Mechanisms of Social Self-Organization

The author proposes a hypothesis of two types of mechanisms of social self-organization: its launch and maintenance of structural integrity. These are two fundamentally different mechanisms. Social self-organization requires four mandatory conditions: (1) a set of interacting elements (individuals), homogeneous in origin and creating, due to their common habitat, a behavioral population system; (2) the obligatory identification of a pacemaker in the population, which “captures” the activity rhythms of other individuals, which is a condition for the emergence of heterogeneities in behavioral activity; (3) the lifetime of a population system must be significantly longer than the lifetime of an individual element; (4) the homogeneity of individuals and the complexity of their behavior in a long-existing population create conditions for functional subordination (heterarchy, in general sense). The behavioral mechanism of self-organization in populations with complex behavior of individuals is reciprocal altruism. Altruism presupposes a hereditarily determined ability for sacrifi cial behavior. Its natural basis is the universal phenomenon of individual recognition and preference. The author examines four sociological concepts of self-organization, in which altruism is presented as a mechanism of self-organization: Ibn Khaldun, E. Durkheim, P.A. Kropotkin and P.A. Sorokin. The mechanism for maintaining an already formed structure is different in nature; it is aimed at continuously ensuring solidarity. This is a “Game” that is implemented in two forms – competition (game) and performance (play). Game is not a specifically human attribute of social life. The content of the “game” satisfies the basic conditions of self-organization. The “game” has three important attributes: (1) isolation of the playing space and temporary organization; (2) the immutability and binding nature of the rules that set the order of actions and form a special ethos and ritual; (3) the game determines the emergence of associations that strive to survive and spread. The associations are based on altruistic behavior. The expansion of the game leads to the creation of male “alliances”; their forms are the basis of solidarity.