Personality and Society in the Theory of Self-Organized Criticality

Abstract

Emerged in the domain of natural science, the theory of self-organized criticality (SOC) has spread to various fields over the past decades, achieving the status of an interdisciplinary paradigm. This article aims to answer three questions: Is SOC really a ubiquitous property of social reality? Does the SOC theory really substantiate the fundamental unpredictability and inevitability of social catastrophes? What contribution can the SOC theory make to clarifying the fundamental mystery of the relationship between human will and historical necessity? I performed a meta-analysis of the latest literature and summarized the results of my own case studies. So far, there is not enough empirical data to confirm that SOC is ubiquitous, although it has been proven that SOC is characteristic of many social systems—especially those in a borderline, transitional state. The SOC theory supports the idea that in some social systems for a fairly long time (even by historical standards), human will, act, and opinion can have a fundamental impact on the development of the whole of a system.