A third package of differences concerns the nature of communications and dialogue. In the horizontal system, you tend to see universal networks, where everyone can connect up to everyone else. This facilitates a question-based dialogue, where basically all subjects are on the table. The government in a horizontal system tends not to make any effort to steer that discourse, but only to deal with downstream behavior that may result. You want to yell “fire” in a crowded theater and people get hurt in the resulting stampede? Well then, you are going to be in trouble.

The critical element here is liberty. The Horizontal system works best by keeping track of relatively few variables and letting the rest interact autonomously so long as the results do not threaten the integrity of the system – in which case the Horizontal system can muster a smothering, comprehensive, response because it’s energies are not being frittered away on trivialities. “Anything not specifically forbidden is permitted” is a far more economical rule set for political power than the reverse.

Vertical systems are just the opposite on communication. Their networks tend to be drill-down networks, or connectivity that runs from the leader to the led. Instead of letting any and all conversations occur, vertical systems typically feature upstream content control, because the dialogues that are permissible are severely restricted in terms of taboos. In short, it is a world of “don’t go there, girlfriend!” I use the feminine here with purpose, since far more of the taboos involve women and restrict their behavior. What do young Iranian women do overwhelmingly when they get on the Internet? They race to Yahoo chat rooms to discuss sex, dating and marriage? Why do they have to go to such effort? These subjects are not discussable in public Iranian society under the mullahs. So what do you talk about in a country like Iran? You mostly talk about what you cannot talk about. That is what I did in the Soviet Union when I lived there briefly: I had lots of conversations with Russians where we talked about all the subjects you could not talk about. We did not actually discuss those subjects, we just talking about Russians’ inability to talk about them. Vertical systems are a sort of strange, Seinfeldian universe in that way: all of your conversations really are about nothing “

This predisposition to create taboos is probably a basic psychological characteristic of all people, Denial, being manifested as a social phenomenon but becomes ruinous when enforced systemically. It short-circuits problem solving and as multiple threats to the well-being of society build, leads to a sense of despair or malaise. The USSR died spiritually long before the bureaucracy gave up the ghost – with true belief among the elite confined to a small number of fanatics around Mikhail Suslov and an elderly generation of pensioners unwilling to believe that the horrifying sacrifices of their lives had been for naught.

Next, in Part II, a look at Dr. Barnett’s Rules of System Perturbations in Vertical and Horizontal scenarios.

ON A RELATED NOTE: TM Lutas is also posting on PNM theory tonight, Gap-Core and the implications of capital flows. Go read him !

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