DEFINITIONS

Order

Order is the capacity of a society to enforce rules, maintain norms, and produce predictable outcomes.

Order includes:

• Impartial enforcement of law
• Shared behavioural standards
• Credible consequences
• Predictability across time and space

Order is not severity.
It is reliability.

A society with order allows individuals to plan, cooperate, and invest beyond immediate self-interest.

Compassion

Compassion is the capacity of a society to alleviate suffering through aid, mercy, and inclusion.

Compassion includes:

• Welfare and support
• Leniency and discretion
• Inclusion into social membership
• Protection of the vulnerable

Compassion is not indulgence.
It is intervention.

Compassion is effective only when it operates within a structured system.

Sequence

Sequence is the dependency relationship between principles.

Sequence asks not what is good, but what must come first.

Within this framework:

• Order is foundational
• Compassion is derivative

This dependency is asymmetric.

Compassion depends on order.
Order does not depend on compassion.

Reciprocity

Reciprocity is the balance between what a society provides and what it requires.

Reciprocity binds:

• Rights to duties
• Benefits to contribution
• Membership to obligation

Reciprocity is not equality of outcome.
It is proportional participation.

Reciprocity is the primary source of legitimacy in large systems.

Feedback

Feedback is the transmission of information from outcome to decision.

Feedback includes:

• Measurement of results
• Acknowledgement of unintended effects
• Willingness to adjust policy or behaviour

Feedback is not criticism.
It is correction.

Without feedback, systems cannot adapt.

System

A system is a set of interacting components governed by constraints.

Societies are systems.

They respond to:

• Incentives
• Enforcement
• Resource limits
• Human behaviour under constraint

Intent does not override structure.