BlackGrowth

Power. That is the abstract concept behind the one of leadership, fundamental to understand the evolution of human sociality. The nature of power is elusive and yet fascinating.  Everyone wants power . There are the ones who want to rule, and they need power; the ones who strive to accomplish, and they need power; even the ones who just wish to live quiet and unnoticed, they need the power to have someone else manage responsibilities in their place. Any ambition has to be sustained by power. And power is in the first place the power to choose; who to be, what to do, how to act or even to not act at all. What is power? So many variables and just one word, then. What is power? How would you define it? ‘Power’ has many possible facets, depending on the contexts. In general, we can say that power is the capability to bend and shape specific aspects of reality according to one’s will. This is magnified when people work together – humans are a social ...

Our society is a complex system, people interconnected on multiple levels of interaction. It has to be somehow dynamic in order to match, reflect and contribute to progress. In fact, society evolves similar to how living species do – under environmental pressure. Like a building lying on shifting foundations, its walls moving along and adjusting their shape to remain intact, society continuously changes. All of those steps answer internal or external needs and opportunities. Looking at the West, how is the society evolving? What its needs, what the opportunities?     The needs can easily be declined in terms of money, power, influence, supremacy – progress costs, after all. New opportunities to fulfill those needs, and how the may be exploited, depend on the context. For instance, technological innovations can provide lots of surprises – like Internet has been an horizon of the events in respect to communications. We could talk about many different aspects – in part alrea...

Humans are a curious species. We are eternally conflicted between our individualism - treasuring freedom, boundaries and independence - and our sociality - which is actually a need and one of the main reasons for our evolutionary success. By exploiting our sociality we are naturally oriented toward progress by expanding the fields of our knowledge and technology. However, in concomitance with our times of crisis and struggle, we see that the way to progress is not necessarily smooth. It is mostly evident in economy and finance - we see that there are perspectives to widen the field and we invest, eventually investing so much that the system can't cope with it and the suddenly expanded field collapses on itself. It is a speculative bubble. Here I will discuss how it is not a mechanism limited to finance - it is everywhere in human activities. It is one of the dark sides of progress itself.     Expanding a field acts on three axis, starting from a pre-existing sphere of acti...

Here we start our comparison between a living - human – body and a State . To understand how close we can relate them, we will begin by looking at what they are made of. We are likely to need a microscope, then. We will analyse structure, function and disease. Cells like individuals Cells are the fundamental basis of any living being. Nothing smaller or simpler than a cell can be living. If it lives, it is either a cell or made of cells. Similarly, in a State the fundamental unit is the individual. Nothing less than an individual person can be a working part of the State. And if it is part of the State, it is either a person, a group of people or a concept thought by people. Cells belonging to the same organism are very similar, sharing a common genetic background and all contributing to the same system; and yet can be very different, specialized in a variety of tasks, subject to a variety of stimuli and stresses. For very similar reasons, just transposed in a different con...