The interdependencies within different human social systems — socioeconomic webs — can be expected to multiply and complexify. This is the socio-semiotic analogue of the biological process of interacting organisms becoming integrated into a “superorganism”, as has already happened several times in the history of life on Earth. This can be elaborated as follows.
In some species of unicellular organisms, individuals have come to form multicellular colonies which, to varying degrees, function as single organisms, integrated by the chemical signalling that occurs between them. At the less integrated end of this scale are protists such as the alga species volvox and certain protozoan ciliates; at the more integrated end of this scale are animals such as colonial jellyfish, sea anemones, corals, and moss animals.
Similarly, in some species of multicellular animals, individuals have come to form social colonies which, to varying degrees, function as single organisms, again integrated by the chemical signalling that occurs between them. These include the social insects: bees and ants on the one hand, and termites on the other, as well as some vertebrates, such as naked mole rats.
The main difference between the integration of individual organisms towards a unified “superorganism” and the integration of individual humans towards a unified “social body” is the means of integration. The former occurs as a biological process, since the chemical means of integrating the individuals is passed on genetically. The latter occurs as socio-semiotic process, since the means of integrating the individuals, human semiosis, is passed on exogenetically through systems whose evolution is distinct from the evolution of biological systems.
Further, whereas biological integration involves selection for chemical efficiency, the maximisation of energy flow through such systems, socio-semiotic integration involves selection for economic symbols of chemical efficiency, the maximisation of the flow of currency units, which quantify the expenditure of human energy, through such systems.
There is, nevertheless, a biological component to this socio-semiotic process: the rôle of genetically inherited value-imposing systems, as described by Edelman (1989, 1992). The organised manipulation of value systems via semiotic systems by elected oligarchies and unelected plutocracies, as previously described, which target emotion and desire as a means of biasing cognition and behaviour, is analogous in function to the manipulation of worker ant behaviours by a queen through the expression of pheromones that affect worker value systems.[1]
Footnote:
[1] If social systems become more integrated economic bodies, there is, unfortunately, no guarantee that governments and corporations will cease to concentrate resources and let parts of the body die. Rather than resources being distributed to all the cells of the economic body, it is likely that the economic organs capable of absorbing the most resources will continue to do so.