| Prosperity and the Universal Law of Increasing Complexity (ULIC): Shared Futures “Capability creates possibilities; shared futures realize them.” Origins My paternal grandparents arrived from Poland in 1925 and joined Kibbutz Ayelet HaShahar, the third kibbutz established in the Land of Israel, just a decade after its founding. At the time, the British Empire ruled the land, agriculture was in its infancy, modern technology was almost nonexistent, security was fragile, and diseases such as malaria claimed many lives. The pioneers had little agricultural knowledge, few material resources, and lived under conditions that are difficult to imagine today. Years later, my father recalled that chicken was eaten only in two circumstances: when someone in the community became seriously ill or when the chicken itself was ill. Beyond those rare occasions, meat was rarely eaten. Material conditions were extremely modest, yet the pioneers knew exactly what they were trying to build and willingly accepted extraordinary hardship to achieve it. They were cultivating the land, building a homeland for the Jewish people, and creating a more just and cooperative society. Yet despite these hardships, Ayelet HaShahar steadily grew and prospered. Fields were cultivated, orchards expanded, and a thriving community gradually took shape. By the end of the 1950s, my father was managing the orchards at Ayelet HaShahar when my mother arrived from the newly established Kibbutz Tzuba to learn modern fruit production. They fell in love and decided to marry in Tzuba, yet the question of which kibbutz they would call home remained unresolved. My father had no intention of leaving the kibbutz where he had grown up, so for a while they moved between the two kibbutzim. Finally, my grandmother encouraged him to follow my mother and help build the young community. He moved to Tzuba and became responsible for establishing its orchards. Why does this seemingly insignificant family story matter? The answer is that although founded more than three decades apart, Ayelet HaShahar and Tzuba followed remarkably similar paths. In both communities, agriculture became increasingly productive, technology steadily improved, and management grew more professional. Industry expanded, while education, healthcare, and community services grew stronger. Year after year, almost every measurable aspect of life improved. By every objective measure, both communities became steadily more capable than the generations that had founded them. Looking back, it seemed entirely reasonable to expect that each generation would prosper more than the one before it. When my mother and her friends established Kibbutz Tzuba in 1948, immediately after Israel's War of Independence, they were no longer creating an entirely new organizational idea. They were building upon nearly five decades of accumulated experience since the establishment of the first kibbutz in 1910. Much of that experience was transferred directly from one kibbutz to another through visits, apprenticeship, and practical work. My mother's own journey to Ayelet HaShahar to learn modern fruit production was one small example of this broader process. The kibbutz movement had already grown from a handful of pioneering communities into an established movement. The agricultural knowledge, organizational experience, and practical lessons painfully acquired by the earliest pioneers had become part of a growing collective capability that each new community inherited. Yet, unnoticed by almost everyone, something else was changing as well. The collective capabilities of both kibbutzim continued to grow as knowledge, experience, and practical skills accumulated and spread throughout the kibbutz movement. My father's move from Ayelet HaShahar to Tzuba reflected this broader process. Yet I would later discover that similar capabilities alone could not explain why communities built upon remarkably similar foundations ultimately followed very different futures. The Puzzle Everything I had observed pointed toward one seemingly obvious conclusion: each generation inherited greater capability than the one before it. Agriculture became more productive, technology improved, management became increasingly professional, scientific knowledge accumulated, communities became better organized, and living standards rose steadily. If capability continued to increase, one would expect long-term prosperity to rise as well. Reality, however, refused to conform to that logic. The contradiction first emerged much closer to home. The improvements we achieved in the orchards at Kibbutz Tzuba were genuine, but they were far from unique. Similar progress could be seen throughout the kibbutz. Better technologies, improved management, greater specialization, and more efficient organization transformed agriculture, industry, education, and many other branches of community life. By every operational measure, Kibbutz Tzuba became increasingly capable. Yet, over the same period, many kibbutzim, including both Ayelet HaShahar and Tzuba, entered prolonged economic and social decline. At first, I wondered whether this was merely a coincidence. But if their organizational structures had remained largely unchanged, why had their long-term trajectories shifted so dramatically? More strikingly, this pattern was not confined to a few communities. Similar developments appeared across much of the kibbutz movement over roughly the same period. Why were communities of different ages, sizes, regions, and economic activities all following remarkably similar trajectories? One could argue that the people themselves had changed. Yet that explanation seemed implausible. The same individuals who had successfully built and managed these communities were now being blamed for their decline. When hundreds of communities begin exhibiting remarkably similar trajectories over roughly the same period, the more reasonable question is not what happened to the people, but what changed in the systems within which they were operating. When I began working outside Israel, I found myself looking beyond the kibbutz. Communities, cities, businesses, universities, and other organizations built upon remarkably similar structures repeatedly followed very different long-term trajectories. I was no longer confronting a uniquely kibbutz phenomenon. The question itself appeared to be universal. Gradually, I realized that my investigation had been guided by two distinct questions that I had never recognized as separate. The first asked what an organizational structure made possible. The second asked what was ultimately realized. Organizational structure appeared to answer the first question remarkably well, but not the second. Somewhere between possibility and realization, a missing variable was shaping the trajectory. I simply did not know what it was. Testing The contradiction demanded a broader test. Was this peculiar to the kibbutz, or was I observing something more fundamental? If the pattern I observed was genuine, it should appear beyond cooperative communities, beyond agriculture, and beyond Israel itself. The only way to answer that question was to look elsewhere. The first test came from an unlikely place: Apple - not the fruit, but the company. It retained its engineers, technology, financial resources, and corporate structure, yet its trajectory changed dramatically over time. When Steve Jobs returned to Apple, he did not begin by hiring a new generation of engineers or introducing a breakthrough technology. Instead, he later explained that the company had drifted so far that even he could no longer understand its product line. He eliminated most of the projects under development, yet engineers whose work had just been canceled left the meetings energized because, as they said, for the first time in years they understood where the company was going. Whatever had changed, it was not Apple's capability. One example, however, could still be dismissed as an exception. The pattern needed to appear independently in entirely different contexts. The second independent test came through the work of Dr. Ichak Adizes. After studying thousands of organizations across industries and countries, he observed that organizations built upon remarkably similar organizational structures repeatedly followed different developmental trajectories. Some continually renewed themselves. Others gradually stagnated. Still others declined. The organizational structure remained recognizable, yet the long-term trajectory varied dramatically. By this point, the contradiction had withstood three independent and increasingly demanding tests. It first appeared within the kibbutz movement, then within a global corporation, and finally across thousands of independently studied organizations. The explanation could no longer be confined to agriculture, Israel, or the kibbutz movement. Whatever was influencing these trajectories appeared to act before differences in capability themselves became visible. By this point, my investigation had quietly changed. I was no longer asking whether the contradiction existed; it clearly did. I was asking whether the contradiction reflected a universal principle. I was no longer trying to understand the kibbutz. I was testing whether the long-term trajectories of human systems built upon remarkably similar capabilities were governed by a universal principle. Discovery The more I compared these apparently unrelated cases, the more one question kept returning: if, in each of these examples, the people, their capabilities, their organizations, and often even their resources remained largely the same, what had actually changed? The pioneers who established the first kibbutzim did not suddenly gain superior agricultural knowledge or technology; Apple did not suddenly discover better engineers; the American space program did not begin because the United States lacked scientists before President Kennedy challenged the nation to reach the Moon; Gandhi did not create the people of India, nor did Martin Luther King Jr. create the churches and communities that sustained the civil rights movement. In every case, the necessary capabilities already existed. Nothing about the underlying organizational structures had fundamentally changed. Yet, despite their remarkably similar capabilities, the long-term trajectories of these societies and organizations diverged dramatically. The question was therefore no longer what they possessed, but what had begun directing those existing capabilities toward fundamentally different futures. The more I examined these examples, the more another pattern emerged. The transformation did not begin with new technology, organizational restructuring, or additional capabilities. It began when existing capabilities became aligned around a shared future. The pioneers were no longer simply cultivating fields; every tree they planted became part of rebuilding a homeland and creating a more just society. President Kennedy did not merely ask Americans to build better rockets; he invited the nation to accomplish something that would redefine what it believed possible. Steve Jobs did not begin by announcing better products; he first restored clarity about who Apple was and where it was headed. Engineers whose projects had just been canceled left the meetings energized because, for the first time in years, they understood how their future contributions fit into a larger journey. Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. likewise transformed ordinary daily actions into meaningful steps toward futures that millions of people could imagine helping to create. Gradually, another distinction began to emerge. Imagining the future was not uniquely human; what mattered was that the future became shared. Once it did, present actions took on new meaning. Individuals remained free to make their own decisions, yet those decisions increasingly aligned as they were interpreted against the same collectively imagined future. This appeared to reveal something fundamentally different about human societies. Across evolutionary history, increasingly autonomous components have remained coherent through increasingly sophisticated coordinating mechanisms. Physical laws govern interactions among atoms; chemical bonding organizes molecules; genetic regulation coordinates living organisms; and highly social animals rely primarily on inherited biological mechanisms that shape collective behavior. Human societies, by contrast, appear to represent something fundamentally different. They consist of individuals with an unprecedented degree of autonomy. The coordinating mechanisms that preserve coherence in earlier evolutionary layers are no longer sufficient. Human societies appear capable of voluntarily coordinating decisions across years, decades, and even generations through a shared understanding of a future that cannot yet be observed directly but nevertheless reshapes the meaning of actions taken in the present. I had not discovered another management technique or leadership principle. I had begun to uncover what appeared to be the uniquely human coordinating mechanism that enables increasingly autonomous individuals to maintain coherent trajectories over time. Whatever this coordinating mechanism ultimately proves to be, it has become increasingly difficult to explain the long-term trajectories of human societies without it. This realization also suggested a broader pattern extending far beyond human societies. Throughout evolution, increasing autonomy appears repeatedly accompanied by increasingly sophisticated mechanisms for maintaining coherence. |
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Key Insight:
Every major evolutionary transition increased the autonomy of constituent units while introducing a coordinating mechanism capable of preserving coherence. Human societies are unique not because they coordinate, but because coherence increasingly depends upon collectively imagined shared futures. Beyond Shared Futures It seemed I was getting closer to understanding the cause of prosperity. Shared futures appeared to explain how increasingly autonomous individuals could remain coordinated through time. If that interpretation was correct, perhaps societies prospered simply because they were united around sufficiently compelling shared futures. History, however, suggested otherwise. History repeatedly demonstrates humanity's extraordinary capacity to unite around shared futures. Communities have inspired remarkable commitment, cooperation, and sacrifice in pursuit of futures that did not yet exist. Yet the historical record reveals a persistent contradiction. Some societies became progressively more capable, resilient, and prosperous. Others, despite equally compelling visions and extraordinary commitment, gradually stagnated, fragmented, or collapsed. The existence of a shared future therefore could not be the complete explanation. The question changed once again: why did futures that appeared equally compelling produce such different long-term trajectories? The more I examined this question, the more another distinction began to emerge. The decisive difference was not simply whether people shared a future, but whether pursuing that future continually required increasing complexity through greater specialization, deeper interdependence, stronger integration, expanding knowledge, and new capabilities. These structural changes continually broadened the range of possibilities available to society. Prosperity emerged not as the direct objective of the shared future, but as one consequence of continuously expanding capability. As new possibilities emerged, they enabled societies to pursue even more ambitious futures, creating a self-reinforcing process in which expanding capabilities continually generated new possibilities for collective action. Other futures followed the opposite trajectory. They could inspire extraordinary commitment and coordination, yet their continued pursuit increasingly depended upon suppressing diversity, concentrating authority, weakening independent institutions, or limiting the autonomy from which more complex societies derive their adaptive capacity. Such systems could achieve remarkable successes for years, sometimes even decades, but they gradually consumed the very capabilities upon which their future depended. Their decline was therefore not accidental. It was embedded in the structure of the trajectory itself. The emerging explanation also cast my own family story in a very different light. My father left Kibbutz Ayelet HaShahar to follow my mother to the newly established Kibbutz Tzuba, not because life there promised greater comfort or security, but because the future being built there demanded participation. Together with hundreds of other pioneers, they devoted themselves to creating something that did not yet exist. Reclaiming rocky hillsides, planting orchards, building homes, and establishing a thriving community required new forms of cooperation, organization, knowledge, and capability. Their shared future continually reorganized the meaning of their present actions. Years later, I watched that story unfold in two very different ways. My grandmother, who had devoted much of her life to building and strengthening Kibbutz Ayelet HaShahar, observed with a heavy heart in the 1990s as, six decades after arriving there, its cooperative structure gradually gave way to privatization. As this unfolded, she quoted a well-known passage from Jewish tradition. According to the story, while the Israelites celebrated their escape from slavery as the Egyptian army drowned in the returning sea, God said, "My creation is drowning in the sea, and you are singing." My grandmother borrowed those words to express both her grief and her anger toward those who welcomed the dismantling of the community she and her generation had devoted their lives to building. Nearly three decades later, my mother looked back on her own life in Kibbutz Tzuba and quietly summarized it in a single sentence: "We never dreamed it would be so good." Only then did I realize that these two women were not describing different opinions or conflicting realities. They were describing the long-term consequences of two communities that had begun from remarkably similar foundations. My father had come from Ayelet HaShahar to help build Tzuba, and my mother herself had learned much of her agricultural knowledge from that same older kibbutz. Yet over the decades their trajectories gradually diverged. Both communities evolved, but they evolved differently. Ayelet HaShahar gradually became a community of increasingly independent individuals with much lower levels of cooperation, integration, and interdependence. Tzuba also evolved, adapting its institutions while deliberately preserving a much higher degree of cooperation, shared responsibility, integration, and collective capability. Their different experiences were therefore not paradoxical. They reflected the consequences of different structural trajectories. The question that had begun with two neighboring kibbutzim had gradually become far larger than the kibbutzim themselves. It had become a question about every human society. How do communities, organizations, and societies that begin from remarkably similar foundations gradually diverge into profoundly different futures? The investigation increasingly suggested that the answer might lie not simply in the futures societies imagine, but in whether pursuing those futures continually expands their capacity for increasing complexity through specialization, interdependence, integration, cooperation, knowledge creation, and adaptation. Understanding why some societies continue expanding those capabilities while others gradually cease to do so became the next stage of the investigation. The answer would eventually redefine how prosperity itself should be understood. |
