Maybe the future is less about AI and more about jazz
Thinking about our future only in terms of technology is hugely problematic, because we are in a race: technological prowess vs. wisdom. When we get too powerful without getting better at collectively wielding that power for good things, we do bad things instead. It really is that simple. It’s just so much easier to break things than to create. You can sink a million pound yacht with a fifty quid drill. Nobody intended social media to turn democracy into a slanging match all over the world, but it did. The kicker is that technological progress is exponential, while collective wisdom has been inching up slowly.
“The real problem of humanity is the following: We have Palaeolithic emotions, medieval institutions and godlike technology. And it is terrifically dangerous, and it is now approaching a point of crisis overall.”
Edward O. Wilson
Every problem we face from the climate crisis to the collapse in mental health is ultimately a symptom of this ground truth. Every solution we discuss, from carbon capture to cognitive behavioural therapy, risks merely masking symptoms. The only real solution is a massive increase in societal wisdom.
Depending on your view of the human condition, this might present a gloomy outlook, and more and more of us are pessimistic. But one crucial fact might save the day: societal wisdom is not the same as personal wisdom. It is systemic wisdom, which is entirely different.
James: “Why the big secret? People are smart. They can handle it.”
Agent K: “A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it.”
Men in Black
Is that what we are, together? Is that all we can be? I’ve been thinking about such questions a lot and I think I know why it can seem inevitable, but also how it can be different. We have a huge blind spot in the ways we think about power.
More specifically:
We often conflate two kinds of power: the power of dominion over others, and power that comes from within, or potency. For example we say power corrupts, but potency does not corrupt.
the distinction exists both inside individuals and inside systems.
Noticing the difference reveals a different take on our big problem:
Modern society functions almost exclusively through dominion based systems.
Such systems have created many amazing things, but not collective wisdom. In fact they work powerfully against it (more on this in a future post).
But we could ask:
Could society function, to a much larger degree, through potency based systems (aka ecosystems)?
Would such a society behave with much greater wisdom, and be dramatically better at tackling the so-called wicked problems that modernity is throwing at us?
Before we can answer we need a better understanding of what it means for a society to function more through systemic potency. That is the topic of the rest of this post. But I want to first round out this chain of thinking with a final step. Even if the answers are yes, what could we actually do about it?
It’s here that I think the potential really shines:
I believe the benefits of systemic potency will apply both to large systems (thousands of people and upwards) as well as to small groups.
We can very easily find out if the second part is true.
We can work our way up, figuring it out as we go, and I expect it to be great fun and enormously rewarding at every step.
I am putting together some practical advice for starting these kinds of small but growing creative ecosystems, which I call gift communities.
But let’s get back to those questions.
Systemic Potency
To understanding whether potent systems could perform societal functions that today rely on dominion systems, the first step is to clarify the difference between the two.
For our purposes dominion is not about brute force but derives its power from any kind of mental agreement to give one authority over another. The word domination suggests some kind of violence is present, but dominion can be perfectly polite, even friendly. This is important to note because there is a widespread belief that top-down business is old fashioned and the world has moved on. In reality we have mostly shifted workplace language and superficial practices, without wide and deep structural changes, as exposed by the fact that the vast majority of us are not even engaged at work.
Being a product of the mind, dominion is largely absent in nature, but not entirely. It is found in the animals capable of adaptive social structure such as primates and some marine mammals (perhaps tellingly, these seem to be largely the same animals as those capable of sometimes being cruel—inflicting pain on others for no practical benefit). However in nature these structures top out at about 200 individuals. Only humans have elevated the practice to thousands or millions. As Yuval Noah Harari captivatingly explains, we do so using stories.
I also use the term machine systems synonymously with dominion systems. That’s a big topic we’ll be returning to but for now suffice to say that, just like machines, dominion gives us abstraction, prediction and large-scale control. These are extremely sharp tools, but they cut two ways.
In potent systems, by contrast, the power doesn’t come from agreements or anywhere else—it is already there, within the system itself. This is overwhelmingly the type of power we observe in nature. The power to become a flower is within the seed. Or more carefully, the system that is seed + soil + water etc. has that power. Note that this is not about energy. The ultimate energy source is external—the sun—but the sun only heats. Here we mean power in the sense of capability—the capability to become a flower is inside the system itself. In contrast to machines, potent systems are concrete, unpredictable, and not externally controlled.
NAMES MATTER. There is already a well established term for precisely this phenomenon: self-organising systems. Why introduce a new one? Because we need to talk more about power! The global crises we face today ultimately boil down to power. We have many amazing solutions available: regenerative farming, breakthroughs in mental health interventions, people-friendly political processes. We don’t lack solutions, we lack deployment. Time after time the folks with the creative vision find themselves in a massively one-sided power struggle with vested interests. We need to think about self-organising systems in a different way: as a source of power.
Examples of systemic potency abound in nature, but to provide a viable alternative to dominion and machine-systems, we need to know if we can get this to work in our own activities. The best way to show that this is possible is with a real example. Twentieth century America might seem an unlikely place to start, given the incredible degree to which it extended dominion around the world, but it is also the home of one of the most beautiful modern examples of systemic potency: the emergence of jazz.
Artists know how
“What this jazz scene really needs is a few more middle managers to keep everyone properly aligned with the mission statement”
Nobody, ever.
The idea that a top-down, managed process could have given us jazz is so absurd it’s literally a gag. The emergence of a new art-form happened without a plan, a structure or any kind of central coordination. In other words, a distinct lack of dominion.
Such observations put us in familiar progressive territory—the kind of thinking that leads to collectivist ideas like socialism in politics and cooperatives in business. But these ideas have been around for a very long time. They have been unsuccessful at dislodging dominion as the central logic of our current paradigm.
I believe a large part of these failings has been an oversight in the lessons we have learned about communal creativity. We have overly focussed on what is absent (dominion), and not enough on what is present. If dominion is a form of power, and we observe that it plays a small role in artistic movements, where do they get their power from?
If we step down from abstractions and remember we are talking about jazz, the answer is immediately obvious: the creative power in the system comes from talented musicians. In other words from individual potency. But the end result is not a thousand different creative acts from a thousand individuals, but a beautiful and exquisitely organised whole—a recognisable genre that brings joy to millions all over the world.
The critical question then is not where did the power come from, but how was it organised? This is what systemic power means: systemic power is individual power organised. Remember, systemic potency is just another way to talk about self-organised systems that reminds us to focus on power. Ideas like socialism and worker-owned cooperatives have not brought us to a less oppressive world because they lack an alternative logic of power organisation. The only option was to try different forms of dominion. In a great and tragic irony, the socialist nations ended up much less collectivist than liberal democracies on many fronts, as in the disastrous centrally managed (i.e. dominion based) economy.
Fewer oligarchs means more state. We will never escape this dichotomy without a different way to organise power. Progressive organisations such as those mentioned in the previous post—the so called “teal” organisations investigated by Frederic Laloux and others—are trying to find a genuine solution. Instead of replacing one form of dominion with another, they look to remove it entirely, or at least to greatly reduce its role. But this still fails to answer the central question, how will power be organised? Lacking a clear answer the reality tends to be “not much”. I have come to believe that the lack of major success stories coming out of the self-managed organisations movement is that most such companies are simply less powerful than the best top-down players.
If we apply this question—how is power organised—to the jazz scene, remembering that the power in question is individual musical talent, a number of interesting observations immediately present themselves. The community has many structural features highly compatible with, even necessary for, systemic potency. We will be looking at all of them in depth in posts to come, but for now they are worth simply noting.
Firstly the musicians and singers are generally free agents, associating in endless combinations with other musicians and outfits according to the opportunities and desires of the moment. The central creative unit however is not the individual but the small group—small enough to foster deep mutual understanding and trust, large enough for powerful creative exchange. Despite the importance of groups, musicians have their own status in the community, as opposed to it being tied to their role in a specific band. Players also have a large degree of creative autonomy—on joining a particular group, be it for a year or an evening, they are not expected to blend in but rather to bring their distinctive sound into the mix. Next, the entire system operates as a kind of gift economy. To work is to give: to the audience as entertainment but also to other musicians as new sounds, new rhythms, new ideas. Reputation and status come largely through the generosity and value of your giving. And finally, to introduce one of our most important themes, love plays a very central role in this system. In this case, love of music. More on all this later.
Several of the ideas listed can be found in innovative businesses. For example, engineers at the video game company Valve have wheels on their desks. They are encouraged to physically move towards their preferred working group, much like a bass player shifting between one band and another. However, being overly focussed on reducing dominion (no managers!) they typically miss a crucial feature that was present in the jazz scene: the greats got to be great.
Anyone reaching a certain height was able to attract others into a group that was not just some band, but their band: Louis Armstrong’s Hot Five, the Miles Davis Quintets and countless others, some famous some not. With creative authority over the group, the exceptional gifts these musicians had to give could soar to new heights. The better the bandleader, the better the talent they can attract. In other words we see the organic emergence of a competence hierarchy.
This turns out to be tremendously important, because the difference in creative potential between one person and another, in a given context, is enormous. Why are Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald hogging all the limelight? Because they are just that good! (I still remember the moment this general idea first hit home for me: watching The Lion King 2. The original is so good it reached the heights of cultural landmark. The sequel is terrible! I remember thinking who did Disney put on this project?! Obviously not amateurs. So that must be how big the gulf is between the A-team and the B-team).
People with a collectivist leaning can get a bit nervous at this point, and understandably so. Surely by letting the greats become greater, they can start to dominate others? And yes, I’m sure to some degree they do, but here we reach a central pillar of the argument I am trying to make, and I wish I could write this in letters a hundred feet tall:
It doesn’t matter when the system itself is organised for potency, not dominion.
Anyone can write a tune, anyone can start a band, and if you have a day job (as most did, when getting started) anyone can choose who they want to play with (and who they don’t). Some powerful individuals might gain a certain degree of dominion over dozens or even hundreds, but the large scale is overwhelmingly self-organising and potent—the power emerges from within—exactly like nature. The localised dominion is a tiny price to pay for the massive increase in overall systemic power that comes when competency is amplified. It’s the difference between jazz being good and jazz being great. It could be the difference between out competing the top-down domineering world, or being forever dominated.
There is a huge misconception that eliminating dominion means eliminating hierarchy of any kind. The New Employee Handbook which Valve shared with the world declares “Welcome to Flatland”. The future-of-work movement remains obsessed with being anti-hierarchy despite some key thinkers clearly arguing against it. It is rare to hear someone talking about liberated organisational structures without the word “hierarchy” slipping in as a moniker for the oppressive alternative. The general vibe seems to be “OK fine there will always be some hierarchy and I suppose we can live with it”.
This way of thinking does not fly with artistic pursuits because the difference between good and great is so obvious: everyone can see or hear it for themselves. The competence hierarchy is not only obvious but celebrated. But in business or governance greatness is much harder to discern, and in a self-managing organisation Louis and Ella might quickly find their wings clipped. In these circles the term “heroic leader” is derogatory. This is a classic example of conflating dominion with potency as the baby is thrown out with the bathwater. We desperately need to find the heroes of the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible!
A highly developed and powerful competence hierarchy is utterly essential for great creative work. Eliminating hierarchy is not just wrong—it’s much worse than that—it’s anti-potency. It allows destructive machine systems to continue to win in the market.
All this leaves us with two hotly burning questions:
Can we adapt what we learn about systemic potency from the history of artistic movements to the creation of general prosperity? Can we do food production, education, healthcare, manufacturing and all the rest, the way we do jazz?
Can such activities self-organise into the strong competence hierarchies that will be necessary to out-compete the status quo, without building large dominion hierarchies with all their attendant toxicity?
I believe the answer to both of these is a resounding yes. We will start to look at how that could work in the next post.
🐘