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How can we overcome our collective ignorance? 

The fact that sociology has failed to master its subjectsociety – has left an enormous scientific void.

SOCIETALogically speaking, this scientific void renders us all ignorant when we talk about our societies and our role as citizens.

There is therefore a Generalized Collective Ignorance (GCI) hovering over our societies which hampers our ability to prevent, resolve and manage conflicts constructively.

This inability is what transforms certain conflicts into societal cancers that are leading us  to the brink of another global catastrophe.

These conflicts turn into cancers because we have no idea:

        • Why are we living together?
        • The goal we must achieve together.
        • What we need to achieve together to reach that goal.
        • The resources and means we have at our disposal to achieve these goals.
        • The guidelines we should use to assess whether the way we use these resources and means will actually enable us, in the short, medium and long term, to achieve our objectives and reach our goal.

Since we don’t have access to this basic information, it’s impossible for us to acquire the knowledge and develop the skills that would enable us to better play our role as citizens. As a result, our general level of competence is very low.

In fact, if we had a tool to evaluate the citizen quotient of every citizen today, we would find that the average citizen quotient would be between 15% and 25%.

 

What’s more, this undesirable condition affects all citizens, including civic professionals, i.e., politicians, senior civil servants, public administrators and civic leaders.

Yet, ideally, as citizens, we should all be at the competent level, and civic professionals, depending on their experience, should be either at the performing or expert level.

 

Unfortunately, this is not the case. It becomes very difficult to maintain a certain social order.

A Weakened Social Order

In democratic countries, the scientific void and the resulting generalize collective ignorance are the two major forces influencing the pendulum swing.

This movement arises from the fluctuations between the pressures some citizens exert to gain more individual freedom and, conversely, the pressures some citizens exert to restrict it.

If we had a “balance-o-meter” to measure month by month the pressure exerted by citizens on the social order, here’s what the fluctuations might look like over a hundred years.

 

The only reason some democratic societies have achieved a certain equilibrium is that many of our leaders have an intuitive understanding of what needs to be done to reduce the level of conflict. Consequently, they have adopted management mechanisms that facilitate a certain social order. Unfortunately, this is not enough.

Intuition, often promoted as common sense, is no guarantee for balance.

Worldwide, political, economic, judicial, moral, religious, military and other management processes create laws, rules, regulations, habits and customs that are incompatible with the development of a balanced society.

As a result, the vast majority of the 193 countries that make up our global village are in a constant state of imbalance.

At Last! The Scientific Void is Filled.

Indeed, we now have access to a new science that helps us, as citizens, whether we’re politicians, civil servants, civic leaders or not, to better understand our societies and the important role we play as citizens.

This new science, called SOCIETALogy1,2 and developed by Denis Pageau, enables us to study societies and citizenship in a way they have never been studied before. Indeed, societalogy uses the lenses of management, enabling us to study :

          • Societies as organizations
          • Citizenship as a profession

This innovative approach enables us to prescribe cutting-edge solutions.

For more information on Societalogy, see the “About SOCIETALogy” page.

To better understand how SOCIETALogy can be used to study societies, please view this explainer video.

You want to know more about the Institute, then jump to the 5 Ws page. It answers the questions: Why? For whom? What? When? And where?

Societally yours,
The SOCIETALogical Team

1 – The term SOCIETALogy is a neologism which associates the words SOCIETAL of the classical Latin: societas, “association” and LOGY of Greek origin: “study”.

2 – SOCIETALogy can be used to study cities and countries. Thus, local and national societies, as well as intermediate societies such as provinces, states, departments, etc. are included. It can, of course, be used to study our global village.