Levels of Identification and Synergy

Encoded in human genome is the totality of what it has taken for humanity to develop: Human beings themselves, the family or the ethnic group, humanity, and life. In all human beings will be found an orientation, in various degrees, to all of the preceding. Some will tend more toward one or the other orientation, and degree of participation in each will vary among individuals and during the lifetime of each individual. And each orientation will favor more of its orientation while seeking to exclude others.

The more atomized levels will see the more general levels as betrayal or illusion. The more general levels will see the more atomized levels as short-sighted, selfish, primitive or ignorant. The tribe or the country does not like people to identify with humanity or with life, any more than it wants them to identify with themselves or their families or their ethnic group. The family orientation does not want people to identify with the nation or with the more general levels at the expense of itself. Similarly, humanity-orientation and life-orientation does not want people to identify with their nations, their ethnic groups, their families or themselves at the expense of humanity and of life.

The people who have identified with the more atomized levels at the expense of the more general ones are usually detested, except of course by the members of the more atomized levels themselves of which they are a part. Hitler and Genghis Khan, who identified with their ethnicities and used their ethnicities to conquer and slaughter millions of people of other ethnicities, are hated by most people around the world - with the exception of course of the ethnocentrists at home who think that they were great leaders and people who hate the same people that Hitler or Genghis Khan wanted to destroy. English and Spanish imperialists, whose crimes equaled those of Hitler and far exceeded those of Genghis Khan, are hated by people of the broader identification as much as by people they conquered, but the hatred of them is muffled in countries that owe a large part of their existence to them. The leaders who favor themselves, their friends, their families, their states, the businesses allied with them, or their ethnic groups, at the expense of the countries that they lead, are known as corrupt. That is because they pilfer the more generalized entity to serve a more atomized entity, instead of serving the entity that they are entrusted to lead.

Depending upon which level of identification is in vogue, are made judgments as to which orientations are better and for what reason. Thus, when ethicity-orientation or family-orientation is in vogue, the national orientation is seen as statism or oppression. When nationalism is in vogue, the humanity-orientation (internationalism) or the life-orientation (environmentalism) are seen as craziness or as treason; the self-orientation or family-orientation or group-orientation, as selfishness or as sin. When humanity-orientation is in vogue, the more atomized levels (national orientation, ethnic orientation, family orientation and self orientation) are seen as divisive, destructive, short-sighted and irrational, whereas life-orientation is seen as betrayal of one's own kind. Humanity-orientation itself, in its turn, is seen as incomplete, arrogant and anthropocentric from the perspective of identification with life. The more general levels engulf the more atomized ones and extend them. From the position of the more general level, the more atomized levels are seen as primitive and destructive; yet their presence is not likely to go away.

What is of some interest is that the more general levels actually go back to a prior stage in the development process. First there was life; then there was humanity; then there was the ethnicity; then the family; then the person. Looking outward toward general identifications actually carries one into man's evolutionary past. But it is a past that is inextricable from what man is today.

Among different peoples there is an identification that they foster. Thus, many Jewish people identify with the destiny of humanity as much as they do with Jewish people; tribal people identify with life and nature as much as they do with their own tribes; and populations in America that identify with America as much as they do with their own region in America. And of course there are people in all of these groups, and others, who identify wth themselves or their blood lines as much as or more than they do with nation or with humanity or with life.

In addition to the biological levels of identification, come also artificial, man-made levels of identification. For example, there is no natural reason why men should identify with other men more than they should with women, or see it their duty before other men to control and beat down their wives and their daughters; yet this artificial identification takes place through manipulation of predespositions that are common to men. Similarly, there is no natural reason why a European person living in Europe and a descendant of European people living in America should see each other as enemies; this artificial identification takes place as
a result of divergent evolution of both places, with their different history creating different and in many respects hostile ways of life. Similarly we see identification with religions, identification with political systems and ideologies, identification with philosophies, identification with economical systems, and identification with cultures and ways of life. While none of these are biologically based, they become a large part of people's identifications through thought, conviction, generational transmission and coercion, and form identification that are frequently as strong as or stronger than those that are of biological origin.

All levels of identification can be applied either constructively or destructively. Destructive uses of general levels include, but are not limited to: Destruction of people's individuality in the name of family, community, ethnicity, nation, psychology or religion; severing of loving interpersonal bonds between people in the name of all these or other levels; prosecution of commerce or science or technology or art or personal freedom in the name of the country or its "values"; cultural, social, economic, political and religious oppression; and religions abusing, murdering and sabotaging all that is life and all levels of life in order to bring about an artificial Armageddon. Destructive uses of the more atomized levels include, but are not limited to: Destruction of the planet for sake of national interest or humanity's material well-being; sabotaging of international cooperation on crucial matters for the sake of national or communal interest; all that is known as racism and ethnocentrism; communities and families effectively taking away from their members the rights afforded to them by the nation, committing and covering up crimes against them, controlling their lives and denying to nation, to humanity and to life what they have to give.

Identification levels can work together as well. One benefits life, humanity and one's nation by finding ways to provide for humanity's energy and water requirements in a way that is environmentally less obtrusive than present technologies. One benefits self, family and more general levels by doing meaningful, inventive, productive, creative or knowledge-producing
work. In optimum, is seen the levels feeding into each other for benefit of each level and of the totality. And in this, is finally found a thinking that has the capacity to produce a livable future.

Life is not one of its components against all others. Life is all of its pieces working in unity. A tree is not the roots or the trunk or the branches or the leaves; it is all of these things at once. Nor is the tree the branch eating the leaves, the trunk tearing off the branches, or the leaves killing the trunk; it is all of the tree's components working together. And what needs to happen at all levels of human activity, as it happens in tree of life, is minimax optimization among the levels, arriving at maximization of constructive interaction among them and minimization of destruction done by all levels to one another.

This has to start through replacing warring dualism with integrational approach to dualities. It is not nature or civilization, worker or businessman, intelligence or compassion, women or men, spirit or physicality, ideal or reality, technology or naturality, nation or humanity, government or private sector; it is all of these things at once that make life. In all cases, as we have seen, there is capacity both for conflict and for cooperation. The activities of thought, and the activities of policy and interaction, should be directed toward maximizing positive cooperation among the levels and minimizing violence, abuse and destructiveness between them.

The model I have is that of minimax optimization through synergy within the framework of check and balance. Check and balance, as was first applied on a meaningful scale by American Constitution, means that no level is allowed to become totalitarian and abuse all others. Synergy means putting together the intelligence and work at all levels to create favorable outcomes. And minimax optimization means achieving scenarios that optimize the benefit while minimizing the wrong.

Through this thinking, and through this mechanism, it is possible to create a livable long-term future that has a chance at lasting sustainability and lasting peace. To honor nature and keep it producing and living - to honor humanity's requirement for livable future for those now living and many generations to come - to honor distinctness of ways of life among cultures and of personhood among individuals - will put in place the checks and balances against the abuses among the levels, while allowing the levels to synergize toward common good.

And then life can grow, blossom, and produce its greatest ever accomplishments, long-term benefit and life and liberty through thought and action that is affirmative to the truth of humankind.