brain
December 2007 
Organic-zation
David Jon
Bodily organs. Organic. Organism. Organization. So many etymological roots running deep here. Leading me to wonder.
If A body has organs--each of which serves a vital role for the health and well-being of that specific body...
Then...
...does this mean that humanity's Social Body is also made up of organs (our various organizations) and that each of these are intended to serve a vital role for the overall welfare of that Greater Body.
Could it be that our various organizations are like the Brains of the Global Body, the Heart of Humanity, the Liver of the Living Body of Buddha-Beings? Is it possible that are 'groups' are somewhat like collections of cells that in sum 'transcend and include' their token individuality in order to serve a much larger purpose in a much greater and vastly more complex Entity?
And... might our organizations be more harmonious if they are in keeping with there proper and fitting role--i.e., the Brain does not try to be the Heart and the Heart does not try to fulfill the role of the Kidneys?
Access: Public
Sounds like some organizational learning rocking the boat on a Hammond B-3.
Emile Durkheim and the functionalists likened society to the human body, but their literal (and positivist) interpretation of the analogy is frowned upon in contemporary sociology.
Wilber's done some good writing on the difference between parts of and members in a social 'body'. The danger in equating social holons to individual holons, I guess, is that in an individual holon there's localized agency/intention/consciousness, which directs the actions of the 'parts' of the holon (such as the organs), while in a social holon, the agency/intention/consciousness resides in the relationships, communications and exchanges between individuals, and as such, it doesn't display localized agency/intention/consciousness, but more of a distributed kind.
There's a lot of people wondering whether the next step in evolution might not be a sort of supra-individual global mind-thing, but I'm not buying that. I like Michel Bauwens ideas on P2P, and in a sense, the internet is also a kind of organization that displays different functions, a division of labour, which is bottom-up. Fascinating stuff, David Jon!