Global (or complex) endosymbiosis
The third out of four 'metaphysical' posts
An Organizational and Cyclical Cosmos
This post will continue in the spirit of the last two, both of which aimed to take a more ‘metaphysical turn’ in this inquiry. To start this metaphysical turn, it was suggested that the Cosmos is fundamentally an ‘organizational’ one, meaning:
All things or processes in the Cosmos are organizations of different kinds, which have, or perhaps fundamentally are, relationships with other organizations in the cosmos.
Importantly, even though ‘organization ‘1’ remains at the heart of this inquiry, the aim has not been to find its strict definition, but instead to use the concept in a general sense to drive the inquiry and follow an artistic thread wherever it leads.
Following this broad aim, it was suggested that ‘organizations’ are ‘cyclical’, meaning that all organizations operate in cycles, that cycles are a common structure of organizations. That first sentence now gets updated:
If the Cosmos is the unfolding of various kinds of organization in relation to other organizations, it is equally, then, at least under this view, the unfolding of various kinds of cycles in relation to other kinds of cycles.
This view leaves us with a number of interesting questions, some more compelling than others, but a few of the more relevant ones to this inquiry are:
What is a psychic cycle? Or the many different kinds of psychic cycles?
What is a social cycle? Does it make sense to speak in terms of psycho-social cycles?2
If a cycle is:
A series (or set) of events that are regularly repeated in the same order.
Then what is a psychic, or social, or psycho-social, or cultural, event? How are cycles formed from their happening?
And perhaps most importantly,
How is it that seemingly different kinds of organizational cycles (bio-geo-chemical, for example) operate in cycles together? Or more generally: how is it that different organizations relate and entangle with one another?
This last question, on the nature of how cycles and organizations are embedded within and through one another, will be addressed in this post. Although addressing for this organizational entanglement is not new, I hope to suggest the concept of 'global endosymbiosis' here as a way to conceptualize this entanglement- which is usually understood under the term ‘embeddedness’ or ‘nestedness’.
Global Endosymbiosis
The concept raised here of ‘global endosymbiosis’ is quite straightforward; it is essentially the same as the idea of ‘embeddedness’, or ‘nestedness’, but aims to provide a slightly different connotation- namely, one which emphasizes the ‘living and dynamic relationship’ between different kinds of organizations.
The motivation to develop such a concept is similar to, or even a direct reflection of, an earlier string of ideas in this inquiry. When asking the question: ‘what is a social organization’? I had suggested (like many people) that a ‘social organization’ operates like an ‘organism’. I went on to suggest (others have not formally done this, I don’t think) that the concept of ‘endosymbiosis’ might be applied to a social context. The main motivation of the post was in outlining the various challenges in developing such a theory, of how ‘endosymbiosis’ as a concept may or may not be suitable when trying to describe or understand ‘social organizations’
As one might intuit, a social organism is an organism because it is a dynamic, living shared space in which agents are sensitive to and immersed in a ‘life-space’, a field in which state changes and interactions are entangled and meaningful. Each agent is sensitive and co-constitutive to the whole, and the parts and the whole are meaningfully and mysteriously entangled. The agents in a social system self-organize around this ‘whole’. Exactly how this happens and is maintained is a mystery, but the theory is developed to try and work towards better understanding that mystery.
A similar line of thought is being made here. Instead of asking ‘what is a social organization’ the question now is wider and more Delphic: namely, ‘what is an organization’?
It is certainly not an easy or routine task to consider this question, but we might be inclined to posit that an ‘organization’ can only be considered through its ‘embeddedness’- through how it is a ‘whole’ made of ‘parts’, and how it is equally and moreover a ‘part’ which plays a role in many possible wholes. Which is to say that the way organizations are ‘embedded’ are part of their fundamental character, or that organizations are what they are because of their relationships with other organizations.
We might also posit that this ‘embeddedness’ is fundamentally a dynamic and self-organizing exchange (the degree of which depends on the kind of organization), and such a lively interaction might further incline one to simply adopt the concept of ‘endosymbiosis’ to a more ‘global’ level- to use the biological metaphor to give more life to the notion of ‘embeddedness’. The suggestion here is that organizations do not simply overlap: they co-constitute, they exchange, they self-organize, and they require engagement. While ‘embeddedness’ might convey a sense of deep reliance or familiarity between organizations, ‘global endosymbiosis’ emphasizes the dynamic exchange between organizations.
Consider, for example, the human body, or the cells within one’s body. Accounting for how a cell makes up a tissue and tissue an organ, and so on, ad infinitum in vertical or horizontal directions: ‘global endosymbiosis’ is a concept to try and point to this horizontal and vertical entanglement, which might equally happen in other organizations, but the metaphor is taken from biology to emphasize the dynamic and living nature of ‘organizations’.
The ‘dictionary definition’ of endosymbiosis is that it is:
A type of symbiosis in which one organism lives inside the other, the two typically behaving as a single organism.
And so, if the Cosmos is the unfolding of organizations and their cycles, then global endosymbiosis suggests that this unfolding and relationality is fundamentally co-constitutive with and through other organizations and cycles; that the Cosmos is not merely full of separate organizations which collide and interact, but organizations which are, to varying degrees, entangled and co-constitutive and sensitive to other organizations.
Put more poetically, we might say that it is through the World that we are what we are, or that anything is the way it is; that we are not a thing which merely interacts, but a process that is fundamentally alive and in tune to everything else. It is through relation that we become enlivened, through relation that embodiment is allowed and explored.
It is easy to see how one might be quickly turned off by the idea for a variety of reasons- the first being ‘this only applies to certain organizations’, or that this is solely a specific biological phenomenon. But why not adopt the concept and use the metaphor to consider the dynamics between organizations more broadly? Indeed, such is the aim, at least partly, of an artistic inquiry: to explore new and different ways of making sense of the World.
Indeed, the many questions, concepts, and problems developed here in this inquiry are creative tools for making sense of the World; and they are by no means polished or complete, it is a process mostly of building and rebuilding, of considering and re-considering. As such, there is no doubt that such a theory would require much more careful consideration, and I suggest it more so as a proto-theory- something which might grow, evolve, or change into something entirely new (or even be abandoned).
Strong and Weak Endosymbiosis
If one might consider the concept a bit further, it is possible to suggest that there is an interesting line to be drawn between strong and weak endosymbiosis- which was hinted at, although not developed, in the post on social endosymbiosis, in the following passage:
One might say that one can be ‘inside’ a social organism in varying degrees of intimacy. Naturally, we might view a ‘family’ as a ‘social organism’, and within ones own family, for example, ones presence constitutes a much more important, meaningful, and emotional role; everyone knows each other to a highly intimate or engaged degree. At the same time, I can be involved in a ‘social organism’, like, for example, a ‘housing market’ which requires my presence as a financial actor in order to sustain there. Nobody else in this social organism has an intimate understanding of who I am on an emotional level, it’s self-organization only depends on my own ability to make certain payments. The important point here is that these are two highly different processes: one requires a complex presence which is intimately remembered among a family ‘field’, and a financial presence, which is far less complex in what it demands of me.
We might say, then, that global endosymbiosis can have ‘strong’ or ‘weak’ forms; it is strong when there are more robust and perhaps necessary relationships between organizations, weak when these relationships are not as robust or necessary. One might certainly be inclined to say that ‘weak’ might simply not be an example of endosymbiosis, but one’s presence in such a social system in the example above does shape and constitute one’s own being in profound ways, even if the relationship is not as strong or intimate.
Where might the line to be drawn between the two? It’s an interesting question, and one to keep in the back of our minds, like some of the many others raised in this post and others.
One might also say ‘system’, but I prefer organization. Indeed, we could also say that everything could be viewed as a ‘system’- and as being embedded in other systems.
Or an intelligible cycle, or cultural cycle.