In a war of all against all, the outcome is effectively random.

I’m haunted by Margaret Thatcher’s assertion: “there is no such thing as society.” I believe that she was mistaken. Except that in some ways, she was right.

What did she mean by “society”? What does anyone mean? Does it matter?

Society is an idea meant to help us understand the world. It is a model: an approximation—a simplification—of complex reality. More basically, It is a collective noun. Similar to “nation” or “culture". It refers to the shared beliefs, assumptions, knowledge and understanding of a distinctive group of people. It is also the people themselves. Finally it is their collective behaviours and interactions, with one another and outsiders, that arise from their shared understanding.

The idea of society—like all ideas—has an instrumental purpose: to help us make predictions. But it also has another purpose: to give the individuals who belong to that society an identity.

Unless you understand your society, how can you understand yourself? And yet, how many people honestly feel like they understand their society? To the extent that they do feel comfortable with their understanding, how positively do they regard it?

People typically want to have a positive opinion of themselves and others around them. To some degree, this requires being willing and able to fool yourself. Because you cannot really understand the entirety of society, or yourself, you must make do with a simplified description, for everyday use. But today, we have too much information. The state of our information environment challenges both our understanding of the world, and ourselves. It also constantly question the goodness of both.

Are people good or bad? Individually, or collectively? Intrinsically, or situationally? Who is in our society, or out of it? Is it constant, or variable? What do we value? What do we want? What is going to happen? What are the dangers? How can we prevent or avoid catastrophe?

What is better: understanding or agreement? They are both necessary. Neither alone is sufficient. Agreement enables coordination. But coordinated efforts to deal with a situation that no one understands lead to failure. While disagreement and lack of coordination make it impossible to cope with a situation, no matter how well understood.

But this question is misleading. The two states are not orthogonal. Agreement means common understanding. If everyone understands a situation, then by definition they will be in agreement.

The problem is that understanding is problematic. The idea of understanding is itself complicated. To what degree do we understand? What parts do we understand? Who understands which parts, to what degree? The classic analogy is that of blind people touching different parts of an elephant, and disagreeing about the nature of the elephant. This analogy is not sufficiently well understood.

To find agreement on complex matters, which cannot be fully understood, we need to recognize and admit the limits of understanding. But in our world, even that is too much to hope for. Too many people are either too arrogant, or too anxious, to admit their inability to understand. So instead, they grasp onto over-simplified explanations and stories.

Often, these stores are fantastical, involving supernatural or magical beings. These beings—including God—understand things better than people can. But they want to help us. So they give us guidance and instructions to follow. We may not understand their reasoning, but we can understand their instructions. If we believe they are trustworthy, then there is no reason to doubt their intentions. If we believe they are superhumanly intelligent—our outright omniscient—then there is no reason to doubt their understanding. And so it only makes sense to do what they say.

Of course, if you are like me, you are a skeptic and a materialist. There are no magical beings. We must make our way through the world using only the tools we were born with or invented. Human beings, like all life, must either cope on their own, or fail, and be destroyed.

Unfortunately, our efforts to cope with one set of complex circumstances has created new, different, more complex circumstances. We are, paradoxically, no more capable of coping with our new situation than our prior one. Possibly we are less capable.

Certainly, on an individual level, we are less able to cope. Even if, collectively, we have more and better tools for observing, analyzing, and predicting. Some things are simply unpredictable. And while it is good to know that, it is not at all comforting. On the contrary, it promotes anxiety.

What is the best way to face the unknown?

Should we live in denial? To pretend we know, even when we don’t?

Should we give up? Should we be passive and accepting? Accept that the world is chaotic, life is uncertain, and that we are inevitably doomed?

Or is there a middle way?

If you look at the world dispassionately, disinterestedly, it appears that, overall, humanity is neither irrationally optimistic or pessimistic. Our attitudes, individually and collectively, span the continuum from fatalistic to empowered.

The fact is that we have some control. But it takes a lot of effort to exert it, and the results are usually still disappointing. We can make progress, but only incrementally, and only with many errors and failures along the way. But for this reason, we should not try to address everyone all at once. We should prioritize, and find ways to make small improvements, which will add up over time. Because that is what we have been doing, for thousands of years.

We should give up on extreme ideas, on utopian or absolute solutions, on any fantasy that we can move directly from chaos and uncertainty to orderly perfection. We should stop listening to comforting lies and psychotic delusions. But they are compelling and reassuring.

The world is overwhelming. It is confusing and dangerous. The promise of making it simpler and safer is is too tempting to resist. We are vulnerable to the fantasy that someone powerful will spare us the effort of dealing with our problems. We want someone to take care of us.

Unfortunately, there is no single magical saviour who can do that. We can only do that together, by working together.

But the idea of working together has gone out of favour. The human world is now defined by competition. Meaning we must all be prepared to struggle with everyone: all against all. How can anyone hope to succeed in such a chaotic and dangerous world? If we don’t accept the promise of a saviour—either supernatural or natural; religious, political, or cultural—then where can we turn? To some other form of escape. To forgetfulness, in substance abuse, compulsion, or obsession. Or we can lose hope, become passive, get depressed.

We need—we are waiting for—a new explanation of the world, a new theory, a new understanding. We need a new interpretation that incorporates all the seemingly contradictory ideas and experiences that threaten to drown us. What will it be?