SUPRA-HUMAN SYSTEMS
| Collection | International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics |
|---|---|
| Year | 2004 |
| Vol. (num.) | 2(2) |
| ID | ◀ 3270 ▶ |
| Object type | General information, Human sciences |
This notion has been introduced by F. ROBB (1992)
According to ROBB very vast and developed human systems escape essentially out of the control of their individual participants.
While such supra-systems are initially bottom-up constructions they end up exercizing a top-down control on their paricipants.
The following reasons seem significant:
- statistically, each member of the society is practically powerless at the supra-level . He is just carried along by the massive flow of the famous “silent majority”, even if that flow reflects merely a herd-effect (the so-called “public opinion”)
- structurally, the individual member find himself generally closely encased (and even ensnared) within some social structure (institution, organization , business) that he has been more or less obliged to join to prosper (or simply survive) personally
- the two former aspects have systemic undertones: mainly, SABELLI's principle about “priority of the simple, supremacy of the complex ” traduces itself as a fundamental dissymmetry between levels in highly differentiated complex systems.
The general impotence of the isolated individual explains probably the existence of lobbies, pressure-groups, cartels, and even mafias which are coalitions of individuals trying to recuperate or obtain some control on society. Of course in such cases symbiosis turns into parasitism .
Anyhow, modern mass-societies are becoming more and more similar to global self-organizing automata.
See also
Cross-level research, Crowding effects, Dissipative structuration, Institutionalization, Network (Evolutionary), Proxemics, Superorganism