Trauma and Closed Socio-psychological Systems
A socio-psychological system comprises of, at macro level- social institutions, roles, legal systems, political systems, at micro level- norms, individual needs, motivation, and everything which guides or influences the behaviour and thinking of the members of a social group.
On the basis of the direction of their orientation, whether inward or outward, Socio-psychological systems can be stereotyped into three categories: Exploratory, Open, and Closed.
1. Exploratory Socio-psychological Systems: These are characterised by a high proportion of time, attention and energy directed towards Socio-psychological objects that lie beyond the boundaries of their social system, often at the neglect of their internal socio-psychological objects. Exploratory systems originate to meet the needs of the people which could not be fulfilled due to dysfunctional institutions within their social system. Members of exploratory systems focus their time and attention on challenges and opportunities, social and psychological, that lie outside their system.
For example, economically and socially backward classes looking up to culture and mannerisms of a dominant class while looking with disdain at their own practices, thereby moving out from their social system to integrate into a system preferred by them, because their internal system could not meet their needs of self-esteem, economic advancement, and political power.
Exploratory systems' members experience emotions predominantly in the lower vibration spectrum: Fear, Threat. Exploratory systems are transient and graduate into open systems.
2. Open Socio-psychological Systems: They are characterised by a balance between outward and inward direction of of time, attention, and energy resources. Open systems are internally secure and driven by functional social institutions, yet they are proactive in identifying challenges and opportunities that lie outside the boundaries of their system, and actively direct a proportion of resources to improve and expand their system to meet the needs of present as well as future. Open systems grow through far-sightedness, acknowledgement of upcoming needs and internal dysfunctions, and commitment to add to resilience and adaptability of their system.
For example, communities migrating for better economic opportunities while also retaining their culture and identity, because their system meets their needs of self-esteem and fulfilling social relations, and migration is not done out of livelihood-compulsion but out of proactive hope for earning better.
Open systems are highly resilient. They face setbacks only when they fail to identify and address some underlying needs of the members for too long. Members of open systems experience emotions predominantly in the higher vibration range - hope, optimism, faith, security.
3. Closed Socio-psychological Systems: They are characterised by direction of time, attention and energy resources inwardly. They are usually very elaborate and developed and are regarded as highly functional by the members of the system. They have a high degree of faith in their self-sufficiency and turn a blind eye to opportunities and challenges that lie outside the boundaries of the system. They also turn a blind eye to the underlying unmet needs of their own members which aren't acknowledged or considered legitimate by their system as such needs too, in the view of institutions of closed systems, are outside the boundaries of their system and hence non-fulfilment of them would not cause damage to resiliency of the system. Closed systems, thus, deny dysfunctions and deprivations within the system and hence so not dedicate any resources to change and expand.
Closed systems, due to their blindness to external challenges and internal deprivations, are often caught off-guard by socio-economic-political realities they encounter. Because they lack developed systems for adaptability and resiliency, they go through a series of trauma every time a new challenge is encountered. They grow out of trauma with time and make provisions for the new reality, but they close their system again out of insecurity. Hence this series of trauma continues and marks itself as the distinguishing feature of closed systems, i.e., Closed systems are reactive and grow through trauma.
Closed systems originate in situations of anarchy to provide security, order and organisation to its members. As they mature, they gradually build their internal security and prepare themselves to deal with external and internal challenges, thereby graduating into open systems. When closed Socio-psychological systems fail to build internal security and to accommodate upcoming needs of their members, they become breeding grounds for abusive relations, deprivations - emotional, social and political, inequality, and injustice. When, due to unmet needs of its members, the internal stress in the system builds up above a certain level, the system breaks and encounters rapid change characterised by trauma. Members of closed systems predominantly experience bipolar emotions cyclically, experiencing mid vibration ranges of belief, hope, faith and security along with low vibration range emotions of shame, guilt at other times. They observe higher occurence of cognitive dissonance and internal conflict during times of change.
Change and growth are inevitable in life. Exploratory systems accept rapid change driven by external circumstances to meet urgent needs of livelihood and survival of their members. Open systems change and grow with informed choice, proper analysis for risk minimisation, and optimality in utilisation of resources. Closed systems grow through series of trauma arising out of short-sightedness, denial, deprivations and injustice.
The terms exploratory, open, and closed systems are stereotypes created to serve as reference points to aid in analysis and visualisation. In reality, every individual, social group at different levels- family, community, caste, etc. constitute of a continuum of different systems across different facets of their life. One might be closed in relationships, open in economic opportunities, to different extent. Also, people at the same level of openness may dedicate time, attention, and energy to their objectives to different extents. Hence, a Cartesian plot as below, with openness or orientation towards externalities along x-axis, and energies along y-axis, may serve as a tool to mark and measure the Socio-psychological distance between different individuals, societies, etc.
(This article is under development. Your comments are invited at rajendra.meena21@gmail.com)