Is our society alive?
Our society as a living entity is between death and life. And not only because we destroy our planet increasing the average temperature on it by one degree per three decades by emission of greenhouse gases. And even not only because by eliminating genetical diversity we disable the biosphere to adapt to these new circumstances. All these things are because we have lost our identity or – what is the same – we have too many identities. We are not committed to any cooperating organism. However this commitment to cooperation is the essence of the life.
With our lost identity we have lost the control on us. If some control is inconvenient for us then we simply change our identity and join to that group, of which control is convenient for us. Or we do not join to any group, we create a one-man “group”. We are going to be seven (eight, nine, ten…) billion free-lancers without common values, without common goals and common actions. We do cooperate only when we like it despite that the cooperation is the essence of our nature, our life, and every kind of life.
So, if we would like to save our planet and our civilisation on it, we have to form living communities which have control on us, and on which we also have control as we take part in its’ construction. A living community has participants which belong to it and only to it. The community takes care of its’ members, and the members are serving the community. There is a need for mutual commitment. Without it the community is not living and then we are part of a dead body. Our days are count down, like the minutes of our cells when our heart stops beating. We, as multicellular organisms are alive, our heart is beating, but we are intended to be social creatures, which are truly alive if they are committed members of a community. A community which is a superorganism beyond us. (See “The Levels of Life”)
The life per definition is cooperation. More detailed the life is a just functioning cooperation which provides mutual advantages for all the participants.
OK, life is not simply a functioning cooperation with mutual advantages. There are two other conditions in the definition of life: a living unit must have an information carrying subsystem, and it is programmed, it has a life cycle, it has irreversible processes. So, a living organism is developing (growing) and reproducing. (See “Definition of Living”)
This development and reproduction – as at least two tasks – serve a good reason for further cooperation. Individuals can specialize on one of them and suddenly raises a new level of cooperation between the differently specialized individuals.
With these differentiation – specialization – cooperation cycles life reaches higher and higher levels, more and more complexity. This is why we can say that the cooperation is the essence of the life.
The mission of human species is to reach higher and higher levels of cooperation and forming a super-society by fulfilling this rule.