Everyone seeks happiness. Happiness may not mean the same thing to everyone, but the founders of great civilizations have taught about ways to achieve it. Aristotle begins his Politics by saying “the end of politics is happiness.” In the Declaration of Independence, the Founders gave “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” as the mission statement of the United States. It is said that Jefferson changed “life, liberty, and property” to “life, liberty, and happiness,” inspired by the writing of Epicurus and worried that Christians would not accept such a crass material goal as “property.” Life and liberty are both necessary for the pursuit of happiness.
Throughout human history the pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness is the engine propelling the great civilizations under different forms of government as civilizations have evolved. Successful social systems are those that have built on, and learned from, previous social systems. They transcend and include the past, learning from the lessons of human history. This is the same way machines and software code evolves.
Too often human beings have reacted to the mistakes and failures of past societies, and sought to create new utopias tabula rasa, completely separating from the past. But we are historical beings and whether a French rationalist, a Russian Bolshevist, or an adherent to the post-critical philosophy of Slavoj Zizek, an attempt to tear down the old and build a new society afresh is doomed before it is started. We can weed out destructive elements in society in order to evolve and adapt, but a return to “the state of nature” leads to the deaths of millions of people who require a complex society for their support.
I started this blog after my book Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, Version 4.0 was published. It is intended to stimulate further public discussion on reform of government in the way the Federalist Papers helped our predecessors to develop a national social consciousness before the adoption of the United States Constitution, which I call “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, Version 3.0.”
Modern complex societies require more than individual social institutions established for separate purposes. They are complex systems made up of complex individuals, who are themselves complex systems. A well-functioning sustainable society requires a social consciousness that encompasses the whole, and enables social institutions to interrelate organically, as the organelles in a cell, or the organs in a human body. Culture that promotes social consciousness through its language, art, traditions, education, research, and discussion.
Most inherited cultural traditions only support tribal-level societies, and are inadequate to underpin the institutions of modern civilization, which gave birth to impersonal states and corporations. Maintaining these institutions and enabling them to serve the common good of society requires an “integral” social consciousness and a “level 4″ operating system of governance.
An integral view of society requires an understanding of goals, stages, levels, spheres, principles and other factors at work in modern society. This website supports such a broad integral view of society.
Gordon Anderson, Founder and Editor.
Each of these successive versions came about when people of conscience sought to secure liberty and social order. The comparison to computer programs is apt, because government is the operating system of human society. An entirely new system that did not take solutions to historical problems into account would fail. The advancements I have cited have occurred because of consistency with the principles of our existence–given by God or whatever term one uses.
Societies can grow analogously to individuals. They need nutrition, and their organs all have to work in proper relation. When they cease to follow natural principles, they collapse.
I would more compare an entirely new system to a “clean install” rather than an upgrade. It would need to include, at a minimum, the five principles I outline in the book. However, every attempt at a clean install has caused great chaos, because the culture has to start a zero and move through stages 1.0 – 4.0 to get to where we are today. It would take several generation to accomplish this at a minimum.
Calling the successive versions of government systems 1.0, 1,5, 2,0 etc. gives the association with computer programs that are improved and renewed over time. Do you think that the ideal government system will come forth by learning from historical experiments such as in Babylonia, Greece, Rome, England and the US? Or said in other words, will the ideal government system come about by a new revelation from God (most likely being an entirely new system) or do you think that God has already revealed many good principles in these historical systems?