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Are large supra-organisms too diffuse for self-awareness?
Like all long-lasting human supra-organisms, living nations have cultural ideas that, although they may be expressed in written documents, videos, and other semi-permanent records, reside ultimately in the brains of the human individuals who currently collectively embody the nation.
There are usually differences between cultural myths about a nation and ideas about how a nation actually works. Leaders, schools, and media organizations may communicate both national myths and more accurate ideas of national behavior. It’s the overall degree to which various such ideas are accepted by individual participants in the nation that counts in determining the behavior of the nation.
The degree of self-awareness of a supra-organism such as a country depends on the degree to which its participating individuals maintain accurate ideas about how the supra-organism works. And the effectiveness of its self-awareness depends on the extent to which its participating individuals make useful decisions, based on their ideas of how the supra-organism works, to coordinate their actions in order to achieve their individual and collective goals.
Communication is vital to successful operation of human supra-organisms. In order to produce effects beyond the capabilities of…
