Mult.Scales.ofChange

Rough draft: Version 0.9, © Valerie Gremillion 2000

Multiple scales of change in the world

How does real change in the world happen? Is it through our direct actions on other humans (the scale of individuals), or is it our aggregate wielding of power through our institutions, that we can alter our social structures and the world around us? The above is often presented as an 'either/or' question - that we must work via political parties, for instance, vs, the 'thousand points of light' of individual people striving for change in themselves. If change happens, in *anything* (corporations, institutions, governments, religions) it has to change one at a time. One institution at a time. And what has to change for any institution to change is the people who make up that institution, all of them. And if you want to change things, you don't change entities.....you change the people who actually *are* the entity. It's the only way, really. This is often the conventional wisdom. Yet though it is obviously highly important that individuals change, is this the only or even the primary level to work on for substantial improvement of our systems and our world? As individuals, our actions create exert effects in the world. But we also affect the world through the institutions we support, control, or set loose on others-- the larger scale entities of corporations, governments, religions, and other groupings, all of which interact with each other as well as affecting us as individuals and communities. The interactions between large-scale institutions is an important arbiter of the dynamics of our societies. In many cases only a government can prevent another government from taking action; it is corporations, and not their CEOs, that do battle in the marketplace. That there are separate rules, constraints, and motives for the different scales - for individuals vs. large institutions -- suggests that change must occur not only in individuals, but in the rules and boundaries between entities like nations and multinational corporations. Moreover, institutions - cities, churches, nations, schools, corporations and more - strongly constrain the behavior of individuals. From social mores to bureaucratic redtape, from how we select our politicians to what are permissible topics in scientific, religious, political or family environments - all of these determine our behavior as much as our individual desires do. Many many people, I believe, would behave differently if the system constraints were different, the same way the actions of a corporate middle manager in a giant corporation would be different in a family-run company or a church picnic. The 'individuals must change first' view seems to ignore the fact that all these 'units' (human, corporation etc) are embedded within systems that constrain or motivate behavior in very specific ways. The 'reward and punishment' systems operative within each community, each company, and each nation, structure our behavior. We cannot simply ignore these fundamental channelings of our tendencies and potential, as higher level/larger scale constraints can act against our individual wills and wisdom. Attempting change only through individual change is therefore less likely to succeed than a convergent approach on many scales. Trying to 'change the system' through individual change alone, for instance, is impossible in a company whose structure of incentives has not altered. Whatever individual change may have occurred is shackled or overshadowed by company strictures at cross purposes to it. In my opinion, the 'change-individuals' way is not nearly as efficient as working on change in individuals while also trying to reconfigure the environment that in large part constrains and directs their behavior. This means that there needs to be discussion of relevant change at all scales that effect the behavior of the individual, as well as of the dynamics within a given scale (say, between individual people, or between corporations). For example, examining regulation of the corporations themselves and their interactions - the corporation network and its constituents- would be one scale. Another,'within corporation', would look at how to change the system of regulation of corporations such that individuals *within* the corporation are not constrained to make decisions they do not personally believe in, hence should not be made to take responsibility for. This, however, brings into question other aspects of system structure, like information flow - do the individuals in the corporation get to see the big picture of the company, or is it hidden? Do they understand the ramifications of their actions in this bigger system, allowing them to align those actions with their ethics? In large part the above are not true for large institutions- in fact a major problem of scale is that they are less and less true as size of the institution increases, leading to the abdication of responsibility for actions whose consequences are unconnected (except indirectly, through company profit) to the actor. As long as there is so little alignment between the actions and ethics of *individuals* and the actions and ethics of the larger scale they are embedded within -companies, nations, etc. - we will have a system capable of inflicting great damage simply through ignorance and a belief that the profit motive is, and should be, primary. Our current system structures support these schisms between ethics, actions, and consequences, through the mis-assignment of profit and responsibility and the constraint of information. To improve the world, our institutions, and ourselves, we must use all the (peaceful) avenues available. This means being aware of all levels that need to change so that the whole can change. And it means working on all those levels to connect our actions to our beliefs and ethics, to maintain the link between power and responsibility, and to open all channels of information and understanding so that we can see the paths we are choosing and their implications for our future.