Social / Institutional Ontology

Are they cast in stone or process?

A realist painting courtesy of ChatGPT-5/DALL.E of an immense archive with endless shelves of ledgers. In the foreground, a suited man bars the way (domination). At the vanishing point, another crouches in despair (alienation). On the right, a man calmly reads (life fact).

On a clay tablet in Babylon, laws were carved into permanence. In the temples of ancient China, ritual roles were rehearsed and recorded with equal gravity. From the bills of parliaments to the blockchain’s distributed ledgers, we find the same impulse: to fix fleeting human agreements into structures that can outlast their makers. This is the work of institutions. At their root, they are social ledgers—the recorded traces of a collective conference, attempting to capture what a society believes counts and who it deems counted. This reality prompts a fundamental question: are these ledgers, like Durkheim’s 'social facts', external constraints that impose a stone-carved weight upon us? Or are they, as Searle’s 'status functions' suggest, more like memory devices—powerful but fragile records of what we collectively recognize? Institutions exist in the tense space between inscription and enforcement, between memory and mandate. Their gravity is not because they are ontologically permanent, but because we act as if they are.

Classical Positions

Eastern

For Confucius and his followers, the foundation of social order was not law but li—the body of rituals, proprieties and formalized practices that guided conduct from family life to governance. Institutions in this sense were living patterns of action through which one cultivated ren (humaneness) and aligned with the cosmic order. They functioned less as coercion and more as moral training, shaping the junzi (virtuous person) and producing social harmony through repetition and refinement.

By contrast, the Dao De Jing of Laozi (pronounced 'lao-dzuh') expressed deep skepticism toward human-made institutions. Where Confucianism saw li as order, Daoism saw ritual and law as husks of a lost natural spontaneity. Institutions here are symptoms of disorder: the more rules imposed, the further society drifts from the Dao. True order arises through wu wei (effortless action) in harmony with the natural way. The best institutions, then, are minimal, nearly invisible, and leave people feeling they have ordered themselves.

Across its many schools, Buddhism shares a pragmatic view of institutions: they are useful but ultimately sammuti (conventional) tools for practice. Traditions differ in the scope, authority, and role they grant the sangha and its rules, yet all converge on the Buddha’s teaching in the Alagaddūpama Sutta (MN 22). Institutions are like a raft built for the crossing from saṃsāra (suffering) to nibbāna (liberation). Once the far shore is reached, the raft must be left behind. To cling to the institution itself—its rituals, rules or identity—is just another form of upādāna (attachment) that obstructs liberation. From the paramattha (ultimate) perspective, institutions are only conceptual designations: labels applied to impermanent, dependently arisen processes (monks, buildings, rules). They lack a permanent anattā (essence). The institution is thus a means, never an end in itself.

In Hinduism, dharma provides perhaps the broadest vision of institution—as the cosmic and moral law that sustains the universe. Social institutions such as varnashrama dharma (the duties tied to social role and life stage) are reflections of this deeper order. Unlike human contracts, these institutions are seen as cosmic prescriptions: by fulfilling one’s svadharma (particular duty) one contributes to ṛta (harmony) and spiritual progress. Here the institution is not merely social convention but a path woven into the fabric of existence itself.

In Japan, particularly during the Tokugawa and Meiji periods, institutions were often understood less as abstract rules and more as kata—form, pattern, or model. A kata is a repeatable structure of practice: in martial arts, a choreographed sequence; in theater, a stylized gesture; in governance, a patterned ritual of authority. Institutions, then, were seen as the patterned forms that sustain social order through repetition and refinement rather than through rational-legal codes.

Taken together, these traditions offer a view of institutions not as external artifacts but as pathways: for cultivating virtue (Confucianism), for avoiding artificiality (Daoism), for skillful navigation of conventional reality (Buddhism), for fulfilling cosmic duty (Hinduism) or for embodying patterned form through repetition and refinement (Japanese kata). They remind us that institutions can be ritual, vow, cosmic law, or patterned practice—forms of life aligned to deeper orders—no less than bureaucratic or legal structures.

Western

In the mid-19th century, Karl Marx offered one of the first systematic critiques of institutions as anything but neutral. For Marx, institutions were not ledgers of shared life but superstructures built atop the economic base.^[1] Law, religion and the state existed to preserve ruling-class interests, embedding domination into their very form. The institutional ledger, in Marx’s eyes, was cooked from the outset: it always kept score in favor of those who already held power.

As dusk fell on the 19th century, Émile Durkheim cast institutions as social facts: realities outside us, pressing back against our private desires with the force of stone.^[2] They were not ours to reshape at will; they constrained, disciplined and stabilized—an external ledger of collective life—objective and coercive.

Standing in the shadow of industrial modernity, Max Weber diagnosed the rise of a new kind of order: rational-bureaucratic authority. For Weber, institutions were not just social facts but meticulously rule-bound structures. They gained legitimacy not from tradition or charisma, but from their perceived impartiality and clockwork regularity—their ability to record and administer society through procedures.^[3] The ledger here became a bureaucracy’s filing cabinet—faceless and depersonalized.

A different constructivist path was forged by sociologists Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann, who argued that institutions are products of habitualization and sedimentation, becoming reality through a continuous process of socialization.^[4] This groundwork was formalized into a philosophy of language by John Searle a generation later. He argued that institutions are built from 'status functions' declared and sustained by collective intentionality.^[5] Money, marriage, and borders exist because we declare and accept them as such. In this light, institutions are ledgers of recognition, filled not by external force but by shared declarations of '$X$ counts as $Y$ in context $C$'.

But if Searle saw a neutral ledger of agreement, Michel Foucault revealed it to be an instrument of subtle and insidious formation.^[6] For Foucault, institutions—schools, prisons, hospitals—were apparatuses of power/knowledge. They didn’t merely record social facts, they actively produced them, generating the very categories (the sane/insane, lawful/criminal) by which we are governed. Their ledgers were tools that disciplined bodies, normalized behavior, distributing visibility and invisibility alike.

Across these voices, one theme recurs: institutions make social reality durable. Yet they disagree on how. For Marx, they are blunt instruments of exploitation, designed to preserve ruling interests. For Durkheim, they press back as external constraints, disciplining collective life. For Weber, they are rational rules that secure legitimacy through procedure. For Berger and Luckmann, they crystallize through habituation, sedimenting into everyday reality. For Searle, they rest on collective declarations of what counts. And for Foucault, they are subtle power/knowledge apparatuses, producing the very categories by which we live. Institutions are thus class weapons, external granite, rational order, sedimented practice, declared recognition or disciplinary nets—but in every case, they ledger our lives into form.

Current Flashpoints

In our own century, the institutional ledger has gone digital. Where once laws were chiseled in stone or inked onto parchment, they are now inscribed across distributed networks. Blockchain technologies promise ledgers that no sovereign hand can erase, enshrining agreements in cryptographic stone.^[7] Here, the dream is permanence without centralized authority—an institution that enforces itself by mathematical design. Yet, this very dream raises a new ontological question: can code truly be neutral or does it merely encode the biases and power structures of its creators into a new, seemingly objective form? From a Buddhist perspective, such permanence risks mistaking the raft for the shore: institutions are means for crossing, not ends in themselves, and to cling to their form is a new attachment.

Yet another, more pervasive ledger has emerged on our screens: the algorithmic protocols of private platforms.^[8] Who speaks, who is silenced, what trends and what vanishes are all inscribed in the invisible, institutional ledgers of machines. Unlike the public edict of Hammurabi’s Code, these ledgers are mutable, opaque, proprietary and tuned for a single ultimate good: engagement. They are perhaps the purest example of Foucault's power/knowledge apparatus, but one that is owned by corporations, not the state, enforcing hidden rules that are shifting and at times unaccountable. Confucian thought would remind us that institutions gain legitimacy not from opacity but from ritualized forms of propriety (li) that cultivate trust through visible, shared conduct.

Meanwhile, public trust in the traditional ledgers of truth—courts, parliaments, newspapers etc. has fractured.^[9] Now, competing digital ledgers proliferate: partisan news feeds, influencer-driven narratives, and personalized realities. Each claims epistemic authority, yet none commands universal recognition, creating a world of contested facts and incompatible truths. In Hindu philosophy, such fracture signals the erosion of dharma—the shared moral order that once aligned social institutions with cosmic harmony. The result is not just a crisis of legitimacy for any single institution but a fundamental crisis of ledger itself: if we cannot agree on what counts as 'factual', whose record finally counts?^[10] Japanese thought highlights that even these digital ledgers operate as kata—repeated patterns that shape collective life; the challenge is whether such patterns sustain harmony or entrench alienation.

If the term: social institution 'petains to the shared process of putting in place' (and it iterally does), then the Conference of Difference (CoD) model of existence provides the ontological grounding that many of the classical theorists (Durkheim, Weber, Marx, Searle, and Foucault) largely miss. Each describes what institutions are—by defining them as facts, rules, weapons, declarations, apparatuses—but not how they emerge as process. Only Berger and Luckmann come close, with their account of habitualization. The CoD model explains that institutions are not tombstones of process but the process itself made durable. They are not artifacts to be worshipped, nor frozen rules to be obeyed but living inscriptions of difference negotiating together with difference. And it is precisely this that defines institutions as adaptive, open, and evolutionary.

Convergence & Divergence: The Ledger in Dialogue

For example, colocracy: a system of government literally 'inclined toward the power of collaboration', is not grounded in abstract ideals but in the ontological fabric of existence itself. As an offshoot of the CoD model of existence, colocracy is consistent with the definition of social systems as shared processes if only because because all existence is itself a conference of difference. In the CoD context, institutions are not optional conventions but the very way reality endures: processes of inscription that make difference durable without closing it off.

That being said, however, Colocracy enters into a long conversation with classical theorists of social ontology, converging with their deepest insights albeit diverging with their proposed solutions.

Convergence: The Insights Colocracy Embraces

Colocracy’s foundation is built upon acknowledged truths from each tradition.

It accepts Durkheim’s claim that institutions must function as social facts—external, constraining realities that structure collective life and stand firm against individual whim. Its demographic ledger is designed to have precisely this objective weight.

It adopts Searle’s constructivist principle that institutions are built on status functions and collective recognition. Colocracy is, at its heart, a mechanism for generating and sustaining a specific kind of declaration: “This demographically representative body counts as our legitimate governing authority.” Its power would evaporate without continuous public acceptance.

It converges with the sociological groundwork of Berger and Luckmann. The processes of civic certification and rotation are precisely the kinds of habitualization and institutionalization they described—practices designed to become taken-for-granted realities through repetition and socialization.

It affirms Foucault’s insight that institutions are not neutral record-keepers but active producers of subjectivity. Its emphasis on civic training and rotated participation is a direct engagement with this fact; it seeks to consciously design this formative process to create emancipated citizens rather than exploited subjects.

It echoes Confucianism in treating institutions as forms of cultivation, not merely coercion. Like li, Colocracy relies on shared rituals of governance that shape character and sustain social harmony, but it does so while embedding equality into the ritual itself.

It aligns with Daoism in valuing simplicity and naturalness. Colocracy’s demographic rules are deliberately minimal—designed to feel light, transparent and adaptive, rather than heavy-handed impositions.

It converges with Buddhism’s pragmatic view of institutions as rafts, not shores. Its civic certifications and rotations are consciously provisional—tools for moving society toward balance, but never ends in themselves.

It resonates with Hindu thought in seeking alignment between institutions and a deeper order. For Colocracy, that order is not caste or fixed duty, but the balance of difference itself—a civic dharma expressed as reciprocity.

It draws on Japanese insights about institutions as kata—patterned forms repeated until they shape collective life. Colocracy builds its choreography through certification, mentoring, and rotation, repeating them until collaboration becomes second nature.

Divergence: The Problems Colocracy Seeks to Solve

However, Colocracy diverges by diagnosing the sources of pathology within traditional institutions and designing its ledger as a corrective.

It shares Marx’s deep suspicion that ledgers are easily tilted to serve particular interests. But where Marx saw this as an inevitable feature of class-based society, Colocracy proposes a design solution: baking demographic proportionality, rotation, and anti-corruption measures directly into the ledger’s code to mechanically resist capture by any single group.

It understands Weber’s modern world of rational-bureaucratic authority but fears its alienating, faceless nature. Colocracy therefore replaces impersonal bureaucracy with shared responsibility. Legitimacy flows not from depersonalized rule-following but from the authentic representation of the social body itself.

It agrees with Foucault’s analysis of disciplinary power but challenges its inevitability. Where Foucault’s institutions (prisons, schools) produce docile bodies through surveillance and normalization, Colocracy’s institution is designed to produce engaged citizens through responsibility and collaboration. The discipline is not one of obedience to a hidden rule, but of participation in a visible, shared process.

It respects Confucian li as a ritual framework for cultivating virtue, yet diverges from its tendency toward rigid hierarchy. Colocracy encodes equality directly into its ledger, ensuring ritualized practice sustains balance rather than subordination.

It recognizes the Daoist warning that elaborate institutions signal disorder, yet diverges from its quietism by insisting that light, adaptive forms of governance can be consciously designed. Colocracy seeks institutions that remain minimal but functional—rules that feel natural rather than imposed.

It acknowledges the Buddhist caution against clinging to institutions as ends in themselves, yet diverges by embedding rotation and expiry into its design. Its institutions are built to be provisional rafts, never shores.

It honors Hindu dharma as a vision of institutions aligned with deeper order, yet diverges from its risk of caste-like rigidity. Colocracy upholds harmony through proportionality, not prescription—fluid balance rather than fixed roles.

It values the Japanese insight that institutions are patterned forms (kata), yet diverges from rote conformity. Its repeated practices—certification, rotation—are designed to keep reciprocity alive, not to reduce it to habit.

Synthesis: A New Model of Durability

Ultimately, all these traditions agree on one thing: institutions are the ledgers that make social reality durable. They disagree, however, on the quality of that durability. For Marx and Foucault, durability tends toward domination; for Weber, toward alienation; for Durkheim, toward external order. Eastern traditions diagnose similar risks: Confucian li can ossify into hierarchy, Daoist skepticism warns that rules multiply when natural harmony is lost, Buddhist thought cautions against clinging to the raft as though it were the shore, Hindu dharma risks hardening into rigid prescription, and Japanese kata can decay into rote conformity. The Conference of Difference (CoD) sits at the meeting point of East and West, converging with their deepest insights while diverging from their limitations. It seeks to preserve durability without rigidity, discipline without domination, patterned form without empty repetition.

The Conference of Difference (CoD) Model argues that the most resilient and legitimate durability is not written in stone-like permanence but in the process itself. Its ledger is not a closed, final account carved in stone. It is a living, open system designed for continuous equilibrium—a ledger that never closes but perpetually recalibrates to circumstances, making it durable precisely because it is open to adaptation, evolution and transformation.

Summary

Institutions are the ledgers of social reality: they record what counts. Our era is defined by a battle over these ledgers—between public and private, between transparent and opaque, between truth and tribalism. As an extension of the CoD model, Colocracy enters this battle not by fighting for control of the old ledger, but by proposing a new one entirely. It converges with classical insights on institutional power but diverges by designing that power to be proportional, rotational and resistant to capture. It answers Marx’s fear of a tilted ledger and Foucault’s nightmare of disciplinary control with a simple, radical principle: existence is a condition, literally a 'process of declaring together'.^[11]

Colocracy

by John Mackay

An introduction to what’s broken in modern governance—and importantly how easy it is to build something better.

Discover the book