Group entity
Encyclopedia
In individualist anarchist
discourse
, a group entity is usually distinguished from an individual hominid
, or animal groups from a single living being of any sexual species. All group-entities are assumed to have certain characteristics in common, most of them sociopathic or destructive to the interests of individuals.
Some support exists for this political view in modern human sciences. Mainstream psychological and sociological research identifies characteristics of human groups including groupthink
, peer pressure
and mass hysteria that support this view, but fall short of identifying all group-entities as malignant. Political science
identifies phenomena such as mob rule
, mass hysteria and moral panic
but of course also studies positive cooperation such as social capital
and political virtues but also more debatable phenomena such as the political party
. See below for references to fields and authorities supporting this view.
Users of the term group entity effectively signal a critical view of group actions and skepticism of positive claims for human group achievements, usually preferring to attribute group success to underlying individual leadership
and relationships
.
, copying legal boilerplate charters and constitutions) rather than by sharing. Groups are also uninterested in interaction other than consumption (often consuming each other in misnamed 'mergers'). Group relations are described as limited to 'eat-or-be-eaten', in contrast to individuals who (do also eat but) can engage in more complex types of interaction with the more complex cognition that sexual reproduction and social living require. The ability to sexually reproduce, in other words, is the main ontological distinction between a genuine being and faux or pretend entities that cannot share interests nor sympathize with sexually reproducing beings. An unbridgeable cognitive gap is assumed to exist between things that make more of themselves by meeting, sharing, mating and protecting offspring, and things that make more of themselves by simply consuming and then splitting off their successor entities.
Biology
makes similar distinctions but only sociobiology
and the autopoietic approach to biology generally assume, as most anarchists do, that the origin or type of being decisively determines its cognition and limits its ability to empathize or agree.
Political implications of assuming reproduction style frames cognition and cooperation are profound and have immediate legal and political implications. Stricter individualist anarchists generally deny the assertion that private corporation
s, for instance, are fundamentally different from trade union
s or political parties
or religious institutions or even non-governmental organization
s. All such entities are seen as self-interested and interested only in their own propagation - their relation to individuals is predatory, parasitic, and only rarely symbiotic. Even if those individuals perceive those groups as serving their own interests, the anarchist argues, they are actually accepting a proxy for those interests.
In particular the distinction is important for sexual interests, which are the most obvious interests that group-entities cannot have, having no sexual feelings, and able to deal in sex only as a commodity not as a direct organismic interest, e.g. a dating game show
which is motivated to indulge sexual interest but only to sell advertising
, thus distorting the mating process to serve commerce. A response to this argument is that groups also do not feel hunger, but can act as a means for individuals to satisfy their hunger - this being the main motive for the corporation and collective economic effort, back to earliest systems of irrigation
.
Bob Black
argued that it was not feelings or intentions or urges but the actual model of collaboration that distincted the group-entity. The sexual individual animal can conceive (pun intended) of seduction, dance, flirtation, and other means of cooperation that do not involve one entity consuming and destroying the identity of the other. Group-entities have no such skills nor capacities - they interact with each other in a way reminiscent of predator-prey relations
, where the predator will consume and destroy the identity of the prey, which no longer reproduces but contributes to the predator's energy. Corporate mergers, for instance, are often presented as relationships of equals cooperating, but in fact usually one executive group or the other will be drastically reduced, the organizational structure
and ethics
of one of the two being obliterated. Corporations do not get each other pregnant, nor do they nurture child corporations - joint venture
s being a notable exception.
As noted above, some anarchists employ arguments reminiscent of sociobiology
and relate the behavior of other animals to those of humans - including that of animal groups. They may rely on observations from ecology
and biology
. For example, in a fish school
, the fish have certain habits that make the school a cohesive group-entity, and which they perceive protect them from predators. But it may also be true that the school itself acts to attract predators, prevent creative or evasive actions, and acts with some collective intelligence
to cut out its weaker members - none of which necessarily benefits the individual fish obeying 'school rules'. Much of anarchist discourse consists of comparing human behavior to that of other pack or social animals, and focuses on the 'collective stupidity' such habits imply - also known in psychology
as groupthink
. John Zerzan
considers even ideas of "number" to reflect such a groupthink.
Some, possibly following Jonathan Swift
, argue that humans are the stupidest
of hominid
s when massed socially, no better than domestic animals bred for either chaos or slavery, and have thus lost much of their capacity to solve ecological or social problems with creativity. War
, fundamentalist religion and pathological consumption are often seen as mere symptoms of this. These phenomena are sometimes presented as arguments against civilization
itself as a process. Certainly Gulliver's Travels
presents cogent arguments of this sort.
The theory of eco-anarchism focuses on reducing reliance on group-entities specifically to reactivate creativity, and strengthen inter-generational ties as an alternative to same-generation peer-groups (seen as prone to peer pressure
) or 'school'. Daniel Quinn
's book Ishmael
presents a positive vision of tribalism
and Great Ape personhood
(the book being structured as a conversation between man and ape) is an influential work of this sort.
An interesting question is whether a family
which exists primarily or only to provide economic, infrastructural, instructional and emotional support to specific individuals who are related, is a group-entity distinct from feelings or methods of individual sexual animals. Families unlike the more economic or political entities focused on the outside world, do seem sometimes to merge or alter themselves so as to relate effectively in ways analogous to individuals' - indeed, a traditional family is formed by exactly such a 'dance' between two such individuals. Positive notions of tribe
would seem to flow from kin
or clan
relationships, as studied in cultural anthropology
and seemingly universal in not only human
but also Great Ape societies.
Lewis Thomas
noted in Lives of a Cell, 1975, that people deprived of traditional life-ways could often behave in ways reminiscent of the sociopathic and predatory ways that nation-state
s interact, e.g. in zero-sum games. The Ik
s, a people he used as example, were not longer able to hunt and pursue their forest lifestyle, and when forced to become farmers were reduced to playing cruel practical jokes on each other, revelling in each others' errors and misfortunes, and squabbling in ways that reminded Thomas of the United Nations
, i.e. not very united at all, and not reflective of a real 'society'.
Accordingly, nationalism
and the interaction between nation-states (or the political factions or parties
that control them) might be the most appropriate or least controversial application of the theory of group-entities being malignant or inherently competitive and unable to cooperate for common benefit. See Prisoner's Dilemma
and the work of Robert Axelrod
for another view of how even self-interested entities can cooperate, which tends to moderate the individualist view.
, a species
, a food chain
, the carbon cycle
of the atmosphere, the water cycle
of a watershed
. Such bases for organization would seem, like that of the kin, clan, or family, to align biological and group interests, and therefore overcome the objections that group and individual entities have nothing in common. Accordingly eco-anarchism and the looser green anarchism
s, and related theories in green economics such as that of trustee
stewardship
of the commons
, are more likely to perceive group-entity actions as benign if the group entity itself has a biological or ecological parameter, mission or scope. For instance, watersheds as borders, or a migration corridors as a right of way
, could align the interests of the biological creatures that rely on these to the group-entities that succeed via effective management of them. Several specific proposals to do this are extant today:
The theory of bioregional democracy relates political party and watershed and other ecological border and management problems explicitly, as one solution to the group-entity interest problem. Peter Barnes
's Capitalism 3.0 advances an economic theory in which explicit trustees of public commons would take their place alongside the public sector
and private sector
as a "third commons sector". Such commons would include not only ocean
s, biodiversity
and natural capital
but also the instructional capital
required to maintain them - including Wikipedia itself or other open content
resources that educated trustees, executives, and the citizenry.
Individualist anarchism
Individualist anarchism refers to several traditions of thought within the anarchist movement that emphasize the individual and his or her will over external determinants such as groups, society, traditions, and ideological systems. Individualist anarchism is not a single philosophy but refers to a...
discourse
Discourse
Discourse generally refers to "written or spoken communication". The following are three more specific definitions:...
, a group entity is usually distinguished from an individual hominid
Hominidae
The Hominidae or include them .), as the term is used here, form a taxonomic family, including four extant genera: chimpanzees , gorillas , humans , and orangutans ....
, or animal groups from a single living being of any sexual species. All group-entities are assumed to have certain characteristics in common, most of them sociopathic or destructive to the interests of individuals.
Some support exists for this political view in modern human sciences. Mainstream psychological and sociological research identifies characteristics of human groups including groupthink
Groupthink
Groupthink is a psychological phenomenon that occurs within groups of people. It is the mode of thinking that happens when the desire for harmony in a decision-making group overrides a realistic appraisal of alternatives. Group members try to minimize conflict and reach a consensus decision without...
, peer pressure
Peer pressure
Peer pressure refers to the influence exerted by a peer group in encouraging a person to change his or her attitudes, values, or behavior in order to conform to group norms. Social groups affected include membership groups, when the individual is "formally" a member , or a social clique...
and mass hysteria that support this view, but fall short of identifying all group-entities as malignant. Political science
Political science
Political Science is a social science discipline concerned with the study of the state, government and politics. Aristotle defined it as the study of the state. It deals extensively with the theory and practice of politics, and the analysis of political systems and political behavior...
identifies phenomena such as mob rule
Ochlocracy
Ochlocracy or mob rule is government by mob or a mass of people, or the intimidation of legitimate authorities.As a pejorative for majoritarianism, it is akin to the Latin phrase mobile vulgus meaning "the fickle crowd", from which the English term "mob" was originally derived in the...
, mass hysteria and moral panic
Moral panic
A moral panic is the intensity of feeling expressed in a population about an issue that appears to threaten the social order. According to Stanley Cohen, author of Folk Devils and Moral Panics and credited creator of the term, a moral panic occurs when "[a] condition, episode, person or group of...
but of course also studies positive cooperation such as social capital
Social capital
Social capital is a sociological concept, which refers to connections within and between social networks. The concept of social capital highlights the value of social relations and the role of cooperation and confidence to get collective or economic results. The term social capital is frequently...
and political virtues but also more debatable phenomena such as the political party
Political party
A political party is a political organization that typically seeks to influence government policy, usually by nominating their own candidates and trying to seat them in political office. Parties participate in electoral campaigns, educational outreach or protest actions...
. See below for references to fields and authorities supporting this view.
Users of the term group entity effectively signal a critical view of group actions and skepticism of positive claims for human group achievements, usually preferring to attribute group success to underlying individual leadership
Leadership
Leadership has been described as the “process of social influence in which one person can enlist the aid and support of others in the accomplishment of a common task". Other in-depth definitions of leadership have also emerged.-Theories:...
and relationships
Interpersonal relationship
An interpersonal relationship is an association between two or more people that may range from fleeting to enduring. This association may be based on limerence, love, solidarity, regular business interactions, or some other type of social commitment. Interpersonal relationships are formed in the...
.
Description
In the anarchist discourse, groups are seen often as akin to asexual beings, reproducing by copying (e.g. cloningCloning
Cloning in biology is the process of producing similar populations of genetically identical individuals that occurs in nature when organisms such as bacteria, insects or plants reproduce asexually. Cloning in biotechnology refers to processes used to create copies of DNA fragments , cells , or...
, copying legal boilerplate charters and constitutions) rather than by sharing. Groups are also uninterested in interaction other than consumption (often consuming each other in misnamed 'mergers'). Group relations are described as limited to 'eat-or-be-eaten', in contrast to individuals who (do also eat but) can engage in more complex types of interaction with the more complex cognition that sexual reproduction and social living require. The ability to sexually reproduce, in other words, is the main ontological distinction between a genuine being and faux or pretend entities that cannot share interests nor sympathize with sexually reproducing beings. An unbridgeable cognitive gap is assumed to exist between things that make more of themselves by meeting, sharing, mating and protecting offspring, and things that make more of themselves by simply consuming and then splitting off their successor entities.
Biology
Biology
Biology is a natural science concerned with the study of life and living organisms, including their structure, function, growth, origin, evolution, distribution, and taxonomy. Biology is a vast subject containing many subdivisions, topics, and disciplines...
makes similar distinctions but only sociobiology
Sociobiology
Sociobiology is a field of scientific study which is based on the assumption that social behavior has resulted from evolution and attempts to explain and examine social behavior within that context. Often considered a branch of biology and sociology, it also draws from ethology, anthropology,...
and the autopoietic approach to biology generally assume, as most anarchists do, that the origin or type of being decisively determines its cognition and limits its ability to empathize or agree.
Political implications of assuming reproduction style frames cognition and cooperation are profound and have immediate legal and political implications. Stricter individualist anarchists generally deny the assertion that private corporation
Corporation
A corporation is created under the laws of a state as a separate legal entity that has privileges and liabilities that are distinct from those of its members. There are many different forms of corporations, most of which are used to conduct business. Early corporations were established by charter...
s, for instance, are fundamentally different from trade union
Trade union
A trade union, trades union or labor union is an organization of workers that have banded together to achieve common goals such as better working conditions. The trade union, through its leadership, bargains with the employer on behalf of union members and negotiates labour contracts with...
s or political parties
Political party
A political party is a political organization that typically seeks to influence government policy, usually by nominating their own candidates and trying to seat them in political office. Parties participate in electoral campaigns, educational outreach or protest actions...
or religious institutions or even non-governmental organization
Non-governmental organization
A non-governmental organization is a legally constituted organization created by natural or legal persons that operates independently from any government. The term originated from the United Nations , and is normally used to refer to organizations that do not form part of the government and are...
s. All such entities are seen as self-interested and interested only in their own propagation - their relation to individuals is predatory, parasitic, and only rarely symbiotic. Even if those individuals perceive those groups as serving their own interests, the anarchist argues, they are actually accepting a proxy for those interests.
In particular the distinction is important for sexual interests, which are the most obvious interests that group-entities cannot have, having no sexual feelings, and able to deal in sex only as a commodity not as a direct organismic interest, e.g. a dating game show
Dating game show
Dating game shows are television game shows, some say reality game shows, that incorporate a dating system in the form of a game with clear rules. Human matchmaking is involved only in selecting the game's contestants - usually for amusement value as opposed to any concern for their happiness or...
which is motivated to indulge sexual interest but only to sell advertising
Advertising
Advertising is a form of communication used to persuade an audience to take some action with respect to products, ideas, or services. Most commonly, the desired result is to drive consumer behavior with respect to a commercial offering, although political and ideological advertising is also common...
, thus distorting the mating process to serve commerce. A response to this argument is that groups also do not feel hunger, but can act as a means for individuals to satisfy their hunger - this being the main motive for the corporation and collective economic effort, back to earliest systems of irrigation
Irrigation
Irrigation may be defined as the science of artificial application of water to the land or soil. It is used to assist in the growing of agricultural crops, maintenance of landscapes, and revegetation of disturbed soils in dry areas and during periods of inadequate rainfall...
.
Bob Black
Bob Black
Bob Black is an American anarchist. He is the author of The Abolition of Work and Other Essays, Beneath the Underground, Friendly Fire, Anarchy After Leftism, and numerous political essays.-Writing:Some of his work from the early 1980s includes...
argued that it was not feelings or intentions or urges but the actual model of collaboration that distincted the group-entity. The sexual individual animal can conceive (pun intended) of seduction, dance, flirtation, and other means of cooperation that do not involve one entity consuming and destroying the identity of the other. Group-entities have no such skills nor capacities - they interact with each other in a way reminiscent of predator-prey relations
Predation
In ecology, predation describes a biological interaction where a predator feeds on its prey . Predators may or may not kill their prey prior to feeding on them, but the act of predation always results in the death of its prey and the eventual absorption of the prey's tissue through consumption...
, where the predator will consume and destroy the identity of the prey, which no longer reproduces but contributes to the predator's energy. Corporate mergers, for instance, are often presented as relationships of equals cooperating, but in fact usually one executive group or the other will be drastically reduced, the organizational structure
Organizational structure
An organizational structure consists of activities such as task allocation, coordination and supervision, which are directed towards the achievement of organizational aims. It can also be considered as the viewing glass or perspective through which individuals see their organization and its...
and ethics
Ethics
Ethics, also known as moral philosophy, is a branch of philosophy that addresses questions about morality—that is, concepts such as good and evil, right and wrong, virtue and vice, justice and crime, etc.Major branches of ethics include:...
of one of the two being obliterated. Corporations do not get each other pregnant, nor do they nurture child corporations - joint venture
Joint venture
A joint venture is a business agreement in which parties agree to develop, for a finite time, a new entity and new assets by contributing equity. They exercise control over the enterprise and consequently share revenues, expenses and assets...
s being a notable exception.
As noted above, some anarchists employ arguments reminiscent of sociobiology
Sociobiology
Sociobiology is a field of scientific study which is based on the assumption that social behavior has resulted from evolution and attempts to explain and examine social behavior within that context. Often considered a branch of biology and sociology, it also draws from ethology, anthropology,...
and relate the behavior of other animals to those of humans - including that of animal groups. They may rely on observations from ecology
Ecology
Ecology is the scientific study of the relations that living organisms have with respect to each other and their natural environment. Variables of interest to ecologists include the composition, distribution, amount , number, and changing states of organisms within and among ecosystems...
and biology
Biology
Biology is a natural science concerned with the study of life and living organisms, including their structure, function, growth, origin, evolution, distribution, and taxonomy. Biology is a vast subject containing many subdivisions, topics, and disciplines...
. For example, in a fish school
Shoaling and schooling
In biology, any group of fish that stay together for social reasons are said to be shoaling , and if, in addition, the group is swimming in the same direction in a coordinated manner, they are said to be schooling . In common usage, the terms are sometimes used rather loosely...
, the fish have certain habits that make the school a cohesive group-entity, and which they perceive protect them from predators. But it may also be true that the school itself acts to attract predators, prevent creative or evasive actions, and acts with some collective intelligence
Collective intelligence
Collective intelligence is a shared or group intelligence that emerges from the collaboration and competition of many individuals and appears in consensus decision making in bacteria, animals, humans and computer networks....
to cut out its weaker members - none of which necessarily benefits the individual fish obeying 'school rules'. Much of anarchist discourse consists of comparing human behavior to that of other pack or social animals, and focuses on the 'collective stupidity' such habits imply - also known in psychology
Psychology
Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...
as groupthink
Groupthink
Groupthink is a psychological phenomenon that occurs within groups of people. It is the mode of thinking that happens when the desire for harmony in a decision-making group overrides a realistic appraisal of alternatives. Group members try to minimize conflict and reach a consensus decision without...
. John Zerzan
John Zerzan
John Zerzan is an American anarchist and primitivist philosopher and author. His works criticize agricultural civilization as inherently oppressive, and advocate drawing upon the ways of life of prehistoric humans as an inspiration for what a free society should look like...
considers even ideas of "number" to reflect such a groupthink.
Some, possibly following Jonathan Swift
Jonathan Swift
Jonathan Swift was an Irish satirist, essayist, political pamphleteer , poet and cleric who became Dean of St...
, argue that humans are the stupidest
Stupidity
Stupidity is a lack of intelligence, understanding, reason, wit, or sense. It may be innate, assumed, or reactive - 'being "stupid with grief" as a defence against trauma', a state marked with 'grief and despair...making even simple daily tasks a hardship'....
of hominid
Hominidae
The Hominidae or include them .), as the term is used here, form a taxonomic family, including four extant genera: chimpanzees , gorillas , humans , and orangutans ....
s when massed socially, no better than domestic animals bred for either chaos or slavery, and have thus lost much of their capacity to solve ecological or social problems with creativity. War
War
War is a state of organized, armed, and often prolonged conflict carried on between states, nations, or other parties typified by extreme aggression, social disruption, and usually high mortality. War should be understood as an actual, intentional and widespread armed conflict between political...
, fundamentalist religion and pathological consumption are often seen as mere symptoms of this. These phenomena are sometimes presented as arguments against civilization
Civilization
Civilization is a sometimes controversial term that has been used in several related ways. Primarily, the term has been used to refer to the material and instrumental side of human cultures that are complex in terms of technology, science, and division of labor. Such civilizations are generally...
itself as a process. Certainly Gulliver's Travels
Gulliver's Travels
Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World, in Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of Several Ships, better known simply as Gulliver's Travels , is a novel by Anglo-Irish writer and clergyman Jonathan Swift that is both a satire on human nature and a parody of...
presents cogent arguments of this sort.
The theory of eco-anarchism focuses on reducing reliance on group-entities specifically to reactivate creativity, and strengthen inter-generational ties as an alternative to same-generation peer-groups (seen as prone to peer pressure
Peer pressure
Peer pressure refers to the influence exerted by a peer group in encouraging a person to change his or her attitudes, values, or behavior in order to conform to group norms. Social groups affected include membership groups, when the individual is "formally" a member , or a social clique...
) or 'school'. Daniel Quinn
Daniel Quinn
Daniel Quinn is an American writer described as an environmentalist. He is best known for his book Ishmael , which won the Turner Tomorrow Fellowship Award in 1991....
's book Ishmael
Ishmael (novel)
Ishmael is a 1992 philosophical novel by Daniel Quinn. It examines mythology, its effect on ethics, and how that relates to sustainability. The novel uses a style of Socratic dialogue to deconstruct the notion that humans are the end product, the pinnacle of biological evolution...
presents a positive vision of tribalism
Tribalism
The social structure of a tribe can vary greatly from case to case, but, due to the small size of tribes, it is always a relatively simple role structure, with few significant social distinctions between individuals....
and Great Ape personhood
Great Ape personhood
Great ape personhood is a movement to create legal recognition of bonobos, common chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans as bona fide persons.-First steps:...
(the book being structured as a conversation between man and ape) is an influential work of this sort.
An interesting question is whether a family
Family
In human context, a family is a group of people affiliated by consanguinity, affinity, or co-residence. In most societies it is the principal institution for the socialization of children...
which exists primarily or only to provide economic, infrastructural, instructional and emotional support to specific individuals who are related, is a group-entity distinct from feelings or methods of individual sexual animals. Families unlike the more economic or political entities focused on the outside world, do seem sometimes to merge or alter themselves so as to relate effectively in ways analogous to individuals' - indeed, a traditional family is formed by exactly such a 'dance' between two such individuals. Positive notions of tribe
Tribalism
The social structure of a tribe can vary greatly from case to case, but, due to the small size of tribes, it is always a relatively simple role structure, with few significant social distinctions between individuals....
would seem to flow from kin
Family
In human context, a family is a group of people affiliated by consanguinity, affinity, or co-residence. In most societies it is the principal institution for the socialization of children...
or clan
Clan
A clan is a group of people united by actual or perceived kinship and descent. Even if lineage details are unknown, clan members may be organized around a founding member or apical ancestor. The kinship-based bonds may be symbolical, whereby the clan shares a "stipulated" common ancestor that is a...
relationships, as studied in cultural anthropology
Cultural anthropology
Cultural anthropology is a branch of anthropology focused on the study of cultural variation among humans, collecting data about the impact of global economic and political processes on local cultural realities. Anthropologists use a variety of methods, including participant observation,...
and seemingly universal in not only human
Human
Humans are the only living species in the Homo genus...
but also Great Ape societies.
Lewis Thomas
Lewis Thomas
Lewis Thomas was a physician, poet, etymologist, essayist, administrator, educator, policy advisor, and researcher.Thomas was born in Flushing, New York and attended Princeton University and Harvard Medical School...
noted in Lives of a Cell, 1975, that people deprived of traditional life-ways could often behave in ways reminiscent of the sociopathic and predatory ways that nation-state
Nation-state
The nation state is a state that self-identifies as deriving its political legitimacy from serving as a sovereign entity for a nation as a sovereign territorial unit. The state is a political and geopolitical entity; the nation is a cultural and/or ethnic entity...
s interact, e.g. in zero-sum games. The Ik
Ik people
The Ik are an ethnic group numbering about 10,000 people living in the mountains of northeastern Uganda near the border with Kenya, next to the more populous Karamojong and Turkana peoples. The Ik were displaced from their land to create a national park and consequently suffered extreme famine...
s, a people he used as example, were not longer able to hunt and pursue their forest lifestyle, and when forced to become farmers were reduced to playing cruel practical jokes on each other, revelling in each others' errors and misfortunes, and squabbling in ways that reminded Thomas of the United Nations
United Nations
The United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace...
, i.e. not very united at all, and not reflective of a real 'society'.
Accordingly, nationalism
Nationalism
Nationalism is a political ideology that involves a strong identification of a group of individuals with a political entity defined in national terms, i.e. a nation. In the 'modernist' image of the nation, it is nationalism that creates national identity. There are various definitions for what...
and the interaction between nation-states (or the political factions or parties
Political party
A political party is a political organization that typically seeks to influence government policy, usually by nominating their own candidates and trying to seat them in political office. Parties participate in electoral campaigns, educational outreach or protest actions...
that control them) might be the most appropriate or least controversial application of the theory of group-entities being malignant or inherently competitive and unable to cooperate for common benefit. See Prisoner's Dilemma
Prisoner's dilemma
The prisoner’s dilemma is a canonical example of a game, analyzed in game theory that shows why two individuals might not cooperate, even if it appears that it is in their best interest to do so. It was originally framed by Merrill Flood and Melvin Dresher working at RAND in 1950. Albert W...
and the work of Robert Axelrod
Robert Axelrod
Robert M. Axelrod is an American political scientist. He is Professor of Political Science and Public Policy at the University of Michigan where he has been since 1974. He is best known for his interdisciplinary work on the evolution of cooperation, which has been cited in numerous articles...
for another view of how even self-interested entities can cooperate, which tends to moderate the individualist view.
More moderate eco-anarchist view: Ecological alignment can tame group entities
Application of the theory of inherently competitive group-entities below that level is questionable to the degree that the group or the entity does have some biological identity, e.g. an ecoregionEcoregion
An ecoregion , sometimes called a bioregion, is an ecologically and geographically defined area that is smaller than an ecozone and larger than an ecosystem. Ecoregions cover relatively large areas of land or water, and contain characteristic, geographically distinct assemblages of natural...
, a species
Species
In biology, a species is one of the basic units of biological classification and a taxonomic rank. A species is often defined as a group of organisms capable of interbreeding and producing fertile offspring. While in many cases this definition is adequate, more precise or differing measures are...
, a food chain
Food chain
A food web depicts feeding connections in an ecological community. Ecologists can broadly lump all life forms into one of two categories called trophic levels: 1) the autotrophs, and 2) the heterotrophs...
, the carbon cycle
Carbon cycle
The carbon cycle is the biogeochemical cycle by which carbon is exchanged among the biosphere, pedosphere, geosphere, hydrosphere, and atmosphere of the Earth...
of the atmosphere, the water cycle
Water cycle
The water cycle, also known as the hydrologic cycle or H2O cycle, describes the continuous movement of water on, above and below the surface of the Earth. Water can change states among liquid, vapor, and solid at various places in the water cycle...
of a watershed
Drainage basin
A drainage basin is an extent or an area of land where surface water from rain and melting snow or ice converges to a single point, usually the exit of the basin, where the waters join another waterbody, such as a river, lake, reservoir, estuary, wetland, sea, or ocean...
. Such bases for organization would seem, like that of the kin, clan, or family, to align biological and group interests, and therefore overcome the objections that group and individual entities have nothing in common. Accordingly eco-anarchism and the looser green anarchism
Green anarchism
Green anarchism, or ecoanarchism, is a school of thought within anarchism which puts a particular emphasis on environmental issues. An important early influence was the thought of the American anarchist Henry David Thoreau and his book Walden...
s, and related theories in green economics such as that of trustee
Trustee
Trustee is a legal term which, in its broadest sense, can refer to any person who holds property, authority, or a position of trust or responsibility for the benefit of another...
stewardship
Stewardship
Stewardship is an ethic that embodies responsible planning and management of resources. The concept of stewardship has been applied in diverse realms, including with respect to environment, economics, health, property, information, and religion, and is linked to the concept of sustainability...
of the commons
The commons
The commons is terminology referring to resources that are owned in common or shared between or among communities populations. These resources are said to be "held in common" and can include everything from natural resources and common land to software. The commons contains public property and...
, are more likely to perceive group-entity actions as benign if the group entity itself has a biological or ecological parameter, mission or scope. For instance, watersheds as borders, or a migration corridors as a right of way
Right of Way
Right of Way is a 1983 television film drama starring Bette Davis and James Stewart, and directed by George Schaefer.The TV movie stars film veterans Davis and Stewart as an elderly long-married couple who must decide how to deal with the situation of one of them being diagnosed with a terminal...
, could align the interests of the biological creatures that rely on these to the group-entities that succeed via effective management of them. Several specific proposals to do this are extant today:
The theory of bioregional democracy relates political party and watershed and other ecological border and management problems explicitly, as one solution to the group-entity interest problem. Peter Barnes
Peter Barnes
Peter Barnes was an English Olivier Award-winning playwright and screenwriter. His most famous work is the play The Ruling Class, which was made into a 1972 film for which Peter O'Toole received an Oscar nomination....
's Capitalism 3.0 advances an economic theory in which explicit trustees of public commons would take their place alongside the public sector
Public sector
The public sector, sometimes referred to as the state sector, is a part of the state that deals with either the production, delivery and allocation of goods and services by and for the government or its citizens, whether national, regional or local/municipal.Examples of public sector activity range...
and private sector
Private sector
In economics, the private sector is that part of the economy, sometimes referred to as the citizen sector, which is run by private individuals or groups, usually as a means of enterprise for profit, and is not controlled by the state...
as a "third commons sector". Such commons would include not only ocean
Ocean
An ocean is a major body of saline water, and a principal component of the hydrosphere. Approximately 71% of the Earth's surface is covered by ocean, a continuous body of water that is customarily divided into several principal oceans and smaller seas.More than half of this area is over 3,000...
s, biodiversity
Biodiversity
Biodiversity is the degree of variation of life forms within a given ecosystem, biome, or an entire planet. Biodiversity is a measure of the health of ecosystems. Biodiversity is in part a function of climate. In terrestrial habitats, tropical regions are typically rich whereas polar regions...
and natural capital
Natural capital
Natural capital is the extension of the economic notion of capital to goods and services relating to the natural environment. Natural capital is thus the stock of natural ecosystems that yields a flow of valuable ecosystem goods or services into the future...
but also the instructional capital
Instructional capital
Instructional capital is a term used in educational administration after the 1960s, to reflect capital resulting from investment in producing learning materials....
required to maintain them - including Wikipedia itself or other open content
Open content
Open content or OpenContent is a neologism coined by David Wiley in 1998 which describes a creative work that others can copy or modify. The term evokes open source, which is a related concept in software....
resources that educated trustees, executives, and the citizenry.
See also
- CivicsCivicsCivics is the study of rights and duties of citizenship. In other words, it is the study of government with attention to the role of citizens ― as opposed to external factors ― in the operation and oversight of government....
- EntityEntityAn entity is something that has a distinct, separate existence, although it need not be a material existence. In particular, abstractions and legal fictions are usually regarded as entities. In general, there is also no presumption that an entity is animate.An entity could be viewed as a set...
- Family resemblanceFamily resemblanceFamily resemblance is a philosophical idea made popular by Ludwig Wittgenstein, with the best known exposition being given in the posthumously published book Philosophical Investigations It has been suggested that Wittgenstein picked the idea and the term from Nietzsche, who had been using it,...
- Green anarchismGreen anarchismGreen anarchism, or ecoanarchism, is a school of thought within anarchism which puts a particular emphasis on environmental issues. An important early influence was the thought of the American anarchist Henry David Thoreau and his book Walden...
- Hive mindCollective consciousnessCollective consciousness was a term coined by the French sociologist Émile Durkheim to refer to the shared beliefs and moral attitudes which operate as a unifying force within society...