Introduction to the First society
by Michael G. Heller
Published in Social Science Files; April 27, 2025
The precondition for the establishment of the first society was an existing group of compatible human individuals with large brains, rudimentary language and a future-orientation. The society was distinguished from the coexisting simple, transient and more coercive groups by its commitment to perpetuity and consensus. The objective of permanence or continuity was most evident in the way the society went about creating mechanisms for making collaborative decisions that legitimated the unified goals of future subsistence, internal social order, and adequate control of territory.
Because societies are built and maintained they demand allegiance and obligation. There had also to be a manifest ability to grow through natural procreation or union rather than by conquest. As Herbert Spencer noted “militancy makes the ruling man all-powerful, he becomes absolute judicially as in other ways: the people lose all share in giving decisions”.1 There had furthermore to exist the cognitive capabilities that enabled awareness of the necessity to organise common subsistence and jointly maintain social order and defence. Their larger objective — beyond safety, shelter and subsistence — was to integrate society for the common benefit of its members.
It will have been clear nonetheless that the means of integrating the society depended on the acceptance and exploitation of individual differentiations, which were, inescapably, the source of differential capabilities for leadership and calculation.
There is no reason to suppose that humans ever existed as undifferentiated ‘hordes’. The horde is a myth. We should instead assume that most early human groups were controlled by coteries of dominant males, much as had previously been the case among their very hierarchically-minded primate ancestors. Once language began to emerge 200,000 years ago it became easier for individuals to discuss leaving such groups. Society was created so as not be governed like animals.
This did not yet mean taking up a radical philosophical position about the ideal society (yes, people philosophised in primitive societies). It simply entailed a moderation and diffusion of the ‘differentiations’ in order that integration could be maintained with relative pleasantry and minimum conflict. These were societies with un-accentuated sustainable functional differentiation based on a demonstrable mix of meritocratic and instinctual capabilities to govern. In these conditions, it was possible to experiment and find the ideal qualities of leadership without experiencing the indignities of outright domination or the risks of violence and breakups.
Humans would eventually return to a brute power and authority model of governance in the fourth society when real material exigencies and dramatic increases in the size of incorporated populations demanded that formal organisations be created.
Before that happened, however, there would be two intermediate evolutions of society that flowed directly from the first society. The second society deliberately flattened its hierarchies in response to emergent infighting and unacceptable dominance. In response to the inefficiencies of second society communalism, the third society experimented afresh with meritocratic and legitimate mechanisms for coordination led by individuals whose powers were strictly limited by convention. Coercion was reserved for flagrant breaches of rules, and according to legitimate custom.
The first society was ‘governed’, but in a cautious manner. There were always matters that had to be aired and discussed, and great effort was made to maintain cohesion. The differentiation between those talked and those who listened in their ‘public assemblies’ reflected their character and knowledge rather than political prepotency.
Though there were differences in the amount of influence exerted by individuals, as well as contrary opinions, a fear of disrupting the harmony of the whole made each person cautious to avoid headlong confrontations that might lead to expulsion, departure, or resentments that would then interfere with essential everyday tasks.
Satisfaction with governance is the principal source of legitimacy in any society, and even more so when every adult has an integral role in the decisions made. Legitimacy takes time to build, but it can destroyed in an instant if governance takes a bad turn and generates a level or distribution of conflict that cannot easily be reversed.
From the beginning society was not a spontaneous interaction of people or a mechanism for creating bonds based on primitive beliefs or esoteric values.
Rather it was a functional method of essentially voluntary cooperation for achieving immediate practical ends, and for fostering distinctive customs and conventions in the longer run. At the heart of it lay a process of decision making about practical matters of survival. It was also a mechanism for enriching human lives through a sheltered process that securely ‘integrated’ people in song, dance, storytelling, and laughter, and in which the ‘differentiations’ might either be muted or enhanced.
Societies were created to endure. That required a sociational ‘future-orientation’.
Dance (I) by Henri Matisse, France 1909
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Herbert Spencer, Principles of Sociology, Vol. I–IV (pp. 1634-1635)