And now, before I continue, a useful distinction.

There are organic institutions and there are synthetic institutions.

Organic institutions are the unspoken, non-verbalized, unwritten, compacts, agreements, rules of conduct, mores, beliefs that underlie the way we interact with each other and how we collaborate and form the units necessary to cope with a very complex world.

And so these are essentially abstracts.

Organic institutions are essentially reified abstracts, principles.

Synthetic institutions are formalized. They are usually written down and they have rules of procedure and they have forms that you have to fill in. They are bureaucratic.

Weber was the first to analyze this new phenomenon of bureaucracy.

And so synthetic institutions are invented, consciously invented.

People sit down and say, what institution can we create to cope with this new development, with this new social trend, with this post-war, post-bellum world?

So an example of a synthetic institution is the World Health Organization, or the United Nations, or the United States Senate. These are synthetic institutions.

Organic institutions change much more rarely. The last time organic institutions changed to some extent was after the Black Death at the end of the 14th century or the middle of the 14th century. This is where when feudalism crumbled and was replaced by proto-capitalism, fewer people were left. I mean, about half the population was decimated, killed. 70% of the population of the British Isles, today’s United Kingdom, were killed in two successive waves of the plague. So very few people were left and they had very high bargaining power. So this destroyed the feudal system and gave rise to the working class. And the working class is the real foundation of capitalism. But that’s a subject for another video.

So there was a last time that one organic institution has changed, economic organization, economic, the regulation of the means of production, to use a Marxist term.

The last time all organic institutions changed simultaneously was about 6,000 years ago, or 5,000 years ago, what we call the agricultural revolution.

Even in the industrial revolution, there was no organic change. There was no organic change because when the industrial revolution erupted in the 18th century, we were already organized to cope with it. We had cities, we had municipal institutions, we had trade, we had international transport via oceans, we had a military, etc. So we had production lines and organized labor long before the industrial revolution because agriculture has been gradually industrialized. And we had, of course, means of transmission of produce from the rural areas to the urban areas. So we had everything in place.

So the industrial revolution did not create an organic change. Last time there was an organic change, change in organic institutions.

Comparable to what’s happening now was in the agricultural revolution 5,000 years ago. So we are living through a period which happens something like each and every 5,000 years. It happens once every 5,000 years.

And of course, we are out of practice. We don’t know how to cope with organic change or change in organic institutions, because none of us in living memory and even in intergenerational transfer of institutional memory, none of us has any remote recollection of how we had coped and how we had managed last time that we had revolutionized change dramatically and fundamentally and profoundly all our organic institutions.

What happened 5,000 years ago? What were the organic institutions we came up with 5,000 years ago?

Well, first of all, we came up with monogamy. If you read the Bible, no one in the Bible is monogamous. Monogamy is a new invention.

So agriculture forced people to stick together in the long bone. And so families were created.

And to keep the stability of the family and to ensure that wealth is passed on to real heirs, to people who share the same genetic material, we came up with monogamy.

Monogamy is intended to secure paternity. So we came up with monogamy and monogamy gave rise to the family at the beginning of the extended traveling. And gradually, as means of production were dispersed and became more distributed, we needed fewer and fewer members of the family and we ended up with the nuclear family.

And in the majority, in many nuclear families today, there are no children. There’s just a couple, a dik.

But 5,000 years ago, we came up with monogamy in the family. We came up with the concept of hierarchy.

I mean, many of these things we take for granted. We think they reflect human nature. They don’t reflect human nature. They reflect organic, the organic emergence or the emergence of organic institutions, which cater to adhere to and coped with new developments, technological developments and organizational developments.

So the family, for example, replaced the clan, the extended clan or the tribe. The family became an outsourcing resource.

So for example, children, we started to raise children in families. When previous to that, they were raised by the tribe, by the clan. It took a whole village to raise a child.

So this changed. Sex was insourced.

Rather than have promiscuous sex with anyone who is willing and ready and available, people started to have sex only with each other’s monogamy, sexual exclusivity.

So these are new things, very new. Humans as a species have existed for something like a million years, depending on how we define human. So about a million years.

What is 5,000 years? It’s a blink of an eye. So 5,000 years ago, we invented all these things, which today we take for granted. And we mistakenly believe that these things reflect our nature, but they don’t.

We can easily conceive. And we are right now conceiving of different organic institutions, radically different, totally divorced from the previous organic institutions. And these new organic institutions, the new normal, will reflect our human nature as much as the previous now defunct, discarded institutions did.

So institutions, even organic institutions, come and go. Our human nature is fixed. Institutions cater to our human nature, sometimes reflect aspects or variants of the human nature, facets, like a kaleidoscope. But they’re not there to stay. They are not immutable. They’re changeable. They come and go. They vanish.

So family is something like that. Monogamy is something like that.

Already, according to the latest studies, amongst up to age 45, 68% of women and 75% of men cheat on their primary apartments. That’s not monogamy. Monogamy is dead. Totally dead.

And new technology made true of that. There’s not a pool of available potential mates is infinite.

So hierarchy, for example, we tend to think, and many public intellectuals tend to think, that hierarchy is inbuilt, is a hardwired feature, not only of human nature, but of nature. It’s of course utter nonsense. The overwhelming vast majority of nature is not organized in hierarchies.

Hierarchy is a total human invention, an organic institution. The very concept of hierarchy, regime, elite, masses, controllers, rulers, ruled, all this law enforcement, which is necessary to monopolize aggression, to monopolize violence, so as to control the masses, so as to perpetuate the self-interest of the elites. All these are new things.

Hierarchies reflect a new spatial organization, organizational unit known as the city. Hierarchy is a byproduct, a feature and a fixture of urbanization.

If you look at a city as a spatial way of distributing humans, human beings, you will see that if a city is to function properly, it needs a center, an epicenter, a place where everyone goes to, for example, exchange information, like the Agora, or like the famous hill in Athens, in ancient Athens, or like the Forum in ancient Rome. So people needed a central location, and obviously things had to be managed. The very concept of management is an organic institution of the agricultural revolution, because only if you are a farmer, only if you’re a villager, you need to manage things. You need to manage inputs. For example, you need to save seeds. You need to manage livestock. You need to manage your oxen with which you plow the land. You need to manage your technology, the plowshares and so on, and you need to manage the humans who make use of this technology.

So the very concept of management is new.

And then there’s a concept of socializing. Again, many scholars, many experts, many sociologists and anthropologists and psychologists claim that socializing, working in social units, collaborating, cooperating within social units, or deriving non-collaborative, non-cooperative benefits. For example, having fun, having a good time, finding sex partners.

You know, socializing, they say, working in groups is reflective of human nature.

Humans are social animals, even if it’s totalists, and Plato called us social animals. It’s not true. Socializing, the very concept of society, working in extended groups, spending time together, which is not goal-oriented, not hunting for a bear or a mammoth, but just having a good time in a pub or in a bar.

Socially distancing, of course. I mean, this is new. This happened because people were forced unnaturally, unnaturally, forced to be together with a very high density per square meter in new, new, structural and organizational units called cities.

Socializing is a function of urbanization, a byproduct of urbanization. There would have been no socializing had there been no cities.

If you don’t believe me, go to any rural area, rural area in third world countries where people don’t socialize.

They see each other like once every two weeks, and they see each other because they have to buy something or sell something.

Socializing is a yuppie concept in a way. Young, upwardly mobile people socialize, all the others isolate, self-isolate, social distance.

Socializing socializing is an example, perfect example of an organic institution, but even more basic institutions, organic institutions, are not part of human nature.

Motherhood, childhood, these are inventions. There’s no such thing as motherhood, not such thing as childhood.

We are socialized and acculturated to adopt roles. There are gender roles. You’re a boy, you have to be a man, you have to grow up and be a man, and this is how to be a man.

I’m going to gender socialize you, I’m going to teach you how to act as a man, stereotypical man usually.

So this is how to be a man, gender role, this is how to be a woman, and this is how to be a mother, and this is how to be a child.

If you read the books of Charles Dickens, Charles Dickens didn’t live 5,000 years ago, Charles Dickens lived 200 years ago, 150 years ago. If you read his books, there’s a mention of children in his books. They are called young adults.

When Louisa May Alcott wrote a book about children, she called them little women, not little girls, little women, because kids, what today we call children, were either young men or little women. End of story. There were men and women.

Childhood is a very new concept, and so is motherhood.

Now think about this, the concept of rules. Again, many political scientists and so on were telling rules, it’s part of human nature, absolutely part of human nature.

We spontaneously and automatically tend to come up with rules, regulations, procedures, edicts, and so on.

Not true.

Actually, the first known codex of rules, the first known book of rules is the Hamuabi codex, the Babylonian codex of rules. It’s bloody tiny. It’s tiny. It fits into a 3K file. It has a few hundred rules to regulate the entirety of society, economic activities, crime, you name it. Rules are new, a new invention. Rules are an example of an organic institution which does not reflect human nature, but reflects human circumstances.

In agricultural society, you need rules. Everything has to be structured. A has to follow B, I mean B has to follow A, cause and effect are also an organic institution, not a natural way of thinking.

If you go to animist, primitive religions, they don’t have cause and effect. They have some alternating.

To this very day, in most Eastern mystical schools and so on, there’s no cause and effect. There is some alternating.

So rules, cause and effect, ways of, I mean modes of behavior, dictated modes of behavior, sanctions, the very concept of punishment, the very concept of sin, which underlie most religions. They are agricultural figments. They are the outcome of human nature trying to adopt to specific, highly specific circumstances.

Don’t forget that until a hundred years ago, we were all farmers and villagers. All by the turn of the century, half the population was employed in agriculture. Today, less than 3% in advanced industrialised countries.

So agriculture is vanishing as a human activity. Machines are taking over, but humans, 2-3% of the population and most of these 2-3%, they’re engaged in sales, in marketing, in distribution and utterly no, they don’t work the fields. They don’t sweat in the fields. That’s what illegal immigrants are for.

So agriculture is vanishing as agriculture vanishes all these, all these organic institutions that I mentioned, family, monogamy, sexual exclusivity, hierarchy, regime, society, socialising, motherhood, childhood, rules, edicts, regulations, all these are going to vanish. That’s the new normal.

We are entering the second organic revolution in 6000 years, second time in 6000 years. No wonder we are all discombobulated, depressed, anxious and we feel that we’re trapped in a nightmare.

This is not only that our synthetic institutions are under pressure and they are and they are crumbling. Our organic institutions are under pressure.

For example, why did we need to invent motherhood and childhood?

Because in the agricultural revolution, men went out to the field mostly. They were helped by women and children. You needed muscle power before technology to cover the initial phase of agriculture required muscle power.

So men did the jobs and so who would take care of the children? Who would raise the children?

Why did you need children? You needed children because they were work power. They were part of the workforce. A child was an investment. It guaranteed your old age when you were 14. Most people died in 40-45. So the child guaranteed the continued production from the fields and end your pension. Child was your pension, your retirement fund, your 401.

But who would take care of this? Who was your banker? Your banker was the mother.

So there comes motherhood. Motherhood was invented by men.

Most of the existing family-related mores and family-related myths and family-related fables and stories and rules and regulations and what is acceptable, socially acceptable, what’s not socially acceptable, the sinful and the righteous. All this was invented by men.

And men invented sexual monogamy and sexual exclusivity to secure paternity. Men invented all this. It’s a men’s world. And they invented all this because they wanted women to take care of their children while they’re in the fields.

And I’m not saying it’s chauvinistic. I’m just saying it’s male.

And what do women today do when they enter the workforce? They become male.

They emulate and imitate men. Why?

Because men invented the work environment. End of story. Nevermind to which radical families you listen.

You can discard all this nonsense that women are going to transform the workplace and so on. It’s too late for this.

Men invented the workforce. Women adapt to it. How do they adapt to it? By becoming men.

So we end up having a unigender world.

But even all this is going to be upended, revolutionized, transformed, eradicated, undermined by the forthcoming organic revolution, which I will discuss in a few minutes.