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Vasile Datcu - thinker, writer, Romania

The Genetics of the Social Organisms

For an observer of the evolution of the contemporary society the picture to analyze is quite surprising: endless armed conflicts, dramatic economic disequilibrium among the nations, out of control emigration, grave climatic phenomena caused by excessive industrialization, enormous cultural differences among groups belonging to the same social organism (see Igor Kondrashin’s study showing that within the 21^st century coexist populations living in the mentalities of the 14^th, 15^th … 19^th centuries). All this gives the analyst the sensation of a planetary disorder so that, within their domestic comfort, he or she feels like being imprisoned and menaced by anything around.

Amplified by the unlimited development of the information technology, too, this picture starts metaphysical fears without an answer in the analyst, owing to the fact that information has been changing from a virtue of knowledge into a vice of it, through its distorted amplification, unmeasured excess and confusion induced by mixing insignificant details with essential ideas. The noise of the media in which he or she lives, increases his or her existential entropy even more.

Stagnation gets to be preferred to progress, which has become as evil as regress. This happens because the core of the problem is not only caused by the exaggerate dynamics of the changes and by chaotic character resulted from this state of things, but moreover, it is the fact that in this unrestless world it seems harder and harder for one to find elements of stability, landmarks necessary to conceptual positioning for analyses and conclusions. It is the lack of this stable fulcra and points of reference that increases the analyst’s anguish.

For ensuring the necessary equilibrium, the analyst could resort to sociology, but that guarantees only the certitude that world is involved in a continual movement, it does not clarify the reasons of this movement, it does not explain why some societies are activer whereas others are slower, why the engines of that technological progress operate at different speeds within different societies, why modern technology, uniforming consumption through standardizing, has not uninformed the social relations, too.

Sociology tells that societies exist in generally the same way as human society, there is no difference between the latter (as “genus”) and the former (as “species”); the concept of society thus becomes so abstract that a lot of registered historical realities get to be impossible to understand. For example: why the East Germany’s communist society is essentially different from that of Cuba’s, and why the Mongolia’s communism differs from that of Cehia’s, although those societies benefited of the same ideological matrix.

Maybe the most striking aspect of the problem is emphasized by the fact that neither sociology nor any other science can relationally explain the existence of the conflicts. History justifies and motivates them, but it cannot relationally sustain them although for millenniums man has the tirelessly built theories of the perfect state, of the harmonious organizations and of eternal peace and has proposed uncountable formulae for an ideal city.

It is true that Karl Marx tried (and even though he himself to be successful) to identify the germ lying at the root of social conflicts in the existence of the classes themselves with their antagonistic relationship. He concretized it, on the social plan, as “class fighting”. This explanation could resist, just with sufficient reserves, only for the eventual conflicts within the same society, in no case between different societies.

In short, the analyst is confronted with a picture of the contemporary world having overflowing dynamics and giving him or her the feeling that the world has got to be devastated by time in all its articulations.

This is on one hand.

Nevertheless, on the other hand, if the analyst is a good knower of history, he or she will be surprised in the societies’ behaviour at some constancies, especially aggressiveness both along conflicts and in the permanence of the sacredness and preservation of customs and mythology.

This means that on the one hand there is a world whose dynamics history closely watches it and records it, and on the other hand there is a basic stratum on which societies lie and which provides them equally with both vitality and stability.

What is the relationship between the two realities which are easily identified at the level of any social organism?

There is a remark to be made here: all the dynamics of a society, its progress, evolution and becoming, all these are possible just owing to the fact that that society remains anchored to a cultural matrix unchanging with time. To understand the relationship between the two realities one must invent a new instrument, which could be called “the genetics of the social organisms». This instrument will deal with the laws that turn a social organism into what it is as individuality, ensuring its adaptation to the living conditions, selfgenerating and selfconserving it. From this perspective, the analyst notices that a given social organism, in its basic structure, will always remain what it is, acting in future with great probability only in conformity with its nature.

The basic structure (family, clans, interests, castes) remained the same along centuries, whereas the normative substructure representing the binder of the elements of the structure (laws, myths, customs…) is predisposed to conjectural modifications. Both are elements lacking dynamism. The engine ensuring movement within the social organism, maintaining the dynamics of the relations among its parts to keep the organism alive are the sentiments, eternal and somehow transcendent to the reality where they manifest themselves: passion, glory, fears, hate, greed, love …). Having thus the constitutive elements and the normative binder of the one hand and the sentiments as a propelling force on the other hand, the social organism is ensured all the conditions to function without syncopes.

The elements of the basic structure and the sentiments remaining invaluable along the time, fact is that only the binder of the parts (laws, myths and customs with their norms of regulating the relations among parts) is the only one able to evolve, but restrictively, neither forever, nor anyway. Representing the genetic code of the organism, analyzing it from the temporary perspective will give the image of either stability or non-stability in searching to adapt itself to the exterior solicitations. It is obvious that evolution, when and how much it will be, will happen by leaps, discontinuously and only when a critical mass is assured within the elements or the element pressing the system towards evolution.

But even if these conditions are fulfilled, the new values are assimilated only when there is a predisposition, an affinity, a compatibility of them with those already existing in the system.

Now the analyst has a new instrument for approaching complex historical events. Using the method of the “comparative history”, he or she watches those events from new perspectives, revealing their secret faces in an attempt to bring them closer to the truth.

The facts presented above can be exemplified by analyzing two well-known historical events, one being seen as manifestation of a social organism, consistent with its own nature and the other one as manifestation of an evolutive organism, its evolution being asked by the need of adaptation to the new exterior conditions.

This analysis of the two events will throw a light on some of their aspects which have been shaded until now.

The first example is offered by the Second world war. From many points of view this event of the recent history seems to be unexplainable. If the first world word finds its justification in the need of the social organisms based on nations to become state organisms, the second one has no reasonable explanation. If the outbreak of the first one was expected by anyone, the outbreak of the second one surprised anyone. (In fact, the first two years of belligerence were labeled by historians as being “strange”.

The most invoked argument concerning the causes of its outbreak is given by the generalized economic crisis that took place as a consequence of the financial crash in 1929, followed by an economic decline up to a planetary scale. But this argument is hard to sustain, since an economic crisis implies movements within a society, not outside it.

A community under crisis seldom resolves its difficulties through invading other communities, because that would mean to more and more deepen its own difficulties, through taking over the others’ difficulties, too. Along history, poverty has never and for nobody been a temptation.

The explanation of the outbreak of the conflict lies elsewhere, although the background of the economic crisis really represented the favorable environment. Analyzing the events that took place in Germany in years previous to the war, it is obvious that the Nazi ideology comes with an innovation unprecedented in the European history: it discovers the “race” as the matrix of a society, of a social corpus, not the “law” asked by the tradition of the Roman law in which Europe has evolved until then.

All the properties of the mythologies of the spaces populated by the Germanic peoples (Nibelungs, Walpurgis, Siegfrieds …) will be set to work through the discourse of the Nazi ideology (the appeal to centuries of ancestral glory, national heroism…) all this being elements of social genetics, elements of race; they become compulsory. Normally for those conditions of economic disaster, the promises for bettering the everyday life through economic development and technological progress fall into derision.

The first mission of the Nazi ideology was installing in the social organism the conscience of race belonging - a quite simple thing to do because of the generalized weakness of the organism after the defeats suffered in the first world war - then the revival of the instincts proper to the race through superpositioning the picture painted by mythology over the everyday reality- always and anyway lying in a absolutely humiliating state.

Once they are activated and stimulated, the energies initiated by the race instincts become an overwhelming impact force, getting to be totally uncontrolled, because their essence remains irrational; and if the social body is drawn into an exterior conflict - and it cannot be anything else but exterior, because within it would be a monolith - it will always have the evolution towards catastrophe. Acting as oneness nobody and nothing can stop it!

This is because in such situations they are not armed conflicts involving mass as wholeness. That is why the “race ideology” is extremely dangerous. It happened with both Germany and Japan.

It is interesting that even the definition of the history, in the Nazi doctrine, was formulated as “battle among peoples” aiming at the expansion of the vital space.

Years ago, sitting on the steps of a temple, a wise old buddhist was trying to find an answer to a painful question: why do all the people consider funny, pitiable and ridiculous the man who says about himself I am the strongest, wisest, most courageous and talented man in the world, whereas if the same individual changes the singular “I” into the plural “we”, saying this time we are the strongest, wisest, most courageous and talented people in the world that men will be acclaimed by the crowd as hero, saviour and patriot?

We do not know if the respectable monk found the answer to the question, but we can give a possible solution of it: in the first case the hero is the individual, subject to the moral laws, whereas in the second one the protagonist is the “species”, which is, to a great extent, outside morals, belonging to the sphere of genetics.

History has the predisposition to repeat itself, not only for the fact that somebody writes it and somebody else makes it, but owing to its own nature. That is why it becomes predictable!

The second example is illustrated by the fact of assuming Christianity and then transforming it into state religion in the Roman Empire.

Jesus directly comes from the Judaic monotheistic tradition through both the unique God and especially the messianic idea. And yet, introducing the concept of “Trinity” embodied in a single being in the mosaic doctrinary corpus based on a hard and inflexible monotheism, in fact it introduces a heresy to which the Jewish sacerdotal caste had to react. Introducing this concept into the exclusively monotheist doctrine, Jesus lays the bases of a religion with a special character: although declared as  monotheistic, Trinity subtly and  profoundly undermines the monolithic character of the faith in a unique God, for however many artifices of judgment will be built, the problem remains unsolved anyway. (See the theory of consubstantiality). It is noticeable here the position of Islam towards the Trinity doctrine: it clearly says that giving Jesus attributes others than being God’s creation, respectively making of Him both a divine nature and a human one, as well as God’s word and word’s messenger is impiety. Nevertheless, the original Christianity remains monotheistic at its core; even if through Trinity it is less inflexible than the mosaic monotheism.

Taken over and spread by apostles throughout the spaces of polytheistic culture, the Christian doctrine will have an evolution unexpected and surprising, because although monotheistic in its essence, in contact with populations whose religious structure had been polytheistic for centuries, it turned into a new religion, in the happiest case a hybrid, composite one, if not plainly polytheistic.

Still since the second century of the Christian era the Christianized populations began to worship the martyrs, attributing miraculous powers to the relics of saints. Compact groups of new converts introduced in their religious rites components clearly polytheistic with which they were accustomed so well. They initiate the cult of the martyrs and saints in the religious practice, introduce the rite of praying in front of relics and statues of saints, invent religious festivals dedicated to them where divine mercy is implored from them as from the gods in Olympus during ancient times. Local saints, protectors of cities, fortifications, lands, trades … come into existence.

In 330, when Emperor Constantine allows Christianity to unrestrainedly manifest itself, an army of saints were already sustaining the more and more complex fabric of the religion in full ascent, without feeling that this state of things seems impiety.

In 397 Saint Martin, the first non-martyr saint of the Occident is officialized. He soon gets to be worshiped all round Europe. (Of course, it is interesting to imagine what Europe was like at that time!)

The zeal of the Empire’s peoples to institute saints and local deities to whom they prayed asking for mercy and charity and to whom they brought offerings, that zeal became irresistible. So that, from the dominant character of the initial Christian monotheism, in contact with social organisms structured by polytheistic religions and practices for centuries, that was rapidly assimilated, becoming recessive, whereas the profound structures of the new baptized social organisms become dominant.

It is remarkable that this phenomenon was one eminently objective, influenced by the nature of the societies where the new religion spread. The authorities’ reaction came very late, in a moment of maximum of factological compulsion, feeling that the situation of the prolificness of the saints got to be totally out of control.

Only in 1234 Pope Grigorie the 9^th confirms, through official acts, the initiative of his predecessor, Pope Alexander the 3^rd, to introduce the canonization in the official practice of the Church.

Until that date however, the peoples’ pantheon, both from East and from West was already overwhelmed by the number of saints who had polluted, to a great extent, the transcendental objectives of the gods. The fact that the cult of the saints directly led to the cult of the icons and statues, in spite of the biblical interdiction “Thou shalt not make onto thee any graven image” (Exodus, 20) does not seem to represent any doctrinary restriction for anybody.

There is nothing similar in the other monotheistic religions!

Christian monotheism was more and more getting to be a hybrid, excellently adapted to the conditions of every social organism. Saint Patrick, the apostle whom Ireland worships, has no religious relevance for the Greeks in Salonic who worship Saint Demetrius or St. Andrew, the saint who christianized Dobruja has no significance for the Norwegians, who worship St. Brigitta of Kildare or St. Ansgar, the apostle of the North.

Of course, Jesus Christ remains somewhere above, untouchable in his Threefold Being ( Father, Son and the Holy Spirit), surrounded by the crowds of saints, martyrs and heroes of the faith, maybe not in the same way in which Zeus was reigning over the gods in Olympus, yet somehow alike. Only that sometimes Jesus is more often with us, here, on Earth!