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The Unbalanced Society

“The most pressing danger to Watatu,” said Diotima, “is threat of losing the outward force, due to our isolation. We can compensate partially with internal diversity, but there may yet come a time when this proves ineffective.”

“An even greater disaster,” she continued, “would be losing the conservative force, since it bridges between the outward and the inward forces. When linked together, those forces create a dynamic tension, which makes the society flexible, welcoming of outsiders, and willing to adjust to diverse circumstances. When their bond is broken, they pull apart, tearing the social fabric, and creating catastrophic results.”

In a balanced society, all three forces are strong. A strong conservative force is created by the stable common bonds between the members of the society. This allows for a strong outward force, because the populace feels secure about coming into contact with strange people and new ideas. This, in turn, is balanced by a strong inward force, which incorporates the newcomers into the existing structures.

If the conservative force is absent, the other forces fail to work together. Instead, the inward force creates small pockets of increasingly homogeneous, single-minded and xenophobic traditionalists. Like melting pieces of ice, these inward groups become ever smaller, as they exclude and expel more members. At the same time, the outward force creates a cloud of unassociated, dispersed and disaffected individualists, who have no stable identity, and are consequently amoral. The eventual fate of such a society is to become more and more dissolute, until its (former) members either destroy each other, or are absorbed by stronger groupings.

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