Think what happens when we decide to invite others to go out to the movies or dinner. With how many of them do we have similar tastes of cuisins or movies? So, how many should we invite? We make these calculations because we wish to avoid frictions and disagreements. Sometimes the potential difference of opinion may be such that we prefer to cancel the whole outing. In these and other similar cases, we are faced with the problem of scaling up.
Anthropologists have found that the scaling up problem applies to the formation of larger communities of people as they attempt to expand from clans to tribes and beyond reaching all the way to state formation. It was found, for example, that indigenous communities in New Guinea had difficulty holding together more than 300 people. Going beyond that size, discord and intragroup frictions ended up with the break-up of the community.
But then they found one indigenous community, the Ilahita, which numbered over 2,500 people. So, how had the Ilahita succeeded scaling up beyond the typical size? The answer was two, let’s call them, social innovations. One was the performance of rituals that brought the whole community together, thus fostering a spirit of common experiences. The other was the adoption of common Gods that demanded certain code of behavior by all members. Solidarity and cooperation were further built across the community by bringing members of different clans together in preparing rites and carrying out common projects for the community.
Another way to promote intragroup harmony is to differentiate ourselves from another community. We can do this by adopting cultural and other customs very different from those of the neighbors. Once such red lines are set, then intergroup competition – the familiar Us versus Them – strengthens the cohesion of a community.
These findings have implications for our times. What if present-day states are experiencing scaling up challenges, they are ill-equipped to navigate? History shows that large conglomerations of different tribes, ethnic or religious groups have been kept together by the power of the state (the Roman, the Ottoman and the British Empires are some example). The motto of the French monarchy, one king, one law, one faith, perhaps best exemplifies the top-down imposition of one overarching force to keep the state’s subjects together by suppressing individual differences. But what if we try to scale up on the basis of free choice? What if we have a menu with something for everyone and we are fine with it? That is, what is the power of democratic rule to overcome the challenge of scaling up? Can we still all agree to go out to dinner without tearing up our friendship?
A relatively modern approach to scaling up is the appeal to some universal human rights. This is what the American Declaration of Independence and the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen of the French Revolution aimed for. The United Nations has also adopted a declaration of human rights as a way to build tolerance across people around the globe regardless of race, gender, ethnicity, nationalism and religion. As we see, though, this approach is not working well at the national or international level.
Let’s stay closer to home and talk about the American experiment. When we hear that the American Republic is an ongoing project working toward a more perfect union, this is an admission of our difficulty in overcoming the challenge of scaling up. From its beginning, the American project faced two challenges. One was the religious diversity of its people. The constitutional separation of church and state was a way to prevent antagonisms across creeds that would spill into politics. After the Protestants’ acceptance of American Catholics and Jews, the Judeo-Christian tradition was coined as a unifying national motto. We no longer hear much of it today though. One reason is that it does not include other Americans, like Muslims, Hindus, and the non-religiously affiliated. The other more important reason is that the politicization of Evangelical and other conservative religious groups has tarnished the brand of the motto and has rendered it unappealing to many Americans, especial younger ones.
The other challenge for America was how to scale up by admitting into its citizenry Black Americans. More than 150 years after the Civil War, racial equality and harmony are still an unfinished project. Immigrants present the same challenge. Not every American agrees to scaling up by admitting immigrants into the fold.
The problem with scaling up does not start and end with just how many people of different races, ethnicities, religions and so on a state encompasses within its jurisdiction at some point of time. The scaling up challenge can also come from within a society because of the evolving nature of cultural and moral norms and personal choices. Awareness about the rights of women, the rights of people regardless of sexual and gender orientation, as well as changing views toward secular and religious freedoms, to mention a few, can open up fissures in social cohesion and jeopardize the scaling up project.
In the background of these challenges, there lies a reality of American life that is the opposite of what the Ilahita used as their social glue. While they brought different clans into common projects of cooperation, American life has drifted toward segregation, not only along the old racial lines, but also along class lines. Living parallel and rarely intersected lives – that is, meaningfully intersected lives – we miss the opportunity to understand the human condition of our fellow citizens. With little appreciation of other people’s problems and values we gather into silos of narrow interests and identity politics.
The scaling up problem is not uniquely American. It is the problem of societies that wish to become more inclusive without abandoning though the principle of democratic consent. Is there an iron law of social evolution that says we cannot scale up as much as we wish? Or is it just another challenge which is within our capacity to overcome?
Let's Reason 