Guest post by PEGGY MOHAN: When the size and complexity of a system pass a certain threshold there is a new feature that typically and suddenly appears: self-regulation. If traffic flow through a crossing exceeds a certain amount we wake up one morning and find a traffic light. It is not there to favor any motorist: what it really signifies is that the scale of things has changed.  We are no longer in the realm of the individual but of something much, much larger: a traffic system with compulsions of its own.

It is comforting to think that there is human agency behind the bewildering transitions we are now seeing the world over towards more state surveillance and control along with less regulation of big business. Clearly there are individuals who benefit from the new order. But there is another way of looking at the direction the world is taking. It is possible to see all this as evidence of a phase change, with the emergence of the megasystem itself as a new protagonist, and with human beings relegated to the status of bacteria proliferating in (and dying in) its gut.

A living organism is a complex collection of cells sustained by the energy that flows through it, without which it would revert to ground state. To sustain life, it must have an inbuilt desire for the energy that fuels its existence, a hunger that dictates a large portion of its activity. And as a high-energy entity it will also work constantly to seal itself off from an outside environment that is closer to ground state. It will also have strong opinions about what sort of environment it would thrive in.

Some of these signs of life have been evident for a long time. The sheer size and structuration of the global community. Its need for a constant flow of energy to maintain itself. The super-networked world we live in. The distances we must travel to live a life. Waste. Up to now this could all be passed off as an intriguing metaphor that echoed the laws of thermodynamics. This creature was still, in our minds, just an operating system under the control of human users.

But when the megasystem comes shamelessly into conflict with notions like democracy that hark back to a simpler world it no longer looks benign and unliving. The extent of surveillance and information gathering that have just been revealed, and the very real possibility of rendition and torture, and of being ‘disappeared’, by a late-stage capitalist system that once protected human rights speak of a new programming. What if something bigger than the leaders we see, more remote from human concerns, was now in charge? What if the telegenic leaders we think we elect are actually more unfree than we could ever imagine?

The name of the game, for the megasystem, is control: control of its sources of energy, and of its own level of order, since it is always vulnerable to a downslide back to ground state if its plug is pulled. This calls for direct control of the places from which this energy is extracted, and a level of vigilance that is in direct proportion to its distance from ground state. It also means a readiness to intervene, with force if necessary, when there are problems with its energy supply, or when it perceives its own internal order to be under threat.

The megasystem needs local allies, and it has a simple formula for selecting them. As a quantitative beast obsessed with control, it looks for individuals with an ability to wield power and an interest in money, big business. And because of the strong connection between big business interests and the religious right, it would always favor alliances with religious right parties if other things permit.

But despite being quantitative, it does have a preference about how its world should be structured. What it envisions is a clearly demarcated inside and an outside. This inner core, which appropriates a high diet of energy, must be sealed off from the outside, which is closer to ground state and in competition for resources. Within individual societies this model of order translates into a pattern of majority-minority conflict, with societies often being fragmented along different fault lines, such as religion, ethnicity, language, gender, economic level and age, until the final inner core is not numerically a majority at all.

Human beings, like cells, take up their specialized roles within the organism, allowing it to live. A few, always opportunistic, manage to find privileged positions. But the majority of the population simply plays along, with no strong opinions while things are good, neither helping nor harming, concerned only with its own survival. And life goes on because the sheer size of the megasystem insulates it from day to day feedback and need for course correction.

Can we from deep in the innards of the beast reach up and stop it in its tracks? Not as individuals. But one individual speaking up at the right time can set off others, and a group of bacteria acting in concert has been known to bring down a large beast, especially if it is already in distress. We have all seen big systems on a roll suddenly come crashing down because they are inherently fragile, unsustainable, their structure totally dependent on their energy flow. The megasystem is inscrutable: its outward strength can mask even a terminal decline. Our job, then, is to study the beast and be alert to the signs, and ready with a road map back to a world that is our size. We must keep chipping away in the hope of setting off an avalanche.

Most of the problems of the present age are linked to the scale of things, and the way back will mean reversal. The world can change: but for that to happen the beast itself has to go belly-up.

Peggy Mohan is a linguist who writes on language, education and on social change. She has written two novels linked to her work on language, Jahajin and The Youngest Suspect, and lives and works as a teacher in Delhi.