Cultural Covenants

Cultural Covenants are covenants which represent a more abstract anthropological entity formed by a group of people. A cultural covenant is one which has taken on an existance of its own; one that exists outside of its membership. Examples are political entities like cities?, kingdoms?, military units, and of course cultures themselves.

I propose that a collection of autopoietic systems that, through the realization of their autopoiesis, interact with each other constituting and integrating a system that operates as the (or as a) medium in which they realize their autopoiesis, is indistinguishable from a natural social system. Or, in other words, I propose that the relations stated above characterize the organization of a social system as a system, and that all the phenomena proper to social systems arise from this organizatiion.

— Humberto Maturana, Biology of Cognition

Cultural Covenants, like other Covenants, are composed objects, but unlike other covenants, Cultural Covenants are quintuple covenants, which means they are composed of five aspects instead of three. These are its Form, its Head, its Function, its Anima, and its Story.

  • Form -- the physical forms or materials which make up the cultural covenant and its outward form (territory of a political unit, weapons of a military unit)
  • Head -- that which makes decisions for the cultural covenant (leaders, laws, etc.)
  • Function -- the aspect of the cultural covenant which defines its function, usually defined by the people and their schools with associated skills
  • Anima -- the aggregate soul of the cultural covenant which defines its values and the standards by which they live up to those values
  • Story -- the myths and stories of the cultural covenant which serve as a kind of institutional memory. May also deal with aphorisms and anachronisms.

— ScotusTheProsyFaerie? - 27 May 2000
— GedTheGreysHain - 17 Oct 2002 [Removed inheritance references, updated to reflect current model]
— GedTheGreysHain - 19 Nov 2002 [Removed 'holdings', replaced with 'aspects']