Selection of Organization at the Social Level: obstacles and facilitators of metasystem transitions

This paper examines in how far Turchin’s concept of metasystem transition, as the evolutionary integration and control of individual systems, can be applied to the development of social systems. Principles of collective evolution are reviewed, and different types of competitive or synergetic configurations are distinguished. Similar systems tend to get involved in negative sum competition, and this precludes optimization at the group level. The development of shared controls (e.g. through conformist transmission) may overcome the erosion of group level cooperation, and thus facilitate the emergence of a division-of-labor organization. The resulting social metasystem transition is exemplified by the emergence of multicellularity, insect societies and human sociality. For humans, however, the on-going competition between the cooperators produces an ambivalent sociality, and a weakly integrated social metasystem. Strengths and weaknesses of the main social control mechanisms are reviewed: mutual monitoring, internalized restraint, legal control and market mechanisms. Competition between individuals and (fuzzily defined) groups at different levels of aggregation very much complicates evolutionary optimization of society. Some suggestions are made for a more effective social organization, but it is noted that the possible path to social integration at the world level will be long and difficult.