What is a S-ORG

Summary
     A S-ORG is a group of communicating, living entities that pursue a common purpose.
     We categorize S-SORGs into one of three classifications: Tribal, Super-Tribal and Post-Tribal.

     A Social Organism is a slippery thing, hard to nail down. But "life" is also a slippery concept. Defining life is not easy, so we won't feel too bad that Social Organisms are difficult to define. We can start by expanding on the concept of "group". A S-ORG is a group of individual living entities and, for the sake of our exercise, let us assume they are human beings. What delineates a S-ORG from a group? A social group would be any group of entities who interact with each other, that "socialize". Is it sufficient that they communicate with each other in order to qualify as a social group? If so, a social group would require communication in some form. Our definition of S-ORG is now "a group of communicating, living entities". A box of marbles doesn't qualify as a social group, although it would qualify as a group of marbles; the marbles aren't alive. A box of plant seeds wouldn't qualify as a social group, although the plants are alive and form a group; as far as we know they don't communicate among themselves.
     A box of dogs would be a social group. They communicate among themselves with actions and relate to each other. Because they lack sophisticated language we would not indicate that they are a cultural group. But I believe that a box of dogs would qualify as a social group. To qualify as a Social Organism the box of dogs would have to be able to pursue a common purpose. If our box of dogs were to hunt game as a group, we would call such a group a "pack of dogs". It is instructive to watch a pack of dogs hunt game. It is arguable that the mechanism that allows them to co-ordinate in order to hunt, through barks, is a language. We recognize the distinction between groups and social groups by giving them names. A "herd" of bison, a "gaggle" of ducks, a "pride" of lions and so forth. A research question is "do we give groups of living entities a name if they do not pursue a common purpose"?    
     Another question is "why do Social Organisms exist"? I'm proposing that social organisms exists because they improve the odds of survival. If I am correct, then the most primitive social organisms exist because two entities can defeat a single entity most of the time. In the evolutionary struggle for existence and resources, the group wins over the individual, everything else being equal. If this is correct, then it would seem to follow that gender creates an evolutionary example by building into a species the simplest Social Organism. While it is not unknown for single sex entities to show Social Organism behavior, the vast majority of entities that form S-ORGs would be bi-gendered. This leads to the question "why aren't there more multi-gendered species"? I'll leave this question for now and go on to other interesting questions and proposals.   
     I believe that we have a workable definition at this point. A Social Organism is a group of living entities that pursue a common goal or purpose. Is this a sufficient definition? Is it a useful definition? I believe the answer to both questions is yes. From here we try to attach other characteristics to S-ORGs that allow us to understand their behavior and to understand why they are difficult to analyze or build useful abstractions around. One essential analysis tool is an understanding of how S-ORGs have evolved. Refer to the previous entry for a discussion of the evolution of blogs. Here, I believe, is the point at which a taxonomy of S-ORGs becomes useful and necessary. Any number of taxonomies can be constructed; what follows is one that I find useful.
    The basic level of S-ORG I categorize as tribal. The terminology is intuitive but unfortunate. There is an odd association of "primitive" with that word and my formal use of the word excludes that perjoritive association. I am only concerned with the size of the S-ORG and a tribal S-ORG is one that has not exceeded a critical number of individuals. I will leave a discussion of the upper limit to another blog.
    The next level of S-ORG occurs when multiple S-ORGs exist within a containing S-ORG. There are two catagories for the containing S-ORG: Super-Tribal and Post-Tribal. The Super-Tribal S-ORG is a collection of S-ORGs assembled by conquest. The Post-Tribal S-ORG is a collection of S-ORGs assembled through voluntary assembly. The Post-Tribal usually results from the efforts of Tribal or Super-Tribal S-ORGs to defend themselves from attack by other Super-Tribal S-ORGs.
    These categories are roughly based on size. The post-tribal has the potential to be the largest of the S-ORGs since it evolves out of the necessity to survive conflict with Super-Tribal S-ORGs. Naturally, Post-Tribal S-ORGs can disintegrate into a collection of Super-Tribal and Tribal S-ORGs and we have the Roman and Greek Empires to illustrate the process. In fact, once these categories are accepted as a framework for analyzing history, a lot of historical events become more understandable.