The DNA in a seed or an embryo knows both the short range and the long-range of its structure, although they are not the same. It knows what it is, what it will immediately become, and what it will eventually be, with a complete knowledge of all the intermediate stages. Even death is preprogrammed.

Can we plan social development (e.g. a world legislature) that way? No, we are not as smart as nature. Although the Falk-Strauss paper nutlines some transition stages from an NGO assembly to an elected world legislature, the steps are tentative and vague, not predetermined.

We only know how to drastically change social structure by sudden revolution (whether bloody or velvet), which is a process that often destroys what is valuable along with what was obsolete (throwing out the baby with the bath water). And we do this with incomplete knowledge of the consequences. It could be breakdown rather than breakthrough. Yet we can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs, as Lenin said.

But wait: The very first time nature did it, it was evolution, where steps of change are usually tentative and often fail. What the seed or embryo do is only development, carefully pre-programmed from past experience. We EVOLVE new social structures, not DEVELOP them.

Even evolution was probably “punctuated” (according to Gould), i.e. sudden, by revolution. Once done, the process gets easier; that is the explanation of morphogenesis. Finally it gets automatic, as in embryonic development.

So perhaps social evolution is not very different from biological evolution. Nature is NOT smarter than we are; it is just a “blind watchmaker” with lots of time. We can work a million times faster. Of course, we can fail through counter-intuitive unintended consequences, i.e. through lethal mutations, which are far more common than beneficial mutations.

Do we have a choice? Stagnating organisms or structures are fragile, vulnerable to changes in environment or circumstances. We’d better try “pre-adapting” before catastrophe strikes. (Indications are already here.) I am tempted to say “Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead” – but I am trying to avoid military metaphors.