New Rules of Engagement

Two ideas collide in my mind.

1. I read a leadership book titled 'What Got You Here Won't Get You There' few months back. The message essentially boils down to... I actually forgot. But the title is more important for this post anyways.

2. Cell->Tissue->Organ->System->Organism. A rudimentary yet powerful description of how complex life forms are organized.

What do these two concepts have in common? The higher up you go in a natural organization such as life, new emergent properties, with new rules of engagements appear. 

Let me elaborate for my less-biology-inclined readers:

Consider a muscle cell. It is an independent entity that can modulate its length and load in response to external signals. But it can't quite accomplish a meaningful work on its own. Together with cells of its kind and other cells that support its basic functions, such as eating and excretion, it forms a formidable muscle tissue. The muscle tissue relies on the muscle cell's nature. But it also is governed by new rules such as synchrony of action among its member cells and new kind of external signals. 

Level up.

A set of tissues with a unique spatial organization and bundle will now give you an organ - say the heart. Now you can actually leverage the unique functional and spatial organization of various tissues to accomplish something, for example pump blood. A heart muscle cell can not pump blood. A heart tissue can not pump blood. But a heart can pump blood. New level, new function, new rules of engagement. 

But a heart that is not integrated into an elaborate network of blood, vessels, and lung pumps nothing to nowhere. Behold - the circulatory system. New level, new function, new rules of engagement. 

For the circulatory system to have a meaning, you need other organs and systems requiring blood. This integration gives us the organism - you and I. An independent, conscious, blogging entity. New level, new function, new rules of engagement.

Now consider this: Do you worry about how much blood you need to pump in the next 30 seconds to continue functioning optimally? Does the lateral elasticity of your right ventricle's muscle tissue worry you a lot? How about the rate of translational gene suppression in one of your white blood cell that has just crossed to your left toe? If you answer yes to any of these, please pm me! We need to talk!

What we learn from this beauty of nature's organization is that each higher level operates in its own realm with rules of engagement distinct from those below. This principle applied at every level of organization gives us a harmonized, beautiful expression we know as a human life. 

We know the circulatory and nervous system must work together for you and I to go about our daily lives. But we don't spend our day mediating the two systems. (Sure, they mediate each other but behind closed doors.) Similarly, whether I like you or not heavily relies on interactions between our personalities, not on whether my prefrontal cortex likes your prefrontal cortex (though those who like to dissect things may disagree with this, but they are always besides the point).

To sum up: as you level up, you can not just get by the old rules of engagement. You need new rules of engagement fit for the new functionality that emerges at the new, higher level. And the new rules of engagement at a higher level are not directly relevant for the rules of the lower level, they are just good enough for their level. 

So why have I beaten the crap out of the bush, like a good habesha does, with all this biological non-sense. (I am tempted to answer this with an Amharic proverb "ነገር ከስሩ ውሃ ከጥሩ" but let's stay on course.)

The short answer is because it is important for the current political climate. WTF?!??

In fact it is important for all human affairs! 

You see, individually, we are incredibly smart, kind, compassionate, and moral beings. Ahmm... I mean more or less, right? How about collectively, as a human society? Here the answer may vary across the entire spectrum of possibilities depending on where and when on earth you are. But in my opinion, the right answer is - we can not know! Because you and I are not human society - we are individual human beings one step below the societal level of organization. However hard we try to codify and define rules of engagements for our societies with constitutions, national and international laws, culture and customs, etc, it operates on another level of socio-biological organization, on a realm beyond you and I. You and I are what the circulatory system is for Jake, what the heart is for the circulatory system, what the muscle tissue is for the heart. 

Our society is made of us, but it is not us; it is a different entity, a level up. It has new rules of engagements which at times appear irrational to us - such as why one group of humans enslave many millions of others because of their skin color, or maltreats half of its entity for their sexual specialization, or mass murder one another in a scenario called war. 

[Do you feel that I am mixing up biology at the wrong place? Well, everything that concerns us is Biology! As an additional point, consider the level above society - ecosystem. Every group of organisms on earth belongs to an ecosystem. It exists because of the ecosystem and to serve the ecosystem. Without the ecosystem of ancient East Africa c.a 3M years ago, you wouldn't be here to read this blog and there would be no politics to discuss. We can also consider planetary systems, which lie above ecosystems. There is no way you and I would be here today without that asteroid which wiped out the dinos 60M years ago. Clearly these higher levels affect us across time and space with their own rules of engagements. Society, which similarly affects and comprises us, rests above our level in this grand organization.]

This does not mean we can not understand how society functions as we are below it. (We can, because Science!). It also does not mean we are not responsible for society because it is above us. (Yes we are, because Duh?) What I mean is, we can not explain society simply by 'human' rules of engagements, such as our intelligence, sense of fairness, love, etc. Such frameworks, besides not fully explaining society, only cause us pain and suffering as we witness societal events that trigger severe cognitive dissonance and shake up of our framework of reality. Or they cause pitiful self-aggrandization as if the sheer intelligence of you and I built this civilization. In either case, it is futile.

Of course, you and I are goal driven creatures who live for a meaning. And perhaps there is a meaning and purpose for our lives. There are things that you and I can do to see a kind of society that we think should exist. As many great men including Chomsky and MLK rightfully deduced, the arc of society's moral universe is long and bends in a certain direction towards which each of us can and do exert a little traction. 

But our intelligence and actions are only parts of society's 'mind'. The past, the future, lions roaming in Kenya, bears feasting on salmons in Alaska, a butterfly flapping its wings in Wyoming, dark matter cruising through Times Square may all be part of society's rules of engagement. 

May be not. 

Who knows!