Society Is a Technology
This 8 minute read will ruin political discussions for you forever.
Politics mostly turns people’s brains into Tribal Mush. One of the reasons is that they sense political debates are important, and so invest emotionally in them. Those debates are important, but for a completely different reason than most people realize: Politics is largely how the most important technology in human history is determined these days.
And that technology is Society itself.
Society is a set of ideas, narratives, rules, mores, and enforcement techniques which is, basically, installed into a set of humans’ brains. Just like any technology, there are different versions and implementations of Societies. And technologies exist to bring some benefit.
The benefits that Society brings are:
Stopping us from killing each other all the time, even when resources are scarce.
Organizing and marshalling specialized labor to accomplish big things.
Making people feel safe and happy.
That’s it, that is what the technology of Society is for.
There are many kinds of Society Technologies, and just like any other technology, it has developed over time -- usually into more powerful and effective versions. It is a tech that changes on the scale of a few big innovations every few centuries. And just like any other tech, it has been changing more quickly in the last 150 years.
But that technology “runs” on something that changes much more slowly: human minds. I don’t mean that individual minds can’t have their ideas changed. What I mean is that human minds, the hardware itself, doesn’t change at all, or extremely slowly. Every different kind of Society has had to be installed on basically the same hardware, because human minds 3,000 years ago are basically the same as they are today.
One could argue that mindsets have changed a lot in that time, but those changes into more scientific thinking, more careful religious thinking, more abstract thinking, more empathetic thinking...those are all just lower level implementations of Society Technology. If you are software-inclined, those are a little more like firmware onto which one could “install” a higher level software.1
City-states were an early implementation of Society Tech. Göbekli Tepe was the first known proto-City-State, about 10,000 years ago. Apparently, a concept of importance associated with astrological and animal worship was used as some central concept to inspire a large group of people to organize food production and specialized labor which lasted at least 1,800 years, surviving famines and bands of raiders better than smaller and more isolated groups did.
Göbekli Tepe from above (Wikimedia Commons)
City-State technology worked up to sizes of several thousand people, and the first concepts of allegiance to a god-like ruler of the state were used to compel adherence to a common set of un-written mores. This technology allowed for organization to be enforced without always having to use actual force. King-worship is a form of technology. It seems silly and somewhat evil to us now, but it survived for millennia because it had the positive effect of making societal organization very cheap compared to having soldiers everywhere constantly coercing an unwilling populace.
This was expanded starting around 4,500 years ago into larger assemblies of city states in places like Egypt, the Indus Region, and then later the Fertile Crescent into concepts of kingdoms which acted like larger city-states. They often invented or co-opted religion (e.g., Pharaoh worship) as another soft-enforcement mechanism. These kingdoms used bureaucracy, hyper-specialization, and god-king status to accomplish very big things and make a lot of people in certain classes of their society very happy. And they started writing down rules that applied broadly...the first laws. This helped reduce people killing each other, even when resources were scarce.
Other societies of the time spent their mental efforts buttressing and justifying existing power structures, but it appears the Sumerians made some efforts to consciously think about what form of government should exist.
The Sumerians were perhaps the first culture that valued innovations in the technology of society itself.2 What records do exist imply a cultural value for establishing hierarchies and methods of organization. The economic record-keeping necessary for such large-scale societal structures, cuneiform writing, was invented and advanced significantly in Mesopotamia. Sumerians developed the first codified legal systems, using courts and jails to maintain order in their society. They kept government records to manage city administration. They established the first formal schools.3 The Sumerians named the years of their kings after the most important happening in that year. The title picture of this article is the Ur-Nammu Seal, named after a king of Sumer who ruled around 2100 B.C. The name of the second year of his reign is “Year in which Ur-Nammu the king put in order the ways of the people in the country from below to above.” His third year was simply “The year Ur-Nammu made justice in the land.”4
Other societies of the time spent their mental efforts buttressing and justifying existing power structures, but it appears the Sumerians made some efforts to consciously think about what form of government should exist. The Greeks seem to have been the first large group to record their discussions about improving Society as a Technology, and they went about trying to find ways to optimize it with fervor and gusto. Huge progress was made in that thought space, and the first proto-democratic governments were implemented in Athens. The infighting of the Greek city-states, however, are evidence that the deep Greek musings did not quite take effective root. It took the Romans, with their high esteem and close study of the Greek oratories, to implement the Republic. This was an amazing success. After conquering the Italian peninsula and defeating Carthage, the Roman system of government was deemed so successful that the Romans then spread their system not solely through conquest, but also by asking people if they wanted to join the Roman system of trade, laws, and security “in friendship”.5 And most groups, including Carthage and the Greeks, said yes. That is in part how the Roman Republic came to control the whole Mediterranean. Not just by war, but also largely by spreading their Societal Technology and its benefits.
Thus the Roman Republic was one of the first times that significant territorial gains were made peacefully, often by the free will and request of the “conquered.” While some upper class non-Roman citizens were sometimes allowed to vote, the true appeal of joining the Roman Republic were the trade and security guarantees. It increased happiness because it made people feel like the laws were to apply equally to a lot of people...which had not really happened widely before. This also made people happy, which increased security.
After Rome, fewer people recorded their studies of Society as a Technology. The Middle Ages were not a noted time of societal progress, and innovations in terms of societal structures were less intentional. That said, some big steps occurred in England (Magna Carta) and Baghdad (House of Wisdom).6 The Magna Carta put some of the first codified restraints on kingship, and the House of Wisdom in Baghdad added information gathering, analysis, and dissemination to the expected roles of government.
A representation of the effects of the Magna Carta
One very important group that strongly studied society as a technology were the Founding Fathers of America. Decades before 1776, they would have dinner parties, meetings, and keggers debating what led the Roman Republic to fall into Empire. Kato and Cincinnatus were held in the highest regard not because Kato was a great Roman orator and Cincinnatus was a great Roman general. They idolized these two men because they thought that if the Romans had listened to libertarian Kato or followed the example of Cincinnatus laying down his power, the Roman Republic would not have fallen as it did. But Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Payne, and others did not stop at hero worship. They debated in great detail the structures that would prevent the monopolization of power -- a negative latching event that they deemed an unrecoverable societal failing. The result of this was our American system of checks and balances and a Constitution that didn’t constrain the people, but the government. This was probably the most important invention that had happened in 1500 years. It was an invention of a new form of technology, and it was installed on human minds. This Societal Technology transformed America into one of the freest (eventually) and definitely the most financially successful organizations of humans that has ever existed.
The modern American Society is not organized around a specific ethnicity or even religion, though it does embrace Christianity and Judeo-Christian ethics (themselves more fundamental, revealed societal technologies, perhaps). The commonality to which Americans were to assent was not genetic or religious, but rather a respect for a restrained government, personal liberties, and laws that applied equally to all (though obviously glaring and awful exceptions existed). Americans are inculcated in a Liberty-based respect for Equality and Law, a sort of nationalism of ideals. That is the highest form of Societal Technology yet reached7 (though it is not perfectly installed and many areas still need drastic improvement).
When Ethno-Nationalism runs on human brains, it leads to things like pogroms and justifying colonialism and slave trades and gas chambers.
There is another important facet of Society Technology. We have discovered that there are certain forms of the Technology that simply won’t run properly on human brains.
For instance, Ethno-Nationalism (e.g., Nazism, Apartheid, any ethno-state) always eventually fails. It almost always leads to genocide, because it stirs up tribalism in ways that are very negative, destabilizing society8. When it runs on human brains, it leads to things like pogroms and justifying colonialism and slave trades and gas chambers. Human brains running Ethno-Nationalism regularly de-humanize and destroy other humans at disgusting rates and horrific scale.
Communism is another failed societal technology, which also almost always leads to genocide. When implemented, its economics just don’t work with humans. Humans are not bees...they won’t work for free un-coerced. Great amounts of empathy and trust are required for humans to give up all the work of their hands. While communism may work inside a small church or a big family, Communism does not scale. This is because empathy and trust do not scale. One can argue how things should be, but the basics of human brains is that great sacrifice is normally only made for the immediate tribe. For this reason (and a few others), Communism is a bad technology because it doesn’t run on human brains properly. And because of this, in order to keep Communism going, the people must be coerced with violence to do what they don’t want to do. Which almost always leads to secret police, disappearances, gulags, starvation, and genocide.
Starved peasants in Soviet Ukraine during the Holodomor (1933), a famine caused by Communism.
These are not ideological failures; they are very real practical failures. Ethno-Nationalism and Communism are just bad societal technologies. You may hate or like them based on ideological reasons, but you are wrong to want to see them implemented. They are failed technologies, like a square bicycle tire or hair in a can. They simply don’t work. Don't get ideological about them. They are failed tech.
2017 banner in a march in Poland, a country experienced in living under Ethno-Nationalist and Communist governments.
Free market capitalism pretty much works, as it takes a base feature of human brains - greed - and twists that aim into a positive for all of society. A free market society encourages people to produce things useful for society by rewarding them for that success9. And the free market also uses money as a way to organically and automatically allocate societal resources in the most efficient manner...or at least it allocate resources dozens of times more efficiently than any state actor ever could. The proper allocation of resources is a HUGE Society Tech benefit of free markets. One could write an entire essay on the value free flow of capital brings purely as a method of producing concrete information about economic activity. It makes things better and cheaper and more efficient for almost everyone.
But does this make people happy? Human brains are also empathetic. This is why the most successful society tech implementations (in countries) have some sort of safety net. In a world of winners and losers, most people would feel sad and horrified if the economic losers starved. But also this would destabilize society, as starving people often would rather burn everything down rather than starve.
So free market capitalism apparently works best when a little bit of socialism is sprinkled in as a safety net. But too much socialism drains and misallocates resources, and everyone is poorer and fewer jobs exist. 10 11 12 It is a delicate balance.
So how does this ruin political debates? Because once you see that Society is a Technology, you realize that ideology by itself is the WORST way to figure out what form of organization is best for our world. And you realize that this tech has to run on a pretty high percentage (85%?) of human brains successfully, or it’s unstable.
We are a little stuck, because it seems best that power should be determined by voting, but politicians are horrible Societal Technologists.
Which is why this article exists. The only good way forward is for people to realize that Society is a Technology. The world is a tremendously better place because of the Societal Innovations of the Sumerians, Greeks, and early Americans who took this technology seriously. The more people that think of Society as a Technology, the more progress our species will make.
Conversely, we need to stop thinking that political ideologies matter. They don’t. They are used to set people against each other to keep Elites in power.
Instead, think like a Techie, or an Engineer, or a Scientist, or a Game Theorist, or a Philosopher. THAT is how we must think of societal debates…What will actually:
Stop us from killing each other all the time, even when resources are scarce.
Organize and marshal specialized labor to accomplish big things.
Make people feel safe and happy.
And use a little history as the input into your Society Tech evaluations, instead of being so uselessly tribal about the Most Important Technology Ever.
One meta-level aspect of Society Tech is that the inculcation of certain types of lower level “firmware” installations are instantiated by the Society itself in order to “install” other aspects of Society more efficiently. For instance, in most modern societies, literacy is emphasized and universally taught such that literacy rates are above 95%+ by the time children reach ten years old. Widespread reading is very important for having a population that is scientifically literate (on the good side), or able to read propaganda (on the bad side). The same could be said for numeracy and the teachings of being a good citizen. All three of these “firmware” base hardware installations appear to be important for an economically successful society. High Society Technologies generally require these lower level Societal influences be at least somewhat effective in order to ensure the success of wider Society. So while a newborn human in the 2000s is very similar to a Sumerian newborn in capabilities, a five year old today will think fairly differently than their Ur counterpart.
Crawford, Harriet (2013). The Sumerian World. New York City, New York and London, England: Routledge. pp. 34–43. ISBN978-0-203-09660-4.
Jim Al-Khalili (31 March 2011). "5: The House of Wisdom". The House of Wisdom: How Arabic Science Saved Ancient Knowledge and Gave Us the Renaissance. Penguin Publishing Group. p. 53. ISBN978-1-101-47623-9
"Today, gross human rights violations, genocidal atrocities and, in some cases, outright genocide are intrinsically linked to the ethnicization-from-above and the contemporary wave of ethnic nationalism-from-below. Unlike some types of warfare, genocide is always a state-organized crime."
Scherrer, Christian P. (1999). "Towards a theory of modern genocide. Comparative genocide research: Definitions, criteria, typologies, cases, key elements, patterns and voids". Journal of Genocide Research. 1 (1): 13–23. doi:10.1080/14623529908413932
"The natural effort of every individual to better his own condition when suffered to exert itself with freedom and security is so powerful a principle that it is alone and without any assistance not only capable of carrying on the society to wealth and prosperity but of surmounting a hundred impertinent obstructions with which the folly of human laws too often encumbers its operations though the effect of these obstructions is always more or less either to encroach upon its freedom or to diminish its security." From the Wealth of Nations page 277. https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Wealth_of_Nations/-WxKAAAAYAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0