484. egalitarianism, diversity and connectedness

Here I return to the discussion of entropy and its applications. The existing model of entropy is incomplete. It takes into account the number of units in a system and their ‘evenness’, equality of probability of ocurrence. The larger either is, the greater the entropy. In the application to systems of people I generalised the evenness into equality of inclusion, legitimacy, access to resources (jobs, housing), or egalitarianism.

A society can be evaluated according to the extent of egalitarianism, but also diversity in ideas and initiative, and their expression. Diversity is needed for the liveliness and dynamism of society, with enterprise and markets. Expression, communication, requires connectedness.  That is missing, and needs to be included, in the model of entropy. It is not yet clear how to do that. My intuition is that in some cases, such as organisations, maximum connectedness is not ideal. It seems that there are diminishing returns to scale: beyond some intermediate level, more connections just adds to the communicative ‘noise’ that distracts. In society, however, maximum connectedness, with everyone able to communicate with everyone, is ideal.

The ideal society offers egalitarianism, of rights, access, legitimacy, admission. Lack of exclusion, in combination with diversity of ideas and their dissemination, and connectedness. The Soviet Union offered equality of posession, access, and rights, formally at least, but suppressed diversity of ideas and their disseminastion.

In Western countries, after the second world war, a viable and reasonaby egalitarian society was combined with a good variety of ideas and their dissemination. That started to break down after around 1979, with the conservative revolution of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, and the breakdown of the Soviet Union. Some restoration of the variety of ideas and initiatives, in entrepreneurship, was needed, but it overshot in the dominance of concentrated capital and rampant markets, in concentration of wealth and power, losing the egalitarian order.   

Now dissemination of ideas breaks down due to people isolating themselves in forts of identity and shooting off extreme, intolerant messages on social media. Finite lives get crammed full with possessions, entertainment, and travel experiences that crowd out contact with mutual influence, or ‘resonance’ as the German philosopher Hartmut Rosa called it. This a cultural feature that I am at a loss to turn around, while it leads to a fragmentation that destroys society.

I can see increasing opposition to inequality, though to regain sufficient egalitarianism, this will require less materialistic hedonism and egoism. This will also be needed to turn around the emergence of ecological disaster. Variety of ideas has an intrinsic strength that will make it survive. A disaster may be needed to bring people more together again.