Our Social Evolution
From Mbscientific_wiki
If you recall, we chose 6 major cellular functionalities as drivers in a cell's life: replication, metabolism, structural, motor-sensor, signaling, and defense/immunity. Then as we covered the tree of life we found out that evolution and natural selection amplify these functionalities in body designs through speciation. Then we covered our mental evolution and found out that as we learn to better ourselves, we are in fact bettering our capacity in carrying out those major functionalities.
If you look at societies as dynamic evolving organisms, one can argue that those 6 major functionalities are the evolutionary drivers of societies as well. We just call them differently. Replication becomes the drive of a society to perpetuate, through its practices of courtship, marriage and parenting. Metabolism becomes the consumption capacity of a society. Structural functions cover the physical infrastructure of a society. Motor-Sensor functionality becomes the means of mobility in a society. Signaling and communication covers the expressive capacity of a society in its myriads of forms. And defense becomes the military machinery of the society.
So one can argue that a society organizes itself to better provide those major functional services for itself. The self-organization manifests itself in governance, religion, codification of rules of social conduct. Provisioning capacity manifests itself in the technological capacity of a society to develop and harness resources, resulting in the economic capacity of a society. And given that a society has to do all of this in a geographical territory, it has to have a military capacity to defend and expand the territory.
So, as we follow the historical time line of civilizations we'll focus on those particular societal aspects:
1- Geographical Domain - The physical, geographical territory of the society.
2- Measure of Social Cohesion - Religion and Governance - starting off as Clan Leadership and Shamanism, leading to dynastic rule and religious governance, and onwards to poly-religious (including non-religious) multi-ethnic societies and democratic governance. This forms the social glue and the basis of social organization.
2- Measure of Creativity and Problem Solving - Technology - starting off as tool making, building of dwellings, agriculture and animal husbandry, this ends up in what we now call Science and Engineering. It is the marker for the capacity of society to create, build and maintain itself physically.
3- Measure of Wealth - Economics - ability to generate wealth and the capacity for trade.
4- Arms/Military Capacity - This is the marker for defense and expansion.
These markers are related. Simply put, governance and religion binds people together. Technology gives rise to the capacity for creation of material goods, wealth. Wealth supports influence, domination, expansion, more often than not militarily.
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