Why Freedom Grows Only Inside Structure
- nisraely
- 35 minutes ago
- 26 min read
“Our contribution grows when we bind ourselves to others, and shrinks to the scale of our solitude.”
I dedicate this column to those who mistakenly equate freedom with self-reliance.
This column continues the arc we have followed over recent months, an arc that began with questions in physics and chemistry and gradually revealed a structural logic that extends from nature to human societies. Although it opens with a quiet drive to Degania on a bright morning, the journey it describes reaches far beyond the landscape outside the car window, because this setting becomes a gateway into a deeper inquiry about how human communities emerge, evolve, and either prosper or remain fixed in place. The column is longer than usual because the insight it develops can be reached only by moving through several layers of reasoning, each building on ideas introduced in earlier columns about particles, atoms, molecules, and living systems. Readers who may have wondered why we needed to explore those scientific foundations will find here the answer, because this column gathers those threads into a single structural argument and shows how the principles that govern complexity in nature illuminate one of humanity’s oldest mysteries, namely why some communities remain bound to the constraints of low complexity while others rise to higher capability. In this sense, the column offers not only a historical reflection on the Kibbutz and the systems that preceded it, but also a scientific explanation of why freedom expands only inside structures designed to hold complexity.
A Trip to the First Kibbutz
A few days ago, I travelled to northern Israel, a region deeply tied to my childhood through visits to my grandmother, uncles, and cousins in Kibbutz Ayelet HaShahar, the fifth Kibbutz to be founded. This time, my journey extended beyond family visits because I continued south toward Degania, the first Kibbutz, for a meeting with Chen Vardi, the grandson of Yosef and Hayuta Busel, two of the twelve pioneers who helped shape its early development. My purpose was to verify historical details and better understand the structural principles that guided the formation of the first cooperative community, yet as often happens, the drive itself sharpened the very questions that brought me there.
Driving along the familiar road that circles the Sea of Galilee, I passed the remnants of ancient villages as well as others established in the nineteenth century. Their continuity is remarkable, yet the village structure has remained largely unchanged since it first appeared twelve thousand years ago. When Degania was founded in 1910, these villages still relied on household labor; cooperation rarely extended beyond the family, and their structure, which had long supported the survival of individual households, could no longer generate the economic growth or build the capabilities required in the twentieth century. Stability persisted, but development had stalled.
Soon after, I entered Tiberias, the only city in the region and once a vibrant center nearly two thousand years ago. I remember it fondly from childhood visits, yet by the early twentieth century it shared the same structural limitations as the surrounding villages. It survived but did not transform, and its long history did not translate into new capability. To understand this, it is essential to recall that a city in a remote corner of the Ottoman Empire looked nothing like the cities we know today. Modern cities offer opportunities because they host organizations such as companies, public institutions, and administrative structures that generate complexity, skills, and upward mobility. None of these existed in Tiberias at the time. Without coordinated businesses, professional institutions, or complex work systems, the city functioned structurally like a large village, relying on household production and informal relationships. Its continuity preserved life but not progress, and it lacked the organizational mechanisms needed for economic advancement.
What I saw on the road was therefore not only a contrast between communities but also a challenge to my early understanding of freedom. The village and the old city allowed individuals to work separately with minimal interdependency, and for many years I believed that this kind of autonomy expressed the most natural form of freedom. I assumed that freedom meant acting alone or within a small circle, avoiding the demands of coordinated structures, and maintaining independence by limiting reliance on others.
Yet the historical evidence along that short drive revealed something very different, because the structures that maintained minimal interdependence for centuries produced almost no progress beyond survival. In contrast, the new cooperative structure at Degania created new capabilities, expanded prosperity, and generated far reaching structural change. The village and the city preserved autonomy at the individual level but could not accumulate capability at the collective scale, whereas the Kibbutz relied on interdependence, alignment, and shared purpose, which allowed it to expand what its members could achieve together.
This contrast raised a question that stayed with me as I approached Degania. Why do community structures that allow individuals to act independently with minimal coordination, such as the village and the city, generate so little collective progress, while structures that require tighter alignment and cooperation, such as the Kibbutz and the modern company, produce far greater prosperity? The village and the ancient city were suitable for the economic and social conditions of earlier centuries, yet their design could not meet the demands of the modern age, in which rising complexity required forms of cooperation capable of accumulating capability rather than merely preserving continuity.
The stagnation that had defined the region for generations was eventually broken only when new organizational structures, most notably the Kibbutz and later the limited liability company, introduced designs that directed individual effort toward shared outcomes and generated sustained prosperity. The contrast between the ancient structures that preserved stability and the new structures that accumulated capability marked the beginning of a deeper examination into how organizational design expands or limits human potential and how structure itself shapes the kind of freedom individuals can experience within a community.
The Paradox of Freedom We Carry Within Us
The contrast encountered during the drive raised a broader question about how we perceive freedom. Many of us, myself included, instinctively associate freedom with the ability to act independently, avoid coordination constraints, and make decisions without relying on others. This intuitive understanding of freedom feels natural at the individual level and is influenced by environments where complexity is low and cooperation is minimal. However, the evidence across the region I had just traveled through suggests that this form of freedom, offering autonomy without structure, does not translate into collective capability and does not generate prosperity when viewed at the community or societal level.
Most of us feel this tension without putting a name to it because the freedom we have when acting alone seems immediate and simple, while the freedom that comes from being within structure develops over time, relies on coordination, and only becomes clear when its overall effects change what we're able to do.
This revealed a tension that must be addressed before we can understand why some societies remain stagnant while others advance. In the previous column we saw that free will, when isolated from structure, cannot reliably produce prosperity because it lacks the coherence required for meaningful outcomes. In this column we move one level upward, from individuals to communities and organizations, to examine how freedom behaves inside structure rather than outside it, and to understand why this shift changes what individuals and societies are able to achieve.
Intuitive freedom reflects personal experience but does not capture the structural reality that prosperity emerges only in systems capable of holding greater complexity. A structure that demands little of its members may appear to preserve freedom, yet it limits what individuals can accomplish because it cannot accumulate energy, coordinate effort, or direct actions toward shared outcomes. By contrast, a structure that requires alignment and cooperation may initially seem to constrain individuals, yet it expands their functional freedom by increasing the range of actions the system can support and by amplifying the impact of each contribution.
Understanding this distinction requires treating freedom not as an emotional state but as a structural property of a system that determines how many coherent possibilities, or states of freedom, are available to its members. The freedom an individual experiences when acting alone is fundamentally different from the freedom that arises within a structure capable of generating complexity, and this difference becomes evident when we examine how systems behave at various levels of organization. This insight directly connects to earlier discussions where we looked at how particles respond to observation, how atoms acquire new degrees of freedom when forming molecules, and how systems at higher levels of complexity develop capabilities absent at lower levels. The same principle applies to human societies because an individual's behavior in isolation does not predict what becomes possible within a well-designed structure that broadens the range of meaningful actions available to its members.
To make this counterintuitive difference clear, it helps to see how the number of meaningful options grows as structures become more complex. In nature, social systems, and communities, individual units acting alone face very few stable options, while units within coherent structures have access to a much broader range of actions and roles because the structure absorbs variation, stabilizes relationships, and creates conditions that promote complexity. The following table provides a simplified but insightful view of this pattern and helps us connect these structural differences to the behavior of individuals and communities.
Degrees of Freedom Across Structures
Unit or Structure | Number of Meaningful Connections | Stability of State | Possible Roles or Functions | Growth Potential | Degree of Freedom |
Isolated Atom | 0 to 1 | Low | Very few | Almost none | Very low |
Atom in Simple Molecule | 1 to 3 | Medium | A few defined roles | Limited | Low |
Atom in Complex Molecule (carbon-based) | 4 or more | High | Many roles within complex structures | Very high | Very high |
Individual Alone | 1 to 2 | Low | Narrow | Almost none | Very low |
Individual in Small Group | 3 to 10 | Medium | Expanded but bounded | Limited | Low to medium |
Individual in High Complexity Structure (Kibbutz or LLC) | Dozens to hundreds | Very high | Many roles across different domains | Very high | High to very high |
This pattern is universal because whether we examine atoms, molecules, individuals, or large-scale communities, every increase in complexity expands the number of coherent actions possible within the system, as structure stabilizes relationships, channels energy, and enables forms of interaction that cannot happen when units operate alone.
Freedom and Complexity in Human Systems:
Understanding this distinction prepares us to examine why people often misinterpret freedom in the first place, and why intuitive judgments about freedom diverge so sharply from the structural behavior of complex systems.
Most people intuitively place freedom at the bottom left corner of the diagram, where complexity and interdependency are minimal. They begin not with a structural question but with a psychological one, shaped by uncertainty and the desire to preserve a stable sense of self. The question they ask is Where is the place where no one can tell me what to do? In that position no one depends on you, you depend on no one, and the absence of structure feels like autonomy because isolation appears to protect identity. Yet this is also the place where a person has the fewest meaningful options, affects no one, and is affected by no one, because almost nothing can be accomplished alone. It is freedom sought to avoid pressure or dependency, but it is also the position with the least capability, and ultimately the least influence.
The diagram reveals a very different pattern observed in complex systems. When the question shifts from protection to possibility, and becomes What must I do to reach the highest degree of freedom and the greatest ability to influence my environment? the answer moves to the top right corner, where complexity and interdependency are greatest. This question arises not from fear of losing oneself but from confidence in one’s ability to contribute beyond the self, and from the recognition that identity is strengthened, not diminished, when expressed within a coherent structure. At this level, structure absorbs variation, stabilizes relationships, and expands the number of coherent actions available to each person. Higher complexity does not narrow freedom; it multiplies it, because only interdependent structures create the conditions in which individuals can act broadly, shape their surroundings, influence others, and participate in outcomes far larger than anything achievable in isolation.
This principle becomes clearer when we look at how complexity transforms what individual units can do in the natural world, because the same shift from isolation to structure expands the possibilities available to atoms, molecules, and systems at every level of existence.
The chemistry analogy provides a useful way to understand this principle. An atom remains the same atom whether it is alone or part of a molecule, yet an isolated atom has very few stable possibilities, while an atom inside a molecule can take part in many more interactions because the surrounding structure stabilizes relationships and broadens what is possible. The atom does not lose its identity inside the molecule; it gains access to a wider range of stable states. Atoms also tend toward configurations that require less energy, which explains why molecules form spontaneously and why life depends on carbon, an element capable of forming multiple stable connections. Human beings behave in a similar way. When alone, we face a limited range of actions and must use much more energy to keep our lives stable, yet when we join a coherent structure such as a community or an organization, we do not lose who we are but gain more ways to express our abilities because the structure supports our actions and expands what we can achieve.
This recognition provides the base for the next step, which is to examine what structure means scientifically and to understand why specific binding forces, in both nature and human societies, influence whether a system can develop to higher levels of complexity and create the form of freedom that fosters prosperity.
Why Nature Reveals the Pattern We Do Not Intuitively See
To understand why intuitive freedom and functional freedom differ, and why structures that seem simple at the individual level often limit what communities can accomplish, it is helpful to examine how freedom operates in the natural world. In earlier columns we noted that particles behave differently when observed, that atoms gain new degrees of freedom when they form stable molecular structures, and that higher level systems exhibit capabilities that do not exist at lower levels because structure expands the range of coherent actions available to their components. When freedom is defined structurally rather than emotionally, it refers to the number of coherent actions a unit can perform within a stable environment, and this range grows as coherence strengthens and complexity increases.
This pattern appears across every layer of existence. Units acting alone have a narrow and unstable range of meaningful possibilities, while units embedded within coherent structures experience a broader and more stable range because the structure absorbs variation, provides feedback, and stabilizes relationships. Structure is therefore not the opposite of freedom but the condition that enables higher forms of freedom to emerge. The Universal Law of Increasing Complexity clarifies this by showing that each rise in complexity creates degrees of freedom unavailable at lower levels, and that such degrees of freedom appear only when a system can hold internal tension without losing coherence.
Observation makes this logic clear. In a small village or simple community the number of meaningful observers is limited because cooperation rarely extends beyond the family, and feedback about behavior becomes infrequent, irregular, and easily disrupted. This creates a narrow and fragile set of coherent possibilities. In contrast, in a modern organization or a cooperative community the number of observers is larger, roles are distributed across many functions, and the feedback they provide is structured, continuous, and aligned with shared goals. These dense and coherent feedback loops stabilize expectations, reduce uncertainty, and support forms of coordinated action that isolated individuals cannot sustain, much as molecular structures stabilize atoms and allow interactions that isolated atoms cannot perform.
The analogy between physical and human systems is structural rather than literal, yet it remains valid because in both domains freedom is determined by the range of coherent actions available within a stable environment. Recognizing this pattern helps explain why the village and the ancient city endured for centuries without reshaping the region. These low complexity structures preserved continuity but could not accumulate capability. Modern organizations and cooperative communities operate at higher levels of complexity and therefore can align purpose across multiple roles, hold internal tension without losing coherence, and convert individual actions into outcomes that the structure can amplify over time.
The paradox introduced earlier in this column becomes clearer. Simple structures appear to offer greater personal freedom because they demand little coordination, yet they provide only a limited range of coherent possibilities and cannot rise to higher levels of prosperity. Structures that require alignment and cooperation may feel counterintuitive, yet they expand what individuals can achieve by supporting complexity, coherence, and coordinated action. With this understanding established, we can now explore the forces that create and sustain such structures. The four fundamental forces of nature offer the most rigorous model for understanding how invisible forces shape structure, coherence, and the degrees of freedom available to systems at every layer of existence.
The Four Fundamental Forces and Their Human Equivalents
To understand why some human structures evolve to higher levels of complexity while others remain limited to the achievements of earlier generations, it is helpful to begin with the natural world, where structure arises from forces that create coherence. All stable physical systems, from the tiniest atomic nucleus to the largest galaxy, depend on four fundamental forces that determine how units interact, how order is maintained, and what possibilities the system can support. These forces do not operate within human societies, yet the structural logic they reveal is universal because they show how invisible forces generate cohesion, stabilize relationships, and enable higher capabilities.
The ULIC builds on this logic by demonstrating that any system can reach higher capability only when it develops a structure capable of holding internal tension and expanding the range of coherent actions available to its members. Such growth requires forces that provide immediate cohesion, medium-range orientation, fine-scale regulation, and long-range alignment. In nature the four fundamental forces perform these roles through attributes such as strength, operating range, capacity to sustain tension, influence on structure, stability during transitions, and scalability. These attributes determine which physical structures can form and which degrees of freedom can develop.
The roles that physical forces play in enabling matter to organize are structurally similar to the roles that Mission, Vision, Values, and Purpose play in helping human communities organize. These social binding forces work through meaning rather than physics, yet they serve comparable structural functions because they influence how individuals connect, maintain coherence as complexity grows, and determine whether the system can expand the possibilities available to its members.
Vision provides medium-range orientation by shaping how individuals relate to one another as they move toward a shared horizon. It determines direction, organizes relationships, and enables complexity to develop beyond immediate tasks. Its structural parallel is the electromagnetic force, which governs medium-range interactions, allows atoms to form bonds, and enables the emergence of molecular structures.
Values regulate fine-scale behavior and stabilize internal transitions. They guide action where rules cannot fully apply and maintain coherence as roles, tasks, and circumstances evolve. This mirrors the function of the weak nuclear force, which governs subtle internal transformations that allow systems to adapt without destabilizing their structure.
Purpose delivers long-range alignment by providing meaning that persists across time, population, and distance. Although weak in any single interaction, its cumulative effect binds large and diverse groups together and sustains coherence across generations. This corresponds to gravity, the weakest of the physical forces yet the only one capable of holding structures together at the largest scales.
Although each of the four binding forces has a distinct role, their true power appears only when they work together. Mission without Vision creates motion without direction. Vision without Values produces aspiration without coherence. Values without Purpose generate order without meaning. Purpose without Mission remains abstract and cannot turn into capability. In ULIC terms these forces form the architecture of Direction, while structure provides coherence and individuals supply the energy that drives the system. High-capability systems are defined not by any single force but by the alignment of all four, because only then can a system maintain tension, build capability, and expand the range of coherent possibilities available to its members.
A final element must be recognized before moving forward. Goals are not themselves a binding force but the operational expression of Mission, shaped by Vision, constrained by Values, and justified by Purpose. When Goals are pursued in isolation from these forces, effort becomes fragmented and progress remains local because the actions of individuals cannot accumulate into coherent capability. When Goals are aligned with the four forces, they become the mechanism through which a system converts individual effort into collective advancement, allowing capability to grow across time rather than dispersing into isolated achievements.
With this structural foundation in place, we can now examine how the four binding forces operate across the different layers of human organization, and why some structures stagnate while others rise to higher levels of complexity and prosperity.
How Binding Forces Behave Across the Layers of Human Organization
Understanding the four binding forces makes it possible to explain why some human systems expand their capabilities while others remain bound to the patterns of earlier generations, because each force behaves differently as the scale, diversity, and structural capacity of the system increase. The family, the community, the nation, and the global layer each require a distinct configuration of Mission, Vision, Values, and Purpose, and the alignment of these forces determines whether a system can coordinate action, maintain coherence, and rise to higher levels of complexity.
At the level of the family the binding forces operate naturally and without deliberate design, since the family is a low complexity structure in which close relationships, shared environments, and continuous interactions provide the cohesion needed for everyday life. Mission arises from immediate needs and does not need to be articulated. Vision remains narrow because long term orientation is limited. Values operate with high intensity because norms are constantly reinforced through routine contact. Purpose remains short in range and tied to identity rather than to long term direction. Although the family maintains continuity, it cannot accumulate capability across generations or distance because its binding forces do not scale.
At the level of the community the binding forces begin to change because the system contains more people, greater diversity, and a wider range of roles than any family can support. Mission becomes explicit because coordinated action requires shared understanding rather than implicit habit. Vision becomes essential because orientation must extend beyond the household to include shared objectives. Values must broaden to include different backgrounds, expectations, and norms. Purpose begins to extend beyond family identity and creates a sense of belonging among individuals who do not share a home but share a social environment. The community reaches a moderate level of complexity, yet it remains limited because it lacks the structural mechanisms needed for sustained coordination across time and space, and therefore cannot convert individual efforts into cumulative capability.
At the level of the nation the binding forces must operate with greater strength, range, and institutionalization because the system contains significant internal diversity and relies on complex interdependencies. Mission becomes distributed across multiple domains such as security, education, economic growth, and public welfare, all of which must align with a broader national direction. Vision must be articulated repeatedly because individuals who have no direct contact with one another still need to orient their actions toward a shared horizon. Values must be formalized through norms, laws, and cultural practices so that coherence can be maintained across regions and generations. Purpose becomes the primary long range binding force because only a shared national identity can unify a population large enough to sustain institutions and adapt to internal and external pressures. Nations that align all four forces rise to high levels of complexity, while nations that cannot align them remain structurally fragile.
At the global level the binding forces must operate under the greatest structural tension because no shared authority, common governance, or unified historical foundation exists to maintain coherence across civilizations. Mission remains narrow because global coordination is voluntary and often inconsistent. Vision functions with partial coherence because nations differ in their priorities and time horizons. Values align only in domains where interests overlap and diverge sharply where historical, cultural, or political differences dominate. At this scale Purpose becomes decisive because it is the only binding force capable of providing meaning that extends beyond national identity and creates the possibility of coherent action at the global level. Without Purpose the global system cannot address challenges that exceed national capacity, such as climate stability, technological governance, or global inequality.
Across all levels of human organization the binding forces determine whether a system can rise to higher levels of complexity and expand the range of coherent actions available to its members. Digital communication tools have transformed the speed and reach of information yet have not altered the structural nature of the binding forces themselves. Mission and Vision can be transmitted rapidly across distance through messages, images, and instructions, but Values cannot be strengthened this way because they depend on repeated interaction, shared norms, and lived experience. Purpose cannot be created digitally because it grows from identity, meaning, and shared history rather than from communication speed. In many cases, digital tools weaken Values by amplifying conflicting norms and short-term incentives. This makes structural design more important than ever because only a well-constructed system can align Mission, Vision, Values, and Purpose in a way that turns communication into capability and allows a human system to rise to higher complexity.
Why Some Structures Prosper and Others Stagnate
With the structural framework of the binding forces in place, we can now observe how different human systems express Mission, Vision, Values, and Purpose in practice, and why certain structures remain stable yet stagnant while others rise rapidly in capability.
The traditional village provides stability but not accumulated capability. Mission remains implicit and tied to subsistence. Vision stays narrow because there is little need to orient beyond immediate needs. Values are strong within families yet weaken at the scale of the community. Purpose is short in range and linked to continuity rather than transformation. Villages endure for centuries because their structure preserves survival, yet the same structure prevents them from rising to higher complexity. Their design reflects the energy conditions of scarcity in which they first appeared. It excels at preserving life with minimal resources but cannot generate the surplus or coherence required for cumulative advancement.
The city gathers populations and generates activity, yet this activity does not automatically translate into integration. Mission fragments into private pursuits. Vision disperses across institutions. Values become pluralistic and often conflicting. Purpose dissolves into coexistence rather than direction. Historically, cities depended on higher structures such as kingdoms and empires to supply the Vision, Values, and Purpose required for cumulative progress. A city could endure, trade, and diversify, yet without alignment at a higher level it behaved like a container of individuals rather than a coherent system, and therefore its capacity for transformation remained limited.
The limited liability company emerged to solve these coordination challenges. Its Mission is explicit and operational. Vision provides orientation internally and externally. Values are formalized to stabilize expectations and guide behavior. Purpose, when present, strengthens resilience and long-term coherence. When these forces align, the company can accumulate capability rapidly because its structure channels energy, coordinates effort, and holds internal tension more effectively than earlier forms of organization. Yet a company’s Purpose remains anchored to markets, which limits its ability to reshape societies at scale. Many of the early companies that appeared in the region surrounding the Sea of Galilee during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries did not survive because they lacked structural alignment and coherent Purpose. Their disappearance illustrates that while companies are powerful engines of capability, they are not complete or omnipotent structures.
The Kibbutz stands apart because it aligned all four binding forces with an intensity rarely found in community-scale systems. Mission was concrete and operational. Vision extended beyond survival toward national renewal and global contribution. Values were codified and reinforced daily through shared work and mutual responsibility. Purpose reached across generations and oriented the entire structure toward service to others, not only to its members. This coherence explains why the Kibbutz transformed the region so rapidly. It does not imply that every Kibbutz succeeded equally or that structure alone guarantees prosperity, but it does reveal that the Kibbutz model possessed a far greater structural capacity for transformation than earlier forms of organization.
A further dimension of the Kibbutz becomes clearer through the reflections of Muki Tzur, one of its most perceptive interpreters. The early pioneers did not attempt to define the individual or shape an ideal human character. They built a structure that allowed a person to remain open, unfinished, and capable of growth, to be both whole and broken without being forced into a predetermined identity. This created a distinctive form of freedom, not freedom from others but freedom sustained within mutual responsibility. In the colonies and estates of the time, managers dictated tasks and workers obeyed, reproducing the hierarchical patterns of the emerging capitalist world. The Kibbutz rejected this model. It replaced hierarchy with shared obligation and enabled individuals to remain themselves while relying on the structure to hold them. In this sense the Kibbutz member was not free because he stood apart, but because he stood within a community strong enough to carry him as he evolved. This was freedom inside structure, and it proved far more generative than the emotional freedom of solitude.
This comparison reveals the structural logic behind prosperity. Villages preserve continuity but cannot rise. Cities stimulate activity but require higher structures for integration. Companies accumulate capability but remain narrow in Purpose. The Kibbutz demonstrates that when Mission, Vision, Values, and Purpose align at high intensity within a coherent community-scale structure, complexity rises and prosperity follows. Its success is explained not by ideology but by structural coherence.
Comparing Social Structures Through Their Binding Forces
The differences between the village, the city, the modern company, and the Kibbutz become clearer when we compare how each expresses Mission, Vision, Values, and Purpose, and how these expressions shape its ability to hold tension, scale complexity, and convert individual freedom into collective capability. The table below synthesizes the structural differences explained throughout the column and offers a clear view of the alignment patterns that determine whether a system can rise to higher levels of prosperity.
Binding Forces Across Human Structures: A Comparative Framework
Force | Village | City | LLC | Kibbutz |
Mission | Implicit, subsistence-oriented | Fragmented, administrative | Explicit, operational | Strong, coherent, shared |
Vision | Minimal horizon | Plural and dispersed | Clear, medium range | Shared, far-reaching |
Values | Strong within families, weak across the community | Pluralistic and inconsistent | Formalized, functional | Codified, lived daily |
Purpose | Short range | Coexistence only | Limited but present | Long-range and unifying |
Binding-Force Alignment | Low | Low | Medium to high | Very high |
Structural Range | Very short | Short to medium | Medium to long (domain-bound) | Long (community scale) |
Complexity and Prosperity Outcome | Stability without development | Activity without integration | High capability within a bounded scope | High complexity and sustained prosperity |
This framework reveals a structural principle that appears across every example in this column. Villages preserve continuity but cannot rise because their binding forces remain narrow and unaligned. Cities generate constant activity but rarely integrate it because their forces fragment across institutions and interests. Companies accumulate capability rapidly when aligned, yet remain bounded by their economic purpose. The Kibbutz demonstrates that when all four binding forces are aligned at high intensity within a community-scale structure, complexity rises, freedom expands, and prosperity becomes structurally achievable.
Conclusion: Why Freedom Expands Only Inside Structure
I had always believed that the purest form of freedom was experienced when individuals were unbounded, self-directed, and independent of structures that impose obligations and expectations, and this intuitive belief influenced my decision to leave the Kibbutz. It felt natural because environments with low complexity give the impression that independence equals freedom, as they require little coordination, have few demands, and allow a person to confuse the absence of structure for autonomy. Only later did I realize that this feeling of freedom arose not from who I was, but from the structure I inhabited, because systems characterized by low complexity offer only simple and short-term possibilities. These environments shape the intuitive assumptions many of us carry about what it means to be free.
A different picture emerged once I observed how systems behave when they rise in complexity, because higher complexity alters not only what a system can achieve but also what freedom becomes inside it. In the nineteenth century, a worker in the English production system, where a product was crafted start to finish by one person or a small group of craftsmen, could work independently yet could never exceed the natural limits of a single individual, and the system produced only the slow accumulation of isolated effort. When that same worker entered the structured environment of Henry Ford’s assembly line (first introduced in 1913), where many individuals contributed to a single product and each held responsibility for one defined stage of the process, the structure absorbed variation, stabilized the relationships among tasks, and coordinated multiple roles into a coherent flow that expanded what each worker could accomplish.
The assembly line increased output by an order of magnitude because it concentrated the contributions of many individuals into one integrated system, and through repeated and coherent practice each worker deepened their expertise, which further increased the capability of the whole. The structural advantage of the American production system was so great that it allowed Ford, a committed capitalist, to introduce improvements no socialist movement of the time had achieved, including a shorter working day of nine hours, a shorter working week of five days, and a minimum wage twice as high as before, showing that a rise in structural complexity can increase both productivity and the real freedom available to individuals within the system.
This relationship between structure and capability reflects the logic of the ULIC directly, because the rise in complexity produced a rise in coherent possibilities and transformed both the individual and the system in ways neither could achieve alone.
These structural principles explain why traditional villages and ancient cities endured for centuries without transforming the region around them, because their expression of Mission, Vision, Values, and Purpose remained narrow, fragmented, or short in range. Villages relied on subsistence Mission, minimal Vision, kin-based Values, and Purpose limited to survival, which enabled continuity but prevented them from accumulating capability or rising to higher complexity. Ancient cities produced movement and interaction, yet their Mission fractured into disconnected private aims, their Vision dispersed across institutions with no shared horizon, their Values diversified to the point of inconsistency, and their Purpose dissolved into the simple fact of coexistence. These structures remained stable but could not generate transformation because the binding forces required for cumulative capability were weak or absent.
In contrast, the modern company and the classical Kibbutz aligned the binding forces with far greater coherence. Companies made Mission explicit, articulated Vision clearly, formalized Values to stabilize behavior across roles, and at times adopted Purpose that extended beyond the market. Yet long-term survival patterns reveal the structural limits of this design. More than ninety percent of the companies that operated a century ago no longer exist, and among those that survived, only a small minority shaped national development in a sustained way. Their structure generates high market capability but rarely maintains coherence across generations. The Kibbutz exhibits the opposite pattern. More than ninety percent of the Kibbutzim founded in the early twentieth century remain active today, and their cumulative national impact is disproportionate to their size. This endurance was not the result of ideology but of structural alignment, because the Kibbutz synchronized Mission, Vision, Values, and Purpose with an intensity rarely achieved at the community scale. Through this alignment, it developed the ability to hold structural tension, coordinate contributions across members, and convert individual intention into cumulative capability, thereby reshaping a region that had remained unchanged for generations.
This recognition of how freedom actually behaves inside and outside structure resolves the cognitive dissonance that shaped my earlier views. The form of freedom I long preferred, which feels immediate and natural because it arises when individuals act alone, belongs to environments where complexity is low, coordination is minimal, and individual choice remains unchallenged by collective needs. Yet this intuitive freedom is narrow in scope and cannot support the ambitions that individuals or societies ultimately hold. The form of freedom that enables progress emerges only inside structures capable of binding individuals through Mission, Vision, Values, and Purpose, because only such structures can convert separate actions into outcomes that accumulate across time and across members. The architectural implication is that autonomy and structure are not opposing forces but complementary requirements of any complex system, and the design challenge is to create systems in which individuality strengthens structure and structure expands the range of meaningful actions available to each individual.
Recognizing this relationship between autonomy and structure leads to a clear architectural conclusion. When structure is weak, freedom dissolves into instability because individuals cannot depend on one another, cannot coordinate their actions, and cannot build outcomes that persist across time. When structure is overly tight, freedom contracts into rigidity because individuals lose the room to adapt, disengage from the system, and withdraw their creativity, which collective progress requires. Prosperity emerges only when structure and freedom rise together, because only systems that align Mission, Vision, Values, and Purpose can hold internal tension, accumulate capability, and expand the range of coherent possibilities available to their members. This insight defines the design requirement for the next generation of communities and organizations, which must achieve the same depth of structural coherence that enabled systems such as the Kibbutz and the modern company to grow, adapt, and influence environments far beyond their initial scale.
When children dream of flight, we do not send them to study birds. We send them to physics and engineering because intuition cannot explain how capability is created. Human systems deserve the same rigor, because intuition alone cannot produce prosperity.
This column showed that the freedom we feel when acting alone belongs to simple environments and supports only a narrow set of possibilities. As systems rise in complexity, freedom expands only when structure aligns Mission, Vision, Values, and Purpose, because only structure can hold tension, stabilize cooperation, and convert individual effort into cumulative capability.
This is why villages preserved continuity but could not rise. It is why ancient cities survived but did not integrate. It is why most companies grew briefly and vanished. And it is why the Kibbutz, by aligning all four binding forces with unusual coherence, was able to transform a region that had remained unchanged for centuries.
Prosperity depends on structures capable of channeling energy, maintaining coherence, and expanding the meaningful degrees of freedom available to their members. Societies that wish to meet the demands of the future must be designed with the same scientific precision we apply to any system that must operate under tension. Freedom grows only inside structure, and the quality of that structure determines whether we remain bound to past patterns or rise to higher levels of capability.
For any matter, contact me at +972-54-2523425
Subscribe here, free!
"Mental and Economic Freedom Are Interconnected."
See you soon,
Nimrod
Dr. Nimrod Israely is the CEO and Founder of Dream Valley and Biofeed companies and the Chairman and Co-founder of the IBMA conference. +972-54-2523425 (WhatsApp), or email nisraely@biofeed.co.il
P.S.
If you missed it, here is a link to last week's blog, “Is Free Will Responsible for Poverty“.
P.P.S.
Here are ways we can work together to help your agro sector and rural communities step forward and shift from poverty into ongoing prosperity:
* Nova Kibbutz and consultancy on rural communities' models.
* Local & National programs related to agro-produce export models - Dream Valley global vertical value and supply chain business model and concept connects (a) input suppliers with farmers in developing economies and (b) those farmers with consumers in premium markets.
* Crop protection: Biofeed, an eco-friendly zero-spray control technology and protocol.
*This article addresses general phenomena. The mention of a country/continent is used for illustration purposes only.