The Good, The Bad and the Holarchy

I don't know how I got to be so old, 82 years today. Still learning. Lots to know. The teachers and preachers of my day missed a concept that might qualify as a theory of everything: physics, chemistry, evolution, sociology, ethics, semiotics, ecology, cosmology, you name it. Why didn't they tell me about holarchy? 

I was born too soon. The term holon was first used in Arthur Koestler's book The Ghost in the Machine, 1967, already too late for me. I graduated in 1963 and was too busy teaching what I knew to read another book until I retired in 1997. If you were born later than I, you have the advantage. You've got the web, hypertext, Wikipedia, TV documentaries, and old guys who want to tell you what they have learned since they retired. You in the back row, pay attention. You need to know this.

In the beginning, everything was one thing. It still is, but spread out so we can see it is made of bits. Furthermore those bits are composed of smaller bits. And those bits are composed of still smaller bits. And so on with no end in sight even with the help of fancy instruments. We are somewhere in the middle of this. The universe, galactic clusters, the Milky Way, the solar system, earth, the biosphere, humanity, nations, provinces, cities, the bridge club, families, us, me. We are bits of bits, composed of bits.  Each person consists of systems, organs, tissues, and symbiotic microbes. The tissues are composed of cells, composed of organelles, made of molecules, which are made of atoms, which are made of hadrons, composed of quarks. To summarize, each discrete entity is both a whole consisting of parts and also a part of some greater whole. Koestler named these discrete entities holons and the grand structure of everything is holarchy, a hierarchy of holons.

Holarchy provides a context for being good and bad. Old Testament tradition simplified ethics as obedience to divine commandments. New Testament tradition adds the dimension of individual choice guided by principle, an ethical standard more responsive to circumstances and also more ambiguous than a legal code. So began a contest between absolute and relative ethics that persists today, for example, in abortion politics. How does one weigh benefit to a baby yet unformed against benefit to the mother? And who gets to decide? 

Beyond that complication, holarchy suggests that every choice is both good and bad, the balance depending on the perspective of the judge, which complicates ethics still further, but also gives legitimacy to mercy and restorative justice as alternatives to retribution. The answer to an ethical dilemma is absolutely relative to where you are in the holarchy. That may not be obvious. Let me explain.

Ethics is about holons relating with each other, which is unavoidable. There would be no breakfast without farmers, truckers, shelf stockers and cash clerks. We owe them a fair return for their work. Each of us is imbedded in a web of support provided by others. No me without us. The whole of which we are parts provides what we need and requires our participation in return. Benefits imply costs; rights imply duties. 

On the other hand. the self is a holon that is responsible for the holons within: brain, heart, lungs, flesh, bone. Be healthy, eat good food, exercise, get enough sleep, fasten your seatbelt. However an excess of self-care is bad because the self is also responsible for others in family, society,  the biosphere, all the holons of which the self is a part.

Ethics remains a contest, for which an example would help. Compare Putin, who will sacrifice thousands of lives and defy international norms to further his ambition for imperial Russia, to Navalny, who would give up his safety and freedom for the faint hope of a more benign democratic Russia within an international community. The ethical value we assign to their choices depends on perspective. That perspective depends on relative affinity to others within the collectives to which we belong. Putin is quite selfish and thoroughly Russian. Navalny is less selfishly Russian, aspiring to alliance with neighbours. Each believes he is justified. They choose their communities and the duty owed to them. Their choices are judged from other perspectives. For the international democratic community, Putin is a criminal and Navalny was a hero. On the other hand, Russians who see liberalism as evil, judge differently.

Because each holon belongs to various groups with different affinities and often with conflicting duties, ethics is always relative and ambivalent. When we do good within one community, we may do harm elsewhere. When I have a warm shower in the morning, keeping my body odour tolerable for my family, which is good, I send a carbon dioxide blast from the water heater into the atmosphere, and that may help turn the biosphere into green mush, which is not so good for anybody including my future family. Perhaps I should keep the shower short.

In any case, we don't really know what we are doing. We give it our best guess, and then pay attention to the results. If we see that what we were doing is not OK, we are less likely to do it again.

Look around. There are still people repeating what's not OK. They were not paying attention.