Younghusband at Coming Anarchy has introduced another term into the 5GW -slash- Global Guerrillas lexicon:  “emergence dissonance.”

The term was inspired by recent discussion of leaderless resistance on Coming Anarchy and particularly* by a comment made by John Robb at his website that a leaderless-resistance movement could form without “a cohesive motivation/doctrine,” which struck a false note for me.  While agreeing that no systematized organization, or doctrine, would be necessary, I thought that some root motivation would need to be shared by the members of a leaderless resistance or that resistance could not be called a movement:

1. The “global guerrilla” phenomenon could be considered an emergence similar to the emergence of broad cell phone usage or the emergence of city-states from nomadic tribes.  Different people are motivated in different locations to form networks of one sort or another, or to act in similar ways, without ever knowing each other, merely because a root desire is shared by all.  In cell phone usage, for instance, the need to communicate quickly is shared by businessmen, or by teeny-bop gossipers, or by terrorists, even if they may seem to have no “shared motivation.” This is game theory, or the theory that people are probably much more alike than unalike and will tend to act in similar ways, leading to a kind of emergence of group activity.  (Paths cross.)
   


2. However, differences between emerged groups could lead to warring between those groups, such as the warring that occurred between city states in early Italy or earlier Greece, proving that the general emergence witnessed in different locations is not the result of what we would typically call a singular “movement.”

In the case of “global guerrillas,” we might say that various anti-establishmentarian groups, possibly militant, might form simultaneously around the globe; but we have little reason to believe that the emergence of these groups should represent a single movement.  They might form into a larger movement, as lines of communication open up between them and broad plans are formed between them around a single Grand Objective, but the simple emergence of these groups in different locations is no more a movement than the broadening use of cell phones across the globe.  If, coming into contact, these groups cannot dismiss fundamental disagreements, however, a good chance exists that they would not then form into a single movement or else that they might make war on each other.  (A Shi’a terrorist organization may not align with a Sunni terrorist organization and an environmentalist terrorist organization to form a triad, for instance.)

Emergence dissonance could be a useful term as we look toward the future.  Younghusband mentioned in his post that “emergence is extremely difficult to detect” — perhaps because emergence in advance is formless, or no-form, simply because the form has not yet emerged — and because of this difficulty, we may often tend to oversimplify present dynamics.  For instance, hysterics often assume a very frightful future is coming, on the basis of present signs of decay or disruption, without also looking for signs of anti-decay (life) or anti-disruption (creativity.)  Destructive forces may indeed be emerging into greater prominence; but because they emerge in isolation from one another, dissonance between them may be developing, from the outset, since differences between such groups exert as much influence on each group’s emergence as whatever similarities exist between them.  Initial conditions are very important.  And I’m also reminded of Mark Safranski’s consideration:

In any system, the devolution toward entropy will be present but these forces are not the only ones driving mankind and the evolutionary and creative phenomena that add value to our civilization have a powerful logic of their own.

That is Gandalf talking to Frodo: There are other forces at work in this world, Frodo, besides the will of evil…

Emergence is not unilinear in a system as complex as the Globe.


*Update: Er, particularly for me, since it seems I’ve taken the term in a different direction than intended by Younghusband…