We need to be better and our societies need to be better
if we want to reach equilibrium together.
We Need to Be Better
The better the citizens, the better the societies.
Indeed, since societies are only the results of our individual, group and collective actions, the more competent we are the better the societies in which we live will be.
Unfortunately, presently I estimate that our overall average competency level to be between 15% and 25%. This means that at best, we are “Advance Beginners.”
This is very low. ☹️ 
To have a better understanding
If we use hockey as an analogy to better understand how low our overall competence level is, then we barely know:
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- How to skate,
- How to shoot,
- The rules of the game.
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Sometimes we even shoot on our own goaltender. 😟 ☹️
To be competent hockey players, they need to have developed their skating skills.
They also have to develop their shooting skills in order to make good passes and score goals. They need to know when it is time to be on the offensive or when it is time to concentrate on defense. Finally, they also need to know the various rules that govern the sports.
This level of competency is usually achieved at the Pee Wee level.
A Malignant Societal Tumor
This general ignorance level is one of the many cancers that plague our societies.
Some of the symptoms associated with this cancer is the:
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- Present rise of conspiracy theories,
- Lack of trust in our institutions,
- Withdrawal from the overall electoral process.
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The latter further reduces our level of knowledge as we do not try to identify and understand the problems that affect our societies.
We need to be better. We thus need to increase our Citizen Quotient from 20% to 60%. Thus to become competent as per Dreyfus and Dreyfus’s model of skill acquisition.
Our societies need to better
The better our societies, the better the citizens.
Indeed, if our individual, group and our collective actions are such that they facilitate:
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- the development of our fellow citizens as well as
- their social integration
- their societal integration,
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then most of our individual and collective needs are met which create a certain social order. Our societies are thus better and the citizens that live within their boundaries are more competent.
Unfortunately, of the 195 countries in the world, only a handful have reached a certain social order, thus equilibrium.
The countries that have achieved a certain equilibrium, have done so despite our general ignorance level.
In these countries, citizens, including politicians, civic leaders and public servants, have intuitively chosen a path that is compatible with a form of social order. However even these countries are at risk.
Indeed, our general ignorance level negatively affects our capacity to prevent, solve or manage our various social and societal conflicts.
As we try to change these tools to help us better meet our individual and collective needs, we often underestimate or overestimate their impacts. These changes create conflicts as citizens are unable to meet some or many of their needs be they individual, collective or both.
This disequilibrium varies from society to society, but overtime the evolution / devolution of societal order and disorder will happen many times. This is called the pendulum effect.
In the animated gif above, time is accelerated to give us an idea of how change in economic, political or moral orientations can affect our societies by increasing or decreasing the level of conflict.
Of course, all societies evolve differently and the speed at which a change can happen can be very long, like a few centuries, or very short, a few years.
The January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol is a reminder that social order, and democracy which is needed to create a sustainable social order is fragile.
In this case, a few things, namely the pandemic, QAnon, and a charismatic leader whose intuition was lacking, influenced the process.
What Can We Do to Stop This Pendulum Effect?
Fortunately, we now have access to a new management science, called SOCIETALogy, which can help us to drastically reduce this pendulum effect.
The new science studies societies as organizations and citizenship as a profession. Studying both the role of citizens, thus citizenship, and the way they organize, thus societies, makes it possible, as we can see in the image below, to align both the governance of our societies and our citizen ethics through best practices.
SOCIETALogy also provides us with much needed scientific models which we can finally use to better manage our societies and to become more competent citizens.
SOCIETALogically speaking:
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- a good society is a balanced society, one where most of our individual, group and collective actions help us meet the vast majority of our individual and collective needs and where the knowledge and beliefs we use to create the laws, rules and regulations as well as customs and habits, help us attain and maintain a sustainable social order. When this is achieved, we thus live in a balanced society.
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- a good citizen is a competent citizen, one who has acquired the necessary personal, social and societal knowledge as well as develop the associated skills. The more competent citizens are, the more they make decisions that are positive for:
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- Their physical, psychological, mental, social and financial health.
- Their interrelations and interactions
- The functioning and development of their governments and their societies.
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As we get closer to these ideal models:
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- the more sustainable will be our social order and
- the less will we suffer from the pendulum effect.
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To Initiate the Process
To help us become better citizens and make our societies better societies, I will soft launch the first ever Community of Practice (CoP) for Citizen. (CoPc) in the spring of 2024.
Until then, I do recommend that you subscribe to the Societally Yours! channel to learn about our societies and the important role we play as citizens in their functioning and their development.
