If we ever hope to build a world of genuine consent, we must first overcome a common presupposition: that in order to coordinate and peacefully coexist, everyone in a given area must live under a single political system or adhere to a single way of life.
Most people simply treat this as a foregone conclusion, beyond debate. Human beings must “find ways to live together,” they say, and we cannot do that unless we are all living under one system.
The first part of that statement is true. We are a social species, and we do need to find ways to live together. The rest is false, as we will discuss below.
For now, let us give this presumption a name—the single-system fallacy—and a working definition:
The unwarranted inference that coexistence requires institutional unity.
Though this fallacy is most prominently applied to governance, it also appears in other areas. One of the most prominent of these has been religion.
The ‘One True Faith’
Enforced religious conformity has played a major role in human history. In many places and times, it was simply taken for granted that religious nonconformity produced strife, weakened a state, or invited the wrath of gods.
Tragically, this presumption has caused far more strife than simple toleration would have. Religious wars. State religions brutally imposed. Nonconformists harassed, forcibly converted, or worse.
This is one of the uglier manifestations of the single-system fallacy, resulting in appalling amounts of bloodshed and misery. And needlessly so…
After many tortured centuries, the Christian world finally began to mature beyond this horror. We discovered that it is not necessary to force everyone in a given area to be Catholic or Protestant, to belong to a particular denomination, or even to be Christian at all. Today, small towns in America are lined with churches of different denominations. Methodists, Buddhists, and atheists live side by side as neighbors. When it comes to religion, the West has largely rejected the single-system fallacy.
Islam, unfortunately, has not. Doctrinally, Muslims are still called to create a world in which everyone is either Muslim or made to pay a tax for not being Muslim. Though there are varied interpretations, enough people adhere to this belief to cause significant bloodshed on the borders of the Islamic world and ongoing attempts at subversion elsewhere.
In the area of religion, the single-system fallacy is clear. Religious conformity isn’t a source of peaceful coexistence. Religious toleration is. Even if religious unity within a small community or a family is a general source of peace, any attempt to enforce it at scale produces far more strife than religious diversity ever does.
A Cognitive Pattern?
The single-system fallacy manifests in many areas—almost as if it is part of a general cognitive pattern:
It is a common concern that a lack of uniformity in education will lead to social problems. Indeed, the public school system in America was intentionally crafted (following the Prussian model) to increase conformity. And many still speak of homeschooling as if it is going to produce socially retarded children and fractured communities.
This is nonsense. Children attend dozens of different types of schools without issue. Homeschooled children are fine, and frequently far better adjusted and educated than their public-school counterparts.
Schools improve when they compete. Different methods better accommodate different learning styles and interests. Greater choice means greater respect for the consent of parents acting on behalf of their children. Tolerance and diversity are, in the case of education, strengths.
Governments impose legal tender laws, and many believe that commerce cannot occur without a single currency. This too is contradicted by the facts. Precious metals, local currencies, cryptocurrencies, foreign currencies, company scrip, and many other mediums of exchange demonstrate a degree of interoperability. Economic markets can and do function without an official currency being imposed upon everyone.
The same is true in the area of law. Multiple legal systems easily coexist. Tribal, ecclesiastical, commercial. Private arbitration and multiple layers of government law. If a single legal system were required for peaceful coexistence and successful coordination, this would never work. But it does.
This is true even when the legal systems are in competition with one another. There is no private arbitration monopoly. Different firms, with different approaches, are all competing for business. The same is the case for insurance companies. They have different rules and procedures, yet somehow, they are able to accomplish the complicated task of paying claims and adjudicating inter-agency disputes. Amazingly, the world is not in flames, despite the fact that there is more than one insurance company and arbitration firm.
A shared language is often deemed necessary, and having one generally does make things easier. Yet Switzerland somehow manages to get along quite well as a multilingual country, so a common language is obviously not a requirement for coexistence.
The pattern repeats again and again. Uniformity is deemed necessary, yet the facts on the ground tell a different tale.
Psychological Reasons
There are many reasons for this cognitive bias. Some have a much larger causal relationship, but all are likely contributing factors to some degree.
Social nature
We humans are, in the words of Duke University professor Michael Tomasello, an “ultra-social” species. We are capable of interacting with a “shared intentionality” that is completely beyond even our closest genetic relatives.
We are not programmatically eusocial, like ants and bees, however. There is an element of choice in our communal nature. We are individuals, and we can choose our degree of association with the group. Our species’ cooperative nature, combined with our intelligence, has allowed us to reach the pinnacle of dominance on this planet.
Yet our social nature also has a dark side. Forced conformity. Bullying people for their differences. Groupthink. Tall poppy syndrome. Tribalism. The horrors of collectivism.
Though it may not always produce horrors, our social nature is a major causal factor behind the single-solution fallacy. Our history and biological makeup point us toward collective solutions to human problems. Collective solutions tend to be unitary in nature: A single group decision. A single set of rules.
People think, Let’s find a way to do this together.
They don’t tend to think, Let’s allow people the freedom to find their own way and then watch a diverse range of solutions harmonize through a process of emergent order.
In other words, we are problem solvers, and the solutions we come up with are usually more specific than “Sit back and let the market handle it.” Even though that is frequently the most effective approach.
Needless to say, shared standards, structures, norms, objectives, and principles can be very useful in human life. These frequently develop through organic processes (the standardization of business practices, the emergence of language). Or they are used in specific instances (a single business with a hierarchical organizational structure). There are times when a top-down approach is effective. This is not an all-or-nothing proposition.
Indeed, that is the problem with the single-system fallacy. It is all-or-nothing. It is the presumption that a single, imposed authority or framework is a requirement for success—that there is no other way.
Sense-making
If you’ve existed for any reasonable time as a human, you have probably encountered the phenomenon whereby you express an opinion, and someone else gets really bothered by it.
Why should they care so much? Why do they get so exercised simply because you think differently about something?
There is a political reason: since democracy pits us against each other via the ballot, we feel compelled to care. Their ideas about life become a concern because they can force them on us!
But let us set that aside, for now, and focus on a deeper psychological reason. It comes down to sensemaking: If others look at the same set of facts and come to a different conclusion, what does that say about the process by which each of us is making sense of the world?
How can we both be right? If he is right, then I must be wrong. And I refuse to accept that. He must be wrong. And I must demonstrate to him that he is wrong!
How much harm has been done as a result?
What do you mean, you’re not (Catholic, Protestant, Muslim, Calvinist, communist, Lancastrian, Yorkist, etc.)?
Well, if I cannot convince you by words, by golly, I will do it by law, or by the sword!
People want predictability and coherent narratives. Some have a high degree of what is called the need for cognitive closure—the desire for definitive answers rather than ambiguity. Some even seek out relationships only with others like them, so as to avoid the cognitive trauma of worldviews that conflict with their own.
Encountering a different solution to the same set of circumstances produces confusion and blows to the ego. When our ultra-social nature kicks in, the result is predictable … and often violent:
We can only have one way of making sense of the world. Thus, it’s time to force that one way upon everyone.
In other words, people impose the single-system fallacy at the political and social level in order to sublimate the anguish of encountering conflicting ideas.
Trait-orderliness
Jordan Peterson, working with colleagues, has created a useful expansion of the Big Five model, dividing each of the five traits into two aspects. They identified orderliness and industriousness as aspects of conscientiousness.
People who are high in trait-orderliness are, as you might imagine, orderly.
They do not like messiness, and having multiple solutions to a problem feels messy. They prefer clear categories and clean organization. Overlapping jurisdictions, fuzzy boundaries, and exceptions to rules do not sit well with highly orderly people. Some have a further bias towards simplicity: Austere solutions. A single rule. An official answer.
High trait-orderliness can also manifest as a desire for control. When an individual feels that his life is disorderly and seeks greater control over it, the impact on others is minimal. However, when megalomaniacs attempt to apply this impulse at the societal level, the results are disastrous.
In its most extreme form, this is called the totalitarian temptation: the desire to remake a whole society according to a particular blueprint. We have seen it tried again and again, to the great misery of humankind.
Orderly people, when in positions of power, do not want to allow many solutions to unfold organically and then watch them harmonize through emergent processes. Their impulse is to impose a single system or solution from the top down.
Related factors
The suggestion that a single system may not be necessary—especially when it comes to governance—is generally greeted by blank stares, derision, or outright anger. Several other fallacies and cognitive biases can contribute to this attitude.
The first of these is status quo bias: a preference for the current state of affairs over change. This bias is itself driven by other cognitive biases:
Loss aversion: Most people feel the pain of a loss more keenly than they do the joy of an equal gain. As a result, change feels risky.
Cognitive ease: Sticking with the familiar requires less mental effort than trying something new.
Regret avoidance: “If I make a change and it goes wrong, I will feel worse than if I do nothing at all.”
The argument from incredulity is a fallacy in which someone claims that a statement is false because they personally find it hard to imagine or understand. Few people have ever heard of pluralistic solutions in governance. A single-solution system is all they’ve ever known. Frequently, alternatives have been rendered cognitively invisible by indoctrination, cultural narratives, or lack of mental capacity.
For centuries (if not millennia), the prevailing dogma has been that there are only two options: government or chaos. A single authority or a Hobbesian nightmare. This is the fallacy of the false dilemma, and many people, not knowing any better, fall for it.
Some also engage in the composition fallacy: the presumption that because a single system works for one entity within a system, it will work for—and must be applied to—the whole system.
In 1994, psychologists John Jost and Mahzarin Banaji introduced a concept that synthesizes and expands on these biases: system justification theory. SJT describes the phenomenon whereby people defend and rationalize the political, economic, and social status quo, even when they are disadvantaged by it.
Existing systems are described as natural and inevitable. Any suggestion of an alternative is derided as unthinkable or “utopian.”
Researchers observed a complex interplay of motivations driving this phenomenon:
Epistemic: (people want certainty and predictability)
Existential: (people want safety and reduced anxiety)
Relational: (people want shared reality, social order, and a sense of belonging)
This form of rationalization is used to overcome the cognitive dissonance associated with oppression and systemic injustice. To reduce personal distress, the system is justified as natural, inevitable, or the only possible option. Suggestions of alternatives thus pose a psychological threat and must be treated as unserious, dangerous, or in conflict with “reality itself.”
System justification theory may have the most explanatory power for both the single-system fallacy and the general derision so often faced by those who offer foundational critiques of, or radical alternatives to, the dominant system.
Stronger and Weaker Versions
A single-system argument, stated in its strongest form as a universal truism, would go something like this:
Stability is impossible under any pluralistic or emergent system; it requires a central authority, framework, or system.
In this form, the existence of any stable pluralistic or emergent order would defeat the argument. Since many such orders exist, the argument, in that form, is defeated.
The defender of the argument must thus deploy variants of it in weaker forms.
How can people of different religions coexist?
Western civilization and Christendom have substantially answered that question, at least internally.
How can disputes be adjudicated without a final court of appeal imposed by an entity with a territorial monopoly on the application of justice (a government)?
The Hanseatic League did it for several centuries; Brehon Ireland did it for 1,000 years. Both were private-law systems. Both were partial and imperfect, but they lasted longer than any modern democracy (and modern democracies are also imperfect).
Yes, examples of layered governance exist (the federal system in the United States, the cantonal system in Switzerland). Yes, the Holy Roman Empire was an example of polycentric order. But ultimately, they all depend(ed) on a higher unity.
These are examples of systems based on competition, pluralism, and layered authority. They have all been able to function just fine. That should tell us something. However, even if we accept the objection that they were all part of a larger unity, we would still then have to address the example of the whole world:
There is no world government, and yet disparate parties engage in successful trade, diplomacy, and arbitration. Thousands of ships and planes move all across the globe every day. If a single ultimate unity were required, those things could not happen. But they do.
Yes, agreements have been made that facilitate all of this. But those agreements came about without any single controlling legal authority.
And that is the point. The single-system argument is regularly made as if it is a foregone conclusion. And yet the world is full of examples that refute it.
‘A boot stamping on a human face forever’
Beds, bricks, and boards are all standardized sizes. No law mandated it. It happened through market convergence and industry coordination—emergent order resulting from human action. When we needed a unified framework, we made it happen. No central authority required.
Humans are extremely diverse in abilities, interests, and attitudes. As such, we naturally resist homogenization. We also know when our consent is being violated, and we don’t like it.
This is why the effort to impose single systems, where they are not needed, must always be accompanied by large amounts of force. Square pegs hammered into round holes. A boot stamping on a human face. Forever.
And when it comes to governments, single systems are definitely not needed, as we will discuss in our next installment.
