Games People Play

“Where do we go from here now that all of the children are grown up?” – Alan Parsons Project, “Games People Play” (1980)

Overview:  This post introduces macrosociology as a predicate to discussions that will follow in subsequent posts.  You can take your time, read it in parts, re-read it and think about it.  Sections:

·       Generative Guggenheim

·       Grand Theorizing

·       Marxian Macrosociology

·       Games People Play

·       Per Aspera Ad Astra

You have to walk before you can run or trip and faceplant.

[Now for a word from our sponsor....]  Nah, not doing that, this is not a YouTube video where you can skip the first minute and a half and not miss anything important.

The Looking Substack will be published monthly on the first Sunday of each month.  Thus, over the next year, the discussion will slowly unravel the macrosocial thought underlying the Gestalt-Genesis/Day Million (GGDM) simulation game in a monthly series.  Soon there will be a run of articles that anyone can read, a ‘historical record’ of my macrosocial thought; each Substack post being sort of like chapters in a book or a college course.

The subscription will always be free, I charge what my thoughts are worth currently; legacy is the value.  Your only investment is the time to read, follow the evolution of the discussion, and maybe think about it.

There is currently only one other Substack (last posted August 2022) tagged macrosociology and I am not sure in what sense.  So, what is macrosociology and in what sense is GGDM a macrosocial simulation game?

Generative Guggenheim

Macro-, Meso-, and Micro- are English prefixes describing descending scale-levels of human inquiry in a subject area.  Most familiar are microeconomics, Mesopotamia, Mesoamerica, micro- and macroeconomics, macrosociology, macroevolution and macrohistory.  Not every area has a study in all scales, Professor Jonathan Turner agreed with me that there is micro- and macroeconomic theory, but meso-economic theory is nonexistent.

“Macrosociology refers to sociological approaches and methods that examine large-scale patterns and trends within the overall social structure, system, and population. Often macrosociology is theoretical in nature, too.  On the other hand, microsociology focuses on smaller groups, patterns, and trends, typically at the community level and in the context of the everyday lives and experiences of people. These are complementary approaches because at its core, sociology is about understanding the way large-scale patterns and trends shape the lives and experiences of groups and individuals, and vice versa.” – Nicki Lisa Cole, Ph.D. (Sociology), “Macro- and Microsociology,” Thoughtco, Sept. 28, 2019 (currently with Know-center, GmbH, in Austria).

Micro- is not used much in normal history or social sciences, if the scale is not macro-, then it is simply history or sociology (or some sub-specialty) without distinction because micro- is the natural starting point and macro- comes later and requires the prefix distinction.  Micro- does not seem to exactly apply to the social sciences, though Professor Turner has defined microsocial dynamics and Professor Elwell (Dean, Psychology & Sociology Dept., Rogers State University) explains the crucial fundamental division:

“The field of sociology can be broadly split into two categories.  Microsociology focuses upon relatively small-scale social groups and processes.  This field is focused on such phenomena as face-to-face interaction (say classroom behavior), the socialization of children, or the influence of a particular group on the political behavior of its membership.  As can be seen from a look at our introductory texts, microsociology increasingly dominates the field of sociology.  I believe the field is increasingly emphasizing micro because it resonates with Americans who tend to be very much oriented to the individual.  Consequently, they find micro sociology much easier to grasp and apply to their daily lives; and we do need students.

Macrosociology, on the other hand, is the study of large-scale social patterns.  Closely related to history and anthropology, it focuses upon total societies and their constituent parts, such as economic and political structures, family and religious institutions, and how these institutions interrelate with one another and with the whole.... Immanuel Wallerstein believes the micro/macro is the only distinction within the social sciences that has use and relevance.” – Frank Elwell, Macro Social Theory (2009), Kindle Edition, p. 11.

I do not recall that Professor Elwell ever mentioned a meso-sociology field, while Professor Turner, who introduced the term to me, defines the meso-social range as corporations and institutions.

“Humans lived for most of their existence in a micro-level world of interpersonal contact among relatively small numbers of individuals in hunting and gathering bands; and at best, their actions were circumscribed by meso-level structures such as nuclear families, bands, and at times, inter-band social formations.” – Jonathan H. Turner, Theoretical Principles of Sociology, Volume 1 Macrodynamics (2010), p. 2.

And,

“The meso level of reality is composed of two basic types of sociocultural formations (Hawley 1986): (a) corporate units that reveal a division of labor in pursuit of ends or goals [however vaguely or precisely defined] and (b) categoric units that revolve around social distinctions that mark individuals as belonging to particular categories which, in turn, lead to differential expectations for, and treatment of, people placed into these categories. There are three basic types of corporate units: groups, organizations, and communities.” Id. at p. 14.

Grand Theorizing

University Professor Jonathan Turner (Dept. of Sociology, USC – Santa Barbara) – not to be confused with University Professor Stephen Turner (Dept. of Philosophy, University of South Florida) whom I argued with one day on LinkedIn – was kind enough to correspond with me in the year following the publication of GGDM.  He provided some free copies of books and articles, from which I quote.  A self-described iconoclast of sociology (noting that Stephen Turner is possibly even more caustic about the state of sociology and the ASA in particular), I think he identified slightly with what I am doing in macrosocial theory, but probably never understood (and I was not good at explaining it).

Thus, I did not have the benefit of Professor Turner’s wisdom about macrosocial processes and structures when writing GGDM.  In later reading Professor Turner’s classifications, I recognized that some parts of GGDM’s simulation might more properly be expressing meso-social ideas.

“The problems with grand theorizing are not so much that they are (or were) ‘grand’ and seek (sought) to explain a large part, if not all, of human social organization; rather, the problem has been their execution. Both Spencer and Pareto, for example, are actually quite formal in their presentations, and yet, their theories still seem rather vague. Talcott Parsons’ approach produced a large category system in which to push and shove empirical reality, but it offered few laws on the dynamics of reality denoted by this category system. And postmodernists, like all critical approaches, have been so busy critiquing science and its presumed pretensions that their own pretentious assertions go untested because to do so would be to invoke the standards of a ‘failed epistemology.’

And so, most sociologists today believe that grand theorizing is one of those mistakes of the past and, moreover, that sociology has moved beyond such theoretical blunders by positing more manageable and testable (and narrow) theories. Thus, the intellectual climate is not right for yet another effort to present a grand theory, and perhaps the iconoclast in me has chosen just this moment to break with current conventions and propose a general theory of human social organization.” – Jonathan H. Turner, Theoretical Principles of Sociology, Volume 1 Macrodynamics (2010), pp. vii-viii.

Macrosociology proceeds from ‘schools,’ ‘traditions’ or the preferred term, ‘perspectives’ named after the founders of sociology.

“Many credit Spencer as the founder of the perspective— placing him just under the big three of Marx, Durkheim, and Weber in the sociological pantheon. As will be demonstrated in Part 4 of this book, this place of honor more properly belongs to Malthus.” – Frank Elwell, Macro Social Theory, p. 12, Kindle Edition.

Whereas the late Professor Mary Jo Deegan (University of Nebraska – Lincoln, d. Jan. 22, 2024) in her book, Self, war, & society: George Herbert Mead’s macrosociology (2008) placed Mead in the pantheon as the ‘American macrosociologist.’  Word search – a wonderful invention – shows that Professor Elwell does not mention Mead at all in his two introductory textbooks on macrosociology.

“What I have found curious is that the grand theories of the early classical thinkers – at least Marx, Weber, Durkheim, and Mead – are still worshiped for their brilliance, whereas similar efforts among contemporary theorists to develop ‘grand theories’ are viewed with a certain skepticism, if not outright derision. A new age of skepticism about the scientific prospects of sociology now pervades the discipline, often bordering on a smug cynicism.  Moreover, even those committed to the epistemology of science are, to say the least, suspicious of general theories.  For those adopting the epistemology of science, a new age of specialization and middle range theorizing has replaced the impetus to think big and to ponder the nature and dynamics of all social reality.  Indeed, grand theorizing has become a pejorative label in sociology, and from my perspective, this new cynicism has kept sociology from realizing its promise as the social science that could unlock the mysteries of the social universe.” – Jonathan H. Turner, Theoretical Principles of Sociology, Volume 1 Macrodynamics (2010), p. 3.

It is thus that we reach the crux of the irony of macrosociology currently, that the grand theorizing that is the nature of macrosociology, from which early foundations it proceeded, is currently “a pejorative label” in sociology, which has talked itself out of looking.  The grand theorist of early sociology “are still worshiped for their brilliance,” and simultaneously out of fashion, outdated.  It seems to happen with everything eventually, the founders of the United States and of ‘rock ‘n roll’ music seem to have suffered the same fate.

Professor Elwell wrote:

“Mainstream sociology is straying from its roots. This can be clearly seen in introductory sociology and social problems texts in which a focus on microsociology and social psychology has become ever more prominent. It can also be seen in the more recent graduates of sociology programs, specialists in one or two of the more than thirty subfields of sociology. While all tend to be well versed in questionnaire design and data manipulation as well as being excellent specialists in such diverse fields as gerontology or deviance, most have little background in the broader traditions of the discipline, little appreciation or experience with holistic analyses.

Today, too many sociologists practice the discipline as one of social data collection and manipulation, a reification of method over substance. Others are specializing in a small part of the sociocultural system – say family, or deviance, or criminality – and losing the inclination or ability to communicate with their colleagues and their students either in other subfields or about the larger social whole. Some still do continue the practice of macrosociology, but it too is often the preserve of specialists with their own jargon, interests, and readership.” – Frank W. Elwell, Macrosociology: Four Modern Theorists (2006), p. xi.

Meanwhile, Professors Jonathan Turner and Seth Abrutyn (Dept. of Sociology, University of British Columbia) have chosen a ‘work-around’ through the discussion of macrodynamics, where Durkheim, Spencer and Marx become instead, ‘macrodynamic selection processes’:

“As an alternative, we propose that there are other types of natural selection inherent in the organization of what Herbert Spencer termed superorganisms. We label these Durkheimian, Spencerian, and Marxian selection, and they explain what Darwinian selection cannot: the dynamics and evolution of sociocultural phenomena.” – Turner & Abutyn, “Returning the ‘Social’ to Evolutionary Sociology: Reconsidering Spencer, Durkheim, and Marx’s Models of ‘Natural’ Selection,” Sociological Perspectives 2017, Vol. 60(3) 529–556.

The “super-organic” was identified by Professor Clarence Marsh Case in1924; Professor Case will be the subject of a future Substack post.

Marxian Macrosociology

During my Cold War youth, “Marx” (i.e. Marxist, Marxism) was a word that would attract stony glares, unless you were talking about Groucho Marx.  I certainly would not have learned of Karl Marx as a macrosocial theorist in my highschool which did not think sociology was a science and did not have either sociology or psychology classes.  Nor do I recall it being mentioned in college or if it was, he was vaguely classified under ‘conflict theory’ of sociology.

The discussion of Marxian Macrosociology is both necessary as an example of Professor Turner’s “grand theorizing” and also to resurrect his macrosocial thought from the Cold War image of Karl Marx.  The difficult service of resurrecting Karl Marx as an ‘ecological’ macrosocial theorist (to this audience of one at least) belongs to Professor Elwell:

“Humans relate to nature through production of goods as well as the reproduction of the species.  It is through the production process that humans transform nature (the ‘inorganic body’) into products for human use. The reproduction process both assures the continuation of society as well as regulates the amount of resources required from the natural environment. These processes are therefore central in understanding how humans relate to the environment, that is, in understanding human ecology.

‘The first premise of all human existence and, therefore, of all history,’ Foster cites Marx and Engels, ‘is that men must be in a position to live in order to be able to ‘make history.’ But life involves before everything else eating and drinking, housing, clothing, and various other things.  The first historical act is thus the production of the means to satisfy these needs, the production of material life itself. And indeed this is an historical act, a fundamental condition of all history, which today, as thousands of years ago, must daily and hourly be fulfilled merely in order to sustain human life... the production of life, both of one’s own in labour and of fresh life in procreation... appears as a twofold relation: on the one hand as a natural, on the other hand as a social relation (116).’” – Frank Elwell, Macro Social Theory (2009), quoting John Bellamy Foster.

Thus, production and reproduction are the two primary acts of humanity, the former being a unique attribute of human intelligence. And from this starting principle, Marx recognized the increasing alienation between workers – brought about by private ownership, capitalism and mechanized industrialization – and nature, the Earth, and the products of civilization.

Alienation is defined by Merriam-Webster online dictionary as, “1: a withdrawing or separation of a person or a person’s affections from an object or position of former attachment : ESTRANGEMENT.”  In Marxian theory, the cognition of creation was increasingly alienated from the final product in industrial production compared to farming and mom-and-pop industry.

This primal observation taken to strawman-fallacy made Marx a 20^th Century ‘threat to human civilization,’ such that ‘alienation’ became almost exclusively a term of Marxism and certain theories of psychology.

“A related problem with writing about Marx is the multiple roles he played during his lifetime. Marx was both socialist prophet and political organizer, as well as a social theorist. As a prophet he forecast the eventual revolution of the working class, the destruction of capitalism, and the establishment of a stateless, socialist society.  As a political organizer (and propagandist) Marx wrote to inspire men and women to immediate action rather than thought. ‘The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways, the point is to change it’ (Max [1945] 1976, 571).

While he wove his prediction and calls to action into his analyses of capitalist society, the revolution and its socialist aftermath are clearly the most speculative parts of his theoretical structure – prophesized perhaps more in hope and faith than in rigorous analysis. Rejecting this vision of an inevitable and workable socialist society, there is still much of value and use in Marx’s analysis of capitalism.” – Frank Elwell, Macro Social Theory (2009).

Games People Play

The mind works in such ways that we can never really describe all of the places we have been to arrive at the place we ended up.  But I have perhaps been on the path that led to Gestalt Genesis/Day Million simulation game since I was about 15 years old, at which age I read Isaac Asimov’s entire Foundation Trilogy plus Foundation’s Edge which was published as a four-book set in 1982 (the original Foundation Trilogy was published thirty years earlier in 1951) and became obsessed with the idea of psychohistory.  It also happened that I discovered “Games People Play” (1980) by Alan Parson’s Project (paired with The Moody Blues “The Voice” (1981)) and probably interpreted the song in a much different way than was intended.

Gestalt-Genesis/Day Million (GGDM) simulation game, or any study of history, sociology, economics, macrohistory, or any social science is not and cannot be predictive and thus cannot be the fictional ‘psychohistory’ of Asimov (Foundation, pub. 1951), or the ‘social physics’ of Comte:

“Social physics is that science which occupies itself with social phenomena, considered in the same light as astronomical, physical, chemical, and physiological phenomena, that is to say as being subject to natural and invariable laws, the discovery of which is the special object of its researches.”

or Flechtheim’s 1940s ‘futurology’ which I believe is the origin of psychohistory.  Carl Sagan famously noted in Cosmos, Episode 2:

“Biology is more like history than it is like physics. You have to know the past to understand the present. There is no predictive theory of biology, nor is there for history. The reason is the same: Both subjects are still too complicated for us.”

But, there is a fledgling academic discipline of ‘psychohistory’ with an organization that publishes a Journal of Psychohistory, and there is also a new transdisciplinary branch of social sciences called cliodynamics that continues in the vein of Flechthiem’s original vision of a “science of probability,” attempting to mathematically model history, culture, economics and macrosociology (naturally drawing criticisms of reductionism), which also has its own peer-reviewed journal, Cliodynamics: The Journal of Quantitative History and Cultural Evolution.

“No serious futurist deals in prediction. These are left for television oracles and newspaper astrologers.” – Alvin Toffler as quoted in BBC article by Courtney Subramanian, “Alvin Toffler: What he got right – and wrong,” (July 1, 2016) following his passing in June 2016.

Per Aspera Ad Astra

You have to walk before you can run – or trip and fall.  This preceding introductory discussion of macrosociology was necessary to the discussion of Gestalt Genesis/Day Million (GGDM) macrosocial thoughts in the following months.  As I said, the Looking Substack could be considered a proto-book and you know every instructive text or discussion, must begin .... at the beginning.  While fiction can start at the end and work back, or go in circles (most famously, Homer’s Odyssey), learned text is expected to be a generally forward-leaning argument from facts.  It’s just our nature.

I am aware of the potential pitfalls and criticisms of Gestalt Genesis/Day Million (GGDM) beyond being a ‘silly science fiction space’ simulation game or an exercise in grand theorizing.  For example, Professor Turner, and much of professional and academia sociology, might regard my macrosocial arguments as “philosophical naval contemplation” written by a “poor philosopher.”

“Sociologist have lost their vision of what science is. Indeed, only in a discipline that has lost its way could mechanical number crunching, per se, be considered ‘science’ and philosophical navel contemplation be defined as ‘theory.’ It is almost as if we have forgotten that science and theory are part of the same enterprise. That is, science is to seek understanding of the universe, and the vehicle through which such understanding is to be achieved is theory. Sociology has allowed poor philosophers to usurp theoretical activity and ‘statistical packages’ to hold social science hostage.” – Jonathan H. Turner, “Returning to Social Physics: Illustrations from the Work of George Herbert Mead,” George Herbert Mead: Critical Assessments, Volume 3 (1992), Ed. Peter Hamilton, p. 132.

Conversely, I view GGDM’s macrosocial approach as an axiom-based “re-humanization of sociology,” getting down to the heart of humanity and expressing it on a macro-civilizational outcome.

I can also anticipate that my macrostructural musings will be criticized for the fallacies of elaborated “categorical system”:

“Elaborating category systems and using them to describe empirical events can be useful for seeing events in more analytical terms, but it is not a good way to build a general theory because the categories are not testable – indeed, they are simply ontological assertions – and the connections enumerated among the categories are generally not testable as well. Category systems often make for interesting philosophy but not particularly good theory, unless they are simple and used to develop general laws on basic social processes.” – Jonathan H. Turner, Theoretical Principles of Sociology, Vol. 1, Macrodynamics (2012), p. 20.

Those too, are just our nature.  Maybe not our better nature, but they are just our nature.

However, my lament is that the process of ‘extracting’ the GGDM macrosocial thought from the simulation will diminish it – flatten it – from the hopefully dynamic play experience of macrosocial thought that was the intended to develop during play of the simulation game.

Preceding Substack Post: “The Structuralist of Civilization,” https://charleswphillips.substack.com/p/the-structuralist-of-civilizations (May 4, 2024).