature of this Process, much less focused or formalised than the material
trading and labour economies. It includes all that effort exerted by mums at home, nowadays
probably far more energy intensive activity than many of their husbands, chained to a desk at
work. It also comprises that whole third economy of charitable organisations. In theory, it
also includes our education and health systems and various aspects of our social services.
But, as we will come to appreciate in later chapters, in countries such as the UK these have
all been co-opted into our bureaucratic state infrastructure, with which they have an inevitable
uneasy relationship. Nurture and labour, as we will come to appreciate later in this chapter,
naturally give rise to very different social structures and cultures.
We saw in Chapter 9 how the sharing of labour converts into exchange of labour and the
consequences of this transition. It provided the ability to break down complex tasks into sub-
components, with different people specialising in each workstream, in due course enabling
societies to construct ever more complex physical structures. In the case of the Health
Process, we see as the starting point a continuous stream of small activities, which in
aggregate are not time bounded. There are no voids in time from one activity to the next;
even if you are not physically looking after your child at a particular moment in time, you are
still ultimately responsible for him or her, ready to respond to a cry in the middle of the night
when asleep. The simplest sharing of nurture interaction is one of direct reciprocation of the
same actions: “I’ll scratch your back and then you scratch mine”. Or “you do the nappy this
time and I’ll do the next nappy change”. Or for a pigeon, “I’ll sit on the eggs in the nest this
hour and then we can swap.” Taking turns.
The switch to an exchange of nurture interaction is a little more subtle than exchange within
Level 2 Ideal Type interactions. Consider again, for example, the situation of building and
then maintaining a fence. To share the construction of the whole fence, two people can do
half each. To exchange in the construction of the whole fence, the overall task is sub-divided
into different elements. To share in the maintenance of the whole fence would involve taking
turns to check the fence over (me this week, you next) and do whatever is required to mend

it; we both operate in a generalist capacity, doing whatever maintenance tasks need doing.
To exchange in the nurture of the fence, we would specialize and define a different set of
types of nurture activity for each: perhaps you do painting type work and I do carpentry type
work. A key thing with this division of nurture is that it is very difficult to predict in advance
whether the end result will be equal effort for each: how much painting and how much
carpentry will really be required.
Now, you are probably thinking why not split the fence spatially in two and agree to maintain
half each? The answer can best be understood in the context of a divorcing mother and
father, who have two children. As they choose to separate, if they both wish to have a
continued involvement in the children, then there are two obvious courses of action, which
they could choose. They could each take one child and look after that child alone. Or they
can take turns looking after both children. It is, of course, the latter option, which in the vast
majority of cases is selected; in fact it would be looked on as quite odd to do the alternative.
The reason is that to split spatially, you are entirely divorcing any involvement in the other
spatial component – the other child. Because of the future focus of the Level 3 Ideal Type
interaction, we are obliged to consider the whole of an object or system and not its
component parts: all the offspring, the whole fence circling a field (half a fence is useless),
and so on. It forces us away from being reductionist, which is manifestly the natural
consequence of Level 2 exchange interactions; rather the outcome of Level 3 exchange
interactions is a steer towards holism.
The benefit that human society gains from the exchange of nurture activity is similar to the
advantage of exchange of labour. At Level 3 it puts human society in a position to be able to
maintain far more complex objects and systems when we specialise and exchange activities.
This is most obviously expressed in modern society within the field of medicine, where over
the last 200 years there has been an increasing specialisation involved, with doctors now
having the choice of a whole variety of different fields to work in. Alluding back to the
comment earlier about predictability of exertion by any particular party, if we have a team of
doctors tending to one individual, it may be that the cancer doctor is never needed. It is only
at a statistical level across a large number of people that it becomes predictable that any
particular specialist will be required to contribute. In this respect the Level 3 economy is
inherently a far more fluid economic system than the Level 2 manufacturing economy. At
Level 3, the economy must ‘flow’ to where there is need, where such need cannot be
precisely predicted in advance. This is a stark contrast to Level 2 activities, where everything
is clearly predefined to achieve very precise outputs to a predetermined timetable.
This very different character of the Level 3 economy is, in large part, why it sits so
uncomfortably within state bureaucracies, which spend much time and effort trying to force
something, which is inherently fluid, to be crystal.

Before we move on to consider the social structures arising from Level 3 Ideal Type
Interactions, a final comment is required. In Level 2 labour activities, when exchange takes
place and a group of people agree how to divvy up a whole task between them in order to
produce a defined, predetermined output, then failure of any one task can be catastrophic to
the whole: the man who agreed to make the axel for the cart did not deliver. No cart. In
Level 3 situations, failure to contribute by one party is often not catastrophic – at least not for
sometime. If something, or an element of something, is not maintained, then it may continue
operating okay, or to a reduced effect, for some considerable time. In fact, more pointedly, in
life there are always too many nurturing activities that could be done. The consequence is
that we have to prioritise: do we clean the house or play nurturing games with the children?
Make this decision time and again, day-in day-out, and we will eventually end up with a very
different outcome: children with high or low self-worth accordingly. And a certain degree of
household chores are unavoidable. But the final outcome, how over the long-term we choose
to divide our time, will take a long time to become fully apparent: 10 or more years. Wherever
and whenever we are engaged in nurture activities, there are always moral choices to be
made, which ultimately come back to our long-term objectives and our collective vision of the
future. What principles do we live by? What are our long-term future objectives?
Health Process – influence on social structure
To appreciate how the Health Process generates larger social structures, the image that one
should imagine is that used earlier of the two adoring adults focusing inwards on the child,
their backs to the outside world, creating a nurturing ring with the child in the centre. If at any
point one begins to struggle with understanding the Health Process and all that it leads to, I
have personally found it helpful to return to this image of the valued object in the centre and
the nurturing ring created by those taking turns carrying out the nurturing activity.
In the case of a child being nurtured a semi-permanent nurturing ring is created by its parents
(or at least should be). The object in the middle of this ring is being constantly cared for and
valued. I have opted to call this focus at the centre of any particular circle of people valuing as
the Value Node: conceptually a conical pyramid of valuers all looking upwards towards the
central object of value. We will return to this situation of permanent Value Nodes later in this
section, but first we need to consider the more egalitarian arrangement between two adults,
taking turns to nurture each other. It might superficially appear in the human context that it is
the person talking who is exerting most effort, but that is to forget the difference between
active and passive listening and the real effort required to be an active, interested and
engaged listener. (Not known to be the forte of men.) Proper active listening requires putting
one’s own thoughts and interests aside and focussing on the communication of the other:
when done properly this requires mental and emotional effort.

Let us now extend the examples from a pair of adults to a group situation. A good example to
try to explain this is the now classic depiction of the Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, to be
found in numerous films. The group of 10 or so sit round in a circle. Then one-by-one they
take turns to stand up, sometimes even stepping forwards into the circle, to talk about what
they did and experienced during the previous week. In this situation, the speaker, now
standing, is the valued object being cared for by the group. The ring of individuals, still
seated, who should be very actively listening to the woes and progress of the talker,
represent the valuers – nurturing the health of the valued object by paying attention to him or
her and being responsive to his or her trials and tribulations and asking pertinent questions.
Of key importance in this scenario is that each person takes turns to stand up and be valued:
taking a moment to be centre stage and given attention by everyone else.
We see here that the value node no longer remains permanently with any one individual, but
moves around the group, possibly lingering on those who need most care and attention.
Each person is willing to expend energy actively participating in the listening and give the
others in the group attention, on the understanding, the faith, that the favour will be returned
and in due course it will become their turn to be nurtured by the rest of the group. When the
value node is continually on the move, then this represents the egalitarian form of the
interaction in a social context. If one were mentally to extend this situation outwards beyond
the Alcoholics Anonymous group to encompass the whole of a social group, then that is a
healthy community. An example of this in the wider social context is the way that we
celebrate people’s birthdays: putting a person at centre stage on that special day of their own
each year.
It is this process of nurturing each other and continually giving little snippets of attention to
each other in the wider group that represents the glue that creates a community. As with the
Trust Matrix, where we learn to extrapolate our trust onto society generically beyond
individual relationships, a similar effect happens at Level 3. The result is what I have come to
term a Value Matrix. In the case of the Value Matrix, we find ourselves extending our faith
outwards to the whole community, expectant or hopeful that effort expended by ourselves will
somehow, somewhen be reciprocated by others: hope. This may not necessarily be the
same others, but is likely to be others from within the same community, those who belong to
that Value Matrix of common principles, beliefs, morals and ethics. The Value Matrix is
naturally far more fluid and adaptive compared to the very rigid and brittle Trust Matrix.
Whereas in the Trust Matrix, the interactions require spatial coordination and with repetitive
and complex tasks tend to take place at the same moments in time, in the Value Matrix the
structure is temporal (each person requiring regular, intermittent attention). There is much
less need for spatial correlation between any two individuals doing the valuing. An elderly

woman might be cared for and receive all the nurturing she needs by son and daughter (in
return for her love during their childhood years), who have themselves fallen out and no
longer meet. So long as they still value their mother and each agree to turn up on different
days of the week, they never need to correlate their movements in space. But they are
clearly correlated in time. It would seem that a human being needs personal attention from
others, but after those early childhood years (except during periods of ill health) that nurturing
does not have to be continuous, just continual. This does not release the valuer from his or
her continuous obligation to value; it is just that the exertion involved does not have to be
constant. But it must be continual and repeated on regular occasions.
Out of all this, we see that a community can be defined as follows: “it is a network of
individuals who are all linked together through an open web of mutually supportive, reciprocal,
and temporally structured, relationships”. Being structured in time rather than space, the
community and its Value Matrix is much more subtle than Trust Matrix social structures (such
as bureaucracies). They are continually flowing and changing. It is for these reasons why
the concept of ‘community’ has been so difficult to pin down, for so long within the social
sciences.
Health Process – Systems Inhabiting Matrices
As with the Peace and Trust Matrices, the Value Matrix can become inhabited by SIMS. In
the case of the Value Matrix, these manifest themselves in the form of permanent value
nodes. This also gives rise to a social hierarchy, but of a very different form to the
bureaucracy.
To visualise the formation of permanent value nodes, we return to the newborn infant
scenario. There are the two adoring parents who form the inner most nurturing ring around
the baby. The baby is clearly not providing any reciprocal nurture back to the parents –
certainly not for many years to come. As previously noted, the two parents are not the only
people who have an interest in the health and well-being of the child; there is also the wider
circle of relatives and the circle of friends beyond. These can be construed to form secondary
and additional rings, seeking both to look after the child, but also to support the adults in their
new found roles as parents. These concentric nurture rings (not protective rings, but nurture
rings) are defined according to their social distance from the value node. They are all inward
facing.
In the scenario described, the greatest focus of attention is being placed on the child. If this
functions well, then that will help the child develop its own sense of self-value – simply by
being valued and treated accordingly. But the parents are also for a period of time being
raised above the social base platform in terms of the level of attention that they are receiving

by their surrounding community. If this situation were to remain permanent, then one would
expect the child at the centre to develop a sense of self-value which was above that of all the
others. The parents likewise would develop a sense of self-value above that of the outer ring
– an over inflated self-value. In the normal course of life, another child is born elsewhere and
the community’s focus moves on. Everyone gets their turn.
Just like bureaucracies build on themselves and seek to grow, so do value nodes. The
positive feedback for this comes from the cultural aspect, to be discussed. In the case of the
bureaucracy, this arose from the SIM seeking to create more and more rules and regulations
and to co-opt new people into the base of the social structure to help it build itself. With the
focus of attention at the centre, the natural point of growth of the value node hierarchic
system is from the centre outwards. In the normal course this happens through each new
generation taking up centre stage in the centre of the nurture circle, the nurture rings moving
outwards, the younger generation receiving the most nurturing attention.
As described for the Trust Matrix, the Value Matrix arises to enable people to understand their
social structure around them. The Value Matrix does not directly map onto physical space: at
least not normally. So those in the different value rings can all be mixing and operating within
same physical space. But here is an interesting outcome of this construct. Within each value
ring there continue to be the equitable interactions, each individual being occasionally
supported by those around within the same situation. Two adults looking after a child, each
also need to spend time nurturing each other. Grandparents helping new parents and their
child must not forget to look after each other. But while the baby is young, then the
grandparents can expect little in return. The inference is that the equitable interactions, being
mutual and involving reciprocation taking place regularly in the near term, make stronger
bonds than the one-sided interaction from an outer ring towards an inner ring, where
reciprocation is deferred indefinitely. If this were the case then there would or could arise a
layering of society – a series of discrete, and loosely linked, value matrices. These various
value matrices would overlap in space, but not in time. The meaning of the latter is that the
communities associated with these value matrices could all occupy the same urban
environment, but they would not interact in a mutually positive way and the communities
would likely evolve to operate according to their own discrete temporal structure operating
according to different principles and beliefs.
The manifestation of this in society is none other than the caste or class system. Such
system very obviously expresses much of what one would predict from this framework.
Anecdotal examples abound. For instance, one would expect those in the outer ring of a
series of concentric nurture circles to become essentially invisible in wider society, or perhaps
literally ‘untouchable’ as in the lowest layer of the Indian caste system. Another example at
top of the value node is the god-like status assumed by English kings through much of middle

period of the last millennium arising from bloated self-value because of being permanently at
the centre of a value node – possibly termed a super-value node.
When such class systems appear, then the equitable value relationships remain amongst
those within the rings – within each discrete class. There arises a natural hierarchy to the
classes, with those in higher classes valued more as human beings than those in lower
classes. The result is that there develop a series of distinct communities, which share space
but they do not share the same time. The latter would manifest, for instance, in terms of
operating according to different daily schedules – active at different times of the day and
night, for instance, attending to religious rituals and festivals at different times of the day,
night, week, month, year. At its extreme, as seemingly happened in Ancient Egypt, the lower
(or lowest) layer(s) might even develop an entirely different religion (the emergent Israelites).
Another anecdotal corroboration to this thesis is the expression of the temporal aspect to
value nodes. In India the caste system is seen in terms of distance from eternal life: the
untouchables at the base layer are seen as furthest removed from being able to progress into
the next life, having to continually repeat life on earth to earn their way up the social pyramid
of castes.
To conclude the discussion on social structure, we see that the Level 2 Growth Process
creates a social structure, which is very rigid and is exclusive in space. The SIMS, the
bureaucracies that can inhabit the Trust Matrix have only vertical social bonds. In complete
contrast, the Level 3 Health Process creates a social structure, which is very fluid – the Value
Matrix. The hierarchic social structures that can grow from and inhabit the Value Matrix have
only horizontal social bonds. We will consider at the end of this chapter how the two different
hierarchic forms can convert from one into the other, often with disastrous consequences.
Health Process – influence on culture
You will have appreciated by now that a key aspect of human culture that arises from the
Health Process is religion, in its broadest definition including mythology. This is most obvious
in terms of the formation of permanent value and super value nodes. An essential part of the
positive feedback associated with a discrete permanent value node is the creation of a
religious doctrine, a faith doctrine, which requires the members of the hierarchic system to
give nurturing attention to the value node and all those individuals and communities higher up
the value node hierarchy. When a super value node exists, creating a god (whether based
around a real human or an imaginary one), then the whole doctrine becomes focused on
paying homage to that god, providing it with regularly and repeated nurture.
To add to this, it is pertinent to point out that most religions involve some form of social
structure based on a layering of society (even if that becomes corrupted in time). For

example, the Christian religion is conceptually structured around a God at the centre, who
has a supporting caste of angels (themselves presented in discrete layers of importance),
which are in turn supported by a caste of saints and below them all the dead who have made
it into heaven. At the base of the pyramid are living people, hopeful and expectant that they
may at the right time progress up the hierarchy. Many, if not most, other religions have
similar structures.
But what of the equitable Value Matrix? What is the cultural component of that basic element
of society that stitches the whole of a Value Matrix together? I would suggest that it is
represented by our mythology and our story telling. It is encapsulated within all that literature
within society which discusses and considers how we each should behave in different
situations, that helps us understand what it is to be moral, to be principled and to be faithful to
each other. As with the social structure itself, the Value Matrix, this body of knowledge is
much more distributed and a less structured system of cultural guidance than that which
arises from the Growth Process. As is inherent to the Health Process it tends to be much
more future focussed and seeking to peer into the unknown and to envision how we perhaps
should live our lives in order to provide a bit of structure onto that unknown. It does not rigidly
build upon itself in the way that our legal system does. Rather it can make leaps and jumps
and draw together many different strands of thought to create scenarios and problem solve
how we might conceptually react and respond to those unknown situations which we have yet
to (or may hopefully never) experience.
Ultimately as a body of knowledge it does, however, build into a comprehensive picture of the
moral basis of a society. And the individual, who grows up in that society and becomes
civilised through that society, becomes familiar with that material, knowing which books and
art that they personally associate with and which feeds into their own personal moral
compass of how to behave and what attitude to maintain.
Beyond this there are some very intriguing cultural influences that arise from the Health
Process. To appreciate these and how they arise, it is easiest to consider an example, where
Level 3 interactions represent a strong component. Consider the scenario of the Victorian
upper class household, with its high society family and its servant community. All those
maids, cooks, cleaners and the below stairs community are retained to carry out what is
essentially valuing work – to cook, to feed, to clean, to raise the children, to wash and so on –
the full complement of nurturing activities required to help the upper class family. But all
these people doing this work are actually being paid on a daily basis as if the work is labour.
To them the interaction that they have with the rich family is not so much of a nurturing
nature, but paid labour – work done on a time basis for a pecuniary reward. The
consequence is that, as with anyone in the lower levels of a bureaucracy, the expectation on
them and of themselves is to be predictable and trustworthy as if it were a Level 2 interaction.

In stark contrast to this, the family upstairs is in receipt of all this nurture. To them, they are
being valued.
In the Victorian household, clearly there is no real requirement for the rich family to ever carry
out any nurturing for the servant staff. But the power of these interactions are such that the
rich family, perceiving the interaction with the staff to be of a nurture type, naturally respond
as if it were. The outcome is that the upper class family develops expectations on
themselves to be much more Principled and Faithful than the staff. In contrast, the servant
staff become Predictable and develop an associated attitude of being Trustworthy. The
outcome, when it spans out across a wider society, is a class structure where those in the
upper classes develop strong ‘airs and graces’, become much more Principled in how they
behave and develop a strong attitude of Faith in each other and society in general. This is
expressed through nepotism and keeping it in the family – a self-contained nurturing
community for those born into it and exclusionary to anyone else. In contrast, the lower
classes become more Predictable and Trustworthy, but do not develop such high moral
standards.
Another way of looking at this is that the rich family in the scenario painted, being that they
experience being valued by other humans on a day-to-day basis, develop a much stronger
sense of self-value than the lower classes. Through this they develop a much stronger sense
of needing to spend time being valued and in turn valuing each other. After all, given all the
chores of life are being dealt with by others, they have the time to participate in much
grooming conversation with each other. In contrast, the staff are not valued by anyone and
as a consequence acquire a very low sense of self-value. Through their day-to-day life they
come to know their place. It is this incredibly insidious manner, in which the Ideal Type
interactions skew the psyche of all those involved in the interactions, that we see the class
system achieving a relatively stable, self-propagating and self-reinforcing structure within
society.
We saw under the Growth Process that there is an additional influence from the processes,
where individuals extend their satisfaction of Needs to develop Wants. In relation to the Level
2 (Growth Process) interactions, this leads to the workaholic businessman, who comes to
define himself by his labours and Want continually to exert himself more or to collect and
categorise the physical and mental worlds ad nauseum. In the case of the Level 3 (Health
Process) the extension from Needs into Wants can arise in two ways. People who are being
valued, which in the normal course of events happens to be more wealthy people, find
themselves enjoying being looked after and nurtured and this makes them happy. But there
is only so much ‘being looked after’ that any particular individual needs. So the natural
consequence is to create other things that require maintenance and nurture. This often
manifests itself through the rich man building a stately home, or creating a beautiful garden,

both of which need much looking after: not by him, but for him as an extension of his own
self-worth. In contrast, the individual who carries out nurturing activity, such as rearing
children, and finds happiness and fulfilment from the hardwork, looks beyond the children
(certainly when they need less attention) and seeks out other things to nurture. For the
individual this may simply be expressed in terms of keeping a pet, or nurturing a garden or
allotment. But when this is scaled up to the collective level, it can extend far beyond.
In periods of our history where society has been strongly affected by the Health Process, this
extension of Needs into Wants has caused the whole society to seek to build structures that
must be nurtured. While the building of such structures requires a strong bureaucracy to
create new physical form, the influence and initiative for creating such structures can come
from the Health Process. The outcome in history has, for instance, been the creation of our
great cathedrals and numerous religious structures around the world. All these structures
have been built to last the test of time. Their main purpose in being built is to create
structures for society to nurture: legacies from past to future generations: a way for a society
in one time period to influence and stamp its mark on societies of the future.
Whereas the social drive from the Growth Process is to build, build, build, the drive from the
Health Process is to maintain, nurture and care and if you run out of things to look after then
make new things to nurture into the future – animate or inanimate. It leads to population
growth (or at least high birth rates), continually creating new generations to care for. And
when particularly strong it leads societies to build magnificent, often religious, structures that
last the test of time.
Process Over-run
I have already alluded to situations where the Health Process went into overdrive and had a
long term detrimental impact on the health of a society. The Indian caste system is clearly a
society that historically arose from a period when the Health Process operated at full strength.
European society through the middle-ages also experienced a similarly strong period of
influence from the Health Process, creating the strongly class-structured societies that are
only now beginning to dissipate through the actions of the Level 4 Adaptation Process (to
which we will come in the next chapter). At its extreme the Health Process has the potential
to create a slave layer to society, something which has been experienced on frequent
occasions throughout the evolution of human civilisation.
We have seen through the course of this chapter that a key component of the Health Process
is all about doing small tasks in the present in the hope of making something beneficial
happen in the future (a healthy crop) or preventing something detrimental from occurring
(tooth decay). We find ourselves having to act in situations where there are so many

variables, and other influences at play between the present and the far future, that it is very
difficult to know whether our actions have been effective or not. The response of the Level 3
Ideal Type interaction in the context of such unknown and unknowable is in part a focusing
inwards and imagining what lies behind us, outside the circle, hopeful that it is conducive to
our continued good health. We are also driven to seek to control very precisely what we can
control and excluding what we cannot. This necessitates enclosing space, in order to exclude
all the unknown outside variables, and then making sure that within that space everything in
terms of objects and our actions is very, very precisely controlled: think in terms of religious
buildings which have sanctums, inner sanctums and inner, inner sanctums and so one. In
this way, we seek to minimise the degree to which the future is unknown by carefully and
ritualistically fixing and controlling what we can.
At the individual scale, this refining of actions may come across as being highly superstitious
or neurotic. The farmer and his village of 5,000 years ago, depicted at the start of this
chapter, can be seen over time to become more and more superstitious and ritualistic about
their patterns of behaviour as a means to perpetuate their existence through time. Such
rituatlistic behaviour represents very precise structure in time. For instance, it doesn’t matter
where a devout Islamic person is or what he or she is doing, three times a day, every day,
every week, every year, he or she must turn to face Mecca and kneel in prayer. The stronger
the Health Process, the more rigid these temporal structures, these ritualistic behaviours,
would become until such point that they become self-defeating. Historic civilisations, which
may have suffered meltdown from an overzealous Health Process, include the Aztec
civilisation and ancient Egypt. If this theory is correct, then for much of the history of Ancient
Egypt, the whole society was characterised as incredibly neurotic.
Process Failure
Weakening of the Health Process would likely be much more subtle than the catastrophic
collapse that can occur as a result of failure of the Growth Process. It would manifest as an
erosion of moral values in a society and an inability by that society to maintain any sizeable
permanent value nodes. Where value nodes appeared, they would quickly dissipate and
certainly not grow to any size. This is seen in our current society through the cult of celebrity,
its continual shifting nature and its apparent dissociation from any real moral standards: real
moral leaders. The ultimate expression of failure of the Health Process is that a society stops
generating anything to value – in other words its population shrinks as individuals stop
reproducing.
rd
A casual observation would suggest that the period we are in now at the beginning of the 3
millennium AD is typified in the Western world, certainly the UK context, by a very weak
Health Process. In contrast, the Islamic world, with their rapidly growing population and

fundamentalist cultures, is very clearly experiencing the Health Process in a very strong way.
There is further a strong influence for the layering of society in the Islamic world, placing
women in an inferior class. Yet as whole societies those in Arabia have much stronger moral
standards than we do in the West. (This is not to say that their morals are better or worse
than ours, but the principles that they express and adhere to are definitely stronger.)
Conclusion
The Health Process is essential for human society to maintain a perspective on the future and
to prepare itself for the future. Without the Health Process, then human society is literally
incapable of maintaining and nurturing itself or anything. Without the Health Process we
would entirely stop reproducing and our species would die out. To develop a proper value for
the planet that we live on and its natural renewable and non-renewable resources, it is
essential that we seek to strengthen the Health Process. So how has it come to pass that it is
now so weak in Western society?
I would suggest that in part it comes down to a major flaw and misunderstanding within that
doctrine called socialism. At its heart, socialism was an ideology that grew from the Growth
Process, providing a very basic welfare state – security for individuals who become
unemployed or unemployable. But it evolved and drew within it an emerging philanthropic
movement, which noticeably appeared during the 19th century. This philanthropic movement,
the roots of which may go back to the communalist (not communist) movements of the late
middle ages, included both the philanthropy of the religious and the very wealthy, creating
schools, hospitals and other health maintaining and nurturing institutions and also the
appearance of the trade unions. The latter are very clearly value node structures,
representing the appearance of Value Matrices within layers of the workforce within the huge
th
industrial bureaucracies that grew through the 19 century.
th
In the UK and much of Europe, the growing state bureaucracies through the early 20 century
seemingly co-opted all these aspects of society, from union movements through to schools,
hospitals and the social services. But all these forms of social structure do not comfortably sit
within the bureaucratic structure. Both schools and hospitals should be nurturing
environments, not growth environments, and to this end neither form functions well when
controlled by a bureaucracy – precise rules and regulations, highly structured environments,
precise categorisation, strong codes of conduct (including uniforms) and endless setting of
st
output targets. To rediscover the Health Process in 21 century Britain, we somehow need to
rediscover the local community which has direct control over its hospitals, schools and other
social services and which are somehow separated from the state bureaucratic system.
Harking back to Chapter 2 and the useless construction of sustainable development with
which most people currently operate and which simply allows politicians to justify continuation

of the status quo, the stark reality is that to achieve real sustainable development of our
societies we need to undergo some fundamental structural changes.
History has been littered with examples where the Growth and Health Processes have
interacted in ways that are ultimately detrimental to society. For instance, the great religions
of Catholicism and Islam clearly grew in first instance as value nodes. In theory these can
happily occupy the same physical space, as evidenced in cities such as Jerusalem. But both
religions evolved into huge bureaucracies, especially the Church. As bureaucracies, they
both changed from being moralistic social structures to being legalistic social structures and
most significantly became exclusionary in space (instead of time). The terror and wars that
followed may have been done in the name of God, but in reality they simply arose because
two religions converted into a different form of social structure and inevitably fought to control
space.
Yet at other times, the Processes have interacted in a very beneficial way. Bureaucracies
function with vertical social bonds. But when bureaucracies grow to such a level that there
are more individuals in one layer than a single person at a higher level can maintain discrete
relationships with, then the vertical bonds become weakened. At the same time the
horizontal Level 3 related bonds can grow – for instance amongst the workers on a factory
floor. The natural consequence is a union movement; it is an inevitability of the social
structures involved.
In Western democracies (though only possible through the operation of the Level 4
(Adaptation Process), we have also harnessed this natural social process of creating value
nodes in our election systems. Political parties are clearly value nodes, attempting to be
permanent nodes and to express the morality of as much of the population as possible. The
winning value node in an election is then placed on top of the huge state bureaucracy, often
leading to an instant clash of cultures between a political movement arising from Level 3
social structures and the extant civil service, which is a manifest Level 2 social structure. But
at least it tends to limit the excesses of each of the two structure creating social processes –
Growth and Health.
Next Steps
So much more could be said about the Health Process, about the evolution of religions over
time, about the guild system in mediaeval Europe, about the eradication of slavery in the
United States, about the union movement and on religion and the inevitable role that sex
plays within religions. Hopefully this chapter represents a little taster to provide a feel for how
the Health Process operates and some of its influences on the development of society. I
have really struggled in describing this Process, so hope that this chapter has made sense.

Reflecting back on this and the previous two chapters, we can see human beings achieving
freedom within an emerging civilised society arising from a population of interacting tribes.
This freedom arises because of a collapse of the perception of time into the present, causing
a loss of cultural history and future. Following the Birth Process, two further civilising
Processes kick into action, the Growth and Health Processes, which through the appearance
of exchange (as opposed to sharing) enable a civilisation to grow and develop. These two
Processes allow that civilisation to create its own history and future.
But the Growth and Health Processes also create strong social structures. One is very rigid
and limits individuals in space. The other is very fluid but constrains individuals in time.
Together they operate to confine individual members of society into very precise positions
within combined social matrices – Trust and Value. These ‘positions’ are more conventionally
known as ‘roles’ within sociology. So, together, the initially free individual finds himself or
herself more and more confined in behaviours, movements, activities and attitudes. It is
against these shackles of civilised society that Jean-Jacques Rousseau was riling when he
composed his theory of the social contract.
There are two ways for that individual to recover his or her freedom. While the Birth Process
can provide true, unfettered freedom, it also acts to destroy those very social structures that
the Growth and Health Processes have worked so hard to build. There is another way, which
leaves the social structures intact, but allows the individual a new form of freedom. This is
enabled through the Level 4 Adaptation Process. Understanding the true extent of this Fourth
Level Process has, for me, been breathtaking. And it takes the social sciences into a whole
new realm.
Emler, N. (2001). Gossiping. Handbook of language and social psychology. H. Giles and W.
P. Robinson. Chichester, Wiley: 317-338.
i
Maslow’s mislabelling of sex as a Material Need raises an interesting point. It indicates that
we are able to attribute wrong Needs satisfiers to satiate Needs. In this respect, one can
easily see how sex, as opposed to reproduction and all that goes with reproduction – how
sex, as a quick act, might be confused for a Material Need. In the context of Level 1
interactions, sex would become a short-term satisfier, participants only looking for
instantaneous gratification, instant experiential pleasure. If this were the case, one would
expect the immediate happiness that someone would achieve from ‘sex without relationship’
would probably feel quite hollow, leading to repeated attempts to replicate the happiness
experience. In other words, one would see someone, who interpreted sex as a Material
Need, quickly becoming addicted to sexual acts. Or, of course, the sexual act might be paid

for as part of an agreed mixed Need interaction, where neither party is interested in a
relationship beyond the relatively instantaneous sexual act and exchange of money.
ii
There is an obvious comparison between the Level 1 Sharing interaction (leading to an
obligation of reciprocation with respect to material needs) and the Level 3 Sharing and
Exchange interactions, which both leave a debt to be reciprocated. I have not explored yet
how these similarities in the Form of these interactions manifest.

Chapter 11 – Adaptation Process (Social Process 4) Page 1 of 22 10/06/2010
Chapter 11 – The Adaptation Process (Social Process 4)
“The love of democracy is that of equality.” Charles Montesquieu quote
Imagining the Unimaginable
In December 2008, The Sunday Times ran a series of articles on the collapse of the Lehman
Brothers investment bank, providing an insider’s view of the lead up to the bank’s demise.
Through this informal history a good account is given on the inherent limitations of pure
bureaucracies – those hierarchical social organisations arising from the unequal mixed
interactions of Level 1 Material Needs in exchange for Level 2 Safety and Security Needs.
Reflecting on the description of the bureaucracy provided in Chapter 9, the higher up the
hierarchy an individual is, the more secure they are in terms of near-term energy
requirements (more normally now expressed as being financially secure) and the more
personally safe they should be from external threats (physical or financial). But it was noted
that the bureaucracy is an inherently brittle form of social organisation, which while very
robust to minor environmental fluctuations, is liable to catastrophic failure when environmental
conditions change significantly or permanently. Bureaucracies are not a naturally adaptable
social form, as demonstrated by the rapid failure of Lehman Brothers.
Standing back for a moment and thinking in abstract terms, adaptability or flexibility are
obvious evolutionary strategies for organisms, whether physical, biological or social,
especially in situations where environmental conditions are variable and unpredictable. To
adapt to varying contextual situations requires innate or cognate responsiveness to the
environment. This necessitates the ability to react to signals about change in the immediate
environment: in other words, the ability to react to received information … something which is
an inherent weakness of pure bureaucracies, for reasons which will become more apparent
through this chapter.
The Sunday Times article on Lehman Brothers described how Dick Fuld ran the organisation
as a fairly brutal (at least relative to today’s Western business standards) autocracy. His
subordinates lived in fear of his wrath and that, if directed at them, he might terminate their
employment at a whim. Their personal security relied on keeping him happy. His style
permeated down through the ranks of the organisation. As explained in Chapter 9, in such a
hierarchic organisation it would have been a prerogative for any member of staff to behave
very predictably towards their superiors to maintain trust. It would also have been preferable
for each employee to maintain a supply of good news upwards. Failure to do so could easily
mean that they became blamed for the bad news and … out. The consequence of this is that
in pure bureaucracies, as amply demonstrated by the Lehman Brothers example, information
is inevitably distorted as it rises up the ranks of the hierarchy – a form of “Chinese whispers”

occurs. Bad news on the factory floor might eventually be corrupted into good news in the
boardroom. A routing on the battlefield might eventually be dressed up to appear to be a
successful vanquishing of the enemy, by the time it reaches the palace and the king. In the
case of Lehman Brothers, changes in the economic market place were turned around to
appear to align with and reinforce the company’s on-going business strategy.
The intriguing observation of pure bureaucracies is that all the while that they provide those
higher up the hierarchy with physical security and safety, they must achieve the same in a
mental or psychological capacity too. For the autocratic leader to be self-assured at the top
of his hierarchy, his real physical safety and security must be matched by the information he
receives. While he has become reliant on others to provide for his security and safety, he
becomes inevitably buffered against, or cushioned from, or protected from, real world
information: the king isolated in his ivory tower, with little sense of what is happening in
reality. Yet in a pure bureaucracy it is the autocratic leader who takes the decisions on the
direction and strategy of the whole organisation. Success or failure entirely depends upon
the accuracy of the information reaching that leader. The pure bureaucracy may be able to
defend itself automatically and naturally without direction, because of its strict codes of
conduct, but it is reliant on direction from the top in order to take decisions on actions and on
the battlefield to attack.
At the microscopic level of individual interactions between inferiors and superiors in the
hierarchy, we have seen that any individual must behave predictably to maintain the trust of
his superior. But humans are canny and cunning creatures, evolved from a highly
competitive social environment. Just as we are capable of displaying predictability to gain
trust, so too are we able to lie. The dilemma for any superior in individual interactions is –
how to elicit the truth from junior ranking individuals? Answering this question paves the way
to understanding Social Process 4 and leads to a completely new form of society and
inhabiting social organisations (evolved well beyond Max Weber’s pure bureaucracies).
Intrigued? Read on …
Adaptation Process – Interaction Driver
By now you will hopefully appreciate that there is some method to my madness; but I cannot
take it for granted that you would therefore believe what I am going to suggest next. It is
difficult to give reason for the first step at Level 4; but by the end of this chapter, I would hope
that my choice of direction has been justified. You see, the Human Need at Level 4 is that of
mobility and autonomy of movement. So, you would be quite right in saying “But we humans
are animals. We are inherently mobile. How can there be a Need for mobility or autonomy,
which is higher in the Hierarchy of Needs, and by deduction therefore a lesser Need, than
eating or reproduction? Surely, we need to move to obtain food to eat?” Indeed we do. But,

and this was my error for some time, in asking such questions you are actually starting from
the wrong place. Let me explain.
Maslow proposed that at Level 4 we need to have self-respect and self-esteem. These are
both very ambiguous terms, which social psychologists have continually been re-defining,
avoiding and then returning to – round and round in circles – but never quite pinpointing what
these terms really mean or represent. As previously discussed, I became aware, as I spent
time thinking about it, that Maslow’s Hierarchy was internally inconsistent. In his framework,
the lower, more important, Needs are physical and then the Needs switch at Level 4 to being
mental. I was convinced that this was wrong and that there should be consistency throughout
– mental and physical expressions of each Need. We have seen this already for the lower
Level Needs. If I were right, then, assuming Maslow had intuited something really
experienced, there should be a physical side to this requirement for self-respect (whatever
that really means). My day-to-day work in town planning and property development, dealing
with disability legislation, may have helped me to make the connection.
Now let us go back to the right starting point.
Humans evolved to live in tribes. We did not survive on our own (generally speaking), but as
social animals in a tribal context. It is the tribe, then, (and in the modern context the nuclear
family unit) which is the propagating unit, the reproducing unit, not the individual human. And
tribes (pre-Social Process 4) are essentially static – they occupy a territory in geographic
space and they are very precisely located (i.e. constrained) within social space. It is in fact
the social space which defines the physical territory: no adjacent tribes and the territory is
boundless. Individual humans are mobile because we evolved through these same five
processes, applied in a biological context, over millions of years, to be highly intelligent,
omnivorous animals, with inherent mobility. We are not plants. But that same evolutionary
process took us in a direction of becoming social animals in tribes. It is through being
members of tribes that individual human beings reproduced and propagated their personal
genes. In the tribal situation, we were each mobile, but that mobility was strictly bounded.
The tribe itself was not mobile and all its members were confined to its territory. And it is from
the tribal context that civilisation unequivocally started.
Maslow suggested that the Need of the individual at Level 4 of his Hierarchy was self-respect.
We readily use the terms ‘respect’ and ‘self-respect’ without much thought as to what they
really mean. The dictionary does not help very much either. To understand the driver behind
the Level 4 process we need to dig deeper and understand what this notion of respect and
self-respect really mean within in a social context. This can be best achieved by considering
once again the whole human being and pondering how this idea of self-respect manifests

itself for all aspects of the human being – mental and physical. We need again to revert to
our animal origins.
The clue, which led me to the realisation that mobility (or autonomy) is indeed the underlying
biological Need associated with self-respect, was from the science of social psychology. In
social psychology, research into the concept of self-respect is known to be intimately related
to the concept of ‘locus of control’. This is simply technical-speak for control over your own
destiny. It has become appreciated within psychology that people who feel that they have
control over their destiny tend to express higher levels of self-respect.
If one breaks down the notion of locus of control to everyday life, then it would appear to
represent the ability of an individual to make decisions and to follow through those decisions.
It is of little consequence to anyone or anything if you simply make a decision in your head,
but do not follow it through. Decisions are all about actions: what shall I do now? It also
concerns the prioritisation of actions: which order should I do these set of actions in?
Critically it is about how you expend your energies: on what shall I focus my attention and my
physical body to ensure that something is done? Reflecting back to the discussions in
Chapters 8 to 10, we see that each of the lower processes directs the individual to focus time
and attention on different sets of activities: classically experienced by most of us as that work-
life balanced debate. How much time and energy do I dedicate to my work and securing an
on-going income (Level 2) verses how much time and energy do I dedicate to my home life
and rearing my children (Level 3)? In a social context, with structured society and strictly
defined roles, an individual’s choices and ability to act for his or her own benefit can be
severely limited. So the question is – what is it that helps each of us to act for ourselves to
choose to meet our personal Needs (especially Level 1, 2 and 3 Needs) in a way we want to
as opposed to the manner someone else dictates?
Again, the real physical analogy helps. Returning to our biological organism that exists in
physical space, what is it that the organism needs in order to be able to make decisions,
which direction to move and when? The answer is simply information. The organism needs
information about its environment. An organism needs to be able to receive information
about its immediate environment using its senses and have the mobility to respond to it. We
will come to the issue of interpretation of that information shortly, but for the moment just
consider the receipt and response to stimuli.
Now, consider the human being within a forming civilised society. The factors which
constrain the mobility of an individual are not anything within physical space … unless
imprisoned by another man or men. The constraints on the movements and freedom of the
individual reside in social space – those Trust and Value Matrices and the associated SIMS:
consider the plight of serfs in Mediaeval Europe or a Roman Centurion being force marched

into battle or a slave in Ancient Greece. For an individual within civilised society, it is in first
instance information about social space that he or she requires to provide him or her any
ability to make decisions about what to do, where to go, how to behave, how to prioritise
activities and so on. In its own right, acquisition of information about an individual’s social
space does not immediately provide that individual with mobility in social space. Far from it.
In those historic contexts, no matter how much information an individual had to hand, they
were still a serf or centurion or slave occupying very precisely defined roles in these societies.
It is only in the context of a wider social process, where everyone is engaged in obtaining
information about social space, that such information eventually gives the individual social
mobility. The underlying driver that starts this process going is the Need of the individual for
information about his or her social environment, his or her social context beyond those
immediate bonds experienced through the Trust and Value Matrices. That information is not
freely given – it comes with a price tag attached, which brings us to the social interaction
underlying Social Process 4.
Level 4 – Focus of Attention and Nature of Interaction
As already noted, it is much easier to visualise the Level 4 Ideal Type interaction in physical
space than social space: for instance, to find your way to a destination in a strange city you
need a map and directions. But, just as with the other processes already described,
everything actually starts in social space and only then becomes manifest in the physical. To
move directly to thinking of the map in the above example entirely misses the important
question of who you obtained such map from and how you knew whether their directions
would be correct, that they have sold you an accurate map and told you truthfully the
directions. You need to navigate a map in social space to find an honourable map seller
before you can find your way in physical space. We will visit the question of how you can
influence someone to tell the truth in the next section. First is the matter of information noise.
In the modern world we are perpetually bombarded and inundated by all manner of
information. How do we filter out all the noise and home in on useful information?
When you come across some new information, regardless of whether it is correct, you need
first and foremost to decide whether it is relevant or pertinent to you. Despite the seemingly
infinite diversity of types of information and content in our modern world, is it possible to
generalise our response to any discrete new piece of information? The key to this is to think
in terms of the use such information may be to a recipient in respect of their decision-making
and how they choose to act in the real world. In this sense, whenever each and everyone of
us as human beings digests new information through our senses, we (mostly unconsciously)
filter such information in terms of the impact or influence it should have on our decisions and
actions. To do this we necessarily need mentally to record the original source of the

information – what event, occurrence, thing in existence initiated this particular piece of
information. The information might be about a volcanic eruption, a coup in some far off
country, a local politician disgraced, a company’s performance or failure, the death of a
celebrity, the birth of a new close relation, the demise of a rare species, the failure of a
particular harvest, the lottery jackpot for an acquaintance, a car crash on the motorway, or the
advertising of a new cosmetic product. And so on and so forth.
Observing myself and others, I think that the implicit question that we pose to ourselves is:
where, when and how big? The where can be a location in physical space or social space; it
is a question of how far removed from you, in either space, the event might be. The when,
more often than not, is used to assess whether the felt impact has already been or can still be
expected. And the scale is used to judge both the degree of influence and how widely (far
reaching) the impact is likely to be. For instance, a major earthquake in central China is likely
to be of little consequence on our day-to-day life on the other side of the world, unless our
personal social network or business activity is somehow closely linked into Chinese society
and/or its economy. When we each read a newspaper, for each item of news we have to
make a very fast judgement as to whether it is something that will or should affect our lives
and therefore whether we should focus on the matter or allow it to pass us by.
The consequence of this natural response to digesting information is to effect in all of us an

awareness of space. It causes us to create mental maps of physical and social space. This
response to the receipt of information makes us both aware of the location (proximity and
distance) of events in physical and social space and also an awareness of time past and time
future relative to the present. For example, I hear about an incident that has recently
occurred (say, a plane hits a building) and wonder how soon it will be for the repercussions to
be felt in my neighbourhood of our global society and how big those repercussions will be
when they have travelled a certain distance to get to me. Event has happened: how long
ago? how fast will the consequences travel? how big was the event and therefore how big will
the impact be by the time it reaches me? Awareness of past and future all at once. Our
natural response is to think of things in terms of vectors: a distant relative has died, who do I
know was close to them and will be affected and need comforting, who else should be
informed. We come to see information following a trajectory through social space. Quite
subconsciously, mind.
We will return later in this chapter to consider the consequences and implications of this
increased spatial awareness and seeing the world around us in terms of objects moving
within that space. First, as with previous chapters, we address the question of what is the
Form of interaction associated with information Sharing or Exchanging.

The time component of the Level 4 Ideal Type interaction is, I would suggest, relatively
instantaneous. In fact it is probably just as instantaneous as Level 1 (Material) interactions.
We might take half-an-hour to go round a supermarket to buy food, but the time spent paying
(exchanging) is no time at all. In similar vein, we might take half-an-hour to peruse a
newspaper, but the time taken to absorb and digest that information which we consider to be
pertinent and useful will be measured in seconds.
This temporal instantaneity leads the Level 4 Social Process to have some intriguing
similarities with the Level 1 Birth Process. However the spatial aspect of the interactions
proves to be quite different. The key difference between the sharing and exchanging tempers
at Level 4 is the degree to which we can assume another person is telling the truth or not.
Sharing interactions are required in social situations, where we are bound to assume that
everyone around is lying. They may not be lying. But there is sufficient doubt as to the
truthfulness of anything that we hear that we are obliged to assume the worst. This, we will
come to see, requires spatial proximity. The flip, or Cultural Bifurcation, which enables
exchanging of information to take place, happens when the information acquired from others
can broadly be assumed to be correct. This affects a fundamental change in the spatial Form
of the Level 4 Ideal Type interaction to a situation where spatial proximity is no longer
necessary. The full explanation of why and how this change happens and the consequences
will be explored through the remainder of this chapter.
Adaptation Process – Behaviour, Attitude and Perceptions
We turn now to the question of how a human being needs to behave in order to persuade
another human to tell the truth. It was discussed at the beginning of this chapter that, and
especially in hierarchic social structures, people are effectively incentivised not to tell the truth
or at least not to tell all that they know. This is particularly the case when news is bad and
may be blamed on the messenger. In fact, looking at the social structures created by Social
Processes 2 and 3, we can readily say that good news naturally travels vertically up
hierarchies, whereas bad news naturally travels horizontally through communities (or social
layers) or downwards from value nodes. Critically for bureaucracies bad news does not travel
upwards; this in small part is what makes them so resilient, robust and brittle to external
influences and then break catastrophically (first order phase change) when outside change
goes too far.
So, how does one person elicit the truth from another?
When I first came to think about this, I knew that self-respect or self-esteem lay somewhere in
the answer. Maslow had been a pretty good guide so far. My conclusion, after much
deliberation, is that the behaviour required for the Level 4 Ideal Type interaction is that of

Inclusiveness. This requires a little explanation: the term ‘inclusive’ has gained regular use of
late in the worlds of local government and town planning, for reasons which will become quite
apparent.
In order to convince someone else to tell the truth, an individual needs to persuade another,
or act in such a way that the other will believe, that it is in that other’s interest to provide the
correct information. In building the whole theory of social interaction on the firm foundations
of a Needs hierarchy, the question of ‘what is their interest?’ proves easy to answer. The
initial owner or harbourer of the information must believe that, in passing over the information
his Needs (especially Needs 1, 2 and 3) will somehow be better met. How does the potential
recipient of the information engender such belief in a way which can help the original owner of
the information to be sure that handing over the knowledge will be beneficial to them and not
be used against them? The answer is by including the other in decision-making. It is far
easier in daily life to gather information and liberally make one’s own decisions in isolation (in
one’s own mind). Including others in our decisions requires effort. Furthermore, including
others in one’s decision-making is likely to require compromise and possibly lead to a
perceived sub-optimal fulfilment of the self’s needs. It is this exerted effort and potential
compromise, which is effectively what we pay out to obtain the correct information and which
makes an exchange of information interaction a complete interaction.
It is quite easy to make the next logical step from behaviour to attitude. If we act inclusively
with others, involving them in our decision-making, then it is inevitable that we come to learn
about and appreciate what they believe and understand to be their own needs (or interpreted
wants). This engenders within us an attitude of respect: being inclusive in your decision-
making represents behaving in such a way that another’s needs are being respected. Or to
turn it around, we can formally define the term ‘respect’ to be considering another human
being’s needs. Following the same framework set out in Chapters 8 to 10, this leads us to the
conclusion that self-respect or self-esteem mean taking one’s own Needs into consideration
when making decisions. On the face of it, it might seem absurd that an individual might not
take his or her own Needs into account, until one considers real life scenarios. What do you
do when your boss has an urgent last-minute request late in the day, when you were
supposed to be going to a school parent’s evening or having dinner with your partner? Do
you have the self-respect to say ‘No’? Or, you are on a stag night, which is becoming
extremely alcoholic: in the context of the peer pressure to consume more, do you have the
self-respect to say ‘No’ on account of your health or an appointment the next day at which
you need to be sober and not hung-over? Of course, these examples assume that you have
a degree of self-worth in the first place. What self-respect essentially means is the ability to
balance one’s other, more basic, needs against each other: for instance, not to turn to
experiential drugs because of their long-term health impacts, or not to work too hard and

damage one’s long-term health, or not to starve yourself to death or commit suicide on
account of some cult or religion.
Being self-respectful consequently means being inclusive of all one’s own Needs whenever
making a decision to act in the real world. Reflecting back to the inherent time foci of the
other Needs, this essentially means that being self-respectful represents taking into account
one’s past, present and future all at the same time: events in time influencing a movement in
space. The inevitable perception, which this creates, is that we see ourselves as objects
travelling through space and time. We see ourselves as objects with our own unique
trajectories within our own mental maps of social and physical space.
The irony, which cannot be avoided, is that as we become more aware and respectful of our
own needs, in being inclusive we come to understand better other people’s needs too. To
achieve mutually acceptable decisions on actions may require each of us to compromise.
Consequently, simultaneous with becoming more respectful of our own entire needs, we also
become, as a result of the Level 4 Ideal Type interaction, more flexible and adaptable as
people. As a result, we are each better able to respond to new received information
regarding our wider social and environmental contexts. We become more conscientious
towards self and others.
As with the other Social Processes, we extend our newly gained perceptions onto the world
around us and begin to see all other objects within space as having needs and trajectories.
We most obviously see this in other animate things, appreciating them to have needs which
they are seeking to fulfil and are consequently driven in their actions and activities in space.
For example, to see something as a ‘system’, it is essential to be able to think in terms of the
processes going on in the system, which in turn rely on being able to think in terms of all the
different sub-systems and particles moving around following their own particular and peculiar
trajectories. Simply put, the notion of atoms and molecules each having specific
characteristics and comprehending things like the operation of biological cells in nature are
reliant on us being able to conceptualise the world in a Level 4 society.
In conclusion, in seeking to elicit useful, relevant and correct information from our fellow man,
we are forced to be inclusive in our behaviour. This teaches us to think of others with
respect, which becomes extended to treating ourselves and everything around us with greater
respect. But this is only the start of the impact of this Social Process; scaling it up leads to
some startling revelations about the way in which our modern world is changing before our
eyes.

Adaptation Process – influence on the economy
In our modern world, information has economic value. That is well understood; how else do
newspaper businesses exist and survive? But this has not always been the case. To
understand how information came to have economic value, we need to remind ourselves of
the true form of Social Process 1 (the Birth Process). As with Level 1, it is not simply a matter
of sharing or exchanging materials, but a question of the sharing or exchanging of the source
of materials. When this is applied to the Level 4 interaction, it manifests as individuals being
reliant on the same information source or different sources of information. The mechanics of
this are not so obvious as with Level 1, since information (on the face of it) can be shared
without constraint. So an example is needed.
Consider two armies confronting each other on the battlefield. One army is a classic
bureaucracy, but the other army has evolved to a higher level. In the classic bureaucratic
army, the intelligent leading general must find a hill, from which to observe for himself events
on the battlefield as they take place. The reason for this is that he is keenly aware that he
cannot rely on the information given to him by his officers. He must therefore directly
experience (see, hear) the battle in order to be able to decide what ‘moves’ to make. In the
other army, in contrast, the leading general can trust his subordinates to tell the truth and is
inclusive in his decision-making with them. He therefore does not need to experience the
battle directly, but can make informed decisions based on reports from the ‘front line’.
We can see in this context that the sharing of the sourcing of information essentially means
that to believe and trust that something has actually happened or that something actually
exists, all interested individuals must experience it directly for themselves. In such earlier
societies it was simply not possible to trust or believe in the reports of others. Exchanging the
sourcing of information, in contrast, represents trusting what others say about the world out
their, what others have observed beyond our own senses. When this is scaled up to a social
process, it effects fundamental changes in the form and character of a society. (This could
lead to an interesting re-analysis as to why the Allies ultimately broke the Nazis in WWII.)
When described in this way, that sharing represents people all directly experiencing an event
or something physical in space and at a point in time, then it becomes readily appreciable that
only a limited number of people can share an information source. Certainly only a limited
number of people can observe any particular event at any one moment in time. But when
true exchange becomes possible, because information availability around society can now be
relied upon as broadly correct, in respect of sources of information, then this unfetters society
in a profound way.
From a purely economic perspective, when information flowing in society achieves a point at

which it can generally be believed, then all of a sudden it has real economic value.
Businesses, such as newspapers, can come into existence and be viable. Clearly the degree
of reliability of information defines in large part the level of economic value which information
can command. One could probably trace the point in time when a Cultural Bifurcation to a
Level 4 exchange society took place for different societies according to when the first
financially viable and independent (not state run) newspaper businesses appeared.
As the Level 4 Adaptation Process has progressed, and as the information flowing through
advanced societies has become more and more reliable, then this has provided the basis for
an ever expanding economy based on information. But there is more to this than just quantity
of information and its financial value.
Adaptation Process – influence on social structure
The Level 4 Adaptation Process does lead to new forms of social structure, but not in the
direct way that Social Processes 2 and 3 do. The new structures at Level 4 arise from the
influence of the Level 4 Social Process on those extant Level 2 and 3 structures. The new
structures are structures in both space and time, in contrast to Level 2 (spatial only) and Level
3 (temporal only). The Level 4 structures consequently manifest more as patterns of
behaviour or processes or systems than as ‘static’ structures; they inherently involve motion.
To appreciate what happens at Level 4, it is useful to reflect on some past thinking on society,
in particular Karl Popper’s Objective Theory of Knowledge. Popper sought to show that there
exists a social or cultural aspect to our human experience of the universe, which is objective.
Being objective our culture exists regardless of any specific individual; it is as influential on
what we do in our day-to-day life as real, tangible and physical things in our universe. To
recap on the introduction to Popper’s Three Worlds Theorem, Popper suggested that there
are three fundamental (and only three) parts to the human being’s experience of reality: (1)
the real physical world that we can see, hear and touch, (2) the personal mental world that
goes on inside our heads and which is privy to each of us only, and (3) our society and
culture. This third aspect of our reality is in essence the same as Emile Durkheim’s ‘social
consciousness’. It is also the Matrices that I have described as arising from the Social
Processes, which together create our entire cultural environment.
We saw in the earlier sections of this chapter that a key effect of the Level 4 Social Process is
to enable people to build mental maps of the world around them – physical and social. The
action of building such mental maps represents a process of turning the social world,
Popper’s third world, from being subjective to being objective. In the social environment prior
to meeting our Level 4 Needs through exchange, people saw the world only from their own
two eyes. Their concept of their cultural environment was almost entirely influenced through

direct Level 1 interactions and Level 2 and 3 relationships. It is through those direct
relationships that their personal behaviour and thence attitudes were established. In this
respect, the experience of society was very subjective. Each person was operating purely
from his or her own subjective observations, interactions and experiences and not from any
common template. The Trust and Value Matrices were very real, but transmitted through
one-to-one and one-to-(relatively small)-group interactions. This contrasts with Level 4,
where there come to exist, in effect, group-to-group interactions, which require objective
agreement across each entire group as to how the groups interact. The inference I have
taken from this is that Popper’s subjective and objective Worlds were inextricable prior to the
effects of the Adaptation Process had been significantly experienced by our societies. Only
through the operation of the Level 4 Process has a truly objective cultural and social world
emerged and come into existence for the philosophers such as Durkheim and Popper to
observe. I have personally come to call this emergence of an objective social space as a
process of ‘social delamination’.
Two examples of everyday life in the business world demonstrate how the emergence of a
truly objective social world affects our experience.
Firstly, historically when two different Level 2 (spatially exclusionary and hierarchic)
organisations met, then they only interacted through their autocratic leaders. It was the direct
one-to-one relationship of the leaders which dictated entirely whether interaction was
cooperative or competitive (say, the English and French kings). Through the descriptions of
the pure bureaucracy provided earlier, it can perhaps be appreciated that neither leaders
could risk lower echelons of either hierarchy meeting (except in highly controlled
circumstances), in case somehow this led to a usurpation of power from either or both
leaders: they could not trust their own subordinates to tell the truth. Yet in our modern
business world, big businesses will often interact at many different levels of the respective
organisations. Such multiple layered interactions are only possible where there is sufficient
respect and inclusiveness, where information flows are trusted and where those at each level
of each interacting organisation recognise the structural map of their own company and the
other and the roles that they are therefore playing. It relies on self-respect of the individuals
involved and mutual respect up and down the hierarchies.
The second example is that of voids or vacancies in organisational structures. It is only when
the structures become objective that it is possible to have vacant positions remaining unfilled
for any significant time period. In both pure Level 2 and Level 3 structures any vacancy in the
social fabric immediately becomes a vacuum that must be filled. The pure Level 2 hierarchy
loses structural integrity from gaps in the structure, so the hole must be formally filled. The
pure Level 3 social fluid simply flows to fill the hole; new connections form across the gap in
society and the hole disappears. But we also saw that the Growth and Health Processes

created voids in time and space respectively. I do not pretend to understand the detailed
mechanics of this at Level 4, but do know that in the Level 4 social structures, which
represent a combination of Level 2 and Level 3 structures, such voids in time and space
become expressed as holes within space-time, within the new mobile structure. As we see in
the modern business world and government organisations, vacant positions can exist for
extended durations of time, waiting for the correctly competent person to occupy the role and
not simply being filled by whoever is next in line or closest to the vacant role. Only social
structures at Level 4, which combine Levels 2 and 3, can maintain such vacancies in the
structure.
This brings us to look in further detail at the concept of the role in modern society, which is
strongly influenced by the Level 4 Exchange process. As previously discussed, in the pre-
Level 4 society the individual was (is in many parts of the world) stuck into a very precise role
and layer of society. But in the modern Level 4 society in parts of the Western world, thanks
to the flows of information generated by people seeking to meet their Level 4 autonomy
Needs, people find themselves much more mobile. They find that they can jump from role to
role, climb organisational ladders, switch to different businesses, leave and join different
communities. And so on. Those social structures and thence roles created by the Level 2
and 3 Social Processes become like hotel rooms, to be inhabited for a while and then move
on – preferably upwards, but by no means always, each person following their own unique
trajectory or journey through social space.
Those extant social structures created by the Level 2 and 3 Social Processes thereby
become the backdrop, the landscape, an objective reality, for us to travel over and through
during our lives. We see the population at large become a mobile swarm, moving around,
across, up and down this social landscape. People become free, escaping their ‘born into’
roles and classes, and following their own unique destinies through society. We see then that
Social Process 4 does not create or destroy structure, but rather it leads to fluxes and flows of
people across previously formed structures, which in due course causes those extant social
structures to evolve.
We express such mobility in the social landscape through mobility in physical space –
travelling, commuting, etc. But there is more. In social space, we are seeking mobility in a
competitive way, each of us competing to climb those notional ladders. This manifests itself
physically through sport. All sport competitions can be seen as highly analogous to what is
going on in society as a whole. League tables represent highly objectified social structures,
with players and teams visibly rising and falling up and down the ranks. Tournament trees
are objective social structures waiting to be filled in as the tournament progresses. Individual
players seek to compete with each other to prove themselves to be the most mobile in
physical space; this is particularly the case for athletics and associated sports, which seek to

enable identification of he or she who can run the fastest, can jump the highest or longest,
can swim the fastest and so on.
The Level 4 Social Process does not lead to equality in roles – the social structures and
hierarchies and local communities largely remain (at least to start with) – but with people
‘flowing’ through them. The Adaptation Process does, however, gradually lead to a different
type of equality – an equality of opportunity. In theory anyone can climb those social ladders.
Any sportsman or sportswoman can win the race or the tournament. Any US citizen can
become President. It is by these mechanisms and cultural changes that we see democracy
emerge out of a society undergoing a transition to a Level 4 Process in exchange mode.
Adaptation Process – Systems Inhabiting Matrices
While Social Process 4 does not create new social structure, the combined effect of Social
Processes 2, 3 and 4 operating together do lead to new structural forms. The Adaptation
Process causes the singular hierarchy to splinter into a number of connected hierarchies
each focussing on a different subject area. The detailed mechanics of this are as follows.
We saw in Chapter 9 that an intrinsic feature of pure bureaucracies is that they are
exclusionary in space. This is expressed not just for the bureaucracy as a whole, but also
within the social structure too. A king, for example, will be the exclusive over-lord of a land.
He will divide his territory into equal(ish) size chunks and give rule of them to his trusted first
ranking lords or knights. They in turn will sub-divide their gifted territories and parcel them out
to their first ranking lieutenants/generals. And so on. In the pure bureaucracy rule of a
territory by one knight is totally exclusionary and that knight would have absolutely no
dealings with any of the other parts of the king’s kingdom. We see then that the pure
bureaucracy is mapped directly onto the physical landscape; social space and physical space
are entirely aligned.
While the knights may be peers of equal rank, there is little, if any, useful information to pass
between them – bar pleasantries between gritted teeth. They are inherent competitors in a
spatial sense, vying for the top job should the king and his family suffer any unfortunate fatal
accident. In the pure bureaucracy communication lines are only vertical, between king and
each of his knights, separately. Whilst there may be trust of expressed and observed
predictability, there is little by way of trust of information relayed, certainly no truthfulness. To
this end it is in the interest of the king to keep the knights apart and at loggerheads with each
other. None of them individually can then have sufficient power (size of armed forces) to
usurp him: best to keep them apart and maintain that inherent competition.
Consider, however, the situation when the king takes a brave step and acts inclusively with

his knights. Perhaps there is a threat from outside the kingdom, which is a security issue for
all of them. The king then starts to include his subordinates in his decision-making. “We
have a problem. We need to act together to defend the entire realm.” Whereas before, the
king was the only person with the perspective of the whole kingdom and each of the knights
was concerned only with their one smaller territory, now the king forces the knights to begin to
think about the whole. The knights enter into this new arrangement because they each see a
personal benefit by having access to more information beyond their own personal borders.
The king, in return, starts to hear some real truth about his own realm.
But the bureaucratic structure still exists and the influence of the Level 2 Ideal Type
interaction still pervades and pushes the knights to differentiate. As they are now included in
discussions about defense of the whole realm, their exclusivity in space is less pronounced
and they need to express their differences in other ways. How do they maintain a ‘distance’
from each other? The answer is that they start to move apart in social space. By being
inclusive the king has initiated the already discussed process of social delamination and
allowed social and physical space to start to diverge. As the process of inclusion continues,
then the original direct mapping of social space onto physical space blurs. The knights will
start to differentiate not by territory, but by opinion and in due course by specialism. And
slowly, over about 500 years as the wheels of the Adaptation Process have turned and
effected change on our societies, then the king and his knights with their exclusionary
territories have eventually converted into a chief executive with his functionally differentiated
directors – finance, marketing, production and so on. Elsewhere, the king has converted into
the head of the armed forces with his generals overseeing the army, navy and air force.
The effect of the Adaptation Process has been to turn simple pyramid hierarchies into a new
form of social structure – most explicitly seen in the modern business with all its functional
departments. These businesses seek to be exclusionary in social space, battling it out for
market share, but can sit side-by-side in a very dense city environment, occupying virtually no
physical space (land area). Across society as a whole, the original singular bureaucracy has
splintered into hundreds of businesses and other organisations (government departments,
quangos, etc) all occupying territory in social space, where social space, unlike physical
space, is effectively unlimited.
The conclusion of this transition is that the tree-like hierarchy of the pure Level 2 bureaucracy
begins to transform into a much more complex organism with functional components, all
intercommunicating (accounts, marketing, sales, production, research, human resources and
so on). This new form of organisation relies on exchanging information between those
functional centres, where the functional parts often operate themselves according to discrete
hierarchies. All of a sudden a single organisation is made up of many different physically (but
not socially) overlapping hierarchies, rather than a single tree. The successful Level 4 social

structure is consequently automatically flatter than the simple fractal tree of the Level 2
bureaucracy, but it still retains a degree of hierarchy: it is unlikely that the hierarchy will be
completely lost, or else decision-making becomes untenable. These Level 4 structures
represent a completely new form of social organisation with outward facing functions (senses
– sales and reseach) and internal functions (organs - accounts and human resources). It is
inherently more adaptable than the bureaucratic form from which it evolved. It exists for
information and is focussed on continually interpreting and responding to that information. In
our intellectual world, the study of such organisations has left the core of sociology behind;
rather it is management theory and business studies, which focus on understanding this new
social form.
Reflecting on the mobility of individuals through social roles, we see that for the individual
human being to survive and thrive in this modern social environment he must be very flexible
and adaptable, being able to occupy different roles and do what is needed and expected by
organisational structures when occupying such roles. (We will explore in a moment some of
the cultural issues associated with this.) For a human being to be able to operate in such a
flexible manner relies on him or her having a high level of self-respect, which in turn comes
from feeling and believing that those around him or her will take his or her Needs into account
in their own actions. It all relies on people being Inclusive, honestly sharing and exchanging
information, and respecting each other. This leads to collective decision-making, relying on
input from many different technical disciplines (more of which in a moment).
And so we see in a symbiotic manner the emergence at the microscopic level of the flexible
and adaptable civilised human being simultaneously with the appearance of much more
flexible and adaptable social organisations. At the middle scale, these are modern
businesses. At the macroscopic scale of whole societies, we see the formation of democratic
society – a society which is much more adaptable and more able to change itself and how it
operates according to received information from the world ‘out there’.
Adaptation Process – influence on culture and ideology
The most apparent positive feedback aspect to the Level 4 Social Process relates to those
mental maps that we each create. As those maps of the social and physical worlds extend,
we need to keep them up-to-date. This requires each of us to stay in touch and we each
experience a driving urge for information in order to do so. But the more information we
obtain, the more objective, larger and more detailed become our collective maps, requiring
yet more information to keep them up-dated. As this personal and collective map making
exercise grows, then this gives individuals opportunity for greater mobility. This in turn means
that those maps that we personally create become moving and evolving tableaus. We need
not only to keep abreast of the background, slowly evolving landscape, but also the

movements of those we know, or wish to know, or are simply interested in (celebrities),

across that landscape. Yet more information please. It is very addictive, if you do not exert
self-control (more on that subject in a moment). This positive feedback is the driver behind
the rapid change we are experiencing in our modern societies: the greater the flow of
information, the faster the maps change, leading to the need by individuals for yet more
information. The outcome of all of this is that very real sense of disconnectedness we may
now feel if we leave home without our mobile phone or the modern information addiction: the
‘Crackberry’.
But there is much, much more to the cultural influence of the Adaptation Process. To best
appreciate this we have to reflect on the changes in our sciences over the last few hundred
years.
Go back two hundred years to the late eighteenth century, the time of Adam Smith, John
Stuart Mill, Auguste Comte and soon to be Karl Marx and Charles Darwin), and we find that
our leading scientists had a tendency to be great polymaths. As a broad generality, our
th th
scientific leaders in the 18 centuries and certainly early 19 century, were generalists; they
were interested in, investigated, became expert on and happily expounded on a little bit of
everything – from philosophy to geology to anatomy. This is a far cry from the situation today,
where leading experts, no matter how clever, are forced to be specialists. They may
nowadays seek to dabble in other subject areas, but generally these are only moments of
venturing forth and then retreating to their personal area of intellectual strength.
So, what has happened over this relatively short time period?
The answer is that we collectively have travelled significant distance in those 200 years, from
a society which predominantly relied on the Sharing of the Sourcing of Information to a
society reliant on honest Exchange. Two hundred or more years ago, a scientific leader
could not himself rely on the views and experiments of his peers. In the mindset of these
people, a scientific fact of the universe was only true if it had been personally observed –
driving the requirement for replicable experiments for each of them to copy. But as society
has moved to a cultural environment where we generally believe what each other say, then
this provides scope for specialisation. This specialisation cuts across every aspect of the
modern world and is still very much taking place. In my own working life, in the property
industry, I have seen a burgeoning of more and more specialisms feeding into the design
process (for example, over the last 20 years, environmental impact assessment reports have
added an extra technical chapter every two to three years). The architects are making a last
stand to be generalists, but this is against an inexorable tide of specialisation.
I have come to term this process Division of Competence. It is the mental or intellectual
equivalent of Division of Labour and likewise relies on Exchange of Competence (in other

words Exchange of the Sourcing of Information). The manifestation of this in the real world is
a growing fractal tree of specialisms, increasing seemingly exponentially. The truly
remarkable realisation of this is that the cultural effect of the Adaptation Process is a huge
increase in the quantity of knowledge that society, the whole of society, can hold about itself
and the physical universe, our entire reality. (Our modern information technology and
computer records, Wikipedia and other, are just a physical manifestation of this.) 200 years
or more ago the maximum quantum of scientific knowledge that humanity could sustain was
that which could be retained within the single heads of our leading intellects – those great
polymaths. Take this process to its logical conclusion and 1,000 years later (we are only part
way through this point of rapid evolution) our total body of knowledge is that which can be
9
held within the heads of, say, 10 billion human beings (10 times the quantity).
It is a truly awesome change. And it all comes down to learning to be honest to each other!
In summary it represents the social equivalent of the Cambrian Explosion, which itself was a
Level 4 evolutionary bifurcation, and all the implications that that infers. If you think that we
are each flooded with too much information now, then pity the grandchildren of our
grandchildren (if we don’t destroy the planet first).
Another area, in which this process has manifested itself is in the sporting world. As with
science, the workplace environment, the economy and the education system, as time has
progressed we have moved to a situation of sportsmen and women becoming increasingly
specialised in their chosen disciplines. 100 or more years ago, our leading sports persons
were individuals proving themselves the sportiest generally – generalist sportsmen able to
compete in many different activities. We now have a continually growing number of different
sports represented at the Olympics, added to every 4 years. This is the same Process
manifesting itself in physical form – ever increasing Division of Competence.
So, where does this leave the individual human being within this brave new world? The
answer is simply learning – feeling our way about this new intellectual, social and physical
landscape. But the real day-to-day challenge is how we each exert self-control in this new
environment.
The cultural environment influenced by Social Process 1 (Birth Process) was that of total
freedom. In that social environment there are no rules or morals, we are each free to be as
opportunistic as we each desire to be, with no sense of the past and no concern for the
future. Everyone just lives for the moment and it is accepted by everyone else that that is
what everyone is doing – materialistic anarchy. Under the influence of Social Process 2
(Growth Process) life is highly regulated; you just have to know the rules of engagement, the
codes of conduct and feel secure in the knowledge that everyone else will operate according
to strict behavioural ways drawn from the past. Under the influence of Social Process 3

(Health Process) it is principles and moral values, which count and provide the individual with
a sense of worth, self-value and drive us to be highly ritualistic. But in a society which has
stepped down the path towards a Level 4 stage of evolution, life is much more complicated.
We are free – to a degree. We have to abide by rules and codes of conduct – at least in the
immediate role and context in which we are operating, which are required and expected of
that role, which we are currently inhabiting. We have to be principled – yet being aware that
our principles may differ from those around us.
These factors require of the individual much greater flexibility and adaptability – a more
chameleon like ability to fit in. Such flexibility is acceptable and provides the individual with a
great deal of social mobility – relative freedom, not absolute freedom. To be effective in this
context, the individual must have two particular personality traits. On the one hand they must
be a very effective communicator – both listener and talker. To be able to survive and thrive,
they must continually learn and enact what those levels of freedom are in each social context,
what codes of conduct are expected and what principles are deemed right. At the day-to-day
level, they need to be inclusive and to learn and understand the needs of those around them.
In turn, to survive and thrive, they must be able to exert a high degree of self-control to do
what is expected of the moment and location and not necessarily acting in ways that are
emotionally driven or represent learnt past behaviours.
To achieve such self-control, the individual must have a high level of self-respect, which is a
learnt trait arising from the degree of respect they have been given during their childhood.
Those who are not given a high level of respect in their early years tend to find themselves
adrift in this new mobile landscape and come unstuck, falling into addictions and numerous
other un-self-respecting behaviours. For our children to take forward the evolutionary batten,
we have to learn how to give them respect as we rear them: by no means an easy task. And,
of course, to provide them with a starting set of rules and principles to work with. Plenty of
scope for new specialists to teach the rest of us through Exchange of Sourcing of Information.
The final comment to be made on the cultural influence of the Adaptation Process is the way
in which it influences our thinking.
It is apparent that the Adaptation Process has driven the whole green movement of the last
100 years, notably starting with the creation of national parks in the US and the early work of
the Sierra Club, leading into the sustainability agenda, wrapping together concern about the
environment with concern about the poverty of those other parts of humanity ‘out there’.
These cultural themes all represent increasing respect for our planet and for other human
beings in the abstract (in other words the rest of humanity on our personal mental maps who
we know exist, but we do not know personally and who are largely disconnected from our
immediate bureaucracies, communities and Level 4 organisations). In this respect,

Sustainability and Democracy are two intrinsic expressions of the same Social Process –
ultimately driven by us collectively learning to be honest about what we tell each other.
Process Over-run
The following is complete unknown territory in a social context as it has not yet been
experienced – certainly not at a large scale. My guess is that the manifestation of the Level 4
Social Process over-running is that people become too mobile both in physical terms and
especially in social terms. This would be expressed by people moving through that social
landscape too fast, jumping from role-to-role too quickly to be able to inhabit those roles
properly. We already see it in part with Government ministers – moved on before they have
reached the bottom of their first briefing pack. This would stop organisations being able to
function effectively, simply because their staff would not really know what they were meant to
be doing.
As people moved faster and faster through the social landscape, there would be two-fold
repercussions. At the macroscopic level, information flows would become immense. This
would be driven by people desperately trying to keep up-to-date with a very fluid and
continually mobile social environment. As information flows increased, then individuals would
stop being able to digest enough information to make sensible decisions about their own
social trajectories. The result, eventually, would be a collapse into chaos as decision making
in all parts of society became erratic and no longer coordinated in any manner.
Process Failure
Failure of the Level 4 Adaptation Process does not have such immediate dire consequences
for society as failure at lower levels. It mostly manifests as a reversion either to autocracy or
to class layering or both. This may not represent a catastrophic failure in the short-term,
albeit does lead to a significantly reduced quality of life at the individual level for many within
the population. But, it should be remembered that earlier civilised societies are not nearly as
inherently flexible and adaptable as the Level 4 social system. It may therefore be that failure
of the Level 4 Social Process would ultimately doom a society because it stops being able to
react to change in the world around – whether we are considering that social world of other
nations or the physical world and the impacts of climate change.
One of the real challenges for any Level 4 society is how to avoid reverting to hierarchic
structures when under threat. There is a tendency to think, when the world around is proving
very challenging or threatening, that if only a benign leader could autocratically choose the
best path – perhaps a new Winston Churchill to navigate us a route through the climate
change challenges ahead. But it is a very dangerous step to take, because we all know (and

as demonstrated by the theory of social interaction) it is impossible to have a long-term

benign leader; it would be an inevitability that the pure bureaucracy returned, or a class
system arose, both of which social forms would ultimately prevent us from collectively
surviving. A select few, those at the top of either or both bureaucracy or class layers would
be saved and the remainder of society sacrificed. Rather the solution ahead is not to revert to
bureaucratic tendencies, but to find ways of making democracy really work, to enable society
to have the genuine flexibility and adaptability required to survive the decades and centuries
ahead.
Conclusion
The suggestion from this chapter is that democracy is not just a situation where a society
holds regular elections to choose a new leader. No. And far from. Instead democracy is
something which infuses every part of society from the way that husbands and wives interact,
how families raise their children all the way up to those society-wide elections. It represents a
fundamental mindset change amongst the majority of the population in terms of how each
individual perceives others, their immediate family, friends and work colleagues outwards. It
is a society, which believes that each and every person is equal in a fundamental way. They
may not have the same roles. They may not have had the same up-bringing. They may not
be as wealthy. But in a deep, deep way each and every person is equal, in that they are
human and they have Needs, and should have equal opportunity to choose and pursue their
own trajectory through social space.
In this context, it seems extremely naïve that democracy can be imposed from outside – such
as seeking to turn a society such as Iraq into a democratic state. Political elections are just
the superficial expression of much deeper changes that must take place within a society.
Without seeking to promote those other changes, then the imposition of regular elections is
simply doomed to failure: without those deeper changes, societies will quickly revert to a
hierarchic state, whether a class system, a bureaucratic system or some mix of the two.
Through the theory presented in this book, all of a sudden a whole variety of changes (and
probably many more not mentioned) that have happened to society over the last 400 years
start to make sense and all link together in an understandable way. From the rapid growth of
our knowledge of the universe through to our fascination with sport and the sustainability
agenda, these all link together in a meaningful way and are all manifestations of this same
Social Process. But don’t think for one moment that these changes are any more
fundamental to the changes that took place to society as a result of the Cultural Bifurcations
associated with the previous Social Processes (Birth, Growth and Health). It is just the sheer
size of the human population, which now exists, that makes these changes more dramatic,
taking place at a greater scale.

In reality we have only just started down the path of a Level 4 society. To understand the
long-term full extent of the potential change that could happen to society, consider the
difference between a Level 3 ecosystem, which only contains plant-life and single cell
organisms (and no multi-cell animals), compared to a fully-fledged rainforest, full of mobile
animals. In the chapter after next, I will begin to explore some of the impacts that the
Adaptation Process has been causing on our cities.
In conclusion and to re-iterate, true and full democracy, and not just the baby democracies we
see around the world now, depends on a widespread perception of equality throughout a
society. It goes to the heart, the attitude and mindset, of every individual within society. The
result is that a society with a truly democratic nature consists of individuals throughout who
have a far higher sense of self-respect than exists in pre-democratic societies. Once an
attitude of respect pervades through a society, especially downwards from the top, then the
perception that one individual has an automatic right to a superior position in any hierarchy
than any other purely because of his or her birth is no longer tenable. It is this collective
attitude that comes to unleash the individual from his social box, his previously pre-defined
role, and provides him with the scope for social mobility.
As individuals gain social mobility, they become able to move through society. In doing so,
they need to be highly adaptable and flexible to be able to function in different social roles.
This adaptability and flexibility at the individual level becomes expressed at the larger scales
through much more adaptable and flexible social organisations and ultimately society itself.
But too much social mobility (as in moving too fast) would ultimately lead to chaos. So, as
stated at the beginning of this book, my friend Dan really was correct when he said that “what
sustainable development really means is how much change can society accept without
tearing itself apart.”

Chapter 12 – Transformation Process (Social Process 5)Page 1 of 4 10/06/2010
Chapter 12 – The Transformation Process (Social Process 5)
“I have always observed that to succeed in the world one should seem a fool, but be wise.”
Charles Montesquieu quote
It will no doubt be disappointing, for those who have understood and enjoyed my deductions
on human society in Chapters 8 to 11, that I have chosen not to seek to spell out Social
Process 5. I had originally intended to do so. But as I neared the end of Chapter 11, I came
to the decision that it would be inappropriate to continue for Social Process 5. Inappropriate
to even try. The simple truth is that if you are not convinced of the validity of this theory of
social interaction by the end of Chapter 11, then my trying to explain the Fifth Process would
not bring you round. More likely, by making some serious mistakes, I would disenchant those
readers, who had agreed with the theory so far. Instead, Chapters 13 and 14 will seek in a
different way to convince those who are still sitting on the fence.
This book is trying to be a work of philosophy, understanding how we collectively have

reached the here and now and thereby provide us with greater understanding on how to
proceed from here, to solve the not-to-be-underestimated challenges ahead. It is therefore
not in the remit of this book to dream of utopias and thence fall into the idealistic traps that
claimed Karl Marx, Herbert Spencer, Le Corbusier and many others. On a more pragmatic
note, I have frazzled so many brain cells trying to ‘get under the skin’ of the lower Social
Processes and work out how to explain them, that I would prefer to leave it to others to dream
up what a world post-Level 5 Cultural Bifurcation would look like. It is sufficiently far away
from our current reality that it is perhaps more a role for the science fiction writers.
In earlier chapters I have provided a few hints about the possible nature of Social Process 5
and I will set out a few more here and then leave it to others to take forward this particular
baton. These ideas are more about what feeds into and drives this top Process, rather than
the outcomes, the manifestations, in such an evolutionarily advanced society.
The first question to address in regard to Social Process 5 is: does it exist at all? I intuit that it
does. My reasoning is that if the theory of social interaction has true validity, then it must be a
comprehensive framework for understanding our experience of life. It must be able to
address all aspects of human society and the progression of society. Social Processes 1 to 4
do cover a great deal of that territory, bar one (in my mind) very important aspect. These
lower processes do not between them explain human creativity. They do not encapsulate, for
instance, my ability to intuit, solve and then describe the theory of social interaction. I am
quite prepared to be proven wrong on the existence of Social Process 5, but for the moment I
am going to assume that it does exist. As to what it represents and how it manifests, I admit

that I am grasping at straws. I hazard that we will need to turn to mathematics to solve this
one.
We saw in Chapter 11 that Social Process 4 arises from us learning to cooperate by

Exchanging information honestly, something which requires a behaviour of inclusiveness and
an attitude of (mutual) respect. It is a Process, which appears because of the Need for
people to be autonomous and to navigate social and physical space. We saw that the result
was people ‘flowing’ across the social landscape. In due course, this causes the landscape
itself to change, breaking down big hierarchic structures into more function based
organisational forms. Such changes to the landscape are not, however, designed by any
individual humans, nor for that matter by any singular groups of people (there is no
conspiracy theory). Rather it happens simply as a result of all of us gaining greater social
mobility. At Level 4, changes to our social world are consequently a consequence of all our
individual decisions and personal trajectories through life.
My initial guess is that Social Process 5, however, concerns itself with humanity actively
seeking to change and design its own backdrop, our social and physical landscapes. This is
expressed in physical terms through technological development.
Remember, in all these discussions, I am considering pure forms of the Social Processes
arising from Ideal Type interactions. The real world is complex, with all Processes taking
place simultaneously, just to different degrees. The Cultural Bifurcation associated with the
Level 4 Adaptation Process, which we have been going through, and continue to do so, in the
‘Developed’ world, represents a situation where all of a sudden a majority of people are acting
with greater inclusiveness, respect and becoming socially mobile. The result is that our
societies naturally convert into fledgling democracies. Clearly within this society there are
people operating to meet their Level 5 Needs; they are self-actualising. But these self-
actualisers are in a sufficient minority that this has not significantly affected the way that we
generally interact across society. There may, however, be pockets where people are all self-
actualising together and this may in those socially bounded locations cause forms of
interaction, social structures and culture to move to a more civilised way of operating.
For society to actively seek to change its own landscape requires more than just creating
maps of physical and social space and then observing the trajectories of others on those
landscapes. To change successfully and sustainably the landscape itself requires deep,
deep understanding about how both landscape and the flows across that landscape have
evolved to where they are, how they take place now, how they might continue to evolve and
the repercussions arising from any intentional interventions either to the flows or the
landscape.

A Social Process, in which we might collectively choose to change both flows and landscape,
would rely on a very high level of intelligence and understanding of ourselves and the world
around us. But not just amongst a few elite intelligentsia. It would require a sizeable
proportion of the population to be Einstein’s in their own chosen field of specialism, into which
they have progressed through choosing their personal trajectories through life – teachers,
nurses, doctors, scientists, bankers, managers, lawyers and so on. They would all need to be
self-actualising leaders in their particular field of operation, which is a significant step beyond
being self-respecting. Self-actualising may not necessarily be a leading expert. It may be
that each person is coached by others and given opportunities to fulfil their own potential in
an area, which interests them and allows them to flourish through their own naturally gifted
attributes.
As to what self-actualisation itself means, I would suggest that between Abraham Maslow,
Mihali Csikszentmihalyi and Malcolm Gladwell, they have developed a reasonable perception
of what it really represents. It involves developing a deep, deep understanding of something,
whether that be skiing or philosophy. It requires the development of a skill through immersion
in the subject – physically or mentally or, more likely, both. And that, as Gladwell points out in
his recent book (Gladwell 2008) requires practice: a great deal of practice, 10,000 or so hours
of it.
So, imagine a world where every single person were a leading expert in some particular field
of learning and knowledge or is fulfilling the very best of their potential in life and you may just
start to appreciate why I have not bothered trying to imagine how such a world would work –
how society might structure itself, what its culture would be like and so on.
Finally, a thought on the perception of time and space associated with Social Process 5. In
the preceding chapters, we have seen that Social Process 1 causes a collapse of space and
time into an instantaneous present and point in space. In Social Process 2, we see the
creation of structure, which gives the effect of creating a defined history: structured space
emerging from past self-knowledge. In Social Process 3, we see the emergence of very fluid
social forms, wholly focussed on the future, enclosing space to ward off the unknown:
structured time future and uncontrollable space beyond the circle. In Social Process 4, we
see the appearance of an understanding of space-time. The relatively more civilised human
being born into an advance democratic society has the capacity to see time and space
simultaneously: not just the past, not just the future, but both together. And he learns to see
him or herself as one of many equal others navigating the social and physical landscapes, a
landscape which is no longer purely centred on the self (a Copernican change in mindset).
So what of the influence of Level 5 on a society’s perception of time and space?

This answer may be grossly wrong, but I sense it has something to do with fractals. It has
something to do with transcending scales of space and time, of seeing similarities in the
whole universe at all different scales. Analogies everywhere. It is through this that the
individual becomes able to create, to intuit, solutions, which fit at all different scales. We see
this now at the individual level with highly creative, self-actualising people. What this
creativity would lead to when a whole society was cooperatively involved, I cannot even begin
to guess.
Happy ponderings.
Gladwell, M. (2008). Outliers - the Story of Success, Little, Brown and Co.

Chapter 13 – The Evolution of the Sustainable City Page 1 of 22 10/6/10
Chapter 13 – The Evolution of the Sustainable City
The purpose of this Chapter is to provide a longitudinal perspective of the way that the theory
presented in the earlier chapters has manifested itself in the development and evolution of a
human society. In the spirit of appreciating that cities have always played the central role in
the progress of civilisation, the story is mapped against the development of an idealised city
in an attempt to show how, amongst other things, the operation of the identified Social
Processes would express themselves in city form. It must be emphasised that this is a very
idealistic perspective – no city has ever developed in precisely this way. Later in the chapter
more discussion will be provided as to how cities have oft strayed off a true path, where that
true path is one of genuine human development. Over the 10,000 years of human civilisation,
there have been long periods of time when civilised societies have stalled and not really
developed or gone down irretrievable blind alleys. However, when this framework is
compared against the rise of Western Europe from the Dark Ages and its 1,000 year
progression, then there has been a remarkable continuity to which the theory presented here
corresponds. Alternatively one can consider the fast-track development of America’s cities –
this theoretical approach again provides a good comparison against observed history. In both
instances, however, it shows how far we have to go before achieving what might genuinely be
termed sustainable cities.
This is my attempt at operationalising the whole of this theory, bringing together the identified
Social Processes. I am bound to have made some blunders, so be critical in your reading.
The intent is not to say this is precisely how it happened. Rather, drawing on the theory of
social interaction, it is an attempt to portray the inferred general progression over time that
has taken humanity, sometimes kicking and screaming, from its tribal origins to a global
civilisation with the capacity to destroy the planet on which it depends.
The Underlying Economics – Competition and Cooperation
The theory of social interaction is predicated on the idea that human beings interact
cooperatively or competitively to meet their personal Needs. Those Needs are clearly defined
as a set of five very different types of Need. To understand how evolution of human society
takes place and how this becomes manifest in city form, it is first useful to explore this
interplay between cooperation and competition and how this changes over time.
To recap, there are two tempers of cooperation, which can take place: Sharing or
Exchanging. There are also two forms of competition: Acting Individually, which is essentially
passive or latent competition, and Taking, which is clearly very active competition. We also
discovered in Chapter 11 that active competition can happen in physical space and in social
space; the implications of this will become more apparent over the remainder of this chapter.

In a tribal context, tribes occupy discrete territories across the physical landscape. They are
social units which are directly competing at Level 1 for material needs. In times of plenty,
then competition may be latent, each tribe getting on with life within their bounded territory.
When food were scarce, then latent competition no doubt frequently broke into active
competition and inter-tribal warfare. One can conceptualise a Level 1 ring, essentially an
identity line, around each tribe, demarcating one identity group (a tribe) from another. As
noted, this dividing line maps directly onto physical space as the territorial boundary.
Each level created by the Hierarchy of Needs creates a ring or line. A Level 2 perimeter
might be termed a defence line (now most explicit in the world we live in as property rights
and nation state boundaries). A Level 3 demarcation might be called a nurture ring,
containing all those who cooperate to help each other in health and reproduction issues. And
so on. A key point to note is that competition lines of one level cannot cross that of another:
they are essentially contours of the needs hierarchy. In addition to this, as we will see, lower
level contours (say a single Level 1 identity line) can contain higher level contours (two areas
separately defended). But not the other way round: a defence contour will not accommodate
within it an identity contour.
Not having spent much time reading on anthropology, the following is a little tentative.
i
Research (Mead and Heyman 1965; Dunbar 1998) has suggested that tribes of old were
nested social units containing family units: total tribe of around 150 containing around 8 family
units of circa 20 head each. The inference from this is that inside the identity perimeter, there
was a defence line which directly mapped the same physical area and social unit. But inside
that, there were, say, 8 separate nurture rings: one for each family unit. The inference is that
the family units were cooperating together for material needs and safety and security needs.
But they were competing in terms of reproduction needs. Following through the logic of the
contours, these family units were mobile and largely autonomous within the wider tribal
territory, meeting occasionally but otherwise tracing their own hunting and gathering trajectory
around their bounded geographic landscape. When the territory was threatened from
outside, the family units would have come together in defence. But, when there was no
external threat, they continued to act competitively in terms of nurturing offspring and looking
after each other’s health.
When the first trading centres appeared, representing cooperative nodes of exchange activity
between adjacent tribes, then a transformation took place. The physical expression of this, in
terms of distribution of human beings across the geographic landscape, will be explored in a
moment. Trading of material items (mutually equivalent peace offerings) between adjacent
tribes represented the appearance of cooperation across what was originally a Level 1
competition dividing line. In due course, through the action of the market place and Level 1

Ideal Type interactions, the tribal identities would have blurred. What was originally a direct
division in physical space converted into a division within social space. This would have been
expressed, as Adam Smith observed 230-odd years ago, as specialisation of goods sourced
from the respective original tribal landscapes.
The occupants of these different landscapes are now physically cooperating through the
action of exchange, but they are competing in social space. To allow the cooperation in
physical space and competition in social space to flourish drove the invention of money and
the competition became expressed in terms of the flow of money through the respective
populations. For each subsequent Cultural Bifurcation similar transitions took place, which
transformed what was originally direct head-to-head physical competition into physical
cooperation with preceding competition becoming expressed in social space. What this
means is that the progress and evolution of civilisation has been a continued process (with
occasional hiccups of varying degrees) of taming competition. Real head-to-head, ‘life in the
jungle’ competition has been gradually rolled back and replaced by what is essentially virtual
competition. We see this explicitly in modern society through our enormous interest in sport
and the great lengths we go to in order to ensure that such sport is, as far as possible, not
fatal nor physically damaging.
The point, at which competition arises, defines the boundary conditions between social units.
The tribes competing at all Levels can be pictured as having five layers (or social contours)
around each of them. As society learns to cooperate, rising up from the bottom, then these
layers are one-by-one peeled away, giving rise to different types of social structures – the
market, bureaucracies, communities, the modern businesses and yet-to-be-experienced
structures at Level 5 cooperation. As this taming process takes place, we see emergent
Matrices coming to manifest in physical form as (1) money, (2) rules and regulations, (3)
social support systems, (4) sport and other, where failure at a particular Level of competition
is no longer disastrous or fatal for the loser. In civilised circumstances there are still losers in
any discrete competitive situations, but civilised society effectively compensates the loser
allowing him or her to live another day and find other ways and other situations to meet his or
her Needs. In a very subtle sense it is the equivalent to the multitude of approaches taken in
the animal kingdom to avoid direct head-to-head, potentially damaging, conflict; but writ-large
across a whole human society this has led to the emergence of very complicated behaviours
and social constructions.
This whole process is further complicated because of the natural fractal nesting of the Social
Processes. These five Processes are a-scalar – they operate continuously at every scale,
between individuals, between families, between tribes, between communities, between
businesses, between cities and between countries. Take, for example, family units within a
tribe:/ if these units experience an internal Cultural Bifurcation and form a new way of

cooperating, then this can have repercussions for the whole structure of the tribe and how it
interacts with other tribes around. These repercussions can have reverbrations up into larger
scales and down into smaller scales. For instance, as we will come to see, tribes learning to
cooperate with other tribes through Exchange of Sourcing fundamentally changes the social
and economic context of the family units within.
But despite the inherent complexity, through all this we do see a general trend towards ever
increasing cooperation within human society combined with ever more ingenious ways to
tame competition. This is human development in operation. There is another useful way to
understand the same evolutionary process. This is through the notion of symmetry breaking.
It is this that strongly informs how a city naturally evolves in spatial terms. Rather than
explain the concept of symmetry breaking here, this will become apparent as the story of the
idealised city’s development unfolds. Remember – idealised.
Step 1 - Tribal Situation to Small Proto-City
We start by going back some 40,000 years to consider the geographic landscape populated
by Palaeolithic human beings. As previously stated, these human beings lived in tribes,
which were thought to have comprised family units of some 10 to 20 individuals (the multi-
generational family). These were the family units within which new individuals were born,
nourished and nurtured.
The five Social Processes operated between the family units within these tribes, no more and
no less than they have subsequently done in civilisation. The family units themselves would
also have experienced these Social Processes internally between the individuals making up
the family. If it were indeed the case that tribes were nested, containing identifiable family
units, then this was the result of evolution to achieve the most successful form of tribal
structure. These Processes would have dictated the continuing success of a tribe and given
rise to very stable tribes, existing over tens of thousands of years. Only when, through trade
(Exchange of Sourcing), the outer layer of tribes began to be peeled away, did tribes start to
experience these Processes operating on them and not just within them. From then on,
everything started to become a little bit more complicated.
Through competition, the tribes had become distributed across the landscape as a patchwork
quilt, each tribe becoming highly differentiated from its neighbours in terms of (1) Identity, (2)
Codes of Conduct, (3) Codes of Nurture, (4) Decision-Making and (5) Technology (the latter
including style of hunting and gathering and in due course whether any basic agricultural and
animal husbandry techniques became practiced). The tribes would have become specialised
and adapted for the particular geographic landscape which they occupied. That said, and

drawing from earlier chapters, the five Social Processes, when applied within a tribal context,
act to cause ever-increasing differentiation to occur regardless of the occupied landscape.
By necessity, territories would have been defended fiercely, because land area determined
access to food (energy) and thereby the ability of the tribe to survive. The process of
becoming more and more differentiated and more and more specialised to the landscape
represents the first Division in operation – Division of Sourcing – driven by the inherent
competition. Within the tribe the families Shared the sourcing of food and this bound them
together under one identity and the same Codes of Conduct (and potentially Codes of Nurture
too). This stark differentiation in identity and codes of conduct meant that individuals
(certainly men) from one particular tribe could never mix with humans with another tribal
identity or peacefully enter the territory of another tribe; they would have experienced and
expressed extreme prejudice (kill or be killed).
With tribes being highly territorial, needing to defend their quilt patch, and given they were
made up of intelligent beings, it is not overly surprising that they might have at times needed
to engage in pacification activities to prevent hostilities. The latter would be detrimental to
both parties. Such conciliation activities could easily have evolved to the giving and
receiving of gifts. In fact this still is the classic approach taken within civilised society to aid
pacification and maintain the peace; it is what we all do at Christmas time, some even saying
‘peace be with you’ as they exchange gifts.
Such interactions are rather pointless if the two parties give and receive the same objects, so
there is a natural tendency in any situation of giving and receiving to try and ensure the
objects exchanged differ. Even better, one seeks to provide the other with something that
they cannot obtain directly themselves. In those landscapes which are fairly similar
throughout, then it might have proven difficult to find difference. But in certain landscapes,
this would have proven much easier. In Anatolia near to Catal Huyuk, for example, the
proximity of a volcano with a plentiful supply of obsidian, which could easily be given directly
or crafted into very useful tools, provided just the opportunity to offer something different
during any giving and receiving of gifts.
For the giving and receiving of gifts to evolve into a regular interaction of exchange of
sourcing between neighbouring tribes would have depended upon those tribes becoming
sufficiently differentiated from each other – bringing to the exchange sufficiently differentiated
materials for it to be beneficial for each party to repeat the interaction. After much time had
passed, tens of thousands of years, a cultural bifurcation point presumably eventually arose
whence one tribe became reliant on the giving and receiving of gifts with its neighbouring
tribes on all sides. This is a major cultural change in more ways than just the interaction. In
first instance their outside contour, their identity line, had begun to blur.

As mentioned above, tribes are naturally exclusionary and thereby very territorial. Proto-
cities, and all cities thereafter, in contrast must be inherently welcoming for trade to take
place. As a tribe became more and more reliant on giving and receiving of gifts, their territory
would have slowly shrunk as they no longer needed it for hunting, until eventually they had
essentially retreated to a sedentary city lifestyle, no longer needing any territory at all apart
from their nuclear family household. The adjacent tribal territories would have encroached
until the edges of their territories were the edge of the habitation. And the proto-city is
formed. The individuals in the proto-city tribe become encased in a somewhat reduced tribal
territory – their habitation, the small proto-city. They cannot travel any distance, because to
do so would be to enter another tribe’s territory.
The proto-city tribe is now heavily reliant on regular, repeated exchange of sourcing
interactions in order to be able to survive. Within the small proto-city, there exists a normal
tribe (as existed before) but a tribe which is forced to be sedentary rather than mobile. The
tribe as a whole is reliant on exchange of sourcing, but within the tribe the families and
individuals Share the benefit of the trades that take place. For modern day equivalent, think
of a Kibbutz (of sorts).
This collapse of one tribal territory to a point represents the first symmetry breaking. Rather
than a patch work quilt of similarly sized territories spread out across the landscape, we find
instead a tribal territory which has shrunk to a point amongst the other much larger tribal
territories. The symmetry of even distribution across the landscape has been broken. This
focussing onto a point – a centre – is an inherent feature of all successful cities from then on
and as deduced in Chapter 8 is a physical manifestation of the Level 1 Social Process
(collapse of time and space to a point in the present). If this point remains stable, then we
can safely say that locally a cultural bifurcation has been crossed. In this first instance, it
gives rise to a stable, but small, proto-city.
Step 2 – Transition from Small Proto-City to Large Proto-City
The small proto-city is still based on the population of a single tribe. There remains an
identity differentiation between the sedentary tribe and the neighbouring hunter-gatherer
tribes. This keeps the small proto-city small. As noted above, the family units within our
small proto-ccity still cooperate with respect to the sharing of food – trade by one family is
shared with others: exchange between tribes, sharing within. As success in trading activity is
shared around the whole settlement, either the whole grows as one, each and every family
increasing in size, or not at all. In the sharing, cooperative, situation, no single family can
grow at the expense of growth of any other.

Meanwhile inter-tribal competition acts to limit the growth of each tribe: there still exists a
degree of competition at Level 1. The surrounding tribes are still acting as previously,
obtaining the bulk of their food from their territory and only participating in exchange of
sourcing to ‘make life easier’, but not dependent on it; there is therefore still a slight identity
boundary between small proto city and surrounding tribes. Prior to the formation of the small
proto-city, all tribes existed in a state of competitive equilibrium. It is a competitive stalemate
which keeps all tribes to a similar size unless the whole landscape increases in abundance of
food availability.
In our small proto-city, which has become reliant on exchange of sourcing, there are new
processes afoot which are acting to cause further cultural change. As we came to appreciate
in Chapter 8, the action of exchange of sourcing forces those involved to become more
opportunistic and marginally more rational through exposure to other cultural influences, other
tribal identities. This Level 1 Birth Process incrementally acts to dissolve the differences
between the identity of the sedentary tribe and the surrounding mobile tribes. At the same
time this Level 1 Process acts to weaken existing social bonds – the bonds of sharing within
the sedentary tribe. Eventually this gives rise to a cultural bifurcation point. This point causes
the family units within the tribe to switch from Level 1 cooperation of sharing to Level 1
cooperation of exchange. When this happens family units within the proto-city are released
from the tribal bond of unity of identity, which binds the whole tribe, to develop their own
family unit with its own unique identity. Where the action of sharing bonds all participants
under one identity, the interaction of exchange allows the appearance of difference in identity.
But exchange represents Level 1 cooperation, not competition. The competition becomes
virtual and comes to be expressed in terms of affluence or success between family units. The
family units are no longer directly competing for food, but instead for status. The first layer of
real physical competition moves upwards to competition to secure future food supplies
through the making and selling of manufactured goods and accumulated wealth.
The cultural consequence is that in the place of clear boundaries created by sharing (inside
tribes) and division (between tribes), these come to be replaced by the interaction of
exchange throughout, allowing the appearance and existence of a more seemless society.
The social and economic consequences of the above are two-fold. On the one hand food is
no longer shared on a day-to-day basis amongst family units. The result of this is that if a
family were continually successful relative to others then it would grow alone, rather than
sharing that success. This means that growth of successful family units can lead to them
multiplying, where before the competitive environment tended to keep them static in size
indefinitely. This leads to a rapid increase in the number of family units, driven from within the
system. Furthermore, the consequence of a dissolution of identity boundary between tribes in
and around the small proto-city is that outlying tribal families, which would have been
experiencing the same Level 1 Process, albeit to a lesser extent, can now settle within the

city; the city culture becomes accepting to newcomers. The outcome is very rapid growth of
the small proto-city into a large proto-city: driven from within and without.
To facilitate the growth process, an economic transition has also taken place, which operates
seemlessly with the cultural changes. The small proto-city is primarily a trading entity only,
which is sourcing and supplying materials from its territorial area to a wider population. There
is a limit to what the inhabitants can do to help improve their own circumstances if they are
entirely reliant on others to bring items to the city for exchange and on the objects for
exchange from within their territory. But when the social boundaries finally dissipate, with a
little bit of rationality and freedom of thought, arising from the opportunistic mindset promoted
by being involved in all those day-to-day exchange interactions, it is a small step for the city
inhabitants to start to add value to goods through combination or manufacture and to begin to
operate as a proper trading centre, onward trading unessential items brough to the city by
others. And so the trading centre transforms itself into a proper trading node and
manufacturing centre. This economic activity of onward trading things and physically making
things enables the city itself to start to grow: a cultural theme of growth and creation of new
physical structure running through the whole society.
Given the positive feedback of each of the Social Processes, the subsequent growth of the
initially small city would likely be very rapid until some limits were reached; we will explore
these first set of limits to growth in the next section. Such rapid growth would presumably
lead to a city such as Catal Huyuk, where there were no streets, no common structures, no
city walls. Every spatial gap would be filled as families multiplied, occupying all the land
around an original household. The city would become a mat, analogous to a bacterial,
cellular growth system. There would be no differentiation across the city. Every family unit:
competing with every other family unit. The culture: entirely a market place mentality with no
apparent social cooperation between families. Each household building would need to be
permanently occupied by a large contingent of the family unit or risk losing the dwelling: there
would have been intense competition for space with little, if any, respect or consideration of
property rights. The concept of the latter simply did not yet exist.
In achieving the transition to the large proto-city, society would have made one of the most
important first steps towards civilisation – the taming of Level 1 competition. While the family
units, which are now the core tribal units of this new society, are all superficially competing
between themselves for basic food, they cannot be competing in a raw, uncivilised form: to do
so would rip the city apart. The family units are cooperating at Level 1 by being part of a city,
which operates as an emergent system acting as an economic beacon to draw in trade from
the surrounding area. Living cheek-by-jowl in a concentrated urban environment, the family
units are necessarily acting peacefully with each other. This allows them to freely trade
between each other, such that any family in need of food is able to trade with other families to

obtain its basic material needs. Food is no longer shared between families, allowing success
within a family to lead to growth and replication of that family unit. But at the same time at the
right price a family will trade with another which is desperate for food. Success breeding
success and replication; failure leading to gradual decline and eventual disappearance of a
family unit, but not immediate death.
This represents a half-way house between the tribal situation where a tribe suffering famine
would simply die and cease to exist and not be helped by neighbouring tribes verses the
circumstance within a tribe where family units would share food between them (in theory no
matter how scarce food supplies were). In the civilised circumstance, it is not sharing and it is
not ignoring the fate of the other, rather it is exchanging which represents a middle ground
which allows winners and losers and yet does not lead to the losers starving immediately.
The severest form of the competition has been tamed and this allows the city to remain as a
cohesive unit despite there being intense internal (yet civilised) competition. Direct physical
competition has moved up a notch to Level 2.
At the end of Step 2, we find ourselves with a large proto-city which has suddenly grown from
seemingly nothing (a single tribe) as a result of a cultural bifurcation being crossed. It may
have taken a long time for that cultural bifurcation to be reached, but once crossed the small
proto-city would have grown very rapidly into a large town. From the homo sapiens tribe,
thought to have been roughly 150 strong, having seemingly been the stable form of human
society for over 100,000 years, all of a sudden we see the first large proto-cities, such as
Catal Huyuk, appearing out of nowhere and growing to 8,000 people in an evolutionary eye-
blink. 8,000 people equates to the population of around 50 tribes, but expressed in Catal
Huyuk as a population of 400 trading, manufacturing and reproducing family households.
They were all crammed into a very concentrated city environment. It is an incredible change,
but then again probably no less remarkable than the order of magnitude of changes in cities
th th
that have taken place during the 19 and 20 centuries.
Step 3 – From Proto-City to Trading City
The growth of the small proto-city into a similarly formed, but larger, large proto-city would
have resulted in structural problems for the whole city. Such structural problems, explained
below, may well have been the limiting factor on the size of the large proto-city.
It was suggested above that each and every household had to be permanently occupied (as
tribal territories did before). Further, each and every family unit (now with a nascent, unique,
familial identity) represented trading family, manufacturing family, reproducing family all
wrapped into one. As the proto-city grew from small original to larger form, then this would
create a significant problem for those family units, which found themselves in the centre. The

successful growth of the city would place them in a fundamentally different economic position
to those around the edge of the town.
In a town with no roads, such as Catal Huyuk, the family households in the centre would find
themselves starved of external trading opportunities. Any visitor to the proto-city would
inevitably encounter those households lying around the edge first and trade with them. As
discussed in Chapter 8, there are no obligations in exchange; each individual (or family unit)
seeking to optimise personal outcome, where when you are trading for food the most
important outcome is that a trade takes place at all.
Family units in the centre of the large proto-city would have various options available to them
to seek to overcome their locational problem. One would have been to relocate to the edge,
but that would have required rebuilding a house, which is a time consuming activity when you
have to make things to trade for food at the same time. Another option would have been to
seek to differentiate manufactured goods, to attract visitors into the centre of the city for better
or different products. But we know from modern market economics that such product
differentiation becomes quickly ironed out as others emulate the improvements or changes.
Another option would have been to become more canny in their trading and seeking to
facilitate internal trading within the city, this would have caused them to become more and
more opportunistic in their attitude. And a final option would be to send out family members
to seek to carry out trades beyond the city boundary.
If those inner families concentrated on a combination of focussing on facilitating internal trade

and also sending out representatives to carry out exchanges beyond the city boundary, then
one could expect to see the gradual appearance of a differentiation between inner and outer
households. In our idealised city, gradually an inner and outer ring would appear where those
in the centre would focus more and more on trading, where those around the edge would
focus more and more on manufacture only, allowing those specialising in trade to facilitate
trade for them.
The above internal competition leading to a diversification in roles, which gives rise to
cooperation, is a feature of cities. The city itself is acting to intensify all these interactions of
competition and cooperation and thereby forcing evolution to quicken. The appearance of the
inner and outer rings represents a new symmetry breaking, only this time it is a symmetry
breaking within the city and not within the wider landscape. It is, however, a continuation of
that same symmetry breaking and eventually leads to the creation of the market place at the
centre of the city – a point node where trade is focussed within the centre of the city.
For the market place – the central point of the city – to form requires a Cultural Bifurcation to
be crossed. This arises when the cooperative interaction between what are now distinctively

trading families and manufacturing families becomes a dominant behaviour pattern and the
two distinctive family types have come to rely on each other. The transformation in city form
would be the appearance of the central market place: the trading families at the centre
effectively ceding their dwellings to enable formation of some common central ground – they
turn their dwellings into stalls with open access to all. Meanwhile the behaviour patterns of
their repeated entering and leaving the city to carry out exchange activity outside its built
boundary would have led to the creation of a radial road network – the spokes of a bicycle
wheel. From hereon these roads become the primary, arterial, road network for our idealised
city.
In terms of social make-up of the city, the trading families, once they have become entirely
reliant on trade and lost any interest in manufacturing, would be freed to be mobile. They no
longer need a household in any particular location and may become permanently transient.
This is a gradual transition from travelling from a household within the city to carrying out
trade beyond the city walls to eventually remaining permanently mobile, following the sources
of the trading opportunities. In this respect, the city has effectively created its own trading
community of families, who seek out to actively trade with the wider population in the
landscape around the city and with other cities. Where before the city was essentially a
passive exchanging society, it is now an active trading society: hence the formal transition
from proto-city to real trading city (passive trader to active trader). Looking forward, the most
important sedentary residents of the city are the remaining manufacturing community of
families: the fully trading families having become permanently mobile, yet servicing the city
from whence they originated. In this scenario the manufacturing families no longer trade
directly with anyone beyond the city boundary, exchanging only with the trading community
who now act as go-betweens for all trading activity and do not manufacture anything
themselves.
There is one final, but incredibly important, aspect to the trading city, which differentiates it
from the proto-city. The trading city has a common currency. The appearance of the market
place would have required the adoption of money, which could be seen to have incrementally
arisen from the needs of the nascent trading families as they sought to make ends meet by
trading from one edge of the city to another. The fundamental importance of money is that it
represents a complete taming of Level 1 competition.
The manner in which money tames Level 1 competition is two-fold: it can be easily stored, so
that each and every trade becomes less essential, and it cannot be eaten. The latter means
that while an individual may really, really want to earn those coins through carrying out a
trade, that money is not food that can be eaten there and then. This acts to divert the
aggression of the hungry man that might otherwise arise – it confuses our natural animal
instincts and forces us to be rational about our situation: simple, but very, very effective!

Money acts to remove civilised humanity by one step from physical and biological reality and
once it has achieved status of common currency forces everyone in society to become reliant
on society for their survival. It is a social construction by the nascent city which binds
everyone of the city to the city for their existence. And so civilisation is truly born.
But while the trading city has a first level of social construction, which represents a basic level
of cooperation across the entire social system, in all other respects our city society still
represents a very competitive social environment. The trading city could not, for instance,
raise an army to defend itself. And there are still no property rights. For these we need to
move on to the next phase of human development and next level of cooperation.
Step 4 – From Trading City to Constructed City
As we start to explore Step 4, a key point needs to be emphasised. In the trading city, all
exchange of labour still only takes place within those units which represent individual Identity
units – in other words, the family unit. The only social structure which can exist outside of the
family unit is the market place, which is a unique form of very fluid social structure based on a
multitude of instantaneous interactions; these give rise to patterns of behaviour, but no social
bonds, each and every operator acting entirely selfishly. In the trading city, social bonds only
exist inside families, whether these are trading families or manufacturing families:
consequently no business or social structure based on enduring social bonds could exist
outside the family structure. It is for this reason that the city simply could not raise an army to
defend itself. Nor could the trading city exhibit sufficient cooperation between family units to
enable the construction of city walls. Security (both safety and securing a food supply) for the
individual is only provided from within the family unit. Beyond the willingness to participate in
exchange of sourcing (Level 1) activity, instantaneous interactions, there is simply no
cooperation between family units.
With Level 1 (Material Needs) competition tamed through cooperative exchange of sourcing
interactions and the appearance of a common currency, money, then Level 2 (Security)
competition takes centre stage. This competition does not affect the trading families; their
route to maximize their security is through maximizing their network of trading opportunities –
the greater their network of potential purchases and sales, then the greater security they
achieve. Arguably competition between trading families now jumps directly to Level 4
(Mobility), driving these trading families to seek out trading opportunities further and further
afield from the city. But this competition between these families does not fundamentally affect
city form and development (though it may influence patterns of behaviour across the wider
physical landscape). Rather it is to the manufacturing families that we need to turn to see
how Level 2 competition is tamed and the cooperation that arises: the latter as noted are now
the principal sedentary families within the city.

Referring to Chapter 9, we found that through symbolic interactionism the individuals involved
in crafting materials for their income come to seek and see security of income through their
ability to craft goods for sale. In first instance, the more goods that they can make, the
greater their perceived security. They are driven to maximise production. This in turn
intensifies competition to sell such goods, which in due course causes the manufacturing
families to diversify their products – another example of the city intensifying competition to
speed up evolution. This diversification of goods is the division that is driven by the direct
competition at Level 2 and the result is a wider and wider range of products on offer. As we
have seen before, the further that division drives a system to diversify the more opportunities
begin to appear for cooperation. In a city with a central market place and the associated
opportunistic culture that is fostered, then the continuing competition at Level 2 to provide
ever more differentiated products causes opportunities to be seen for the amalgamation of
products to give more complex outputs. This provides scope for manufacturing families to
seek to collaborate, where such cooperation would give rise to a step change in product
differentiation which would be far more difficult for others to emulate. (“I make nails, your
fashion planks of wood; together we can manufacture sheds.”)
The cooperation that is required between manufacturing families is fundamentally different to

that which can take place between trading families and manufacturing families. To produce a
complete product, which represents an amalgamation of outputs, two or more families must
coordinate their activities and be able to rely on each other to provide their aspect of the
product. This drives the appearance of exchange of labour and, as explored in Chapter 9, all
the requirements for trust and predictability that go with it. Importantly for the development of
culture, this would have required documenting who agreed to do what and through this we
see the appearance of writing – arising again out of need amongst those concerned.
The Cultural Bifurcation for this appearance of Level 2 (security) cooperation would have
been the point when a sufficient number of the manufacturing families came to rely on each
other to produce goods for trading. This would have resulted in a rapid extension of individual
contractual situations to engulf the whole city society under a unified code of conduct – a
rationally based legal system and a common written script to support it.
The manner in which this would manifest itself in city form is through the next symmetry
breaking. This symmetry break represents the appearance of chords connecting the radial
road network. When you draw a diagram with radial routes that are connected by a series of
chords, then in each segment of the circle one sees a distorted grid, which more and more
approximates an orthogonal grid the larger the circle becomes. The city geometry for the
Level 2 (security) cooperating society is the gridiron city. Such city form represents the
structure of maximum permeability and internal connectivity (proven by space syntax
analysis), which is exactly what is required for those manufacturing operations to work best

when linking together to create a complex manufacturing economy. With the appearance of
chords as streets, the city can also be seen to have reached a point at which it could build city
walls to accompany those cross-streets; there is now circumferential cooperation taking place
round the city and not just radial cooperation taking place between inner and outer city.
Proper collaboration can now take place between all the residents of the city in relation to
meeting their collective safety and security needs; the consequence is that the population is
now able to cooperate together as a society to actively build the city.
In terms of social structure there is an equally fundamental change in our city society, which
is an expression of this symmetry break but in social space. As a common legal structure is
formed, the opportunity exists for business operations to begin to extend beyond the family
unit. As the city rapidly grows in economic terms after the noted Cultural Bifurcation, then the
whole of our developing society appears to turn itself inside out. Where before all hierarchic
structures had to exist within family units, now we have such structures growing without limit
with family units “hanging off” those social hierarchies. Those structures can become all
those different types of bureaucracies originall noted by Max Weber – the business
bureaucracy, the army, the civil service and so on. Hand-in-hand with the appearance of the
gridiron city one can therefore expect to see a very rapid growth in the scale of hierarchic
social structures that can exist within a civilised society.
With social structures growing rapidly, our developing city becomes able to create physical
structures that dwarf anything that was possible before in terms of physical size and material
output. Our city has begun to industrialise! And with this the city has evolved to be able to
construct itself in a wholly coordinated manner.
Step 5 – From Constructed City to Public City
The starting point for understanding the next step in the evolution of the idealised city is to
focus on the consequences to the family unit arising from the last transition. When the family
unit has been ‘turned inside-out’ with businesses now existing outside the family, new
individuals in society, on maturing from child to adult, can no longer be assured to achieve
their personal security of income through the family – from the family business. The family is
no longer a social structure for business: only for reproduction. The consequence is that
family units shrink, from extended family structure incorporating family and business (the
modern remnants of which are manifest as Mafiosi families – operating according to their own
rules and codes of conduct which are not necessarily aligned with those of wider society)
down to multigenerational extended family and eventually to the modern nuclear family of the
Western world, comprising sexual couple and their children. This shrinking of the family unit
represents a relatively slow cultural change.

The situation for the individual growing up in the nuclear family is that rather than growing into
the larger family business, he or she must at some point leave the family structure, become
independent, find their own source of income and, in due course, set up their own family unit.
The natural consequence of industrialisation and the social process of inverting the family
structure in society is a very rapid multiplication of smaller family units. Whether this has to
be accompanied by a general population increase or not is debatable, but history seems to
indicate that this tends to happen. A social explanation of this is that despite the social
changes, people still expect to live in larger family structures and so naturally (to start with)
create their own. Only as time passes does this settle down through cultural change to a
more reasonable nuclear family size and thence steady size of population.
Now, consider again the culture associated with Level 3, as discussed in Chapter 9. It
revolves around the desire to control what it is you can control, and exclude what you cannot.
In physical activity this gives rise to ever more specific rituals. The physical expression of this
mindset is the desire to enclose space. The reason for this is to demarcate that which can be
controlled by the individual or the individual social unit and that which cannot.
In everyday practical terms this is understandable in the context of raising children. In order
to be successful in this endeavour, one has to be able to create enclosed, protected and
‘made-safe’ space, in which children can play and learn. This enclosure of space is
something, which has manifested itself throughout civilised history through the creation of the
household. But it is also especially evident in relation to religious buildings. As outlined in
Chapter 10, religions naturally arise from the Social Process of Health and religious structures
almost always express degrees of enclosure of space – outer sanctums, inner sanctums and
inner-inner sanctums and so on: at each stage reverence focussing inwards.
If the Social Process at Level 3 (Health) focuses people on enclosure of space, in the context
of the social upheavals arising from the Level 2 (Growth) transition outlined above, then one
can see that the real manifest competition that underlies Level 3 (Health) is competition for
space. There is a burgeoning number of family units all seeking to define and enclose their
own private space. The city acts to intensify this competition.
The route to resolving this competition is to appreciate how the nuclear family units diverge in
terms of their Reproduction and Health Needs as a result of this competition. In the context
of large families, which comprise people of all ages throughout the family, then the
Reproduction and Health Needs of that large multi-generational family unit remains constant
over time: the family unit always contains a mix of ages living within a single household. But
the Needs of the nuclear family unit changes very considerably over time. Starting at point of
child leaving the family-nest, there is a period of time when the individual is a lone operator in
society (sometimes a very short time, but increasingly longer in more developed societies).

Then the individual pairs up with another and there is a period (albeit sometimes fairly short)
when the couple is the core unit. Then they start to have children. In the large multi-
generational family, there are always children around, of all ages, and there are always older
people around and so on. But for the nuclear family unit, the children grow and during each
phase of child growth the Needs of the family unit change dramatically, until eventually the
children flee the nest, leaving behind an older couple who have their own continuing Needs
into old age (together or alone, depending on choice or fate).
It is these changing Needs of the core social unit, the nuclear family, which represent division
at Level 3 (Health). Eventually such divergence becomes sufficient to enable cooperation to
begin to appear between generations in society. In the idealised city this gives rise to the
appearance of a social support sector, including schools, hospitals, religious institutions and
other forms of social structure whose aim is to provide social and community support. Initially
under Level 3, these tend all to be linked and to provide generalised support to the nuclear
family unit – hence the appearance of cults, religions and religious institutions. It is only
under the influence of Level 4 (Adaptation) that we see this splintering into a multitude of
specialities and different competencies, such as the uncountable number of different types of
charities, which now exist in our Western societies.
But how does this appearance of cooperation at Level 3 manifest itself in physical form?
We see intense competition for space, forcing family units (whether before, during or after
children) into smaller and smaller spaces. This eventually flips and, in our idealised city, in
conjunction with the appearance of social support systems, we see the appearance of public
space. Such public space should be understood not just in terms of parks and open spaces,
but also all those public spaces that accommodate those social support structures, including
schools, hospitals, churches, social services buildings and so on and so forth.
In the parlance of modern thinking in urban design, architects speak of good city planning as
involving the creation of a hierarchy of public spaces. This is simply a manifestation of Social
Process 3 (Health) cooperation. For each scale of society there represents an enclosure of
space. The sexual couple has the bedroom. The family unit has a house and balcony or
garden. The small local community has the communal garden, only accessible to residents of
a building or group of buildings. Then there is the neighbourhood park, used by locals but
rarely by strangers. And moving up we come to the city squares and the city parks. At each
and every scale we see the same process at play. Do families within households share
bathrooms or does each bedroom have an en suite? Do households share gardens or have
their own? Do proximate communities share schools or have their own? And so on.

In the idealised city, these public spaces should act in such a way that they ameliorate or
remove the inherent competition that exists between generations, seeking to satisfy the
particular Health and Reproduction Needs for each and every age group. Through the
appearance of cooperation, society achieves a much more efficient use of space through
specialisation of space. Rather than each social (primarily family) unit trying to accommodate
many different activities within its own enclosed space, discrete spaces are created for the
different needs of different age groups within society – children, youths, singles, couples,
families, the old, the infirm, the active and the inactive. Such public spaces provide the fora
for all interaction between those with common circumstances associated with health and
reproduction and through this facilitate the development of mutual support structures across
society.
On the face of it, this leads to a natural layering of society according to Need. But this should
not lead to a class or caste system, because we all age, so the layering is continually shifting
and in flux. There is, however, scope for social exclusion to emerge, as is evident in current
British society, where the nurture needs of the young and old are clearly treated culturally as
a lower priority than those of the working population age group.
In summary the symmetry break from trading to public city has a much more complicated
effect across the urban landscape. It is a transition from no public space (all space is entirely
privatised, except for an essential street network) to a city with a hierarchy of public spaces
and public buildings.
Step 6 – From Public City to Connected City
In Chapter 10 we came to see that Social Process 4 (Adaptation) related to the individual
achieving social mobility: to achieve their needs of autonomy and self-respect, people need to
become socially mobile within society. This gives rise to a competitive environment with
everyone competing to climb or influence those social structures created by Social Processes
2 (Growth) and 3 (Health). We further came to appreciate that the expression of this in
physical terms is mobility in the real, physical world. People come to experience high
degrees of motion in their daily lives, which for many is felt in terms of commuting to and from
work. This rapid increase in mobility creates its own problems for our idealised city – its road
infrastructure rapidly becomes overloaded. This social competition becomes expressed in
physical terms through competition for speed of movement in physical space – the speed at
which a social unit, whether individual, family or business, can move from A to B. The
consequence, of course, is a clogged up road network. (At Level 1 the focus was movement
of materials; at Level 4 the emphasis is on motion of people and transmission of information.)

The outcome is analogous to the solution achieved at Level 3. Through Social Process 4,
described in Chapter 11, we saw the thinking economy (as opposed to the labour economy)
rapidly diversifying, giving rise to individuals specialising in a broader and broader range of
working activities. This rapid diversification represents the divergence at Level 4 and
eventually enables cooperation. As people come to work for a wider and wider range of
different businesses and involved in an increasingly diverse range of different activities, then
they eventually no longer compete directly in terms of social mobility. Essentially the number
of social ladders to climb has all of a sudden exploded in number, so that eventually everyone
can climb their own ladder. This means that they can begin to cooperate in physical space
when they need to move from A to B for the purposes of climbing that ladder of their own.
Where at Social Process 3 we saw the appearance of public spaces, at Social Process 4
cooperation gives rise to public transport systems, together with all those other public spaces
in which we can express the Level 4 tamed competition (for instance, sports venues). As
before, the intensification of physical activities that is promulgated by the city puts pressure
on society to find the best solution. In this case, public transport represents a much more
efficient approach, in energy terms and spatial terms, to delivering the mobility needs for large
numbers of people … when they are able to cooperate in their mobility (social and physical)
requirements.
But there is another equally, if not more, significant transition arising from the Level 4 Cultural
Bifurcation and which gives rise to a new more obvious symmetry breaking in the city form.
Level 1 cooperative interaction represents the exchange of materials and this eventually
leads to the formation of a central market place within an evolving city. Level 4 cooperative
interactions are also focussed on instantaneous exchanges between people (in contrast to
the non-instantaneous nature of Level 2 and 3 interactions). At Level 4 the object of
exchange is information and this too happens most effectively in a centralised location. The
consequence of the Level 4 transition is therefore a step-change increase in the intensity of
activity and interactions taking place at a city centre. In fact this becomes so intense that it
causes the city centre to splinter. The result is the poly-centric or poly-nodal city form that we
appreciate in the modern era. (Many, if not most, big Western cities now manifest a core
surrounded by numerous other centres. Some big cities have even splintered to the extent of
no longer having an identifiable singular centre.)
When this splintering occurs and when it happens successfully together with the appearance
of public transport systems, the idealised outcome is the nested hierarchic, poly-centric city.
The symmetry of a singular centre for the city is now broken. We now see a city with a
multitude of well-connected, yet competing (they are all generalised), urban centres,
experiencing large flows of people and information between them.

Step 7 – From Connected City to Creative (or Sustainable) City
Looking forwards from where we are today, at first the different urban centres within the wider
city all compete directly in terms of the role they play in the wider city, particularly with respect
to its knowledge economy (compare the direct competition between, for example, the City in
London and Canary Wharf). But again, this competition leads to division and the expectation
is that as time progresses these different centres take on well-differentiated characters, in
particular in terms of the roles they play in the entire creativity of the city, providing different
specialisms, skills and competencies to the overall benefit of the whole metropolis.
Eventually one would expect to see sufficient diversification between these urban centres that
creative cooperation can begin to appear. Eventually the truly sustainable city could be
likened to living systems, where the different urban centres within become analogous to the
organs of an organism, or different parts of the brain within a human. Only then will we see
truly creative and thence sustainable cities. Rather than being a polycentric city, we see a
multi-functional city, expressed in spatial form.
Reality Check
So much for the idealised city. No city has ever actually evolved precisely according to the
sequence of Steps described above. And yet… And yet, there is a sense to this chronology.
If you consider the evolution of European cities over the last 1,000 years, from the point at
which Bruges (in the north) and Venice (in the south) both appeared on the map and began
the slow process of rebuilding Europe out of the Dark Ages, then the general themes
described above have taken place, in approximately the chronological order described and
our cities have grown along these lines. Radial road networks do naturally appear before
chord road networks. It was many centuries before real public spaces began to appear and
these preceded genuine public transport systems. A fast track way of seeing this process in
action is to consider the development of America’s cities – all of which expressed this
approximate development sequence, but in a vastly speeded up way.
The question stands, however, as to why, throughout civilisation, have cities not simply
followed this development scenario. Why has it actually taken so long to reach our current
level of development? Why did it not happen more quickly? If the chronology outlined in this
Chapter were to represent the true path of human development within civilisation, then why
did so many civilisations fail or veer off this road less travelled?
It was suggested in Chapter 1 that whatever theory was the outcome of my intellectual
journey, such theory needed to be that which is ‘downhill’, the natural way humanity develops
because people want and need it to happen that way. Yet observation of history indicates
that while there have indeed been progressions known as Modernity (expressed here as

Level 1 Process – Birth) and Division of Labour (Level 2), for starters, the path of human
development has not always been a happy one. Learning to tame our inherent animal
competitveness in a civilised way has not always happened easily. Rather, cities have
frequently gone down unsustainable development paths and subsequently failed. In Jared
Diamond’s words, from an outsider’s perspective civilisations have frequently seemingly
‘chosen’ to self-destruct.
By and large it would seem that the most significant route to failure arises from a loss of
competition. At each Step identified earlier a situation can arise where the initial competition
that drives development leads to a winnning, dominant component of society, to the detriment
of everyone else. There are also other ways in which civilisations can stall in their
development, always arising from lapses in competition. For instance competition might
achieve a stalemate and slow down development or an abundance of resources might cause
a temporary cessation of competiton. The following paragraphs provide a few examples
where failure or a stalling of development might arise.
At the very beginning, Step 1, where there is the potential for the creation of the small proto-
city and the first breaking of symmetry, symmetry across the landscape might be restored by
all the tribes starting to trade equally between them and all tribes consequently becoming
more sedentry. The outcome is the neolithic situation of tribal encampments scattered across
the landscape. This would be a new symmetrical situation, with a landscape of point nodes
rather than larger tribal territories. The reason why this would stall development is because
no neolithic village would likely provide manufactured products which are sufficiently
differentiated from any other to enable any one village to ween itself off direct reliance on the
landscape. As with the tribes before, evolution of human society would still take place but at
a much slower rate than if a proper city were to appear.
At Step 3, when the market place forms in a city centre to create a trading city, then if one
family manages to become the dominant, exclusive operator in the market place and ousts all
competition, then that trading family unit will come to control all the material flows in and out
of the city. All manufacturing families will be forced to trade through that controlling trading
family. This will inevitably stifle competition and creativeness to develop new products for
export. True development essentially stops. Instead the city will naturally follow down a route
of creating an elite, often in due course a religious elite, who control the energy flows through
and energy stores within the city.
At Step 4, when manufacturing families would otherwise turn inside-out allowing the creation
of a competitive business economy, then there is the potential for the formation of a single
bureaucracy, covering the whole of a society. Instead of a whole raft of competing
bureaucracies, a society becomes a single bureacratic entity – an autocracy. Again, internal

competition becomes stifled, which causes a cessation of creativity. The city and any society
dependent upon it effectively ceases to develop.
The autocratic society containing a single bureaucracy can develop further, but in a way
which is ultimately a dead end. For example, when the vertical social bonds arising from
Social Process 2 (Growth) weaken relative to the horizontal bonds of reproducing family and
community arising from Social Process 3 (Health), then the bureaucracy can morph into a
caste or class system and ultimately apartheid and slavery. A different type of caste or class
system can arise when the Step 5 transition goes awry – something that we have yet to
observe. In this outcome the needs of a certain layer of society, such as middle-aged
working people, come to be placed in total priority over other groups in society, such as
children, youths and the aged. It is this type of inequitable society, which we are seeing begin
to appear in Britain, where much of the benefits of society are clearly geared towards the
working population to the detriment of both our children and our elders.
In all these circumstances, a key outcome is the stifling of creativity in a society. The
consequence of a non-creative city is that it stops adapting to and responding to its context –
the wider world economy, the wider civilised society and the wider environment. This
automatically puts the city at odds with this wider context. Instead of acting synergistically,
the city starts to compete against its own hinterland on which it is dependent for its survival.
This is the reason why, as Lewis Mumford recorded, throughout history cities have developed
through trade or by conquest. A most obvious example in history of a city which started on
the right path but seriously erred was Rome; and as a consequence Rome eventually fell.
(We will explore Rome’s rise and fall in further detail in Chapter 15). The failure of cities to be
sufficiently creative is the root cause of our current global environmental problems. Our cities
around the world, particularly in the developed world, are simply not sufficiently responding to
the signals of environmental change (mostly degradation) around them. Throughout history
this has always proven to be an unsustainable path of development.
The singular solution is to learn how to make our cities creative. But, as noted earlier in this
chapter, this requires fundamental changes in how we organise our societies. It is a lot easier
said than done – it is a road less travelled. For a whole society to be creative requires
evolution of that society towards ever-increasing numbers of people in that society self-
actualising (meeting their Level 5 Needs). There inevitably being a degree of hierarchy to
Maslow’s Needs, this in turn requires that most of the population are meeting their lower
Needs too. All this requires us to learn to interact with each other in more civilised ways,
which as we have seen has major implications for the manner in which society is structured.
It may be a downhill process, towards which we might eventually evolve, but en route the
direction of travel has to fight against all those vested interests that appear within society,
those social hierarchies where one person or group of people has it better than another. But

this collective road less travelled is something along which we Need to navigate, or else, as
Jane Jacobs noted in her final book, we are destined to revert to a new Dark Age.
Dunbar, R. (1998). Grooming, Gossip and the Evolution of Language, Harvard University
Press.
Mead, M. and K. Heyman (1965). Family. New York, Macmillan.
i
I have used the term “tribe” in the way that it is generally understood within our language.
More technically within the field of anthropology, I should probably be using the word “band”.

Chapter 14 – Intellectual Roots Page 1 of 18 10/6/10
Chapter 14 – Intellectual Roots
Introduction
The aim of this chapter is to ground the theory of social interaction in our intellectual heritage.
The middle chapters of this book (Chapters 8 to 13) have been intentionally light on
referencing for a reason. In Chapter 2 it was posited that the theory put forward in this book
can be likened to an autostereogram (3-D image hidden beneath a random dot picture). In
this case the theory of social interaction represents a coherent and comprehensive framework
for the social sciences, which is hidden within the current multitude of ideas and theories that
exist across the various scientific silos. To seek to demonstrate the theory’s validity and
compatibility to extant thinking cannot be done in the normal scientific sense of asking a
discrete question of nature, designing an experiment and then empirically observing the
response. Rather it is more like a fingerprint matching or facial recognition exercise. The
task is to identify as many elements as possible where this theory matches and corroborates
existing accepted notions of how the world works. Some of these will be anecdotal, others
based on hard empirical research. There is no single area of work which can be used to
prove or disprove the emergent framework of Social Processes.
To endeavour to undertake such a matching exercise in the space of one chapter means that
I can only scratch the surface of where this theory of social interaction correlates with existing
intellectual ideas and accepted thinking. I have therefore sought to concentrate on the most
influential people and insights that have occurred over the last 200 or so years. I have been
able to do little more than provide pointers; to provide detailed discussion would require an
entire separate book. There will be many other areas where this theory confirms or
challenges existing preconceptions and rather than seek to set them out in the book, a
website has been prepared (www.theoryofsocialinteraction.blogspot.com) to enable a more
interactive forum for discussion and to enable everyone and anyone to participate in a debate
which will eventually either provide further foundations for this work or tear it apart. I am
myself struggling with the breadth of issues that this work addresses and raises and to this
end believe (in the spirit of the Level 4 Adaptation Process) that from hereon it must be a
more collaborative exercise engaging a multitude of different technical specialisms.
Given that this theory of social interaction suggests a contiguous picture of human
development, where our existing intellectual legacy represents a melee of different ideas but
no unifying framework, I have chosen to use the theory presented here to structure this
chapter. As a proponent, I have only sought at this time to present ideas and facts, which
seem to corroborate the theory. I leave it to others to point out where it seems to fall down.

It is probably impossible to prove this theory of social interaction. In fact I would suggest that
the closer it may be to reality, the more difficult it might be to prove – akin to the apparent
difficulty within the psychological sciences to prove or disprove Maslow’s Hierarchy thesis.
This does not worry me on the grounds of the proposition of Karl Popper that it is impossible
to prove any scientific theory. It is only possible to disprove things. The question is whether
this theory is better than what currently exists – not that, as noted above, there is any existing
contiguous, broadly accepted, theory of human development. This really means that the
challenge for any reader is to decide whether or not they feel that this theory neatly ties
together all those heretofore disconnected ideas in economics, sociology, anthropology,
psychology and other disciplines, observation of our collective history and daily experience of
life. If yes, then adopt this theory and build on it. If no, then how and why? If marginally
wrong, are the principles correct but misinterpreted by myself? And if majorly wrong, then I
am sorry I wasted your time – I hope at least that you enjoyed the read, the intellectual ride.
The Challenge
The challenge posed at the start of this book was to identify a theory of human development
that might be applicable to human societies – anytime, anywhere. Given the fractured and
siloed nature of the existing social sciences and seeming dissociation from the natural and
physical sciences, then this seemed a long-shot. Hopefully, however, by this point you will
have come to appreciate that, daunting as it might be, it may not be an impossible ask. By
the end of this chapter I would further hope that you will be broadly convinced that this theory
of social interaction more than adequately represents a step in the direction of a unified
theory.
If the theory is broadly correct, it leads to the inescapable realisation that it might represent
the hint of something which transcends the social sciences altogether. If applicable to
humans anytime, anywhere, then it is not just a theory of the development of civilisation, but
actually a theory of the progress of humanity – the evolution of mankind. And if that is correct
then this theory really represents a step towards a general theory of evolution. That,
however, is beyond the scope of this book (and will be addressed further in the AfterWord).
The key point that I am trying to make is that there is no fundamental reason why it should not
be possible to formulate such a theory for the social sciences. Mankind, unless you are a
creationist or other, is not above scientific investigation. In the biological sciences, Darwin’s
evolution theory is broadly accepted as something which ties the whole natural sciences
together, yet gives little indication of the future state, nor real direction of development, of an
ecosystem. But Darwin’s theory does help to understand the historic path taken by
components of any particular ecosystem … well, to a degree. If mankind is not above

scientific analysis and explanation, then any successful theory of the progress of civilisation
must necessarily infer, if not actually have, wider application.
This theory of social interaction falls into the same category of explanatory philosophy and
science as Darwin’s theory of evolution. It enables explanation of past events and gives
clues as to the future possibilities. But it by no means dictates the future, nor envisions any
particular utopias for human society. It just says: “this appears to be what is happening, how
the engine of human society works”. The rest is up to us to decide our own collective path.
Construction of the Theory of Social Interaction
Here follows a fast recap of the build-up of this theory with some additional pointers where
these ideas correlate with established or well-respected exploratory thinking.
We started with the unavoidable observation that we are each one of us individual beings;
this is something which is well established in our day-to-day experience of life and in our
philosophical heritage. Though we may normally be social animals, one can in theory extract
a human being from society and keep that individual alive, separate from society. He or she
may gradually go mad (at least from the perspective of those from whom he or she has been
been removed). But that person would still be alive and seemingly functioning and surviving.
Any general theory for the social sciences has to embrace at least our potential for
individuality, if not our very real, at least perceived, personal experience of being individuals.
As an individual within society, each of us experiences at the very least some basic Needs.
To stay alive we need continual access to air to breathe, water to drink and food to eat for
energy – all three factors (oxygen, water and sugars) are required for us to expend energy.
No matter how comfortable or squalid our personal existence, without these essentials we
would each die. No negotiation. These Needs are absolute – they do not vary over time or
space; they are a biological fact of living organisms. To remain alive we Need them. Side-
by-side with these material Needs, there is another set of equally important Needs (easily
forgotten, but absolutely essential), some of which must be fulfilled for us to maintain
sentience. We have to experience the universe around us. Without sensations, experiencing
our environment through our senses, an individual human probably eventually undergoes
brain death and certainly experiences severe psychological damage. Mind and body both
have to “feed” on (or perhaps more accurately interact with) the physical universe to remain
alive. Various experiments in the field of psychology and empirical research done on those
put in solitary confinement all point towards the detrimental effect on the human being from
sensory deprivation (Solomon, Leiderman et al. 1957; Lasagna and Germoglio 2002).

Turning to the latest thinking on energetics in the biological sciences, John Whitfield provides
a very readable summary of the latest understanding of energetics within biological and
ecological systems (Whitfield 2006). It is apparent that all living creatures have Needs that
extend beyond the immediate (second-to-second) energetic requirements. Organisms must
have the ability to grow and develop structure. This requires of their environment that the
energy available is more than just the absolute bare minimum to sustain existence because
growth is an energy intensive process. More pointedly, to be able to grow, requires a degree
of stability or continuity in energy supplies from the environment: in other words, security of
supply of energy. When energy fluctuates dramatically, beyond a reasonable background
variation, then this hinders the growth of an organism because any spare, saved, energy
must be dedicated towards seeking out new energy rather than expended on growth and
structural development (Kooijman 2000).
Beyond security of energy supply, individual organisms must be capable of reproduction.

This may not necessarily be critical for an individual in the short term, but it is essential for the
continuance of a species. For the individual to reproduce requires maintaining a satisfactory
degree of health (successful functioning of the unique and individual biological system) at
least up to the point of successful reproduction and, in the human case, successful rearing of
off-spring. Darwin himself is perhaps the best reference for this observation.
Humans, being living organisms, experience these three essential Needs no more and no
less then any other living thing: (1) immediate energy from and interaction with the
environment to remain alive in the present; (2) stability in or security of energy supply to
enable growth and remain alive into the near-term future; and (3) a healthy environment, an
environment to which the individual is evolutionarily adapted, to enable maintenance of health
and thence the capacity for reproduction over the longer term. With a minor tweak to his
original thesis, these three absolute and irrefutable Needs correlate to the first three Needs of
Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Human Needs. Which he coincidently developed through
observation of monkeys.
The hypothesis that to understand human society one must start by appreciating the Needs of
the individual is not new. There is clearly Maslow himself (Maslow 1968); though he never
sought to extend his ideas beyond that of the individual. Two other highly respected social
scientists, both still alive and kicking as I write, have built their academic careers on the
general Needs hypothesis: Burton (Burton 1990) and Max Neef (Max Neef 1991). In both
cases they have started with Maslow’s Hierarchy and then sought to extend it to include
additional Needs as a means to fit the notion of Needs of the individual with their personal
observations of humans in a social context. In adding other Needs to Maslow’s original
supposition, both Burton and Max Neef have arguably strayed beyond absolute Needs to
relative Wants. The consequence of which is that both thinkers have gone down an

intellectual path which prevents generalisation of their ideas beyond the immediate cultural
environments which they themselves have observed or experienced. They can no longer be
applied to anytime, anywhere.
As further corroboration of the approach taken here, it can be quickly seen that by
considering mind and body as having connected, but differently expressed, Needs then
several of the other Needs that were proposed by both Burton and Max Neef appear
automatically without requiring separate invention: for example, the need for an individual to
have an identity. By appreciating the tripartite nature of being human, the Identity Need
appears an inherent part of Level 1 Material Needs and not a separate Need.
While Burton and Max Neef have sought to create practical frameworks from the Needs
hypothesis, there has also been a more philosophic stream of argument which was initiated in
1987 by Braybrooke (Braybrooke 1987). This was elaborated by Doyal and Gough (Doyal
and Gough 1991) in the early 1990s and again taken forward more recently by Brock (Brock
2005). In all cases, the proponents have argued that the advantage of relying on basic
Needs is that, although not completely free of ambiguity, such Needs are sufficiently clear to
allow consensus within the social sciences and provide a sufficient degree of objectivity to
enable scientific investigation. A key aspect of Doyal and Gough’s views on Human Needs is
the importance of autonomy as a fundamental Need: in their view as important as the three
already noted above.
Superficially it is not immediately obvious that Doyal and Gough’s autonomy actually
corresponds directly with Maslow’s fourth Need in his Hierarchy – that of self-esteem and
self-respect. To appreciate this connection one must return to the recognition, noted a few
paragraphs earlier, that human beings have both mental and physical Needs, which sit side-
by-side. At Maslow’s Level 1, the body Needs energy, the mind Needs experiences. At Level
2, a degree of continuity in both energy and experiences is required: when the individual is
bombarded by extreme and absent experiences he or she can become quite unsettled, no
more or less than when food availability becomes erratic. At Level 3, the body Needs a
healthy environment to remain healthy itself, while the mind Needs its experience of the
universe to be conducive to maintaining a healthy mind. Clearly there is a degree of
subjectivity as to what a healthy mind might be; in a social context it could probably be
construed to represent a human being who can live in society with other people (in other
words not becoming psychopathic and has the emotional capacity to rear children). And at
Level 4, Maslow’s self-esteem and self-respect are the mental requirements which parallel
the body’s Need for motion, mobility or, in Doyal and Gough’s terminology, autonomy.
Based on these arguments, Maslow’s Hierarchy of Human Needs seems to be a reasonable

starting point for any intellectual venture to explore the phenomenon of the individual in

society. A final substantiation of this approach is the recently emergent field of investigation
in the psychological sciences – positive psychology or happiness – together with the huge
literature base of books on “how to be happy”. Considering the various branches of research
in positive psychology (Myers 1993; Myers 2000), they seem (at least from my personal
reading) to sit comfortably within the general framework originally formulated by Maslow.
The Needs hypothesis then gives us a platform to work from, and on which we might build an
objective theory of the experience of the individual human being and way of explaining his or
her motivations and consequent actions. The next step is to put that human, with a discrete
and definable set of absolute Needs, into a social context. What happens? The unique step
taken on the intellectual journey presented in this book is to acknowledge that human beings
are individuals, who have evolved to be highly social animals. Whilst we are each individuals,
we spend most of our time in the company of others, interacting with those others. This
parallels the conclusion that Gary Runciman of Cambridge University has drawn through his
life-time analysis of the progress of and state of sociology (Runciman 2000).
Human Needs force individual humans each to act in the physical universe to seek to fulfil
those Needs in order to remain alive (and to remain happy with being alive). In a social
context such action becomes interaction. So, our personal Needs drive us to interact with
others. This equates directly to Georg Simmel’s initial hypothesis and what he considered to
be the scientific project for sociology (Simmel 1949). Another close line of historical thinking
that I have found to substantiate this step is the early philosophical works which preceded the
now well-established discipline of social psychology, which as noted previously has strayed
away from its roots. The main inputs to this line of thought were the ideas of Mead and other
contemporaries, later followed up by the French philosopher Levinas. Both Mead (Mead
Project ; Mead 1938) and Levinas (Levinas 2006) have suggested that the individual human
being cannot develop his or her identity without interaction with other human beings. The
theory of social interaction presented here concurs with this argument by suggesting that
identity is a fundamental Need of the mind, where that Need can only be adequately satisfied
through interaction with others. By extension the same applies for all our Needs, both
physical and mental.
Having made this step, there is an immediate realisation that comes from it. In each and
every situation where there is an opportunity for or requirement for interaction, we can each in
theory decide whether to act in such a way that mutual Needs are met (Needs fulfilled for the
two or more interacting people) or act individually such that only our own Needs are met. In
its most severe form, this individual action represents acting selfishly and results in denying
the other party or parties fulfilment of their own Needs. This gives two extreme positions –
acting cooperatively or competitively – with there clearly being an extensive grey scale in
between.

This dualism between acting selfishly or mutually is instrumental to this entire theory of social
interaction. For the full theory to be a valid approach to understanding human societies and
the progress of civilisation, one would expect this duality to be embedded deep within human
culture. It is, and it is not hard to find. It underpins the concepts of good and evil, ying and
yang, dark and light and so on. These constructs and dualistic variations on the theme are
intrinsic components of many human cultures past and present, for the simple reason that, as
suggested by this theory of social interaction, they represent an essential part of everyday life
for each and everyone of us operating in a social context. Even if deemed anecdotal
evidence, this observation provides strong support that the theory presented here at this point
of formulation maps well against our human experience of society.
The next key step on this intellectual journey feels like an automatic progression. It is to
suggest that the proposed five fundamental Needs, derived and adapted from Maslow’s
original hierarchy, motivate people to act in subtly different ways to seek to fulfil each of those
Needs. This will cause there to be a set of differentiable interactions. For instance, two
people interacting cooperatively to meet their mutual Material Needs behave differently to two
people interacting cooperatively to meet their mutual Reproduction Needs. This gives us,
assuming we have started with an objective and irreducible set of Human Needs, five
characterisable forms of interaction. Seen from an individualistic perspective, these might be
translated as five identifiable types of social action by the individual in a social context.
The established precedent for pursuing this line of thinking is the works of one of the most
famous and most revered sociologists – Max Weber (Weber 1978). Weber posited four
different types of social action, which to varying degrees correlate to those arising from the
emerging framework presented here. (For instance, Weber’s zweckrational social action and
Social Process 2 type interaction, which underlies the formation of bureaucracies, correlate
extremely well). More importantly than the degree of similarity between the five forms of
social interaction and Weber’s Ideal Types is the notion of the Ideal Type itself. As Weber
proposed, and the theory here suggests, underlying the complexity of real life, there is a
discrete set of Ideal Types of interaction. In each and every real interaction in the real world,
these five Ideal Types will be expressed to varying degrees. It might in practice be difficult to
deconstruct any particular meeting or sustained interaction (relationship) between people, but
in theory one could identify the relative contribution from each Ideal Type to that interaction:
say 40% Material Needs, 30% Security, 10% Reproduction, 15% Respect and 5%
Recognition. Weber’s approach thereby sets a precedent for the notion of the Ideal Type of
social action, or as proposed here social interaction.
Logically the manner in which one person decides to act – (a) selfishly (one extreme), (b)
individually, (c) collaboratively (exchange) or (d) collaboratively (sharing) (opposite extreme) –
must strongly influence how others around also act or interact. If there are only two of us, if I

choose to act individually, then you are forced to do so too. And both exchange and sharing
can clearly only take place by mutual consent. As we expand this appreciation to larger
groups of people, we begin to see that a group of interacting social animals (tribe, community,
whole society) can only function effectively if they generally all act or interact in a similar way.
This gives us the emergence of large scale patterns of behaviour extending across the whole
of a social system. This further differentiates one social unit from another. As this framework
is ‘worked up’ it becomes apparent that these interaction types come to define the boundaries
between social units, whether in a nested sense (sharing family within exchanging
community) or a spatially or temporally separated sense (mutually exclusive communities in
space or time). As we discovered in Chapters 9 and 10, societies operating under different
legal systems (codes of conduct) are mutually exclusive in space, where communities with
religious or ceremonial difference are mutually exclusive in time (but can occupy the same
space). I recognise that there is scant precedence for this line of thinking anywhere in our
intellectual history. It should be treated as a prediction for future examination and
investigation. It does, however, correlate in certain ways with Cultural Theory, which is
discussed in more detail in a moment.
The conclusion of this is that it is possible to analyse the interactions taking place between
people and categorise them into Ideal Types. For example, the activity of tea drinking
ceremonies, whether green tea in China, the very precise tea ceremonies of Japan or English
Breakfast tea drunk with extremely delicate china in Victorian England, are all most probably
Level 3 (Nurture) sharing interactions: “I share tea, displaying a capacity to provide for you
and empathise with your thirst, and at the same time demonstrate my nurture capabilities to
carry out a precise ceremony and look after these delicate objects” – the more delicate and
intricate the ritual, the better. By this means, this framework can be used objectively to
examine and compare the real economies, the social structures and the cultures within
different societies.
Beyond Weber’s writings on the concept of Ideal Types, I have not been able to find any
historical intellectual thinking which can be construed to underpin this line of thought – in
particular the notion of there being discrete sets of actions or interactions associated with
defined Human Needs. This then represents a key element of novelty in this theory of social
interaction and I rely entirely on logical argument and life experience to justify the approach
taken.
A reason why there is no direct link between this aspect of the theory and our intellectual
heritage is quite explicable. Ever since Adam Smith set out the initial explanation for free
market economics and trade, economics as a science has sought to focus almost entirely on
issues related to material exchange (and more recently information exchange). Both of
these, we discovered are instantaneous interactions, with a tendency to break social bonds

rather than make them. Economics then has been conceived as the science of Social
Process 1 (Birth) and confined itself to matters where obvious objects or services
(information) are exchanged and where there is no obvious (or seemingly permanent) social
structure involved or emerging from the interactions. Sociology, anthropology and thinking on
culture and management sciences have then sought to fill the gap remaining – every other
aspect of human society and primarily where there are obvious emergent social structures. In
this respect the conventional structure of the silos in the social sciences (including
economics) are essentially horizontal, linking themselves to the felt and perceived social
processes. Where the theory of social interaction differs and makes a revolutionary break
with the past is to suggest that such existing scientific silos are fundamentally misconceived.
Rather economic factors, social factors and cultural factors actually infuse each and every
aspect of our lives and cannot and should not be separated out in the way that the sciences
have attempted to do so for over 200 years.
If this theory of social interaction has real merit, the inference is that the social sciences would
need to reconstitute themselves more according to a matrix. Some specialists focusing on
discrete Social Processes and other specialists focusing on identity/personality, economics,
social structure or culture across all the Processes. Making such a revolutionary break with
the past, I would consider myself to be operating in the ‘cold’ if it were not for the contribution
of Gary Becker, a Noble Prize Winner in economics. Becker has spent much of his career
challenging existing notions in economics and, through empirical research, has shown that
economic issues do indeed pervade every aspect of our lives (Becker 1976; Becker 1992;
Becker and Murphy 2001).
I believe that this gives us a reasonably firm platform to work from. The hypothesis arising
from this theory is that for each of the interaction Ideal Types, identified through the Human
Needs concept, there can be expected to be an economic dimension (an exchange of energy
of some form), a social dimension (the creation or dissolution of structure within society,
where the latter essentially represents enduring relationships of repeated energy exchanges
between individuals) and a cultural dimension (the manifest and peculiar way in which energy
comes to be exchanged within a particular society). This will no doubt be far too energy
focussed for the average sociologist; yet it is perhaps timely in our modern era of concern
over energy availability to finally create a proper intellectual link between the social sciences
and thermodynamics. Even if sociologists and anthropologists find this a step too far (for the
time being), I at least hope that the economists will appreciate the potential of this way of
thinking to enable them to provide better explanation for the whole of human society and not
just the market place.
The penultimate step in the process of creating this theory has been to draw on the empirical
work arising from social psychology – the relationship between behaviour and attitude. While

the interaction between attitude and behaviour is becoming well established within social
psychology (Myers 2000), the manner in which I have selected to use this relationship to
underpin this theory is again seemingly novel. Rather than try to justify the approach taken, a
more effective way to substantiate this step of the journey is to consider the results, which
were set out in full for each Social Process in Chapters 8 to 12 (excepting Social Process 5
(Transformation) which I myself am still struggling to understand). The remainder of this
chapter will endeavour to make that link between predictions arising from the theory of social
interaction and established thinking.
The final step of theory formation has been to revert back to Mead and his contempories
drawing on their ideas of symbolic interactionism. This area of social psychology has been
used to suggest that the way we learn to interact with people and the behaviours and
attitudes that arise strongly determines how we interact with the animate (living non-human)
and the inanimate universe. To my knowledge little in the way of practical use has previously
been made of these philosophical ponderings by Mead and his contemporaries. So, using
symbolic interactionism in a practical way to develop a real theory of the progress of human
society is again seemingly novel. (But, as with all the steps on the journey, I have had to
cover so much ground that I may have missed huge areas of historic work, thinking and
empirical evidence. I would be much obliged to anyone for pointing out areas that I have
missed – whether supporting or seemingly contradictory to this theory).
So, to the Social Processes themselves and their consequences in terms of how they
influence the structure of society and the behaviours, attitudes and self-beliefs of individuals.
Notwithstanding the suggested re-orientation of the social sciences (!), how do these Social
Processes correlate to established, or at least well recognised, thinking and evidence?
Social Process 1 – Birth
Social Process 1, as theoretically formulated in Chapter 8, would give rise to a trend change
in society over time that parallels those observations made by philosophers and sociologists,
which have as a collection been given the monica Modernity (Giddens 1991). While Social
Process 4 (Adaptation) may have complicated and accentuated matters over the last couple
of centuries, it is Social Process 1 that most comfortably fits with the observations of
Modernity. This, in its own right, does not prove Social Process 1 to exist. As restated at the
outset of this Chapter, seeking to prove the existence of the predicted Social Processes
represents a finger-printing or facial recognition exercise. This simply provides one piece of
evidence that Social Process 1 (broadly as constructed here) might genuinely exist. As we
discovered in Chapter 8, Social Process 1 would give rise to a host of other trends and
characteristics within society beyond those that have been recognised to be associated with

Modernity. These have been especially evident over the last half century. We start with
liberal economics.
Over the past 200 years, human society has built up, through much theory and empirical
research, a field of science known as Economics. There are now many branches and
specialisms within this science, and if Social Process 4 is true and continues apace these will
continue to grow and splinter into ever more specialisms. The core of this new science
represents the concept of the free market and how it operates. While much mathematical
rigour has been added since, Adam Smith’s original construct still largely holds (Smith 1994).
If Social Process 1 were one of the drivers behind civilisation, then Adam Smith’s approach is
broadly the description one would expect of the physical (in time and space) manifestation of
that Process: division of the sourcing of materials (a core part of Smith’s construct),
exchange, trade and the market place all driven by individual Need. Furthermore it now
becomes apparent why economics is so readily converted into mathematical language. The
instantaneity of the social interactions underlying this Social Process make it easily
describable in statistical terms for exactly the same reason as the thermodynamics of ideal
gases are easily understood through relatively simple equations. Furthermore, it became
apparent to me as I worked up Social Process 1 that what I was working on was a Process
whose result was, to all intents and purposes, identical for the social or physical: equilibrium,
maximum entropy, atomised state with least structure and so on. While many have long
appreciated the apparent similarities between economic’s descriptions of the free market and
the physical sciences, none to-date have fully brought the two together. Hopefully, this theory
of social interaction may enable a better cross-fertilisation of thinking. The key starting point
is to appreciate that money is a proxy for energy; I have found little historic discourse on this
particular issue, though there is much discussion now to be found on the Internet on this very
supposition.
In addition there has for some time been a growing appreciation that liberal economics,
essentially the political ideology driven by Social Process 1 attitudes and associated cognitive
understanding, is analogous to Darwin’s theory of evolution: survival of the fittest in the
biological world paralleling survival of the fittest business operator (individual or company) in
the social world, driven by competition.
If Social Process 1 becomes strongly expressed in a society, then one would expect the
impact on individuals to be the experience of anomie (Emile Durkheim (Durkheim 1895)) and
anonymity (Richard Sennett (Sennett 1984)) as discussed in Chapter 8, together with the
promotion of highly extroverted, but shallow, personalities amongst individuals and behaving
increasingly opportunistically: people eventually fit the predicted mould and become Rational

Economic Men. This pattern of behaviour has recently been documented by Oliver James in
his linked books Affluenza and The Selfish Capitalist (James 2007; James 2008).
To round out the connection of Social Process 1 to our intellectual heritage, I make reference
to Francis Fukuyama’s book The End of History and The Last Man (Fukuyama 1992). We
saw in Chapter 8 that Social Process 1 causes a collapse of time onto the present and a loss
of all ideology. This is precisely what Fukuyama has noticed and what we seem to have been
experiencing for the last 50 or so years. Modern politicians no longer have any ideologies to
express; they live for the present, just like the rest of us.
Social Process 2 - Growth
It is with Francis Fukuyama that I start consideration of Social Process 2. There is a growing
body of literature, which has appeared over the last two decades focussing on the issue of
Trust. Fukuyama’s book, titled Trust (Fukuyama 1995), is perhaps the best known. Other
significant authors include David Landes (Landes 1998) and Paul Seabright (Seabright 2004).
Landes, a well respected Harvard professor of economics and history, has provided a body of
evidence that demonstrates that a key factor behind the success of industrial societies has
been the growth of trust in those societies. Seabright has further seen the important
behaviour accompanying the attitude of trust; he has considered in detail how trust depends
upon highly regulated behaviour amongst strangers.
To my mind, the most important historic work which corresponds to the predictions regarding
Social Process 2 is that of Weber’s creation and consideration of the concept of bureaucracy
(Weber 1947). Being familiar with Weber’s construct, I was acutely aware as I formulated
Social Process 2 and its manifestation in terms of social structures that the criticism could be
levelled that I was seeking a way to explain Weber’s observation. I see no way of avoiding
such criticism beyond stating that I was aware of its possibility and tried to free myself from
preconceptions while formulating my ideas. The result felt an entirely logical conclusion from
the method pursued. Furthermore, linking the appearance of Division of Labour arose
automatically from the approaches followed.
What has not been previously recognised is the political ideology that accompanies the
bureaucratic structure. This has come in more guises than the single ideology of freemarket
economics associated with Social Process 1. From Social Process 2 there is communism,
fascism, nationalism and various other –isms all of which relate to the creation of highly
hierarchical social systems, limitations on freedom and strongly defended geographic space.
Perhaps the strongest empirical evidence of Social Process 2 is our relatively recent lived
history – the industrial revolution. This period of our history is obviously the result of some
positive feedback process leading to exponential growth of structure – physical and social –

until some thresholds were reached. Looking at our history, simple correlations, such as the
maximum viable size of armies and the maximum stable size of businesses, all of a sudden
th
makes sense. The success of the UK in industry during the 19 century was equally played
out on the battlefield; as a society, the British manifested the strongest Trust Matrix during
that era, likewise the Romans two millennia before.
It was, of course, Karl Marx, who did recognise the existence of a positive feedback process,
which presented itself to him in the form of Capitalism: the rich get richer and the poor get
poorer. It was also Marx who first came to recognise the potential tensions between the
different social structures arising out of Social Processes 2 and 3, which was subsequently
th
played out through the union movement, starting from the late 19 century and running
th
throughout the 20 century.
Building on Weber’s description of bureaucracy, Talcott Parsons concluded that there are two
and only two fundamental forms of social structure within civilised society: instrumental (better
known as the bureaucratic form) and expressive (better known as the community) (Parsons
1937; Parsons 1964; Parsons, Shils et al. 2001). Parsons’ first presumed social structure fits
well with the predictions of the social structures arising from Social Process 2.
Social Process 3 - Health
The other of Parsons’ two structures, the expressive, corresponds to those structures
predicted to arise from Social Process 3.
th
In the latter half of the 20 century, Basil Bernstein and Mary Douglas endeavoured to build
upon Parsons’ deduction to create what they termed Cultural Theory (Douglas 1989;
Thompson, Ellis et al. 1990; Douglas 1992). This sought to describe these forms of social
structure in much more detail and to present them as orthogonal idealised forms. They have
suggested that any particular observed real social structure could be mapped on a plane
according to its characteristics in terms of low/high bureaucratic tendencies and low/high
community tendencies. This has been termed the grid version of cultural theory and has
been a very popular and extensively adopted theory within the social sciences in the latter
half of the twentieth century.
If the predictions in this book prove broadly correct, then there is a great deal of validity to the
cultural theory approach. Or put the other way round, the popularity of cultural theory
suggests that it is rooted in something real and experienced and since the theory of social
interaction accords with cultural theory, then this represents strong support for the new theory
now presented. The orthogonality of the two types of social structure may well exist in terms
of structure in space and structure in time. However, if the theory of social interaction does

prove to be accepted, it can be seen that Douglas and Bernstein have, in certain places in
their construction, confused the characteristics of these types of social structure between
each other and with the characteristics of other key social structures: the tribe and the market.
The final piece of evidence that I refer to, to support Social Process 3, is the independent
observations of both Charles Horton Cooley (Cooley 1918) and Georg Simmel (Simmel 1978)
regarding the concept of value. Both Cooley and Simmel deduced that value is the result of
some form of process arising from human interaction. But neither of them were able to
develop their basic observation beyond just that … an observation.
Social Processes 4 and 5
I have struggled to find any significant sociological or other works which encapsulate Social
Processes 4 and 5.
In respect of Social Process 4 I perceive that the intellectual projects of sociologists such as
Manual Castells (Castells 2000) and Saskia Sassen (Sassen 2002) are to understand better
the manifestations of Social Process 4. But the current global changes taking place, as a
result of Social Process 4, are happening at such an incredible pace and are so awe
inspiring, when you look into them, that seemingly all individuals focussing on this matter find
themselves at a loss for words to describe them.
In practice, it is to the world of management science that we have to turn to see an emerging
appreciation that there is another social structure, which is distinct from the bureaucracy or
the community and yet somehow fuses the two together (structure in time and space). But to-
date management science has been largely a practical discipline, so the work presented in
this book provides some of the first theoretical thinking that binds management science to
sociology and economics in a contiguous framework. Through following the method in
Chapters 8 to 12, I too, once I had ‘got my head round’ Social Process 4, found myself
reverting (at least mentally) to expletives. The reality is that this is all so knew that no one
has fully been able to encapsulate it yet.
As for Social Process 5, there is a growing body of literature on the creative city, for example
Charles Landry’s work (Landry 2000). But none yet seems to progress beyond a few
observations. From a very different perspective, I would suggest that Malcolm Gladwell,
creator of the term the Tipping Point, has started to grasp the measure of how we seek to
meet our Level 5 Needs to self-actualise and to succeed. In his latest book, Outliers
(Gladwell 2008), Gladwell suggests that human success comes from practice and the slow
development of deep understanding and honed skills through diligent and intense immersion

in something creative – mental, physical or more likely both – from writing to skiing and
beyond.
Five Social Processes – Macroscopic
I have already alluded to some areas of thought, such as Cultural Theory, which cut across
more than one Process. While recognising their anecdotal nature, there are two sources,
which transcend three of the identified Social Processes.
Firstly there was the French Revolution, the unforgettable mantra of which was Freedom,
Equality and Fraternity (Stephen 1873). Once one appreciates that Equality in the French
Revolution never envisaged the full degree of equality of people that we allude to now, but
rather the lesser aspiration of equality in the eyes of the law, then Equality in the French
Revolution directly reflects Social Process 2 (justice achieved through an equitably applied
trust matrix). Once I had realised this similarity between the French Revolutionary war-cry
and the outputs of Social Processes 1, 2 and 3 in order, I was for some time tempted to call
Social Process 3 “Fraternity”. But in the end, I decided to use a word with no political
baggage and no sexist undertones.
From a completely different perspective, I refer to the recent work of Joel Kotkin (Kotkin
2005). Kotkin’s book provides a fast and very readable run through the history of civilisation
and the role played by cities. He has concluded from his research that the most important
contributions that cities have provided to human civilisation have been (1) to be places for
trade, (2) to provide security and safety for societies and (3) to represent religious centres.
Again, Social Processes 1, 2 and 3 …
Five Social Processes – Microscopic
I come finally to what I consider to be the ‘coup de grace’, which fully justifies the intellectual
journey that I have travelled. Throughout this journey, I have skirted around the core of the
subject of psychology. Much consideration was given in the early chapters to humanistic
psychology, positive psychology and social psychology, but not the core parts of this
discipline. Until the end …
In Spring 2008 the New Scientist ran an article on Personality written by Daniel Nettle from
York University. Having recently fully operationalised the framework, I had just completed
first drafts of Chapters 8 through to 12 of this book. As I read the New Scientist article my jaw
dropped, my heartbeat quickened and my breath became short and shallow. I read it again
and then as soon as I arrived home ordered from Amazon Nettle’s book of the same name,
Personality (Nettle 2007). And waited impatiently for it to arrive.

In his book, Daniel Nettle has provided a précis of 100 years of empirical research and
associated academic thought in the field of the core project of psychology and understanding
of the nature and character of human personality. He sets out what has emerged as a
growing general appreciation across the discipline. Through 100 years of empirical testing, it
is now apparent that the human being can be explained according to five quite distinct and
defineable dimensions of personality. These are (1) degree of extroversion, (2) degree of
agreeableness, (3) degree of neuroticism, (4) degree of conscientiousness and (5) degree of
openness. These are summed up in Nettle’s book on Personality with the following table of
the “Five Factor Model” (rows have been re-arranged):
Dimension High scorers are … Low scorers are …

1. Extraversion Outgoing, enthusiastic Aloof, quiet
2. Agreeableness Trusting, empathetic Uncooperative, hostile
3. Neuroticism Prone to stress and worry Emotionally stable
4. Conscientiousness Organised, self-directred Spontaneous, careless
5. Openness Creative, imaginative, Practical, conventional
eccentric
The terminology is very different, but …
The theory that I had just operationalised and written out predicted that a human being
growing up in a social context would, through five Ideal Types of interaction, experience five
fundamental influences on the development of his or her identity, ultimately leading that
individual to have and to express five different dimensions of identity. But much more than
the number five being a coincidence, on reading Nettle’s book it became quite apparent that
my theoretically predicted five types of identity dovetailed neatly with Nettle’s empirically
deduced five dimensions of personality, correlating according to the numbering attributed to
them in the above table. They correspond to a level, which is uncanny and impossible to
ignore or deny.
To my mind at least, I had reached a situation where theoretical prediction and empirical
evidence collided, beautifully. Intellectual journey complete … well, at least a nice staging
post reached … to publish and share the insights with others …
The remaining two chapters of this book represent a little exploration into some of the
consequences of this new theory of social interaction for social and economic policy and
some thoughts on the wider application of this theory.

Becker, G. (1976). The Economic Approach to Human Behaviour, University of Chicago

Press.
Becker, G. (1992). The Economic Way of Looking at Life. Nobel Prize Lecture.
Becker, G. and K. Murphy (2001). Social Economics: Market Behaviour in a Social

Environment, Harvard University Press.
Braybrooke, D. (1987). Meeting Needs. Princeton, Princeton University Press.
Brock, G. (2005). Needs and Global Justice. In the Philosophy of Need. S. Reader.
Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. 57: 51-72.
Burton, J. (1990). Conflict: Resolution and Prevention, St Martin's Press.
Castells, M. (2000). Rise of the Network Society, Wiley-Blackwell.
Cooley, C. H. (1918). Social Process, Charles Scribner's Sons.
Douglas, M. (1989). "Background of the Grid Dimension." Sociological Analysis 50(2): 171-6.
Douglas, M. (1992). Risk and Blame: Essays in Cultural Theory. London, Routledge.
Doyal, L. and I. Gough (1991). A Theory of Human Need. London, MacMillan Education.
Fukuyama, F. (1992). The End of History and the Last Man, Free Press.
Fukuyama, F. (1995). Trust, Free Press.
Giddens, A. (1991). Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age,
Polity Press.
Gladwell, M. (2008). Outliers - the Story of Success, Little, Brown and Co.
James, O. (2007). Affluenza, Vermilion.
James, O. (2008). The Selfish Capitalist, Vermilion.
Kooijman, S. (2000). Dynamic Energy and Mass Budgets in Biological Systems, Cambridge
University Press.
Kotkin, J. (2005). The City: A Global History, Modern Library.
Landes, D. S. (1998). The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why are some so rich and others
so poor? New York, W. W. Norton.
Landry, C. (2000). The Creative City: A Toolkit for Urban Innovators, Earthscan.

Levinas, E. (2006). Humanism of the Other, University of Illinois Press.
Max Neef, M. (1991). Human Scale Development. New York and London, Apex Press.

Myers, D. G. (1993). The Pursuit of Happiness, Haper Paperbacks.
Nettle, D. (2007). Personality: what makes you the way you are. Oxford, Oxford University
Press.
Sassen, S. (2002). Global Network, Linked Cities, Routledge.
University Press.
Sennett, R. (1984). Edited and introductory essay by Richard Sennett, Simon and Schuster.
Simmel, G. (1949). "The Sociology of Sociability." American Journal of Sociology 55(3): 254-
261.
Simmel, G. (1978). The Philosophy of Money, Routledge.
Smith, A. (1994). The Wealth of Nations, Modern Library.
Stephen, J. F. (1873). Liberty, Equality, Fraternity. London, Smith, Elder & Co.
Thompson, M., R. Ellis, et al. (1990). Cultural Theory. Boulder, Westview Press.
Weber, M. (1947). The Theory of Social and Economic Organisation. London, Collier
Macmillan Publishers.
Weber, M. (1978). Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology, University of

California Press.
Henry Press.

Chapter 15 – The Making of Civilised Man Page 1 of 21 10/6/10
Chapter 15 – The Making of Civilised Man
In Chapter 2 it was briefly mentioned how the mainstream of the scientific discipline of
sociology entirely negates the existence of social evolution, social progress, development or
whatever you wish to call it. While there are leading thinkers around who do believe that
social evolution has taken place and are actively researching this subject area, for instance
Garry Runciman from Cambridge University, for the most part those in sociology appear to
consider social or cultural evolution to be void ideas: social change – yes, evolution – no. As
stated in Chapter 3, this is largely because the extant established frameworks of both
functionalism and structuralism simply do not allow evolution to take place. At the same time
thinkers in economics do more readily accept that development (if not evolution) happens.
But, with the demise of the Washington Consensus, the economists are seemingly at a loss
as to what economic development, or for that matter any sort of development, really means.
Through Chapters 6 to 12 and especially in Chapter 13, I have sought to show that through
the use of the concept of ‘process’ it is indeed possible to construct a framework that allows
for, indeed requires, that social evolution take place. Such alternative way of thinking opens
our eyes to a social world in continual flux, where change is the norm, in contrast to the
concocted frameworks of both structuralism and functionalism, which endeavour to structure
our world and treat change as the exception. In this Chapter, I will seek to use the
framework, the theory of social interaction, to provide some further understanding of the
manner in which social and cultural evolution takes place, sometimes before our very eyes.
A key part of this is to understand better the notion of ‘empathy’ and how we appear
collectively to use this human ability to facilitate the development of our societies. When I
was formulating the theory, I originally thought that empathy was the Attitude that ran with the
Level 3, Health and Reproduction, Ideal Type Interaction. But as the whole system of Social
Processes revealed themselves to me, I began to realise that empathy was something, which
must follow through all the Ideal Types of cooperative interaction. In the following discussion,
I have been fairly loose in my use of the term empathy, straying into territory such as Theory
of the Mind, which to me seems to be closely connected with the concept of empathy.
(Theory of the Mind is essentially the human ability to appreciate that other individuals see
the world from a different perspective. Children normally gain the first step of Theory of the
Mind at around the age of 4, leading quickly to a very observable step change in how they
interact with each other and the world around. When your son or daughter hides under their
duvet with their feet sticking out, kicking and says ‘You can only see my legs’, you know he or
she has achieved a first step along that vital stage of mental development and is unlikely to
be autistic.)

To tell the story of cultural evolution, we first go back around 2,000 years to the Coliseum in
Rome in all its originally glory (or is that gory?). I have written this and the next Chapter in a
way that presumes the theory of social interaction is correct: so please forgive the very
presumptuous knowledge of the past, of which I clearly I have no direct experience.
Does Human Society Progress?
Let us step inside Dr Who’s mythical time machine and travel back 2,000 years and land the
blue police box surreptitiously in a dark alleyway in Ancient Rome (not incongruous at all). As
we step out we would find ourselves in a very, very different world to the one we live in now.
There would clearly be the superficial differences. No one would have a mobile phone, nor
ipod. There would be none of those life-easing gadgets of modern society that we are
coming to take for granted, but all of which consume energy one way or another. Clothing
would be far simpler – a tunic or cloak held round with a chord or belt: few fidgety buttons to
worry about. But all these observable factors would only be on the surface, and easily
changeable; they can easily be recreated on a modern film set.
To explain some of the real and fundamental differences between society in Ancient Rome
and our more developed societies of the modern world we need to make our way to the
Coliseum to see some gladiatorial contest.
Once comfortably seated amongst a crowd of Romans, heady with anticipation, we would find
ourselves watching something which would make our stomachs churn, freeze to the core. It
would be quite likely that you and I would be violently sick. Yet not those Romans around us.
They would be enjoying every moment, cheering and clapping and willing on the lions or
gladiator to tear the unfortunate Christian or prostitute or slave limb-from-limb. It is one thing
to watch such spectacle on a film screen, amazed at the special effects; it would be quite
another to see it for real.
But how come you or I would experience such mental anguish and exhibit such physiological
responses, which are so different from those Romans around us? In 2,000 years there has
not been any genetic evolution. Taking account of a mothers diet, at birth a Roman child of
2,000 years ago would be unrecognizable from modern day Italian infants (albeit with perhaps
a few more Germanic genes added to the recent baby for good measure, but still not in any
way more evolutionarily more advanced).
The difference between then and now comes down to the rearing of that child and the human
culture in which it was brought up. The fundamental difference between you and me verses
an adult Roman of old is that in our modern cultural setting we learn from an early age to
extend a higher level of empathy well beyond the bounds of our immediate family. When

sitting in the Coliseum watching a gory fight, that Ancient Roman would only care that it was
not they themselves down there in the ‘ring’ or an immediate family member. Perhaps they
would be applauding in part through sheer relief that they were not. But most importantly they
would not, probably could not, empathize with those others down on the floor of the arena
about to be dismembered.
You or I, on the other hand, through our up-bringing are unable to watch such a spectacle
without some little part of us mentally putting ourselves in the shoes of that other human
being in distress. We ‘feel’ for them. And if they are about to be dispatched with some
gruesome weapon that feeling is likely to cause us to be violently sick. The key point is that
because of our modern culture we see that unlucky other person as another human being –
part of the human family, a member of our wider society. To the Roman sitting next to us,
they would ‘see’ that other not of their tribe, not of their family not of their society. To the
Roman audience, the unlucky Christian or slave was no more ‘empathizable with’ than a Bull
to a Spaniard or Mexican audience in a bullfight. The unlucky Christian or slave lay outside a
Roman’s ‘empathy circle’ or ‘empathy remit’, beyond the limit to which they chose (or more
accurately had learnt through up-bringing) to extend their empathy. To Romans, other
Romans and Italians more widely were other human beings; beyond that other people were
as good as not being considered as other humans (read on). Those others were, to all
intents and purposes, ‘alien’.
It is a difficult notion to take on-board in our modern cultural environment, on a planet that we
call a global village, where all other human beings are mentally thought of as having
freedoms and rights. But go back only 50 years to North America or 20 years ago in South
Africa and one would have observed a similar situation with slavery or apartheid; to the
dominant whites, the blacks did not warrant the same empathy.
Turning the tables and taking some Ancient Romans picked at random and brought back to
our own times, they would likely come across as close to psychotic in the manner in which
they treated other people (at least in close relationships). Traveling back further to Ancient
Eqypt, the cultural environment was likely even more brutal. Certainly if you were a slave in
Ancient Egypt, you would probably be treated little better than how we treat chickens or pigs
in modern farming factories. These ancient societies were very, very different. Close to
unimaginably so. In ways that are very difficult to depict properly on the cinema screen.
Notwithstanding their inability to Accept (Level 1 Attitude) other people from beyond the
shores of Italy or to have Faith (Level 3 attitude) in each other beyond the very immediate
family circle, the Romans had learnt to Accept and Trust (Level 2 Attitude) each other. It may
only have been a basic level of trust by modern societal standards, but it was clearly much
greater than those others whom they, the Romans, considered to be barbarians, those aliens.

The Roman prowess in war, their highly regulated and coordinated armies, the like of which
was not seen again until the English Red Coats of the Napoleonic Wars, attested to Roman
society having achieved a significant degree of Level 2 (Security) cooperation dependant on
mutual trust. Their resulting legal codes have provided the foundations for many of the
European legal systems of the modern age.
But though they could trust each other, relatively well, the Ancient Romans had not (as noted)
developed the capacity to have Faith (Level 3) in each other at a societal level: such Faith
was still entirely contained within the close family circle. This was all about to change with the
emergence of Christianity, as we will explore further in this Chapter. That cultural change
from then to now is a clear demonstration of an evolving civilised society and the making of
civilized man.
The Rise of Empathic Man
As I mulled over the concept of empathy and its relationship to the identified five Ideal Types
of interaction, I came to the realization that the ability to empathize represents a core human
ability or faculty, learnt through our historic evolution, which enables us to act as a social
animal. It would have emerged as an essential mental ability as we progressed through the
evolutionary stages of the social animal, from lone operator through herd into ape troupe and
then tribe and eventually human family unit. Survival of the fittest social animal would have
filtered out those incapable of empathy and thereby unable to cooperate with other members
of the group.
As a mental ability, empathy can be likened to the physical ability of throwing, or chucking, a
ball. In the case of empathy, it represents a matter of ‘throwing the mind’. A vast majority of
human beings, all that are physically able, are at birth quite able to learn to chuck a ball as
they progress through childhood years. How well they learn to chuck a ball depends on the
environment in which they grow up and the degree of practice they put into such an activity.
Typically boys learn to chuck balls far better than girls, simply through practice and playing
ball games when young. And if they don’t learn this ability in younger years, it proves very
difficult to learn it later on. By early teens, a human being can either chuck a ball a
reasonable distance or not, and this pretty much sticks (barring injuries) for the rest of their
lives. Of course it is girls who tend, because of our cultural environment, to learn the ability to
‘throw the mind’ far better than boys (with a little better genetic disposition and less
testosterone to assist). And it sticks on both accounts for the rest of their lives.
So, throwing the mind, or empathy, might be considered to be an innate human ability, an
essential attribute of an advanced social animal. The question of a normal human adult is not
one of can he or she empathise, but where and how widely does he or she choose to ‘throw

their mind’. A child reared in a large, competitive nursery with relatively little adult supervision
and mentoring, may never learn to empathise at all beyond themselves: must look after
number one only. In extreme cases, they might even struggle to Accept (Level 1) other
human beings as being individuals with a unique right of existence. On the other hand, a
child who is nurtured appropriately by caring, focused, attentive adults, with sufficient direct
one-to-one nurturing might become able to Accept, Trust, have Faith in, Respect and
Recognise a very wide group of people, extending well beyond his or her immediate family
circle.
As discussed through the Chapters 8 to 12, at Level 1 empathy represents an Acceptance of

another’s desire to live. Ponder for a moment on your own personal scope of Acceptance. In
the modern world, you probably extend Acceptance to all other human beings on this planet.
You probably also include within your ‘circle of Acceptance’ “higher” animals such as apes,
monkeys, bears and dogs. I personally would be inclined to include all mammals and most
larger reptiles. If you watch films, such as Madagascar, which plays with this very issue
through the question of what Alex the Lion can eat in the wild, our modern Western culture
extends the ‘circle of Acceptance’ similarly to my personal view, but stops short at fish. Fish,
it would appear, have not yet made it into our circle of Acceptance. Seemingly we
emotionally see fish as scaly objects of fascination and potential food, not as compatriot living
organisms seeking to eek out an existence and survive in their watery environment. Hence
why we find it so difficult to stop ourselves over-fishing the seas. Dolphins and whales have
made it into our collective circle of acceptance and hence why they culturally act as icons for
the sea environment.
At Level 2, empathy manifests itself in the form of recognizing that another can fear and feel
terrorized. You or I might extend our personal ‘circle of Trust’ quite far and wide: certainly all
human beings and perhaps some higher animals too. But culturally, representing the
average of people’s ‘circle of Trust’, the degree to which we collectively extend our Trust is
quite limited. If you look at, for instance, the Israel-Palestine on-going problems, it is quite
clear that Israeli and much of Western society have not really extended Level 2 empathy to
the Palestinians. And for America to have waged war on Iraq and bombed the country in the
way that it did, infers at a cultural level a degree of Level 1 Acceptance of the Iraqi people
(seeking to minimize collateral damage), but clearly stops short of any Level 2 Trust empathy.
From a cultural perspective, at the outset of the second Iraq war, neither Britain nor America
had yet progressed to an emotional and thence cultural point of recognizing that those foreign
people living in Iraq were capable of fear: desire to live – yes, fear – no. With so much
exposure of the war and subsequent events in the media and the personalization of stories,
this began to change and manifested as a genuine change in tactics for our armies in that
country.

At Level 3, empathy manifests as a direct recognition of another’s desire to maintain their

personal health and to reproduce. The existence of very costly national health and social
security systems within many European countries, representing a high collective tax burden
on each individual, infers that Level 3 empathy culturally extends across, but is limited within,
those societies. Outcries in the UK press about Europeans being a drain on our health and
social services indicates that Britons do not extend their Level 3 empathy across the English
Channel: it is confined to those identified (accepted, trusted and ‘faithed’) as being part of the
British community. In America, with its continued refusal to implement decent social security
and health provision for all, Level 3 empathy can be construed as being still largely confined
to the family unit, or at its widest local religious or immigrant communities, but not across
American society as a whole.
The key to understanding this concept of your personal ‘circle of empathy’ is to differentiate
between the rational and the emotional (the difference between rational and emotional
empathy is something which has been noted by Simon Baron-Cohen from Cambridge
University (Baron-Cohen and Wheelwright 2004)). You look in a fish tank and rationally know
that those creatures swimming around in the water are living organisms and therefore by
definition have a ‘will to survive’, they will act to seek to continue their existence, to search out
food, to flee threats and, if possible, to procreate (Darwin gave us that scientific appreciation).
But do you empathise with the survival drive of those fish? If, for whatever reason, you
needed to kill one of those fish – a dare, to eat, to reduce over-crowding in the fish tank,
because it had become manged and may infect other fish – for whatever reason – how much
of an emotional barrier would you need to overcome to do so? Probably not much. But if the
same applied for a cage of chickens, cats, dogs or monkeys – what then? I, for one, would
find a very significant and, in the case of cats, dogs and monkeys, nigh on insurmountable
emotional barrier, to carry out such a task. I would empathise with each individual creature’s
‘desire’ to live and stay alive: no matter the rational argument, which might suggest that any
particular individual animal needed to be dispatched for wider purposes. I don’t envy vets,
who enter their profession to look after animals, only to find that a significant proportion of
their time is spent putting them down.
Let us apply the same model to a more mundane everyday situation. Let us say you are
working in a hierarchical organization. You come to realize that one of your immediate
subordinates is, in reality, far more intelligent and capable at the general area of work than
you yourself. Rationally, of course, you see that they are another human being with a keen
desire to progress, to climb the organizational ladder. But can you empathise with this? The
practical everyday proof of how much Respect (Level 4 empathy) you have and give to this
capable subordinate comes down to how much information you provide to them. Do you give
them all that you have, at risk that they excel and are then promoted ahead of you? Or do
you strictly limit their access to information in order to control their personal success, to keep

them below you on the hierarchical ladder? Would you, could you, risk all, and give them all
the information you have?
From personal experience, the business world of the present time in the UK context contains
those who are capable of Respect to those below in the ranks and many, many who are not.
Full democracy, a world where a vast majority were capable of giving Respect to others, I
would suggest has a long way to go. We are beginning to be able to speak the language,
through for instance modern policy on community consultation. But this is still largely a
rational recognition that others also wish to progress their personal circumstances and have
their own Needs. Full emotional connection with this language across society as a whole is
still, in reality, just a pipe-dream.
And as for Level 5 empathy, Recognition, that would require you to actively suggest that you
and your subordinate swap roles because of their clear greater capability over that of yourself
and the consequent benefit for the whole organization. One step at a time … eh? Even
father to son relationships often fail that test. At least, however, we have progressed beyond
the social state of Ancient Rome, where patricide was, though not the norm, not an entirely
abnormal occurrence.
It is well worth pausing for a moment to ponder on your own empathy circles – rational and
emotional. How far do you rationally extend each empathy circle – Acceptance, Trust, Faith,
Respect and Recognition. And then for each how wide is your personal emotional
equivalent? How would society differ if, in a cultural way, we all extended the emotional
empathy circles much wider?
Cultural Evolution
Being the first attempt to describe this new construct for the social sciences, this theory of
social interaction, there are no doubt numerous errors in the detail of the story told so far.
However, hopefully, these minor mistakes do not detract from a much better and clearer
picture emerging of how human society has developed and evolved to where we are now.
Civilisation is a process, which is not particularly surprising since evolution, as originally

envisaged by Darwin, is itself a process. To this end, there is no certainty that civilization will
progress; but it has been our good fortune that over the last 10,000 years progression has
exceeded reversal: modern democratic societies are more comfortable and happy
environments for the average human (the majority) to live in than anything else we have
known. Such more advanced societies have also been undoubtedly successful for the
human species in terms of facilitating a dramatic rise in population growth, relatively
advanced scientific understanding, technological development and providing many of us with

a high standard of living. The question that now faces us is whether we can sustain such
societies and continue to progress; we will turn to this question in the final chapter. The
remainder of this chapter will draw on the framework spelt out so far to see how and whether
this theory provides greater light on some of our recent history and elements of our current
circumstances. This represents a continuation of the fingerprint recognition exercise of
Chapter 14.
The construct presented in this book suggests that the evolution of human society progresses
through the cycling of five discrete and identifiable macroscopic social processes. In forward
gear, each of these processes represents an increasing depth and extent of a particular type
of inter-human cooperation: (1) increasing acceptance of our fellow man, (2) greater trust in
those we know, (3) increasing faith in our communities, (4) growing respect of the needs of
others, and (5) something we are yet fully to appreciate. Through this approach, we also
come to realize that change is the norm. And yet, because of the nature of at least one of the
social processes (in particular Level 2 – Growth), which acts to strengthen the structure of
what already exists, change can sometimes appear slow or correspond to a continuous
reinforcement of the status quo. Such status quo can never last forever, because, as we
discovered, it leads to societies which cannot adapt to a changing world and wider universe,
which itself is always changing. Such periods of stasis can then be interspersed with periods
of structural breakdown and rapid change. The consequence is that development can be
seen naturally to follow a pattern similar to that predicted by the famous paleontologist
Stephen Jay Gould for evolution in general: that of punctuated equilibrium (Gould and
Eldridge 1977).
The five social processes themselves are the only constant. They are continually at play,
wherever and whenever human interaction is taking place … and in between those
interactions too as individuals mull over the implications of their recent interactions with
others, or play out those interactions onto the physical world around them: taking out pent up
aggression on the environment or an animal, or dreaming about a new exploit. Change is the
norm. The processes, being continually at play, play off each other leading to the highly
complex societies that we experience. Nor are the processes simple in terms of geographic
operation: the processes themselves lead to the creation or breakdown of social divides and
barriers, thereby operating at different speeds and to different degrees in different
communities, bringing those communities or societies together or driving them apart. It is a
subtle interplay that will take us a long, long time to come to comprehend profoundly. Yet,
hopefully, the insights that I have put down in these pages will pave the path to a better
understanding of ourselves.
We find ourselves with a theory, which suggests five very identifiable motivators behind the
development and evolution of human society. I have called these Birth, Growth, Health,

Adaptation and Transformation. But in our recent intellectual history they would more
naturally be called (1) Rationality, (2) Socialism (or at its extreme Communism), (3) Religion,
(4) Sustainability (or perhaps simply Democracy) and then (5) something that we have yet to
experience in its full glory and for which we do not yet have a name. The last may just as well
be called Oscar (reward through recognition) for the moment.
In appreciating how this construct relates to lived out history, one must remember that real life
is messy. The theory of social interaction cannot decisively predict the future (thankfully). An
earthquake here or a volcanic eruption there may have an instrumental affect on the way a
particular society evolves going forwards after the catastrophe. The theory does, however, fit
with the approach to human history promoted by Fernand Braudel and others: that of
understanding macroscopic social and economic trends and seeing key historical characters
as actors playing a part in the human theatre. It is those underlying trends, though, which will
ultimately influence how a society might respond to an external impact. In the aftermath of a
major earthquake one society might wither and perish or fundamentally reconstruct, while
another society might shrug off the incident and rebound. Which direction a society will go
will depend on the fragility or strength, and the rigidity or flexibility, of that society at the time
of the event. That state of a particular society will in turn have been defined by its evolution
prior to the event, how it has been developing according to the relative speed of cycling of the
five very different social processes.
Here follow a few tasty examples that have occurred to me, which help demonstrate the
validity, usefulness and explanatory power of this theory.
Some Worlds Past
I have already discussed Ancient Rome, pointing to the apparent dominance of the Level 2
(Growth) Process during the middle, expansionist years of its civilisation. There existed a
highly regulated society, providing the foundations for our modern legal systems. Rome’s
prowess on the battlefield was a natural consequence and fostered a society, which sought to
dominate (compete with) all others in order to secure its own supplies of food: the positive
feedback, just as the bully in the playground, threaten, feel threatened, threaten more. The
intimately linked drive to grow ever outwards led Rome eventually to over-extend itself and
the rigid social fabric eventually broke down in a series of catastrophic failures.
But what of other societies gone by?
Ancient Egypt is an interesting case study, which endured far longer than has our current
Western civilisation. Where Rome became stuck in the past (through the culture associated
with Social Process 2), Ancient Egyptian society seemed only to look to the future. They took

religion to its extreme – to seek to live for eternity. The Level 3 (Health) Process seems to
have dominated for much of the history of Ancient Egypt. It was a society driven by ritual and
must have bred some of the most neurotic people ever to have trod this earth. There were
intermittent periods in which the successive Egyptian empires sought to expand; but by and
large the physical constraints, circumstances and fertility of the Nile Valley and the natural
protection provided by the surrounding desert seemed to have encouraged a continual
reversion to and reinforcement of Level 3 type behaviour and culture: a highly layered society
with slave classes, kings treated as gods (super-value nodes) supported by layer-upon-layer
of religious castes, a desperate drive to prolong the life of those at the upper echelons of the
layered hierarchy, physical structures created to last eternity and a very fervent mythology.
Ancient Greece, on the other hand, did for a short period of time appear to find a reasonable
balance between Level 2 and Level 3 Processes. The consequence of this was that they
were able to begin to explore, even if only superficially, the nature of a Level 4 society with an
early form of democracy. The focus on sporting prowess and non-lethal, rule-bound
competition was wrapped up as an inherent part of this cultural development.
For each of these ancient societies and many more besides, it is possible with hindsight to
see how the influence of the various identified social processes characterised their
development and eventual demise. Furthermore, it can be seen how the different processes
affected different eras of these societies. Rome, for instance, started out as a trading society,
and in its early years naturally took forward the Greek baton on the matter of rationality and
philosophy (for example, the sceptical thinking of Cicero). But Rome’s unilateral success,
and consequent focus on growth, ultimately became its own ruin. Rationality and philosophy
came to be replaced by law-making and rule creation. In due course, as the growth faltered
and Roman society came concerned about its own future, it finally became dominated by
religion (Social Process 3 (Health)), providing fertile social conditions for the birth of
Christianity.
Protracted History – the appearance and evolution of Christianity and the Church
This framework can also be used to trace the evolution of cultural themes in society, as
already demonstrated through Chapter 13 and the history of the theoretical city. For instance,
the emergence and subsequent progress of Christianity becomes, with hindsight, quite
explicable.
Going back to times before Christiantiy, religion in the Middle East tended to take the form of
idolatry. Each family, or community, would have their own particular household god or set of
gods. Back in Ancient Egypt these represented anthropomorphisations of aspects of nature –
sun god, moon god, wind gods, rain gods and the like. By Ancient Greece and into Ancient

Rome the gods had gained strong personalities, with direct links to aspects of nature
somewhat reduced. Of key importance, each family would have their own preferred selection
of these gods or just focus on one of these gods. We can now appreciate from the discussion
on Social Process 3 (Health) in Chapter 10 that this represented a manifestation and
delineation of any specific individual’s social support network – tribe, family or community.
Those within the family circle, or local community, represented the support group for
reproduction and maintenance of health. The god or gods represented the label for and
provided the mythology for the moral framework, which bound together and differentiated that
family or community from others and created the cultural environment for rearing the next
generation. In modern times, one of the best examples of this is that of the Jewish
community.
One can easily see how cultural evolution took place, leading up to the system of
‘mantlepiece’ gods. Tribes, whether errant gatherers or sedentary farmers, would have
formed their own unique gods (value nodes). As these groups became more and more drawn
into and linked with the urban centres through trading activity, the towns and cities acted as
cultural melting pots, bringing together the different myths and religions, dissolving different
tribal or race identities. Single gods became mixed together to create families of gods,
eventually by the time of Ancient Greece representing the whole cast for a major on-going
musical or soap opera. Individual families still retained links to specific gods, providing an
indication of their cultural roots, linking them to others within the urban setting with similar
tribal backgrounds, keeping similar daily schedules and rituals and coming together in venues
dedicated to those ritualistic activities (temples, etc). The appearance of the linked family of
gods represented a blurring of the community differences, generating a wider city society and,
of key importance, enabling interbreeding across all the different communities resident within
the city.
But this was all about to change.
In the cities of Palestine, especially with Jerusalem being such a successful cultural melting
pot, a Cultural Bifurcation eventually took place. Out of this array of different cults appeared
one new religion to unify them all, a religion whose god was so all-powerful that his name
could not even be spoken. He represented a super-super-value node for a larger society.
The lead up to this Cultural Bifurcation took a long time in development (The Old Testament),
but at sometime circa 2,000 years ago a tipping point arose at which this new religious
concept all of a sudden started to spread like wildfire, eventually engulfing the whole Roman
Empire. For this to have happened the whole Mediterranean society must have been
culturally prepared and ready for this new approach to take hold. That preparation had been
the huge amount of trade around the Med and its very successful cities along its shores from

Jerusalem to Rome and beyond, gradually merging all the individual communities and city
societies into what became perceived and felt to be a singular human society or civilisation.
What did the widespread take up of Christianity mean? It meant that all those embracing this
new religious banner were accepting that all others who also professed to be Christian
became acceptable reproducing partners, part of a much, much bigger human family and
construed to be part of the broader cultural and social support network for people’s health and
to aid the rearing of off-spring: a whole civilisation embracing the same moral framework.
Of course the message and mythology within this new religion needed to match the reality on
the ground – embracing all other Christians as part of a broader family – the ‘love thy
neighbour’ approach. Much iteration took place in the lead up to anno domini to achieve the
right message and such iteration continued afterwards through the writings and re-writings of
the gospels and associated literature. Putting aside questions of whether God exists or not,
the very real and most important practical effect of the Bible was the creation of a singular
moral framework which could span a huge population and bind together a multitude of
disparate races. It certainly proved to be far more effective and virulent as a guide for living
and helping communities to succeed and reproduce than anything that had gone before. Yet
for some, unbeknownst reason, it did not take hold in those harsher desert environments to
the east and south of the Mediterranean. Something subtly different was required: that
something was finally formulated to a satisfactory degree about 700 years later: and then
Islam spread like wildfire through those other proximate societies to create a competing
civilisation.
If one looks again at the social structure which emerged with Christianity, it was, to all intents
and purposes, a class or caste structure, typical of layered Social Process 3 (Health)
structures. There is God, all-powerful and everlasting at the top of the hierarchy: the central
value node. The next layer down, there are the cast of angels. Below them are the various
saints and below them our better behaved ancestors. At the bottom of the heap, the lowest
layer, there are us living human beings. It is a classic layered social structure created by
Social Process 3. But while this structure in theory remained, in practical terms and in the
real world of live human beings it did not last. This new brave world, where all living humans
were equal, was quickly corrupted by Social Process 2 to create a human hierarchy in the
name of the religion. Through the resultant Church, with the Pope at the top and a strict
hierarchy of Bishops and Cardinals below, this new human created structure began the
process of converting what was originally a moral framework into a legal framework. What
were principles became laws and codes of conduct. God the benevolent father (Health
Process) mutated into God the rule-maker (Growth Process).

As the centuries went by, the Catholic hierarchy desperately sought to hold everything
together for as long as possible, using ever more terrorising tactics to do so: most notably the
decades, running into hundreds of years, of inquisitions. But it was in vain. Eventually the
human created structure became over-extended, unstable and was inevitably split asunder.
As expected for Social Process 2 hierarchies, the structural break was quick and rapidly led
to war after war for territory. Remember, structures arising from Social Process 3 compete in
time, but structures arising from Social Process 2 compete in space. It was therefore
inevitable once the Protestant / Catholic split appeared that this would lead to terrorising
tactics, degrading into war, to seek to dominate territory and enforce the laws of that ‘religion’.
(Though the terms Protestant and Catholic originated from religious concepts, the wars
between the different parties were not really religious wars but rather legal wars, seeking to
control the rules and codes of conduct that applied across the European landscape.)
The waning of Christianity in Western Europe, ever since the Enlightenment and to a
profound extent in the last century, has been a natural consequence of Social Process 4
(Adaptation) in action. Division of Competence has caused the splintering of both the Social
Process 2 structures and the Social Process 3 value nodes. The Church of England, for
instance, remains a generalistic moral framework for British society. But it now competes
against countless specialists in moral thinking, notably the third economic sector, our very
substantial number of charitable organisations.
So, where can we expect Christianity to go from here? Is there any role for any organisation
acting in the capacity of a generalised promoter of morality in a modern democracy? I have
no idea. But the reality is that in a world of the internet and modern communications and high
(all relative) levels of social mobility, the activity of Division of Competence (Social Process 4
(Adaptation) will continue to create evermore specialist organisations, each promoting a
different focused aspect of morality and contributing in a small way to the wider moral and
ethical fabric of society. What was held within the Bible as a single source of reference will
continue to become dispersed and more nebulous, made up from our larger library of
literature, guidance and other sources. Ultimately each member of a truly democratic society
becomes both contributor and participant in the on-going debate about what should be our
values, morals and principles, rather than simply being recipient readers of a single book
dished down from the top of the human hierarchy. The logical conclusion of the Adaptation
Process acting on religious (Level 3) structures is that each and every human being develops
there own personal distinct religion or spirituality.
The truth and practical reality of our modern world is that the Bible was a good start and
created a fantastic and very successful general moral framework, but in reality we are rapidly
moving on from when it was put together and all need actively to build upon that early

scaffolding. The Bible does not, for instance, tell us what to do in regard to stem cell
research; we have to develop the principles for these types of issues ourselves.
As to what a parent should do in this modern context as you try to fathom what principles to
use to frame the rearing of your children, the answer is to become an active participant in that
on-going debate and when stuck for a solution on drugs, internet porn, school ground
bullying, what to eat, how to treat the other sex and so on, ask the internet. There is sure to
have been many others who have been there, done that, and written about it. But in
referencing that wider and growing body of knowledge, advice and stories, be wary. Don’t
rely on any single source of guidance, read widely and be your own moral judge by
constructing your own approach from the disparate types of sources of advice that you find –
seek the majority opinion. That is the nature of a democratic society and the practical reality
of being a Moral Man in a civilised society.
We turn now to look at how the social processes have acted together to form our modern
world.
Recent Historic Events, which shaped the modern age
One of the most interesting consequences from looking at our human history through the
prism of the theory of social interaction is the way in which similarities in terms of social and
cultural evolution arise in very different times and places. Given the structure of the theory,
this should be expected; but when first used to understand our common history, it is quite
th
fascinating. For example, the materialisation of the union movement through the 19 century
has strong parallels to the birth of Christianity, which arguable appeared in response to the
structural hierarchy of the Roman Empire, unifying those social layers at the base of the
hierarchy. In similar vein, via Social Process 3 (Health), the unions emerged as a social
response to the rapid industrialisation of Europe and America and the associated creation of
vast human hierarchies dedicated to delivering security for the capitalists at the top of the
heap.
The unions were clearly not as generalist as Christianity, rather representing specialist
organisations focussing on the welfare of workers within different industries. Out of the union
movement subsequently appeared the basis of the modern welfare state (in some extreme
cases communist states), representing a merging of individual unions to create a whole
societal cause. But the adoption of the principles and morals of the union movement into the
state rapidly turned a Level 3 structure (layers and value nodes) into a monstrous hierarchy
(the big governments we have today), which automatically sought to convert those principles
and morals into rules and laws. The parallel with the creation of the Catholic Church over
1,000 years earlier is quite remarkable. Understanding our recent history in this way, we

begin to see why welfare or socialist states, big governments generally, find it so hard to
manage things like education systems (especially early schools) and health services. They
can never get it right, forever tinkering. The reason is because they are trying to control and
rule aspects of our society, which are not, and will never be, amenable to being dictated to
from above. As with the waning of the church, it proves to be seen whether the centralised
system that we have, for example in the United Kingdom, will endure in the face of the
Adaptation (Level 4) Process and an essential resurgent Level 3 (Health) Process (if we are
to rediscover how to value our children and our planet).
In the last section, it was noted that there were centuries of preparation and incremental
cultural change associated with the Level 3 (Health) Process around the Mediterranean
society before the Cultural Bifurcation, which marked the appearance of Christianity. Moving
to the middle of the last millennium, Social Process 4 has been slowly and methodically
infusing change across Western societies for many centuries. If I were asked to identify a
time when Social Process 4 first became fully apparent culturally and socially in British
society, I would point to the Tudor and Elizabethan era (1500s). The social factors were quite
obvious: the breaking away by Henry VIII from the Catholic Church and the growing schism
between Protestant and Catholic, only just kept at bay under Queen Elizabeth I and leading to
the English Civil War not long thereafter (less than 40 years – the 1650s).
The cultural elements of Social Process 4 were more subtle. The popularity of original tennis
(then known as tenes) as a sport in the Tudor court suggested that within that inner circle of
the King’s court, there were the first murmurings of social mobility and expectation amongst
individuals at this highest level of society that they could, through their own actions, change
their position in the social hierarchy. Under Elizabeth, another key marker is Shakespeare’s
famous quote: “All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They
have their exits and their entrances, And one man in his time plays many parts,”. This
phraseology would only have meant something to people who were already beginning to be
infused with Level 4 (Adaptation) culture. This cultural mindset was played out in action,
expressed mobility, through the age of exploration and all the global discoveries of foreign
lands and peoples that took place during Elizabeth’s reign.
Arguably the English Civil War represented (for the English society) the first Level 4 structural
bifurcation, the consequence of some earlier Cultural Bifurcation during the Tudor /
Elizabethan era, the cultural influence of which grew in strength across society until it caused
a real fission of the structural hierarchy to occur. After the period of history around the Civil
War had settled down with a parliament and nascent democracy in play the Level 4 Process
seemingly returned to take a back seat.

The 150 or so years leading up to the explosion of the industrial revolution are better
understood through a thriving Level 1 (Birth) Process. The exploration that took place during
the Tudor/Elizabethan times, which had been driven by Level 4 (Adaptation) Process, had
opened up a new world to trade with. It was this activity of trading, which then, if the theory in
this book has any merit, caused the Enlightenment to happen. Furthermore consideration of
where the Enlightenment was strongest, UK, Holland and Italy, directs us straight to those
societies which were most heavily engaged in trade (as opposed to plunder, the preferred
past-time of that time of the Spaniards). This is not to say that the UK, Italy and Holland were
not innocent of plundering newly discovered territories, but they more quickly moved on to
trade. Trade, as we discovered in Chapter 8, infuses increasing rationality across society.
Not only that, note how much of the rational philosophy coming out of the UK and Italy during
the period 1600 through to 1800 was very individual focussed, typical of Level 1 (Birth)
culture.
The 1800s were then typified most strongly by Level 2 (Growth) Process, driving the industrial
revolution and creating many of those cultural factors, which we tend to associate with the
Victorians, from over-engineering bridges through to the creation of a sizeable police force
and the makings of a highly regulated society. But what happened next elsewhere in Europe
is an interesting comparison in the way that an imbalance in the Social Processes can drive a
society down an unsustainable, even self-destructive, path of development.
In the United Kingdom, all the while through the 1800s that Social Process 2 (Growth) was
rampantly driving UK society to create social structure and make and build all manner of
things from paints and clothes to suspension bridges, Social Process 1 (Birth) was still a
strong influencing process, causing that society to be free-thinking and accepting of others.
Being an island state, which had conquered the high seas and created for itself a global
trading network, though Social Process 2 (Growth) characterised this era, it was operating
hand-in-hand with a still vibrant Birth Process. (Arguably it was this parallel operation of
Processes 1 and 2 that gave rise to the frequent booms and busts (build and break), which
typified this time period.)
In stark contrast, on the continent in Germany, the industrial revolution started slightly later
and progressed faster than it had in England. The consequence was the rapid creation of a
super-structured hierarchical society, which strongly bound together all the Hanseatic cities
into the North German Federation. Without the same level of free-thinking rationality and
acceptance of others generated by a strong Social Process 1, Germany became evermore
infused in the thinking and attitudes of Social Process 2. As a whole society it became
paranoid about its security, especially its security of energy and material supplies to feed both
its population and its rapidly growing industry. It developed into a society fixated on growth
and securing the resources it required to feed that growth.

While most accounts of history focus on the politics that led up to World War I, through the
lense of the theory of social interaction we see another perspective. One can come to
appreciate World War I as an accident-waiting-to-happen. In the early 1900s, German
society was literally a loaded gun waiting for the right trigger to unleash itself, as Ancient
Rome did long before, along a self-destructive path of competitive growth. World War II
happened simply because in beating Germany the World War I allies did not seek to instil any
cultural change into German society: a mistake they were clear to avoid the second time
round. Further still, through the lense of the theory of social interaction, it can be seen that
the greater embrace of Adaptation (Level 4) amongst the World War II Western allies meant
that the battlefield could be directed from London or Washington with much greater
confidence on the information available for decisions than from Berlin or Tokyo. Could this
have been the defining advantage of the WWII allies?
In the meantime, even further east, in the heart of the Asian continent and even more
removed from an active trading network, we see the formation of the Russian Bear. In this
case, however, the nascent structuralist society sought to harness the ideologies of socialism
and Marxism, which emerged out of Germany’s industrialisation. We see a society, which
unequivocally from the start of its process of industrialisation, embraced all aspects of the
Social Process 2 culture: emblems, flags and all. The result was the creation of the USSR.
th
The latter half of the 20 century has been characterised by an on-going friction between two
major ideologies. On the one hand we have Russia and China embracing Social Process 2
(Growth) cultures and on the other hand around much of the rest of the world, notably in
general those parts most accessible to sea trade, we have the West. The driving ethos of the
West has been Social Process 1 (Birth), expressed as human rights. But the last couple of
decades have seen, with the help and feedback of rapidly improving communications
networks and global information systems, a dramatic resurgence of Social Process 4
(Adaptation). The recent Credit Crunch, however, was most obviously the result of a rampant
Social Process 1 (Birth) (or perhaps Social Process 1 and 4 operating synergistically in
tandem).
Where we go next is anyone’s guess? Or more pointedly, as I will discuss further in the final
chapter, through the insights of the theory of social interaction, our next steps are a matter for
us to choose. Where do we want to go from here? How can we re-achieve a balanced
th
process of development? And what, apart from its brief appearance at the end of the 19
century through the union movement, has happened to Social Process 3? … oh, yes … that’s
most dominant, just now, in Arabia with the embrace of Islam.

The Making of Civilised Man
In the last few pages I have tried to demonstrate through various examples how the Social
Processes proposed by the theory of social interaction may have operated through certain
parts of our history. There was clearly more complexity than that inferred by the descriptions
provided. Yet, once you start to comprehend the nature of these predicted Processes,
wherever you look it is possible to see them in action, in the background or foreground,
influencing the manner in which society has developed, or how a group of societies have
come together, or blown themselves apart. The Processes operate at every scale of human
society, wherever human interaction is occurring between individuals or interaction between
subsets of society or between whole societies. For instance, they can be seen happening
between businesses in a market place or up and down a supply chain, or between different
religions, or between nation states (Europe coming together to form the European Union,
initially under a banner of free trade, then adopting a common currency and slowly in terms of
common laws and united defence), or between different races in a local community, or
between your family and your next-door neighbours, or between you and your wife / partner /
brother / sister / mother / father. The Processes together make and break marriages just as
they make and break business empires and civilisations.
Through all this, have these Processes made Man more civilised? The answer is ‘no’ and
‘yes’. Over the last 10,000 years, the identified Social Processes, and the consequent
evolution and development of human societies, has not effected any significant genetic or
biological change to the homo sapiens species. Take a baby born today and place him in a
foster family in Ancient Rome and he would grow up as a Roman of old, with all the beliefs,
attitudes, prejudices and behaviours of those around him. He would not be differentiable from
the crowd. And vice versa.
The answer in the biological and genetic sense and the make up of our brain and associated
psychology is therefore ‘absolutely not’. In this context, I find it incredulous how much we
seem willing in recent decades to blaim our inherited genes for behavioural and attitudinal
problems. For instance, to claim that widespread obesity is anything other than a common
cultural addiction to too much of the wrong foods is farcical. We are no more or less
genetically predisposed to obesity now than ever have been. Yes, there are bound to be a
few individuals within society with genetic disorders, which prevent them, for example, from
detecting a full belly or disable some aspect of their metabolism. But to suggest that, all of a
sudden, genes are to blame for a sizeable proportion of children in the current age becoming
obese is pointing the finger at the wrong culprit. It is our culture that is very clearly in error
and through the theory of social interaction it has been possible to understand both how and
why. More pointedly we each have to take responsibility for our part in that culture.

Hopefully this theory will enable some form of re-setting of the pendulum, to bring us back to
a more balanced interpretation of the causes of individual and social malaise – cultural verses
biological.
Returning to the question of whether Man is now more civilised, the answer is indubitably
‘Man in modern society is more civilised’. A baby born now may be no different a template to
a baby of 3,000 years ago; but a child of 5, or 10 or 15, most surely is and increasingly so
with age. It is the societies that we have ever so gradually, over centuries and millennia,
created for ourselves which are most certainly more civilised and each of us growing up in
those societies becomes a more civilised person than that of our ancestors. But the civilising
process is by no means assured. Numerous social psychology studies and experiments have
shown how quickly, in different circumstances, individuals and small groups can regress to
less civil behaviour and in due course attitudes. Nazi society, and many other societies
besides, current and past, are and have been just other examples of such regressions, writ-
large.
The answer, then, to the question ‘how come we are more and remain more civilised in
modern society than those which have gone before’ is simply that we keep each other more
civilised day-to-day through cooperative behaviour. The modern press, for instance, is an
instrumental and essential part of modern democracies, ensuring rapid dissemination of
information (Exchange of Information) in order, amongst other things, to prevent social
hierarchies created by the Level 2 (Growth) Process from doing what they naturally do best:
hoard information unto themselves and seek to control all members of an organisation or
society from the top-down for the express benefit of each layer of the hierarchy over and
above those in the layer below. The press is one of the means to force better equality and
ensure that those at the top of hierarchies better respect those at the bottom. (Note to New
Labour: equality is not best achieved by rule and regulation, a tool of capitalism and
bureaucracy, but by freedom of information.)
This process of continually civilising each other, a process which itself might be called
sustainable development, can and indeed does occur before our very eyes.
In Chapter 2 I pointed to the seemingly unresolved (at least unresolved through extant
constructs for understanding sustainability) definitions of and differentiation between
sustainable development and corporate social responsibility. With the benefit of the theory of
social interaction, it is possible to appreciate that sustainable development is actually the
underlying process that has driven, year-on-year, a continual increase over the last three
decades in corporate social responsibility reporting (driven primarily in this instance by the
Level 4 Process). The reporting is simply a business requirement for operating within an

increasingly democratic society, where there are expectations of Respect and associated
transparency towards those influenced and affected by the operations of any big business.
So, to the trite argument noted in Chapter 2 about which is the bigger and more important
issue – sustainable development or corporate social responsibility – the answer has to be
sustainable development for all of us. But for an individual business the most immediate and
current concern will inevitably be corporate social responsibility. In reality no business can
ever be assured of a future: just as people are born, live and then die, so too are businesses.
A sustainable development report for a business would, correctly, not be some report on
carbon emissions, but rather the underlying organisation’s strategy setting out how that
business intended to survive indefinitely, continuing to exist in the context of a totally
unknown future: probably a document which would be impossible to write. On the other
hand, a corporate social responsibility report is simply a re-assurance to a (vaguely, but
increasingly) interested public that the particular business has behaved well, respected
everyone and everything it has dealt with (from staff inside through to global carbon emission
impact) and should thereby be given a licence to operate another year and an organisation
acceptable to do business with.
The most important point to draw from this is that sustainable development and sustainability
are not some utopian status quo. They represent continual social change. In fact, arguably
in a rapidly changing physical and ecology world, status quo is the one certain thing that
sustainable development is not. So, please bear in mind and laugh out loud, when any
government bureaucracy, which is by its very nature a backwards looking organisation (note
the Growth Process culture focussed on the past), seeks to assure you that keeping things
just as they are is sustainable.
Finally, at the conclusion of this chapter, I revert to John Elkington’s concept of the Triple
Bottom Line, discussed in detail in Chapter 2 and which represents the construct which has
to-date informed how sustainable development and sustainability are interpreted by just about
all and sundry. To remind the reader, the Triple Bottom Line idea is used to infer that
sustainable development represents achieving a balance between the environmental, social
and economic factors associated with whatever aspect of society is being considered: the
terms environmental, social and economic pertaining to the subject matter of the extant
academic silos of those names. This is a corruption of the original intent of this construct, but
generally how it is now used. I remarked in Chapter 2, however, that through the new
approach presented through this book, there is a degree of logic to the Triple Bottom Line,
which explains why it has so readily been adopted.
If you take environmental factors to mean operating in a manner which does not
unnecessarily plunder or destroy our environment and natural resources, then it can be

construed to relate to keeping Social Process 1 (Birth) (the underlying driver of materialism)
under control. If you take economic factors to mean limiting the relentless growth of big
business, the productive / capitalist economy and the political drive to generate ever more
jobs, then it can be construed to relate to keeping Social Process 2 (Growth) under control.
And if you interpret social factors to relate to the perceived requirement to promote
communities and social cohesion, then it can be construed to mean keeping Social Process 3
(Health) under control (note how this, in our current situation, requires promotion rather than
limitation.) The Triple Bottom Line would then represent keeping Social Processes 1, 2 and 3
in balance. Social Process 4 is, of course, the driver behind the desire to do all this, to
monitor and report on the other three Processes because, as we discovered in Chapter 10,
Social Process 4 (Adaptation) is all about understanding other people’s whole Needs and, in
a cultural sense, seeing present, past and future (rationality, legality and morality) all at the
same time.
That then is why the Triple Bottom Line has been so easily embraced, because, though
seriously misunderstood, it actually touches upon a deep truth about how human society
genuinely develops. In modern democratic societies we do indeed naturally learn objectively
to see human development in terms of three competing tensions. They are just not quite as
simple as expressed by the Triple Bottom Line construct.
In the final chapter we turn to the problem of the moment – sustaining our, now very large,
civilisation on a small planet. In the last few centuries we may have been incredibly
successful as a species, and we have created much more (all relative) civilised and pleasant
(happy for many more) societies across large swathes of the land masses of this planet. But
can we sustain that progress?
Baron-Cohen, S. and S. Wheelwright (2004). "The Empathy Quotient: an investigation of

adults with asperger syndrome or high functioning autism, and normal sex differences."
Journal of Autism and Development Disorders 34(2).
Gould, S. J. and N. Eldridge (1977). "Punctuated Equilibria: the tempo and mode of evolution
reconsidered." Paleobiology 3(2): 115-151.

Chapter 16 – Sustainable Development
Some kinds of change can be frustratingly slow. Other types of change can be frighteningly
fast. That is seemingly the world we live in at present; and perhaps has always been.
For the environmentalist, such as James Lovelock (REFERENCE), hoping to change the way
we collectively operate takes extreme patience. No matter how much evidence is collected
and presented to the ‘powers-that-be’ and the masses, few seem to pay scant attention. It is
the same challenge as trying to dissuade an entrenched smoker from smoking. Despite the
huge rational evidence base to show that he or she will surely die an uncomfortable death
from the habit, it is only when they themselves finally decide, for themselves, that lighting
another is not beneficial in the longer-term and that the momentary pleasure is something
they can do without that said smoker will change their ways. But for society at large to turn
from an ultimately disastrous routine, which provides many with short-term pleasure … the
challenge seems unsurmountable.
And yet side-by-side with this we see an incredible amount of change taking place, especially
with the adoption of new communications and information technology. We still have little
sense as to what the full social implications will be from the take up and propogation of better
and better and faster and faster ways to communicate and compute, but the change seems
relentless, even headlong.
So, on the one hand we have change inertia, despite huge and growing evidence that change
is required, and on the other hand we see a huge change momentum into a completely
unknown future. A seeming contradiction. But with the theory of social interaction, it is a
quandary which is both explicable and, hopefully, eventually resolvable.
Through this chapter, I hope to provide a taste as to how this new theory might caste some
light on our current dilemmas. Perhaps a little ironically, these two seemingly paradoxical
positions, described above, are on a rapidly coinciding collision course.
The Evolution of Civilisation
Human civilisation is inexorably heading towards its most difficult challenge yet. Not that one
should belittle in any way the challenges, which have been surmounted so far. But now the
repercussions of failure are just more immense. Furthermore, in times gone by and certainly
pre-500 years ago, the human population on planet Earth was made up of a number of more-
or-less separate or competing civilisations. Failure of one tended to mean opportunity for
another. Now, however, living in one global village the fates of all of us are much more
entwined. With the comfortable lifestyles that many of us are now able to enjoy, we and our

children all have much further to fall. Turning to the new theory presented in this book, we
can begin to see the challenge ahead in a new light. Firstly, let us stand back and ponder
what these newly identified social processes really represent.
Through the pages of this book it has been suggested that human civilisation is driven by five
fundamental social processes. These manifest respectively as the processes of (1) Birth, (2)
Growth, (3) Maintenance of Health, (4) Adaptation and (5) Transformation of our cities.
Social Process 1 (Birth) is the birth process, which perpetually seeks to create new sparks of
life – city life, that is. It does not disappear once a city is born, but is forever the fire of
economic trade at the heart of human cities. The other processes can be seen in a similar
way, ever present. Yet there is a degree of priority to them. Without trade, a city will die, very
quickly. But this Birth Process has forged onto humanity a very different cultural mindset
towards the natural world, the earth and its resources, than that which we started with some
ten or more thousand years ago.
Human tribes were inherently limited to the territory they inhabited. There was always a
latent, if not very real, competition between neighbouring tribes. Were a tribe to be
successful in its day-to-day bid for survival, pitted against nature and the elements, then its
numbers might grow. But that in turn would put pressure on territory and, in due course,
increase the competition for resources either within or without. The consequent cultural
mindset of the tribe is that of being strictly constrained. Because of the type of cooperative
economic interaction taking place between human beings, that of sharing, the very real
physical limitations become socially expressed through tribal boundaries and cultural
identities. The known ‘world’ is by definition a closed place, exactly limited by the resources
that exist within that highly bounded territory, shared amongst and exclusive to members of
the tribe. Economically, socially, culturally and ideologically the known universe is a bounded
environment, a closed system. This is also expressed temporally by seeing time as a cycle –
a closed loop.
But when exchange activity across tribal boundaries begins to occur, that bounded universe,
that closed system, begins to open-up. As Anthony Giddens’ closed loop of time uncoils (his
concept of Modernity), so does the conceptualisation of space. Eventually, after 10,000
years, we reach a beautifully ironic conclusion to this process. We come to see and sense
the Universe as essentially infinite. And simultaneously, we abruptly come to find ourselves
living on a very clearly defined, and bounded, spacecraft – Planet Earth.
We saw in earlier chapters how the activity of trade softens, weakens and eventually entirely
fades out all perceptual identity and higher boundaries between different social groups. As
human society becomes amorphous, so does its perception and conception of space.
Eventually, under the influence of the Birth Process (Social Process 1), space comes to be

seen as a uniform infinity. If space is seen as a uniform infinity, so does its contents, the
resources and energy available to sustain life. So, every time you drop by a shop to buy
some food or some trinket or a new pair of shoes, your action reinforces and helps to
perpetuate in your minds-eye the sense that the resources available to Us on our planet are
infinite. It is very subtle and barely perceptible (on each event) … but it is. And it is
unavoidable. Economic exchange, being able to buy what you want, where you want, when
you want, is magical; it provides instantaneous gratification of our most pressing daily Needs.
But it has consequences and it is those implications that we NEED to learn to tame.
The Current State-of-Play
The solution is not, however, to limit trade. At least, not directly. Trade has been and always
will be the underlying driving force and lifeblood of human cities and the civilisation that they
generate. Our cities cannot exist without it. To seek to limit trade directly would risk
unravelling Social Process 1 … and that is something which is unthinkable. The simply reality
is that there are too many people now on our planet to consider going backwards; to seek to
revert to tribal ways would itself bring upon us a catastrophic population crash.
Rather the only route is forwards. But how?
My inference, from living with the theory of social interaction in my head for the last decade,
has been that sustainable development is achievable through keeping the identified social
processes in balance. That in a very subtle, but incredibly strong way, the five social
processes control and limit each other. So, instead of trying artificially to limit trade, the
answer to our current challenge is to strengthen the other social processes, where required.
My interpretation of our current situation, looking through the lense of the theory of social
interaction, and admittedly a perception gained from someone living in British/Western
society, is that there is indeed a misbalance in the social processes within that social and
cultural context. The Birth Process (1) is very strong within us Brits. Our culture and
dominant ideology is infused with notions that trade, economic activity of exchange, shopping,
money and so on are the most important things in life and in our economy. Our society
suffers the inevitable consequences, individually and collectively: obesity, indebtedness, drug
abuse, environmental destruction, over-fishing and growing mountains of waste. All the result
of a society fixated on instantaneous gratification and a sense that our collective ‘territory’ is
unlimited. Those problems aside, we are generally well-fed and have far better standards of
living than any society before us.
The Growth Process (2) is also very strong within our society. This manifests as a very
strong and robust legal system and state police force, highly regulated and obedient army

and generally good infrastructure. We are collectively very good at defending and
maintaining the status quo. This is further exemplified by the instinctive response of our
leaders to the recent Credit Crunch to build ourselves out of the problem: when there is a
crisis, turn to construction, clearly our security was not secure enough. Certainly the
response of the British Labour Party has been a classic example of a group of individuals
totally and utterly infused with all that the Growth Process represents. And why not? They
did, after all, originate as the worker’s party: rules, regulation, bureaucracy run in their blood.
The less pleasant elements to the Growth Process being so strong in British society (as
compared to much of continental Europe) is our over-focus on work and inability to get a good
work-life balance. This is particularly expressed in the ways in which we seek (or at least our
Government seeks on our behalf) to manage our schools and health system: rules,
regulations and targets. It also manifests as a struggle to embrace real democracy, which is
most readily apparent within our town planning system. All the well-meaning words and
policy statements aside, seeking to promote public consultation and engagement, the practice
of town planning in the United Kingdom is not particularly democratic; there is a cultural
failure to implement the theory. The Central Government recent imposition of a new
infrastructure commission represented a serious step backwards in this regard and was a
very typical response of a bureaucratic system, which was failing to impose what it sought.
I have no formal proof of the following suggestion; it should, however, be easy to test through
computational modelling. I have a hunch that it is strong Social Processes 1 and 2, in the
context of a weak Social Process 3, which have given us the boom-bust form of development,
which has typified the growth and development of Western cities over the last 200 years. The
Growth Process builds social structure and out of that we gain physical structures and see
our working economies grow. The Birth Process, however, continually weakens whatever
structures exist or are growing. Whilst it is perhaps a little counter-intuitive, it turns out to be
the same process, the Birth Process, which represents both the formation and the structure
destroying process. The way to reason round this seeming contradiction, inherent in Social
Process 1, is to appreciate that wherever ‘birth’ takes place then it gives rise to something
new, which is going to compete with what already exists (I draw your attention to the
discussion on retail malls across the American landscape, provided in Chapter 8).
So, together, we have growth and weakening of structure operating hand-in-hand. These two
processes do not flip-flop from one to the other, but rather the experience of our recent history
is that they rev up together and then fade (or fall dramatically) together. The recent boom
then Credit Crunch was a classic example: a huge boom in the trade and growth of the
business economies, followed by an almost catastrophic failure in both. Rapidly growing
social structures weaken as they grow and at some point inevitably fail, catastrophically.

Frustrating as it may be that we seem to have to live through this perpetual cycle of bubble
and burst, it is far better than either process accelerating alone. As previously noted, the
Birth Process operating on its own would lead us inexorably to anarchy. And the passage of
th
the 20 century provided several examples of the Growth Process operating alone (Nazi
Germany, Soviet Russia, Communist China, being the most prominent in our recent history).
Rediscovering What is Important in Life
The way to resolve this boom-bust cycle is not to limit either Social Process 1 or 2, but
instead to focus on something which can provide a dampening effect on the day-to-day and
decade-to-decade exuberance of Birth and Growth respectively. That is most readily
provided through a process which is much more far-sighted and provides a much more long-
term outlook on life, the Health Process. It is here where certainly British and American
societies are lacking. It is in this regard that British and American societies are known to be
at ideological odds with the continental European way. I am not suggesting that Europe has
achieved a perfect solution. But it is readily apparent from the construct of the theory of
social interaction that the Scandinavian countries, for instance, have in recent decades
achieved a much better balance between these first three social processes.
The manifestation of a stronger Health Process within Scandinavian society is very readily
apparent in numerous ways. It is not just their better work-life balance, and culturally
accepted greater importance given to family life. It is also expressed through their schools
systems, which are set up for the benefit of the children, rather than acting as state funded
childcare for the benefit of working parents. It is demonstrated in the way they treat young
offenders, through real rehabilitation rather than imprisonment. And it is expressed through
the greater import that they give to environmental issues (Norwegian whaling aside).
Through a stronger Health Process, these societies are generally much better at nurture and
division of nurture than we are in the Anglo-American version of Western culture. The
consequence is that members of those societies individually and collectively have greater
capacity and ability to value their children and through this to value the world around them.
There are no doubt some quirky elements to these northern societies, which might be
construed as negative (for example, a known propensity to turn to booze in the dark winter
months). But, in general, they have forged a more sophisticated, more civilised, cooperative
endeavour. It may still be significantly short of where they need to get to in order to enable
Nurture, the valuing and maintenance and health preservation aspects to those societies, to
balance and offset the negative elements of Birth and Growth. But they are most certainly
well-ahead of where we are in Great Britain and far, far ahead of American society.

An essential step towards more sustainable development (it is all relative) is to enhance the
strength of the Health Process across all Western societies. It is only through this that we will
individually and collectively develop that longer term, future focussed mindsets, cultures and
ideologies, which can enable us to value (that is really emotionally value in our day-to-day life
and not just rationally value – remember the discussion on empathy in Chapter 14) … which
can enable us all to value our planet and the resources it provides us to survive into that
future: not next year, not next decade … but beyond into next century. To do this, we need
to learn culturally how better to value our children (again … really and practically value). This
will have the dual benefit of them feeling more valued (more concern for their own health and
less likely to become obese, to turn to drugs, etc) and give them the capacity to value each
other and the planet that they inherit from us.
(I hope as parents that Nicky and I are doing our bit! But it is hardwork fighting the cultural
grain, observing the British schools system dedicated to churning out service economy
worker bees rather than rounded human beings.)
Another way that the Health Process helps to keep the Birth Process tamed is in regard to the
way that it encourages us to understand space. As discussed in Chapter 9, under the
influence of the Health Process we neurotically seek to enclose and control space. This is a
direct counteraction to the smooth and unlimited space we come to see through the Birth
Process. The Health Process is also far better at controlling and protecting that which lies
within bounded areas of space than the Growth Process: for Growth Process think of a leaky
lattice network, but for the Health Process think honeycomb or suds (in your bubble bath).
But ramping up the Health Process within British society would be a real challenge. It means
very directly wresting power back from those centralised bureaucratic hierarchies and
business and political elite. The Health Process, remember, is a bottom-up process. It
cannot be dictated to from on high by political leaders, it has to emerge from the day-to-day
lives of people. It requires communities taking genuine (not just token, but real) control of the
localities they live in – their streets, their schools, their hospitals and health services and so
on. Only by having real involvement and ownership of those aspects of life associated with
nurture, will the families and communities in our society be able to develop a better sense of
balance between those competing Needs – Material, Security and Nurture (Birth, Growth and
Health).
That change, real change to society, cannot happen without us also embracing Social
Process 4 (Adaptation).

Embracing Change and Taking Democracy Forwards
We saw in Chapter 11 that the drive behind the Adaptation Process comes from the top and
the bottom of society. On the one hand it is driven by individual people seeking autonomy
and control over their own destiny and thereby needing information to make good decisions.
On the other hand, for those (initially) fixed in roles higher up social hierarchies, these people
need accurate information about ‘what’s out there’, which they cannot themselves directly
observe. To obtain more accurate information, they need to show respect to those lower
down social hierarchies.
The impetus behind the Adaptation Process is inherently going to be greater when the wider
context, social and environmental, is continually changing. At first that wider world must not
be changing too fast or the Growth Process created social structures will simply collapse
(Lehman Brothers style). Alternatively, if wider change is too slow, then the extant social
hierarchies may be able to maintain the status quo for much, much longer. But when wider
change lies within reasonable parameters, then the adaptive response of the social system is
to become more fluid and this, as set out in Chapter 11, promotes social mobility and equality.
Fundamental to this transformation process is flow of information. It is further this flow of

information which is a key step towards a more sustainable mindset and culture. Whereas
the Birth Process has given us a cultural sense and associated ideology of an unlimited
planet, the Adaptation Process drives home the fact that the planet is actually very finite.
Ideal Type individual interactions of Material Exchange operate without any information,
knowledge or sense of how much resource might be available. For example, in going to a
market and seeking to bulk buy some fish, one is operating in absence of any sense that the
supply of those fish is ultimately limited. For the right price, one might perceive that one could
buy as many fish as one may wish: pure, theoretical microeconomics taken to the extreme of
the graph. It is only by layering on information exchange associated with the Adaptation
Process (for example, reading a newspaper on the way to the fish market) that the bulk fish
buyer may become aware that, for all the money in the world, he would be limited in the
number of fish he could buy: only a finite number exist in any one year: the supply is
renewable, but limited.
st
What we are experiencing during the modern epoch, around the beginning of the 21 century,
is the emergence of a new ideology. It is an ideology which in due course needs to be as
powerful as each of liberalism (birth), structuralism / socialism (growth) and religion (health).
It is the ideology of Sustainability and it is THE ideology, which naturally accompanies the
social structure of democracy (noting that the social structure linked to Democracy (Social
Process 4) is inherently fluid, whereas the social structures arising from Social Processes 2
(Growth) and 3 (Health) are naturally static). In particular, the ideology and culture of the

Adaptation Process has to develop to a point at which it automatically limits both trade and
economic growth.
So far Sustainability has been quite a difficult concept to pin down, as discussed in Chapter 2.
But core elements of it are quite clearly that of appreciating that we live on a limited planet
combined with a culture of being inclusive and of showing greater respect towards others
(especially less fortunate others and those lower on social hierarchies) and the natural world.
These characteristics of the Sustainability ideology are quite predictable and explicable form
understanding the dynamics of the fourth Ideal Type interaction and resultant Adaptation
Process.
I would suggest, however, that we are still living in what might be termed the theoretical part
of the process. Daily we learn more and more about our planet and come to know more and
more about the limitations of resources experienced by other people in other parts of the
world. For instance, we are coming to know rationally that the timber supply for our furniture
and houses is strictly limited. But we are still slow to respond, because of the strength of the
other social processes (Birth and Growth). This knowledge has not yet fully been absorbed in
an emotional sense. When it eventually does, however, the consequences will not just be a
Tipping Point in environmentalism, but also a fundamental change in how democracy
operates and the associated structures of our societies. It will necessarily come hand-in-hand
with real, genuine and heartfelt respect given by those at the top of social hierarchies to those
at the bottom.
I hesitate to make any suggestions as to how that future might look or be structured. To do
so would be to fall into the same trap as those of yesteryear – dreaming up utopias. In the
spirit of the Adaptation Process, the structure of the future should be found and formed as a
collective endeavour. I would, however, anticipate that the understanding provided through
the theory of social interaction will be of significant assistance. I also sense that with this
theory a combination of our communications and information technology will help us
collectively to computationally model scenarios of that future, testing out different ways in
which the Social Processes interact, to provide us with options and opportunities for actively
taking matters forwards.
We see then that the unknown future from our headlong adoption of new electronic
technology and a future of known limitations, because of our very finite planet, are indeed on
a collision course. The outcome will not just be social change beyond our wildest imaginings,
but continual change. A future, in which the Adaptation Process has a strong part to play, will
be a future with a very mobile population – physically and socially.

Back to the Beginning
So, to reflect right back to the beginning of this intellectual story, I revert to that first moment
of inspiration about a better way to understand the concept of sustainable development. It
would seem that my drinking partner, Dan, really was right: sustainable development is
indeed how much change can society accept without tearing itself apart.
And with that, I close. My brain at last no longer aches from ideas trying to burst out … at
least not with respect to the social sciences. I am still left wondering, though, “why five?”. If
this theory of social interaction is correct, why are there five social processes? I have a
hunch …

After Word Page 1 of 16 10/06/2010
After Word
The following thoughts have been separated from the main part of the book. Advisedly so. It
is one thing to try to sort out the social sciences, which have so clearly been in need of
unifying for a long time. To follow it through and extend the potential new way of thinking in
the social sciences to suggest that we might review the constructs of our natural and physical
sciences, is probably a sign of true madness. But …
All the while that I have been trying to solve the question of how cities evolve and whether
social progress actually happens or not, I have become increasingly aware that the
framework, which I have been incrementally formulating to explain human development, has
wider application. Within the body of this book, I have included the occasional tantalizing
allusion to the generalization of the theory of social interaction. But I am wary. Very wary.
For the extrapolation of this theory challenges some fundamental … absolutely fundamental
… preconceptions about the universe that we have collectively developed over the last 400
years, since Copernicus and Newton.
So read the following text whichever way you wish – as a flash of inspiration or genuine
evidence that the author has gone decidedly mad. I feel obliged to include these ideas,
because to me they are a logical extension of the theory presented within the pages of this
book and because there is an outside chance they may actually be true – however absurd
they may at first appear to be. You decide. But I have separated them from the main part of
the book just in case, and so that they do not overly taint what I believe to be a sound
hypothesis – the theory of social interaction.
During the 10 or so years of the intellectual journey to craft this book, to solve the riddle of
‘what drives the progress of civilisation’, I found myself stalled for around three of the latter
years. Most of the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle were in place. I had deduced the Ideal Types
of interaction that drive the Social Processes (four of them at least). I had mostly
operationalised the Processes themselves, solved the Level 3 Need adaptation from
Maslow’s original hypothesis (Social Needs being a superficial expression of Health and
Reproduction Needs) and generally understood the Forms of interaction associated with each
Ideal Type. But there was one essential part of the story that I could not place to my personal
satisfaction.
It was evident to me that, when a system was operating competitively, the manifestation of
Social Process 1 (the Birth Process) appeared to correlate with our general notion of
increasing entropy – dispersal (to be explained in a little more detail in a moment). The
apparent existence of an underlying Process even seemed to explain the Second Law of
Thermodynamics. Yet the dynamic nature of the Process did not seem to fit the essentially

static concept of entropy that we have collectively developed over the last 100 or so years.
While the wording of the Second Law seems to infer a process (ever increasing entropy)
none of the mathematical constructs which have been developed to support the Second Law
have a time component: entropy can currently only be explained through statistical mechanics
and not through Newton’s Laws of Motion. This lack of an arrow of time is a recognized gap
in our explanation of nature, which many authors have sought to address in recent decades.
Nor did the concept of entropy fit with the appearance of nodes of activity, cities, which
seemed to be the logical outcome from the Social Process 1 in operation when the
components of a system start to operate cooperatively by exchange.
Ever since trying to grasp thermodynamics during my Chemistry Degree at University of

Bristol, just what is entropy really trying to measure? To me, it had always been a ‘made-e-
up’ thing to aid mathematics, rather than something tangible that I could relate to in the world
around me. Energy – that makes sense. Matter – very tangible. Fields and things – not
quite so sure. Entropy – non-plussed.
To generalize the theory of social interaction, it should be able to explain or correlate with
entropy and the Second Law of Thermodynamics. But how?
Something was amiss. Given how well the series of Social Processes seemed, at least to
me, to work and explain both our recorded human history and observable events and
characteristics in the world around me, I had a hunch, an intuition, that the problem lay with
our extant interpretation and understanding of entropy. And then it hit me. It was staring me
in the face.
th
On 5 March 2008, it dawned on me. Could what we are really trying to measure, when we
talk about entropy, be “interaction”? Could it be that entropy is actually (or should be if
measured correctly) a measure of interaction of a system with its environment? A measure of
the level of interaction of any defined system with the wider universe? If entropy were really a
measure of the level of interaction of a system with its context, then not only did it appear to
work for Social Process 1, but for all the identified Processes. Such interpretation of entropy
would provide me with the ability to say that all five Social Processes were, in fact, entropy
maximization processes. Five different routes for matter to achieve maximum entropy,
maximum interaction. The Second Law held throughout and it was a process (or series of
processes).
Superficially that provided a resolution to the matter. And I lived with that solution for over a
year. But as I sought eventually to write it down and type these words, I became aware that it
somehow still didn’t fit. I reverted to scouting round the Internet for current thoughts on

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entropy and it was then, on 10 March 2009, that I more fully solved the puzzle. Well, mostly.
There have to be some questions remaining.
Thinking on entropy has moved away from its original perspective of order and disorder.
Rather the more sophisticated view of entropy that leading thinkers now hold is that entropy
represents a measure of the degree to which energy is dispersed through a system. The
higher the entropy, the more distributed is the energy through a system of matter particles. I
realized that this seemingly correlated precisely with the outcome of competition. Could
entropy in fact be a proxy for the level of competition within a system? The Second Law of
Thermodynamics would then read as: a system of separate particles will always naturally
move towards a state of competitive equilibrium (a competitive stalemate).
Perhaps the best way to explain this is by means of analogy. Reflecting back to the
discussions in various chapters of this book, consider again the human landscape before
civilization: it was occupied by a collection of competing tribes. Imagine, as a mind
experiment, one were to compress a collection of those tribes into a small area and then
remove the fence and watch what happened. The obvious result is that the tribes would
quickly disperse and spread out across the whole landscape until each tribe occupied an
approximately similar, larger area of land (assuming an even distribution of background food
resources). If the human example feels inappropriate, then think in terms of releasing a
group of female wild tigers into a landscape not previously occupied by tigers. In each case,
the final state would represent a new stable state with all tribes (or all tigers) in competitive
equilibrium with similar sized territories dispersed across the landscape. For these biological
systems, this is a state of maximum entropy, maximum dispersal.
Could it be that this example is not just an analogy, but a real comparison? That molecules in
a gas do just the same – spread out to occupy a larger volume to reach a new stable state of
competitive equilibrium. But … competing for what?
The ‘competing for what?’ question is the very serious, mind-boggling question that one has
to overcome in order to have one’s eyes opened to the real intricate splendour of the universe
we live in – to see through that auto-stereogram and see real beauty beyond. The answer
could be that the atoms are competing for energy. Atoms in a gas are competing to interact
with that background ever-present radiation, as human tribes or tigers would compete to
access the background food sources across the geographic landscape.
Mad or what?!? Read on and see where it takes us!
When mind experiments are undertaken in physics pertaining to the classic gas in a box
scenario and the entropy question of ‘why does the gas spontaneously expand?’, it is easy to

think in terms of either the atoms alone or the radiation energy alone (the latter usually in the
context of a vacuum and lack of atoms). But any container of a gas of atoms also contains a
gas of photons and the two are continually interacting: very approximately by orders of
24
magnitude at room temperature and pressure there are around 10 atoms in a cubic metre
14
and 10 photons: both very big numbers. It is the density and character of the latter, the
photon gas, which actually defines the temperature of the container. From everyday life, we
also know that wherever and whenever matter and energy interact, then energy becomes
degraded (or metabolized): in the simplest scenario a single photon, through interaction with
atoms, becomes two longer wave, lower frequency photons of the same total energy, but now
heading in different directions effecting energy dispersal. Look around you right now: the only
material, which you can see, which is not degrading photons in the visible spectrum (or is
degrading a very few photons), is glass in windows. Everything else is scattering and
changing the character of the electromagnetic spectrum incident upon it and in doing so
effectively metabolizing that energy. The objects may all be in equilbrium – same
temperature – but they are not inert; they are all affecting the nature of the electromagnetic
radiation.
Objectively, the atoms in a gas achieve the same consequence in the universe as the tiger or
human tribe: dispersal and degradation of energy. In turn, dispersal of each of these matter
systems throughout a container or across a landscape achieves the outcome of a greater
amount of interaction with the background radiation / energy and thereby a greater rate of
degradation or metabolism of that available energy.
After much thought, my conclusion has been that the singular drive behind the identified
social processes, and the same processes manifest in the physical and biological contexts, is
(I think) that of increasing interaction. Entropy and the Second Law are simply an expression
for first order (Level 1) systems of this drive towards increasing interaction of any piece of
matter with the physical universe – background energy or other matter or both. When you
start thinking in these terms, then numerous aspects of nature start lining up in a way that
they did not before. Entropy, then, is not the underlying driver: it is an expression of the
underlying driver. We have, seemingly, collectively misconstrued entropy as the underlying
driver. Conceiving the actions of matter and energy through the lense of cooperation and
competition and a drive of all matter systems to maximize interaction leads to some very
interesting insights into the world around us.
The first and most obvious inference is that, building upwards from atoms and within the
lower ranges of temperature and pressure, there are two primary phases of matter: solid and
gas. These are first order systems. In the solid state of an element, all the atoms can be
considered to be sharing energy. Any radiation incident upon a solid object is quickly shared
out amongst the atoms within the solid, more normally expressed as vibrational energies

within the solid object. In contrast energy absorbed by one atom of a gas is quickly (mostly)
taken, through collisions, by other atoms of gas. The outcome is similar: the energy is
dispersed and degraded. But the mechanism is very different. In the gaseous context it is
expressed both in terms of individual atoms spreading out to occupy a volume and energy
dispersing outwards through the gas. In the solid it is just energy dispersing through the
system, being shared by the constituent atoms and molecules. The physical characteristics
of matter, which help to support this perspective, are that the thermal conductivity for the solid
of each element is much higher than the thermal conductivity for its gas. Thermal
conductivity represents the rate at which energy can spread or travel through a material:
sharing is faster than ‘taking’. When expressed in this way, it quickly becomes apparent that
the most interesting part of any particular element is that line delineating cooperation from
competition. This is the first order phase change between solid and gas.
The reason why the level of competition in a system appears to correlate reasonably well with
our current concept of entropy is as follows. Entropy is defined as being zero at Zero Kelvin,
the asymptotic point (i.e. you cannot ever reach it) where there is no energy within a system.
Slightly above zero Kelvin, the background radiation comprises mostly long-wave radiation,
either as background photon gas in a vacuum or as low frequency vibrations within a solid.
Low frequency equates to long-wave; the energy is vibrating across, shared by, many atoms
within a solid. As you raise the temperature of a solid, then there exists a greater and greater
proportion of shorter wave radiation (according to the Black Body radiation spectrum). In the
solid object, shorter waves of radiation can no longer be shared out amongst the atoms and
give rise to an increasing level of competition within the system as temperature rises.
Eventually a critical point is reached where competition for energy exceeds cooperation for
energy and, all of a sudden, the solid sublimes (solid to gas phase transition). The collection
of atoms, which were the solid, are no longer acting as a discrete and identifiable object,
something with a definite identity within the universe, and have converted to a collection of
independently operating units (as in a gas).
Standard molar entropy as measured and calculated by conventional physics gradually

increases from zero at zero Kelvin. A step-increase in entropy always occurs at the first order
phase change, the point of sublimation. This is exactly what one would expect; in the solid
system, only energy is dispersing; but when the solid sublimes into a gas both solid and
matter are now dispersing, so entropy (in the sense of energy dispersal) experiences a step
change. The deduction from this is that entropy is only a proxy for competition, not a precise
measurement of.
So, the primary phases of matter, as suggested here, are gas and solid, arising from the
underlying difference in the way particles interact together in order to optimize interaction with
background radiation. In these contexts, matter acts simply in passive response to changes

in its context, most notably changes in temperature and pressure. However, these first order
processes represent the dispersal of energy through a system, either through cooperation or
competition, when the total quantum of energy within the system remains unchanged: for
example, initial temperature variation becomes uniform with the average remaining constant.
Entropy is the spontaneous dispersal of energy, when all other parameters remain fixed.
Whereas first order processes take place when temperature and pressure remain constant,
we will come to see that second and third order processes arise when temperature and
pressure respectively are changing.
In our everyday experience of the inanimate universe, we only see matter in this passive role.
We don’t tend to observe the switch to the alternative approach to cooperation – the
appearance of exchange behaviour. Switches to cooperative exchange behaviour only
happen in certain circumstances. We have seen this for cities in the social context. For the
atomic context the most obvious example is the creation of stars, arising from a relatively
uniform background of hydrogen gas, creating a highly competitive environment for a low
level of incident radiation from the surrounding universe: that background ever present
microwave radiation providing a temperature of approximately 2 to 3 degrees Kelvin.
In the physical context, we would expect to see Process 1 manifest itself as a positive
feedback process, whereby atoms begin to exchange photons between themselves …
unless, of course, photons are just a proxy for something else ... (as money is a proxy for
energy). In this way, atoms can increase the level of interaction they experience with the
wider universe by cooperating through exchanging units of energy between each other. The
atoms are, all of a sudden, no longer reliant on outside incoming radiation for their level of
interaction, but can essentially self-generate interaction. As we saw in Chapter 8, for the
human being involved in such exchange activity, this affects our sense of time and space.
This would be the same for atoms in a forming sun. The locally increased level of interaction
would distort the perspective of time and space for all matter in the vicinity creating the
illusion (albeit a very real effect) of this thing called gravity.
As with the gravitational effect that cities have on human populations (modeled in urban
geography through ‘gravitational models’ of interaction between towns and cities), the
gravitational field itself does not exist. The sense of gravitation as a phenomenon is very real:
a distortion of experienced time and space. But there is no ‘field’ and no requirement for
some boson to be the conduit of gravitation. Gravitation simply arises as an experienced
consequence of the way that matter is interacting.

increasing temperature
cooperation competition
sharing taking
solid gas
cooperation
exchange
(+ve feedback process)
The second order process concerns itself with the creation or destruction of structure in
response to temperature change. At the atomic scale, the structures, which are formed
through sharing represent situations where atoms bind together with covalent bonds to create
molecules or crystal lattices. The formation of these systems allows atoms to achieve
security of interaction with background energy through generating new vibrational and
rotational ways to absorb and emit energy; they are therefore better able to interact with
longer-wave background radiation. Competition at level 2 is the bulk of the science (or art) of
chemistry – atoms battling it out to achieve the most stable covalent bonds (noting that the
strongest bonds are not necessarily the most stable). The most stable are those, which can
withstand the greatest range of temperature change. The currency of exchange for atoms
involved in second order interactions is that of electrons. In covalent bonds, electrons are
shared.
The appearance of exchange at the atomic scale only begins to manifest in circumstances
where molecules are sufficiently large and thereby sufficiently differentiated to enable new
forms of interaction to take place. Where molecules become large enough to swap or
interchange electrons or covalent bonds, exchange manifests as the cascading of electronic
bonding through a molecule and then into other molecules. These phenomena are the basic
building block of organic life: for example the operation of the chlorophyll compound within
photosynthesis, where incident radiation is used to release electrons, which cascade through
a series of linked, but not formally bonded, complex molecules. The positive feedback
process associated with second order phenomena can most easily be seen in the context of
formation of crystal lattices. In the right environmental conditions, lattice structures will build
themselves, growing until the building blocks have all been used. We normally conceive of
this through deposition, atoms forming a crystal from either gaseous or liquid conditions. But
it can also happen from the other direction – solid to crystal, when sufficient temperature and
pressure is applied: for example formation of diamonds.

The unequal interactions involving level 1 and level 2 exchanges in nature give us a whole
host of beautiful phenomena, most notably snow flakes and other fractals. These types of
power interaction are clearly harnessed within biological systems: for example trees and
animal lungs.
Third order cooperation and competition at the atomic scale is, unsurprisingly, a little more
subtle. As with second order processes, third order interactions manifest around that key
delineating point between cooperation and competition: the first order phase change. Third
order sharing interactions give rise to a phenomenon, which is very familiar to us in life:
liquids. Drawing on the understanding provided in Chapter 10, we can now appreciate
(assuming that I have interpreted this correctly) that liquids are matter systems, which are
structured in time, not space. The very nature of liquids supports this notion through the way
they respond to external changes. If you smash a brick into ice, it breaks and stays broken.
If you smash a brick into water, then after a moment or two of disruption, it retrieves its
original state, as if nothing had happened; microscopically it may be very different, but
macroscopically it seems unchanged.
At the microscopic level, we see also a similar style of interaction as that described in Chapter
10. Water, for instance, is understood to be structured through what are termed Van Der
Waal’s forces. These are not permanent covalent bonds, as required to create molecules.
Rather they are continually shifting and changing interactions between adjacent atoms or
molecules, allowing atoms and molecules to move with respect to each other. Liquids also fit
with this notion of systems seeking to maximize interactions. Liquids generally (possibly
always) have a much higher heat capacity compared to their solid and gaseous equivalents.
Liquids represent energetic sponges, absorbing energy from their surroundings to a much
greater level than solids or gases. That’s why you can die from hypothermia so quickly in
cold water; it saps away your heat. For each discrete quantity of energy provided to a liquid
system, relatively more of this energy is rapidly absorbed to increase interactions between
particles than cause a temperature rise (as would happen in solids and gases); as a
generalization liquids are consequently very poor heat insulators. Another element of
supporting evidence is the high level of stability expressed by liquids in the context of
pressure changes. Where covalent bonds are stable for large temperature ranges, liquids are
not; but they are stable for very large pressure ranges. This is not always obvious on phase
diagrams, because temperature is usually shown linearly on an axis, whereas pressure is
often shown logarithmically.
If we say that liquids, per se, represent systems of atoms or molecules, which arise from third
order sharing interactions, then how does competition manifest? The answer is simply
through layering: oil on water. In contrast, mix two different liquids together, which do ‘share’
then the total volume drops: for example, add together 50ml of water to 50ml of ethanol and

the resulting liquid occupies less than 100ml. This could be construed as cooperation, where
in the mixed context individual molecules achieve a greater level of interaction in a smaller
volume than when separated.
Exchange interactions at level 3 represent another fundamental building block of life. They
represent the emergence of cyclic interactions, where energy becomes cycled round and
round a system of interacting molecules. This contrasts with the level 2 processes, where
exchange gives rise to a channeling of energy down a cascade in a linear way and ultimately
discharged as low grade, highly dispersed energy. In level 3, the energy cycles or spirals in
such a way that, as far as possible, it is retained within the matter system, thereby raising the
level of interaction experienced by all those atoms/molecules within the particle system: the
more energy retained, the higher the level of interaction. An obvious example in our
biochemistry is the citric acid cycle. It is in respect of this cycling and thence retention of
energy, where third order exchange processes can be seen to operate in direct counterplay to
the normal function of entropy (dispersal of energy by means of competition or cooperation of
particles). Same underlying driver – to increase interaction – but resulting in a very different
outcome.
Moving onto fourth order systems in nature, we come to something, which fascinated one of
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20 centuries most eminent chemists: Ilya Prigogine. He spent much of his scientific life
studying those systems, which are generally known as vortices. These systems have been of
great interest because they involve emergent behaviour where all of a sudden the billions of
molecules within a gas or liquid start to move in a synchronized manner and through this are
able to dissipate energy far more effectively. Such coordinated behaviour goes against the
grain of conventional interpretations of entropy involving energy and matter dispersal only.
For example, take a wine bottle, fill it with water and then up-end it and watch the water flow
out. Try it again, but this time jiggle the bottle such that the water inside starts to spin and
create a whirlpool and the water will exit far, far quicker. When you let water out of the bath,
such whirlpools happen spontaneously.
In highly controlled conditions, Prigogine showed how vortices in a layer of liquid can be
created through a temperature differential between top and bottom. As the temperature
difference was increased and the flow of energy through the liquid increased, then a series of
bifurcations in the nature and effectiveness of the vortices was recorded, until the system
eventually collapsed into complete chaos. Through the theory presented in this book, it can
now be interpreted that what Prigogine was possibly observing was a stepped transition in the
system from cooperation to competition between all the molecules in the liquid. Sharing is
represented by large scale coordinated behaviour of the molecules in the liquid. Increasing
competition sees that cooperation shrinking to smaller and smaller scales within the liquid,
which eventually takes on the properties of a gas with no cooperation at all.

My suggestion for understanding exchange in fourth order and fifth order interactions within
atomic systems is to apply the principles to information as for energy at lower order
processes. Hence fourth order exchange interactions lead to dispersal of information through
a system. Fifth order interactions could be understood in terms of cascading of information in
a linear sense through a molecular system. This, of course, raises the question of whether
there is indeed a sixth process, in which information is cycled. If I have been broadly correct
in my interpretations so far, then I hand the baton on to mathematicians and physicists to take
forward these ponderings. If we are able to solve them, then we will be able to begin to solve
the complexity of our own grey matter, and issues such as how memory is retained.
Putting all these processes together, we see a suite of processes, which together explain
much of the physical universe. These processes in a very real sense compete against each
other: for example, earlier conceptions of entropy saw a continuous battle between chaos and
order, with chaos perceived as generally winning. This is exactly what would be expected
from this alternative theory of interaction: chaos verses order is not so much entropy verses
life (as originally perceived by Erwin Schrodinger), but first order processes competing with
second and third order processes – all essential for life. When entropy is seen as a
manifestation of something deeper, then all of a sudden it becomes possible to appreciate
how these higher processes seem to appear without breaking the Second Law. The Second
Law of Thermodynamics still applies, it is just that there are other processes which naturally
work against it in the right circumstances. Second and third order processes generate order
in space and then time and fourth order processes give rise to what we term emergence:
coordinated motion. Entropy is ever-present; but there are other processes which are ever-
present too.
I have, so far in this Afterword, focused on the atomic level because I am more familiar with
matters of atoms and molecules than other areas of physics and biology. However, as noted
in the main part of this book, the identified processes of interaction optimization are a-scalar.
They operate perpetually at all scales. It is the same set of five processes, which have
created quarks and nuclei, bacteria and insect colonies, dogs and cats, countries and
connurbations and suns and galaxies. If this is right, then the implications are immense.
Breathtaking. Here are just a few of the ‘stop you in your tracks’ realizations that switch from
being impenetrable questions of nature to becoming simplistic knowledge.
Why is our body temperature 37 degrees Centigrade? If you consider the specific heat
capacity of water and how it varies from 0 to 100 degrees Centrigrade, it just so happens that
it has a minimum at 36 degrees Centigrade. This would therefore represent the temperature
at which water is most responsive to environmental fluctuations. It is the temperature range,
at which any additional energy provided to a body of water will have greatest impact in terms
of increase in temperature and thence increase in the degree of internal competition between

particles within the fluid. It is a very sensitive zone between competition and cooperation; it is
the temperature range in which any new energy provided to a body of water could most
readily be converted to other uses rather than just increasing the degree of internal interaction
between the water molecules. It is quite predictably, therefore, the body temperature of
advanced, mobile life forms, which need that energy for other purposes, especially motion.
Furthermore, we can probably say that the more evolved a water-based life form, the closer it
will be to 36 degrees: a generalisation which seems to hold.
Another example is an explanation for the general structure of the Periodic Table. The series
of symmetry breaks described in Chapter 13 in regard to the idealized city can be seen
elsewhere in nature. The most obvious example is the shapes of the electron orbital
structures found in atoms and predicted by Schrodinger’s original thinking on quantum
mechanics. There is the s-level orbital (Level 1), which is perfectly spherical and gives rise to
atoms, which do not comfortably form any covalent bonds – the noble gases and alkali metal
ions. These atoms prefer to remain entirely competitive. P-orbitals (Level 2) enable elements
to form structured and relatively brittle compounds, including common materials such as
diamond, graphite and glass – generally conceived as non-metals (apart from the noble
gases). D-orbital elements (Level 3) in contrast form much more malleable structures, mostly
metals, which notably contain within them a liquid – the mobile electrons which facilitate
electrical conductivity and all that goes with that. Above d-orbital, the f-orbital (Level 4)
provides the Lanthanoids and Actinoids, which by deduction represent systems, which are
inherently dynamic (not static) and as a consequence are naturally less stable and have a
propensity to decay. Theoretically there is a fifth level to the periodic table, but we have not
yet seen or created any atoms of this size.
Perhaps I’m dreaming. But to me there are too many ‘matches’ in this finger-print recognition
exercise to be ignored out-of-hand. Here are some other less obvious implications.
While we are considering the very microscopic scales, it is interesting to dwell on another
aspect of quantum mechanics. One of the enduring difficulties of reconciling quantum
mechanics with our bigger picture views of nature is the apparent fickleness of matter at such
small scales. Atoms and subatomic particles do not seem always to ‘obey’ the rules, but can
seemingly act in quite mysterious, sometimes unpredictable, ways. Perhaps that might be
because the rules (force fields and the like), which We have invented, do not actually exist –
at least not in the way that we have currently conceived them. The theory of interaction
would suggest that the other way to look at things is to say that we have created the rules, the
various forces and fields of nature, because at the statistically large scale things appear to
tend to abide by such rules. When you take a big enough statistical sample, humans in
civilization are also very law abiding and trustworthy; otherwise, as we have discovered
through the pages of this book, civilization simply could not exist. At the microscopic scale,

each atom and sub-atomic particle may simply be responding to its immediate environment in
a way that enables it to maximize its individual interaction with other particles or with that
background radiation. Only when you scale this up to the universe that we actually see, hear,
feel and generally experience does this appear to be expressed in the form of fields and
forces. Rules. The atoms and other subatomic particles are themselves responding to
something deeper – a generalized drive to interact.
This alternative view could give rise to a rather beautiful simplification of our existing
interpretations. As noted already, it completely does away with the concept of the
gravitational field – a field transmitted by some boson type things. Gravitational fields
themselves simply do not exist; they are a ‘made-e-up’ thing to help explain nature. The
Process, which gives rise to an observable event in the universe, for which we have used the
nomenclature ‘gravity’, is the same for stars as it is for cities. We do not really believe that
cities have a gravitational field. So let’s be consistent and drop the notion for stars! We
certainly do not need some imaginary particle such as gravitons.
Radical, or what! And hence why I have put this as an After Word. If you don’t want to
believe it, then just treat this as a bit of fanciful science fiction. And enjoy in that light.
If gravitational fields do not exist, then what about all those other fields of nature? Yep. They
too fall away as completely unnecessary concepts. The electric field is just an illusion. The
magnetic field is as real and tangible as that well-known force field of sexual attraction. And
quite analogous because magnetism and sexual attraction are both manifestations of the third
order processes. The phenomena of experienced forces are all very real; but they do not
require fields to explain them. Furthermore, the orthogonality of the electrical and magnetic
forces arise directly from the nature of the underlying interactions and their relationship to
space and time as discussed in Chapters 9 and 10. These are all just observable aspects of
the universe arising from matter’s ‘need’ to interact, leading to the identified fundamental
processes of nature.
There is, however, a very important and significant additional appreciation that we need to
realize in order to be fully successful in this alternative perspective. In fact, having put
traditional market economics firmly into its place within the wider social sciences, it is now
pertinent to recognize that the science of economics does have an edge on our physical
sciences. The edge is this. Physical sciences tend to deal with only net flows of energy,
where market economics recognizes gross flows of energy: money or effort in exchange for
energy (food). It is this that has largely prevented any previous reconciliation between
economics and the physical sciences. It is this too that has forced the physical sciences to
call upon fields to explain nature. Convert your thinking to gross flows of energy (the two-way
flow of energy associated with any interaction) and the need for fields falls away.

Here’s another thought on physics, which falls out of this alternative view on things. There is
a conundrum in astrophysics/particle physics on the issue of matter itself. Why, given there
seems to be this other stuff called anti-matter, is our universe (or at least local universe)
apparently dominated by matter and does not contain anti-matter? If the generalization of the
theory of social interaction is correct, the answer is for exactly the same reason why we see
homochirality in nature, where all amino acids in biology on Earth have an L-form of chirality
(or twist) and all sugars the D-form. (For non-chemists, chirality relates to the symmetry of a
molecule – left-handed or right-handed.) At some point in our distant evolutionary pasts,
nature followed down a particular route and everything else followed.
Finally we turn to the natural sciences.
If the theory presented in this book were to be true and if it is indeed possible to generalize
beyond the human condition, then we see that 150 years ago Charles Darwin made the first
important step towards a theory of evolution. But Darwin only saw part of the picture.
Survival of the fittest is not just about competing against others for energy. It is also about
competing to be the best at cooperating. Combine that with a sense that there are five (as a
minimum) discrete forms of competition in nature and all of a sudden we find ourselves with a
completely different perspective of the universe around us. It is a universe in which life is no
longer some freak accident, but a direct consequence of the way that the universe operates.
It may be statistically unlikely to be found in any particular pocket of the universe, but in the
big scheme of things that small probability turns into a certainty somewhere. The chart at the
end of this Afterword provides a sense of progression form the microscopic upwards and
shows how evolution has been a continuous process from basic matter into advanced life.
Before signing off, there are four initial points worth making about the implications of this
alternative perspective on the life sciences.
Firstly, there is a needed clarification about the nature of competition in the living world. This
alternative framework not only provides an explanation for why we see animals cooperating in
tribes, herds and other social environments. It also enables us to appreciate that there are
different forms of competition. The classic picture of the leopard and gazelle competing for
speed with the fittest surviving is technically wrong. Rather the correct interpretation is that
leopards are competing against other leopards for a source of food (Level 1 competition).
Gazelles are competing against other gazelles for safety (Level 2 competition). The
competition for mobility between gazelles and leopards is actually Fourth Order competition
(Level 4): a much lesser and weaker form of competition. It is for that reason why not all prey
on the savannah have chosen speed, but rather other species (such as the water buffalo)
have chosen size, rate of reproduction and horns instead of agility and speed within their
environmental context of predators. It comes back to the old playground saying: “How do you

out-run a tiger? You don’t have to, you just have to out-run your friend!” The simple truth is
that the tiger is not competing with you: he just wants his breakfast. You would be no more
competing with the tiger than would be a fresh green pea on your plate at supper with you.
Secondly, this alternative perspective of the manifestation of competition and cooperation in

nature explains why evolution, as seen, is both spiky and lumpy. The conventional
interpretations of Darwin’s theory, combined with notions of entropy and the like, suggest that
evolution is a gradual continuous process, where all species progress in a fairly uniform way.
There should be no evolutionary spikes, such as human beings, who have seemingly
progressed far beyond other species in certain respects (notably, our brains). But the theory
of interaction suggests that we should indeed expect such spikes. The theory infers that we
drove our own evolution in terms of cooperation and competition, because other humans are
both our worst competitors and best cooperators for resources: the more intense the
competition and the more intense the cooperation, the faster evolution will likely progress.
The theory also allows scope for lumpiness in evolution; we should expect to see the
punctuated equilibria predicted by the famous ecologist Stephen Jay Gould. This arises
through the way the different processes interact at different scales and in particular the
manner of operation of Social Process 2, which when operating effectively acts to maintain
the status quo and generate stability.
The third point to make is that this framework helps to resolve once and for all the long-
standing debate between ‘selfish geneticists’ and others who point towards Darwin’s original
concept. The gene may indeed be selfish. But genetic competition is necessarily third order
competition. As noted above, inter-species competition and cooperation is always inherently
less intense than intra-species competition and cooperation.
Thirdly, this framework will hopefully provide a much more sophisticated intepretation of the
health of ecosystems. At present our only way to decipher health of habitats is by means of
level of biodiversity: it is assumed that the greater the biodiversity, the better. This is so
obviously a gross simplification of nature and may well be found ultimately to be incorrect.
Through the theory of interaction we will hopefully deduce much more elegant ways to
measure the health of ecosystems and better appreciate the roles played by species within.
To finish. I am strongly persuaded that the theory of social interaction is genuine and
represents a significant improvement on existing constructs in our social sciences. As to the
generalization of that theory, I am less sure. Are the ideas presented in these last few pages
complete madness? Or could there be a grain of truth to them? Could it be that the grand
theory of everything that we have been chasing for the last 100 years is not some way of
mathematically linking quantum mechanics to relativity and gravity, but rather something
much more simple, which itself challenges many of the complexities of our current constructs.

Is a General Theory of Evolution the dream of a madman, or a very real proposition to take
seriously? And, if it is true, what does that mean about the way we perceive the universe
around us – a universe, which in some ways is very, very alive?
You decide. I hope you enjoyed the journey.

Evolutionary Progression Predicted by Generalisation of Theory of Social Interaction

Complexity develops moving from left to right as the different Processes have an effect on a group of particles.
At Level 5 a new emergent system appears and the process starts all over again.
REALM TEMPER LEVEL 1 LEVEL 2 LEVEL 3 LEVEL 4 LEVEL 5 BASIC

SIGNIFIER BIRTH GROWTH HEALTH ADAPTATION TRANSFORMATION CURRENCY OF
EXCHANGE
Emergent New basic unit Spatial structures Temporal New emergent New emergent
signifier of from which created from basic structures systems complex systems
cooperation / complexity unit created from
competition develops basic unit
Subatomic Spin +/- ? ? ? ? Atomic Nucleus with Very high
Realm bound protons and energy photons
neutrons
Nuclear Realm Negative / Atomic Nuclei Atoms (p-orbital) Atoms (d-orbital) Atoms (f-orbital) ? High Energy
Positive Charge (s-orbital) Photons
Atomic Realm Magnetic Gases Covalent Bonded Liquids Vortices ? Low Energy
Polarity (north / structures Photons
south) (molecules/lattices)
Molecular ? Complex ? ? ? Autocatalytic Sets Electrons
Realm Molecules
Bacterial Left / Right ? ? ? Archaea (?) Bacterium
Realm
Protozoan Cooperator / Bacteria Colonies Eukaryotes Alveolate (?) Protozoan Simple Sugars
Realm Predator Foraminifera
Animal Realm Female / Male Protozoa Slimes / Algal Plant Life Animal Life Intelligent Animal Complex Sugars
Blumes
Human Realm Unselfish / Intelligent Herds Territorial Tribes Exploratory Human Being Food Stuffs
Selfish Animals Tribes
City Realm Good / Evil Market Places Built / walled Cities Religious Cities Democratic Sustainable City Money
Cities
Robotic Realm ?? Tools Fleets ? ? ?
(?)

Reference Charts for stages and consequences of Ideal Type Social Interactions and Social Processes
Chart 1 – Social Interaction and Social Process
Ideal STAGE 1 - INTERACTION DRIVER STAGE 2 - FOCUS OF INTERACTION Social Process

Type
Biological Mental Need Social Need Question of Question about Time Focus Economics of
Need Others Others Interaction
Level 1 Material Needs Experiences Presence of Can they provide None Present Material Market Birth
Others required food /
object?
Level 2 Safety Security Not threatening Can they do What is their track Past Contract (time Growth
required task? record? limited)
Level 3 Health and Emotional / Supportive Can they do Are they Future Contract Health
Reproduction Mental Health required task? consistent? (indefinite)
Level 4 Autonomy Locus of Involvement in Do they have Do they tell the Trajectory (past, Information Adaptation
Control decision-making access to relevant truth? present, future) Market
information?
Level 5 Flow Self- Participation in ?? Do they give credit ?? ?? Transformation

Actualisation success where it is due?
© Julian Hart Page 1 of 4 Draft – Feb 2010

Ideal STAGE 3 - ETHOS FOR INTERACTION STAGE 4 - FORM OF INTERACTION Social Process
Type
Behaviour in Attitude Expectations Cultural Spatial Form Temporal Bonds Matrix

Others/Self of Others/Self Environment Form Created
Level 1 Peaceful Acceptance Unprejudiced Open Proximity Instant None Peace Birth
Anarchic Acts to break
existing bonds
Level 2 Predictable Trust Law Abiding Structured Strict Proximity Time Bounded Rigid Trust Growth
Regulated contractual
bonds
Level 3 Principled Faith Moral Rhythmic Loose Time Indefinite Flexible Value Health
Dependable Ethical Ritualistic Proximity contractual
bonds
Level 4 Truthful Respect Respectful Sharing Instant Social Mobility Social Adaptation
Inclusive = Proximity Unlinking of Space
Exchanging individuals becomes
= No proximity from social Objective
roles
Level 5 Recognition ?? Varies (??) Varies (??) ?? ?? Transformation

Ideal STAGE 5 - INTERPRETATION MISCELLANEOUS Social

Type Process
Happiness Identity Narrative Ideology SIMS Macro-social City Type Five Factor
Type structures Model (link)
Level 1 Elated Self Individualist Liberalism Tribes Atomised Market Place Extroversion Birth
Stimulated Impatient Anarchy society
Level 2 Assured Self-Assured Team Socialism Bureaucracies Hierarchy Walled city Agreeablen Growth
Secure Target Structuralism Defended city ess
Safe Deadlines Communism
Unstressed Hard work
Level 3 Comforted Self-Worth Value Communalism Unions Layering Public city Neuroticism Health
Serene Family Localism Communities (classes, Religious city
Pleased ‘Faith’ Mythology Charities, castes)
Home Morality Political Parties
Level 4 Informed Self-Respect Networking Democracy Modern Career ladders Poly-nodal city Conscientio Adaptatio
Knowing Learning Sustainability businesses League tables usness n
Exploring Inclusivity
Accessibility
Level 5 Flow Self-Confident Practice Creativity ?? ?? ?? Openness Transform

Absorbed Skill ?? ation
Recognised Novelty

Table of Intellectual Roots
Social Most closely Observed and Most closely Cultural Social Action Cultural Stages of City Psychology Analogies
Process connected recorded connected Theory and Environment Development “Five Factor - Physical
mainstream Social Trend Ideology Social Model” - Biological
Science Structure - Social Animal
Level 1 Economics Modernity Liberalism Unstructured Traditional Unstructured Market Place Extroversion - Gas
Birth Anarchy Affektual Anomie - Eukaryotic Cell
Liberte Anonimity - Lone Animal
Level 2 Sociology Increasing Socialism Grid Instrumental Regulatory Walled / Agreeableness - Crystal Solid
Growth Division of Communism Bureaucracy Zweckrational Legalistic Defended City - Algal Bloom
Labour Equalite Structured - Herd / Flock /
Shoal
Level 3 Sociology Increasing Communalism Group Expressive Superstitious Religious Neuroticism - Liquid
Health Division of Religion Community Wertrational Ritualistic Centre - Plant
Labour Fraternity Rhythmic - Territorial troop
Level 4 Management Communications Democracy Inclusive Poly-nodal City Conscientiousness - System

Adaptati Science Revolution Sustainability Global - Animal
on - Mobile Tribe /
Army
Level 5 Management Creative Sustainable Openness - Life

Transfor Science City - Intelligent Animal
mation - Non-trading
settlement

The Origin of Man

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ROUGH DRAFT

EVOLUTION OF COOPERATIVE BEHAVIOUR

A Book by Julian Hart

DRAFT – Feb 2010

The Origin of Civilised Man and the Evolution of Cooperative Behaviour

! Julian Hart Page 2 of 7 10/6/10

! Julian Hart Page 3 of 7 10/6/10

! Julian Hart Page 4 of 7 10/6/10

! Julian Hart Page 5 of 7 10/6/10

! Julian Hart Page 6 of 7 10/6/10

This is the story of my intellectual adventure.

! Julian Hart Page 7 of 7 10/6/10

! Julian Hart Draft – Feb 2010 jalhart@btinternet.com

! Julian Hart Draft – Feb 2010 jalhart@btinternet.com

! Julian Hart Draft – Feb 2010 jalhart@btinternet.com

! Julian Hart Draft – Feb 2010 jalhart@btinternet.com

! Julian Hart Draft – Feb 2010 jalhart@btinternet.com

Jacobs, J. (1970). The Economy of Cities, Vintage.

Maslow, A. (1968). Towards a Psychology of Being, Van Nostrand.

Popper, K. (1972). Objective Knowledge: An Evolutionary Approach, Oxford University Press.

! Julian Hart Draft – Feb 2010 jalhart@btinternet.com

Chapter 2 – Sustainable Development

! Julian Hart Draft – Feb 2010 jalhart@btinternet.com

The Triple Bottom Line

! Julian Hart Draft – Feb 2010 jalhart@btinternet.com

! Julian Hart Draft – Feb 2010 jalhart@btinternet.com

! Julian Hart Draft – Feb 2010 jalhart@btinternet.com

No theory, replaced by … no theory.

! Julian Hart Draft – Feb 2010 jalhart@btinternet.com

! Julian Hart Draft – Feb 2010 jalhart@btinternet.com

The Nature of Development

! Julian Hart Draft – Feb 2010 jalhart@btinternet.com

! Julian Hart Draft – Feb 2010 jalhart@btinternet.com

Naim, M. (1999). "Fads and Fashion in Economic Reforms: Washington Consensus or

Pearce, D. (1995). Blueprint for a Green Economy, Earthscan.

Rodrik, D. (2004). Rethinking Growth Strategies. WIDER Annual Lecture, UNU-World

Runciman, W. G. (2000). The Social Animal, University of Michigan Press.

! Julian Hart Draft – Feb 2010 jalhart@btinternet.com

! Julian Hart Draft – Feb 2010 jalhart@btinternet.com

Chapter 3 – Cities and Civilisation

© Julian Hart Draft – Feb 2010 jalhart@btinternet.com

Certainly, if it isn’t sustainable now, it won’t be in 8 or 16 years time. But if it is sustainable

Understanding process is the key.

© Julian Hart Draft – Feb 2010 jalhart@btinternet.com

© Julian Hart Draft – Feb 2010 jalhart@btinternet.com

© Julian Hart Draft – Feb 2010 jalhart@btinternet.com

© Julian Hart Draft – Feb 2010 jalhart@btinternet.com

© Julian Hart Draft – Feb 2010 jalhart@btinternet.com

© Julian Hart Draft – Feb 2010 jalhart@btinternet.com

Notwithstanding the negation of social progress in sociology and failure to conceive a

Braudel, F. (1973). Capitalism and Material Life, 1400-1800, Harper Collins.

© Julian Hart Draft – Feb 2010 jalhart@btinternet.com

Diamond, J. (2005). Collapse: house societies choose to fail or succeed, Penguin.

Jacobs, J. (1970). The Economy of Cities, Vintage.

Marshall, S. (2008). Cities, Design and Evolution, Routledge.

Prigogine, I. (1997). The End of Uncertainty, Free Press.

Reader, J. (2005). Cities, Vintage Books.

Schobert, H. H. (2002). Energy and Society: An Introduction, Taylor & Francis.

© Julian Hart Draft – Feb 2010 jalhart@btinternet.com

© Julian Hart Draft – Feb 2010 jalhart@btinternet.com

Chapter 4 – Human Beings - Happiness and Quality of Life

© Julian Hart Draft – Feb 2010 jalhart@btinternet.com

Living to ski or skiing to live?

Are you happy?