Organisations are best thought of as cultural organisms. Groups of organisations with compatible operating models can be thought of as a cultural species. The human genus is the genus that includes all cultural species. Since the emergence of humans around two million years ago, evolution has produced many different cultural species within the human genus.

It is becoming clear (Dunbar) that only human scale organisations are understandable for individual humans and have the potential to provide psychologically safe and healthy environments for humans. A careful analysis of human history demonstrates that super-human scale organisations are inherently unsafe for individual humans, and that completely atomised societies are inconceivable, as they are apparently incompatible with human social needs.

Viewed from within the context of human evolution, the emergence of “civilised” (super-human scale) societies and the construction of empires is a social cancer that feeds on cultural species and has resulted in the destruction of cultural species and in a severe reduction in the number of healthy cultural species. Based on this understanding we can conclude that the human genus has been declining in adaptive fitness since the dawn of “civilisation” around 10,000 years ago.

The NeurodiVenture operating model is the social DNA of an emergent cultural species that has developed an immune system that enables it to survive and even thrive in three complementary contexts:

1. within super-human scale societies afflicted by terminal cancer
2. within social environments that contain a growing number of NeurodiVentures
3. within social environments that contain other human scale cultural species within the human genus

The minimalistic aspect of the NeurodiVenture operating model supports a huge diversity between cultural organisms and overall equips the NeurodiVenture cultural species with a level of resilience that differs markedly from the brittleness and pathological cultural inertia that characterises super-human scale societies.

The main difference between modern emergent human scale cultural species and prehistoric human scale cultural species lies in the language systems and communication technologies that are being used to coordinate activities and to record and transmit knowledge within cultural organisms, between cultural organisms, and between cultural species.

The main commonality between prehistoric societies and modern human scale cultural species is the critical importance of knowledge for survival, and a cultural appreciation for the value of knowledge and the value of trust based collaboration at eye level both within cultural organisms and between cultural organisms.

The main difference between all human scale cultural species and super-human scale “civilised” societies lies in the devaluation of knowledge and reliance on anonymous transactions and abstract monetary metrics, and in a corresponding devaluation of trust based collaboration at eye level.

The end of capital

Peter Thiel and Eric Weinstein, the manager of Thiel Capital, are two people who are not afraid to share their thoughts. It is interesting to see how they can spend 3 hours framing their quite astute observations on human society entirely within the box of capitalism and “meritocracy”, and how this frame prevents them from reaching deeper insights about human limitations and human creativity.

Human scale does not exist in Peter Thiel’s world. Instead Peter and Eric attempt to explain everything in terms of individuals, individual merit, organisations, growth, and progress in science and technology (without any attempt to delineate the boundary between science and technology). In the dialogue referenced above they both go to great lengths to complain about the extent to which virtually all organisations have become sociopathic, but they don’t realise how insisting on an individual talent or merit scale and a universal metric (capital) is the perfect breeding ground for the corruption that they complain about. It is as if they complain about all the hierarchical structures that differ from an envisaged ideal and universal “meritocratic” hierarchy that is defined by criteria stipulated by Peter Thiel & Co.

Whilst long, the above dialogue is highly recommended for all those who are still convinced that capital must be part of the furniture of all technologically advanced societies.

The dialogue between Peter Thiel and Eric Weinstein illustrates that some of the most fundamentalist capitalists question whether there has been any substantial technological progress at all over the last 40 years.

I concur with the diagnosis of stagnation in many areas of knowledge, but from my perspective economic growth and capital are counter-productive and dangerously misleading metrics going forward. Capital is a legacy technology that will need to be phased out if humans want to have any chance at avoiding the self-destructive pattern of civilisation building and collapse that has characterised the last 10,000 years.

We need to be clear about the remaining life expectancy of capital as a relevant metric at super-human scale. In the short term human scale employee owned companies and cooperatives can opportunistically work within a capital-driven world, but over the next 30 to 100 years the role of capital will likely be reduced to zero – it’s going to be an obsolete legacy technology just like the telegraph is a legacy technology today.

The interest in human scale employee owned companies is growing globally, as such companies are capable of thriving in a capitalist environment due to their collaborative advantage, but they are also ideally positioned to thrive in other emergent environments that are less toxic for the planet.

Domain-specific metrics that measure physical properties are going to become much more important than abstract metrics at super-human scale. Abstract metrics are only safe (low risk of corruption) for local resource distribution at human scale.

From economics to the web of life

If we want to avoid repeating the mistakes of human “civilisations”, the rules for coordinating at super-human scale will have to allow for and encourage a rich diversity of human scale organisations.

In a human scale social world, apart from the self-imposed constraint of human scale, there is no universally dominant organisational paradigm. In a super-human scale social world that is increasingly toxic for individual mental and physical health, a diversity of human scale paradigms will eventually crowd out the super-human [global/national/mega-city] scale paradigm that dominates today.

The resulting web of interdependencies can simply be thought of as the web of life rather than “civilisation 2.0”. We must not to again make the anthropocentric mistake of putting humans at the centre of the universe.

At human scale cultural evolution operates as follows:

1. On the relationships between cultural organisms and on the links between cultural species.
   Relationships can strengthen or weaken, new relationships can be established, and established relationships can be be discontinued or put on hold. At any point in time the relationship between two cultural organisms can be described in terms of the binary trust based relationships between specific individuals. The duration of relationships can last from months through to many decades and possibly longer.
2. By individuals who may chose to leave or join a cultural organism, travelling along the link to a related cultural organism of the same cultural species.
   From an individual’s perspective such a change in organisational membership is minor. The individual retains their individual competency network, and the change can be described as the emergence of new regular collaboration patterns within the individual’s competency network and the weakening of earlier regular collaboration patterns – it is very much comparable to a change in team membership within a cultural organism. From the perspective of the cultural organism involved the change reflects a desirable change or optimisation in the interaction patterns across the organisational boundary that is well received by most of the individuals involved – a new team is welcoming a new member and another team in the related cultural organism will reconfigure accordingly. The duration of organisational membership may last from months through to many decades or an entire lifetime.
3. By individuals who may chose to leave or join a cultural organism, travelling along the link to a related cultural organism of a different cultural species.
   Again, from an individual’s perspective such a change in organisational membership is relatively minor. The individual retains their individual competency network, and the change can be described as the emergence of new regular collaboration patterns within the individual’s competency network and the weakening of earlier regular collaboration patterns – but in this case the individual will need to integrate into a new culture. Often such a change will be motivated by the neurological disposition and specific talents and interests of the individual, who may have discovered via personal interactions across the organisational boundary that she or he would be more comfortable in the target culture. From the perspective of the cultural organisms involved the change reflects an opportunity for cultural cross pollination across the organisational boundary that may improve the collaboration patterns across the cultural species boundary. The average number of shifts between cultural species will be zero across a typical human life, and the number of shifts will likely be one or more for many neurodivergent individuals, who will feel compelled to search for a cultural environment that is well suited for their particular needs and cognitive lens.
4. By individuals who may chose to leave or join an unrelated cultural organism of the same cultural species.
   This scenario represents a mixture of scenarios 1 and 2 above. The individual will have had to establish a relationship to someone in a different cultural organism, and hence the change represents an emergent relationship between two cultural organisms. The duration of the new relationship may last from months through to many decades or possibly longer.
5. By individuals who may chose to leave or join an unrelated cultural organism of a different cultural species.
   This scenario represents a mixture of scenarios 1 and 3 above. The individual will have had to establish a relationship to someone in a different cultural organism of a different cultural species, and hence the change represents an emergent relationship between two cultural organisms. This scenario may be fairly rare, as it involves establishing a cross-species relationship between cultural organisms that had no prior contact. The resulting relationship may start off very much as an experiment or exploration with outcomes that are difficult to predict. It may result in the individual having found a more accommodating target culture in terms of their neurological disposition, and the link between the two cultural organism may only be short lived.

At human scale individuals enjoy a significant level of agency, with the ability to remain in a given cultural organism as long as they desire, and to move to a different cultural organism when this is aligned with individual neurological dispositions, talents and interests. All atomic changes in relationships and memberships leave an individual’s existing competency network intact and at all times the individual is part of a cultural organism that provides a livelihood for the individual.

Similarly cultural organisms enjoy a significant level of agency at human scale, as all individuals in the organism may create new relationships across the organisational boundary as needed, for example coordinated via a simple advice process and as needed via deliberation in Open Space. Cultural organisms that don’t operate an egalitarian culture will quickly find themselves at a disadvantage, as they are held back by cultural inertia. At some point their members may decide to join more egalitarian cultural organisms.

Agency at super-human scale is an emergent phenomenon that can not be attributed to any specific individual. Living within “civilisation” we are surrounded by super-human scale structures and it is difficult for most people to imagine collaboration at human scale without being embedded in some bigger hierarchical system.

Each human scale cultural organism represents an aggregation of agency that manifests itself in individual relationships and interactions across the organisational boundary. In a non-hierarchical cultural organism there is no single individual that “leads”, instead external representation and decision making of the cultural organism is distributed across all the individual relationships between the cultural organism and other cultural organisms.

Large sets of collaborating cultural organisms (some of which may be given labels for the purpose of communication and reasoning about them) without any hierarchical command and control are unattractive for sociopathic empire builders. The lack of hierarchical structure is a key element of the immune system against organisational cancer.

Visualising human collaboration

Human spoken and written languages are useful, but we need better [non-linear] languages systems for reasoning about collaboration beyond human scale.

The human lens is a meta language that can be used to construct better language systems.

The human lens can be used to model all aspects of the relationships between cultural organisms and all aspects of the relationships within cultural organisms. Furthermore the fractal characteristic of the human lens also allows the representation of groups of collaborating cultural organisms and the representation of abstract relationships between such groups.

When such structural and relational abstractions are agreed between cultural organisms, the result is a formal abstract framework that defines agreed collaboration patterns. Abstract collaboration frameworks can be worked out collaboratively in Open Space, and as needed choices between alternative approaches to specific details can be made via a democratic process involving all members from all cultural organisms that are involved. The focus of democratic governance at super-human scale completely shifts away from the selection of “leaders” to the selection of suitable collaboration frameworks for ecosystems of collaborating cultural organisms.

Below is a high level overview of  valuable resource flows represented with the help of the logistic lens within the human lens.

The represented abstract categories can be refined as needed in corresponding models of concrete instances of resources and agents.

In a simplistic capitalistic world such complex multi-dimensional collaborations patterns tend to be linearised into legal agreements that are dominated by a simplistic one-dimensional metric – capital.

We can use the same visual notation as above to create models of dysfunctional feedback loops (or negative “externalities” in the language of economics).

In a networked digital world agreed collaboration patterns can be formalised with the human lens, making use of physical metrics to quantify flows of resources and energy, without any need to resort to abstract metrics. The technologies for resource based accounting exist today.

Below is an example of a high level commonality and variability analysis of the agriculture sector represented using the categories of resources, events, and agents (the REA paradigm).

The visualised categories are the commonalities that characterise the sector. Corresponding representations of concrete instances of these categories with the help of the logistic lens and connections between these instances lead to models of value producing processes and activities that can be refined to any desirable level of detail.

Where we stand today

The only thing that stands in the way of phasing out the legacy technology of capital is cultural inertia and the ongoing indoctrination in outdated economic ideology delivered by our education systems.

In the coming decades metrics that measure physical properties (energy use, resource use, waste metrics) are going to become much more important than abstract monetary metrics. We will increasingly discover that abstract metrics (“currencies”) are only safe to use for resource distribution at a local human scale, and that at super-human scale the risk of corruption of abstract metrics simply becomes too large to be acceptable.

To comprehend where we currently stand it is useful to conduct a little thought experiment. What would happen if the global financial system collapses or if all the technology infrastructure underpinning the financial system collapses?

If everybody just continued with all their daily activities as usual as far as possible, irrespective of their ability to be paid or to pay, the following would happen:

• In the technologically “less advanced” parts of the world the impact would be minimal. People would continue to go about their lives, collaborate along the lines of trusted relationships, and as required come up with alternative no/low tech accounting systems at human scale.
• In the technologically “advanced” parts of the world the impact would be much larger. Many technological systems and complex automated supply chains that assume working connections to banking systems would be disrupted. Above and beyond the inability to purchase physical goods online, people would quickly run out of credit tokens on their phones and on public transport, preventing them from using such services. In general, all technologies that rely on embedded links to banking systems would become disabled, whilst all technologies without such links remain unaffected. People could continue to visit retail shops and pick up goods or deliver supplies – and just as in the technologically less advanced parts of the world people will likely quickly come up with low tech accounting systems at human scale.

The overall result of using alternative low tech local accounting systems would be a much reduced ability to rapidly shift abstract credit tokens around the world.

The main people who would get concerned would be all those who used to be able “to make a living” from speculation, from rent seeking, and from shifting abstract tokens around the world. Those same people will likely not have access to any of the trusted relationships at human scale that are essential for surviving in a non-financialised world. Similarly many of the people who used to have “second and third level” bullshit jobs (all those people in jobs involved in operating the technology that supports the financial system) may discover that they lack useful trusted relationships at human scale.

In a world where many global supply chains for physical goods are disrupted, and where technological failures refocus collaboration on local trusted relationships at human scale, resources and goods would flow at slower rates, and the flows that continue to take place would largely be local, focused on the absolute necessities of life. In some geographies food shortages would quickly become extreme, and the overall reduction in long distance transportation would significantly reduce energy consumption.

Interestingly renewable energy sources and connected electricity distribution networks and connected customers would only be disrupted in locations where they are deeply entangled with banking systems.

The outlined scenarios could very quickly result in civil unrest, especially in the “advanced” parts of the world that are further removed from trust based collaboration at human scale, but this observation can in no way be taken as a “proof” that a world without capital is inconceivable:

1. Dismissing a world without capital because we personally have never experienced world without global money is simply a case of ignorance and lack of imagination fuelled by fear of the unknown.
2. In prehistoric times humans survived and increasingly thrived without money for many hundred thousand years. People’s life expectancy may have been shorter than today, but prehistoric humans where highly capable in transmitting complex knowledge over many generations, allowing them to adapt to many different climate zones and to a huge range of different local ecological contexts.
3. A small number of technologically “backward” societies still share more characteristics with prehistoric cultures than with the WEIRD (Western Educated Industrialised Rich Democratic) cultures that dominate today.
4. With relatively minor adaptations many of the technologies we use today could be disconnected from the global financial system and could resume operations in a post-capital world. The magnitude of the changes required are in many ways comparable to the magnitude of the changes to remove Y2K limitations from our software systems – not trivial but far from impossible, and perfectly achievable within a few years. As part of this transformation our technologies could be wired up to resource based accounting technologies that track flows of resources and goods purely in terms of physical metrics. The result would be a global logistics infrastructure capable of tracking resource flows without the translating (liquefying) everything into an abstract 1-dimensional metric of capital that instantaneously disappears through conceptual wormholes to facilitate universal fungibility for everything under the sun – everything and everyone is for sale.
5. Some of the effects outlined above such as a reduction in global resource flows, a refocus on local flows of resources, and a reduction in energy consumption would be highly desirable in terms of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and a rapid transition to a zero carbon economy. A transition towards resource based accounting as outlined above would allow us to re-enable global resource flows under a completely new regime of governance: we would be able to plan and budget in terms of resource needs and we would be able to very easily monitor agreed limits of energy and resource consumption in raw physical units without any distortions.

Considering all of the above, we can conclude that we are already much closer to a world without capital than capitalists would like us to believe. In many ways such a new world is much more desirable for most of us than the delusional world of infinite “growth” that we are still being sold.