9.3 Open and closed societies
Modern societies oscillate between operating in open and closed modes. In open societies, emphasis is placed on fair-play principles, ie. principled honest play and individual freedom. In less open societies, dominant factors revolve around connections with key ruling figures and clans.
In open societies, the fair play principle translates into values. In closed societies, the main values are the relations to the ruling classes and figures. Closed societies also give more value to some generalized ideology than to just play and freedom itself.
Collisions between the autonomous principles, general values, concrete relations, and the ultimate sense occur on multiple levels in all spheres of life. For instance, in business life, general emotional mechanisms suffer shocks from the autonomous Stock-Exchange principle of supply and demand; the autonomous principle of effectiveness puts concrete results against general expectations, etc. Man may reduce the principle of effectiveness to the principle of (autonomous) speculative profit, which can destroy (the sense for and connection with) general values. During the big economic crash in 1929, available general values like food were physically destroyed even if people were starving. The crisis usually occurs when there is more demand for symbols (stock price) than for their content (stock’s value). Principles cannot be destroyed because they work independently of man’s will: the law of supply and demand starts working automatically once there is something happening either on the supply or demand side – regardless of whether that which is offered or demanded is meaningful or senseless.